LTSV - Harbingers of Change - 48 (Patreon)

The Dungeons did not wait on Mira to figure out her new financial landscape and she was forced (forced!) to dump the entire mess on Adra when they received word that the Pearl Forest was getting ready to open. He had access to her accounts now, thanks to Lady Celebrana tacking him on as 'Her Grace's' plus-one administrator despite not being asked to.

Presumably, she was trying to keep from being the cause for friction between two foreign heads of state.

"Use whatever you need for Guild purposes," Mira said, kissing him on the forehead as she passed him by on her way out of the Penthouse. "I'll take whatever shares you need to improve your voting block."

Adra had been sitting on her couch, working in the background and overtly watching as she got dressed and geared up. He brightened as she mentioned the words 'voting block.'

"That reminds me," he said with a dawning smile. "Now that you're free, I can finally have Mason wander into traffic."

"Please don't destroy some poor stranger's car—or any of ours," Mira sighed. "Although, it will be nice now that you don't have to stash him in out-of-the-way parts of the building. Alan complained to me yesterday that he found 'Mason' standing in a corner of the old work-share space, staring at a wall and not responding to questions."

Adra's smile widened and turned just a touch cruel. Mira stopped what she was doing and frowned at him.

"Were you doing that on purpose?" she asked, aghast.

He turned to kneel on the couch cushions and leaned over the back to put his arms around her waist and give her a beseeching look as he gazed up at her.

"Darling, they've been a thorn in my side for so many years and I had to be nice to them for the entire Cycle, previously. You cannot possibly ask me to not have a little fun at their expense now." he pleaded.

"We're lucky he's just decided Mason is on new drugs," Mira sighed, draping her arms around her husband's shoulders. "Please don't take that as a challenge."

"I may have to increase his erratic behavior," Adra said with a semi-apologetic shrug. "I do need to get rid of him soon. Maintaining a second body is too large of a drain on my resources to continue with now that we don't need access to Virgil's inner circle. Although, speaking of voting blocks, I should make sure I know who is going to inherit his stake in LivingShadow before I cut him loose."

Mira thoughts about that. "I never knew anything about his estate planning. I'm honestly surprised that he has a will."

"His grandfather got him into a headlock and made him do it," Adra said dismissively. "Unfortunately, from what I recall he pointedly left you next to nothing, even though you were engaged by that point. I recall him having an argument with his estate lawyer about it. He wanted to leave you actually nothing, but his lawyer argued that cutting his own fiancee out completely gave you room to contest the will."

Mira wrinkled her nose. "Charming."

Maybe they could sacrifice one car… no. That was silly. The Guild budget was tight enough as it was and what if the person driving it got hurt in the process? It would have to be one of the demons and Mira didn't like that. They'd do it without question, which seemed, to her, to be all the more reason why they shouldn't be asked to.

Maybe Adra could let the body wander too close to the Ruined Borough Gate during a goblin wave?

Well, that was a problem for later.

"I see that you've gotten the Dragonscale Robe to work," Adra commented as his attention turned to the material under his chin and, indeed, she had.

Mira was dressed in a high-necked gown-and-trousers set that reminded her a bit of an Áo Dài, with its standing collar, long slitted tunic, and wide legged trousers underneath. The light green fabric had a shimmering, scale-like texture and she'd layered it over a silk camisole purchased through the System Shop that gave her an excellent bonus to her defense, at least for a spell caster. She'd also used her repatriated income to invest in a bevy of rings and other jewelry that increased her various resistances, including a 'circlet of intellect' that boosted her resistance to mental interference. The last artifact she'd purchased was a long-line duster made of thin quilted silk overcoat called the 'Silken Coat of the Firmament', which granted her resistance to forced movement.

None of the items she'd bought had a rarity over 'uncommon', but they combined to give her at least light protection from most hazards.

"The System has been accepting feedback from me, now that we've met face-to-face," she explained while making a face. "It thought that the bikini armor was a cultural preference. It apparently tries to make the armor as appealing as possible so that people will actually use it."

As she spoke, her phone made an inelegant trombone noise and she pulled it out to hand over to Adra. "You have custody of Virgil's messages while I'm gone."

He received the phone between two pinched fingers with an expression to match. "Must I?"

"Yes, Syrith heard that local law enforcement needs ongoing proof of harassment if you want them to look favorably on granting a restraining order, especially against a parent. The texts will go a long way towards keeping him out of the lobby."

Virgil hadn't actually made it into the building yet, but his car had been spotted near the barricade a few times. If she had lived anywhere else, she was sure he'd have been on her doorstep already. At the moment, he had to get past a police barricade and several floors of easily annoyed demons before he could reach her, so all he'd actually managed to do so far was blow up her phone with angry text messages.

Adra glanced at the screen, his eyes cooling as he frowned at the latest string of angry messages from Virgil.

[VB: You may have gotten the alien bitch on your side but that doesn't make your lies true look at your choices.]

[VB: You've traded your family for an actual monster do you even know her name.]

[VB: This won't last once they finally meet the real you.]

[VB: You're still the same useless, destructive little brat you've always been.]

[VB: Don't expect to crawl back when you realize what a fucking stupid stunt this was.]

"Seems like he is also aware that these messages could establish a pattern," he murmured and muted the phone before he blanked the screen and slid it into his pocked. "Why are all his sentences running together?

Mira shrugged as she sat down to put on her boots, which were of high-end mundane make because the System didn't sell anything like a comfortable hiking boot yet. She had two more pairs in her wardrobe, just in case. "I think he's yelling at the phone, using text-to-speech."

"Ah."

Adra got up and came over to wrap her in a hug. "We're going to get you a new phone number for Guild use. Even if you need the record, there's no need for you to actually read the things he has to say."

Mira was quiet, but not because anything Virgil was saying had hit home for her. Mostly, everything he said sounded like 'blah blah loser noises blah' to her at this point, but she did have to admit she would have said exactly the same thing to anyone else who was in her current circumstances.

"Alright," she murmured and enjoyed the hug. It'd be another week until she could snuggle with her husband again, so she leaned into it, but couldn't help but add, "You can't waste one of our vehicles on Virgil either."

"I won't," Adra said, even managing to sound sincere about it. "I promise."

[You have entered the Class D Dungeon 284J: The Pearl Forest. To leave the Dungeon, you must defeat the Dungeon Boss who guards the Exit Gate. You have 120 Hours to defeat the Dungeon Boss before a Dungeon Break occurs and the denizens of this Dungeon escape through the gate to assault your world.]

[Best time: 123 hours, 15 minutesTotal Clears: 1]

The Pearl Forest was, essentially, what it said on the tin.

The Gate opened right on schedule and they had been thoroughly briefed by the juniors, Amanda, Todd, Louis, and Beatrice, so they'd sort of known what to expect, but the reality was still a slap in the face even for Mira.

The Pearl Forest was an imitation of a pine forest in winter, but everything was made of precious stones. The needles on the trees were thin shards of emerald. The fat berries on a holly berry plant near their entry point were glossy red globes of pure red spinel and everything, everything was covered in a fine layer of seed pearls.

"It's all an illusion," Amanda had warned them. "Don't bother picking up anything the System doesn't call out as a material. Half my inventory was full random sticks and pebbles when we got out. We didn't understand how stacking worked while we were in there, so we didn't realize anything was wrong when it all went into the same slot."

Cece was the first one to find her voice as they took in the wintry splendor around them. "Woah."

"Woah is right," Mira agreed. "The kids weren't exaggerating."

"It's cold," Randall observed. "They must have spent the whole time freezing."

"They said they regularly found a plant called fire-berry and the fruit raised their core temperature," Cece reminded him. Her System-awarded gear was well suited to this dungeon. She had a little double-breasted coat on that sported a hood decorated with a star where here forehead would be if she had it up. She'd supplemented with a pair of fluffy earmuffs and tall fur-trimmed boots. She clutched her Cherubim staff with both hands as she looked around. "I want some for my potions."

"It's on the list," Alan promised, waving his notebook. He'd spent the last few days making a 'shopping' list of everything they knew the Pearl Forest produced and tracking their prices in the System Shop. Aside from the stuff they'd be setting aside for Cece's potion training, they would be prioritizing high-value materials

"Cece, can we get a 'clear vision' blessing?" Once again, Randall was taking point on their strategy.

At some point following their game night, the boys had started using Cece's pet name. They'd tried to use her full government name for a while, but kept slipping up and after the game night everyone seemed to have just given up. Mira knew it was her fault. She was the one who started it, but Cece didn't seem to mind—probably because it was her preferred nickname in their previous life.

According to the kids, most of the creatures in the Pearl Forest relied on their power of illusions to hunt prey, which meant they weren't very strong individually. There were some foxes that could cooperate with up to two other members of their pack, but they actually had pretty low aggro and would only attack if someone hit them first. They were more likely to steal your supplies and leave them strewn across the dungeon.

Cece nodded and traced the spell in midair with an enchanted silverpoint pen that they'd found in the System Shop, which eliminated their need for a giant supply of sharpies for each caster. The formula turned in midair, rose overhead, and grew in size until it was big enough to cover the entire team before falling down on top of them, exploding into a cloud of golden faerie lights.

All of the trees of the 'Pearl Forest' in their immediate area were replaced with snow-laden soft pine trees that appeared to Mira as [Sugar Spruces] when she checked, using the System.

[Sugar Spruce: A rare variety of pine whose sap crystallizes into a sweet, highly reactive resin. Produces [Sugar Spruce Gums.]]

"Interesting," she mused and went over to one of the trees nearest to her. She found little buds of sap clinging to the bark. They looked like spruce gums, but they were an even darker, richer shade of amber than any she had ever seen before and smelled a bit like torched sugar.

[Sugar Spruce Gums: A golden, sugar-like resin harvested from the bark of Sugar Pine trees. A versatile alchemical reagent prized for its ability to stabilize volatile mixtures.]

"Cece, can you come use your apothecary's Appraisal on these?" she called out. "I think these look useful for your needs."

Note:

I'm taking funny suggestions for what the in-universe equivalent of the "Blair Witch Project" would be.

Áo Dài -   A tight-fitting or flowing long tunic with high side slits starting from around the waist, paired with loose silk or cotton pants. (wikipedia)