Dungeon Item Shop: Chapter 14

"Hey, how do I get a class?" asks Fresh.

Jubilee looks at her, eyeing her up and down. "Ah... I don't know if you're cut out for it really..."

"Pleeeeeease!" begs Fresh, leaning in towards her only companion.

Jubilee rolls their eyes. "Fine, It's just some guild stuff honestly, depending. We'll talk about it once we get out of here, okay? Let's just focus on our work for now."

"Really?!" asks Fresh excitedly.

"Yeah. Yeah, take it easy," sighs Jubilee, waving an idle hand at her downwardly and looking out towards the floor ahead.

Floor three of the dungeon is just about the same as the first two. By the looks of things, it’s also just a small, compacted dirt room. But now there are some slight differences. The floor isn’t entirely open-space. Rather there are small, half-crumbled, waist-high walls scattered throughout the layout. The bouncing tips of orange mushroom caps can be seen from just behind them, from up here on the stairs. Fresh stands there, her arms full with the two caps which she strains to hold in front of herself like a large pair of stacked bowls. But there is something else moving around down there too. She only catches a glimpse of it at first, as it moves around the decrepit brickwork walls. The room looks like somebody had tried to make a labyrinth at one point, but had given up half-way through.

“It’s a snail,” says Jubilee, following her gaze. Fresh nods, understanding. But not really. Snails? What kind of dungeon was this? Sure enough, it sloshes around a corner lazily, coming into their line of sight. A ‘giant’ snail, about the size of a medium sized dog with a dark, marine-blue shell on its back, trails around, leaving a bubbling streak of a vaguely viscous goo of the same color just behind it. Lazily, it looks at the two standing on the stairs as it passes, its eye-stalks turning idly away a moment later in indifference. Not responding to Fresh’s eager waving of her fingers towards it.

“Ah, isn’t it going to attack us?” asks Fresh curiously.

“Most of the easy creatures don’t really mind us, as long as we don’t step down from the staircases. Deeper down they do get a little…” Jubilee shifts around. “- temperamental though.”

After a few seconds, the trail of goo dissipates, as it soaks into the dirt and Fresh watches as the small figure steps down, grabbing a clean handful of it. The snail lazily turns its eye-stalks around to look back at the masked person who is now down in its territory. It barely begins to narrow its eyes in anger, as the glass splinters pierce straight through both of them, sending them flopping down to the ground like leaking water-balloons. Fresh winces as she watches the rather gruesome spectacle, feeling rather nauseous at the macabre sight. This was somehow more grim than with Mr. Mushroom. Maybe because the snail was bleeding profusely, spasming and spraying a thick red blood on the walls as it is still more than alive.

A second skewer of glass comes out from below, burrowing through its soft underbelly before piercing out of its neck, killing it instantly, much to Fresh’s relief.

[ You got {8/10} Experience ! ] (Party)

Jubilee doesn’t say anything, they just keep walking, rather bored looking as the next two mushrooms come around the bend with fury in their tiny, rather adorable gazes. Their expressions are erased as well in an instant, as the glass cuts their lower body in half in a horizontal arc that slices through their mouths. Jubilee not even having broken their stride towards the next staircase. As Fresh watches her rather awestruck, she supposes that they’re already too strong for these early floors. She’s basically being carried right now. The thought makes her feel a little unwell, she wants to be useful too.

A loud, ringing sound explodes around her and Fresh jumps, dropping both of the caps down the stairs as she yelps in surprise.

You got [10/10 Experience] ! (Party)

[Level up! You are now LEVEL 2 ! ]

{No-class} {Cooking: 1}

~*+- PROFILE -+*~   HP: 3/3 +1 "FRESH" SOUL: $%§ / §**+'#   LEVEL: 2 

STATUS: ???

CLASS: NONE

OBOLS: 01

RACE: HUMAN

[INVENTORY]

STR: 02 +1 WIS: 02 LUK: 03   DEX: 02 INT: 02 LOV: 02 +1

[ You got {2/15} Experience ! ] (Party)

Jubilee looks back, stopping only for a moment. “Oh. Wow. Level two… great.” They shake their head and keep walking forward, waving a hand idly back behind themselves. “Great…” they sigh defeated. “Congratulations. Get the mushroom caps and the snail-shell. We’ll do one more and then we’ll go back out,” is all they say as they vanish down the next few steps, just as the red fog dissipates.

“Ah, wait!” calls Fresh, wanting to ask what she should do with this new window. But Jubilee doesn’t really bother to stop, likely not caring. Fresh looks at the menu that has appeared before herself, feeling rather thankful to the strange person for letting her get experience points so easily. Her life was literally being saved again. She’s going to pay them back somehow, she promises herself that and looks at the menu that had appeared.

It looks like some of her stats had automatically raised themselves. Much to her relief, her maximum health has also raised itself back up by an entire full point, setting her back to where she was on her first day here. Some of them hadn’t though. Fresh isn’t quite sure how this is determined, she’ll definitely have to ask somebody. But just the health alone is reward enough, thinks the girl as she smiles looking at it. Her wobbly legs feel just a tiny, teensy bit sturdier than before. Though she does feel kind of exhausted despite that. Her body is frail in more ways than just her maximum health.

But this window here… she looks at it, apparently she gets to choose an ability? But… there’s only one thing here?

*~+- PLEASE CHOOSE AN ABILITY -+~*

[1] Choice Remaining

{Cooking: 1} [Extra Crispy]

+1 heat resistance. You are able to extract more nutrition from burnt food.

???

???

She wonders for a second. But then she thinks she understands. Maybe since cooking was the only skill she had raised so far, she only had access to that ‘pool’ of choices? That made sense, but was a little defeating. She kind-of, sort-of liked cooking, but she never really did a lot of it. She'd have to make sure to try raising some other skills, especially something related to crafting. Still… -

[ You got {2/15} Experience ! ] (Party)

[ You got {4/15} Experience ! ] (Party)

[ You got {6/15} Experience ! ] (Party)

[ You got {8/15} Experience ! ] (Party)

Ah! Jubilee must already be clearing the next floor without her, realizes the girl, simply taking the only skill available to her, before going down to collect the items. The shell comes off of the snail surprisingly easily, with a disgustingly wet ‘schlock’ and she tries not to look at the deflated eyes that are filled with glittering fragments, while she removes it. Sighing, feeling pretty tired now actually, she places it inside the stacked bowls of the mushroom caps, of which she has four now in total. Well. Which they have, she corrects herself.

Found: [MUSHROOM CAP (Orange)] x 2 !

Found: [SNAIL SHELL (Blue)] !

Fresh feels a little stronger now after her first level-up, but this load is becoming very, very heavy for her to carry just like this. The four caps alone are bad enough, causing her to strain greatly to keep them all aloft. But then the shell too on-top of that? She can’t see anymore where she’s heading with the tower of stuff obscuring her vision. Sweat beads on her forehead and drips into her scrunched eyes, as she takes slow, labored steps. Kicking out with her foot to ‘feel’ the way out before herself. Her foot misses the first step and she stumbles, yelping loudly. The items fly out of her hands, falling down the stairs together with her in a flurried jumble.

[FALL DAMAGE: 1] [2 HP remaining !]

Her face thuds into the dirt.

[FALL DAMAGE: 1] [1 HP remaining !]

“Agh!” shouts a voice out from in front of her. Fresh groans, pushing herself up slowly with wobbly arms and coughing out a mouthful of wet earth as her vision looks up at the small figure, who has a mushroom cap stuck on the top of their head.

“Ah! Sorry!” shouts Fresh, scrambling up to her shaking legs to help Jubilee. Doing her best not to laugh at the sight of the figure trying to pry the cap off of themselves. Though that’s easy enough, as she feels incredibly unwell and light in the head as she jumps to her feet. Breathing seems difficult, as if she had run a marathon. Her skin is clammy and covered in sweat and dirt that also stains her sleeveless robe.

“You idiot!” shouts Jubilee back at her as the cap ‘plops’ off, leaving a rather stringy trail of an off-white goo stuck to the top of their hood. “Dumb-ass! Watch your step!”

“Sorry,” says Fresh, feeling rather bad, getting ready to be yelled at some more.

Instead, the figure sighs, holding their hands out wide at their sides with the palms facing down as they slowly exhale to calm themselves. “Are you okay?”

“I… I think so,” squeaks Fresh, surprised that they’re asking.

The figure stares up at her for a moment, looking into her eyes. Feeling their gaze, Fresh looks away awkwardly, grabbing the side of her left arm with her hand. “Stay here and get the stuff back together. I’ll go get the rest.”

“Okay…,” mumbles Fresh as she watches the figure go to collect the last of the loot. They came back a minute later though, only carrying one single extra cap.

Feeling Fresh’s curious eyes on them, Jubilee sets the cap down on top of the stack and rubs the back of their head. “I went a little overboard…”

Fresh blinks, not exactly sure what they mean. She leans sideways to look behind them at the bodies of the mobs laying there. A group of three snails, entirely eviscerated with the glass spikes jutting through the destroyed shells.

“Ah…” says Fresh weakly, feeling a little better about her own mistakes now.

Jubilee bends down and grabs three of their five caps. “Come on, you take the rest. Let’s get out of here.”

“Okay!” says Fresh eagerly to the figure already walking up the stairs. She’s tired and hungry. Her stomach growls. Her eyes look up to the body of the single cap-less mushroom monster on the other end of the room.

“Come on!” calls Jubilee from up above. Fresh jumps up, grabbing the rest of the stuff and runs up after them as they go to leave the dungeon together.