Ravensdagger_Love_Crafted - страница 2

Congratulations!By persevering through immense pain your Endurance skill has risen by +1.Endurance is now 10^802 (+1)

What is this silliness? You huff as you grow new eyes, then use them to glare at the box. It thinks it can fool you? Hah! You’ll show it.You start trying to grab it with different sorts of tentacles. Physical, physical-adjacent, imaginary, unimaginative, bureaucratic, and even Ancient tentacles do nothing, but you notice the box wiggling a little when you bring in reality-warping tentacles.If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.Your smile is feral.

A New Quest!The World is in Peril! Only You and your Plucky Summoner Can Save it!

Cute, it thinks it can distract you. You grab the box and pinch it with a pair of handy tentacles. Only they’re not handy, because hands aren’t nearly as good as tentacles at the best of times.

Inventory

(10 Item Slots per Page)

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Item

1^984x

Pretty Dresses

Poisoned Salad of Yummyness (Lethal)

Abigail's Purse

17x

Shades of Purple

Chthonian

Beginner's Alchemy Kit

Abigail's Snack

Pillows

Soul-Powered Entropy Reversal Device

Hole

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You wrestle with the box a bit, then open your mouth and start bringing it closer. The box, probably realizing what you’re about to do, starts panicking.

A New Quest!DO NOT EAT THE BOX!

Your teeth chomp down with great satisfaction on the box and you chew away at it. It tastes a bit like glass and lightning and the sad loneliness of people who live in their mom’s basement. Not the best snack, but a snack’s a snack.“Drea-mer?” Abigail mumbles next to you.You put all of your extra tentacles away. “Go back to sleep, it’s still nap time,” you tell her before wigging about to find the optimal sleeping position next to Abigail. You slip back into your dreams with hardly a whisper.

Omake Two

Dreamer died.Or, well, something happened that kinda sorta led her to dying a teeny tiny bit. Like, she was dead, but only a small percentage of her. Not a full number percentage either. One of those fake imaginary numbers. She was most of 0% dead.Math had also died. No one mourned its loss.She woke up, as she was wont to do on occasion, and found herself in a small room. A very small room with, in its centre, a dias upon which sat a floating ball of crystal that spun and hovered and pulsed with unknowable intent.“What?” she asked aloud. Her voice echoed strangely across the cavern.Fortunately for her, a helpful text box appeared before her nose to assist her.Dungeon MenuCurrent mana: 20/20. Regen: 1 per day.Current Condition: 100/100ConstructionMinionsTrapsQuestsShe blinked. Or would have blinked, but she didn’t have eyes, or, she noted as she looked down, a body. This was neither new nor novel and didn’t warrant any panic beyond a passing note that she’d need to make a new body before engaging in cuddles again.Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.Dreamer decided that this place was neat and all, but there weren’t any Abigails around and so she was going to leave.Then her non-face smacked against an invisible barrier near the exit.No matter what she tried she couldn’t leave, and every time she did try a new message popped up.Dungeon Core Cannot Exit Dungeon.Shrugging, she extruded some tentacles outside, intent on yanking herself from there.The tentacles started to melt.Dungeon Cannot Build Beyond DungeonNow she was getting somewhat annoyed. Still, if the tentacles lasted a few seconds outside of the small room, then maybe...

* * *

“Abigail,” Daphne said. “What is that?”The ‘that’ in this case was the huge lump of stone and rock that towered behind Abigail like a terribly misplaced piece of the landscape. If the landscape was vomiting a constant tide of melting tentacles.Abigail sighed. “I have no idea,” she said. “But it’s Dreamer’s fault.”

Chapter Forty-Six

There was a big argument. You didn’t like it, not one bit, but in the end you won so that’s all that matters.The girls are all gathered in Daphne’s house sipping at tea that Edmund delivered while you get ready for your big adventure. An adventure that you’re going to do alone, because Abigail is fragile and so are your other friends.You, of course, aren’t sitting at the table and having tea. No, instead you’re standing across from a very worried Abigail and are trying very hard to pretend that her big wet eyes aren’t doing things to your tummy. It’s not fair that she can look at you like that.“You can’t come,” you tell her again. “You’re too squishy.”“I know that, but you might get hurt,” she says.This is not the first time she brings this up and it’s not the first time she’s wrong about it. “The big mean people can’t hurt me. I’m unhurtable. But they could hurt you and that would make me very...” you pause, then realize that you have found the perfect counter. “That would hurt me. Yes. I can be hurt if you’re hurt, but they can’t hurt me unless they’re hurting you.” Perfect!“Abigail,” Daphne says as she places her teacup down without so much as a click. “I actually agree with Dreamer. Strange as she might be, she is still more than capable of taking care of herself. If she runs into any trouble or fails to return before nightfall, then we can act on our own. I think Edmund has some old friends who could help mount a rescue. Still, we ought to at least give her a chance.”You nod. Daphne is being very smart.Then Abigail turns her wet eyes on Daphne and her confidence crumbles. “U-unless, well, maybe we could go,” Daphne says.You huff. This is taking too long. “Fine. I’ll stay here and go.”“Oh?” Charlotte asks. She has been looking around ever since she entered Daphne’s house but now she’s focused on you. “You can split yourself?”“Oh no,” Abigail whispers in horror. You can understand her fear. That would mean having to split her hugs between you and another you, which is only half as many hugs.You shake your head. “No. I just need to leave some of me here and let this part of me go.” To demonstrate you tentacle a hole though the universe and have one of your wigglier tentacles poke out of it in the air behind you. “See, now you’ll know that my big body is safe.”“Your big body?” Charlotte asks.You don’t have a lot of time to explain, but it would be rude not to. “This body,” you say as you gesture to yourself. “Is my small body. My big body is where I am. This is like a puppet body for hugs and cuddles.” Which now that you mention it means Abigail never hugged your big body. It would take many, many hundreds of years for her to hug all of it. You need to hurry up and make her less mortal.“So, as long as your main body is intact, you can just make a new puppet body?” Charlotte asks.“Yes!” you say.She shrugs and turns to Abigail. “I say let her try. Though she really ought to wear a disguise.”There’s some more arguing after that, but it’s about what kind of clothes you should wear and then a long explanation about why your pretty dress, while very pretty (everyone agrees) isn’t the best for being sneaky and is recognizable on account of being your pretty dress.This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.In the end, the sun is well on its way towards the horizon when you step out of Daphne’s mansion wearing an all black outfit covered in holes for your tentacles and a lot of black cloth wrapped around your face. Charlotte declares that you look like an adorable ninja.You don’t know what that means, but if it’s adorable then it probably does look like you. You are a thing that should be adored.Walking all the way to the Inquisition’s headquarters would take too long, so when you’re finally outside you make a big tentacle come out of the ground, wrap your small body around its tip, then fling yourself across the city. Like throwing a rock only it’s you instead.You cheer as you fly past a bunch of houses and, thanks to your super fast reflexes, snap a pigeon out of the air as an in-flight snack.You crash into the roof of an apartment building two blocks away from the Inquisition, roll a lot to bleed off your speed, then fall off the edge and crash at the bottom of an alleyway. But you didn’t lose your snack and you can fix all the broken bones so it’s okay.Getting up, you dust off your ninja outfit, rub some feathers off your face, then stick your head out of the alley.There aren’t a lot of mortals around at this hours, so hardly anyone notices as you run across the streets towards the big castle and slip through some alleyways and up some walls with your tentacles.In no time at all you’re standing before the Conclave of the Inquisition. The front of the building is large and flat and made of dark stones with little alcoves where statues of people with silly hats holding beakers and rulers and scales are all staring down towards the big doors at the front.You find a shadowy place next to a newspaper stand across the street, then you grab some more shadows from a few other places and bring them closer so that you’re even harder to see.This is where you’ll do all your work.Reaching out, you send a billion little tentacles that are just on the other side of everything questing within the Conclave to map out every tunnel and passage and room. Some tentacles hit things that shouldn’t be and get zapped or eaten, but they’re small and don’t matter.You find Pou-tine right where the important man’s memories said they would be. It’s deep, deep under the building, in a room built with hundreds of circles in the ground and a bunch of obelisks that might be made of bones around. Pou-tine is stuck in the centre with all sorts of equipment being aimed at them.Nodding, you grab your body with another tentacle and move yourself over to where Pou-tine is.The room smells like rubbing-alcohol and grease. It’s barely lit by a few yellow-ish magic circles on the walls next to rows of metal desks just like in school.Pou-tine shifts a little, a fri-eye turning in your direction.“Hello, Pou-tine,” you say. “I’m here to free you.”

Interlude One

Byzantine.It was a word that Merwin Fuller had first heard during his stay at the Akademie der Magie in the north. He had had to look it up, to discover what it meant after first hearing its use.To think that one day he would use it to describe his own work. Truly, he was no longer the starry-eyed fool that he had once been, filled with innocence and curiosity.Now he knew that innocence was merely a form of ignorance, and that curiosity was the path to an untimely and gruesome death.Something strange was happening in the Five Peak’s Conclave of the Inquisition, and as one of the Chief Inspector Generals it was his duty to get to the bottom of it. The office he was loaned was a spartan little room, a desk at the far end, some shelves and lockers for personal artefacts and a few chairs which were occupied by a fidgeting Administrator and a stoic Paladin.“I do not suspect that I must explain why I am here?” he said. His accent had always been thick, no matter how hard he tried to rid himself of it, still, it gave a harsh edge to his words that made softer men weep.Administrator Silva squirmed in her seat and Paladin Uther was as straight as any man in his position, though the scuffs and scrapes in his uniform certainly suggested that he was not at his best. Few combatants were as proud or fierce or implacable as the Paladins of the Inquisition, and that price showed in their neatness.“This incident, this absolute mess, is not, as far as I can tell, the fault of the local Inquisitors,” he said.The Administrator almost sank in her seat before remembering herself. “Yes sir, thank you sir.”“Nonetheless we will be going through a full inspection and evaluation, a subject has escaped our grasp, one of the most dangerous seen since the Inquisition started its work. More, I believe it might have been freed by another subject. Paladin, your report, it was complete but I want your opinion.”Paladin Uther nodded once. “The Seventh Night Guard Rotation, group two, were on the scene first. They are some of the only ones that had more than a fleeting glance of the second subject. The anomaly appeared to be a young humanoid with erroneous appendages. Tentacles, essentially. We classify her as a biological modifier, an anomalous mover and perhaps a shifter.”“Dangerous,” Fuller said. “Administrator, I require the file on Anomalous Subject One-Oh-Four-Two.”Administrator Silva nodded so quickly her shako almost flew off her head. She pulled up a briefcase and slipped her thumb into a hole at its top. A few pulses of will rang through the room as she pushed a specific pattern into the case’s locking device, undoing the many locks keeping the documents within safe.The case was opened with a pneumatic hiss and the Administrator pulled out a file which she passed to him. “I, Administrator Silva attest that Chief Inspector General Fuller has the Classification required to view this document.”“Witnessed,” Paladin Uther intoned.There was a large red three on the front of the file. He pressed a thumb to the number and pushed his will into it. It revealed the circle hidden within the folder and he deactivated the security countermeasure with a few twists of his will.Everyone in the room had classification at or above level three. Though he suspected he was the only member of the Inquisition at Five Peaks other than the Site Director with Class one.The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.He laid the small pile of sheets within the document before him and began reading them.

Anomalous Subject-1042

Rapid Response Threat Rating:

AS-1042 is capable of generating large amounts of non-anomalous liquid material. This material complicated capture and movement of AS-1042. AS-1042’s size and dimensions make it difficult to move and capture.ADDENDUM: As of Incident 1042B Subject AS-1042’s original body has changed to resemble that of a young human male with unknown properties. Exercise extreme caution around AS-1042. For additional information see document: Incident AS-1042B, AS-1042 Secondary appearance.

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