“Hey, are you ok?”

Nalu is still lying on the ground. Our gaze locks. I never paid attention but her eyes are the color of gold. A watery abyss of gold and tears.

“We’re both alright, thanks to you. Welcome back.”

Yep, I’m patting her head like she’s a kid that did a good thing, I don’t care. The spot between an Odon’s ears looks like it's made for patting. No one can stop me. Her smile is the only permission I need.

Why do I even try to justify myself to the wind? It just feels too fast. I can almost hear Ian mocking me for getting attached too easily from an universe away.

I wanted to avoid it, really. I can never settle down anywhere. Forming deep bonds isn’t good.

In the end I’m just too soft. Isn’t that what she asked at the start? She understood me before I understood myself. Soft, yes? Indeed.

I wasn’t alway like that. Ma’s passing really hit me hard, uh? Twenty two years later and I’m still fucking hurting. I hope she’s somewhere nicer now, I’ll pray for her too. Since you exist, make yourself useful, y’all gods out there.

“Can you get up? I have some water.”

Her hands are shaking on the ground, she’s making great efforts to move.

“Slow down, it’s fine. We’re safe. Grab my hand. Just sit against the wall.”

“Thank you. Arren.” would you look at that, not even a cheerful yes at the end.

“No you got this wrong. This isn’t how you say it. It’s ‘Thank you, Nalu’. Yes?” And don’t go and make that surprised face at me! I’m not the one who fainted from healing someone!

“Don’t go risking your life for me like that again, ok? I’m very sturdy, don’t worry about it.”

“I worry, yes.”

“I worry too. So take care of yourself. Yes? Now drink that water before you collapse again.”

Why is she so hesitant? Just drink! Expert spell : shove the drink in the mouth! Learned that one from babysitting Ian’s kids, works great every time.

She emptied the whole canteen, talk about not knowing what you want!

“Idiot Arren...”

Do you think if you mumble I won’t hear you? I’m sitting down too, squatting is uncomfortable.

“We made a nice team, no? It all went well, if you forget the ending. I’m surprised you could move so agilely with all that armor on.”

“Strong is Nalu best spell…” she’s looking down at her armor “Help armor no, yes?”

I kinda figured that her large silver armor couldn’t be that comfortable to sit in.

“Open belt, yes.” she points at her back. The part covering her tails is latched on by three buckles. Vehi probably helped her put it on. I unbuckle the belts one by one, we’re close, she’s breathing fast.

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As soon as the last one is unlatched, the whole chest plate opens from my side and just falls off to the floor on the other side.

“There you go.”

Her posture instantly relaxed. Must have been hard to breathe in there. The sweat is making her fur stick to her skin, she has a lot of curves for such a frail frame. She looks like a tired athlete after a marathon. A tiny, three tailed, horned ears athlete.

“Hey, can I touch your tails?” going by her reaction, that's not something you ask. The tails in question are expressing a lot of surprise right now, if having a cat ever taught me anything.

“Nalu… touch Arren scale… yes...”

Oh I do have those, and a useless tail as well. Every race has quirks that make the others curious I guess. The Venpars’ wings are fascinating too.

The tails were very soft.

----------------------------------------

“That should be a lot of copper, we just need to get rid of the eggs somehow. Feels somewhat bad but I don’t think we should leave them here like that. The food collectors might be in danger when they hatch.”

“Drop hole, yes?”

“That’s a way to go about it.”

Forty-eight giant eggs rolling down the hole.

“Do you still have enough strength for this? Never done it but I can try.”

“No mana, no strong. Nalu order, yes.” Just like that I’m back in the military.

Breaking away the copper ore from the wall is surprisingly easy with the enchanted warpick. The ore is a consistent smooth bluish green all over. That should be some pretty high purity ore we have here. I think. I don’t really have any idea how it works but since there’s no obvious stones in it that’s probably good news.

It doesn’t take long for our two backpacks to be full. There’s a bit of leftovers that I end up carrying in my folded up poncho. It’s all quite heavy but this body can take it. That Nalu and I can both boost our own muscle strength helped a lot.

We enter the city by the same way we had gone out, a guard is there but he’s apparently Vehi’s friend, he doesn’t question us at all.

Nalu leads us to a smithy. It’s the place right next door to the armorer I bought stuff from earlier. The smith is a relatively taller than is ordinary Odon woman, the tallest I’ve seen so far, she’s at least 140 centimeters tall.

She doesn’t even say anything when she sees Nalu, she just magically sends a flame towards the hearth and brings us a large bin to unload the ore. The whole process of crushing and smelting the ore was done astonishingly quickly. After just half an hour we sat looking at 24 small 100g copper bars and some leftovers. The smith took three bars as her share and left us to deal with the next clients. She didn’t say a word the whole time.

We take nine each, the leftovers will be Vehi’s share for providing the information. All of Nalu’s money is going to be for Vehi anyway, she explains that she wants to send him to a prestigious magic school in another Odon city which costs 200 000 silver coins in tuition fees. I would give her some more of the copper but has enough saved up now was her answer. The nine copper bars I have are worth a whole 90 000 silver coins, that’s pretty insane. But considering making runic armor needs a lot of copper, this isn’t even that much in the grand scheme of things.

Speaking of armor, it’s time to invest. The chainmail was nice but it didn’t offer that much protection. I negotiate for a while with the armorer next door, the 50kg of silver needed for the full armor is worth 50g of copper, and the smith’s rate for a custom armor is at 1 for 1 for silver so it’s another 50g, because I want some more options like slots for crystals and the crystals themselves, as well as reinforced rune tracks for later runecraft and a custom made padded inner-wear, the grand total comes to 20 000 silver coins or two of my nine copper bars. I also trade five of the bars for the same amount of thick copper thread free of charge. This should be more than enough for the whole armor. I’ll be paying Nalu a full bar for the runecrafting work, which will let me with a single one. That’s still 10k silver coins for later. The buying power of copper really is insane.

What I learn from discussing the runes with Nalu is that her affinity is really one of the best for the job. Since you need to cast a spell on the copper runes for them to be able to copy it, and she can do pretty much anything as long as she has enough mana. Of course the copies from the runes won’t be quite as strong but they also do not consume nearly as much mana to keep going. I get the whole armor suit enchanted with durability and magic protection effects, such as lowering the armor’s conductivity, which is very useful with lightning mages like Eviniel being a thing.

The whole process is taking twelve days. I spend some time learning to read, and the rest mostly spending my mana, then sleeping, then doing it again over and over. I manage to get my crystal to be bigger doing that, if I had to guess it probably went from the upper fourth level to the middle fifth? It’s quite slow.

It’s about time to get out of this cave now.