"Spoon, look~" Rosalia said excitedly, sending me a pm of her new class.
[Angel of Luxuria]
An angel chosen by the Goddess of Lust, Beauty, and Bathing herself. You have been viewed as an ideal representative for Luxuria, possessing both an unparalleled beauty and an innate talent for magic, as well as an appreciation for relaxation and bath.
"You'd be insane not to take the class," I responded after reading the description.
"Yep, I already accepted it," Rosalia responded, busy tapping away in front of her while fully nude. "Wow, there's so much information."
A notification popped up on my screen.
[Luxury Bath Suite has been revealed to be one of Luxuria's private baths, gifted to the Dimension Thief after receiving his offering of souls.]
[The goddess Luxuria has taken interest in the dimension thief. Luxuria wishes for the Dimension Thief to get closer with her favored, Rosalia.]
Was it just me, or did it feel like the goddess was not-so-subtly trying to play matchmaker between a certain thief and her favorite angel?
[Luxury Bath Suite has been renamed to Luxuria's Hot Spring Bath]
Ding.
[Joint Quest: Luxuria's Hot Spring Bath]
Goddess Request
Luxuria wishes for you to upgrade her Hot Spring Bath. This is a joint quest. Participants include the Angel of Luxuria and the Dimension Thief.
Obtain these ingredients and bring them to Luxuria's Hot Spring to begin the process. The Angel of Luxuria must be present.
0/1 Branch of a World Tree
0/1 Faerie Fountain Water
0/1 Rock of Gibraltar
Reward: +1000 affinity with the goddess Luxuria
Upgraded Hot Spring
"Looks like we got a joint quest," I remarked.
"Yep, we'll be working together more in the future~" Rosalia chimed. She seemed happy about it.
"Maybe we should make a guild," I joked.
"Sure, if you make a guild I will join it~"
I looked over the quest notification again.
"The hot spring upgrade from a goddess request is probably worth the effort, but these ingredients sound really rare,��� I thought out loud. "Branch of the World Tree? What the heck is that…"
"If you read it carefully, it mentions a branch of a World Tree, meaning there are multiple in this world. But I think you're right that they must be rare."
Rosalia licked her lips in thought. "Anyway, it says that to convert to [Angel of Luxuria], I need to absorb the water's energy. I have to be in the bath naked until my body absorbs enough energy to change to the new class."
I nodded. "I'll try to get some food for us while you do that."
"Thank you. Be careful out there, Spoon. If you're in trouble just come back immediately, and sister will heal you~"
"Yes. I'll be counting on you if I'm injured."
I took a quick rinse in the shower, which spouted water from all sides, and then dried off and put on my clean clothes. All my stats were raised by 100 from the bath, which was insane on all accounts. This was the power of a goddess of lust, beauty, and bath.
Rosalia sat in the middle of the bath on her knees in a meditative position, the water reaching up to her chin. She closed her eyes and began chanting softly, as the bath water resonated with her body and the glyphs and runes to the side of the bath awakened, glowing with energy.
After drying off my hair, I stepped into the dimension room's living room, where a large television now hung from the side of the wall. Oddly enough, I didn't see a remote for it anywhere. I raised my hand and opened a portal to the outside world.
I landed on my feet back in the small rock crevice from earlier, where the various weapons I stuck in the ground were creating a barrier of entry. Ruffling my hair, I leaned down and took a look at the spinosaurus situation outside.
It seemed like they made camp here because of all the corpses on the beach. The two juveniles were busy gnawing at the bodies of a particularly fat soldier, as one of the adults, the smaller female parent, napped with half its body submerged in the sand.
Maybe this was doable. The juveniles were small enough that I could take them on in a fight even if they noticed me, so as long as the adult spinosaurus stayed napping, I'd be fine fishing in the side. And worst case scenario, I had shadow to escape.
One by one, I pried off the battle axes and warhammers blocking off the gap, and crept out into the sand with my poleaxe gripped in my right hand. Slowly but surely, I used the elevation in sand as cover, crawling prone towards the ocean. I made it behind a large rock, which I used for cover while I caught my breath. Sand crawling in the blistering heat was a lot more laborious than I ever expected. It felt almost like swimming in sand, the way I had to push the hot sand back as I moved my elbows, and the need for stealth amplified the difficulty of the ordeal exponentially.
It took a while to reach the water. Using the rock as a natural line of sight barrier from the juveniles, I waded through the crystalline clear waters until I was more than waist deep, and fish darted around my body curiously. A palm sized golden red fish nibbled at my toes, and a few smaller fish were even casually swimming between my legs. I hoisted up my adamantite poleaxe and thrusted it down at a colorful blue fish with yellow stripes, but missed.
Lifted my poleaxe again, I stabbed downwards, keeping the majority of the poleaxe underwater to minimize any splashing sounds. Every time I stabbed downwards, the fish darted out of the way. How did Rosalia make this look so easy?
Maybe it was time to change strategies. Muttering under my breath to complete the summon, a long black whip materialized in front of me, diving into the water telekinetically in an attempt to grasp a fish. No dice. As powerful as it was as a succubus weapon against humanoid enemies and larger life forms, it was completely ineffective against lower life forms like fish and inanimate objects. Which was a shame, since swinging from one place to another like spiderman during a fight was something I was dying to try out until I found it that it just didn't work.
I gripped the sea water soaked shaft of my poleaxe and resumed my assault on the local fish population. My stomach was growling in moderate pain, having skipped at least two meals at this point. There were so many rations back at our base camp… if only I could get to there. But for now, only fish was on the menu, and maybe a few coconuts if I could sneak past the adult.
Splash.
After much time and effort, my poleaxe's spear tip pierced a big juicy fish, which wriggled deliciously on top of the spearhead. What should I do with it? Cook it over a fire to make some roasted fish? Or maybe cut it up into sashimi? My mouth was salivating already at the thought.
Splash, splash.
The fish thrashed while skewered, causing a bit of a mess with water splashing everywhere and into my eyes and mouth. I spat out the taste of salt from the seawater that splashed into my mouth, and hoisted the poleaxe further into the air in a violent motion in an attempt to stun the fish.
In the middle of the struggle between man and fish, a soft yelping noise came from my right. Oh, no. Not like this. I turned my head to the sound, my heart beating. A juvenile spinosaurus had walked around the rock and was now staring at me while making a deep purring sound. Standing at just over four feet tall, the lengthy juvenile with crocodile-like teeth and stubby arms tilted its head inquisitively as it continued to examine me.
"Hey there buddy… easy now…" I said slowly, while backing away with the poleaxe in my right hand and the skewered fish in my left, as the juvenile examined my every move.
As it was watching me, I stumbled while trying to walk backwards through the water, flailing my arms in the air. This sudden motion seemed to startle the juvenile, who raised its head in the air and began yelping with a more urgent tonation, compared to the curious purring from before.
I needed to shut it up, now. Before it woke up the adult.
"Love whip, restrain!"
Love whip shot through the air and coiled itself tightly around the juvenile's jaw. Proving to be much weaker than the adult spinosaurus that immediately shrugged off my attempt to restrain its jaw, the juvenile couldn't open its restrained jaw at all, tossing and turning as it tried to get rid of the black rope. It let out several panicked squeals for help, which were audible even through its clamped jaw. Not good.
Putting the fish into my inventory, I lifted my adamantite poleaxe with both hands and slashed at the juvenile, striking it right on the neck with the sharp, white and curved axe portion of the blade. Its tough hide prevented full penetration, but the blow still left a nasty bleeding gash in the side of its neck underneath the beginning of its bony webbed sail. The long jawed animal let out a whimper, and I swung again, this time using the other end of the poleaxe head, which was shaped like a pickaxe spike.
The spike dug into the side of the juvenile spinosaurus's torso, as it lunged forward at me but couldn't open its jaw. Pushing back with my hands horizontally gripping the shaft of the poleaxe, I knocked over the bewildered spinosaurus into the water with a splash. Blood leaked into the water from the open wounds on the juvenile spinosaurus, as it thrashed loudly in the water and stood back up.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Heavy footsteps. This was bad. Very bad. I turned around and started swim-running to shore, just in time to see a large sail peeking out from above the rock, and a yellow crocodile-like eye with a vertical pupil fixate onto me.
Seeing its wounded juvenile, the infuriated spinosaurus parent turned its head and let loose a spine chilling roar towards me. I entered shadow form and zoomed through the water, towards the gap.
The adult spinosaurus charged straight towards my cloud while roaring, as the other uninjured juvenile picked its snout up from eating a soldier's corpse to watch.
Fwoosh. The duration of my shadow ran out, and I was left running for my life in the sand. Just a few more steps to get to the gap. Oh, no. I could see the shadow of the adult spinosaurus grow larger in front of me. Right as I reached the gap, I dove face first in, sliding painfully across the sand.
THUMP.
The entire crevice shook from the impact of the adult spinosaurus ramming its body into the mountain wall.
Phew. I was safe. I dumped out the excess weapons from my inventory again and hastily put together the barricade, as the adult spinosaurus sniffed at the entrance before backing off to its injured young.
The injured juvenile whined and squealed painfully as it limped back to the nest and sank onto its side, its chest rising and falling as it took laborious breaths. The adult spinosaurus nudged the juvenile with its head, looking over its young protectively, before turning its head and staring directly at me. I gulped. The damage I did to the juvenile was probably fatal, since it had a deep laceration on its neck and an even deeper spike wound. Without antibiotic treatment or a healer, the wound would fester into an infection and likely kill the juvenile.
That was probably going to make the parents very, very angry, although we were in a bit of a stalemate here. The spinosauruses couldn't make their way into this crevice, but I also couldn't leave the safety of the crevice too comfortably either. And plus, my poor Siege Tank golem's core was just sitting out there. If only I could just reconstruct that, I'd have so much more firepower at my disposal.
I'd figure this out later. For now, it was time to eat.
I returned to the dimension room soaking wet, to find Rosalia and Meat Shield snugly cuddled up together on the sofa.
"Oh, you're back. How did it go?" Rosalia asked, adjusting her posture. Her eye color was different now, an icy blue-gray replacing what used to be light green.
"Close call, but I got us dinner. What happened to your eyes?"
"It's a side effect of the class change. I'm the Angel of Luxuria now~"
"Hang on, we can talk about it over dinner. Let me get cooking."
"Sure, I can help you. How are we going to cook, though? There's no kitchenware here."
"I'll buy some."
After giving my clothes a quick wash in the incredibly convenient magical laundry basket, I opened up my dimension shop. Thankfully, I still had 270 souls left over to use on some basic necessities.
"Hey, cat," I called to Meat Shield.
"Nya?"
"How does ventilation work in this room? Can I just start a fire here or will that cause issues?"
"This room is connected to the heavenly realm, so you don't have to worry about breathing~ However, I really suggest you don't start a fire here. The floors are made of wood, you know~"
Hm, interesting. The dimension room seemed to have connections to both the heavenly realm and the underrealm. I absentmindedly flipped through the dimension room catalogue, before finding something that caught my eye.
[Basic Kitchen and Stove]
A room furnished with stone containing all basic kitchen necessities. Includes a coal oven, and a stove that can be used for both cooking food and cooking your enemies alive.
Price: 60 souls
Not bad for the price, and I wouldn't have to worry about burning the whole room down. I purchased the basic kitchen without any regrets. Surprisingly, a new door did not appear with a bang like I expected.
"Huh? Where's the kitchen?"
Meat Shield stretched her sleek back and yawned. "Since you got more than two rooms now, the layout got renovated. Only Luxuria's bath is directly connected to the dimension room now, because it's the most important~"
Rosalia stood up and opened the storage room door. "Wow, a hallway. It's so pretty~"
What was originally the storage room was now a hallway that continued along the japanese theme, with tatami panels and white in the middle lining the walls. We walked through the hallway to the first door, which was the storage room from earlier, still empty. Going a bit further was a second door, which led to a rather barren looking stone kitchen. The way the wooden japanese style hallway abruptly transitioned into stone was disorienting, but I'd eventually get used to it.
Rosalia leaned against my shoulder behind me as we looked at the kitchen. I looked back at her. Her head came up over my shoulder, which was unusual for a girl.
"I didn't notice before, but you're pretty tall," I told her.
"Yep, I'm 175 cm~" she laughed, squeezing beside me.