Dressed to Kill Chapter 16 (Patreon)

AN: I WROTE CHAPTER 16 BUT FORGT TO EDIT IT BEFORE POSTING and then i got drunk so this is unedited chapter 16

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I dropped the spider and ran.

Stupid move. No escaping a man on horseback.

He caught up with me in seconds, the sound of the horses hooves tearing apart the crumpled underbrush roaring through the second floor.

I activated [Shadow Cloak] and did something that might have been stupid.

[Mana: 8/10]

Dropping to the ground, I let Valjean pass me. He rushed by, eyes scanning the exit, slamming into the portal. Did he see my face? The cloak covered most of it. My hair was tied back in the hood, though my clothing would stand out. It wasn’t like I had worn it in public.

I stayed low to the ground, staring up at the portal. He knew I could use some kind of stealth or invisibility and had presumed I kept running for the exit. Maybe a real noble would have a mobility skill that would let them reach the portal before him. Whatever his leap of logic was, it had saved me for now.

I scrambled forward, staying low and in the dark edge of the dungeons walls, pausing for a moment to inspect the dungeon floor on the opposite side. My eyes were adjusted to the twilight of the second floor, while the first was in dusk. I could see nothing on the other side.

I stepped through cautiously.

There was a flash of golden light. On the other side of the room, Valjean whipped his horse about, pointing it towards the dungeon entrance. It was a trap. Some kind of magic tripwire must have revealed I cross the gate. I jumped to the side, ready to dodge a furious attack from Valjean.

None came.

“Show yourself.” He said, horse trotting forward slowly. His weapon was laid across the horse. “Why are you doing this? You have nothing to fear from revealing your class as a Noble.”

Valjean started. He looked at the portal in general, rather than at me to the side. Slowly, carefully, I crawled to the side of the room.

“Being Chosen isn’t that bad. I was Chosen too.”

Bad? Being Chosen? I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. How could being elevated into the highest class of society possibly be bad?

I tripped over one of the decaying wolf corpses, jumping as my hands landed in the pooling blood.

Valjean crossed the room in an instant, hand outstretched to catch me. I kicked off, blood splattering below me, nearly slipping, slamming myself into the wall still covered in the cloak of shadow. His hand grabbed dead air.

Valjean turned, furious.

“Stop this! You’re not helping the people of this town. Why keep it alive? Just so they can live in squalor?”

Why is he trying to let it collapse? So that they can live in poverty in a city? I had to bite back my tongue. I slowly navigated the room, pressed against the wall.

“I’ll sponsor you into the Academy. You can gain the skills you need. Conscription isn’t so bad.” Valjean’s horse padded around the room. I crept along the wall.

The horse turned inches from me, its head swiveling on a gigantic neck until it hovered inches from me. It sniffed.

Valjean pulled the head away, circling the room,

“You can’t just hide in here forever.” He said.

He was right. I also couldn’t leave without a spider corpse. I got no experience today. I had to get something. So I did another stupid thing. I jumped back into the second floor of the dungeon. I sighed with relief in the quiet that filled the floor.

With the canopy of trees destroyed, the wind that would normally shake the branches instead whistled as it crossed over the gap. I walked back to the discarded corpse. Valjean would be on the first floor for a while; there was no way he would suspect that I would go deeper into the dungeon instead.

I estimated the size of the spider’s body. It was probably the size of my torso; too large to fit in my bag. I put a foot on it, grabbed one of its limbs with both hands, and pulled.

The leg came off surprisingly easy, with a crunch and a pop. I staggered backwards with surprise at just how easy it was. I repeated the process eight times, stuffing the legs into my backpack. It probably hadn’t taken enough time for Valjean to have given up his search on the next floor.

I dug through the leaves, pulling out globs of sticky web covered in leaves before adding them to my backpack too, slinging it back over my shoulder and creeping towards the dungeon exit. I stepped through slowly.

No magic tripwire went off. Valjean was gone.

I didn’t find him on the rest of the floor either. I crossed slowly to the exit, walking out into the town center.

One of the two unlanded nobility pounded on the door to the blacksmith. I heard distant shouting in another part of the town. They carried bright lamps that shone like spotlights, possibly some artifact of magical origin. The town center was alight as if it were day time.

I felt the Shadow Cloak strain before I ducked away to a different street. Creeping through someones yard and behind their house, I saw the way back to my workshop was blocked by another light plodding down the street. The noble pounded on another door.

I crept to the town’s edge, slinking around the back of houses, pushing through bushes, and hiding in the shadows of fences. The workshop finally came into view.

Valjean and my mom were at the front door. My stomach dropped.

Had he seen me? Was his perception so high he recognized me despite the cloak and my face being blocked? They talked quietly but urgently.

They were checking every house to see who was missing.

I quickly rushed around the towns edge again, dodging the burning lights to move towards Sandy’s house. I pushed the door open without knocking; it creaked on its hinges.

Sandy looked up from another book, blinking rapidly.

“Gwen?” Sandy whispered.

I dismissed the Shadow Cloak, coming into full view, still panting. She must have seen the panic in my eyes, because hers widened. Without replying, I stripped my backpack off, shoving it under the bed, pulling out my spare clothes and using my skills to rapidly change.

“What’s happening?” Sandy asked, standing up now.

“Surprise census.” I replied. “Valjean saw me.” 

“He — he saw you? Does he know?”

“I don’t know — I had the cloak on. I don’t think he saw my face. He was at the workshop — at mom’s.”

“Shit.” Sandy said. She was pacing now. She walked to the desk, grabbing her giant cleaver sword, before running back to her bed and throwing it under the mattress. “Town’s going to be pissed tomorrow.”

“So what now?” Sandy asked.

“I — I don’t know!” I said. “He cleared the entire second floor with a single swing.”

“Love to seem him do it with a sewing needle.” Sandy said.

“There’s no way we can fight him.”

“Then lets not get caught?” Sandy said.

The shouting up the street was growing closer, the nobles dipping into each home and checking the rooms, comparing them with who they knew lived there. We were still panicking when it reached Sandy’s house. I nearly jumped as the first fell on the front door. They weren’t opening to the workshop.

Me and Sandy stared at each other.

“Dad still isn’t home.” She said finally.

The knocking came again. Wordlessly, we rushed out of the work shop and to the front door. That harsh light they held spilled in through the windows, bouncing off the walls, casting in the room in a terrible glow.

The door swung inwards with a rush of cold night air and we stared up at Valjean. The light in his hand made him almost a shiloutte.

“Ah — girls. Is… Henri home?” He asked, then, under his breath, “Too tall to be him.”

“No.” Sandy said, slamming the door shut.

Valjean caught it with one hand. He wasn’t carrying his halberd anymore, but he was still covered in his armor. Dust and dirt that he had flung up on the forest floor of the dungeon clung to parts of it. He smiled, eyes creased with stress.

Then he pushed the door open and stepped inside.

“I’m sorry to be impolite. We have a census of the town to take tonight, you see.”

“Why?” Sandy asked. “Should wait til tomorrow.”

“I got an unfortunate letter. I’ll be leaving tomorrow to deal with a situation in Foundry.” Even as he replied, his eyes scanned the halls. Then they landed on me like a physical weight.

Why? I jumped through a mental checklist. I had changed out of the clothes I was hunting in. I had put my backpack away. I wasn’t holding a sewing needle. I followed his gaze down to my hands.

They were covered in wolf blood.

“Are you alright?” Valjean asked, looking up at me. There was no worry in his eyes. Just suspicion.

“We were…” Sandy started.

“Butchering.” I said. “I was looking at the leather Sandy was working on, haha.” I said nervously.

“Ah, right.” Valjean said, swiveling to Sandy. “You’re a butcher. And you… inherited your mother’s class.” He said the last part to me.

“Yep.” I smiled.

Valjean smiled back, then stepped back into the night. The door shut.

Sandy and I sat in silence in the cold hallway as the light slowly grew distant. Valjean pounded on the next door.

“Shit.” Sandy whispered.

“Safe for another day.” I said. “We will probably have at least a month before he comes back.”

I left the hallway without looking back, pushing back into Sandy’s workshop, and yanking the spider legs out from under the bed. Then I displayed them proudly to Sandy.

She flinched back.

“This is what you have to show for all this?” She asked, pulling one of the spider legs free but holding it at arm’s length.

“Tried bringing a whole corpse. That’s what started the mess. The [Shadow Cloak] gave out trying to hide the whole thing.”

I dumped out the legs and the web, grabbing the globs of it myself while Sandy walked the leg over to the table.

“Alright. How do you want it?” She asked, lifting up the piece and holding it into the lamp light. Orange light glittered off the ivory and metallic red patterning on the leg.

I pulled on the memories impressed on me by the Shell Dress Pattern for an answer.

“Can you cut some diamond shapes out of it?” I asked.

Sandy snorted before pulling up the leg and stabbing into it. As she worked, more shell than should’ve been possible was extracted, bending itself into shape as diamond pieces. She worked carefully to make sure each diamond was only composed of one of the legs two colors. A pile of fist sized diamond shaped tiles littered her desk in moments.

“I may have mostly collected skills to cut through hard shells or help me kill monsters.” Sandy said. She must have seen the look on my face.

“Now we need to get you one of those for leather.”

I pulled on my own skills of [Thread Mastery] and [Hand Spinning,] using one of my needles and magic in place of a spindle. The spider web spun round it. I pulled a fine piece of thread through.

Sandy worked on the next leg, then turned back and looked at me.

“Have you even finished my stealth set yet?” She asked.

I dropped the spider web and dug under the bed for what was left of her set with a flushed smile.