Dungeon Item Shop - Chapter 71: Fragile (Patreon)

Fresh can’t sleep.

Instead she sits cross-legged on the large rug in her room, looking at the pile of coins that she is stacking in front of herself. Hundreds of Obols. Some of her earnings since she and Jubilee had paid off their debts to the adventurer’s guild. As she thinks, she idly takes the coins, stacking them on top of each other into little towers.

“Fragile,” she says, placing a finger against the largest tower. The structure falls in an instant, dozens of coins falling to the floor and rolling away in all manner of directions and she sits there, idly. Watching as the glinting silver and bronze coins scatter, as if running away from her. As if children, running away from a hungry witch who was hunting them through the dark night.

They were fragile.

This is fragile.

This life of hers. This house. Her friendships with Jubilee and Basil. She looks at the pale, weak hands hovering above the glinting ruins. Herself.

“Fragile,” she repeats again, the word gnawing at the back of her mind. As if she had become obsessed with it. As if the very thought was possessing her at this late hour. The single phrase, the single concept had set its hooks deep into her mind and it wouldn’t let her rest. It wouldn’t let her sleep.

The girl’s eyes rise up, as she stares at the thin, chain-lock latched on to the flimsy wooden door. She tilts her head, gazing at the weak, rotting boards that the lock was affixed to.

Fragile.

Turning around, she looks at the wooden shutters, placed above the paper-thin glass. Only a single metal latch held them shut.

Fragile.

Her hands run through her hair, rubbing against her skull as she thinks. As her sleep-addled mind works its way through this single thought, born of the sounds of trickling water that never seemed to leave her ears along with the creeping of the night outside. Owls and crickets making their moon-calls.

If Jubilee finds out that she had snooped upstairs. They would stop being her friend. She is sure of it.

Fragile.

If Basil finds out that she is a witch, she would be terrified of the girl. She would hate her. She is sure of it.

Fragile.

If somehow, any of the thousand things that could go wrong, finally seized their chance and went wrong. It would be over. It would all be over. All of this. Everything she had worked for so far, everything she has been struggling for. In an instant. Like a dream after waking, she would become untethered from it and it would all be gone and in those waking moments, she would grasp at the strings of the memories that she had made, but they would snap and fade away. They would leave her floating alone through the world, the ties that bind her here, the seals that hold her new life intact are…

“Fragile,” she stares with wide, still unblinking eyes at the coins before her, laying on the rug.

The girl grabs her cursed dagger from her bag and holds it in her hands, looking at it. For whatever reason, Jubilee seems reluctant to take her into the dungeon all too often, even if the stats would be a huge help for them both. She would never get stronger at this rate.

She herself is too weak to do anything but kill Mr. Mushroom, which she could only do once every two weeks anyways, when the dungeon resets. The two mush-mushes on floor two are already too much to handle by herself with her current abilities. She looks at the coins, wondering if she can pay someone from the adventurer’s guild to take her through the dungeon for experience. She’s sure she could but…

The back of the blade of the dagger taps against her hands as she thinks. If she leveled in the dungeon, they would see her abilities, they would see her class.

She taps the dagger against her hand again.

The man from the sect? If what Jubilee had said was right and if she went and told him the truth, he would help her.

The dagger taps against her hand again.

But what if something went wrong? What if she told him the truth and he doesn’t react like she expects? Or what if he does, but then somehow word gets out? What if someone sees her going into the dungeon with a man from the witch’s sect?

The dagger taps against her hand.

Everything is so fragile.

Fresh’s gaze rises up, as she looks around her room, at the newly repaired collection of armor and weapons. Swords and breastplates and shields and all manner of exotic items sitting next to her new cauldron. She’s a caster, isn’t she? Isn’t witch a caster class?

She has a single combat spell, but it doesn’t even do damage. It just steals a little luck. She needs something that does damage. She needs something that can hurt things. The dagger taps against her hand again, as she listens to the permeating sound of the distant fountain. She needs something that can kill things.

Before she knows what she is doing, her hand reaches into the bag and pulls out the grimoire, which seems particularly wet tonight, as water drips freely from the corners, trickling down her crossed legs and onto the carpet.

A pale, fragile finger flips through the pages with elegant precision, pulling the wet paper carefully apart, as it moves to a section she doesn’t recognize. One that she is sure wasn’t here before, when she had looked through the entire grimoire over the past few weeks. The ink, dripping wet, as if it had been freshly written.

“Malediction…” reads the girl quietly to herself, not quite sure if its her own voice that she’s hearing or simply the trickling of the distant water taking odd shape and form as it mixes with her thoughts. Her finger runs along the page as she reads the lines, the digit smearing the fresh ink, as her eyes dart to the depictions and notations filling the pages. All of them are written in different styles and hand-writings, as if the freshly written pages had somehow always existed.

“-In the water.”

“I can hear it-“

“- I killed them all. I’m so so-“

“-There’s nothing left.”

She skips over the annotations, her eyes focusing on the description of the spell.

[Malediction]{CURSE}

Curse an enemy with an affliction of the black-fountain. Once applied, it will drain their health once a minute, dealing damage equal to your LOV at the time of casting.

Warning: Once applied, this curse can never be removed.

New Ability: [Malediction]

Fresh blinks. Her mind suddenly jolts to full wakefulness again, as the sharp, chiming sound of a window appearing rouses her from this odd, trance-like state which she had been in. The girl closes her eyes for the first time in minutes. Blinking for the first time since she had sat down on the rug and started stacking the coins. Her dry eyes burn in relief, as she scrunches them tightly shut, her mind waking up from its strange, half-dazed state.

Her head lifts upwards, as she looks at the window that then fades away a moment later. Did she just get a new ability? Without leveling?

The girl’s gaze lowers back down to the open pages of the book in her hand.

They’re blank.

She sits there, cross legged on the rug, looking down and watching as black ink runs down the sides of her bare legs, tingeing both her pale skin and the new fabric of the carpet. Yelping in surprise, she slams the grimoire shut and runs to get something to clean it off before it makes a stain.