We left the first floor through the boss room and found a nearly identical set to those of the first floor's entrance leading downward the next level. It, like the rest of the dungeon looked almost uniform in every way. The only differences I could make out in the continuing inexplicable glow that lit this place, were all so minor that I was surprised to have noticed them myself. Whatever magical force rests this place every night really doesn't put much thought into the design, except maybe for where traps are placed.
I had no idea how the General up on ground level was able to differentiate them, but assumed it had something to do with just wanting to open a portal to the specified location, rather than actually thinking of the image. While my own knowledge of the Dimensional step spell suggested that you needed to keep an image of the location in mind, maybe it really was as simple as just wanting it in this case, as each floor entrance looking the same allowed for easier memorization.
At least, I thought so. Somehow, probably in no small part due to my Memorization ability, I was able to remember the exact location of each and every crack in the stonework, the placement of every crevice where two stone blocks met and where on the walls each little patch of mold clung. But here I noticed that all of these seemingly innocuous features were in entirely different places compared to the first floor as we walked. As usual, navigating this place would definitely have been impossible for me otherwise.
"This way, Master."
Yua had taken the lead again and had to force herself to walk a bit slower to keep pace with me after accidentally caused her to walk too far ahead a couple times without noticing. This was likely because I used the points she gained this time to level her Speed stat and round it off with her other main stats as we moved between the floors. While I was busy hoping she'd get used to how it felt by our next battle, she had already set about mastering this new speed the only way she could, by focusing on keeping pace with me. Seems she knew the benefits of controlling her body, rather than just making use of the force she could put out with it. Still, she'd have plenty of opportunities to use her speed to its fullest later, the thought of which I could already tell had left her excited.
How could I tell? Her tail, of course. Although, with her strength what it was now, and with how fast it flicked through the air, I was a little worried what might happen if I were to let it hit me.
"Master, there's a monster right around that corner."
"Alright, can you tell what it is?"
Yua's ears twitched as she focused on the sounds of our next enemy shuffling about.
"It sounds like a Trent."
"Trent, huh?"
If I remembered correctly, a Trent was a type of living tree monster. If the Proud Great Wolf's fur was anything to go by, my Fire Ball spell should be able to burn it easily.
I guess I might actually end up burning down a forest after all.
"Is there anything else you can tell me about it?"
"Yes, Master. Trents move really slow, but they make up for it with longer ranged attacks. They can also sling their branch-like arms around like a whip, so it's best to get in close of you can't dodge its attacks."
"Then I'll use my Fire Ball on it. Back me up."
"Yes, Master!"
I definitely can't let our progress today make us get ahead of ourselves. While the first floor took less than an hour to complete this time around, we needed to get as far as we could as fast as we could. And in order to do that, we both needed to make it through this in one piece.
After stepping around the corner, I found the slow, lumbering tree monster I was expecting. About seven feet tall and with its leafy hairdo scraping against the ceiling, it slowly slid its way across the floor by working its seemingly unnecessary roots like a couple dozen spider legs all wriggling about at the same time. Its hide of green, rotted bark looked hard and difficult to break through physically, but its skin being so tough must be why it moved so slow. Even the act of turning to face us when we made ourselves known looked incredibly labored, a far cry from the speed the wolves above demonstrated.
So slow to greet its opponents. It's like it's asking us to kill it.
I aimed my palm and threw a Fire Ball at it. Unable to move fast enough to avoid the spell, the Trent had no choice but to stand its ground and take it. At the same time, it lashed out with one of its branches, stretching all the way over to us. Its branch whipped through the Fire Ball, lighting itself on fire and empowering its attack with the flame it swathed itself in.
I dodged its strike, but only barely, as I was expecting the concussive force of my spell to stop its attack. Its branch whipped the ground where I was, leaving behind a scorched dent in the stone. Thankfully, my mana was not wasted as my Fire Ball still managed to hit it center mass. Bright red flames traveled up its body and lit the leaves above alight. Bits and chunks of smoldering bark peeled off and fell to the floor.
As if it felt nothing at all, the Trent launched another attack. However, perhaps sensing the danger I posed to it, this time it chose to aim for Yua. She dodged it easily enough, easier than I did, anyways. I sent another fire ball hurtling towards its center.
The Trent burst into light and was gone right after my second spell hit. I was happy that the thing didn't seem to have a face, so I didn't have to listen to it screech from the pain of the fire. I had enough of that with the last boss.
Once it and all its discarded bits of barky-flesh were gone, and while I was basking in the fact that the fight was so easy because I was right to take on the first floor again for a few free levels, Yua dashed over to pick up what it dropped. She held out the small vial of light brown liquid for me to appraise both as a Merchant and Apothecary.
[Trent Tree Sap. 1 Silver. Can be Combined With 'X' to Brew Stamina Potions.]
I reported this information to Yua and put the vial into my item box.
"Hmm. So, Trent Tree Sap can be used to make endurance potions? Isn't that great, Master? Now you won't have to buy more."
"Yea, that's what I'm hoping for. But it's not like we used the ones we bought this morning yet anyways. Also, it doesn't even say what I need to mix it with."
Come to think of it, I had the Apothecary class before finding our first Living Slime Goo and didn't find out what it could be used for until I found the second ingredient, Green Moss. If you don't know the recipe beforehand, finding the second ingredient must be the requirement. While that's a bit of a pain, at least it wasn't expecting me to randomly experiment and waste ingredients to figure it out like you often had to do in games. Unlike them, I couldn't just pluck these ingredients out of the soil, we had to fight for them. So, wasting was definitely a no-no.
"Speaking of, did you happen to see any more of that green moss on the first floor?"
"No, Master. I'm sorry, but I didn't."
"It's fine. We did find it in a hidden area, after all. Maybe there is another place it spawns that has more of it."
Maybe the second ingredient will be hidden on this floor as well. It was a common in for developers of games with a potion-brewing system to leave ingredients meant for a specific type of potion together in the same room, be it with some bundled together in a specially named bag while others were left out on shelves, all to subtly suggest to the player they should consider combining them to see what happens, thereby learning their effects in the process.
Then again, more games also randomized locations. One ingredient may be found in a sunny patch of forest somewhere, while another might only be found in the deepest part of a cave a few miles away. If the dungeon ran on that kind of logic, then maybe we just had to search for it.
We continued through the dungeon, looking for our next battle, while keeping an eye out for any and all plants, when a thought occurred to me.
"Yua, do you know if any plants grow in the dungeons? Not just hidden away like the, but just, like, in the ground?"
I'd already tried analyzing the regular moss I've seen growing on the walls a dozen times, but it seemed to be of a different, more useless variety, as it didn't share the name or effect of the Green Moss I had in my item box. So, I had to wonder if there were other plants known to actively grow here in bunches, rather than finding the occasional one-off. Can't exactly start hording potions if the ingredients to make them are super rare, right? And Madame Turquesse did make it seem like getting ingredients from the dungeons was easy.
Who knows? Maybe we'll find a floor that is just one big garden. One filled with endless potion ingredients for me to experiment with.
"I've heard of that being the case," Yua said. "But I never made it deep enough to find out for myself."
"Right… How deep did you go in the dungeon when you were on your own, anyway? You seem to know so much about it."
Her ears twitched a half-second before she clenched her fists. I wasn't sure if she had heard another enemy approaching or if I had touched a nerve by asking. My guess was the latter, considering how her giddiness suddenly faded from her expression. From this and the furrow to her brow, I got the impression that she just didn't want to talk about her past experiences in the dungeon past potential feats off her own strength for some reason. She was silent for a moment before speaking again.
"… I only made it to the third floor."
The third floor? But she was only level three when we met. If she was able to make it that far on her own, actual skill at fighting must be even more important than the stats backing it up than I thought. And if she made it that far on her own, that means she beat a minimum of two floor bosses by herself. That's insane. If true, her skilled must really warrant all her bragging. The fighting prowess she's displayed so far must just have been the tip of the iceberg.
No wonder why her price at the slave house was set so high. She was a top tier beauty and an excellent fighter. It made all the sense in the world now. So much so that I no longer doubted that the initial asking price Alphonse mentioned for her contract was true. I may be contradicting my earlier intentions regarding her, but while I hate the idea of actually owning her, she was worth every penny. Er, copper.
When I noticed that she'd gone silent again while I thought about these stupid things, I shook my head. Worried that I might once again fail to uphold a what this time looked to be an important conversation I actually wanted to have, I pressed on without thinking.
"Why did you stop there?"
"… Because, that's when I was forced into slavery."
Shit. Oops…
Guess it's a sore subject for her. Knowing how she fights, she's probably good enough to make it even deeper than the third floor. And that not even mentioning her love for fighting in general clearly being enough to propel her forward if just the thought of fighting in the dungeon was enough to get her to lighten up around me a little. I should have guessed something significant had happened to make her stop and just shut my mouth. Shit. And the mood between us was so jovial just a second ago.
Wait. Wait. Wait! Actually, it may have been entirely unintentional, but I managed to lead the conversation to a place where one of my biggest questions regarding her might finally get answered.
"Could you… Can I ask what happened?"
I asked the question that had been boiling on the tip of my tongue since my pessimistic brain first pulled together all my idiocy and smashed it all into the shapeless mess that just fell out of my mouth. She stopped in her tracks, her ears not needing to give that usual cute flick to show she heard me. In the middle of the one of the second floor's many halls, she stared at her feet, looking just as dejected as she did when I first bought her.
Remembering the guilt that I felt in that moment myself, I thought that, if it was only going to bring up negative memories for her, then I shouldn't prod. Maybe I should just leave it for if, no when, we turn in the full price for her contract and ask Alphonse if he knew what happened to save her the trouble. I'd hate to ask him of all people to tell me, but I knew I wouldn't be able to rest easily until I knew the truth.
"If you don't want to tell me, you don't have to. I'm not going to make telling your story an order."
"No. It's fine. My master has the right to ask any question of me he wants."
I winced and, unsure of what to do with myself, scratched the back of my head. Her statement, mainly that title she insisted on using, stung. Probably more than she meant it to and more than it should have, but it stung.
"I'm not asking as your master. I'm asking as somebody that cares about you. If you don't want to tell me, then don't. I won't get mad and I won't ask again."
Despite myself and the potentially deep subject matter, I felt my cheeks heat up again at how easily my feelings for her graced the open air between us. She, however, bit her lip, held her hands together in front of her chest and looked into the distance, as if remembering an old, but deeply-rooted pain. Then she looked me directly in the eyes. Her emeralds weren't shining like they were a few minutes ago, but she persevered all the same.
"It was only my fifth day down on the third floor. I was training to fight the boss when I was beaten by a group of enemies. I… got cocky and tried to round up a bunch of monsters and fight them all at once to save time, but they ended up circling around and overpowering me much faster than I thought they could. I managed to break free from them, but they chased me. Hurt and tired, I couldn't fight back anymore. So, I ran.
"I wasn't able to focus on my ears and one of the monsters hit me hard enough in the head to make me forget where the exit was. I was scared. For the first time since entering the dungeon, I was scared. The blood from my head wound made it hard to see, but I happened to run right into an Adventurer. Out of breath and barely able to speak, I begged him for help. He heard me out and, after seeing the trouble headed my way, he said he would, but that I had to give him all the loot I had picked up so far that day as payment. I swore on my ears and tail that I would and we shook on it. He told me to wait for him outside the dungeon.
"I wanted to fight together with him, but did as he asked when my knees started to shake. So, I ran. I hated myself for being so weak, but I had no other choice if I wanted to live and come back to try again. That's all I wanted, so I did what I to to live."
She stopped to cover her mouth and tears welled up in the corners of her eyes. It sounded like a pretty basic story of someone biting off more than they could chew and paying for it, but it was clearly more to her than that. The first real bit of her true self that I got straight from her mouth and that didn't require me to abuse my powers to look into her personal information myself, was nothing more than the fact that she loved fighting. It wasn't something I could understand myself, since I was more or less a pacifist to a fault in the past. One whose sole experience in fighting was in his repeated daydreams of saving his classmates, friends or even random people from a crazed attacker. That was it. But I could see plainly how much it meant to her and by how her shoulders shook, that just the thought of being weak hurt her.
If sharing all this was only going to upset her, then maybe I really shouldn't have asked.
But it was too late to complain now. Again, like she did in the past, she persevered. Yua swallowed enough of her sadness to allow herself to continue.
"When I ran away to the sound of that man fighting to clean up my mess behind me, I got distracted when I heard him cry out in pain. He seemed to be doing fine when I turned back and saw him jab his spear straight through one of the monsters that tried to kill me, but because of that distraction, another monster attacked me. It tried to grab me by grabbing the bag I used to carry my loot. I tried to wrench it away, but I was so tired and weak that I couldn't get it loose. So, I had to abandon it.
"I left the loot behind and made it out of the dungeon safely. That Adventurer didn't follow me out immediately, of course, so I waited for him as we promised. When he finally came back out, just as hurt and just as tired, but also just as alive as I was, he smiled bravely. That smile was so reassuring that I felt like it pulled a great weight off my shoulders.
"I had been pacing around the dungeon's entrance, waiting for him to come back out and show that I didn't get him killed by my mistake. And when he did finally come out, he smiled through the blood and sweat. In awe of his strength, I gave him the potion I had on me and while he drank it, I asked what happened. He spared no detail when he told me all about how he heroically exterminated all the monsters I left behind and that he even managed to kill the few lunged at him after they were drawn in by the sounds fighting. I was amazed by his skill, since what he told me sounded like it would have been impossible for me even if I was at full strength…"
She paused and the fond smile Yua had been wearing as she recanted the first part of her tale ended so abruptly that I almost felt myself fearing that it would never appear on her lips ever again when her expression took a sudden depressing turn. Again, with barely forced breath to amp herself up, she continued.
"But his cheerful smile suddenly changed when I told him what happened to my bag. He got mad. Really mad. Madder than I'd ever seen a human be before. Seeing him like that, I thought he might turn his spear on me right then and there, but I couldn't understand why.
"Nothing I had in that bag was all that valuable and could easily have been replaced in a day or two of fighting in the dungeon and i would have gladly done so. But he didn't even give me the chance to finish explaining. Didn't give me the chance to go and try to find it after regaining some strength. Didn't even let me offer to make it up to him some other way. As soon as I told him I abandoned the bag inside, he went and told the guards that I broke our agreement. And technically, I did. And because of that, I was branded as a Thief from then on. I was arrested immediately and sold to Alphonse De Grave as a slave. That was three years ago."
Yua slumped against the wall, as if the memory of how weak her legs had been back then sapped her of all her strength again, like the levels she'd just gained meant nothing.
The story itself was easy to follow, if not messed up beyond reason, especially knowing that she really did spend three years in that slave house, but the circumstances of her becoming a Thief in the first place made no sense at all to someone not from this world.
"Why were you called a Thief when all you did was say that you would do something? It's not like you took something of his, right?"
Wiping her tears, Yua shook her head. "I didn't just promise to give that stuff to him, I swore by my ears and tail that I would hold up my end of the deal. Our ears and tails are immensely important to us, so when a beast-kin does makes a promise like that, it's just as powerful as when a human signs a contract. Meaning that my loot was already as good as his the moment we shook on it. So, failing to give it to him was considered stealing what was his."
Was it really that easy? Back on Earth, and any other world that should run on even a semblance of rationality, wouldn't count that towards anything other than a word-of-mouth agreement. From the sound of things, she didn't sign any sort of paper or use any sort of magic to agree to the terms he put up, but they instantly screwed her over before he even fulfilled his part? According to her, her things were stolen before he finished fighting the horde. How was it fair for her to be punished then?
Why would the Goddess build this world that way? What was the point in making it so ridiculously easy to ruin someone's life? I mean, what if a pair of children, let's say brothers, made a similar pact and one brother offered the other a toy in return for taking over his chores, but their parents unknowingly took away said toy before the agreement could be finished because the first brother was caught lazing about? Did that mean they would be permanently labeled a Thief? Over a toy?
There had to be more to it than this.
"Then how did the guard find out that he wasn't just making it up to frame you?"
"Because the guards held us there until they brought over a Scrying Orb. With that, they were able to examine me and found that I did have the Thief tag. So, they were forced to side with him. Nobody would ever believe a Thief."
"That's so unfair."
A tear ran down her cheek before she could wipe it away and she continued. I thought the story was over, but she continued.
"… He tried to buy me. The man that saved me. I could tell what he wanted me for and it wasn't revenge. I could tell he thought of me like that from the moment I ran into him in the dungeon, but I had no choice but to beg him for help at the time. But I knew. I could tell by the way he looked at my body."
She glanced at me, as if to say "the same way you look at me," and I shrank back. But those words never left her lips.
"I'm sorry…"
"It's okay, Master. I know now that you aren't a bad person like he was. But because I knew what he was after and because I was mad at him, I started a fight with Alphonse's guards. When I saw that Adventurer standing there with that big dumb smile on his stupid face, I did all I could to make it abundantly obvious to him that I'd attack him the moment I could. Eventually, he got the message and backed off, so I let the guards overpower me. I wasn't allowed to eat for three days after that, but it was worth it. That man ran away and never came back. As far as I know. And after seeing how well acting out like that worked on him, I started doing that every time someone showed interest in buying me, so that I wouldn't be picked. Being able to fight back on occasion felt great… but I was punished severely every time."
After hearing her out to this extent, not only were my worries over her backstory quenched, I fully understood the reasons behind her actions both at the slave house and towards me after I bought her and I didn't blame her for it one bit. I could also easily understand why she was so concerned with me punishing her every time she mis-stepped. Though it would probably sound like it was somehow her fault, her obvious beauty likely caused her to catch the eye of many a prospective buyer in the slave house, meaning that her entire life since then has been punishment after punishment, all because she asked a stranger for help.
And I was just the next punishment.
I had various reasons for buying her, but I couldn't deny that my own sexual desires weren't one of them. And now, because of men like me, she had to choose to defend herself whenever a new buyer came by. And because of how she chose to do this, she was going to be killed if I fail to protect her and buy out her contract.
No wonder why she seemed so eager to help me pay off Alphonse despite clearly hating me at first. She was probably just happy enough to not have to fight off people trying to buy her for her body anymore. Hell, maybe that was also why her personality did a sudden one-eighty this morning. After doing what I could to show her that I wasn't going to be like them, she probably saw me as just the lesser of many evils. But I couldn't allow myself to feel like some sort of knight in shining armor for saying it was also because she knew I wasn't going to force myself on her, because I wouldn't, but it was my years of loneliness that led me to her in the first place.
Who knows, maybe if Alphonse didn't screw me over on the contract, my built-up lust and excitement over her might have led me to taking her back to the inn, instead of the dungeon yesterday. I'd love nothing more than to say for certain that that wouldn't be the case, but if all those repressed feelings caused me to commit the sin of buying her in the first place, then I'd be a fool to deny the possibility.
I was just another cog in the shit show her life had become since her enslavement.
Watching her stand there in the middle of a dungeon filled with monsters actively trying to kill us, I raised an arm to hug what looked like nothing more than a defenseless girl in need of some true, loving affection and a good shoulder to cry on, but I knew I didn't have the right.
I can't believe I ever even considered using her like that. What the hell is wrong with me? What on Earth were those excuses I made for myself when buying her? Loneliness? Ha!
When my arms dropped away before my hands could so much as brush her chestnut-colored hair back, she lunged at me. My heart nearly exploded from my chest. The thought that she'd finally chosen now to attack me, right after telling me why she used to routinely beat the thugs in the slave house to a bloody pulp, sent my mind into a flurry of unease and panic.
But she didn't do that. She didn't raise a fist. She didn't call out the name of her favorite ability. She didn't bare her fangs, throw a kick, sling an endless barrage of insults my way or anything else that I deserved. The impact her body made against mine caused no pain. None at all, whatsoever. All she did was bury her face into my chest.
Surprised beyond belief that she could forgive a bastard like me enough to actually let me console her, I could do nothing else but let her weep and hold her.