For the next few days, my services were in rather… high demand. According to Drezon, the first batch of dresses I pushed out were surprisingly popular, and several customers who weren’t the right size for them asked for custom orders. Even some who did fit and bought the originals asked if they could get particular designs.

Sadly, looking at women to design outfits was not as exciting as I would have hoped. In my head, I had imagined them standing there naked for me to measure them. Instead… they had Drezon take their measurements, which he passed on to me. I felt like my dreams had been crushed, but I did the work regardless.

The suits sold, too, but they weren’t nearly as popular. As is the norm in the world I came from, women were a lot more interested in their fashion than men were. Though, thanks to this I was able to get shoes for myself and Lilith. Shoes might not seem important to most people, but when you had to walk for six hours across a rough landscape where you couldn’t see three feet in front of you, shoes were a godsend.

More importantly, though, I was able to make more money than I had hoped. Because the dresses were in such high demand, each one sold for a thousand sin. With me earning half the money, it took me less than a week to get enough to send Lilith to one of the mages in town. She was overjoyed when she heard that, and actually gave me a kiss that lasted longer than I knew I could hold my breath. Of course, she was embarrassed about that, and made me promise never to mention it again…

“Why don’t you take the lessons yourself? I mean, you need it just as much as I do, don’t you?” She asked, her face still darker than her normal shade of red.

“Yeah, but you’ve been wanting this longer. Besides, if you study well enough, you can teach me. That way, we won’t have to save up so much money again.” Lilith nodded her head quickly with that explanation. Though, there was a bit more to it than that, because I wanted to have her test something for me.

The mage in Darknorth, the name of the town we found ourselves in, was a shadow mage. Now, this didn’t quite fit with the information I had, and I thought it’d be better to learn through Lilith, who wouldn’t be as experienced as a professional. In Layers of Hell, magic was not as firmly separated into classes as this. Sure, there was shadow magic and water magic, but they were all branching paths that could be learned from the basic magic proficiency.

Furthermore, I needed to focus on something myself. I had put off getting a class until now, for multiple reasons. In the game, you could choose your class at any time, but resetting it was a pain and a half. And, many classes required you to have certain abilities. For instance, the character that I beat the game with previously was a Dark Knight. That class required a high degree of mastery with the sword, heavy armor, as well as shadow magic and necromancy. It could be considered one of the more overpowered classes in the game.

Now, a class was not necessarily required, but it did provide certain options. Each class had a single ability that would be unique to that class. For the Dark Knight, it was the shadow poison, a mix of shadow magic and necromancy that could be cast onto a weapon, and deal heavy damage over time.

The problem was, I probably wouldn’t be able to get that class again. Realistically, magic should not be so easy to understand that I can quickly build up the skills needed in time for it to prove helpful. So, I had a debate with myself. Should I pick a class now, or wait to see what happens later? If everything goes okay, once we hit the eighth or ninth floors, we should be able to settle. Lilith might want to head off to do her own thing once I’m taken care of, but there won’t be a need for me to battle anymore.

On the other hand, a class might help me get to that point. Even now, with the Equipment Mastery skill, I qualified for a large number of classes. But… I did not think that I needed to get a class immediately. If I settle on one of the next few floors, I can get a crafting class or something. But, I should wait until it’s actually relevant.

Lilith didn’t come by until a full day after we sent her for the lesson, so I spent that time making more and more dresses for Drezon to sell. When she did get back, I could tell from the broad smile on her face that it had worked. This idea was further reinforced when she ran up to me in the back room, and picked me up in a powerful hug, yelling “It worked!”

I involuntarily coughed from the sudden hug attack. “Back still hurts.” Lilith let out an apologetic noise and set me back down. “So, you’ve got shadow magic now?”

When I asked her that, she furrowed her brows. “Well… I’ve got magic. But I don’t really know what I want to do with it.” She explained. “According to what my teacher said, everyone has their own path of magic. My magic won’t be used to its fullest unless I make my own path.”

That sounded more like what I had hoped for. If we needed to pay for a lesson every time that we wanted to learn a new branch of magic, we’d never get done. “Does your path include healing? Because, and this is just me, but I really hope your path includes healing.” I gave a light chuckle, followed by a wince as I remembered that humor hurt.

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“Oh! Right, well, I can try?” She said with a strained smile. “You alright with a total novice working on you?”

“Just don’t turn me into a toad, please.” She looked confused at my comment, so I just shrugged, pulling my shirt off to show her the wound. It had mostly healed over the last week or so, but it was still a pain. “If it doesn’t work, there’s always plan B.”

“What’s plan B?” She asked with a worried tone as she moved behind me.

“Well, we’re going to need to go to the next layer sooner or later. This one is still pretty deep in the danger zone.”

“Ohh…” She seemed to have a hint of sadness in her voice. “What floor do you think it should be safe in, then?”

“Judging by how the monsters have been on this floor and the last one, I think if we head down to the eighth floor it should be good for people to live in safely. Just a rough estimate, but I feel like it should be right.”

I couldn’t hear any response from her for a while, but soon a gentle warmth spread out through my back. I opened my status window, and watched as the last portion of my health recovered. I couldn’t help but smile, and was just about to say something when Lilith spoke up. “Hey, what do you want to do? After we get to a safe area, I mean.”

Okay, so I froze up when she asked that, I couldn’t help it. This was something I had just been thinking about myself, and I wasn’t sure how she’d take it. “I don’t want to be a fighter… If I find somewhere safe, I want to settle down. This may be Hell, but who says it has to suck, right?”

I had the vague feeling that she nodded behind me. “Yeah… that makes sense.”

“What about you? What are you going to do? You said that you wanted to show me around since I got you out of that prison.” I turned back to look at her, but she had her head held down.

After a moment, she lifted her head back up and gave me a sad smile. “Well, I suppose I’ll just have to find something. I’m not the type to just settle down so easily. Who knows, maybe I’ll find an adventure of my own to get into?”

I immediately regretted my answer, but couldn’t think of anything to say to help. Putting my shirt back on, I held her hand and smiled to her. “Want to go tell him we’re leaving?”

Lilith giggled, nodding her head. “I think he’d like that. The old guy’s pretty friendly when you sit down and talk with him.” I wouldn’t know, that wasn’t really anything we did much. I mean, he brought me measurements and supplies, and I was his manufacturing line.

Either way, I nodded my head, and the two of us went down to say goodbye to Drezon after grabbing our equipment. However, before we ‘left’, he did something that completely caught me by surprise. He pulled a bag of coins from under the sales counter and handed it to me.

“Uhm.. you want me to have this?” I asked, confused. As far as I knew, this should be everything he had. Just the weight alone told me that it was a massive amount of sin.

“Nah, I’ll be getting it back off your body when you go. Just figured it’d help out on the next layer.” At that comment, I felt as if I had been struck by lightning. Of course! This was the most obvious exploit in a game like Layers of Hell. If you can pick up the equipment off of dead people, but those dead people keep their equipment when they die, then doesn’t that mean that everything is copied?

There had been theories about that on forums for Layers of Hell, but it always took so long to get back to where they died after going through and beating the boss of a layer that people assumed the exploit was impossible. But, if the items were simply taken off your body after you died, of course you wouldn’t find them. “But, wait. Doesn’t that mean the economy will exponentially inflate the further down we go?”

Drezon nodded his head at that. “That’s true. Figure ten floors down, this’ll only be worth a tenth of what it is now. Still, no harm to me, and it’ll help you out later.”

I lowered my head for a moment, nodding. “Thanks… I appreciate this, really.” Afterwards, I turned my head to Lilith, and gave another nod. I heard her unsheathing her knife, and felt a cold prick on the back of my neck.

What seemed like only a moment later, I woke up. This time, I was on a wide grassland, with not a tree or a soul in sight. The only presence was Lilith, who was gradually waking up next to me. In her arms, she held a similar large bag of coins that I did. Most likely, she killed me, took the bag off my body, then killed herself. That felt like even more of a cheat than what I first thought.

“Morning.” She said to me, still groggy from waking up. “You want to go again, or wait a bit?” This was the sixth layer now, the layer of eternal day. Still two more to go before we were really safe.

“Well… there’s not a city anywhere in sight. How about we just relax for a minute first?” She nodded her head with a small smile after I said that, laying back down against the grass. Honestly, I was just not looking forward to the next layer in the slightest. The real reason that the eight level was the safest wasn’t just because of the monsters tapering down, but because the environment of the seventh level made it almost uninhabitable.

“I’m ready.” I said after a few minutes of relaxing. I felt her place the bag of money in my hands, and laughed. “Really, Lilith? How are we going to keep carrying these if we double them at every layer?”

I opened my eyes to see Lilith with a sheepish grin. “Sorry, didn’t think about that. Anyways, you sure about this?” When I nodded my head, she pulled her dagger out, and I closed my eyes one more time. This is going to suck.

The next thing I knew, my body felt heavy. I was waking up again, but not in the normal way. I had been shocked away, and felt my entire body struggling to move. The seventh layer, commonly known as the River Styx. The entire layer of hell was one big water environment.

My lungs felt like they were on fire, and I turned my head to see Lilith appear next to me, the space rippling as she arrived. It seemed like I had woken up only seconds after being brought here, but now it was ending all over again. I accidentally breathed in some water, my lungs starving for oxygen, and almost vomited it back up instantly. Have I mentioned that one of my greatest fears is drowning? The pain you go through prior to it, don’t let anyone tell you that it’s an easy death.

My vision grew dark, and I felt myself once again pass into oblivion. At least this time, it’ll be a nice layer. That was the only thought I could come up with before everything went black.