Prytaneum
Reflections
I did my best to ignore the many looks I was getting as walked down North-West Main, making my way to the Hephaestus shop and entered. As I did, Wayland looked up expectantly, took a long look at me, and sighed.
"Son of a bitch, boy," He swore. "Again!?"
"That's my mama you're talking about, Wayland," I said with a stern look before closing my eyes and leaning back against the door. I was exhausted, even if I was trying not to show it; it had been another long day. "But yeah. Again."
"Good gods above," Wayland replied, shaking his head in a mixture of awe and exasperation. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but you were right—I have never seen anyone go through armor like you do, boy. Five goddamn sets of armor in five goddamn days!? What the hell are you doing to them, son?"
"Same old, same old," I said with a sigh. "I've just been going to the Dungeon."
"What you're going to do is ruin my reputation if you keep doing this, son," Wayland said, trying to hide his worry with an extra helping of gruffness and nearly succeeding. "Getting your armor ruined and walking into my store wearing rags…it's a miracle you haven't died yet, son. What are we going to do with you…?"
"If you think of anything, I'm open to suggestions," I answered. "In the meantime, do you want a report on the armor I showed you yesterday?"
"Favarges work," Wayland grunted. "I remember. What happened this time?"
"It was…" I paused, trying to think of the word. "Brittle? Sort of? I mean, it held up well enough for a while, but then the entire thing just shattered in one hit."
"Mm," Wayland grunted. "It was made out of steel and Lygerfang Fur, so I thought it would be able to hold up, but it's true that what doesn't bend has a tendency to break eventually. What'd you fucking do to it this time?"
"I finally reached the tenth floor and some Orcs tried to knock my head off," I said. "Various things happened and I found myself in a tight spot. Had to take a few hits to get out of it."
"A few hits?" He said, incredulously. "From a gang of Orcs, son? You're lucky the armor broke and not the rest of you and, I mean, how? At this point, I'm half convinced you're immortal. I reiterate—it's a miracle you haven't died yet. I'll tell Favarges to keep that in mind, but I'm starting to think there's nothing anyone can do to account for you."
"That's fair," I said. "Do you mind…?"
Wayland reached down below the counter and picked up a rough sack, tossing it my way. I caught it out of the air, and opening, pulling out the change of clothes I'd left with him this morning. I'd say it had been just in case, but, well, this was the third day in a row that I'd needed it, so it was more like pattern recognition. I'd gotten tired of people staring at me in the middle of clothing stores and I hadn't wanted to worry Hestia by showing up looking like this, so I'd planned ahead.
"Thanks," I said. "I'm gonna borrow your changing room, then."
Wayland grunted a bit while I hauled myself off to get dressed. Once I was in the privacy of the changing rooms and away from the eyes that had been watching me all day, I rubbed my face and sighed again before looking down.
Truth be told, the armor I was wearing now wasn't a complete ruin. The back half was more or less fine. It was just everything else that was the problem. The front was all but gone, nothing but a jagged crust of armor hanging like a necklace at my collar bones. Four straps dangled at my waist, freed from the armor to which they'd once been attached, with only the ones by my shoulders remaining. As a result, the back piece hung at an odd angle, no longer balanced by the front half. And my shirt? The lower half of my pants? Rags.
Things hand been a bit closer than I'd made them out to be on the tenth floor. Technically, I'd reached the entrance yesterday, but turned back so I'd have a chance to preparation. I'd been anticipating the tenth floor since I heard about them in Eina's lessons, expecting a repeat of my first time on the seventh. I hadn't been disappointed, so it was a damn good thing I'd gone in prepared.
My second trip to the seventh floor, now the better part of a week ago, had gone fairly well all things considered. My first set of armor had been one of the best available and I'd gone in stocked on all the potions and antidotes I could need. Even so, it had taken me the entire day to clear the floor in its entirety, hounded by monsters as I was.
But things changed starting on the eighth floor. The walls had turned from green to brown and where there had been barren, stone-like floors above, they'd been replaced with short, grassy plains. And it got bigger, in every way. There were many more rooms, all of them larger then on the upper floors, and the hallways between then became shorter, meaning there always seemed to be places for enemies to swarm from. Where the ceiling had been ten or twelve feet high before, it abruptly grew to over thirty, making everything seem far, far larger in the process. No new monsters had appeared on the eighth or ninth floors, but I liked to think of it as sort of a 'greatest hits' floor.
Ironically, the most dangerous things on those two floors were the Goblins and Kobolds, previously the weakest monsters in the Dungeon. The ones that appeared there were stronger, smarter, and better equipped. That last one hadn't been a complete surprise thanks to Eina, but it had still been my first time seeing 'Landforms,' the 'nature weapons' that the Dungeon could produce for its own. I'd seen Goblins reach for what seemed like odd plants or rocks and pull crude axes and clubs from the ground. Other times, they'd arm themselves with bows and arrows from twisted tree branches. They fought in much larger groups, too, which took them from annoying to dangerous. If the Goblins and Kobold's on the first four floors were normal examples of their species, those on the eighth and ninth were warriors and they fought me in armies. Attacking up close and from afar, harrying me with traps and armors, coordinating attacks on me though-out the Dungeon, riding Killer Ants…well, I'd really started getting tired of Goblins and Kobolds.
Especially since they'd ruined my armor. Where my first set armor had lasted me almost all the way through the seventh floor, of the three pairs I'd needed to navigate the eighth and ninth, only one had lasted all the way to the end and even it had been so badly damaged that it'd been cheaper to simply replace instead of trying to risk it on the tenth. Instead, I'd decided to prepare myself as best I could. I'd spoken to Eina and Miach to help figure out countermeasures for the various threats, I'd stocked up on potions, flasks of water, and more—I'd even asked Wayland for advice before buying the best armor available on the eighth floor of Babel, since it wasn't as though I had much choice but to replace my gear. The shield had lasted me two whole days before the continuous attacks had finally broken something. The greaves had lasted nearly four until one had been bent completely out of shape and a Killer Ant mount had gotten me by the other and tore it away. I'd even had to replace the helmet after the cheek guards had been deformed enough that I'd need to literally pry the thing open to get it off.
Again, I was getting really tired of Goblins and Kobolds. Several days later, I didn't have anything left of the first set of armor I'd bought or of most of the sets I'd bought in-between. But I'd rolled with it, prepared myself, stocked up, and headed down to the tenth floor today. If I hadn't known better, I might have even been looking forward to it.
Long story short, I'd had a pretty awful time. The most annoying enemy on the floor were the Batpats, which I'd figured out even before I got there. Eina had told me days ago that they attacked using sound waves that could break a person's concentration which, it turns out, was a nice way of saying they projected the sound of nails on a chalkboard straight into my brain after pumping up the volume to max. I'd bought potions meant to help deal with them as well as some earplugs, just in case. As a final measure, I'd practiced surrounding my head with water to distort sounds, sort of like I'd shielded Annabeth from the Sirens years ago.
Of course, in the end I'd had to resort to my final measures pretty goddamn fast. The Dungeon had spawned something like fifty of the things the moment I entered the tenth floor and they'd spent their entire day ruining mine. With the ceiling now thirty feet high, dealing with them was significantly more annoying and they made a point of never, ever shutting up. Which had, of course, made dealing with the rest of the floor a blast. Because nothing made fighting horde after horde of ten feet tall, pigheaded Orcs more fun than feeling like someone was stabbing me in the head with a knife. Repeatedly. None of the countermeasures I'd been able to buy had been up to dealing with the opposition I'd had to face and I'd had to resort to using my water bubble which had made things only mildly less aggravating. In the end, the distraction, on top of my own distorted sense of hearing, had gotten me in trouble more than a few times and a few Orcs had smacked me around with clubs made out of literal trees.
The only good thing I'd found on the tenth floor was the mist that filled it in its entirety. Even if it had done generally horrible things to the visibility on the floor, it was still water and that still counted for something. Mist wasn't as good as normal water, but it still gave me a vague sense for where things were, healed me somewhat, gave me strength, and made the whole experience a little less miserable. But even with that advantage, the occasional hurricane, and my bag of supplies, in the end I'd been driven to seek refuge in one of the Pantries for the second time when they broke my ribs along with my armor. And even that had been a pain in the ass because I'd had to fight without Mrs. O'Leary by my side—or rather, I wasn't mean enough to expose her sensitive ears to the screeching of a hundred Batpats, which had quickly replaced Goblins and Kobolds as my least favorite monsters.
So instead, I'd fought alone. I'd won, eventually, though even then I'd gotten beaten up more than I liked. The Pantry waters had helped smooth away my physical injuries and the worst of my headache, but…
I took a slow breath, finished changing, and walked back into the main room.
"Wayland," I said. "Do you know anyone I can speak to about getting a loan for some better armor?"
He didn't seem particularly surprised by the question, but then he'd seen the state I'd been in the last few times I walked through his door. I wondered if he'd looked into it any. I had—it had gotten to the point that I'd asked around about getting a loan to buy some magical armor, but that had turned out to be problematic. As it turns out, banks didn't have a lot of faith in adventurers who'd only been around for a week, had started an entirely new Familia, and were looking to buy armor far beyond the normal price range of their group. I guess I couldn't really blame them for that, but it was still frustrating.
"You speak to the bank on North?" He asked as if reading my mind. "Or the one on South-East?"
I nodded.
"And the Guild," I said. "But even with the money I've been making recently, I guess I don't seem trustworthy. If you know anyone, though, I promise I can pay it back."
"Aye, boy," Wayland said, nodding my way. "I wasn't sure, but I'm starting to believe you. I'm starting to think you're crazy, mind you, but you've managed to survive every set of armor you've ruined. That's got to count for something. Way I see it, either your luck is going to run out one of these days or you're going to live forever."
"I'd bet on the former, personally," I said. "But I'll still pay you back before it happens."
"Mm," Wayland said, nodding to himself. "If that was all, I think it'd be fine. The only thing I'm worried about is that no armor's going to be enough for you, not really. Way I figure, if you get some armor that will withstand what you put it through, you're probably just going to go and put it through worse until you break it again and need to buy something better. The way you keep going through that stuff, if you start taking loans, you're gonna be in debt until the day you die, boy. I wouldn't even think about that stuff until you're better off."
I sighed at that and looked down at my feet. I didn't want to admit it, didn't wanted to accept it, wanted to—had tried to—push through, but it was beginning to look increasingly like I had no choice. Truthfully…he was probably right. The way things were going, I would have to slow my pace for a while and gather funds on the upper floors before getting better armor, venturing deeper, and repeating the process all over again.
But how long would that take? How much time was I going to waste waiting around instead of pushing forward? It had already been a week and I'd been stopped twice—and I knew full well that things were only going to get tougher from here on out, with each and every floor making matters worse. But…but…
"But there might be another option, son," Wayland said after watching me for a moment. "Might be a bit of a long shot, especially since you're so new, but…maybe."
"What?" I asked, looking up quickly and not even bothering to hide my excitement. "What is it?"
Wayland pursed his lips for a moment and looked around for a bit before sighing.
"You exchange your items yet?" He asked me.
I shook my head.
"Came straight here," I told him. "I didn't want to stand in line half-naked again and I wanted to ask you for advice before heading back to Babel anyway."
"Good," He said, nodding to himself and closing his eyes before nodding again. "Stick around again, son. When my shift ends, we'll go for a walk and see what we can find."
"Okay," I agreed. "What are we looking for?"
"People with an eye for potential," He said, looking at me before making a face. "Or else damn fools, I suppose."