Day 121
EVENING
Candyfloss clothing makes for great eye candy!
THE WHITE LOSER INN
ON THE FRONTIER
BLAH, BLAH, BLAH. More chatting in the guise of a group meeting.
We had left Sister Girl behind in the Theocracy, and Royal Girl and Maid Girl in the Kingdom. On the flipside, we’d gained the twins. With them and Merimeri, that put us at a total of twenty-four girls plus three dungeon emperors, a Poster Girl, and a Stalker Girl. The girl population density was off the charts high.
Since I was bored, I started fiddling. The level 50 Dark Wraith had dropped a “Dark Ring: Intelligence +30%. Dark Magic. Shade. Dark. Smokescreen. Blind. Instakill.” I liked the intelligence boost, but the rest of the Traits were meh at best.
“Yet compared to the rest of my shady shit, this is but a shadow of true meh.”
Dark magic was all about low-accuracy Death or Dark spells. Totally useless, to my mind. On the one hand, this ring also helped with Shadow magic. On the other hand, I rarely had a chance to use Shadow magic. Shadow Incarnation and Shadow Crows weren’t effective on truly strong enemies, and anything weaker, it was faster and simpler to bonk ’em to death.
“Hmm… I can’t deny, I do like the blindfolding potential, though… But then again, the dungeon emperors can use Presence Sensing to mitigate a blindfold entirely.”
I grumbled and grumped my way through more complex fiddling. I did have spare ring slots, and I didn’t want to sell the ring and have it end up in the wrong hands—Instakill wasn’t a Trait to take lightly. But if I couldn’t sell it or use it, what good was this thing?
“Now, if a cute girl walked by and things got a little heated—in the bedroom sense—an instant blanket of darkness could come in handy… Dee-da-dee-da-dee-da-dee… Ta-da. Look what I did.”
By combining the powers of Darkness and Shadow magic, I drew a magic sigil of pure darkness in midair. Then, upon my charging the sigil with magic, it cast its Dark Wall spell, and a thick wall of darkness that no light could penetrate sprung up around me.
All it did was make me invisible, so it wasn’t a gamechanger in the defense department. But if I took this wall and folded it into something like a box, this could make for a good blindfold. The inside was pitch black—and that’s exactly what I wanted! Excited at the new use case for this ring I’d just discovered, I looked up and found all my classmates glaring at me. Hmm…if it requires drawing a sigil in midair, I might as well draw the sigil inside me with Alchemy. More efficient, y’know? And if a blindfold’s a possibility, maybe I should build a shack out of Earth magic first, then slap a darkness wall on that. Could get more use out of it that way.
“I guess? ’Cause it’s possible; I’ve just done it. Is that what’s next? A darkness shack?”
Huff huff puff?
“Wait, wait, wait—don’t bust out the Lamaze method in a conversation about doing it! People are gonna get the wrong idea, then I’m gonna be told off, and the telling off will switch partway through to beaning me with morning stars, and should I fend those off, the girls will switch to sickles and chains like some kinda freaky warrior monks, and then they’re gonna demand I make them new miniskirts (with a hidden chainmail layer), and then next thing you know, I’m gonna be crafting the latest in knight fashion, and I have a very bad feeling these will be used for sinister, possibly ninja-y, purposes, namely sexy snaring and sexy slaying? And I’ll fall for it every time! I know I will! ’Cause every time I so much as sneak a glance at she who wears full-body chainmail tights, I get attacked! Making new clothes is signing myself up for defeat, but…I just can’t help it! My body does it on its own! It’s made three sample costumes for three special souls just while we were having this conversation! I’m bursting at the seams with experimental energy, apparently. I have to test the strength! The feel! The fit!”
Jiggle jiggle.
Unfortunately, this was the moment when the meeting devolved into an epic glare fest. Sickles whirred ominously on their chains.
“Why, pray tell, is Faleria-san doing the Lamaze breathing method? What did you do to her in that dungeon of yours?”
“Someone fetch a lowwife! A highwife!”
“Or a wife halfway in between, perhaps.”
“Is there a doctor in here? Oh! We have a Saint. Maybe that’ll do.”
I sensed this was my time to make myself scarce, so I skedaddled. The Track Down and Exterminate Haruka unit was on red alert. I think I’m trapped! …Which is what I get for trying to barricade myself in a dining hall. Does it count as being a shut-in if I’m shut up in an inn dining room?
“No, no, no! It’s a purely virginal huff-n-puff. I may be especially fond of girls in heated breathing situations, but I swear this is just a qi-refining breath technique that, uh…somehow turned into the Lamaze method. But she didn’t learn it from me! My humble ‘hiiiyah’ morphed into the huffing and puffing of late state pregnancy. A mystery, really, how this kind of thing keeps happening.”
Dark magic could absorb other magical attacks and had high magic defense overall. Alas, its physical defense was just terrible—as was readily proven when the morning stars crashed through the walls of my literal black box. Sickles and chains sliced the shadows to shreds. Yup, I was on the lam in Shadow Skulk, but Elf Girl found me out and sicced the rest on me. Curse her magic-sensing powers!
“There he is!”
I unleashed a massive murder of Shadow Crows and threw in a few illusions for good measure as I once again attempted to make a break for it. Alas, it was all for naught. I was caught fast the moment I left Shadow Skulk. I tried to take to the skies, but one of the Volleyball Girls and Bunny Girl teamed up to spike me back to the ground. I slammed into the floor and was immediately jumped by a pack of teenage girls doing their best orphan impression…but I was too crafty to be caught. I used Qing Qigong and slipped through the gap between girls on the wings of a girl-generated gust.
“Gah! I got past Class Rep’s squad, but Book Club President’s gang is lying in wait! And they mean business! Not the short shorts! The bra-ometer’s reading a sudden increase of pressure on my nether regions!”
With two commanders leading the bunch, the girls made themselves into an iron curtain—and much like a curtain, this one had fabric draping over all sorts of bulging objects.
“I’m innocent, I tell you! I’ll have you know, everyone at False Accusation Victims Anonymous tells me I’m the guiltiest of guilty criminals, and if that isn’t proof of my flawless innocence, I don’t know what is. I didn’t do anything! Except try to Ground Shrink my way to safety. Yeah, could you not fling yourselves at me? Trying to Ground Shrink here, and it’s a bit distracting. Let’s dial back the launching, ladies. Unrelated, but—those new short shorts and wrap top combos are doing a number on me. I never knew sportswear could be so R-rated! Wait, Princess Girl’s not here, right? That means we’re all under eighteen! We’re not supposed to be in an R-rated scene! There is too much tight clothing clinging to outrageous curves for a sermon targeted to the teenage male audience. Is this even ethical?!”