I didn’t feel like feeding the girl myself, so I untied her hands and shared the food among the three of us. Since Gcien eats too much, the food that she brought that was supposed to st three days ended up sting only a single meal. I guess I was also to bme for that, since I decided to eat a lot and not take a break for a while.
“How deep is this pce?”
“... it only goes down to the twentieth floor.”
“Lucky you. Because of that, you won’t have to stick with us for too long and worry about food.”
She didn’t seem that relieved yet. While I made sure that her portion would st at least for a day and she had plenty of water as well, she was still having a hard time eating all of that. I couldn’t bme her. She was in a byrinth, completely defenseless with someone that she had heard was a violent monster and his pet who didn’t want to look as much as terrifying.
Gcien and I were done with the eating before long, so we decided to take a break while the girl was resting… She told me her name, but there was no reason to memorize it. No need to concern myself with the names of those who saw me and only saw the word monster.
While I was waiting, I decided to test the skills of the magic forger css and summon the magic tools. They were blue and ethereal, but I still could feel them in my hands. I could affect some pebbles on the ground with them, so they truly worked. I couldn’t wait to look for a pce where I could seclude myself and then make the amulets that I had envisioned… The only annoying part was that the best materials that I had now was made of silver. Gcien would be fine with them, but they would burn my skin.
“... Did you make that bow yourself?”
“Yeah, what about it?”
The girl didn’t say anything in response. I realized that she had been staring at my weapon while I was fighting, but that didn’t come as a surprise. She was a dwarf, after all. Getting interested in unusual weapons or magic implements was part of her nature.
“With that design, you could make a more potent bow using the magic woods found in the Elven territory. The sunspire cedar would be the best option.”
“I already have enough problems with them without having to destroy their trees for wood as it is.”
She didn’t say anything after that. I wasn’t a tree hugging elf, but I still had some hesitation in cutting down trees given that I was from Earth and I heard a lot about deforestation. As for the dwarves, they couldn’t care less, apparently.
While she was looking at my bow, I saw her face and noticed why she was a bit soft and chubby.
“Do you have human blood?”
She woke up from her trance. Thanks to that, she looked away with a mix of a somber and sad expression. It looked like my guess was right. A lot of things started to make sense now.
“... My grandmother was a human.”
“Let me guess, because of that, your mother or father wasn’t welcome, but you are treated a bit better because you are one fourth human?”
She silently nodded. Still, it looked like she had a desired to prove herself. That was why she came after me alone… by killing me, she would improve the fame and standing of her family. Come to think of it, besides knowing the factions, I didn’t know how the dwarven society was structured. I imagined that it was based on skill, but it was hard to say.
“You have balls for coming after me knowing that I had to deal with a bias even worse than you had suffered,”
“... I didn’t come after you because you are a half-vampire, but because you are a threat to my people.”
“The people that treated you and your family like shit. And yet, here I am letting you live… perhaps not for long. Shall I show you the nature that supposedly makes you and many others fear me?”
“Grrr…”
“You are no fun, girl.”
Gcien didn’t appreciate the way I joked around by using psychological fear to unsettle others. She made her disapproval clear, her piercing gaze silently conveying a sense of anger, as if to say, Even I, a beast, know better than to stoop to such tactics. It was troubling to realize that a creature like her, a beast, adhered to a code of behavior that put my actions to shame. There was something almost ironic, even embarrassing, in seeing her innate sense of honor outshine my own conduct.
“While I was joking, what I didn’t say wasn’t. Try to escape or attack me again, and nothing will stop me from putting you down. Capisce?”
“... What is ca… pixel?”
“Something that you don’t need to know.”
I sighed. My mood wasn’t so sour that such a thing prevented me from joking around. It was much better than being the king of depression. In any case, I had to hurry up and clear this byrinth, even if this girl is hated, kind, by other dwarves. They eventually will notice her disappearance and realize that something was off.
While I had to hurry up, the fact that I couldn’t stock up the materials to forge items was a bit troubling… it seemed that I would have to save them all to only make amulets.
“You shouldn’t concern yourself with me. I am just passing to get some materials and the csses necessary to forge weapons and armor. You guys are already in a bind, given that the empire sent some members of the holy order after me and they wouldn’t come with only a few hundred minions to fight for them.”
“You mean your brother? Jacques Dawnshield?”
“That is right, his little sister is there too. Although I can’t say she has become a fearsome healer, she wouldn’t have been allowed to come if she weren’t.”
Now that I thought about it, Jacques and Iri should have had a level of teamwork from fighting together for a while. Their movements at times showed an unspoken understanding, the kind that comes only from many battles. Yet during our fight, Iri was left exposed more than a few times, vulnerable in ways that seemed uncharacteristic of someone who had fought alongside Jacques before.
The first possibility was simple: they had underestimated me. Maybe they didn’t realize just how precise and good I could be with a bow. To them, I might have seemed like another combatant to handle carefully, but not someone who could thread an arrow into a critical opening mid-combat. But that expnation didn’t sit right with me. Jacques was supposed to be sharp and cautious against vampires, and Iri didn’t strike me as careless. It wasn’t like them to leave such gring gaps if they truly understood the situation.
That brought me to the second, far more unsettling possibility: this was intentional. Were they testing me? Trying to gauge the limits of my skill by forcing me to go for Iri? Or worse, was it a setup? Were they baiting me, creating opportunities to draw me into overextending, lowering my guard so they could exploit an opening? The holy order can create some individuals that can be pretty reckless, but that much?
“The empire has a cirvoyant too, so they should know what will happen and what battles they should avoid.”
“Really?”
The girl looked astonished… I wondered if she knew nothing because she was a low-ranked dwarf or maybe the dwarven information network was that bad. In any case, the girl couldn’t help but look down worried… they knew that they would fight the empire, but was the holy order that scary when they weren’t dealing with undead and abyssals? I thought that Jacques’ build was entirely to hunt me down…
“If you are worried, then finish our meal and then let’s move on. I don’t want to stay here longer than necessary. If you find them on the battlefield, tell them that I would be waiting to fight them at home.”
The girl had no idea what I was talking about… returning to the empire seemed more than stupid, after all. That was true. I just want to annoy them a bit. Still, it would be funny if one day I suddenly met them at home, just to let them know that none of them can stop me from moving around.
Still, to make that possible, I would need to be able to fly… being able to fly and use camoufge at the same time would give me one heck of an advantage. Creating an aircraft of any size would be difficult, but it would be fun… I also could tame a flying beast and then make it grow like Gcien.
‘I should have tamed that ice phoenix somehow…’
“Grrr…”
I shrugged when Gcien realized what I was thinking. Back then, I would have to let Gcien go since I didn’t have enough mana. Still, given my high dexterity, perhaps it wasn’t impossible… the chance should be insanely low, but the chance was there.
We resumed my hunt and soon reached the next floor. Even though Gcien wasn’t helping, my increased magic allowed me to summon arrows without worries. Thanks to that, I considered trying to upgrade the rank of my arrow creation. Perhaps it wouldn’t be good for efficiency, but it would grant me a bit more power. At the same time, I wouldn’t have to burn my hands to summon my stronger type of arrow… which currently was the silver type.
It made me wonder... elemental affinities existed, and I had seen their power firsthand. Then what about holy and dark affinities? I knew they existed as well, but their exact nature and how they interacted with my existence remained a mystery to me.
If gaining a holy affinity could somehow counteract that vulnerability, or if a dark affinity might provide resistance through its oppositional nature, it could completely change how I approached combat.
But then came the deeper question—was that even possible for me? Could someone like me, already tied to certain strengths and weaknesses, shift those fundamental traits? Or was I locked into the nature I was born, or cursed with?
If my life weren’t constantly on the line, I might have taken the time to experiment with this theory, testing the limits of what affinities could do and whether they could truly alter someone like me.
WritingMachineGun
