A couple weeks have passed since the two met, the upper floor was build but they were still working on filling it with furniture. Elizabeth had asked Morgan for assistance in expanding a basement level for her artisanal goods. Morgan trained every other day so she helped Elizabeth with her work during her off days. Nathan and the others became more busy as the locations of an assassin's guild hideout was scryed by Olivia of the Wizards guild. Morgan wasn't sure when the war between the alliance and the assassin's guild began, though she knew something about the assassin's guild building blackmail portfolios on all the guilds of the alliance, causing them to turn on each other. Because of this, Nathan had to withdraw some of the people patrolling the 25th floor. So he entrusted the protection of Elizabeth to her. She knew just how big an asset Elizabeth was to the alliance, the risk of the assassin's guild finding her was too big.
And thus was why Morgan was standing in the middle of a field of snow killing frost giants. She spun her spear as she slid between the legs of a frost giant, each step shook the earth and caused her to slightly stumble. Elizabeth needed a way to keep the cellar cool without disturbing the air. By enchanting frost giant cores, it will continuously cool down the surrounding air and essentially create a natural air conditioner. The problem is that frost giants are considered boss entities, even though they are found on the 23rd floor, they are as powerful as the common monsters on the 28th. Blue blood flew through the air as Morgan stabbed through the tendons and muscles in the back of a frost giant's leg. It stumbled forward as it lost control of that leg. Morgan used the chance to jump up the back and push the spear at the base of the giant's neck, however she was thrown off before she made it half way up the back. Large spears of ice flew through the air, lodging itself into the snow. Morgan had to dodge the spears in the air and large spikes coming out the ground while rolling around to avoid being trampled to death.
The frost giant stepped back, focusing on healing the torn and pierced muscle. Morgan concentrated all her mana into her right shoulder and arm, a blue glow coating the surface. She generated momentum as she sprinted forward and jumped up with her back arched to the right. With all the mana coursing through her arm, she twisted her waist and pushed her arm forward, tossing the spear through the air. A streak of blue light shot across the sky as the snow around the spear blew away. A loud crack of thunder shook the earth as the spear crossed the sky and pierced through the frost giant's eye. Morgan heard a loud pop as her shoulder popped out of it's socket. She stumbled as she clenched her teeth, with a deep breath she pushed it back in place. A loud rumbling growl echoed through the air as the frost giant wailed around clutching it's eye and eventually falling backwards into the snow. A wide crater formed around the giant where the ground sunk.
The spear disintegrated into blue light and gathered back in Morgan's hand, she jumped onto the frost giant's chest and performed a deadly spinning spear dance. Cuts, stabs and puncture wounds appeared all over the giant's body. The giant once again let out a bellowing cry, nearby mammoths and snow golems targeting Morgan and trying to kill her. She continued with her spear dance, deflecting flying wolves and ice projectiles in the air as she deepened the gashes on the giant's chest. Bodies piled around the collapsed giant as the whirling storm of blades stabbed at everything in sight. Finally when the wound on the chest seemed deep enough, Morgan ran forward towards the giant's head. With a deft jump and back flip off the frost giant's chin, she spun around and threw the spear directly into the deepest wound. She then landed on the pommel of the spear, driving it deeper into the giant's chest.
However the nearby monsters continued to throw themselves at her. She had an upper hand towards the mammoths and ice wolves due to her spear's effects against beast type monsters. But the snow golems could only be killed when their cores are extracted or destroyed. Snow golem cores were sold at high prices when extracted safely as they could draw water from the air, they were incredibly useful on warmer floors to quench the thirst of players. Of course the only really safe way of extracting the golem core was to completely immobilize the golem and reaching into the snow to pull the core out. Morgan's mana passages were completely drained, she couldn't spare a single bit to cast a spell of any sort. Luckily she had a spell scroll Elizabeth prepared for her. She pulled a scroll from her inventory, a large array of runes and arcane letters spread across the page. Morgan bit into the skin under her thumbnail, drawing a small bead of blood. She smeared the blood onto the scroll and held it out towards the swarming hoard of monsters. A small warm orange glow gathered before the scroll, slowly turning brighter and warmer. The snow started evaporating, exposing the cold dirt and stone beneath it. The monsters slowly stopped approaching as the small orb grew into a large ball of fire. It twisted and spun, sparks sputtered and seared the dirt. As it grew to it's maximum size, all the monsters felt the danger of the fire ball and started retreating. Morgan flung the massive fire ball at the hoard of monsters, instantly wiping out a large portion of the army while causing major damage to the ones not in direct contact.
Morgan fall back on her bottom, mist gathered before her face as she panted. Normally she would have brought her hunting party to clear the hoard, but for some reason she claimed she could slaughter all of the frost monsters on her own. She felt like showing off to Elizabeth a bit, not completely sure why. The two had become great friends living together for a while, and Morgan inevitably felt an attraction towards Elizabeth. It was unavoidable, the two began dressing more freely and comfortably around the house hold. Since they were living together they might as well not hide anything. Elizabeth's figure was simply alluring. Though her cheeks were slightly sunken, her body was nothing but fit and curvy. She was incredibly well endowed, causing Morgan to feel slightly self conscious about her own bust. She had tough muscles across her body, though nothing like the lean and tough muscles on Morgan's body, they were still impressive for a non-fighter. And that bright smiles of hers, her cute dimples. Morgan's mind wandered as she laid back and regained her energy. The snow slowly replaced all the evaporated sections and started covering a few of the corpses.
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Morgan sat up and began cutting the important pieces from the corpses, she didn't have the capacity to bring everything back but not everything sold well anyways. Tusks from the mammoths, fangs from the snow wolves, cores from any intact snow golems and what ever loot was dropped by the monster. She then pried open the chest cavity of the frost giant to search for the core. It is usually located next to the heart, a bright blue orb radiating cool energy. Luckily her spear only sank into the giant's lung, she could still salvage the heart and sell it. There were many parts of a frost giant which could be used for crafting, it would take a while to pick everything up. The heart, ears, core, liver, stomach acid, toe nails etc. All of that was worth quite a bit. As she dug around the chest, she discovered something hidden under the heart - which she then cut out. It wasn't the usual blue she had seen in other frost giant cores, it instead had a slight greenish hue, a few slivers of some blackish vein ran through the core. When she continued to dig around, she then found the proper blue core that would be found in a frost giant. What ever that green thing was, she'd never seen it before.
Morgan placed everything into a bag and left the area, the monster corpses started slowly disintegrating into gray dust. She made her way to the waystone at the center of the 23rd floor. She stepped onto the black stone platform and placed her hand on the waystone. The stone pillar glowed white as the runes all across the pillar and the platform lit up, a bright white barrier erected itself around Morgan and shrunk around her. Suddenly she found herself back on the 25th floor and the white light vanished. People have tried to create their own waystones by copying the runes and material, however never to succeed. Morgan personally believed it could only work due to the deities' work.
She walked down the street and through the twisting alleys and walkways. Before she had to wander around for quite a while before finding the right alley and familiar dark oak door, but now she recognized the place much more and could find the place easy enough. Morgan pushed open the heavy door and made her way downstairs, Elizabeth was currently focusing on enchanting the door with runes she didn't recognize. Looks like she wasn't in full focus mode since she noticed Morgan walking down the huge bag of materials. She put down the scribing tool and turned around with a smile.
"Hey how was the hunt, did you manage to get that frost giant core?"
She walked over and gave Morgan a tight hug before stepping back and wincing
"You stink, put the bag over there and I'll sort it out. You should go upstairs and get cleaned up."
"Oh yeah Elizabeth, have a look at this. Do you know what it is?"
Morgan rummaged around the bag before pulling out the green core with black veins, the veins seemed to have spread even further around the orb. Elizabeth picked the orb up and turned it around a few times, her eyes focused as she activated her appraisal skill.
Corrupted Frost Giant Core
This frost giant core has been corrupted by the dark energy of the asuras, it's energy is unstable. Though hard to control, the cool energy radiating this core would be much stronger than a normal frost giant core. If imbued properly in an item, it could be controlled.
"Woah, where did you get this. I didn't think the asuras had their grasp even in the lower floors. I'll hold onto this for now, maybe Tom would know a bit more about it."
"Yeah alright, I'll get cleaned up first."
Morgan walked upstairs to the shower, her clothes weren't very tattered since her armor had blocked everything but she was still very messy. Good thing she kept her hair short as it could be cleaned easier. When she was invited to Afterlife, she was sporting a long pony tail past her shoulders. After a couple days she had blood, guts and all sorts of gunk stuck in it. Now she simply cuts it as short as possible and lets it grow out until it becomes a problem again. She winced as the hot water rolled off her shoulders and into the cuts on her body, she didn't manage to dodge all the ice flying through the air. Though the armor covered most of her body, she couldn't afford to buy the gloves and shoulder guard. Her arms were basically bare. Ignoring all the cuts, she had bruising all across her body. One exceptionally large one on her back when she got smacked in the back by the frost giant. She felt a couple of her ribs crack at the time, but a simple healing elixir fixed her up easily. Elixirs simply quicken the healing process, they don't actually heal above the natural healing factor. This also means that scars are more likely to form and bones can heal incorrectly. Luckily Morgan has never been in a situation where an advanced healing elixir wouldn't work.
Morgan got herself properly cleaned up and put on a loose tank top and shorts. Both her and Elizabeth have been going commando more frequently recently as summer started to roll by. They were both women so they didn't She quickly rinsed off her armor and put it in her inventory, there were a few cracks and scrapes on the surface so she would need Elizabeth to help polish it up a bit in the future. Morgan made her way back to the subbasement, Elizabeth was sitting on the floor sorting all the things in the bag into small drawers in a container she placed in a corner. The subbasement was currently a little bare, Elizabeth had built a few cupboards into the walls, some cabinets with counter tops and installed some ceiling lights but other than that it was just a large stone room. The room was so large Elizabeth needed to vault the ceilings and create pillars in the middle of the room. Large arches connected from the center pillar outward to the walls. The pillar had runes carved into it with a part carved out for the core to be inserted in the future. The radius of effect the frost giant core had was perfect for the size of the room.
"You sure got a lot of useful things eh Morgan, It's no wonder you were promoted to B squad team leader. Now come and fill these glass jars for me, all the fruits and stuff are in that basket over there. Follow the recipe on this sheet and place the jars in that cupboard."
Elizabeth handed Morgan a sheet of paper and went back to sorting the materials. Morgan headed over to the countertop with fruits and glass jars. Each of the jars had a lid with a plastic rim around to seal the jar well when closed. In the basket were fruits and a few jars of spices and botanicals. From what she could recognize, she saw oranges, limes, lemons, cinnamon, and lavender. There was a jar of what looked like some small black berries, some dried star like spice, a large bottle of a clear liquid and some green looking dry pods.
"Hey Elizabeth, does this mean to fill separate jar with each thing or to put it all into one jar?"
"Oh, yeah just put it all into one jar. Usually it's would be better to steep everything separately and mix at the end but it's just more convenient this way."
Morgan rolled her sleeves up and looked at the top of the sheet Elizabeth gave her
'Elizabeth's house blend gin'