Mark had to break off an accidental relationship with Zirrilit.

“Okay but I just don’t understand, why is fuck a metaphor?” Zirrilit asked.

Mark considered it, it was a fairly innocuous question.

“I don’t think it counts as a metaphor. It's just something you yell when you are surprised… Or angry… or happy… Actually in English you can just put fuck wherever you want into most sentenses for whatever reason.” Mark tried to explain.

Zirrilit considered it for a moment before responding, “English doesn’t make sense.”

“Yeah,” Mark agreed.

They both stood in an acrid tunnel filled with little slime monsters and stared down into the dark cavern before them. It didn’t smell of mold or dust or even of the earth as you would expect from an ancient sealed passageway.

It was just a dark empty stairway down into unknown depths.

“Okay, I’ll go look at whats down here while you stay up here.” Zirrilit said while nodding. That plan made the most sense after all.

“Zirrilit maybe we should consider-”

Zirrilit did not listen and just shuffled down the stone steps.

Mark stood warily staring down the depths that had been opened up in front of him. Considering whether he should follow, or be on the watch for what had made this secret passage. Maybe he should just run and get help? Why would someone put this here?

He could feel himself beginning to panic already, and almost turned to run and get help before he realized Core was directly behind him.

Watching him.

The realization that he was not alone calmed him. He reached over and grasped the machine’s arm to steady himself and started breathing exercises to calm his heart rate.

After a few minutes Zirrilit trudged back up the stairs and dropped a crate onto the ground in front of Mark.

Zirrilit yelled loud enough to startle Mark, “I found a box!”

“Was this all that was down there?”

“Yup! Big empty room and this box right in the middle.”

Mark considered the possible reasons of why that could happen for a few seconds before coming to a proper answer for this situation.

“That is freaking weird.”

He reached towards the crate and pried the lid off, inside there was a sword with a glowing blue edge.

There was no hay, packing peanuts or any sort of stuffing to prevent damage of this item during transport. Simply an empty box and a magical glowing sword.

Mark grabbed the sword by the hilt and lifted it, gingerly touching the edge of the blade with a finger.

~

Mark woke up on the floor with a burning pain in his chest.

When he went to push himself up his arm seized and he felt a flare of agony burn through that entire side of his body.

Mark gasped for breath, unable to form words. His muscles were contracting without his say so, and that very action he couldn’t control was incredibly painful in a way he had never felt before.

It was as if his brain was being shaken like a can of pringles, as if crawling insects were burrowing through his flesh.

Zirrilit nosed at him as he seized on the ground, she planted her head on his chest to hear his heartbeat.

She poked the sword and felt a slight shock, though it wasn’t enough to harm her.

“Handling magic items without proper training and skills is considered harmful. You should not touch equipment such as this without having someone else identify it first.” Core announced to a room that wasn’t listening.

Mark barely heard it, and after a few minutes his breath started to come back and he realized he was lying and flailing on a moist cavern ground. He brought himself up to a seated position and felt a stream of moisture along his back begin to trickle into his underwear.

“Holy fuck.” Mark gasped, he couldn’t get enough air into his lungs.

“Maaaaaarrrrrkkkk!” Zirrilit screamed, and Mark snapped his attention to her.

She paused for a moment, she had simply been excited he wasn’t passed out anymore.

She didn’t have anything important to justify how concerned he suddenly looked.

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“You got shocked!” She tried, after an uncomfortable pause with Mark staring at her she decided to continue. “The thing in the box was a shock thing! And you aren’t supposed to grab magic stuff without someone identifying it first because it might be using evil magic!”

“Oh, yeah that makes sense.” Mark rubbed at the hand responsible for his shock, “Thanks, I should have asked you about this kind of stuff instead of going off on my own and getting zapped.”

The machine watching the conversation interjected, “Zirrilit is just repeating-”

“Yup, you can rely on me! I am fully self-sufficient and I know all kinds of stuff about magic things and monster sewers!”

Mark nudged the hilt of the sword with a foot, “Okay, so should we just leave and go tell people about the weird secret passageways? I think that might be something people would want to know about. This place seems dangerous and getting shocked really hurt.”

Zirrilit nodded, “But if we leave now we don’t get the treasure. Also slimes are easy to hunt and worth a lot of money I think.”

Mark thought about it, he didn’t need money at the moment but he might want it in the future. The real thing he couldn’t get out of his mind was the magical sword he had found.

It was magic, the glowing blue luminescent along the edge was beyond what he knew existed. It was a unique and unreplicatable object by humanity’s standards.

“Okay, but how do you think we should move the stuff since we aren’t supposed to touch these things to someone who can check them out without touching them?

“Well,” Zirrilit pulled the crate back, “I could just carry them all in this box so that no one needs to touch them!”

Mark nodded and stepped back, nearly slipping as Zirrilit lifted the blade. He flinched slightly as she dropped it carelessly into the box and it loudly clattered against the wooden bottom.

Zirrilit turned to leave and Mark went to follow, his foot making a squelch as he lifted his boot. He looked down and saw a deformed sphere of slime reshaping itself to repair his footprint.

That was what he had almost slipped on. A thought crossed his mind and he bent over to lift the small construct.

He pressed it against the edge of the opening which formed a doorway of sorts and watched the liquid around the slime’s core deform to wrap around the corner slightly. He pushed his hand into the ball and watched the slime push its way through his fingers as the core tried to ensure the liquid remained in a perfect sphere.

“Whatcha doing?” Zirrilit asked.

“Well there are secret doors in the walls, but there should be slight gaps in the wall and floor.” Mark explained, “The slime pushes into those gaps so…”

He pushed the core into the corner made by the floor and walls and watched as the displaced materials rushed up his arm. Theoretically, when he met something that wasn’t solid stone the core would pull the liquid down to attempt to form into a perfect sphere.

Mark squatted down and started walking down the corridor until the slime inexplicably retreated towards his hand.

“Okay, so there is a door here. But I don’t know where the button to open it is.” Mark reported.

Zirrilit smiled, she didn’t know exactly what a button was, other than the context which implied that it was a magical brick which opened secret doors but-

“Let me see it-” She pushed Mark slightly behind her where he had the best view of her destructive abilities.

Then she launched forwards and slammed into the wall hard enough to shatter the brittle, solid concrete bricks and steel rebar which revealed the passageway beyond.

A pebble fell from the ceiling and bounced helplessly off her eye, which felt irritating but wasn't painful. Her eyes were made of a clear material harder than diamonds.

She stepped forwards into the dark passageway, looking for an enemy.

An arrow thunked into her side and she whirled to the left to come face to face with a blank concrete brick wall.

Nothing there, she stepped slightly further into the tunnel looking around the corner and saw a gilded wooden chest at the end of the hallway. She stepped back to tell Mark about her accomplishments and then another arrow struck her side from the same direction.

She whirled and struck, clearly this guy was invisible and she would tear them to pieces-

Her claws hit the wall and cleaved through the stone slightly.

Now she was confused, she stepped back and then forwards again while staring and watched as a small ice arrow formed itself along the wall and shot at her when she stepped onto a specific spot.

“Wow! Hey! Mark! Look at this!” Zirrilit yelled, then she stepped back and forth onto the brick on the ground she identified to be the cause of this. “I think the ground here does magic!”

Mark watched an ice arrow form over and over and shatter helplessly against her scales.

“I think that’s a trap Zirrilit. That brick is activating a trap that shoots you.”

“A trap?” It was something that Zirrilit had a concept of, but her people had always lacked the industrial capability to make on a large scale.

She had claws and could not forge or wield metal properly, the closest thing her translation blessing could connect that word to was an ambush instead of a snare or a bear trap, possibly involving throwing logs at people.

Granted, bear traps or snares wouldn’t work against wyverns or dragonkin; it would fail to crush even her foot.

Zirrilit paused mulling the word over, a tool-ambush. A tool that ambushed. Genius really. Humans were definitely geniuses.

“I will go first then and bring the chest to you!” She was trying to be helpful, showing off her worth as a potential partner.

She walked over, ignored the arrow, turned the corner and then exploded violently after stepping on a small wire.

Fragments of steel buried themselves in her scales as the force of multiple hand grenades hit her all at once.

Zirrilit winced slightly. “Ow!”

She offhandedly pulled some of the metal out of her side and continued down the path. She reached down, grabbed the metal chest and pulled to find that it was connected to the ground with some sort of metal string-

A gout of flame shot from the ceiling into Zirrilit’s face. It was mildly annoying and difficult to see through. Like if someone started poking you on the snout or blowing air into your eyes.

She pulled the wire out of the wall and walked back with the chest, noting that for some reason the explode-y trap did not go off this time while the ice arrow trap did.

Mark saw her go around the corner and squeaked in surprise.

“Oh no! Zirrilit you’re bleeding!” He squeaked out.

She turned to the side and noticed that yes, there was in fact a small trickle of blood from one of the cuts.

The rest had barely pierced her scales and had such little effect on her that they hadn’t damaged any blood vessels.

The bleeding was already slowing, her body was too durable.

But Mark clearly looked concerned about the inch or so wide gash on her side, so she lifted her arm and pouted, “I think the explodey thing got me.”

“Oh damn- Yeah that doesn’t look good, you might need stitches.” Mark hissed in a breath, “We should maybe go back to town so that a doctor can see you.”

Zirrilit waved it off, he was clearly already reaching his overprotective stage of the relationship, “I’m fine, we should finish this job first.”

“But Zirrilit, look what if a slime gets into that? Or what if it gets dirty and you get an infection?”

Core answered that question, “Her body temperature is outside of what bacteria can survive Mark.”

Zirrilit nodded, “See, we can keep going.”

“I don’t know, this is starting to seem like maybe a bad idea. Whoever put this here probably isn’t going to like us wrecking all their stuff.

The people behind Core’s eyes began debating, Mark wasn’t supposed to be discouraged by the tests, they needed him to continue exploration and thus continue testing to find his innate ability distributions.

Mark shook his head, “I don’t want to deal with crazy people putting mines into sewer systems and these will probably get confiscated by the police the moment we get back to town anyway.”

Core began speaking a prepared script, “Those objects resemble something that was reported stolen twelve years ago and would now be considered free gain to anyone who finds it. The thief was reported dead.”

Zirrilit nodded, “See! Buried treasure! And we still need to finish the quest! Can we please take them? I can go first and Core can summon medical services whenever there is an emergency!”

Mark grimaced, but Zirrilit looked desperate to continue exploring.

She looked like she wanted to prove herself.

“At least let me bandage that for you,” Mark decided, “Core you have a first aid kit right?”

Mark grabbed the small box marked with a bright red teardrop- blooddrop. The commonly accepted universal sign for a medical service

“Okay, pull let me see the cuts.”

Her clothing was repairing itself, designed to be wearable in the conditions she might experience. Zirrilit hitched her shirt up slightly so he could bandage the wound.

“Were you a healer or something before you got grabbed Mark?”

Core focused on Mark’s answer.

“No.”

“So uh, why did you take the medical kit from the robot, weren’t they a trained healer or something?”

“Uh… Right.”

Mark handed the kit back to Core.