Chapter 32: Anticlimactic

A few nights later, I went back down alone.

I checked in with Sabine one more time and asked if I should keep anything in mind. She said "try not to die." And, uh, that was about it.

The weasel rode on my shoulder with LIGHT up, putting out about ten feet of glow in every direction. It was enough to see the walls and the floor. It also kept licking my right fox ear.

[Okay. The plan is to walk around, look at things, grab a thing, and go home. Nothing fancy. The only thing I ever wrote into this place is the volume three arc, and Lily doesn’t find her way down here for another two books.]

The ruin went a lot deeper than the chamber with the columns. Corridors ran off it in three directions and none of them ended anywhere my light could reach. I picked the middle one.

Two turns in, the weasel’s glow found a thing in the corridor ahead of me, and it turned around.

[Oh, come on.]

It was low and gray, with a lot of legs and a flat wet head. It clicked at me twice, then came down the corridor faster than I could back up.

"CREEEEEE!I"

"AAAAAAAH!" I screamed back.

[Weasel! APPRAISE, now!]

Cave Lurker

Level 6

Rank E

[Level six, Rank E. Okay, that’s right around where I am. That’s a fair fight. I’ve got six upper-tier Forms sitting in my head, and I’ve been training for exactly this since—]

I stepped in, routed mana down my arm, and threw the Falling Star at it. The same move I’d taught to Lily.

The Lurker went straight through it and hit me with its whole flat body.

"ACK!"

I left my feet, hit the wall, and came down on the black stone with no air in me at all.

[FINESSE five. FINESSE FIVE. I know the Forms, I don’t have the ARMS, oh god it’s on me, it’s on me!!!]

It landed on my chest with its legs everywhere and brought the wet head down at me. My sword was somewhere across the corridor. I put an arm up in front of my face.

It went through the arm and got me in the ribs. I heard them crack. Then it pulled back and came down again, and the second one was worse, and I couldn’t even scream about it because there was still no air in me.

[Okay, I’m dying. This is what dying is.]

The weasel jumped off my shoulder. It landed on the Lurker’s flat head and fired LIGHT point-blank into where its eyes were.

The Lurker shrieked and reared back off me. The weasel rode it up and kept the light going right in its face. It thrashed, slammed itself into the wall twice, and fell over with its legs curling in.

And... It was dead.

A Level 1 spirit had somehow just blinded it to death.

[... My flashlight has a higher kill count in this ruin than I do.]

I stayed on the floor for a second with a hand on my ribs. Then I did what any dying woman does.

I gave a speech.

"Well, weasel," I wheezed, propping myself against the wall. "I gave it a good shot. I really did. I came down here with a head full of Forms and an honest plan, and I want you to remember that when you tell people about tonight. Tell them your contractor had a plan." I coughed. "I want it known that I got up every morning this week and trained like an idiot. And when it counted, I walked in there and threw the Falling Star like I meant it, and that thing went through it like it wasn’t there, because at the end of the day I’ve got a novelist’s arms and I move like a coat rack. So honestly, buddy, if you really think about it, this was always how it was going to-"

The weasel looked at me, alarmed.

[SPIRIT LEVEL UP]

[Lamplight Weasel - Lv.1 → Lv.2]

[New Skill unlocked: MEND - Lv.1: closes minor wounds. Range: touch.]

It padded over and put one small paw on my ribs. Warm blue light went into me and my ribs stopped hurting.

I sat against the wall, fully healed, in the middle of a heroic monologue I no longer had reason to finish.

"... Never mind, then."

[Hm. That was anticlimactic.]

The weasel climbed onto my chest and sat there looking extremely pleased with itself. I scratched it behind the ears while I got my breath back, then pulled up its sheet.

[Lamplight Weasel - Lv.2]

[Contractor: Kohaku Sakana]

[LIGHT Lv.2 / APPRAISE Lv.1 / MEND Lv.1]

LIGHT had gone up a rank on its own, too. One fight, and the weasel did every useful thing in it.

[Okay. Lesson learned. Two lessons, actually. One, I can’t fight. A Level 6 knocked me across a hallway in one move. I already knew that, but now I know it better.]

The weasel was grooming a paw.

[Two. I’ve been treating this animal like a flashlight. But in one fight it leveled up, unlocked a heal, and did more damage in that corridor than I did. Spirit skills scale off the contractor’s level, and my level is going to go up a lot if I keep coming down here and letting it do the work. So maybe I’m not the one who’s supposed to be winning these.]

I got up, checked that the Lurker was well and truly done, and went to find another one.

---

{Lily}

"Hehe, I love how confident you are, Marisol. You’re nothing like that lame roommate of mine."

"I know. She would never sit on your lap like I’m doing right now."

"I know, right? Did I mention she was lame?"

"NOOO!"

I woke up.

Bad dream. It was nighttime, and the air was cold. I glanced over at Kohaku’s side. It was pretty dark, but I could see she was sort of turned over onto her side, fully covered by her sheet.

[... Gosh, stop it, Lily. Get some sleep.]

I closed my eyes again.