Page 47

Hours passed and the sun was rising over the trees of the forest. I hadn't been in any kind of rush to wake up the twins but it wasn't long after the sun came up that they stumbled out of their tent covered in sweat and looking somewhat miserable.

"You two okay?"

"We closed the flap of the tent so when the sun came up we started baking in it. It's good thing it's only early spring." Torien peeled her tunic away from her body.

Early spring huh? I woke up in this world surrounded by snow so I thought it was winter still. Though I suppose I did walk down a mountain and it hadn't been snowing much since I left that area. I don't really look forward to actually experiencing winter if this chilly weather was spring. Not that the cold or heat really bothered me much with my resistances. Infernal makes it sound like I crawled up from hell though. Fitting I suppose for a demon, even if I'm not one anymore.

Morrigan stretched and lifted her arms above her head and gave me a slight peek at her toned midriff. Even as a mage she kept herself in shape. "Hey Lilith, do you mind if we wash ourselves up in the river before we get started today?" she asked.

"I don't mind. We're behind though so we should try to fill out a bit more of the map before we head back to town around midday. Try not to be too long."

"Do you wanna join us Bella?"

"N-no thanks. I'm still okay. I would rather wait till we get back to town to take a proper bath."

"Suit yourself!" she said as the two twins walked off, leaving the clearing.

I started working at taking down the tents. Today was the last day we were going to spend here after spending two full days in the dungeon. We needed to get back soon but I didn't want to show up with a barely completed map at this point. We got this far and spent this long in this area, we should do our best to give them something reasonable. I wanted to walk the area again and try to get a few more landmarks or distinguishable terrain features on the map before we went back. If we left around noon we would still probably make it back by sundown.

I had completely pulled up all the stakes and mostly had everything packed up by the time Torien and Morrigan returned from the river. Morrigan looked about the same but Torien had perked up considerably. It seems like she doesn't like being sweaty. Kind of a funny contrast from the person who didn't hesitate to cut into a bone dog not long ago and generally seems to be the more masculine of the two.

Morrigan had her staff out and came back with a number of water spheres floating around her. Likely in anticipation of doing a once over of the territory before our return. Torien helped me finish packing up the tents and we had all of our bags ready to go. Rather than return to the clearing later we opted to just carry all of our bags as we did our last check.

I looked down at the huge chunk of crystal sticking out of one of the bags. The bag itself wasn't light but when you added this huge crystal to it, the thing weighted a ton. I was the one with the most strength in the group so I was on the hook for it but I was not looking forward to lugging it around.

Right before I was about to pick it up, a sudden thought made me feel a bit silly. "Hey Mimi, you can store this backpack without absorbing it right? We'll need it back but you don't mind carrying it for me right?"

"Sure!" Without any hesitation, the crystal and backpack turned to mana and swirled into the pommel of the sword Mimi was mimicking.

Torien looked at me flatly before putting her backpack down too.

"Uh Mimi, you wouldn't mind carrying all of our backpacks would you?"

"Nope! Put them down in front of me and I'll hold on to them for you!"

All of our bags vanished into raw mana and swirled into Mimi. I looked at the faces of my relieved party.

Torien smiled wide, "I take back any hesitations I had, Mimi's the best."

I just laughed in response and we started off towards one corner of the unfilled map.

After about an hour of walking and looking for landmarks we came across the first monster we'd seen on the entire trip outside of the dungeon. It looked like some sort of monkey with really long arms. It screeched at us angrily and I could see it starting to build fire mana in its body.

Before it could cast Morrigan had shot several of the water balls at it. Instead of small splashes of water I expected, the balls exploded outwards in small pressurized explosions, knocking the creature off balance and spraying all of us with mist.

I activated [Coin Flip] and summoned one of the magical coins before flipping it in the monster's direction.

"Tails" The coin landed and a flash of pink light punched a hole in the monster's chest. The monster wailed in pain clutching it's chest long enough for an arrow to pierce its skull with a hollow thunk. The monster fell over, dead instantly.

[Your party has defeated a Howler Rebadan]

[You have unlocked the skill Luck Magic Lv. 1]

The four of us stayed cautious of our surroundings for a little bit but there didn't seem to be any more enemies coming. We relaxed and Torien got to work carving up the Rebadan while Bella closely watched.

"That was new magic, was it something you got from the dungeon boss?"

"Yeah, my class leveled up and I got a few new spells from that fight."

"Wait, that means you weren't using a martial class while we were in the dungeon? What kind of magic was it?"

I hesitated, I didn't know if I should talk about this or not. I didn't have any common sense about what was rare and what was common but I had a feeling this was the kind of thing that might get me in trouble. Still, she was a wild mage, she would be able to tell that my magic was weird or uncommon eventually anyway.

"When I was in the dungeon I was using a decently powerful Luck based class. After we fought the boss I unlocked some Luck Magic. This is kind of a secret though, I'm only telling you since you'd be able to tell my magic is non-standard anyway."

She looked quite surprised but I also saw some excitement in her eyes. "I know some adventurers talked about the Luck stat sometimes in the guild but I never knew there was related magic. Would you be willing to show me some more later, when we aren't trying to finish up a job?"

I smiled, her enthusiasm was infectious. "Sure, I actually want to talk to you about some other magic I stumbled across too. I want your opinions on it."

"Awesome! I can't wait."

"Ooo, Lilith, can I eat that!?" Mimi's voice cut into our conversation just as Torien was walking back over to us with the monster's core.

I looked at the core in Torien's hand. "I don't know. How valuable is that core Torien?"

She looked down at it in her hand. "Well, it's not worthless but it is pretty common. This core is heavily fire aspected which makes it useful for a lot of heating and fire enchanted items, but fire aspected cores might be the most common cores out there so it's not like anyone's willing to pay a lot for it. I think it's fair to give this to Mimi if she wants it."

"Really! I can have it!?" Mimi quickly shifted out of the sword form into her humanoid form in front of me. Torien handed over the orb and Mimi began staring intently at the fire orb.

"What are you going to d—"

Before I could finish Mimi stuck it into her mouth and chomped down on it like it was a piece of candy.

"Mmmmmm! That tastes so good! Ooooh, I can feel the fire mana tingling inside of me. If I have access to these, it should make it pretty easy to maintain a good amount of mana. Even when we're in an area with almost no ambient mana in the air."

"If they're inexpensive enough we might want to keep a small supply for you as rations." Morrigan added.

I looked down at the dissected corpse. "Is there anything else of value here?"

Torien looked down at it too. "Well... I suppose we could skin it for the hide and a butcher might want its meat but it would have to be treated first and I'm not sure if they have anyone in Traehall that can treat monster meat or not."

"Well, I suppose we could test to see if it stays fresh in Mimi's storage. Would that be alright with you?" I turned to Mimi.

"Sure, I can try. I might have to focus on expanding my pocket dimension if I need to keep carrying so much stuff around. Still, at my current rate one of those monster cores could probably keep me for two days if I sit still or one full day in this form. I actually have so much energy to burn right now I'd like to try getting used to being in this form a little bit."

"That sounds good. You probably shouldn't walk around much in town until you get the hang of shapeshifting or figuring out some kind of illusion magic to hide your true form. It's a good idea for you to get used to this form while you can."

Mimi nodded and turned to the corpse before turning it into magic particles and absorbing them.

"This might be obvious at this point but the dungeon isn't collecting as much of the ambient mana in the area so monsters are returning here now. We should keep an eye out and note down the monsters we run into in the area now that the dungeon isn't pushing them away," Torien said.

I looked at the map and put down a square to indicate a monster encounter before flipping it over and indicating the monster we just fought.

Okay, let's get this finished up.

We walked around somewhat methodically so we could finish up the map but we didn't run into any more monsters. Unfortunately we were also so focused on finishing up the map and keeping guard for monsters that we didn't get to talk much either. Other than the Rebadan there weren't any other monsters around here yet from what we could tell. I found that a little odd but Morrigan informed me that it usually took a while for monsters to reappear in an area for a variety of reasons.

Mimi took the opportunity to wander around, try climbing trees and to my horror attempt to eat almost everything she could pick up. Eventually she explained that nothing she ate could probably hurt her which I assumed was because she didn't actually eat the same way that we do. But it was still very jarring to watch her stick rocks and plants in her mouth. Eventually she grew bored of that since apparently almost none of it had enough mana to be worth bothering.

It was just before midday that we were back at the road and finally getting ready to head back towards town. As interesting as this whole experience has been I was kind of excited to get back to a real bed and have a nice bath. Since we were going to head back on the road, Mimi had to go back into sword form so she didn't draw any attention from anyone we passed. Not that she seemed to mind.

The time passed quickly as we talked casually before we saw the gates to Traehall on the horizon again. It had been a long four days we had been away from town on this, admittedly somewhat harrowing, adventure. We decided to carry our packs for the last stretch to avoid suspicion of coming back entirely empty handed. Unfortunately this meant I had to lug over that super heavy crystal from here to the adventurer's guild.