Ch 1.17: Equipment

One moment Elaina was standing in a dark cave, and the next she was standing in an even darker cave, one noticeably chillier. “Eeep!” she heard from her side, Carline screaming out and the sound echoing down a system of tunnels. “What just happened?”

Elaina looked around, trying to find any light at all. “I think we’re on the mission. System, can you hear us?” No response. “Shit, I was really just trying to get her to tell us more information.”

“Okay… Well, I guess we should share class details, right? If we’re going to be working together.”

“I know yours already, actually. Because I’m an Administrator, I think. And I guess it’s only fair I share mine.” Elaina felt along the wall, feeling a slight pull towards it. She found a carved out portion and pushed inside, tapping a crystal embedded in it. The crystal depressed further into the stone, and then a string of small crystal lights illuminated on the rocky ceiling.

“I’m— I’m a Masochist Mage. I get bonuses to [Restraint] when I’m embarrassed, or if I choose to restrain myself, and a little bit of pain is turned into pleasure.” She blushed, kind of wishing she’d said this before turning lights on.

“Oh. Is, uhm, is that why your skirt fell off against Waine?”

Elaina pursed her lips. “Ya, that was on purpose… For the skill, I mean!” They were both blushing now, doing their best to avoid eye contact.

“Hey,” Elaina asked, trying to change the subject, “can you see right now, without your glasses?”

Carline’s eyes opened wide, and she started feeling around her face. “I see fine, actually. I forgot I wasn’t wearing them.”

“Huh,” Elaina said, thinking back to her foot injury when she first met the System. She had [Pain Response], which she thought mostly took care of it, but was there maybe more to that?

“May— maybe we should get going?” Carline asked.

“Yeah, let’s do that.” Elaina started walking down the only exit to the small room they were in. It was deeper in, as the System hadn’t deemed it necessary to transport them to the entrance of the cave they were for some reason. “Uhm, Carline, do you have any idea where we actually are?”

“Not exactly, but I can take a guess from what I’ve heard in stories. Did they not have many stories about System Users where you’re from?”

Elaina shook her head, creeping down the tunnel. “No. We had lots of stories about the Aspected, but not too many about those with classes.” It made sense; Aspected people were commonplace for Carline’s portion of society, so they wouldn’t make for great stories on their own.

“Well, I think we’re in a dungeon. They’re like holding places, meant to guard System fragments, and also serve as training grounds.”

“But where exactly?” Elaina asked, rubbing her hands together. “It’s so cold here.”

“Maybe near the capital? It’s not too cool for me, but maybe I’m just used to it.” The capital. Carline had said it so casually, but that was hundreds of miles away. There was no way they’d gone so far so quickly, right?

As they went in further, the terrain of the cave changed, rock fading away with each step, giving way to a hallway made entirely of metal, metal the same hue as the automatons that walked the halls of the academy. After the cave had been left completely behind, the hall opened up to a large room with one table in the center, holding up a small metal box with a small crystal circle on the side.

“Oh my stars, an actual chest!” Carline rushed past Elaina, ignoring the latter’s protests to wait as she reached the box and pressed the crystal in the center. The chest popped open, a shining blue light escaping from inside.

“What even is that?” Elaina said, creeping up from behind.

“It’s a star chest! Look.” Carline reached in and pulled out two crystal orbs, each a little smaller than her hand, much smaller than the orb that housed the System. “They’re gear crystals!” she said, handing one of the orbs to Elaina.

[Basic Mage Gear]

“Welcome to the dungeon,” a voice said as soon as she grabbed the crystal. “As you are new Users, you have been granted a basic inventory set. Further gear must be earned and will be distributed as deemed appropriate by the stars.”

“That’s the System!” Elaina said, looking around for the voice. “Hey, System, where are you?”

Carline shook her head. “I’m not sure she can hear you, or if that’s even her. Not the same version, anyway. Before we left, she said she’d disconnected from her other nodes.”

Right, the System had said that. “That doesn’t make sense though! That was her voice; I know it. System, come back!” she shouted.

Carline ran over, waving her hands in panic. “Calm down! There’s monsters in here, remember?”

Fuck, right. “I know it’s her though,” she whispered.

Carline frowned. “I can’t say I understand it fully, but I think we’re looking for, I guess another part of the System? In here she won’t remember us, but she’s still in danger, so we need to take her back to the school.”

Elaina’s head ached. Too many crystal things for her to understand, too fast. She looked back down at the sphere in her hand. “What is this thing anyway?”

“Oh, right,” Carline said, smiling. “I think I can just show you.” She held her crystal up and closed her eyes, seeming to focus for a moment before it shot out of her hand, lighting up, bursting into thousands of tiny crystal shards and enveloping her.

Carline’s uniform disappeared, disintegrating as the glowing dust swirled around her. For just a moment Carline seemed near nude, only a blinding, vibrant blue light that glowed from her skin hiding her modesty before it began to fade from the top of her body, leaving in its place a flowing set of white robes. The garment had a criminally high neckline as far as Elaina was concerned, especially on someone as gifted as Carline, with loose sleeves going down to her elbows, a green chord tied around her waist, white fabric falling all the way to her ankles. Even though the neckline was chaste and the robes went almost to the floor, the two slits running up each leg and stopping over halfway up her thighs gave Elaina a view she hadn’t been graced with yet. Carline normally wore her uniform skirt below her knees, far more conservatively than most other girls at school, so this first peek at her thighs, pale and untouched by the sun, thick and begging to be squeezed—or maybe even to squeeze— was a gift greater than any Elaina could’ve hope for. After the crystal cloud reached the floor, transforming Carline’s uniform boots into tan sandals, it coalesced into one final shape, a staff as tall as Carline herself, made of knotted wood and ending in ring shaped head with one thorny spike up top.

Carline swayed back and forth to see herself, the front flap of her robe dancing, showing more of her with each movement, even flashing a brief glimpse of white panties. “How do I look?” she asked, face glowing pink. “The bottom is a little, well, a little less than I’m used to.”

Elaina was still stunned, finally realizing her mouth had been gaping the entire time the transformation happened. And after it had finished. “You’re, uhm. You look amazing.”

Carline smiled, looking down at the floor. “You should try yours! I don’t think these boost our abilities or anything, since they’re just basic gear, but it gave me a weapon at least, and this way we won’t have to worry about ruining our uniforms down here.”

“But where did your uniform actually go?” Elaina asked.

Carline shrugged. “I can put it back on, I know that much. I guess it’s inside my staff right now?” She twisted the heft of wood in her hands, looking it over. “Or maybe not. But I can feel it, that if I will this outfit back into the crystal I’ll get my uniform back.”

Normally such a testimony wouldn’t be too convincing to Elaina, but she’d had a number of such feelings herself since arriving at Endrin, especially relating to crystal technology. She braced herself and extended the orb out like Carline, willing it to… To turn into clothes, she guessed.

The orb shot forth, breaking apart just like Carline’s had. As the cloud swirled around her and her clothes disappeared, the first thing she noticed was the drop, her breasts falling as her bra dematerialized, and she went to cover her chest instinctively. What the fuck, Carline has bigger boobs than me and hers didn’t drop at all! The next thing she felt was the chill. She looked down at her body as it changed, that same blinding light enveloping her until it started to fade as the crystal swirl made its way down her body.

She was not granted long, flowing robes. She could barely call what she was being given a dress. Long, blue and almost completely transparent sleeves came together into a top that hung on only to her tits, leaving her shoulders completely bare as it extended down, only becoming opaque just above her nipples. Her clothing had slits up the sides like Carline’s, even thinner ones, but where Carline’s mercifully stopped just at her crotch, Elaina’s extended all the way up to her waist, the dress itself extending only barely past where the white robes’ slits ended. A pair of tan sandals like Carline’s finished the so-called outfit, and the remaining crystal fragments formed into a length of crystal chain that wrapped itself around Elaina’s right arm.

Elaina shivered, the cold of the room even greater now that she’d lost her knee-high socks and multiple other layers of her wardrobe. The breeze also told her what she’d been fearing most. It wasn’t just her bra that was missing; she had no underwear at all. She’d definitely seen panties on Carline, and there was no way the girl didn’t have some support for those breasts with how they’d sat on her frame. Elaina had done something wrong, right? There had to be more; she had shirts longer than the dress she’d been given. She looked up at her companion, seeing the girl unabashedly ogling Elaina, eyes going up and down her body, gazing over way more thigh than Elaina would ever show normally, running over her hanging chest, nipples hardening even more against the dark blue fabric as the chill set in.

“I—” Elaina’s teeth chattered. “I’m really cold now.”

Carline snapped back to consciousness, closing a drooling mouth. “Oh! Sorry, here.” She waved her staff at Elaina, and in an instant she was warm again, like nothing was ever amiss at all.

“Gods, what did you do?” She looked down at her body, goosebumps disappearing from her arms and legs. Her nipples stayed hard, but she supposed that might not have been just the cold.

“Body heat is part of [Health], so it isn’t too difficult.”

“But isn’t that a waste of your mana?”

Carline turned away, blushing. “Yeah, I— I didn’t say anything before because I was worried about that, but it’s a relatively minor use of my aspect, and, uhm, with my skill, [Viewer Rating], and you dressed like that, I’m barely spending more mana than my natural regeneration right now anyway. If I’m walking behind you and can activate [Unseen Watcher] too, then I don’t think I’ll actually be spending any at all.”

“Oh,” Elaina said looking back down at herself, at the amount of exposed skin. Her aspect is stronger if… If she’s sexually attracted to her target, and if her target can’t see her.

“There!” Carline said. “When you’re looking away, I can, uhm, the mana drain evens out.”

“Right,” Elaina said, turning around. She wasn’t cold at all anymore, but a shiver still ran through her body. “We should, uhm, keep going, I guess?”

“Y— Yeah, of course.”

Elaina started walking, painfully aware of the gaze that would be on her. She couldn’t see the back of her robes, but she could feel the breeze on her open back. There was a single strand of cloth running across the back of her shoulders, connecting her sleeves and keeping the thing from falling off completely, but below that there had to be some gaping hole, revealing who knows how much to Elaina’s new voyeur friend. And she likes it, likes me? She actually, really likes it?

Until the room with the chest, it had been a straight shot, no side rooms or branching paths to worry about, but now there were those choices. Elaina walked past all the side room, some looking like barracks for soldiers, some completely empty, and some still that were once again caves, destroyed metal walls and furniture strewn about them. “Just so you know, I’m sort of winging it here,” she said back to Carline. “I have no idea where I’m going.”

“Right,” Carline replied, obvious trepidation in her voice. As enthusiastic as she’d been with the gear crystals, there was an eeriness as the two ventured further that was impossible to ignore. This place was obviously built by someone, but no one was here. They were supposed to be defending it from monsters, whatever that meant, but there was only nothingness.

They continued their trek in silence, sandals pitter-pattering on the metal floor the only sound as they delved deeper into the so-called dungeon, until they heard howl-growling, a cross between the sounds of a wolf and a bear that froze both of them in place, more pitter-pattering coming from round the corner ahead as tendrils of black smoke slithered around the walls and towards the them.