Dungeon Item Shop - Chapter 16

For the first time since she was reborn, Fresh takes off her boots and sets them to the side by the door. Feeling a great sense of freedom and satisfaction coming over her tired mind, a yawn overpowers the smile on her face, as she wiggles her toes and gets back to work. Humming a tune that she remembers from her old life to keep herself awake, as her head grows heavy and droops repeatedly.

It had been about two hours now since they had gotten back. But Fresh still sits there, now alone, as Jubilee had left more or less silently shortly after she had started working. The girl rubs her eyes, she’s really tired. Her stomach growls again and she sighs, feeling a little worn down. Her eyes go to the mushroom power that she has been crumbling. Three caps have already been shredded apart to the best of her effort. But it was hard without a mill or anything of that kind. Maybe just even a stone mortar and pestle. But with just her hands it was arduous, crude work.

What was she even doing, shredding these? She doesn’t have a plan or any idea of what to do with the shredded material. It just seemed like the only thing that she could do. She didn’t want to just sit there and do nothing. But even if she tears all of these apart, what will she do with them? Maybe she just made things worse? Maybe they could have just sold the raw caps. Now the merchants for sure won’t want them.

She sighs, looking away from the mushroom caps, opting not to eat any of it. She only has one health point left and doesn’t want to risk it. Besides… they weren’t hers to eat. She rips off another fistful with a shaking hand and begins shredding it. These were pretty much all Jubilee’s. All she did was carry them, hell, not even all of them. So, of the thirty some Obols worth of raw materials, how many were really hers? One? Maybe two. But not more than that, at least in her own eyes. She crumbles the last of the forth cap apart into the snail-shell that is close to full now.

[CRAFTING: 2] { Idle Hands ! } 

Fresh looks up to the window, feeling a little pride though, as she looks at it. This was her second crafting level now. So apparently taking raw materials apart gives her… experience, or whatever is used to calculate these sub-categories. So this means if she levels up again, that she’ll have two crafting ability choices to choose from now? She smiles and grabs the last mushroom-cap, her shaking hands tearing into it as she thinks, but she feels unwell.

“I guess I’m dying…,” says Fresh to herself idly, laughing at the absurdity of that. She looks down at the cap in her hands. “Wait for me on the other side, Mr. Mushroom, I’ll see you again soon.” Her head flops forward, as she sighs in defeated exhaustion. It’s tempting to go to sleep and there was the bed right there, just across the room…

Fresh shakes her head, snapping out of it. “Let’s both do our best, Mr… Mush…” she quietly mumbles beneath her energy-less breath as she continues tearing into the cap, her head sleepily nodding down forward as she reaches her limit.

“Stop talking to the mushroom, dumb-ass,” snaps a voice from just beside her. Fresh perks up, her low hanging head snapping upwards in surprise towards Jubilee, who she hadn’t even noticed entering through her sleepy daze.

“Ah! Welcome home!” says Fresh, not sure why. It feels like the right thing to say in her tired mind.

Jubilee tenses up and Fresh thinks she’s about to get hit or poked again, maybe that was a too personal thing to say? But instead the figure just sighs and idly tosses her a small bundle that lands in her lap, walking past her towards the table. “Shut up. Here.”

Fresh looks at the small brown-paper wrapped thing in her hands.

“What’s this?”

“I’m not going to dignify that with an answer,” says Jubilee, sitting down at the table.

Fresh looks at the paper in her hands and undoes the wrapping, revealing a piece of still hot, brown bread. Her eyes grow wide.

“Is this for me?” she asks in surprise. Jubilee looks back at her, shaking their head before sitting down at the table to put their head back down to rest.

“No, I bought it for the mushroom. Dumb-ass.”

Fresh laughs, feeling a bit more chipper now. “Thank you!” Jubilee just grumbles in return. She looks at the bread, her first ‘real’ food since she had gotten here. Her first… wait. Her eyes open wide.

“Didn’t this cost a lot of money?” she asks, remembering the price of ten Obols. That was already a third of their haul. 

“If you don’t want it, then give it back,” sighs Jubilee. Fresh pulls the bread back away and takes a loud, audible bite of it and her tired eyes light up. It’s deeply savory, the dark-brown bread still retaining a lot of oils and moisture with a thick, heavy rye flavor; the smell of which is carried up to her nose by the still warm air rising up off of its crusted surface. Fresh’s fingers squeeze down on the sides of it in delight. It’s bread. But it’s delicious. Far more so than Mr. Mushroom ever was.

She rips in to take another bite, it’s delicious. It feels like the best thing that she’s ever eaten. Fresh wipes her eyes, feeling them grow wet. Again. She owes Jubilee for yet another thing.

“Thank you,” stumbles Fresh out, doing her best not to cry as she takes another bite. Her fingers scratching against a black, charred end of the bread.

“So? Did you figure anything out?”

Fresh gulps, swallowing a large piece of bread that she hadn’t finished chewing yet and looks nervously at her party-member, who still hasn’t raised their gaze to look at her. Something hurts in her gut as she looks back to the bread in her hands. Her fingernails idly scrape against the char. The room is quiet.

The girl looks at the black spot on the bread, scraping against it again with a fingernail as she watches a bit of it flake off, the black crumbs falling into the mixture of mushroom powder.

Fresh takes in a sharp breath, an idea coming to her.

“I need to see an alchemist!”

“Huh?” asks Jubilee, looking over now after raising their head an inch.

Fresh jumps up to her feet, almost knocking the bowl over as she jumps up. “I have an idea!” she says with a wide smile.