Vol.6 Ch.7.1 – Finishing Touches I
Chapter 7: Finishing Touches
It didn't take me long to find Selene her first item: A Hawkeye Ring. Lower quality versions of this kind of ring were popular with archers and musketeers all across the kingdom and so it only stood to reason that the legendary version of it would be perfect for Selene with her new rifle.
A strong boost to ranged accuracy, eyesight and weapon range as well as a slight boost to Dexterity. Nothing particularly tremendous but all of it put together would help her get to grips with her weapon. I was under no illusion that Selene would reach Anna's level of accuracy anytime soon but given that Anna had over a decade of experience using her longbow, that didn't mean much.
By the time we'd picked out the ring Melinoe had grabbed the brooch she'd been eyeing earlier.
“What you got there?” I asked as I looked at it. A fairly plain thing, five almost colorless little hexagonal crystal chips held in the shape of a beehive.
“Kinetic charm,” she said. “It blunts slashing and piercing attacks and dampens blunt impacts, then turns them into mana for me to use. Should keep me from losing limbs or getting smashed flat.”
“While also helping you power your magic,” I mused. “Great choice.”
She looked smug for a moment and I poked her in the ribs just to tease her.
“So what happens if you just punch a wall while wearing this?” Alisha asked.
Melinoe paused. “Huh,” she said, then pinned the brooch to her toga, knelt down on the ground and punched the marble. She winced right after, then her expression relaxed as she clearly didn't feel as much pain as she should have. At the same time, mana was coursing around her, beginning to form her aura. “That's a lot more potent than I expected.”
“Perfect,” I said. “Do you have any idea what else you want?”
She bit her lip. “Could you help me look later?”
I had a feeling she already knew what she wanted and just wanted to spend a bit of time looking with me but I didn't mind. “Sure,” I said. “Right after I find Selene a tunic.”
She nodded and I turned back to Selene, holding out a hand. She placed her hand in mine and off we went to find her a tunic.
It didn't take long. A few minutes of aimless wandering was all it took for us to arrive in front of a blue tunic, quite similar to the one Freya had given her, but this one an actual legendary item.
“Savior's Garment,” I muttered as I read it. I wasn't sure this was the right fit for her though.
It was a legendary tunic, resistant to slashing and stabbing attacks, exactly what I had wanted her to find. But on top of that it also had an effect that would dampen damage done to the wearer's allies and draw it onto the wearer. I did not like that idea. The whole reason to find her a legendary tunic had been to make her harder to hurt, not to have her draw harm onto herself. But before I could voice that concern and risk having her yell at me again for not leaving the defending to her, she said:
“It's perfect.”
“Are you sure?” I asked carefully.
“Keeping you all safe is my job,” she said, as I had expected.
“Alright,” I said, “but let's at least find you something to offset the downside.”
To my surprise she agreed right away and once again I let my luck guide us. Or rather, I tried to. The moment I took her hand and closed my eyes I got the most peculiar sensation and immediately opened my eyes again. I was staring at the pedestal right next to the one that had held the tunic. This one held a ring.
“Font of Blood,” Selene read out. “Wow.”
I looked at it as well and had to agree. The perfect compliment to the tunic. I supposed that was why they'd been placed right beside each other.
This ring would heal the wearer any time they took damage, except the healing was the same no matter how much damage was dealt. So if she got a broken rib, simply stubbing her toe once or twice would fix it. And, with the tunic on, even one of us stubbing our toe would be enough.
“These were made for each other,” I said.
“They were,” she agreed, then asked: “So, does the tunic's effect still bother you?”
“No,” I admitted. “With this it's actually just great.” Then I looked over at Meli and Yume, the only ones left who still needed to find stuff. “Who wants to go first?”
The two of them exchanged a look before Yume said: “Let me, please.”
“Sure,” I said, grabbing her hand and then letting my Luck guide us.
This time we didn't hit on the right item right away. In fact, we walked farther than for any other item so far. I was starting to wonder whether we'd walked out of the treasury when I felt that by now familiar tingle. I opened my eyes and realized that yes, this little walk had taken us quite far. This area felt darker. The air was colder and it was as if the stars in the sky above us were dimmer. I was starting to wonder if we might have stumbled across some kind of Outsider corruption when I looked at the items around us and understood. This was the section for cursed items.
Magical items were classified into several different tiers. Lesser magic items made up the lowest of those tiers. They were followed by normal or average magic items. Then came high tier magic items. Then Legendary. And then Mythic. That was how it was taught and, for the most part, that was how things worked. But then there were also cursed magic items. These tended to come with obscenely powerful benefits but in exchange they also came with severe and punishing downsides. One of the first items here that caught my eye was the Moron's Ring, which tripled the wearer's Faith while lowering their Intelligence low enough to turn them into a drooling idiot. In itself that was not too bad, except for the fact that, once put on, it could not be removed without cutting off the finger it was placed on.
But why had my Luck guided us here? These were the kinds of items adventurers usually gave a wide berth, the kinds that people would try to pawn off as quickly as possible so they wouldn't accidentally use them.
I looked down at the item in front of us and immediately wanted to take a step back. It was a potion vial, the liquid a dark purple and even though the bottle sat inert before us I could tell the contents would be unusually thick and viscous, tough to swallow even if you knew what it was and had decided to drink it after all.
And then I read the description. And let out a nervous chuckle. In any other situation, for anyone else, this potion would be exactly what I had described, a massive upside and a downside so severe that you wouldn't even consider using it. But for Yume it was damn near perfect.
A Cursed Potion of Body Forging. It would severely increase the drinker's Strength and Vitality at the ever so slight cost of aging them twenty years. Even a completely fresh adventurer barely past the age of majority would consider these downsides too severe and for anyone older it wasn't even worth considering. But for Yume this had absolutely no downsides.
“It's perfect,” she agreed with my unspoken assessment. “But I am not looking forward to drinking this sludge.”
“I'm not taking a swig out of solidarity,” I said. I'd meant it as a joke but her reply was gravely serious.
“Thank you.”
I gave her a hug and she melted into me instantly. “I told you, I don't plan on leaving you anytime soon.”
“I know,” she muttered into my chest. “It's just...”
I gently kneaded one of her fox ears and waited for her to continue.
“I'm feeling a little more emotional than usual, sorry.”
“It's fine,” I said. “I like this cute version of you as well.”
She snorted.
“Hey Yume?”
“Yeah?”
“When we have some peace and quiet, I would like to talk about what your mom said.”
She didn't stiffen up but she did go still for a moment, then relaxed again. “Of course. I should have explained a lot right then.”
I didn't say anything.
“Thank you for not bringing it up earlier.”
“You're welcome.”
**
We returned to the others a while later and this time I offered my hand to Melinoe. Our relationship was still the freshest and so there was a bit of an electric feeling when our fingers touched. She seemed a little nervous and I pulled her close to me before setting out to find her third item.
When I felt her breathing even out I started walking and pretty soon we arrived at something that felt promising. I opened my eyes and saw that we were back in the section where she'd found those charms and the brooch. And in front of us sat a charm. It had a butterfly design, with an amethyst set into the center as the butterfly's body, the gem the exact same color as Melinoe's magic. It looked beautiful just sitting there and I knew it would look gorgeous pinned to her toga. And the thing was...
“Stars above,” she muttered. “How did I miss this?”
Pain Siphon. A morbid name for a brilliant piece of gear. It would convert the pain experienced all around her into mana for her to use. Crucially, this did not apply to only her enemies. Any jarring impact against Selene and my shields, any little cut Alisha could heal in seconds, any little ache Selene's tunic drew onto her, all of it would only serve to fan the flames of Melinoe's magic. And that was before even counting the pain felt by her enemies. Because her penumbral magic could hurt enemies when she wanted it to. A lot.
