Chapter Eighteen

“You look like a cat Hyacinth dragged back to play with.” Ambrosia chided, handing Harmony a healing drought as she left the dungeon.

He’d never do that. He doesn’t play with his food. A cast of [Renew Spirit] as she downed the potion boosted its effectiveness. There were hours until dinner. “How did you find me? I thought you were busy with the band.”

“I keep your schedule. When you described how you handled the first floor I got a pretty good estimate of how long it would take. More importantly, a little bird told me.”

Spies. Friendly spies. She’d done that at Coodly Manor as well, to make sure she was where she was needed when she was needed. It helped her take longer breaks in between so they could slack off together.

Harmony grunted with a shiver as she combined her skills to reset herself. A slight tweak of the mourning routine. “Better?”

“Much. I’m guessing problems with the second floor?”

Harmony nodded slowly. Ambrosia knew how much she loathed admitting weakness. This wouldn’t be the first task she’d failed at. It took a week to figure out how to deal with the garden gnomes when she’d been assigned to that pest problem.

“I know exactly who to start with,” Ambrosia continued.

Harmony totally trusted her friend, but something in the woman’s tone and twinkle belied a surprise.

“First let's get you changed.” From a shopping back Ambrosia pulled out a garment bag.

Excitement overshadowed suspicion. Night might be spectacular to look at, but the armor had somehow morphed into a uniform more than a fashion statement. You can only spend so many days wearing the same outfit without getting tired of it. “You’re a lifesaver.”

“I know,” Ambrosia said with a wink.

Hyacinth disappeared into the shadows to take a nap. Running around with Ambrosia wasn’t his thing.

The yellow sundress with blue flowers was as close to the opposite of Night as could be. Rather than extravagant and out there it blended in with the crowd as the “in” thing for early summer. Combined with a hat for shade, Harmony doubted anyone would recognize her after a slight application of [Beautician] inspired makeup and a tweak to her hair color to a bluish tint. As without protections as it was, Ambrosia had knowingly provided a metal bracelet to calm [Small Armor]

The Guild might be the choice for information, followed by Sir Maxwell and Prince Adric for their experiences with Nae’s Garden. She could maybe grill them harder on how they defeated the second floor, or look at the guides again, but those were all dominated by team tactics. They would still be available after she ran about with her bubbly blonde friend.

It helped that they didn’t go straight to whoever the Ambrosia planned for them to meet. Skewers with round mini-cakes soaked in syrup, short stops to peruse booths with colorful clothing made from soft wooze fur. It’s not that they didn’t go in a general direction. The meandering did stop. It stopped in front of a small training gym.

Gyms in Naewauld weren’t as big a thing as in Hazeldown. You rarely recruited teams to help with the dungeon, usually, you looked for one specific skill or person to help your team be rounded out. This produced associations like the Grave Society. The commission had more of a stranglehold on pet battles and cracked down heavily on illegal matches. The guild was more active in the community taking many of the roles gyms provide; Harmony suspected Hemlock played a role in that lack of support for Hazeldown. But gyms hadn’t been eliminated, merely reduced.

Ambrosia produced Harmony’s Viridian gym badge to the doorman, allowing them unquestioned access.

The mystery of why they were here tugged at Harmony until the coiled gray centipede she’d seen battling months ago, Chompers, greeted her with a chitter. Two men stood chatting nearby. “Jack?” They both turned to face her. That’s when she got a look at the short well-muscled young man standing next to the skinnier pet owner. “Mike!” Two former leaders of The Dig Boys in one place.

Both had their faces scrunched up as they looked at her. “Little off-White.” Cried Mike recognizing her first. Harmony hated that nickname. He’d stuck it to her while training her in the basics of fighting with a size disadvantage and getting her covered in dust and dirt in the process. “Or is it Lady Off-White now?”

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“That joke would land better if you ever actually managed to write to me, Mikey Shrubert. Jack at least sent a note when he went off the the capitol.”

The temperature in the room dropped slightly. Harmony pressed to control it. The temptation of using [Final Silence] burned with her embarrassment from not realizing how angry she was about that until Mike spoke.

“My woman didn’t want me sending letters to girls.”

“Maybe if you focused less on the fact that I’m a girl and more that we were friends!”

Jack stepped between the two. “This is a gym, we don’t do this kind of fighting here. We’re all Viridian badge holders. This is where we go to support each other. Harm wouldn’t be here if she didn’t need that support.”

“Don’t you mean, Lady White?” Mike corrected.

Jack slugged him in the arm. “She didn’t ask for that. And she’s right you should have written. Grow a spine when facing Beatrice.”

“Sorry.” Mike winced while shifting back and forth on his feet.

“What kind of help do you need?” Jack asked Harmony.

“I need a way to defeat the plant monsters on the second floor and farther up Nae’s Garden. I was thinking of some kind of weed-killing poison.” That had been one of the tools Coodly Manor had used to maintain the grounds, and not all of the trip here had been browsing wears and eating treats. That only slightly took her mind off the disaster that trip to the second floor ended up.

“Any group having issues just rents out a necro from the Grave Society,” Mike answered, still a little salty in his tone.

“I have to climb the tower alone.”

“No one has to grind like those crazy foreigners.” Mike barked.

“Do I need to ask you to leave?” Jack interrupted enough heat in his voice to get Chompers twitching and eyeing Mike hungrily.

“No. I’m out.” He turned and gave Harmony a very mocking bow. “Farewell, Lady White.” Before he stomped out of the gym.

“I’d like to say I didn’t know what’s gotten into him, but I know exactly who has gotten into him.” Jack groaned. “To answer your question. Poisons and alchemical concoctions don’t work. There are always teams who are resistant to hiring cursed classes, and who have poor skills for handling the garden’s lifeforce-enriched plants. They’ve all failed.”

“The guides say poison skills…”

“Skills.” Jack interrupted. “Skills work because it is part of you actively challenging the dungeon. You can have a poison ten times as strong as a skill, but it’s missing that little piece of a person to make it work there.”

“I should have selected [Rot].] Harmony groaned.

“I’m glad you didn’t join those stinkers. That’s not the path for you.”

“You can smell them too?” Harmony half-whispered in shock.

“Probably not the same way you do. I know I’ve never talked about my class. I’m a tracker. I’ve got a nose for these things. Not all of them smell wrong, wet mulch, but many clearly select skills not because they fit them but because they were told that is best for the dungeon. That’s not you. Your smell has always been refreshing and it would have been a shame to ruin that.”

[Poise and Bearing] covered any immediate repulsion from being smelled. Jack has always been kind and respectful, and one couldn’t always control how their class and profession affected them. If someone needed to give others leeway, her faults put her at the front of that line. “That doesn’t help that I do need a skill to handle those woody abominations. Evolved challengers do it alone.”

“They train specifically to handle this dungeon with their path, or buy skill stones in preparation if they can’t manage to create one.”

The ability to use a skill stone opened up with the last level. [Stride Against the Fall] and [Final Silence], there hasn’t been a chance to adjust to them, like wearing a good pair of shoes in, as not to get blisters. Adding another one that's too much too soon. Both of them feel weird. [Stride] doesn’t have a locus, it’s everywhere to a greater extent than the ocean-like churn of [Mana Rotation], while [Silence] is eerily quiet in its corner of space inside her. She’d expected random muting of sounds, uncontrollable numbing in spurts like when she’d used it on herself. Instead, it waits. Skills never wait, even when there weren’t issues with authority they always acted up like unruly children when you first got them.

“Thank you for the advice.” Jack, sweet as he was, only moved up here a month ago. Nose aside, he wouldn’t have the information she needed.

“You’ll figure it out, Harm, you always do.

With a slight bow of respect, Harmony retreated outside.

“Sorry, I thought you wanted to see Mike and some friendly faces from home.” Ambrosia apologized, now more friend than a personal maid.

“I’d thought so too. Another familiar face from home might be more helpful. I don’t think I’ve introduced you to Len.”