ABH - CH 41 - Burdened

A/N: Still 17 ahead, which is still pretty good! Was in a bit of a funk this week but i'm hoping today and tomorrow will get me out of it.

Chapter Forty-One

Burdened

Rise of Winter, Week 5, Day 5

There was no chime. That was the first thing Freddie noticed. The dungeon was odd—not every room had chimed, after all. And, at the moment, she was too confused to really care. 

“Salt, water, and spices?” Freddie said, looking into each of the barrels. “What is with this floor? Is this dungeon just a bakery in disguise?” 

She had used [Inspect] on each item, which had told her it was, helpfully, Listrain salt and spices. Which meant nothing, because Listrain was not a real place. The best Freddie could guess was that Listrain was what the dungeon had decided to name the imaginary swampland the items came from. 

Freddie opted to loot it all. Even the near grey water within the grimy barrels. What the dungeon provides and all that. Freddie had a hunch that if she didn’t use [Listrain Water], the [Meal Fit For a Goblin] reward would remain elusive. It wasn’t intuition or anything. [Otherworldly] was still running and every time Freddie tried to leave the plague water behind the Skill turned her head back to look at it. 

After the third chill went down her spine, Freddie gave a put upon sigh and shoved the barrels into her satchel. Still, it did not seem to be reaching its limit. Yet. 

Grabbing one of the cooked bread rolls, with its disgusting grey hue, Freddie took a bite, chewing thoroughly. 

“For looking extremely unappetizing, I will say it doesn’t taste too bad,” she mused, and Ogon floated out of the bonfire he’d been resting in. 

“The fire here is terrible,” he whined. “It's not nearly as hot as yours.”

Freddie blinked, looking up at the ember.

“Ogon? Did you… grow?” She asked, skepticism lacing her tone. 

He was a spirit, sure. But it hadn’t even been a full day since he’d manifested! The ember was no longer a speck of glowing dust, but roughly the size of Freddie’s pinkie nail. 

Still exceptionally small, but definitely larger, she thought.

“I consumed their heat,” Ogon said, and somehow Freddie could hear the smugness in his tone. “Of course I grew!”

“That sounds gross. Is it because you torched them? Or because you killed ‘em?” Freddie asked, refusing to beat around the bush with the fire spirit. She needed to know how Ogon grew stronger. The little spirit, without a [System] to quantify his capabilities, would have to just guess at his power. 

Which was fine, really. It’s what Freddie did in elsewhere, after all. 

Ogon was silent for a long moment, the only sound in the room the crackling of the bonfire, before, finally, he said, “The second one. I siphoned their life-warmth.”

Freddie looked at the spirit blankly. “Should I know what that means?”

Gasping, Ogon flitted around Freddie—and before he could set her hair on fire, she used [Imbue Flame]. “Of course you should! Life-warmth! It’s the source of our power! The Heatshiller gives and takes it away at will!”

Freddie did, somewhat, recall one of her Skills, mentioning the Heatshiller. 

She pulled up the description of [Fire Manipulation].

[Fire Manipulation: As a Young Lady of Flame, the world of the Heatshiller shall be yours to command. Much like the monster of myth, you are capable of great things. Whether you alter fire to do your bidding, wrap yourself in the warmth only a true flame can bring, or wish to burn your enemies—this Skill will allow you to manipulate Fire according to your will. Total effectiveness is dependent on your Perception, Magic, and Divinity stats. Additional effects unlocked upon level up.]

“Is the Heatshiller real? The [System] says it's a monster of myth.” Freddie looked from the crimson screen to Ogon, her eyebrows furrowed. 

As Ogon dug into Freddie’s hair, he all but screamed into her ear, “Of course he’s real!! He is the Master of Fire! The King above all Kings! The top elemental!”

Freddie felt a smile tug at her lips. “Oh? The top elemental?”

“Yes! Yes! He is our Lord, even more so than you are my Lady! To be blessed by the Heatshiller is to be Flame incarnate!” Ogon grew more frantic as he spoke, darting in and out of Freddie’s hair until he was in front of her face.

“You sound like a religious fanatic, Ogon,” Freddie scolded. “If you ever meet the Heatshiller you’ll have to be cooler than this.”

Ogon stilled, the orange flicker of his flames dimming into a dark red. “Like this?”

Blinking, Freddie leaned back slightly. “I didn’t mean literally. Actually, when you meet him you’ll want to burn as hot as you can. Burn brighter than a star.”

Immediately, the spirit warmed and twisted himself, and beginning to change his form into a small ball of white hot fire. 

“You said when!” Ogon screeched into Freddie’s face, “When! When!”

Freddie flinched further back from the noise, confusion settling on her face. “Well, if you want to meet him, we’ll find a way. But—“

Ogon froze in place. “But?”

“—wouldn’t you want to be as strong as you can get before meeting your King?” She finished, a wild grin spreading across her face. “Show him just how powerful you are so that your reputation precedes you? Let him know you are Ogon, Master of Flame in your own right.”

He buzzed with excitement, and though Ogon didn’t have a face as such Freddie could see the wonder in the fire. “I need more life-warmth.”

“You need more life-warmth,” Freddie agreed. “Between the two of us we can make it happen.”

As Freddie stood, there were two options before her. One was to take the far left hallway—it was wider, and she could here the scraping of metal—and the other option was the far right hallway, with its narrower walls and a sharp curve. She had a feeling that the wider hallway led to the more important end, with its moderately lit sconces and the sound of sentries.

That was to say the end of the dungeons first floor.

And Freddie wanted to know what awaited her there, desperately. She wanted to know what it felt like to have conquered a dungeon's floor. She wanted to know if it would feel impressive or if she would be underwhelmed. Freddie had never had that experience in elsewhere—elsewhere had no dungeons.

So, for the first time in the dungeon, she chose to go left when she could have gone right.

-

“Ugh! More of them!” Freddie whined as she slid her foot out and tripped the charging Red Goblin.

“Agreed,” Ogon said, dejected, as his fire ate into the flesh of the fallen goblin. “This makes five.”

Every time they saw another Red Goblin, Freddie grew more agitated.

“Where’s the floor boss? There’s supposed to be a guardian! Not a bunch of small fries,” she grumbled, leaning against the wall of the dungeon and letting Ogon devour the life-warmth of the goblin.

Freddie herself had expected a Level when she defeated the last goblin. Or the goblin before that. Or the one before that. But instead, her [Status] continued to read 99.9% of the way from Level 12 to Level 13.

It was infuriating.

Then again, the four goblins Freddie had bested had crumpled under one-two punches. They were barely Level 2.

As Ogon melted the final goblin, Freddie looked at the vines hanging at the end of the hall.

[Inspect]

[Vanda Vine, Tier 1, Level 2]

Skipping over the usual description Freddie frowned.

[Fire Conjuration+Fire Manipulation]

As she blasted the vines with flames, they fell away quickly. Unimpressed, Freddie watched the plants turn to ash.

“Why are they so weak if this is—” Freddie cut herself off as she looked at the view across the Vanda Vine’s pit.

Across the divide was a familiar scene. A long table covered in a ratty grey cloth. A single chair that creaked if one were to sit in it. An empty plate.

“The beginning of the dungeon?”

Freddie groaned.

“I knew it was the right move to just pick a single direction and keep going that way.” Grumbling, Freddie used [Fire Step] to descend into the pit and rip the mana pearl out of the heart of the Vanda Vine. “I’m never doing anything but that. We’re just gonna go right. Even if it leads to a lava pit. Especially if it leads to a lava pit.”

Climbing back out, Freddie dismissed her Skills. 

There was no point in keeping any of them up, not even the base ones. Freddie had finished every monster in the dungeon up to that narrow hall. 

“Oh,” Freddie stopped, stretching her limbs. More aches and pains had settled into her knees and she’d found herself walking with an odd gait.

[Regenerate]

As the fissures in her knees rewound themselves together, Freddie let out a relieved breath.

“One a blessing, one a curse, [Nemoan Protectorate].”

In her mind the lands around her unfolded, and the form that was Freddie’s grandfather was slightly closer than before. It wasn’t much by most standards, but Freddie knew it was because of the scale of her map. In reality, Freddie knew her grandfather must have been rushing to her.

He was desperate to get to her—he had to be. No one who didn’t care would run so furiously to her.

Fighting back a thickness in her throat, Freddie swallowed.

“Come on, Ogon. We have a dungeon to best.”

“I wasn’t the one falling behind,” the spirit laughed from ten feet in front of Freddie.

In response Freddie activated [Running] and darted past Ogon—her tongue stuck out for a moment as she took the lead.