“If I gave some to Slimey, I bet he’d turn into a metal slime. Come to think of it, all the mithril, gold, and iron in his stomach might’ve made him pretty metallic already… Funny how he can eat literal lead and never gain weight. Watch out, Slimey! The girls will hate you for that!”
My hands were busy the whole time I kept myself busy delivering my lecture to my audience of one. They worked at their tasks as automatically as if this was ingrained muscle memory. The moment the idea occurred to me, they ran ahead and performed work even my brain didn’t quite understand. First, I shaved down a thin layer of gold and dissolved it in mercury. Then I melted mithril, mixed it into the gold-mercury solution and let a mysterious, inedible mushroom I had lying around suck up the solution. I channeled a bunch of magic into the mushroom until it shone a brilliant platinum white. At last, I had a…Sage’s Soul Mushroom? That’s what Appraisal called it anyway. Welp. No idea what I did, but I made a thing!
Wisdom was as clueless as I was. I flipped through heT Collector’s Complete Best of Magic Items, which I’d only skimmed before, and found nothing pertaining to Sage’s Soul Mushrooms—which in hindsight made sense, seeing as it wasn’t a magical “item” per se and was thus outside of the scope of an alchemist. Maybe it was related to esoteric Chinese alchemy.
“Sage’s Soul Mushroom: ? ? ? The ultimate Elixir.”
Okay, well…it was a mushroom. I knew that much.
“So it’s some kind of healing thing? What exactly, O Skills of mine, are you trying to heal? Do you think I’m touched in the head? You wound me! Now my poor wounded heart needs healing! You know anything with mercury in it has gotta have some effect on the brain…”
Mercury wasn’t good for the body either. But thanks to General Health, poison didn’t work on me. Right?
“Although that makes literally no sense. Being in shape shouldn’t, y’know, keep you safe from megatoxins… And what happens if the dose builds up over time? Don’t tell me this’ll turn me into a metal teenage boy! I don’t wanna be a literal metalhead!”
To be fair, no one was forcing me to eat it…but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from it… Oh wait. Yes I could.
“Because at the end of the day, no matter how OP, a mushroom’s just a lump of fungus. And I’ve got six beautiful bare legs to ogle instead!”
No ordinary bare legs were these. No, these were a transcendent, resplendent, and (technically) appendant collection of legs. Every flesh tone was on display. Milky white tangled with golden brown; soft swells rubbed nonexistent shoulders with firm muscle tone. They were so soft yet so taut, so salacious and yet gracious. They were oxymoron personified; they were the cruelty of beauty’s delicate and rapturous charms taken to their illogical extremes. They were art; they were music; they were some of the finest pieces of ass I’d seen to date. Now was not the time to be looking at mushrooms! Hubba hubba!
“We tried on, new clothes. How do we look? Cute, yes?”
“Yes, very cute. White and red. Pretty. You agree?”
“Pretty clothes! I’ve never seen, so pretty, before. Do they look good, on me?”
The miniskirted shrine maiden triad! Oh, god was dead and we had killed him with the power of hot girls! With shrine maidens like this, who needed gods? If one visited such a shrine to worship, it was not at the feet of gods. Let me worship at these fine feet; let my eyes rest upon those thighs! It was gods vs girls’ legs, and the legs were ready to walk away with the trophy!
“Hoo wee, I am blessed tonight! Let me get down on my knees and pray! Let me assume this most respectful angle from which to ogle your ankles and everything north of them, everything south of the hem, every peep of thigh to grace my eye. Girl, it may be a sin, but I am here to worship your golden calves. Come, oh ultimate upskirt shot, and render me a fool—oh, that wasn’t an open invitation to attack me. Oh no. God is dead, and this teenage boy is not far behind!”
I had made miniskirt shrine maiden costumes as sample products, see. Now the dungeon emperors had weaponized them against me, and I was in no position (being as I was groveling on the floor) to intercept their attacks. I was driven into a corner; I was laid low by their swift diversionary maneuvers. Oh yes. I was surrounded on all sides, and brother, I had no choice but to start blitzing.
“All calculations are finalized; all attacks are coordinated. We have planned this assault down to the most miniscule detail, and we’ve executed the operation with unerring precision. You may have mastered the lore-rich and pervert-powerful virtue of chastitty sex move, and you may have learned from my classmates all the horny shit for which lore has yet to be written; you may be experts of the erotic and ninjas of the nasty, and you may have joined forces to become the ultimate, terrifying, berserkers of the bedroom—wait a second, just what have my classmates been teaching you? What do you guys talk about in those meetings? Huh? That’s for girls to know and me never to find out?”
The moment the dungeon emperors succeeded in grabbing me and holding me down, they stripped me of every ring and bracelet. My chokers? Gone. My headband? Poof. (My cloak, gloves, and the rest of my assorted accoutrements had vanished in the earliest stages of the fight. Teamwork makes the dream work, and tonight’s dream required me nekkid.)
“Curses! The double danger of shrine maiden robes and bare legs have rendered me powerless! Except…I still have an ear cuff, and with that, I can use my Infinite Magic Hands! Mwa ha ha!”