Dressed to Kill 17 (Patreon)

With eight mana left in the bank, I could finish Sandy’s set in a single night. My increasing practice with thread manipulation and using the magically enhanced stitching made it quick and easy, the articles coming together at magical speed.

[Tacca II]

►[Cloak: 100%][98% Shadow Aspect][+2 skill shard]

►[Outer Shirt: 100%][95% Shadow Aspect][+2 skill shard]

►[Inner Shirt: 100%][98% Shadow Aspect][+2 skill shard]

►[Pants: 100%][98% Shadow Aspect][+2 skill shard]

►[Shoes: 100%][70% Shadow Aspect][+2 skill shard]

[Generating Skills…][10 Skill Shards]

►[Shadow Cloak I] ►[Tracking Proficiency I]

I finished the set before the night was out. Sandy wore it proudly.

“It has pockets.” She said.

“Can’t cheap out on the pockets.” I replied, not looking away from the pile of spider scales that had built up on her desk.

Sandy gave the legs to Cinnamon, unwilling to waste any meat. Spider legs or chicken legs; it didn’t make a difference to him. I could still hear him happily chewing and crunching through the hard bits that remained.

I crashed for the night. In the morning, I ate breakfast with everyone that lived in the Tailor house. In loud conversations, the women of the house guessed at the reasons for Valjean’s midnight census. They debated if someone had gone missing or been lost in the dungeon. I just quietly ate my breakfast, enjoying the opportunity to take my time eating.

The noblemen had left in the morning.

“Weeding?” Terry asked, looking over the kitchen table at me. I was still shoving down second helpings, but I nodded yes anyway.

We worked in the neglecting garden for probably an hour, tearing out green invaders of our garden. It was tedious labor that left me covered in dirt and with plenty of time to think.

The garden was a tiny raised bed in a square lot behind the house surrounded by overgrown berry bushes. Terry grew those for pigments in paints. Flowers and herbs competed for space in her limited poultices, though they took ages to grow.

“Why don’t you grow these in the dungeon?” I asked, looking at the herbs.

“They match the energy of their environment.” Terry said with a wave. “They come out of our dungeon dark black. Great for pigments. We have a few. Or they become clear. I made a poultice with those once.” She sounded like she was going to continue, but trailed off and kept grabbing plants.

“What happened to it?” I asked.

“It made wounds disappear.” Terry said, staring into space.

“Isn’t that… good?”

“Oh. No. It didn’t heal them. Just made them…” She gestured with her hands.

“Invisible?” I asked.

She nodded.

Terry was trapped at her level. Alchemical reagents were expensive, often given by priority to the potionmasters trained by colleges or who ran conglomerates. To level up, she would need expensive reagents she couldn’t get her hands on.

It sounded like our dungeon had a Shadow element throughout all the floors. It filled me with grim anticipation for what we would find lurking at the deeper levels.

The shade provided by the house gradually slipped away as the sun rose in the sky, my hands raw and covered in dirt from pulling free every last weed we could find in the garden. When there was none left, I left to the workshop.

There was a pile of barrels full of supplies there. Mom was working on repairing her own sewing gloves.

“Did we get a new work order?” I asked, looking over the barrels.

“No!” Mom said, excited. “I — we — I figured you could work on your own patterns! Then we can send these out to be stock in a shop somewhere. Foundry.”

“My own patterns.” I repeated, looking at the barrels of leather and fabric and thread. The raw resources made me reach out for my mental link to the Shell Dress Pattern. Collated experiences of dozens of Seamstresses and Tailors constructing the pattern flowed through my mind like dreamy memories. 

How many Hunter Patterns was she expecting me to make? And how much of the leftover resources could I appropriate for myself? Every pattern required cloth and thread of some kind on top of the monster materials. Eventually, mom would notice the goods missing from her workshop. I placed a hand on the rim of one of the barrels, staring down inside of it.

“Yes! Aren’t you excited to make your own? You got a pattern right? Your first one!” She said, happy.

I smiled.

With no rush on the job, we had all day to work on the materials.

We worked on the set for a few hours. Mom gave me pointers on the various stitches and pattern cutting. She fused the material back together smoothly so I wouldn’t have to kludge the stitches back together.

She didn’t make a single comment on me avoiding using my mana.

“Did Valjean find you last night?”

“What?” I blurted, stabbing myself in the finger. I shook my wrist to ward away the prick of pain.

Mom blinked.

“At Sandy’s house? I told him that’s where you went. He was interested in where you were last night.” Mom said. Her tone was slightly more serious, now.

“Oh! Oh. Yeah. He stopped by.”

“Good.” She said, continuing work on a set of her own.

She had brought out dusty mannequins that normally laid in the furniture pile. Years of wear and tear marked them. Some leaned at a bend. Some were missing heads or arms.

A few sported pieces of the multiple garments mom had made just today.

There was a knocking on the door.

“Esmeralda.” Henri said as mom pushed the door aside.

“Henri.”

He pushed out a wooden crate. Mom took it, popping it open.

“What is this? A peace offering?”

“No. I still think we should leave this damned town. Just… have more than I can sell this month. Thank your daughter for me.” Henri said, sweeping to me.

“What?” Mom asked. “Oh. We must’ve taken up too much space with our work order.” She tsked.

“Sure.” Henri said. Then he reached inside and shut the door.

Mom set the crate down. It was full of cuts of meat, spiced and wrapped in paper.

“Good time for lunch?” She asked.

***

Sandy twirled. The loose cloak of the outfit spun out around her. It was only afternoon, but we were still in her workshop. I was scarfing down leftover sandwiches while we procrastinated heading to clear the dungeon.

Valjean left in the morning. The only thing between us and the dungeon was being seen.

“How does it work?” Sandy asked, grabbing the bottom of her cloak and running her fingers over it. “Is there a button, or…”

“You should have the skill on your sheet. Just like your normal skills.” I said.

Sandy nodded, her eyes glazing over as she opened her system interface.

Then she disappeared.

It was hard to look at the space she was standing in — like trying to focus on a blind spot. Rather than her being invisible, it was like everything around her collapsed inwards and my mind made out a blurred image. I reached out and felt my hand run into her.

My forearm disappeared in midair. I watched my air disappear like it was being dissolved, panic filling me despite the logical understanding that this was how the skill worked.

There was a wooshing noise as Sandy’s [Shadow Cloak] fell away, revealing her standing right in front of me, gripping my arm and staring down at me.

“Huh. Really doesn’t cover much more than myself, yeah.” She said, almost absentmindedly.

“We don’t have mana to waste on that!”

“It’ll be fine.” Sandy said. “Are you ready?”

I double checked my backpack. Both sewing needles hung from it. On top of the rope, I had spun threads of spider web — one now slightly older than the other, thanks to being left in the dungeon. It had lost some of its luster that no amount of polishing could return to it.

“Race you there!” Sandy said. Then she disappeared.

“Wait! I won’t even know…” the door swung open. “When you’re there.”

[Shadow Cloak][Mana: 9/10]

I shut the door carefully behind me before walking towards the dungeon. I didn’t bother running. The shadows strained in the afternoon light, but managed to remain in one piece staying near the long shadow cast by the village’s buildings.

It was still Twilight inside of the dungeon, the golden-orange light of the sun painting the empty farmland. My [Shadow Cloak] strained under the light.

I jogged up the path to the dungeonheart just to find Sandy already there, smiling dumbly and swinging her legs from the rock she sat on. I was about to cancel my Shadow Cloak when I got a better idea. Instead, I climbed up the rocks behind her as quietly as I could, then dismissed it.

“About time you showed up.” I said, swinging my legs to match hers. She scrambled forward, shocked.

“What?” She asked. “No way!” She frowned.

“Yeah, I’ve been here for a while now, just waiting for you to notice.” I said, faking a yawn. “You know. Seamstress speed.”

Sandy started to talk then stopped. Then she laughed. I smiled and dropped down from the rock. She folded her arms.

“Maybe we can bring back a whole spider today.” I said, looking to the cave. “We’re going to have to conserve mana… I don’t have enough to kill all ten of them.”

“I’m right here, you know.” Sandy said, throwing an arm around me with a smile. “You don’t gotta kill all ten. You take care of the spiders.”

“You’re right.” I said. “Go kill all the wolves for me.”

Sandy laughed, but she reached to her waist and pulled free the gigantic cleaver-sword Gerald had made for her. She was still wearing a butcher apron under the cloak.

“Is that a sheath?” I asked, looking down at the leather scabbard she decorated her waist with.

“Made it myself.” She said by way of reply.

We stepped into the dungeonheart.

The light leaking into the dungeonheart made the wolf hunt easy. Sandy activated [Shadow Cloak] again, disappearing. The static wolf clawed at the wall, sniffing under the stone.

Then its head rolled across the ground. Watching gave me a headache. Its head had disappeared for a second as [Shadow Cloak’s] invisibility poured over the sword.

“Was that a skill?” I asked.

“Just a heavy swing.” Sandy replied. When she spoke, the invisibility of the cloak faltered, splitting open to show her upper body floating in midair before collapsing around her again. The rules of the ability seemed poorly defined. A skill broke the ability, but regular attacks didn’t.

Two more wolves died just as easily. I followed behind as we entered the final room. My eyes jumped back and forth, scanning. I didn’t bother wasting my mana by activating [Shadow Cloak.] I already had to use it to get into the dungeon.

The last room of the dungeon was eerily quiet without Sandy’s usual grunting or conversation and the last wolf prowling in stealth. I held my needle out in front of me.

There was a scrape of stone behind me. I whipped around to meet the wolf.

It hit the ground in two pieces behind me, Sandy’s stealth disappearing as she swung with a grunt.

She smiled wickedly, standing over the corpse and panting.

“If this is even a tenth of how good it feels to be a noble, it’s no wonder the bastards are so cocky.” Sandy said. “What other skills can you make? I’ll give you all the wolves you want if you can give me magic.”

“Magic? Our classes are already magic.” I said, leaning down over the wolf. The clean cut in the middle would add a ton of work to making the leather usable.

“Not crafting magic! Real magic. I want a fireball.”

“A fireball?” I asked, turning and frowning at Sandy.

“Or lightning. Like in the stories. The noble always has some crazy magic.”

“Probably need something a lot bigger than a wolf to craft something like that.” I replied.

Sandy paused, putting a hand on her chin. Then her eyes lit up.

“Floor three.”

“What?” I asked.

“Floor three is going to have a boss! It’s as far as I managed to clear on my own. The boss will give us some kind of magic. Definitely. And then you can craft it for me.” Sandy said.

“Alright.” I agreed with a smile. That was always the plan, after all. But… “First, we need to clear floor two.” I stared into the open archway that led deeper inside. The warped image of the forest showed on the other side. 

Unlike the golden-orange sunset of this floor, it looked like it was dawn inside. The bottom of the forest was cloaked in black with crimson red painting the tops of the leaves.

“I’m ready.” Sandy said, nodding at the gateway.

“After you.” I replied.

She stepped through.