Chapter 8

After solid couple minutes of Seshat mentally running down a list of thirty goddesses that could possibly fit the three symbols I mentioned, she snapped her fingers as she seemingly came to a conclusion. "Aha! It must have been that Aphrodite!"

Hearing her answer, my prior mythology lessons came to the forefront of my memory, and I could confirm her thoughts as the dove was her normal symbol, the seashell could symbolize her birth out of the ocean, and Aphrodite was definitely vain enough to slap a depiction of herself on her Falna's design.

"Was there any survivor or did you merely escape from them?" Seshat asked as she inspected my rapidly healing wound.

I swallowed back any words for a moment before I looked at my Wulfrim Drone which loudly beeped and fly side to side as though to say no.

"No... I very much doubt they survived me throwing a pretty powerful explosive directly into them. Or at least even if they were on their last limbs it's highly unlikely for them to have escaped from the second floor of the dungeon as I was pretty deep into the floor." I explained making Seshat nod in understanding.

I mean they were all rather wrecked and torn apart plus they didn't really move at all when my drone took their bags from them so I could loot them of whatever they had.

I then took the bags out of my inventory and experimentally leaned forward to test my wound, and other than a deep tight soreness in my stomach. I was feeling much better which made sense as healing potions were magical for a reason as healing in the dungeon would be terrible if the potions took literally hours to heal up a single arrow wound.

Seeing the obviously girly bags I had looted Seshat scoffed. "Yes, most definitely Aphrodite's ilk... Were they beautiful? Oh, and good job on looting the corpses of your enemy such a practice is the best way to get ahead my darling child.!" Seshat congratulated me with all the care that a mother would congratulate their son for coming back with a bag of goods he got from killing some bandits.

"Uhm, yeah there were three elfish girls, and they were beautiful," I said thinking back to Mia and just how cheery and nice she was in our first meeting, and then she completely flipped.

"Hmm... Do you think more on this because they were beautiful women? Do you regret protecting yourself out of some kind of chivalry?" Seshat asked not even condescendingly but honestly with true curiosity, and I was reminded about how she was a goddess and didn't at all have a human's mindset about this kind of thing.

For a moment I was silent as I organized my thoughts before I nodded. "I mean I certainly never killed or even really hurt anyone before outside of a bit of wrestling and schoolyard scuffles... With them being beautiful women, yeah I think it weighed on me more than if they were some drunk nasty looking dudes who attempted to mug me." I said speaking truly from my heart as my goddess would know if I lied and would get me nowhere.

Seshat patted me on my head making me chuckle and then gave me some more life advice. "Jake as a goddess I will give you some advice I have learnt both in my life and watching watched you mortals for many thousands of years." She said before clearing her throat.

"Pride is worthless in this world unless you are the strongest, and even then, you are just more liable to being stabbed in the back... So, it doesn't matter what you need to do." Then Seshat held my face close to hers with her golden-slitted eyes staring into my own as she tried to somehow download the next words into my head. "The heavens don't give a shit what you do down here if you are defending yourself... When you are judged by my fellow gods all they see is, so and so attempted to kill you for no reason other than their personal gain so there is no negative karma on you regardless of the person you killed, age, gender, race, or position."

"So just screw everyone else and just focus on yourself, Jake." Seshat consoled me and I nodded in understanding even if her speech hadn't entirely sunk into my head yet.

"Ah Seshat... By the way, I used all the Sulphur Hehe." I said weakly and Seshat's eyebrows twitched.

"Good... Now I have an excuse to have you go shopping for me so I can nap all day. Go to the southern district close to where Hephaestus and Loki have their holdings there is a decent store that sells all the materials you and I need for your next armor set as well as to replace the stuff you've been wasting you little shit!" Seshat scolding me and I let out a cry as the cat girl leapt over the huge pillows filling the room and grabbed onto my back so she could begin giving me a noogie for using all her expensive Sulphur.

Once she was nice and satisfied with bullying me, she sent me off with a final message. "You can use those little elvish tramps' money to buy the materials. Don't you even think about using Familia funds to pay for the list." Seshat warned me and I sighed as I adjusted my plans to go straight there and instead go to the guild first and turn in the normal monster stones so I would have enough money.

"Yes, dear! Don't worry I forgot your special cream for your rash!" I loudly joked as I exited the store and had to duck as a wooden ornament whizzed over my head as I Seshat hissed at my joke.

-

Making my way to the guild I saw a number of the adventures were seemingly back into the swing of things and weren't rioting in front of the Guild or anything which allowed me to easily enter the Guild without being questioned by the Ganesha Familia people like last time.

Entering the Guild, however, was whole different beast as it was completely overrun by adventures so I just joined the shortest line I could see.

Once I got closer to the front of the line, I saw Misha Flott was my receptionist for today. And she was in fine shape... Nah she was franticly sorting out monster stones and getting her adventures out of the way and this time I remembered to use two different bags to hold the kobold and goblin monster stones so I didn't have any issues with her.

"Hmm no mutated or aberrant monster stones?" She asked and I shook my head.

"Nope, I kept away from them, as they always seem to be in a decent-sized group," I responded and she nodded in understanding muttering how I was one of the smarter ones.

"Alright here is your haul of the day. Fifty thousand valis, do you need it to be split up into multiple bags for your party members?" She asked and I realized she knew that all these monster stones were far too many for one person which was true as I turned in all the monster stones those three girls had.

"Nah this is all going into the Familia coffers," I said waving her off and she nodded in understanding giving me five ten thousand Valis coins.

"Have a nice day and be careful in the dungeon, never know what else can change!" She said as I walked away from her till and out of the Guild.

Making my way down south to the more business and rich side of Orario was also not at all an issue other than having to ask for some directions to the store in question I needed to go to.

"There you are," I muttered as I found the aptly named the Fog Depot, helmed by the small Achlys Familia which made their living gathering dungeon and other more exotic materials to supply the larger crafting Familia's.

"Hello welcome to the to the Deathly Fog... How may I help you." The receptionist asked me as I came into the large store/warehouse.

Looking at said receptionist I saw it was a guy with rather dark bags under his eye and clearly just wanted to be anywhere but here. "Yeah, uh can you mark which aisle I can find all the stuff on this list, so I don't have to keep coming back," I said offering the list to him earning a blurry-eyed glare from the man before he sighed.

"Fine... Just when you get all the stuff you need, ring up the purchase in the back with Anna." He said pushing the sale onto his coworker and seeing how tired he was I nodded making him take my list and begin writing down which aisle's all the stuff I needed was on.

"What kind of ice flower did you need?" He asked and I blinked before I recalled I put that there so I could make myself an actual magic mirror as being able to teleport home would make my life so much easier.

"Any flower that blooms surrounded by subzero temperatures," I said making him nod and scratch out what he wrote before adding something else.

"And the unrefined meteoritic ore? Does it need certain elements or materials within the meteor and much more importantly is it an astral mana infused meteor?" He questioned and I shook my head stating I only needed meteoric materials for a vanity project and the cheaper the better.

Because in the end, I was going to need to do other whole projects to refine the meteoric ore with my mana to ignite it back into Terraria grade meteor ore and then refine it into ingots that I could use for stuff, such as the Meteor armor.

That armor set would easily last me a long while allowing me to skip the whole iron-silver-gold armor sets and get one of the better armor sets even with the Calamity mod's armors before the so-called hard mode starts after I kill the Wall of Flesh.

While I was running around the store, I was thinking about my Terraria progression and was honestly wondering when I could chance trying to kill the King Slime or even the Trojan Squirrel which was the so-called easiest boss I could fight.

The biggest thing that worried me honestly about fighting these bosses was how they would react to the dungeon's monsters and if they focused on them I could easily stay in the back and just shoot them but the last major concern I had was what I should do about other adventures interfering as it would be a while till I was strong enough to get down to the eighth floor as that's when the tunnels and rooms go from being four meters high to ten meters high which would allow me to use a grappling hook to maneuver around the weaker bosses with some impunity.

And that's the floor when the number of adventures heavily thin out as the dungeon only gets bigger the deeper you go.

I quickly went around spending all my money grabbing all the stuff I added to the list but thankfully a lot of it was rather cheap like simple sand for me to make my own glass for a multitude of other things. But just getting three ice flowers was expensive as all hell...

Either way, after I emptied my wallet of all the money, I made in the last couple days including the three elves' money that I looted I went to the lady running the back register named Anna supposedly.

"Hello... Are you Anna?" I asked with my face twitching as I saw the lady running the back was literally asleep with her head on the table to ring up purchase and seemingly in answer to my call, she loudly snored.

For a moment I wanted to summon Sir Fluffykins the First to bonk her over the head with an acorn or something. But I settled for poking her with my poking stick I had in my inventory to see if a monster was actually dead.

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