An Unbound Soul

"Where are we supposed to stand?" asked Cluma, staring down at the tenth floor boss, which covered the entire floor in a layer of red, pulsating flesh. A constant flow of eyes bubbled to the surface, stared at us for a few seconds, then sunk back under. At the edges, irregular tendrils snaked up the walls like vines.

"The map says to jump from eye to eye, to always keep moving, and never to touch its flesh."

Cluma continued to stare for a few seconds before shaking her head. "I could probably do that, but I don't want to."

I nodded my agreement and launched a fully charged lightning bolt through the hole in the ceiling, which, as a result, flipped over to become a hole in the floor.

"Why are the monsters here so... random?" she complained once I'd grabbed a raw emerald from the chest.

"It matches the theme of the dungeon, which seems to be based on the squishiness of reality."

She sighed, poking at a light on the wall. It had shifted colour again and now had a purple tinge. "Does this mean the maze has changed again?"

I took out the map for the next floor and stared at it. Then I turned it through ninety degrees and continued to stare.

"Yes," I answered, "and if you give me half an hour to stare at this, I might even be able to work out how."

Cluma squinted in confusion at the paper in my hands. "Did they sell you a dud map? That looks like the cartographer spilt his pot of ink all over it."

"It is certainly very... dense," I agreed. At first glance, it looked like someone had taken the maps of the previous ten floors and glued them on top of each other. Possibly, at some point, it had exploded and been inexpertly reassembled. Then someone had shredded a dictionary over the top as garnish.

Thankfully, I had a way out. "We've been here long enough today. The floors might be short, but we've done ten of them. Home time?"

"Huh? How long have we been down here?"

"A little over six hours."

"Woah. It doesn't feel like."

"It was a new dungeon, and you had new skills to experiment with."

She'd gained a level in [Assassinate] already, after some extensive experimentation that resulted in her expending a soul point on [Enlarged Stamina Pool]. She very likely would have picked up [Enhanced Stamina Recovery], too, but she didn't have the points for it. So much for her having plentiful stamina already; the skill sucked it up like a sponge.

It worked more or less as I'd guessed; the stamina cost scaled with the remaining health of her target, factoring in the damage dealt by the attack she'd applied [Assassinate] to. Since it was remaining health, that meant she could whittle something down half-way with her other attacks, then finish it off with [Assassinate], but the costs were steep. The boss I'd just zapped, which had been level fifteen, was out of her one-shot range. Things would likely have been different if it had a weak point to exploit, but the abomination didn't have a heart for her to stab out, and she couldn't kill it with a superficial nick.

Although maybe things would change in the future; the level increase hadn't made it more effective, which would be hard given that it could already kill with any small wound, but instead it reduced the stamina cost. It remained to be seen how the stamina reduction scaled, but unless there were serious diminishing returns, by level ten it would be awesome.

If the scale was linear, my higher level cap would let me use it for free. Now that would be overpowered. Alas, the way the System was generally balanced meant that it probably wasn't linear. More likely, the cost decreased by a compound percentage.

We followed the staircase down a few steps beyond the invisible portal that led to the next floor, where I left my usual tooth before teleporting the pair of us home. Teleporting back onto the stairs tomorrow wouldn't be ideal, but the entrance room of the floor often contained monsters, while the stairs were safe spaces. I'd just need to be careful not to fall.

"What's for dinner?" asked Cluma once I'd finished my teleport.

"Maggot?"

Cluma scrunched up her face in disgust.

"Hey, I have [Advanced Cooking] now. I bet I can make it taste good."

Cluma answered by poking me in the nose.

I searched the memories of my new skill for a new recipe that I hadn't known before, that was quick to make and didn't require any ingredients I didn't have. If I wanted to level the skill, I needed to push myself, but with the time we'd spent in the dungeon, it was getting late.

Cooking the maggots really would count as pushing myself, not that I fancied eating it myself. I'd have to find someone else to foist it on to; it wouldn't count as a meaningful skill use if I cooked one up and binned the result.

Picking out a complex, layered stir-fry, I cooked us up some dinner—failing to get a skill level for my efforts, alas—and sat down at the table with Cluma.

"So, happy with your choice of dungeon?" I asked.

"Our choice," she corrected.

"Okay, if you want to be pedantic about it. Happy with our choice of dungeon?"

"Uh... The mazes are interesting, but the monsters are kinda gross and weird. Also, how come we didn't bump into any other delvers? It's in the middle of the demon capital. Shouldn't it have been full?"

That was actually a damn good point. I had to admit I wasn't the most observant individual, and spotting the lack of something was harder than spotting its presence. It hadn't occurred to me that we'd not met a single demon in the dungeon, nor had I picked up any at a distance with [Mana Sight]. Not only that, but we'd bumped into plentiful monsters on the direct path from the entrance to the boss chamber of each floor. There hadn't been much foot traffic outside of the dungeon, but the warehouse was stocked with the usual corpses and dungeon materials, so it was obvious it was being worked.

Was there some method of starting on lower floors? Even if so, it was odd no-one was farming steel. Did we happen to arrive on some sort of demonic national holiday?

"I honestly have no idea," I admitted.

"Just another point of weirdness, then," she giggled, before shovelling a fork full of meat into her mouth, having unerringly picked out the lumps of kobold from among the vegetables I'd cooked them with.

I nodded my agreement before eating my own food. The skill upgrade had improved the taste a lot, on top of granting new recipes.

I spotted Cluma's ears twitch, before she stared down into her bowl with a slight blush.

"What's wrong?" I asked when she brought a fork full of lettuce to her mouth, a fact that meant she was very distracted.

"Nothing. Just... don't use [Mana Sight] to look outside," she answered.

Obviously, just like any other human in the world, having been told not to do something, the immediate impulse was to do it.

I looked down into my bowl, avoiding meeting Cluma's eyes.

"You looked, didn't you?" she said.

"Of course I did! You told me not to!"

We both continued to eat in silence, with [Mana Sight] very definitely turned off. Alas, Cluma didn't have the option of switching off her ears, and they continued to twitch in time with a very interesting variety of facial expressions.

"What are they even doing, out in public on the street?" I muttered. "Would you like to borrow my corpusclite earplugs?"

"No thanks. They're getting further away. And to answer the first question, probably because the chance of being seen is exciting."

"How is that exciting?! I'd be mortified!"

"Me too. Today."

"Today? What's that supposed to mean?"

"If I was in heat, maybe my opinion would change."

I opened my mouth to express my disbelief, but stopped to consider that even human hormones could have massive impacts on behaviour. For beastkin, with a year's worth of sex-drive crammed into two weeks, I could see her point. Who knew how she'd act?

A sigh from the other side of the table suggested I was letting my worry show on my face, so I automatically slipped into my usual method of handling the situation; thinking about something else entirely and pretending the subject never happened.

Thankfully, I hadn't completely forgotten my recent lessons about the importance of good communication, and managed to catch myself.

"If you want to emulate them next year, you can do it on your own," I said instead.

A flicker of surprise turned into an evil grin. "Oh? I'll remember you said that."

It wasn't like I was immune to hormones. Far from it, in fact. I was fairly certain it would take more than hormones to get me acting as shamelessly as that, though.

Meal over, I took some paper and started to plan my anti-Cluma visibility device. The knowledge instilled in me by my skills was irritatingly sparse, and while the knowledge of the affinity crystals combined with my basic Earth physics knowledge suggested that I could use air and water to generate a spray of mist, I couldn't work out the details. It would take some trial and error.

"What are you doing?" came a disembodied voice, accompanied by invisible arms wrapping around my chest and a mystery assailant pressing herself into my back.

"Coming up with some way to prevent surprises like this," I answered.

"Huh? What? No! That's totally not allowed!"

"Who says?"

"Me!"

"It hardly seems fair that you can put all this effort into hiding from me, but I'm not allowed to put any effort in to countering you," I pointed out.

Cluma remained silent, although she didn't break the hug.

"Could I have my arms back? I need them to sketch."

"Nope!" she replied, still pinning them to my sides.

The silence continued for a few seconds more.

"We seem to be at something of an impasse," I pointed out.

Cluma giggled. "Really? You have a higher strength stat than me, not to mention [Strength] and [Superimpose]. You could break out easily. Even if you couldn't, you could teleport away. Yet, for some reason, you aren't. I wonder why?"

That made me giggle in turn. Why would I want to shake her off? If I had anything against hugs, letting her live with me would have been a really poor life choice. I leant backward instead, enjoying the attention.

I wasn't going to be able to get any further with my plans without testing them, anyway, so there was no point continuing to stare at them.

"Fine. If you give me my arms back for two seconds, I'll pack the paper away."

"Why only two seconds? What happens after?" she asked curiously.

"Cuddles on the sofa?"

My arms were released very quickly.

"You're being oddly compliant today," she commented.

"Am I? I'm just... finally getting used to things, I think."

"Not quite in time," she answered, and I could hear the pout.

"No, it'll be a while before I'm up to that, but I have a whole year. For now... cuddles. Although lying on a sofa without a (television) running in the background feels a bit weird, despite the fact I haven't seen a (television) since I lived on Earth."

A few minutes later, the pair of us were intertwined on the sofa, which was surprisingly more comfortable than it sounded. Cluma's tail wrapped around one of my legs, but she didn't give any indication that it was deliberate, or even that she'd noticed. She was focused entirely on squeezing me so hard that the contents of my chest were in danger of being forced up my neck. I hugged back, although my lack of tail prevented me from reciprocating that particular part.

It had been a long day, and apparently my body had taken my horizontalness as a sign that it was permitted to switch off. A minute later, I fell asleep.