Chapter twenty-one

Lord Tyler’s snoring greeted Harmony as she stepped out of the shadows. The lord looked peaceful, a state she wished she could join him in but knew her mind wouldn’t let her. The letter she left about taking a breather sat unopened. She picked it up and shoved it into her bag.

Instead, she focused on cleaning up the lodge. Sinking into the menial tasks of her profession. Dusting, washing, tidying up. Tyler’s armor needed polishing, and while [Small Armor] wasn’t the same as the [Heavy Armor] skill, it gave her enough of a glimpse into what she should do to take care of it.

They had another day at the lodge booked. The plan for a second dungeon diving run had been on the table, but now it wasn’t wanted or needed. Problems waited back at the manor, ones she had no idea how to solve. And if her new pet couldn’t behave for a day with her gone, her situation was hopeless.

Only after the lodge was spotless did Harmony sit to rest her eyes.

The crash of dishes woke her. Lord Tyler stood at what had once been, prior to the maid closing her eyes, a spotless food prep area. It was like a culinary bomb went off, the victims of which lay scattered across two plates.

“I made breakfast!” Tyler announced.

Disasters piled upon disasters. “Thanks, my lord,” Harmony responded, almost happy at how simple this one was. A messy kitchen she could handle.

“You were so beautiful sleeping there that I didn’t want to disturb you.”

Harmony’s happiness from an easily solvable problem collapsed in the face of awkward compliments.

“I unlocked my stats. I know the team is splitting up, but they did wager on it.”

Harmony offered the distraction while taking the plate. She picked at the poorly organized collection of food bits. As a failure in cooking, it was still better than some of her past attempts.

“We’re actually planning on meeting for lunch. They felt bad about leaving you for dead. It’s also a goodbye for Rose, who’ll leave for the capitol soon. If we don’t follow through on the wager, what’s the point of making one. I’m sure the team will be happy to use that to decide who’s paying for the meal. That means you got a new class skill?”

Harmony nodded. “Hand me your glass.”

His juice, like hers, was probably half warm. Harmony focused on [Cold Touch]. Chilling the liquid was an option, but she wanted to avoid any risk of necromantic spoiling and instead focused on the glass, letting the skill cool it until her fingers felt a little numb.

“Your chilled drink.”

That way, he expected the cold before taking the cup and drinking.

“Oh, grandma will love this. She often regrets transferring the ice, well now blizzard mage, to the capitol so she can work on her post-evolution growth.”

She flexed [Poise and Bearing] to remain impassive. If the matriarch loves this for the summer, then there will be no doubt that Bates will shift her role to be the woman’s personal maid, replacing Astel. Moving on and up is inevitable. She wondered if Tyler realized that would mean he’d see less of her. Maybe one girl isn’t too different from another if Jessica is to be believed.

“Cold drinks and beauty treatments. I’m sure the gods are having a good laugh at how we use our skills.”

“Fire isn’t only meant to light the night.” Tyler countered.

Harmony had read that book too, because it was Tyler’s. She’d miss all the new books he’d acquire if she was transferred. And Tyler wasn’t so... her beginnings of a positive thought froze when she watched his eyes slip down to her chest. Tyler could grow up more.

“I’ll need to clean an outfit to have ready for lunch. Some time to focus on my leveling changes won’t hurt, either. Knock when it is time to go.”

With [Style and Grace], the maid smoothly moved away from the meal. She considered it less a retreat than a regrouping because the words had some truth. She’d used up her outfits and needed a change there.

“Oh… okay.” Lord Tyler stuttered a little.

Harmony let go of the social skill as the door clicked shut to her smaller room and allowed herself to slump down. So many things had happened that it was hard to feel settled, yearning for that reserved state she liked. In a spark of inspiration, she forced a synergy with [Cold Touch] and [Poise and Bearing]. The two wouldn’t normally synergize, but bridging them a little with the connection stat. A cold, uncaring, detached feeling overcame her. The first thought was that if she killed everyone, her problems would disappear.

Hyacinth, who’d been snoring in the corner, awoke in a panic. His energy booted her through their [Familiar Bond].

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The Necromancer stumped to the side as her soul took a bludgeoning internally. The throttling shook her out of that dissociated state.

Don’t be stupid, Stupid. Hyacinth chastised her verbally through their bond for only the second time since gaining the ability.

“Yeah, thanks.” She told the toad.

He grumbled grumpily and settled back into trying to sleep.

Scary combinations, scary potential, scary problems. Clearly, some things should not be mixed. It almost made the simple idiocy of Thibodeux’s focus on activations appealing. As much as there was the risk of metaphysically stabbing herself, she knew her method of using skills was who she was, and the stats she unlocked backed that up. Everyone agreed going against your nature led to stalled advancement.

She reached down and petted her familiar, stroking the back of her already sleeping shadow toad. The love, amusement, caring, and anger from her partner meant that she’d never be alone in this. She knew he wouldn’t want to be woken up again, so she swore off anything too radically different from what she’d attempted in the past.

The flower dress had been hand washed and dried since the abuse at the dungeon club. That didn’t mean it couldn’t be cleaner. [Dust] with a little oomph behind it stripped out the ground in bits of dirt, leaving the whole thing a tad more vibrant even if it added a little extra wear and tear in the process.

What she really wanted to do was modify it. The fiber and even some of the dye used were from dead materials. But like with books, it was highly processed, which made it difficult to manipulate. These kinds of people she was joining for lunch rarely wore outfits more than a handful of times, and she didn’t want to show up in the same outfit she’d worn only a couple of days ago.

The last time she’d tried modifying something like this was months ago. A lot has changed since then. Skill levels, a way to empower an attempt, and now stats that could help with the process. Best of all, it should be a safe way to test how far she’s come since then.

She ran her hands across the dress. Plant fibers and some of the flowers stitched into the dress were wool. All technically dead, but her class wasn’t feeling it. She leaned into her connection stat to see what she could get out of it. It was like cleaning out clogged pipes, pushing and scraping until the old pathways opened. Even then, she could feel the connection degrading, the link clogging back up.

It created a time crunch. [Beautician], style, from [Style and Grace], and [Manipulate Dead] surged together as the necromancer maid pulled at whatever synergy she could get to make her idea come to life, forcing it with her stats when she had to. She imagined a soft flowing dress similar to what she saw in the matriarch’s sketches. Colorful and flamboyant.

The material thinned and softened, plant and animal fibers mixing. Colors blurred together, washing out what had once been stitched flowers. Necromantic energy surged through those carved and cleared connections. It bent and shaped the fibers taking more power than changing the shape and color of hair and nails.

So much energy, the first bit of plant and animal cell mix warped under it, becoming a warped black spot.

“Oh no.”

Chronostasis kicked in, slowing everything down. She tapped down on the energy she used through the skills, but what she’d sent was already coming. The jagged black spot expanded, and new ones bloomed. The soft texture she’d been aiming for became slick, black, and wet looking. A hole started to form.

“No. No. No. No. No.” She didn’t want to be forced to wear her peasant-like pants and shirt, her maid outfit, or the new armor. That was sure to bring back memories of the disastrous dive.

[Mana Rotation] activated to boost [Renew Spirit]. She threw that into the mix, hoping to revitalize what was staying together and halt the new changes.

The dress glowed as the skill not built to work clothing shoved into the rebuilt connection and into the energetic mix from [Manipulate Dead]. While both necromantic energies played almost opposite functions in affecting dead material, they weren’t completely incompatible.

It did slow down the destruction of the material, but it continued to change into that shiny black material. Inside of that flecks of bioluminescence bloomed from the [Renew Spirit], freckling the dress like a sea of stars that emitted faint bits of pale green and blue light.

The beautiful idea torn from the fashion sketches was wiped away with a wave of out-of-control power, leaving a dress that looked nothing like what Harmony desired or wanted.

She expected the bits of light to die off as the skills’ actions faded, but they stayed. The connections she had forced open filled, and the outfit settled. It felt as separated from her class as it did when she started, maybe even farther apart, as the process had snapped and broken some of the old history of death within the garment. Whatever effect she had forced upon it was done.

Frustrated, Harmony forced herself to look at her failure with dispassion. The smooth black surface was appealing, reflecting light more like a polished stone than a piece of cloth. She tugged at it, and despite some minor shrinkage, it was more elastic than the plant fiber had been. Squeezing into it was possible. The motes of light made it enchanting, to the point where it looked like a fancy magical creation. Which she supposed it was, even if formed from skill usage gone wrong. More importantly, it didn’t look like something bought from a cheap store, and it wouldn’t show the massive amount of skin her maid uniform or the armor would.

A pauper of options, she sighed, stripping, then sliding the thing on, squeezing into it, stretching the new dress with her body as she forced into the tight bits through the elastic nature of it.

Tight but not restraining enough to cause her movement or attack skills to complain. The dress jaggedly cut off above her knees but hugged her all the way to that point, stretching but thankfully not riding up as she made a few test strides. The hole left a bare patch across her back but didn’t tear at all, merely stretching like the rest of the dress.

The image she saw in the small mirror of the guest room was striking, unusual, and, while form-fitting, covered most of her skin except for below the knees and the swath across her back. [Style and Grace] and the [Beautician] skills agreed that it would do, though there was a hint that she could use make-up and work on her hair.

Blue highlights and a touch of waviness. It was relieving to use a light touch and get those simple changes made after the work from the dress.

It would take months of tinkering to figure out how the new skills and her unlocked stats worked together to get the effects she wanted. She knew what she needed as an actual teacher, a tutor to help. An unaffordable and time complicating dream, even if she didn’t have to worry about her new pet complicating her life. Fear of someone barging into the lodge and taking her into custody came. News of what happened had to be spreading. It happened hours ago. If they were going to burst in, she knew it would have happened by now.

One task at a time. There was a lunch to go to and a new dress to show off.