Chapter 84 - The Weaver's Map IV
Three dead ends was all it took for Claire to develop an understanding of both the maze and the sadistic degenerate that had designed it. At best, exploring the labyrinth was painful. At worst, it was an incarnation of raw frustration.
The corridors were divided into three different types, with the first being straight empty halls. Though seemingly harmless, their size rendered them incredibly obnoxious. Some took minutes to traverse, even with the lyrkress running at a full gallop, while others would lead to dead ends that were invisible from a distance.
Far less common were the monster-bearing variants. They were often filled with rocks and debris, but monster halls were much shorter than their emptier counterparts, often requiring only a fifth of the time to dash from one end to the other. Despite all her exploring, Claire had only discovered three beyond the first, with a total of six crabs split unevenly between them. The monsters’ levels fluctuated from seventy to eighty-five, but none were able to injure her as heavily as the first. Knowing their strengths and weaknesses enabled her to eliminate them easily and in short order.
The most obnoxious corridors were the ones filled with traps. The inconveniences and defence mechanisms were nothing but malicious, with most amounting to little beyond petty harassment. Some would fling manure and stain her cloak with unsanitary substances, while others would play ear-piercing screeches. One particularly sadistic contraption would first dump water on its victims and blast them with cold air once they were thoroughly soaked. The lyrkress was unaffected, but the fox was apparently so miserable that she decided to cheat and keep herself in a safety bubble from that point onwards.
Though the traps themselves were already irksome, the most painful part of the design, by far, was that they would activate every time she passed them by; she was subjected to the exact same mind-numbing set of displeasures each time she backtracked. The repetition was driving her insane. Just like the long empty halls. She couldn't tell which was worse, but whatever the case, there were only three types of corridors—a fact ratified by both the fox and her own experiences. Knowing that was precisely why Claire was incredibly confused to turn a corner and find herself face to face with a tiny room containing a large wooden chest.
Knowing that it was anything but what it appeared, the lyrkress flicked her tongue and sank into thought. The first possibility she considered was that the chest was a mimic, but that seemed far too obvious a card for the labyrinth’s sadistic overseer to play. She didn’t think it possible for the malicious scoundrel to subject her to something so bland and boring.
“There has to be more to it,” she muttered. “It has to be some sort of trap. But what if he made it a mimic just because he thought I would think it wasn’t?”
Biting her tongue in annoyance, she approached the box and kicked it as hard as she could. Her hoof tore right through the wood and split it in half, confirming the suspicion that it wasn't a monster in disguise. That, she expected. But what she didn’t expect was for a piece of loot to come rolling out the top. It was a large wooden mallet, marked on both ends with a stamp in the shape of a crab. The bludgeoning tool was about a meter long, with the hammer-like part featuring a diameter of roughly twenty centimeters. It wasn’t the most impressive weapon, but it could certainly be put to use.
“There’s no reason not to take it.” With another mutter, Claire picked it up and turned around, only to find that she was no longer staring down the hall she had just come from. Instead, she was greeted with an infuriatingly familiar scene. Because the walls were lined with boulder-shaped holes and the bloodstained sand was covered with tiny wads of cotton.
It was the start.
The place she had fought her first crab.
A low groan escaped her throat as she realised that the chest really had just been another trap, albeit one that was more cleverly designed than the others. Slowly shaking her head, she looked down at her consolation prize in an attempt to determine if it had been worth her time, only to find it missing. There was nothing in her hand, even though she could have sworn that she had felt the wood against her skin until she turned to look at it.
Her right eye twitching, she grit her teeth, fought back the urge to slug the wall, and retraced the path that her tail had left in the sand.
____
Only after an hour of exploring did the halfbreed find her way back to her previous location. Having learned her lesson, she turned in the direction opposite the chest and walked down a completely different corridor. Operation avoid the chest was both a go and a perfect success. Until she turned three corners and found herself staring at a second wooden box.
The backtracking process repeated itself, over and over, with very little progress to be made between each iteration. She was never able to make more than five new turns without running into another piece of imaginary loot. The worst part of it all was that seeing the chest was apparently enough to bring her back to the start. It didn’t matter whether or not she opened it. Turning around would always immediately trigger the effect.
Five rage-inducing incidents later, Claire heaved a heavy sigh and cast an unamused glare at the sky. It was getting late. She had barely made progress, but the sun was already on the verge of sinking beneath the horizon.
Sylvia had already set up another large tent made of palm leaves, positioned right by the maze’s entrance. The lyrkress had no idea where the furball had managed to get them, seeing as how Crabby Crags was devoid of trees, but she was too exhausted to raise any questions or concerns. Lumbering over to the open flame, she thought of a hundred different ways to insult the twisted celestial before plopping her face down in the sand. Her half centaurian frame made the motion incredibly awkward, but she didn’t care. She couldn’t be bothered to seat herself on the log that the vixen had prepared.
“I give up,” she muttered, through a mouth of sand. “I’m going to be stuck here until I die.”
She had forced herself to press on because Llystletein force mage was on the verge of evolving, but she hadn’t been able to find any more monsters, even after half a day’s worth of exploration. She just wasn’t getting anywhere. Five chests was already five too many.
“Come on, Claire, don’t give up!” said Sylvia. “It’s not like there aren't any exits. You just have to find them.”
“You gave up before me.”
The fox had decided to call it a day after their third forced reset, despite her bubble repelling most of the traps that the other halfbreed had been forced to endure.
“Only because I needed to set up camp!”
“Whatever.” Pushing herself off the ground, the lyrkress hid behind a rock and rinsed herself off. “I swear to Box, I’m going to start breaking down these stupid walls next time I run into a chest.”
“I really don’t think that’s a good idea… Running away is gonna be a lot harder if the walls are full of holes. And ummm… I think some of the monsters in here might actually be over level 100.”
“I’ll deal with it when it happens.”
It was the third time the pair had repeated the exchange. Having already determined that the walls weren’t made of magic, Claire was only a hair’s breadth away from ordering Shoulderhorse to consume them. Caution was the only reason she had refrained; she wasn’t keen on the idea of suddenly finding herself face to face with a monster too far out of her league. Optimally, she wanted to raise all her classes to level 75 before fighting any of the crabs’ warrior equivalents, but she knew she was likely going to have to settle for just evolving force mage. There simply weren’t enough monsters out and about for her to acquire the experience she needed.
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All the filth finally cleansed, Claire walked back over to the fire and sat down in the sand. Concentrating on her cloak, she slowly transformed it into something more comfortable, a thin nightgown made of silk, just long enough to cover her body from head to tail.
“Say, Claire?” Sylvia got up off a bed of leaves, walked over to the log, and curled up by Claire’s side.
“What?”
“Can you tell me a bit more about uhmm… Valenininsee or whatever it was called?”
“Valencia?”
“Yeah, that! All this exploring is starting to make me kinda curious about the world outside of Llystletein. Al has maps and stuff… but they’re all thousands of years old and he’s really bad at telling stories.”
Pausing momentarily, Claire pursed her lips, lowered her gaze, and stared straight into the crackling flame. “Do you want to know about the city? Or do you just want to hear some of the songs that Valencia’s bards sing? Most of them are stories.”
“You can sing?” Sylvia blinked. Thrice.
“Not anymore.”
“Oh, right. Singing is technically a combat skill, isn’t it?”
Claire nodded. “I can’t become a bard anymore either.”
“Aww… That’s too bad. We could’ve sung some really awesome duets. I’ve never gotten to do that before since none of the other foxes are any good at it. I’m the only half elf, and Dad’s voice isn’t high or low enough to compliment mine all that well.”
“The other foxes can’t sing?”
Sylvia giggled. “They’re so bad you wouldn’t believe it. Not even the skill helps!”
The vixen sang a distinctly elven tune as she got back up and stepped a bit closer to the campfire. It was full of long, high-pitched notes that almost seemed to echo into the night. Each was accompanied by a flash of magic, a manifestation of the power that distinct sounds could bring.
“My dad’s the one that taught me to sing,” said Sylvia, as her tune continued. Claire didn’t know how the half-elf was doing it, but she was singing and whispering at once, with neither interrupting the other. “He has a really weird class that makes him stronger if he sings while he fights.”
A flick of the tail created a translucent but otherwise perfect copy of the fox. The illusion—the echo—kept the hymn going, even as the vixen herself quieted.
“That doesn’t sound very convenient,” said Claire. “He’d be in trouble if anything winded him.”
“It’s not as bad as it sounds, since he can do stuff like this too.” Sylvia pointed a paw at her echo. “Anyway, enough about me and my dad. Tell me about Valensa!”
“Valencia.”
“Whatever! The name doesn’t even really matter!” The fox got up on her hind legs just to cross her arms and huff.
“Names matter. As a bard, that’s something you of all people should know best.” Claire rolled her eyes and prodded the vixen’s nose with a finger. “I haven’t told you anything because you haven’t answered the question yet. Do you want to hear about the city? Or do you want to hear what the bards sing about?”
“Ummm… how about a personal story?”
“That works.” Claire closed her eyes for a moment as she sifted through the memories of her childhood. “Have I ever told you anything about my family?”
“Ummm… just your dad. You didn’t really talk about anyone else.”
“Then I’ll tell you a story about one of my most gullible cousins.”
“Oh, that sounds like a good one!”
A faint smile crept onto Claire’s lips. “Very.”
Her eyes distant, Claire began to recite a fond memory, a memory about a beautiful royal garden, a porcelain fountain of youth, and a devilishly sly half-snake full of malicious intent.
___
Despite spending the evening in high spirits, the lyrkress found herself eluded by a good night’s sleep. Thoughts of catgirls plaguing her mind, she had to toss and turn for the better part of an hour before finally passing out and drifting off to the land of dreams.
And even then, freedom remained outside her grasp. She could hear their giggles as she dashed through the empty manor’s halls, growing louder and louder no matter how far she ran. They bothered her, disturbed her, and filled her with the urge to empty the contents of her stomach. But they were nowhere near as frightening as her father. Even if they made her feel sick to be in her own skin.
Panting heavily, she threw open the door to the courtyard and burst through it in hopes of running through her mother’s bedroom. But the familiar enclosure was nowhere to be seen. Instead, she found herself standing in a certain familiar bathroom, where a dishevelled man lay face down in the tub with a silver artifact and two slices of bread. She wasn’t exactly happy to see him wearing nothing but a towel, but she felt it was well worth the exchange. His lavatory was impervious to the sounds made by her pursuers.
His phantom arose from his body shortly after she entered, chuckling as he looked upon his twitching other half. He went on a bit of a rant that culminated into an awkward laugh as a few too many words appeared in her mind, all at once.
“Breakfast in bath bad idea. Nearly died.”
The corners of her lips twitched as a sharp pain shot through the back of her skull. Even though she didn’t have a body. Seeing the reaction, the man put a hand to his mouth, averted his gaze and silently muttered what seemed to be an apology under his breath before snapping his fingers and teleporting them to another room.
No longer drowning, his body had moved to a desk, where it was staring intently at a magical box featuring a complicated set of diagrams. Claire had no idea what “linear regression” and “t-values” were, and she wasn’t planning on finding out. Fortunately, the phantom was in accord; making her study didn’t seem to be at the top of his to-do list.
Another snap of his fingers brought them to the usual room with the usual set of artifacts. Only this time, the man wasn’t in control. His body was sitting back, relaxed with a bowl of food in one hand and a metal cup in the other. He didn’t reach for the artifact that allowed him to manipulate it, even as the box displayed a set of dark glowing screens.
After glancing at her, his ghost rubbed a hand on his chin before clapping his hands together and going on a bit of a rant, summarised in her mind as “Play. Similar.”
Log Entry 1866
Detect Force Magic has reached level 16.
It took her a moment to realise that he meant that it was like an act in a theatre, that the people enslaved within the box were performing a stageplay to serve as entertainment. And entertaining it was. The whole night seemed to vanish as she watched a snarky doctor work through case after case, each with higher stakes than the last. Songs would play and credits would roll after each major act; she could tell that she was watching not one production, but a series of interconnected, elaborate dramas with each technically distinct from the last. She almost felt like no time had passed, even when the phantom pointed to his magical clock and vanished into the void.
___
Claire
Health: 2500/2500
Mana: 4739/4739
Health Regen: 662/hour (1324/hour)
Mana Regen: 3384/hour
Ability Scores - 190 Points Available
- Agility: 386
- Dexterity: 355
- Spirit: 318
- Strength: 296
- Vitality: 331
- Wisdom: 564
Racial Class: Frostblight Lyrkress - Level 53.41
- Frostblight Lyrkrian Martial Arts - Level 8.13
- Paralyzing Gaze - Level 8.20
- Ice Manipulation - Level 7.05
- Lyrkrian Shapeshifting - Level 8.56
- Thermodynamic Regulation - Level 4.81
Primary Class: Llystletein Bloodthief - Level 57.04
- Assassinate - Level 12.31
- Bloodthief - Level 11.21
- Charm Catgirl - Level 1.00
- Cloak and Dagger - Level 9.14
- Envenom - Level 13.79
- Manathief - Level 10.10
- Phantom Blade - Level 8.54
Secondary Class: Llystletein Force Mage - Level 49.17
- Basic Force Resistance - Level 4.64
- Catgirl Detector V. 0.32 - Level 7.31
- Detect Force Magic - Level 16.45
- Force Manipulation - Level 18.06
Unclassed Skills
- Artifact Manipulation - Level 2.50
- Axe Mastery - Level 1.04
- Club Mastery - Level 12.10
- Cooking - Level 1.00
- Dagger Mastery - Level 12.23
- Dancing - Level 7.60
- Digging - Level 11.99
- English - Level 25
- Llystletein Authority - Level 6.10
- Makeshift Weapon Mastery - Level 18.87
- Marish - Level 19.08
- Sewing - Level 1.42
- Sneaking - Level 15.65
- Spear Mastery - Level 5.46
- Sword Mastery - Level 8.38
- Throwing - Level 8.49