They were nowhere, and they were everywhere. For a brief moment of time the only thing that Lillia could feel was the thread of Eisel’s collar balled in her fist, and his struggling heartbeat through Vianaffir’s pommel.
First, there was the smell of spice and wood smoke. Then there was the sway of the sea under their feet. Then Lillia opened her eyes to the market.
Every stall had seemed so colourful the first time she’d been there, but after being in Eisel’s domain, the market was beautifully easy on the eyes.
Lillia was still using Vianaffir to support her weight. As the pair landed in the market, she shifted and the blade lurched forward, pulling further through Eisel and widening the lethal wound.
He didn’t have the strength to moan.
“Welcome back, darling. Thanks for coming to the traveling ma—WHAT THE FUCK?!” Rickshaw had popped up behind one of the stall counters to the right of Lillia and had the appropriate reaction to the soon-to-be corpse Lillia had brought along with her.
Lillia, for her part, was too out of breath to answer the skeleton as the adrenaline drained out of her. Her fingers tingled as she kept them wrapped around Vianaffir’s hilt. If Eisel still had a heartbeat, she couldn’t feel it anymore.
“Does he need a potion? I mean, I don’t do freebies, but we could do something quick and…” Rickshaw leaned over the counter, and the gold behind his sockets flickered for a moment. “Though you are in the middle of stabbing him so. Maybe you’re not paying for the potions.”
“I…” Lillia’s throat was too tight for her to speak. She wanted to pull the blade out of his chest. Wouldn’t that be the right thing to do? But each time the thought crossed her mind, she could see the wound stitching itself together and Eisel standing up to grab her.
“Ugh. Honeybee is gonna kill me. You know how hard it is to get blood out of hardwood? There’s a reason I stay on my own floors instead of messing around on the fighty ones.”
Lillia was still staring at the body. How was she supposed to know when she could take Vianaffir out? How was she supposed to know if it worked? How was she supposed to know when it was ov—
[Eisel the Usurper Vanquished! Yay!!]
Confetti popped out of the space where Vianaffir had pierced Eisel’s heart. Lillia fell backward as the fanfare blared; the sword came with her, tearing out of the corpse with a soaking squelch.
[Gained - Poison of Weakmind x 2]
[Gained - Essence of the Prideful x 1]
[Gained - Usurper’s Garb Fabric x 1]
The text faded, and the fanfare stopped for a moment. Then something glowed deep within Eisel’s chest wound. The emanating light shifted from white to green to blue to purple and then into a brilliant gold.
[Legendary Drop!]
“Holy, don’t see that every day.” Rickshaw was leaning over the counter, watching the show.
Rather than being added to her inventory, the final drop revealed itself to Lillia as a mote of light that hovered over Eisel’s corpse. She hesitated for a single moment before taking one hand off Vianaffir to touch the light. It was warm.
As soon as Lillia’s finger brushed against the light, it bloomed outwards into a series of weapons that grew more massive by the second. The silhouette of a rapier turned into a battleaxe turned into a great sword.
Then the light stuttered for a moment, and the text returned.
[Additional Quest Completed - Remove the Usurper]
[Reward De-Randomized]
The light snapped inward, folding on itself over and over until it was something small and thin. Just before it fully formed, Lillia reached out and caught it.
Of every fearsome shape it could have taken, the light sat in Lillia’s hands as a tiara with a frame of clear glass and coloured shards where the gems would have been. The tiara caught every light in the market, sending them cascading in a thousand glittering directions.
[Gained - Legendary Item: The Vibrant Dawn]
Lillia didn’t need to force the text to explain what was going on.
[The Vibrant Dawn]
[Legendary Tiara - Required Class: Princess]
[The Sun Never Sets - The Princess’ Authority is increased in rooms they have already conquered.]
[Befitting Her Station - The Princess’ Authority grants her Poise. Poise increases the Princess’ prowess as long as she fights in a manner befitting her station.]
[Waltzing Retainers - Once per day, the Princess may summon [1] armored knight from the ballroom to assist her with any manner of tasks. The number of knights is dependent on the Princess’ authority.]
[Let the princess carve a path, that her name may carry weight beyond its lineage.]
While Lillia read, Rickshaw had slid in beside her. She was interrupted from re-reading the last lines by the skeleton clicking a tongue he didn’t have. “First legendary drop I ever get to see live, and it’s not even something I can sell.”
Lillia looked up at him. “I don’t want to sell it.”
“Good, cause I don’t wanna buy. Only equippable by the Princess Class? Darling, from what I can tell, that’s only you, and there is no margin in a one-woman market.”
Blood continued to seep out of Eisel’s corpse after the drop.
Lillia waited.
Some stupid, hopeful part of her waited for the levels. For the flood of everything Eisel had stolen to come rushing back where it belonged.
Nothing came.
Of course nothing came. Killing a thief did not put the jewelry back in the box. She was lucky she’d gotten what she did during the fight.
Rickshaw approached, then recoiled from the corpse. Lillia imagined him scrunching a nose he didn’t have.
“Seriously though, I invite one lady to come back to my market from anywhere, and she brings me a corpse. Absolutely ridiculous. What am I going to tell my other customers?”
Rickshaw scratched the back of his skull. The sound of his finger bones scraping was louder than Lillia expected.
“Alright, kid. Are you buying? Are you selling? Or is this just a…delivery?”
Lillia shook out her hair, and some of her bangs still stuck back on her sweat-slicked forehead. She was drenched in sweat, absolutely coated in Eisel’s blood, and even some of Nennia’s blood had slipped between the plates of her battlegown and stuck to her between changes.
It wasn’t bug guts, but once again, Lillia was gross.
Havoc. Thorne. Nennia.
Lillia’s mind reached for them one at a time and found only questions. Were they alive? Were they back in their rooms? Had the dungeon taken the victory as cleanly as it had taken Eisel?
She wanted to check. She wanted to sit down. She wanted to sleep for a week.
She wanted a break. Shopping could be a break. It’d been an escape for her before.
“I would like to buy a mirror, some more soap, my old dress back…” She took a second to steady herself. “And some smith’s tools if you’ve got them.”
“What do I look like, a village market?”
“You don’t have mirrors?”
“I have enchanted mirrors and standards, darling. Thus, my issue with the body you left on my floor.”
Lillia kept trying not to look at the dead body. Eisel had deserved it, and that had been the point. That didn’t mean she didn’t want to distance herself from it. “It goes away, doesn’t it?”
“Is that guy from one of the dungeon rooms?”
Lillia nodded.
“Ah. Damn, I’ll get the cleaners.”
“What?”
“Darling, that is no longer a monster. That right there, that is a corpse.”
“Oh.”
“Well, you abused the coin I gave you to bring him here so he could die out of his room, right?”
Lillia nodded.
“Then don’t be surprised when you leave a dead body.”
Lillia looked from Eisel to Rickshaw and back. He looked so much harsher in death. His face was screwed up and his clothes were a crumpled mess, as if this were the reality and every waking moment had been spent trying to maintain certain appearances.
“Well, he was a ba—”
“Darling, I do not care. I’m sure he deserved it. People die in dungeons; we kill ‘em. That’s what we do down here. You kill things, you get rewards. And he might not be in the drop system, but those look like some nice shoes he’s wearing.”
“Would they be an item?” Lillia asked. The thought of pulling blood-soaked clothes off Eisel was enough to make her stomach flop around.
“Oh! No, they wouldn’t be part of the Dungeon anymore. They just look like they’re well made and about my size.” Rickshaw looked over to Lillia. “If you help me lift them over there, I’ll give you a discount on the mirror.”
Eisel’s corpse was wet, and probably cold. Just because Lillia’s hands were already bloody didn’t mean she was eager to get more on them.
There was at least one solution to it, though.
Lillia pulled off the Plains Tyrant’s Crown and placed The Vibrant Dawn on her head. It was light and felt oddly ordinary.
Once she wore the item, she held out a hand toward Eisel’s corpse. “Waltzing Retainers!”
Despite appearances, the travelling market was a small space. Lillia’s voice echoed back to her. Nothing happened.
“Go, my waltzing retainer?” Lillia tried. The second attempt wasn’t loud enough to echo, but it was just as useless.
Rickshaw patted Lillia on the shoulder.
“I’ll figure it out. I just need to activate the item, and then my knight will pick it up.”
“Darling,” Rickshaw said. “It’s a legendary item. You have to attune to it.”
“What? How do you attune to something?”
“You’ve gotta rest.”
“I didn’t attune to Vianaffir,” Lillia said, “and—”
“Yeah, Vianaffir ain’t a legendary sword in anything but name. There are legends about it, but item-wise it’s classified as very rare.”
“I…oh.”
“Hey, don’t let that take away from how important that sword is to you, darling.”
Lillia was busy picturing what would have happened if Vianaffir were a legendary blade. She could have pulled it out during her battle with Eisel upon hitting level 15 and found out that it wouldn’t work.
“All right, darling, you have whatever crisis you need to, but come on. If you want that mirror, you’re gonna have to lift with your back.”
Lillia looked over at Rickshaw, who was now standing above Eisel’s cooling corpse. Blood had pooled beneath him, as it had beneath Havoc’s body in her first days in the dungeon.
Oh God, she wasn’t going to have carry him, wasn’t she?
Lillia stood by the door to the heart of memory, holding her new mirror with her old dress and additional bars of soap in her inventory. She desperately needed water to get some of the blood off her hands.
“Thank you again for your business, darling. You take care, and I will see you around the dungeon somewhere.”
“Third floor of the architect challenge, I know.”
“Oh no, I won’t always be there. Gotta keep it moving. Can’t find me in the same place twice.”
Lillia stopped. She didn’t quite turn around to Rickshaw. “Then why did I find you there last time?”
“It seemed like you were really counting on it,” he said, “and I’m a sucker for a sob story.”
Oh.
“Now you, darling, should run along. Go out there and celebrate killing that guy. I’ve got a corpse worth of loot to organize.”
“Thanks, Rickshaw.”
“I’d say anytime, but I’m never giving you an invitation coin again.”
Lillia pushed open the door to the Hearth of Memory. There was darkness and text in front of her.
[Would you like to rest in the Hearth of Memory or transfer to another Hearth?]
[Which Hearth?]
[You Will Return to the Cathedral Hearth]
[Resting There will Move Time in the Dungeon Forward by [1] Day]
[Are You Ready?]
Lillia took a deep breath.
“As I’ll ever be.”