LIGHTNOVELONLINE Chapter 19: Cool Beauty
Time left until monsters respawn: 3 hours, 41 minutes.
We entered the beauty department and immediately I realized where we went wrong. “Oh,” I said, holding up a compact from the makeup display. “If we came through here first we'd have powder to throw at the invisible creatures.
“Oh,” says Jose. “Pocket some in case they come back.”
“Good idea,” I say, and pick up the powder box I'd already spitefully smashed on the floor.
The beauty department itself has two exits. The one we came from, to the seasonal section, and the other goes back to the drugs and pharmacy area. The beauty section itself is pretty straightforward. There are dozens of low shelves we can easily see over. There are mirrors standing upright at the end of each shelf. The whole area is maybe 30 feet by 30 feet.
There's just one enemy in the beauty department. But it's not good. The “enemy” is our coworker, Rebecca, who seems dead, judging from the blood dripping down her neck. The blood originates from a harlequin mask she's wearing. She moves like a puppet on strings. The mask, in a creepy imitation of Rebecca, says “How about a new face?”
It's the kind of thing that Doctor Who would have to run from for 40 minutes straight. Jose puts two bullets into its mask and we keep moving.
At the far side of beauty we see the way down. It's a long, serpentine ramp fit for those wheelchair (or maybe walker) bound. Or for kids with skateboards who want to do sick tricks.
We look down into the next area which gives us pause. The next area is the 1st floor. The way home. The way out. But the first thing we see down there is a whole-ass glacier.
“It's 8:05,” I say. “Let's get everyone else to this point, then proceed. I don't want to get caught in a situation where we clear the path but nobody can get out in time.”
“Makes sense,” Jose says.
“Also, Mercy and I aren't even dating.”
“What?” Jose raises an eyebrow at me.
“Like I said, I get this weird feeling in my gut when I make eye contact with her. It's not natural.”
“Okay,” he says, clearly not knowing what I'm on about.
We walk back through the seasonal department.
“Like, I have to keep telling waiters at restaurants that we're not together.”
Jose asks, “why would you be in front of waiters?” He seems genuinely confused.
“Oh, because we get dinner once or twice a week.” We move into the darkened backroom on the third floor.
“Hold on,” he stops, so I turn on Yellow Ray to see him. “You're dating her.”
“No, we just get dinner as friends. You know I hate to eat out alone.” I shake my head at his disbelief. This is totally obvious to me.
“How long have you not dated her?”
“Like six months?”
He goes very, unnervingly quiet and keeps moving. We get down into the rat swarm hallway. Jose asks, “Hey Jun, quick question.”
“Shoot.”
“You ever been in love before?”
I think about it. “No. I dated but never had that feeling, you know? I think it's just something that I don't do.”
He asks “What's your Wisdom stat?”
I have to check so I close the eyepatch. Oh I've gained 3 levels. Neat. “My Wisdom is 5. A little low.”
“Average is 10.” Jose says. “You are half as wise as the average human.”
“Well when you say it like that it sounds bad.”
“Okay, so I need you to raise that number.”
I sigh. “Okay, but I need a minute to plan out my path. I have 3 levels to play with.”
“Damn, I only got 1. But okay.”
With that I take a breather and figure out how exactly I'm going to turn my mess of a build into something actually useful.
My main strength right now is flexibility. I can do a bit of everything but nothing particularly well. My good stats are Dexterity (49), Agility (29), Intelligence (36) and Reflexes (43). I've got 10 Ki and Arcana points so I can carry on with either of those paths without much difficulty.
I poke around at the classes I don't have access to and learn something interesting. 1st Step classes have a specific stat requirement of 10, 2nd requires two stats at 15, 3rd needs two specific stats at 30. To get a 4th step class you need two stats at 45.
So, if I boost my Agility and Reflexes a bit I should unlock more classes. Okay let's do it. I level up Rake once. My stats rise and I have 3 free points left over so I improve my Wisdom to 8.
“Hey wait, Jose, do you think that maybe Mercy likes me?”
Jose holds his head as if he's got a splitting headache.
“Wait,” I say, coming to another realization. “I think that feeling in my stomach is that butterflies thing! People talk about love like that, don't they?”
Jose holds his hands over his mouth and screams. It sounds like a frustrated, annoyed scream. “A-am I wrong?” I ask.
-----
Time left until monsters respawn: 3 hours, 17 minutes.
We arrive back at the 4th floor and are greeted by the whole crowd of survivors. Some of them look pissed.
“Uh, what happened?” I ask Theo.
Theo rubs the back of his head. “Some of the people here have encountered some creatures over there that are not part of the Get! store experience, and therefore that incident is not the responsibility of the Get! corporation.”
Natalie translates. “They found shoe snakes in those small hills over there. People got hurt but nobody died.”
A large white man with more entitlement than education shouts “And this idjit keeps talkin’ company man talk like he's some kinda big shot!”
Shouts of “Yeah!” and “tell ‘I'm!” and “I'm not racist, he's the racist” follow the outburst. Jose casually fires a round into the air to shut everyone up.
I hold my hands up as if to make peace with the people. “Alright sooo I super don't care. We're going to get clothes that aren't covered in blood and goo and then lead you all down through the third and second floors. We want you close by if we get a route through the first floor.”
“But what about the monsters?” someone asks.
“I have a gun.” Jose states. “They are dead.” People nod in acceptance. If there is one thing Texans understand it's that firearms are the answer to most problems.
Jose and I swap clothes again for... Yeah we're just getting new versions of our existing outfits. No reason to debate wardrobes now. “Oh!” I shout to the group. “And everyone get a jacket!”
We make our way back down to the beauty department. The survivors greedily sweep up the coins left by the Chameleonians and we park them in the patio furniture.
“Okay, we're going ahead now.” I say cheerfully. Then sternly I say “Do NOT go anywhere else. I mean it. You WILL DIE.” And then I try to brighten the horrified faces with a “Bazinga!” followed by “but no really you'll get murdered.”
Theo walks over to me. “Great pep talk. You're team lead material, Jun.”
“Yeah,” says Brian, “with speaking skills like that you could make a... a... Put the fun in funeral!”
Natalie just smirks and shakes her head. It's really great to see them again after all this time. I check my watch. It was only like a couple of hours. Seems longer somehow, like maybe 6 chapters or so.
“Yeah, so, keep them safe, etc.” I say, and pat Brian on the shoulder.
“Oh we will,” he says, gripping a Dog Skull mace. I had forgotten about that thing. It is still metal as fuck.
We get to the stairs and don the jackets we picked up before heading into the arctic section below. I'm assuming it's frozen foods.
“Final stretch,” Jose says as we both look forward.
“Final stretch,” I say.
-----
Time left until monsters respawn: 1 hour, 33 minutes.
It's less of a final stretch and more of a final slog. The ice we reach is solid. We look for a tunnel, a passage, a switch, a weak point, a hidden path, a false wall.
“Nothing,” I say, my teeth chattering. We've been looking for a way past this wall of ice for 20 minutes now. We even pulled Nat and Brian down to help us.
As we're searching, I approach Natalie, who's checking out the west side of the ice wall. “Hey, uh, Nat,” I say sheepishly. She just glares at me. “Look, I just wanted to apologize for earlier.” She doesn't even look at me.
“I, well Jose and I, that is... We went through something horrible in Afghanistan together.” She finally looks at me. She looks... Annoyed, still. “And I didn't come out unscathed. Jose lost his leg and I came out with...” I scratch my head and look away. “Pretty severe PTSD and depression. Like real-ass, really bad thoughts and depression. And being in here, it's kinda just like that cave, you know? Just an endless sea of death.”
I have her attention now and I don't even want it. “So when I died, twice, at the fucking Get!, after making it through goddamn hell in that cave, after making it through goddamn hell in my own head ever since, I just... “
“Cool, you're more fucked in the head than I thought. Still, I don't forgive you,” she says flatly. “And stop crying. It's pathetic.”
Was I crying? Fuck, I am. I wipe those indicators of weakness away. Can't be weak. Can't be pathetic. I'm a Ranger.
She walks away from my embarrassing display over to the others. Nat says, “think Brian, how would this work in one of your dungeons?”
Brian rubs his freezing fingers together and says “well, there is a possibility that it doesn't open from this side at all. Like if there was an exploding barrel or something exciting to get through, if you were going the right way. Which we're not.”
“So we're fucked?” asks Jose.
“I mean, unless you can melt a wall of ice?” is Brian's reply.
I start conjuring Fire Bats.
We work together and take turns. I keep us supplied with flaming bats. Jose, Nat, Brian and Theo keep bats against the ice to melt it as quickly as possible. We don't need a big hole so we're just trying to carve a narrow tunnel into the ice wall. After 30 minutes we've made it... 5 feet.
“We have half an hour left,” Nat informs us. We have to do something else.
“Okay, I can take a chance here. But it's kind of a long shot.” I say this as I hand off another Fire Bat to Theo.
“Whatever it is, do it,” Theo says, then takes the bat to work on the wall.
I sigh. My Intelligence now being over 30 qualifies me for the Sorcerer class. There's a chance. A CHANCE. I'll get a fire spell from it. But it's pretty much our only chance at this point.
Sorcerer
Your blood is steeped in magic. You discover an arcane aspect of your heritage hitherto unknown. And it. Is. Powerful.
A third step class. 10 subclasses. Nine class evolutions.
Gain 2 Intelligence, 1 Reflexes, 1 Charisma and 6 Arcana upon choosing this class. Two basic, advanced or expert combat Arcana spells will be granted to you upon choosing this class.
Uses Intelligence, Charisma and Arcana.
Upon level up three additional random basic, advanced or expert combat spells will be granted, until all basic, advanced and expert combat spells are known. Each level you gain 1 Intelligence, 1 Reflexes, 1 Charisma, 2 Arcana and 5 free points.
I take the first level of Sorcerer and pray for fireballs.
Please select your Sorcerer subclass!
Sorcerer Subclasses
Dragonblood - While in negative AP your elemental attacks deal 25% more damage.
Mageblood - While in negative AP your elemental defensive spells absorb 25% more damage.
Ghostblood - While in negative AP you take 25% less damage from physical attacks.
Chimerablood - While in negative AP your body takes on aspects of the magic you use.
Huh. Didn't it say that it had 10 subclasses? Whatever, getting a subclass at 1st level is nice. Being the master of being multiple things at once, I choose Chimerablood.
I look at my spells list to see what I got.
Ice Spells
Snowflake Shuriken... Basic... 1 AP
Freezing Beam... Advanced... 1 AP/Second
Icicle Trap... Expert... 15 AP/1 Hour
SERIOUSLY!?! Not only are there no fire spells but I got THREE ice spells. Fuck me I guess. Fine. Let's hit level 2 on Sorcerer and pray.
Please select your Sorcerer subclass! Spells of your chosen element will be favored in what spells you learn at level up.
Burning Sorcerer - Your fire spell damage increases by 25%
Freezing Sorcerer - Your ice spell damage increases by 25%
Shocking Sorcerer - Your electric spell damage increases by 25%
Windy Sorcerer - Your wind spell damage increases by 25%
Stone Sorcerer - Your earth spell damage increases by 25%
Wave Sorcerer - Your water spell damage increases by 25%
Oh, okay so this class gets TWO subclass choices, awesome. Now that I have these ice spells I should really go into ice- Naw just kidding.
Blazing Chimerablood Sorcerer, Level 2
New spells: Flame Shot, Flame Thrower, Burning Blade.
Flame Shot
Shoot a small ball of fire like a sling bullet. The longer you hold it the more powerful it gets, but don't expect too much.
Range: 50 ft
Cost: 1 Arcana Point
Proficiency: 0%
Flame Thrower
A stream of flames shoots from your hand. Quite dangerous, actually.
Range: 25 ft
Cost: 1 Arcana Point per second
Proficiency: 0%
Burning Blade
Summon a sword of fire, or add a flame enchantment to an existing weapon.
Range: touch
Cost: 15 Arcana Points for 10 minutes
Proficiency: 0%
I shove everyone aside and hold an open palm to the tunnel in progress. “Flame Thrower!” A stream of orange flames 6 inches wide leaps from my hand. I stop after 10 seconds and see that I've carved a whole foot into the tunnel.
I wipe my brow and say “I'm going to need all the Dr Pepper we've got.”
I chug the Arcana-Point-recovering DP between gouts of flame and we make rapid progress. Over the course of 5 minutes we make a hole 30 feet long and wide enough for even the fattest customer to get through.
When we break through there's a cheer from the crowd gathered behind me.
We peer through and see what will be the hardest part of the whole adventure: Getting everyone out alive.