Chapter 91: Assignment (Patreon)

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rFwhua5V__QqckI7DaJGNiOnn4Ux63K9hcF9jIge2I4/edit?usp=sharing

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"Will you stop doing that?!"

"Doing what?"

Tiana pouted, crossing her arms over her chest. "You know what..."

When they met once again in the market square, Tiana was justifiably horrified upon seeing what was left of Cayden's arm, holding back tears as she clung to Cayden's uninjured side and listened to an abbreviated, watered-down version of the events that had transpired in the dungeon. Cayden was surprised by his sister's over-the-top reaction – in the week since losing his arm and seeing the growing replacement, he'd gotten over any trauma of the missing arm and had grown to see it as no more than a temporary inconvenience. Yet even his assurances that the arm was growing back weren't enough to calm Tiana down from her borderline hysterics.

Cayden supposed he shouldn't have been surprised. He hadn't started delving until after Tiana had left, and while she'd heard stories of his adventures in various dungeons, she'd never actually seen him injured before. Hearing toned-down retellings of delves didn't have nearly the visceral impact of seeing Cayden literally missing an arm.

Luckily, Cayden had just the skills to set her back at ease. Not any skills offered by the system – skills honed from over a decade spent as a big brother.

"What do you want me to stop doing? How can I stop if you won't even say what it is?" He and Tiana were sitting side-by-side on the edge of the fountain, and as he spoke he flexed the new muscles in his four-inch nub of an arm, poking his sister in the side of her head.

Tiana frowned, muttered something rude under her breath, and then fixed Cayden with a glare that could kill weaker monsters. "Will you please stop poking me with your arm?"

Cayden was unaffected. He adopted a confused expression, looking down and to his left. "My arm? Whatever could you mean? I only have one arm, and it's been here to my side the whole time?" As he spoke, he repeatedly poked his sister. Again. And Again. And again.

Tiana growled, wincing under each poke, then sighed defeatedly. "...please don't make me say it..."

A Cheshire grin stretched across Cayden's face. "I have no idea what you're talking about. If I'm accidentally poking you with something, just say what that thing is, and I'll stop."

Once again, Tiana released a sigh. "Will you please stop poking me with your..." She winced, as if it caused her physical pain to say the next words aloud. "...your nub."

Cayden looked down at the short length of his right arm in surprise. "I've been poking you with my nub? Oh, I'm so sorry. But now that you've mentioned my nub, I'll stop." As just as he said, he finally stopped nudging his sister's head.

Tiana released a sigh of relief. "It's just such a stupid name. Can't you call it anything else?"

"I'm the one who lost the arm. When you lose an arm and then grow your own nub, you can call your nub whatever you want," Cayden said with a superior tone.

Tiana released an exasperated groan as she turned away from him, but Cayden didn't miss the tiny smile she was trying to hide by doing so.

"How's life at the compound been?" Cayden asked, turning the conversation back to her.

"Not too bad, actually," Tiana responded, perking up. "We just started a new section of our training that has us out in the city much more often. Still closely monitored, but apparently it's so we know how to interact with normal people without seeming weird. It's kinda strange, getting trained to shop and gossip, of all things, but it's nice to get out a little more often. See the city and all that."

Cayden glanced over to the corner of the courtyard where Valeria waited with her bodyguards. Was this her fulfilling her part of their bargain, or was it just a normal part of the fateweaver training? Unfortunately, there was no easy way to ask in the moment, and he doubted Tiana would know either way.

They had largely given up on using Tiana's [Dual-Speak] to communicate. While it was undoubtedly a useful skill, Cayden had no way to easily ask or answer questions without alerting hidden listeners, so it was easier and simpler to just talk in roundabout terms when it came to anything sensitive. If Tiana had anything important that she needed to share, she could still use her [Dual-Speak], but Cayden would rather just enjoy the limited time they could spend together rather than plotting and planning for potential futures.

So that's what they did. For the next hour, they simply talked and chatted about their lives. Mostly it was Cayden talking, as Tiana claimed her life in the compound was almost entirely filled with boring lessons that she didn't want to think about in her free time. So he obliged her. Though the 'newness' of regularly seeing each other had slightly worn off after their close to a half-dozen meetups, their time spent together was short, and they'd been separated for a year; he had more than enough stories of his and Elise's adventures to keep Tiana entertained.

"...when do you think I'll be able to see her?" Tiana asked with a slight hint of melancholy after Cayden finished the story of the origin of his [Taunt] skill, when he'd been forced to literally brush swarming bug-monsters off of his oblivious friend's back while she was entirely focused on her enchanting.

Cayden glanced to where the princess and her bodyguards were waiting and was surprised to find the girl already moving in their direction. Once again, it seemed his time with Tiana passed much quicker than he'd expected or hoped.

"Maybe we can find out now," he whispered to Tiana before turning fully to the approaching princess. "Valeria! I was wondering...would it be okay if Elise comes to visit my sister with me next time?"

"...who would that be?"

Cayden blinked. "Elise? The girl who you sponsored for the affiliate academy, and who was with me when we met in the Lost Forest?"

If Valeria was embarrassed by forgetting Elise's name, it didn't show on her face. "Yes, that should be fine. I will let you know for sure, though, in our next communication.” She turned to Tiana. "Please wait with Jevroy while I speak with your brother for a moment."

Elise glanced between the two teenagers before nodding, giving Cayden a last farewell hug – which he made sure to return with extra pats from his nub to the top of her head – and hurrying over to where the hulking earth elemental waited on the other side of the fountain. Valeria glanced to her other bodyguard, the elf fire-mage, who recast the same skill he'd used in Cayden's hospital room a week earlier. Under the morning sun, the thin flames were all but invisible, and none of the surrounding citizens reacted to the display.

"I have an assignment for you," the princess said, and Cayden's heart beat a staccato rhythm in his chest. He knew this day would come, that the price for Tiana's potential freedom would eventually come due, but he hadn't realized it would come so quickly. "I understand you are still injured," Valeria continued with a glance at Cayden's missing arm. "And it is perhaps more dangerous than you might find acceptable. As such, you are welcome to say no without penalty. Our agreement will continue, and I will find alternative assignments for you in the future. Although I hope you accept."

Cayden's heartbeat sped up even further in anticipation. "What is it?"

Valeria stared at Cayden evenly, her gaze deadly serious. "I would like you to delve a dungeon."

There was a silent, pregnant pause.

"...are you serious?"

"It would be a D-ranked dungeon, and you would be able to bring a team, or whoever you need," Valeria hurried to add.

"Why would you need me to delve a dungeon for you?"

"My team needs to train, but my father doesn't want a repeat of what happened in the Gauntlet. We just need someone I can trust, and preferably someone low profile, to clear the dungeon before us." When Cayden didn't immediately respond, she continued. "I can assign some agents from the palace to clear the dungeon in your place. I was simply hoping for the added protection of anonymity."

"No, no, it's fine, I'll do it," Cayden said. "I'm not worried about the danger. I was just surprised. With the way you were hyping it up, I thought it would be much worse," he chuckled.

"...it has the potential to be very dangerous," Valeria responded, and Cayden thought he could maybe hear a note of defensiveness in her voice. "I trust my teammates, but there is always the possibility that whoever is targeting me hears about my planned delve. If they try to set up traps, you may be the one to trigger them."

"But the fact I'm delving it at all would probably dissuade them, right? They wouldn't want to waste a trap on me and alert you to a leak in your security, not when there was no chance of it catching the right person."

"That's...true. But that does not mitigate the danger entirely."

Cayden chuckled again, shaking his head. He'd gone into this conversation expecting to be forced into a mission fraught with intrigue and danger, yet now he was the one trying to convince the princess that her assigned mission wasn't as dangerous as she thought it was. "I think I'll be fine. But I'll be extra careful, just in case."

Valeria gave a decisive nod. "I'll let you know the exact day and time later, but it will be this week and won't conflict with your classes."

"How?" Cayden asked. "How will you message me, I mean? Seems like there should be a more secure way to communicate than by passing notes under the door."

"Ah yes, I have been meaning to talk with you about that," Valeria said with a tiny wince. "It...is slightly awkward. But you remember Henrietta, my gorgon roommate?"

--

"...so apparently I'm courting her now."

"What??" Elise asked, nearly dropping the vial of the potion she'd been carefully mixing. It had been a few hours since his conversation with the princess, and he sat in Elise's dorm room, explaining his employment as an 'agent' of the princess in exchange for Tiana's freedom, along with his first mission, while his friend mixed potions for his upcoming delve. "That quickly?"

"It's not a real courtship," Cayden explained. "Just a method for the princess and I to easily communicate without seeming suspicious. Henrietta's the third daughter of a count, so she doesn't have the best prospects. Apparently, it isn't that uncommon for nobles at her level to try and bring promising talent into their families through marriage."

After a moment of staring blankly at the corner of her room, Elise nodded. "Makes sense. I would've expected the princess' roommates to be higher ranking than that. But a third daughter of a count? That wouldn't be too suspicious."

"It doesn't have to be completely airtight," Cayden said, shrugging. "Just plausible enough that us talking outside of class wouldn’t seem unusual." It had been a shock to him, hearing the princess' suggestion, but it hadn't taken him long to acquiesce. He was by no means an expert, but he'd been learning more about the kingdom and its politics in his remedials class. While marriages between normal citizens were viewed similarly to how they were on Earth, noble marriages were seen more as tools to be leveraged than anything else. As long Valeria's roommate understood that nothing more would come from the arrangement, he was fine with it.

"What have you got for me?" he asked curiously a few minutes later as Elise finished carefully heating the last of the potions and removed the protective goggles from her face.

"A good variety. This first batch is mostly for testing to see what's most effective, and I can fine-tune different potions for you later."

"What's there to fine-tune?" Cayden asked. "Aren't the most effective potions for delving well documented?" He remembered Elise complaining about that, long ago – the impetus for her branching into enchanting.

Elise hummed. "Yes and no. In general, there's a list of the 'best' combat potions for any given situation, but that varies depending on the user. A vitality-boosting potion will obviously be more useful for a frontline fighter than for a rogue. Beyond that, though, I'll have to account for [Alchemical Assistance]."

Cayden pulled up the skill he'd learned from Delphia with [Borrowed Power].

Alchemical Assistance (passive) (lvl 1): All potions are 30% more effective on the user. The user's potion limit is increased by 200%.

In all his experimenting with Elise's skills, [Borrowed Power] had already leveled up to two. But since he hadn't had any potions to play with, aside from his stock of healing potions, [Alchemical Assistance] remained at level one – a strange discrepancy he'd yet to figure out. Elise hypothesized that the level of [Borrowed Power] represented the max level he could increase any 'borrowed' skill to, which made sense to Cayden. But that brought up the question of how [Borrowed Power] would level over time. If it leveled from training his 'borrowed' skill, then it seemed a waste to have separate levels for [Borrowed Power] and [Alchemical Assistance]. But if it leveled from him borrowing different skills over and over, then he'd be forced to use [Save Progress] on [Alchemical Assistance] if he wanted to level it alongside of [Borrowed Power]...which would force him to sacrifice either [Claw Mastery] or another of his general skills.

That wasn't the worst thing in the world, but...he was really tired of re-leveling [Claw Mastery] over and over.

"Why would you have to account for [Alchemical Assistance]?" Cayden asked, returning his attention to his friend. "It's just a thirty percent increase – shouldn't that be easy to calculate?"

"You'd think so," Elise sighed. "But thirty percent more effective how? Does that apply to the duration? The strength? Does it only work for beneficial potions, or are you thirty percent more vulnerable to poisons and negative side effects, too?" She shook her head. "I tried asking Delphia, but she doesn't have any experience with alchemy. Without knowing what the effects of a base potion would be, she has no way of telling how her skill affects her with any precision." She looked at Cayden with a scary gleam in her eye. "With you, though, we can figure out exactly how the skill works."

Cayden swallowed, suddenly reminded of how he'd been offered the [Test Subject] class.

"...maybe we should do some testing before the delve in more controlled circumstances?"

"I can't spend all day making potions to test. I've got classes too, you know," Elise responded, waving away his concerns. "And besides, you'll have me and Delphia there to help if anything goes wrong."

Cayden looked at her sharply. "What makes you think you're coming? I wasn't even sure I was planning on inviting Delphia." A D-ranked dungeon was higher ranked than most of the dungeons he was used to clearing solo around Avernon, but despite the loss of his arm, he was much more powerful than he'd been a few months earlier. He figured clearing it solo wouldn’t be too difficult. D-rank was one rank below the Gauntlet, but Cayden expected it would be about the same difficulty as their test. Much of the danger of the Gauntlet had been mitigated by the students only clearing a portion of the overall dungeon and not being required to fight the bosses.

Or at least that had been the original idea before the Eldritch monster had shown up.

"Why wouldn't you? The princess said you could bring a team, right? And I've been cooped up in this academy for ages. I'd like to get back to some enchanting." She looked pointedly at Cayden's missing arm. "I think it's about time I finally got around to making you some of the enchanted gear I promised you."

"Yeah, but what if someone lays a trap? It could be more dangerous than a regular delve," Cayden protested. While he was comfortable with the risk when it was just himself, Elise coming along changed the equation completely.

"Weren't you the one who was trying to convince the princess how safe it would be? I'm coming, and that's that." Elise said with finality. Cayden opened his mouth to protest again, but Elise cut him off. "And if you don't let me come, I won't tell you what I learned about the princess' skill."

Cayden's words died on his lips as he frowned at his friend. But eventually, he released a sigh.

He knew firsthand how stubborn Elise could be when she put her mind to something. It seemed that – after so long – he was about to return to delving with his best friend.

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