System Change

Alanah managed to pick her jaw up off the ground after hearing about Silvi’s antics with the elves. What would she think if I told her that recipes for elves, dwarves, humans… everything were included in the giant lot of recipes I brought with me? Alanah shuddered at the thought. She did have some… extravagant recipes, but they were ones that she would never think of sharing or actually using. Hearing about the little bunny only reminded her of them.

“That was my reaction, too,” Stella said, breaking Alanah out of her thoughts. “She is quite the interesting companion.”

“That’s putting it lightly,” Alanah said. In the corner of her vision, she had notifications waiting for her to open, so she decided to dismiss Stella while she sorted herself out. “You can head back down. I’ll be down in a bit, then we can figure out what we’re going to do.”

“Alright.” Stella nodded and left her room.

Once the door to the room closed, Alanah began rifling through the new notifications. Instantly, she dismissed all the kill notifications. There was no point in looking at any of those. She had long since capped out her level, and any experience points gained were just wasted numbers.

The next notification caught her attention. She read it over a couple times, then nodded in satisfaction. Her Metamorphosis: Dawn Siren had been hanging there at level 19 for the longest time. Seeing that it had finally leveled to 20 made her happy. It also gave her hope that she may even be able to control the skill even better the next time she used it. If there even is a next time, she thought.

She had basically fought off a combined army of two kingdoms by herself. She felt great about being so strong in that form after increasing her stats like she had, but would there be another reason to use the skill? Whatever, she thought. It’s a great trump card, no matter what. Maybe I should just go take the fighting to them. She smiled at the thought of showing up at the combined army’s camp and just cutting loose. I bet it would be cool fighting alongside a dragon, too.

She thought about the creature she had only just seen before passing out. In all my time on this world, I’ve yet to see anything more than a drake. They must have really struck it rich in that dungeon. Maybe I should have gone. She shook her head. If she had gone, then nobody would have been here to defend the city, and there was no telling what kind of state the kingdom would have fallen to by the time she got out.

Finally, she dismissed the congratulatory skill leveling window and moved to the next. When her eyes fell on it, she frowned. Then she reread it again, then again. Finally, she shook her head, closed the notification, and stood. She had to get to work. She was going to be very busy for the foreseeable future.

***

“Are you almost finished?” Derek was standing by the forge next to Tyron.

“Twenty more minutes,” Tyron said. “It would be even faster if you would leave me to it.” Derek nodded and went back to their makeshift camp—or, what was left of it.

Once Edgar so rudely left him to lead the raid dungeon, Derek became antsy and anxious. So, he began packing up. If he was going to lead the rest of the dungeon, he was going to do it his way. Sure, he wouldn’t make any friends that way, but he had already made enough. He didn’t need anymore.

Was he going to possibly offend some prominent people in the kingdom? Sure, he was, but he planned on laying all that blame on Edgar. It was his fault, after all. And if the rest of the raid party got snippy, he had a bunny that was just waiting to put some people in their place.

Speaking of Silvi, she was still sitting on the last vestige of furniture at their makeshift camp. She was currently staring death and daggers at a piece of pie sitting on the middle of the table. The pie wasn’t bad. It tasted just like a regular apple pie back on Earth before the system came. But that was the problem. It wasn’t a regular pie made from regular ingredients back on Earth.

This was a pie made from a recipe received from the Crown Restaurant. Its taste was supposed to be superb, but it was just regular. Silvi was a pissed off bunny. One who adamantly refused to return to Savannah to help in the case of a battle breaking out. There were two reasons for her refusal.

The first reason was that he told her of his theory that the Void Travel skill had done something to the ingredients in her food. It had said that not even things placed in spatial storage would be safe, after all. He couldn’t quite point out exactly what was wrong with them, but if he had to guess, he would say that some of the ingredients, even post cooking, had aged, while others had stayed the same, or maybe even reversed their aging.

And the fact that all the ingredients were very specific, the disruption caused by Void Travel had caused all the flavoring to be off by a bit. But that was just his theory, one based on the time aspect of the void. The space aspect could mean many different things. Things that hadn’t affected the ingredients and would instead only affect living creatures and people.

If he was going to test it, Bones and Ogre wouldn’t make the worst test subjects. They had both killed dozens of people just for money, but then again, so had Vanessa. The world really was different from how it was before. Well… Earth had assassins and hit men before the system, as well. But they had tried to kill him, and that was personal, so they would make good test subjects.

However, he couldn’t do that yet because of the dragonkin he had stored inside his Time Prison. He wouldn’t want to risk something happening to them after all the hard work he and the others put into capturing them for everybody.

Derek nodded with his thoughts and looked back at Silvi. The other reason she had chosen not to ‘go home,’ even after Derek offered to keep hold of her storage ring until he got back, was because of all the good food she was missing out on. She had been jealous when seeing the dragonkin, and when he showed her some of the meat he’d saved for her.

She was even more so when she realized that a bunch of her items were spoiled, at least by her standards. After that, she had been very insistent that she finish the dungeon with him. She seemed to be very excited about the prospect of leveling up her Cook What You Kill skill, especially after being thoroughly disappointed after learning that she wasn’t allowed to eat the elf. Those elves had been the only things she’d really killed after obtaining the skill.

So, knowing that Derek was about to complete more trials with a bunch of possibly tasty enemies inside, Silvi couldn’t miss the chance.

“You should put that away and get ready. I don’t think Avery will be inside that trial much longer,” Derek said to the angry Silvi.

‘All that work and now it’s gone. Just no good, nasty food,’ Silvi sent back via her telepathic bond—too lazy to activate her communication crystals at the moment.

“Just think of it this way.” Derek started. “Now you get to prepare even more dishes to replace the ones that have… gone bad.” He really didn’t agree with her that all she had left was no good, nasty food. The food really was good, and many people who didn’t have the opportunity to eat at places like the Crown Restaurant would appreciate it. But he wouldn’t argue with her. It was like an artist made a masterpiece, then, it somehow got turned into a printed picture, and the original was no longer there. It was still pleasant to look at, but didn’t have the same effect.

After a couple more minutes of death stares at the pie, it finally disappeared into Silvi’s storage ring and she hopped off the table. After that, Derek stored the table and their entire makeshift camp was gone, leaving almost no signs that there ever was one. Finally, man and companion walked over close to Tyron, but not close enough to get in his way, and waited for the smith to finish his current project.

That was soon complete too, and Derek had a pair of leg armor to match the one for his upper body. It was made the same, and fit over his jeans nicely, and would even work well over his bare legs. The smith had used the wyvern hide for the leather and small versions of the scales for the outer armor. His new armor didn’t limit his movement one bit.

“Thanks,” Derek said to the smith. “They’re perfect.”

“Are you sure we need to go now?” Tyron asked back after nodding. “I still need to make the gloves and boots. The gloves won’t take as long as the rest. I can at least make them now.” The usual stone-face Tyron let it show how much he was enjoying working with all the new dragon-based materials.

“Unfortunately, no,” Derek said. “This will have to do for now. But, hey!” Derek reached up and pat the giant of a man on his shoulder. “You won’t be bored for a very long time once we get back to Cydaria. And, after you finish up my gear, you’ll be able to create anything your heart desires with the remaining material.”

Tyron snorted and tore himself away from Derek to begin loading up his own area. During the process, Derek heard the man mutter something along the lines of needing to finish Derek’s items now, so he had complete freedom once leaving the raid.

Derek only smiled and didn’t say anything. He felt like he was taking the best smith in the kingdom’s favorite toy away and wasn’t going to allow him to play with it until his room was tidy.

Loading up an area with storage rings turned out to be much faster than initially creating an area. In storage rings, it didn’t matter where everything went—there was no specific order to things—one could just toss everything in and sort it all out later. So, the smith was finished in minutes.

Finally, they left the area and headed back towards the main camp. The biggest reason Derek wanted to leave so quickly was because neither of their transport beasts were left. Lyra was currently in the trial with Avery, and Blitz had disappeared along with Edgar. They could technically use Rocky and have him plow through things and take them there, but they were still keeping him a secret, so he stayed in his… noodle form, as Silvi called it.

Neither Derek nor Tyron were slouches, though. It took them a good while, but eventually they made it back to the main camp, where they were met with Cain, who had gone back earlier, before Edgar left, to help handle any dissent among the party.

“What’s going on?” the elementalist asked. “Where are Edgar and Blitz? And what was that weird feeling coming from the other camp a while ago? It took everything I had to keep everyone from finding out.”

The weird feeling was, of course, Silvi appearing through the portal created from Void Travel and whatever weird feelings came with it. “Well, about that…” Derek started, then soon described everything that had happened to the Guild Master, who stayed emotionless all the while.

“Impulsive,” Cain said once Derek was finished. The only thing that had thrown the Guild Master off slightly was when he talked about Silvi coming from Cydaria to the raid dungeon, but he quickly regained control of his facial expression. Cain shook his head. “This is going to be a problem.”

“No, it’s not,” Derek said.

“It is, though,” Cain replied. “After learning what may be happening outside, many have been hesitating—those who managed to bring escape scrolls with them have been considering using them.”

“Oh?” Derek’s eyes lit up. “That’s perfect. Let them use them. That will make things much simpler.”

“But…” Cain started, but Derek interrupted.

“Look, Edgar left me in charge for better or for worse. Looking at the trials, there hasn’t been a single one that I haven’t been able to do solo.” He wasn’t kidding. He would have been able to meet the survival limits on the dragon trial with ease. And now that he had powered up again, that trial would be even simpler now. “And now that my companion is here…” He nodded at Silvi. “I won’t have any problems at all. So, let the ones who want to leave.”

Cain was silent for a moment, but eventually conceded. “Fine. Let’s go tell them of the situation outside.”