Having entered the third floor of the clothing store, Poe and Lucia realized that it was not only clothes being sold here.
Looking around Poe was shocked to see things from metal armors, swords and all the way to what looked like a suspicious box filled with all sorts of strange runes flowing on the side.
Getting closer to the box, Poe inspected the description in front of it.
[Surprise box series: Box of Wonder]
[Activate the box by infusing mana into it!]
[Upon activating the box, a wonderful surprise will unfold]
[Costs: 5 gold]
[WARNING! UNSTABLE! MAY EXPLODE UPON ACTIVATION!]
Seeing the last line, Poe got an idea of what place the third floor was. This was where the entire collection of defect, unstable or useless products ended up.
From what Poe saw, it looked like the clothing store had other shops that specialized in other areas, like the thing called [Box of Wonder]. From what Poe observed, it was likely from a toy store of some sort. The armor and swords were from a smith under the clothing store and so on.
In the end, all the things that were defect, unstable, useless and so on ended up on this clothing stores third floor.
Looked like the third floor really was "unique". Now Poe started worrying about the fact that clothes meeting his requirements was only available on the third floor, it was pretty much the same as saying that only defect or useless things needed 5 strength or less…
Just as Poe was about to turn around and leave whatever place the third floor was, he heard a disturbing voice from the distance.
"Ah! This is so cute~ Poe will definitely love it."
"Yeah! The one we found before looks even better in my opinion. Maybe we could get both of them?"
"What a fantastic idea Cecilia! We really are the same!"
"Indeed, I didn't expect you to have such a great taste when it came to choosing, Poe would definitely love both of them!"
Hearing the voices in the distance Poe shuddered to himself, as he felt Cecilia was starting to fall to the dark side and Ivy was slowly trying to show her the true wonder of the dark side.
Realizing the path Cecilia was turning to was bad, Poe remembered the bad feeling he got earlier. Poe did not really care that much about that, but from what he heard in the distance, it sounded like he was the one they talked about before.
While Cecilia and Ivy bonded over something weird in the distance, Poe and Lucia both decided to not come close to them, wherever they were doing, it did not sound like anything any of them would enjoy being a part of.
"Poe let's go over there and check if we can find something over there."
Lucia pointed in the direction opposite of where they heard Cecilia and Ivy's voices coming from.
Poe saw what Lucia was doing; it looked like even Lucia was uncertain whether she could control Ivy and her new companion Cecilia.
After all, they still did not know what happened for Cecilia to be so happy being together with Ivy all of a sudden and from Lucia's past experience. None of the people Ivy had ever befriended was decent people and was broken in some way like her big sister.
Not being certain of how Cecilia was doing and thinking it might be a misunderstanding, Lucia was about to turn back, but was startled to hear a weird laughter from behind her.
Looking around the first thing she saw was Poe dashing in front of her and speeding away into the distance. The scarred look on Poe's face as he disappeared into the distance was priceless for Lucia… Nevertheless, she had no time to think about such things, so she stopped thinking about it and fully turned around, just to be greeted by Ivy and Cecilia coming over with a smile plastered across both of their faces.
Lucia mostly ignored the creepy smiles plastered on both of their faces and instead turned to look at what they held in their hands.
In Ivy's right hand was a frilly pink dress and in her left hand was what look like a headband with cat ears on top of it. The frilly pink dress looked like it was a perfect fit for Poe and if you counted in the creepy smile, she was giving off; Lucia started to understand why Poe ran away.
However… Poe should know that she could handle Ivy, so there could only be one reason as to why Poe ran away. Thinking this, Lucia turned to look at Cecilia, who also had a smile on her face, but instead of Ivy's creepy vibe, it gave off a gentle and caring feeling, but as Lucia continued to look, she soon discovered something felt wrong about it.
Her thoughts turning, Lucia finally saw what Cecilia had in her hands and most likely the reason for Poe running away. In Cecilia's hand was what looked like a cat pajamas, in Lucia's mind she also slightly approved of it, purely based on the fact that it would look extremely cute on Poe.
Returning to reality, Lucia sighed as she looked in the distance Poe disappeared into, while leaving no traces behind after disappearing.
"Shall we go and find Poe? She disappeared before we could test this top quality "gear" we found."
"I-I guess we have to…"
"Yay~ let's go~"
In the distance Poe was running away at a speed faster than light itself, his speed was indeed faster than what his stats allowed him, but some weird force inside of him drove him forward. Away from the nightmare behind him, while running Poe could only think of one thing.
She has fallen! Cecilia has fallen to the dark side! I knew Ivy was up to something! So she was targeting the poor and gentle Cecilia all this time…
Poe decided to ignore the fact, that Cecilia was the one who brought them here in the first place…