Dungeon Menagerie 16 (Patreon)

Commissioned by InfiniteChaosRei

Dungeon Menagerie

Chapter 16

-VB-

Vanessa stretched herself fully, raising her arms over her head, locking the joints, and even standing up on her tippy toes. 

She felt her muscles pulling and stretching before she allowed herself to relax. Her arms dropped and flopped to her side, and her head rolled down until her chin was hitting her collar. 

She felt … free for some reason. Like she had a lot of load she’s been carrying that was just off of her shoulders. 

And then she looked up.

“Mori, you’re not usually in my room in the morning.”

After she and her goddess did a check-up, Mori kept himself close by her side more so than normal. The only time he left her alone was when she was in the bath, and sometimes not even then. He was … on guard. 

He ruffled his feathers a little before settling in.

“Look, it’s not your fault that my Skill is acting up, okay?” 

He didn’t respond, merely resting on the floor as he waited for her to get dressed and go back to the Dungeon. 

He was really adamant about her becoming stronger, and she understood his position. It was hard watching any friend screaming in pain. 

“Fine, fine. Give me a minute.”

But then she stopped because Mori sighed.

He doesn’t sigh.

He stood up and walked over to her, and then, as she watched, pressed his forehead against hers. 

She felt … 

She could kind of hear what he wanted to convey, even though she didn’t have the words for it. 

He wanted to give her something again, just like his eye cover. The Justitia. He was also saying that … Justitia was not the name of the headband/eye cover? 

He seemed to understand a bit more of how her Skill worked, at least intuitively, and wanted her to invest some of the stored Essence in him.

She wasn’t sure what he was trying to do, though. Was he trying to double himself or something? Or …?

Shrugging, she sat back down on the bed and patted the bed right next to her. She hadn’t even eaten yet, so this was already as a hassle, but if Mori was being this insistent, then maybe this was important. 

He sat down almost like how a human would.

And then she did as he asked. 

She felt how much Essence Mori was “worth,” so she went and chunked that much and gave it to him. Material Extraction, an ability that worked only with the creatures of the Celestial Menagerie, acted upon Mori, but instead of taking her friend away to give her something of him, it took the bulk of the Essence she had stored in his stead. 

A brief flash of light lit up the room and blinded her. She sat still as her temporary blindness came to an end and the spots in her eyes slowly died down. When she got her senses back, she found her lap heavy with something. She looked down while still blinking the last few spots out of her vision, she saw … a sword? 

It was … Justitia the Sword. If her eye cover was Justitia the Eye Bandage, then this was Justitia the Sword. It was a longsword with a black rectangular sheathe. The hilt of the sword was made out of Mori’s feathers and the sheathe itself was covered in rolls of bandages, covering only like a fifth of the surface. 

She wondered what that was about. 

Vanessa turned to look at Mori and found him knocked out. 

It must have taken a lot of him. 

She ran her fingers over his feathers, making sure to run her fingers with the grain.

“Thank you,” she said quietly. 

Mori was always watching out for her. He was her best friend. 

But then she got an idea. 

Bubbles the Card was … uh … not a good companion. It was a mindless, if somewhat intelligent, bubble maker. 

So what would she get if she used Material Extraction on it? 

She pulled out the card and did just that. 

There was a brief flash of light again (was she going to have to get used to that?) and then she found herself holding … a bar of soap. She knew instinctively that this bar of soap would never run out. 

“Nice,” she muttered. “I can even sell this for a high price.”

And then her Skill acted up. She felt the Celestial Menagerie bloom and reach up for something… Something big. 

Her eyes widened in fear. What if it was something like that Void thing? 

Mori snapped out of his exhaustion and stepped up to guard her, though neither of them knew where the new companion would come from.

It grabbed something … digital? 

There was a flash, and Vanessa found herself blinking the spots out of her vision for the second time today.

When she finally got her vision back, she found herself looking at …

What was it? 

The Celestial Menagerie gave her a quick rundown on what it was. 

Keramon was a digital creature. A “Rookie,” “Unidentified,” and “Virus” “digimon,” Keramon was a destructive digimon that thought of the destruction it sowed as part of a play.

She found herself a little fascinated by the … puppet like creature with spindly lips and large hands. It was like a parody of a puppet. Like someone gave a jellyfish puppet eyes and hands.

 “Huh.”

It floated around, leisurely looking around her room with the look of a kid trying to find something fun to do. 

“Hi,” she hesitantly called out. 

Keramon turned to look at her and … smiled. 

Yikes. 

That was a killer’s smile. 

“You’re my companion,” she said. “Which means you’ll be my friend.”

It perked up and bounced around midair. 

… It couldn’t be too bad if it liked having friends, right?

-VB-

Current List of “Friends”
Judgement Bird (“Mori”)

Chaurus (“Chauky”)

Keramon (unnamed)