Archive of Our Own

ksat a s'ereht

        “What?” 

 eno deriah eulb eht llik

        “Why her?”

 retal melborp a

        “But!”

tbed a

        “Fine, fine. A deal's a deal.”

The last party member crawled out of bed looking for the chamber pot, but before the thief could relieve himself, a traveller's pack came flying across the room. Staggering back, he nearly fell back onto the bed when it hit his chest.

From the doorway, the tall fighter glared at the Thief who had been talking in his sleep. It was always bad luck when that demon-kin had bad dreams. But the search was still ongoing, so they had no choice but to head out. “You overslept; now we’re late, so you’ll take first watch tonight.”

Day 1

The thief pointed towards a place for the party to step. “Over there, next to that stone, there are no spiders; it’s probably clear."

“Okay.” 

Her race's lower height was a boon in the cave; while the others all bent over uncomfortably to avoid the rocks and cobwebs, she moved at a more comfortable pace. Yet she still had to stretch her legs wide to keep her steps inside the tracks of the others. But this last step would have to be a jump.

She squatted down, bending her knees for the jump. Even though she winced when her long braids touched the filthy ground, she still hopped forward without complaint. As she sailed through the air, aiming for the spot their thief indicated would be safe, —he yelled to her as she passed him.

“Wait!”

In her peripheral vision, she saw his hand reach for her as the ground approached in slow motion; he wasn’t able to pull her back. He gripped onto her satchel, but she kept moving; it simply slid free from her shoulder. 

She could see it now, a dim light shining under a tiny streak that ran through the ancient dust, revealing an ever-so-faint glow. Damnit, a magic trap.

She leaned back to try to abort the jump, but while moving through the air, there was nothing to push against to change her direction. 

Landing on her heels with her toes off the ground, her feet slid out from under her, and she fell backwards. 

She cursed her luck as her head was rapidly falling back towards the rock she had just hopped over. A blinding light forced her eyes shut. 

Her shoulders impacted the ground first, then her head. There was no sharp rock, only soft, damp guano. Opening her eyes a moment later, she was in pure darkness. It was so dark she could not even see her hand when she lifted it in front of her face.

“Mmgh,” she let out a low grunt as she slid her hand over her face and around to the back of her head. It was damp, but the moisture was cold. She squeezed her eyes shut, processing her situation, cold… It’s probably not blood.

I can’t see at all, that's a problem.

Reaching to her left, she patted the ground until she felt the familiar shape of her staff. Gripping the shaft tightly with one hand, she used the other to pull a tuft of hair from her fringe, grunting as they came free, roots and all.

Chanting a spell as quietly as she could so as not to attract the attention of whatever might be lurking nearby, the hairs burst into a tiny flame, the flash lasting about a second. What a waste of mana. She thought, yet the spell did what it was meant to. She saw the flash just before the world went black once more.

Well, I'm not blind, that's a relief.

If she were blind, then all hope was lost. She’d be devoured by the beasts of this dungeon before her party could think of coming to find her. But being dropped into a darkness this complete was actually, for the time being, a boon. Her research showed that none of the beasts that called this dungeon home could see in complete darkness. Had she been teleported in front of a monster, she would have had no time to even think about the situation.

With a smile not too dissimilar to the one her first and only student worth mentioning used to have right before he tackled a challenge he was sure to fail, she sat up.

Ok, let's get started.

10 points for not dying.

10 points for seeing it coming.

But you’re still taking a 50-point deduction for setting off a trap; you’ll have to work off the credit.

She pictured that young prodigy talking to her, motivating her in his own special way, not to panic or, worse yet, accept the loss. That boy’s priorities were always the wrong way round.

Better get back on topic.

Calm down, assess, act.

I am not bleeding, no noticeable injuries. My mana is, for the most part, nearly full.

Where am I? Where are the others? Are they ok? Will they look for me?

She shook her head as if to dismiss the last thought as foolish. It might take a while, but they’ll find her. After all, they were in this dungeon searching for someone already; what was one more?

Right, first things first, I need to see.

She needed to do something about this darkness, but for the time being, it was what was keeping the monsters at bay. There were several simple solutions to the problem, but they all added to the risk of attracting monsters to a part of the dungeon that they seemed to naturally fear.

She sat on the ground, folding her legs in front of her like he used to do. She did her best to ignore the damp guano soaking into her skirt. ‘Think, think, think, spells are so structured, so logical, if you deviate from the steps by the tiniest degree, they go awry with effects you'd never expect.’ But he said that was the best part: “Once you know how it works, you can guess how it would go wrong when you tweak it.”

She gave it some thought; she felt she could tweak every fire spell she knew to use as a light source. But knew, in the end, no matter which one she used, it would only be a beacon for every monster here. If only there was a spell that granted her magic vision. 

Technically, there was---demon eyes did exist after all. They even granted their users some kind of otherworldly vision . It was theoretically possible to mimic them with magic. But she didn’t have one to experiment with, or years to work on it.

What to do, what to do. Perhaps if I cast ‘minor flame’ and try to hide the light??? Hmmm. If I blocked the ends of the tunnels with an ‘earth wall’, that would cut the light off, but then the monsters might just wait on the other side for me to take it down again when I need to pass. Maybe if I used an illusion spell to make the tunnel look dark. No, if the spell was set to target everything in the area, it would affect me too.

Then, as if her student were speaking to her from somewhere in her memories, a long-forgotten conversation played out in his voice. 

“Illusion spells use so much mana; instead of casting it on the entire area, can't we just cast it on a single target and save the rest of the mana?”

She replied, “For someone with as much mana as you do, you spend more time than me finding ways to spare it. In theory, you could pick a single target, but what good would it do if their companions could see through it, or if someone you didn’t notice came by and was not under the effect?”

AHAH, that's right.

With a smile, she began the chant for the spell ‘clean room,’ a spell used by talented maids of nobles to make a space look more presentable until they could attend to it properly. Though the spell was generally avoided because the lighting in the illusion matched the exact position of the sun, regardless of whether the spell was cast indoors or not.

Casting the spell on herself, she targeted only her eyes, and the cave walls and floor came into view. Not a speck of dust in sight. She thought that this was a spell worth working on perfecting later. If she showed her estranged mentor, she’d be able to rub it in; he’d never succeeded in inventing a new spell himself. 

With her success in conquering the dark, she moved on to the next step. Securing a working knowledge of her surroundings. Judging by the angle of the artificial shadows her illusion granted her, it was likely three or four hours past midday outside. So, despite how mana-efficient casting this spell on herself alone was, she guessed she had only about five hours of light left for today.

Don’t sit down and wait. No tall, handsome swordsman is going to come rescue you. She knew that no matter how skilled she was as a mage, she’d die if she wasn’t proactive.

Because her less impressive master was not able to teach her any humility, she knew she was exceptionally skilled. He failed to stop her from leaving partway through her studies to earn the fame she knew she deserved. 

It was only after taking on some minor country noble’s three-year-old son, who in two years mastered everything that took her twelve, that she concluded she was, in fact, not special, and the world won't pull its punches for a side character.

First rule of being lost: don’t wander around aimlessly. If rescue is not a fantasy, then wait. Already contradicting myself. If I can’t wait around, but I can’t run off, then I’ll set up a camp and work from there. Let’s make somewhere safe to wait and return to, then I can venture out as needed.

With liberal use of the mana-hungry spell ‘stonewall,’ she capped the tunnel off, leaving a doorway she could dart in and out of with ease. But still narrow enough that the large beasts would only be able to angrily claw and scrape at it. 

Without a carpenter, she opted for a demon continent staple for a door. She cast a modified version of a stone wall, creating a large circular slab that she would roll back and forth inside a groove on the floor.

She knew she had water covered, as long as she had mana. She could conjure a ball of water and drink all she could ever need. However, food was a problem. 

Dungeon delvers had limited space to carry food, so the best they could do was bring dried rations, usually 5 days of full rations and another 3 of half. Less if then needed to bring fresh water. The only problem was that their party's thief was left holding her bag of supplies when he tried to stop her jump.

What am I working with?

On this floor of the dungeon, there were three major threats, well, four if she counted rival explorers after her loot. Young adventurers would discount that danger because they still had grand ideas of glory, and had yet to feel the sting of hunger when a failed quest or two leaves you penniless.

But she knew better; she was taken prisoner once by a team on a long string of failures. She could remember how they argued over who was getting what parts of her gear. Followed closely by who would get to take her first. 

It’s been years, but she couldn’t forget the smell; she’d still retch sometimes when charring meat at camp. That once beautiful smell made her remember how they screamed when the four of them held her down, and she cast ‘burn in place’ on herself. Searing the flesh off all of them. 

Despite the pain, she had the peace of mind not to move so that her skin wouldn’t peel off. While they rolled on the floor. She chanted an advanced healing spell for only herself. 

She shook her head to banish the image to the far reaches of her memories. ‘Back on topic.’

The monsters here weren’t as bad as men; the monsters only wanted to eat her. And that was fine by her; fair was fair, she was planning on eating them. 

On the menu were:

‘Mud golems’.

         Animated semi-humanoid clay constructs. Prized for the poetry that was made from their corpses, but had no nutritional value. 

‘Armoured caterpillars’. 

         The giant insects weighed over a ton with a chitinous carapace that was nearly as hard as unforged iron. Their meat was edible and a good source of fat, but full-grown men had a hard time getting at its insides. As a Migurd and a woman, she’d need to plan ahead for that task. 

‘Giant tarantulas’. 

       They were spindly, hairy, chiton-covered spiders that, when fully grown, stood half the height of a man. Although the hatchlings would have no trouble following her in here, they were non-venomous and could be crushed underfoot. 

The Migurd dried and preserved spiders back in her village, albeit normal-sized ones. So the idea of getting her hands on a 3-pound spider leg didn't rub her the wrong way.

Between securing the entrance to the tunnel with two very mana-hungry spells and taking a break to restore a portion, she cast a one-off fire spell to temporarily dry out a corner so she could rest. Still uncertain of how secure the doorway was, she was loath to risk being low on mana.

After a few hours, the spell stopped giving her any light at all, and she had no choice but to huddle in the corner and wait till morning.

day 2

It was cold and damp, and the sticky guano soaked deep into her cloak. In the pitch-black of night, every sound carried far, waking her many times. But panic would do her no good, so she rolled into a ball each time and closed her eyes.

Waking that last time, she reached the point where she was getting angry with herself for not being able to fall back asleep. It was easily one of the worst nights' sleep she could remember. 

So she activated her modified illusions spell again. There was a faint light coming off the walls and floor, with extremely long shadows that nearly crossed the whole space.

I really need to find a way to stay warm. Magic was not a long-term solution; it was her only defence, and she could not risk having no mana if something found her.

Relying on the relative safety of her reinforced door, she risked using some, chanting the words for ‘burn in place,’ allowing her fire spell to warm the air around her body just the tiniest bit. It might be a low-cost spell at that temperature, but it was still a continuous drain. 

The sun was finally out, but low in the sky. Sighing, she stood up, trying to scrape off most of the smelly droppings that were clearly part of her clothes now. 

I can’t do that again. Where is the damn exit?

There was no way she would make it if she tried to wait for rescue. What should I do, what should I do… What should I do? Her pulse was rising; she found herself hugging her knees, rocking back and forth. 

Another memory of the tiny mage came to her, he was working on a spell that she hadn't explained yet, experimenting to make it work on his own.

“Why don't you wait for me, it would be faster if you let me finish and show you how.”

He just kept looking at his work. "I'd rather be charming than Rupunzle."

"Hmm, hmm, hmm." He hummed a tune I didn't recognize before saying something too profound for his age.

“How tall could the tower be

If a prince could climb her weave

Why’d she need to be SET free

Surely she could just LEAVE.”

---------------

You say the weirdest thing, like you have a lifetime of lessons. Did you forget, I’m 'your' teacher. And also, why do your poems rhyme? That's just weird.

He was still helping her from somewhere deep inside. She slapped her cheeks with both hands.

Act! If you can’t think of a reason to move, then move without thinking; perhaps the reason will follow later.

Closing her eyes and breathing in and out deeply, she calmed herself before leaning into the side of the giant stone wheel. It took all the strength her little body had to get it rolling. 

She didn’t get far before the pitch-black tunnel that the monsters preferred to avoid curved gently to the left, ending about 50 yards down. The cave tunnel ended in a stone wall, there were a few blocks lying to the side, leaving a small gap in the wall. 

Climbing through, she stepped into an ancient ruin. The cobbled floor, stone walls, and what for her race was a high ceiling should have calmed her. But the bright light supplied by the magic circles etched into the walls at regular intervals meant she was now back on the menu for every hunter here.

There were no ruins in the research materials she found on this dungeon, and her team had been exploring only caves for months now. That meant she was somewhere that her team, or any of the adventurers that sold information to that broker, had never seen. There was no doubt that she was in for a long wait before her team found her. 

The fear that they'd not find her at all was quickly pushed aside by a smug smile. If she was the first to find this part of the dungeon, then the glory for beating it was hers. She might have been in trouble, but she still enjoyed a challenge.

She crept along the narrow corridor, using the weak yet innate boost to stealth that came as a benefit of being one of the smaller races. Careful not to stray too far from the hole that led back to her 'homebase', it was the only place that she knew of that was 'safe'. So she kept the exploring to just a few of the side rooms, there weren't any items of note. If it were true that no adventurers had found this place yet, then there'd be no corpses to loot. 

Luckily, monsters were few and far between, and easy enough to avoid. She assumed that if the daring adventurers were only in the cave system, there was nothing to eat back here. 

Without any predefined work during this expedition, she was quick to seize the opportunity that presented itself; she stumbled across a 'giant tarantula' in the act of laying eggs. An edible monster in a vulnerable state was something she couldn't pass up.

An easy target and a source of meat. 

Because it was occupied, she could take her time finding a way to dispatch it silently. Being extra cautious, it was wise not to turn a one-on-one fight into a slaughter by attracting bystanders. Opting for an 'earth dome' to encase it and then filling and freezing it with a water spell followed by an ice one.

After she was certain it had died, she got to the grueling work of separating its juicy legs from the thorax with the only tools she had at hand: a nearby rock.

She was completely covered in viscera after nearly twenty minutes of hacking, cursing that she lost her satchel when landing on the teleportation trap. Getting angry with herself wouldn't help.

She had six of the eight legs bundled in her arms when she finally headed back. Clicking her tongue in frustration at not being able to carry more, each leg was easily a full day's rations for someone her size, but she'd have to eat double to make up for the permanent chill.

- - - - - 

The first day, she ate it raw. Crunching through the hard leg and picking out the stringy, tough meat was unpleasant. But she was raised on the demon continent, so as bad as this was compared to adventurers' dried supplies, it was still on par with a scavenged meal when the hunters returned empty-handed. 

She ignored the certainty of parasites and the diarrhea that would follow the meal. Casting a weak healing spell every hour or so, making sure to always keep her mana above 50% in case she needed to fight.

Days till starvation +1

There is no way the others would be happy with this setup. She smiled, thinking about how squeamish her 'more capable' party members were.

Her cave was cool, it made her need to double up on calories. But it also meant that the meat she brought back wouldn't rot in just one day. Yet she knew that each excursion to hunt was a risk she might die, so something had to be done about storage. 

Each monster was huge and would supply several days' food, if she could store it safely. That spider supplied her with three days' worth just from its legs alone.

She couldn't just toss meat away. So she dug a hole near her stone door and cast an ‘ice block’ inside, before laying the 4 remaining tarantula legs on top and covering it with the sand and guano that made up the floor of her current home.

Casting ice spells inside her unheated refuge was not going to make it easier to sleep at night. So to keep her spirits up, she spent the rest of her "light hours" attempting to make the cave a little more homely. Frustratingly, the cleaning was hindered by her useful spell; it might be helping her see in the dark, but it was still designed to 'hide' the dirt.

Once she knew she was not heading out again, knowing she would regain some more overnight, she felt comfortable sacrificing a little mana to cast two spells before bed. 

She made a flat sheet of rock that lay loosely on the floor, then, after spending hours rubbing the floor and walls to find all the sticky, moldy guano she could, she covered the slab of stone before heating it to just below boiling for a long time. The stone would absorb heat and slowly release it over a few hours, and once the guano finished drying, it would act as an insulating layer between her and the floor.

It was disgusting, and the cave would smell of singed hair and sulfur for days, but she'd get a lot more sleep this way. And mana did regenerate four times faster while sleeping. She spent most of the night mulling over the problem, 'I need to cook, but mana-fueled flames burned things away instead of cooking. I could in a pinch, if I had enough meat stored, but there is still the risk of using up all the air. What would you do?'

After a few hours of grinding her teeth, she finally drifted off to sleep.

Day3

She didn't have her diary with her.'I hope they don't look through in my satchel, that would be embarrassing.' So she didn't feel there was a need to track the days, and she stopped counting them. Tracking achievements and milestones seemed a better idea. Roughly assigning them in her head, what 'week' she assumed they were done instead. 

Setting up a morning routine was a good idea, constantly thinking about her situation was taking its toll. Anything she could automate would relieve some of that compounding stress.

Hmm, simple stretches, bathing, breakfast, and maintenance of my gear.

Keeping flexible and fit for times she might need to flee was a good idea. Getting wet in a cave where the temperature was barely 10 ° above freezing was out of the question. Splitting meals into three per day was the norm, and it was generally a good idea to spread your calorie intake, but with her need for detox magic, she thought it better to skip breakfast. As for gear, all she had was her clothes, boots, mage-staff, and a good-sized rock she used to beat the joints of a turatula's legs into submitting to become her food.

Eighteen, nineteen, twenty. Finishing off just enough squats to start to warm her core, she changed to a child's game from her days in the Migurd village. She surmised it was a way for the elders to teach the young ones some survival skills. 

The children would stand at one end of a courtyard or field while one stood on the other end with their back to the others, eyes closed to try and hear them approaching. While the group snuck up to them, touched them on the shoulder before dashing back to the start before anyone else was able to touch.

Crouching into a 'sneak' stance, she crept from one side of her cave to the other before hitting the wall and dashing full speed back. She kept that up until the point she felt she was about to start sweating; she can't afford to be damp in the cold.

Finally, while she waited for the faux shadows in her ‘dark-vision’ to shorten a little more, she sat with her legs crossed on the slab of stone she used as a bed, she took her 'trusty joint separating tool' AKA ‘rock’ and set to the monotonous task of filing it down against the slab. 

Giving this stone a slight tapered edge would take hours, twelve, maybe fifteen. Normally, working with little purpose was boring and frustrating, but she had no books, no new spells to learn, and no one to talk to. She had nothing but time, so she would work on it before and after her ‘foraging, hunting, escape’ trips.

“Hnng!”

A light grunt, and a heavy shove, and her door rolled to the side.

“Huuu… Fffooo….”

She gave one last motivational breath as she stepped out from what little safety she had.

Day ??

Exploration missions - three.

Hunting trips - three.

Days overwhelmed by the situation - one.

AHH. Day seven, I guess.

Crying didn’t do anything, but it helped at the same time. Reaching the limit of mana came with fatigue, nausea, and a mood change not too dissimilar to postovulation. Or maybe she was just unlucky, and they lined up.

She hugged her knees like the first night. This wasn’t how I pictured dying alone.

The sound of an occasional sniffle echoed down the cave for a while.

- - - - - - 

A few times, she was left with no other choice but to use a fire spell to defend herself. All living things instinctively backed off in the face of fire, so as a last resort, it was an effective defence. 

But a mana-fuelled fire was not natural; it decayed everything to ash. So even though most of the edible meat had turned into ash, she still got a day's calories from the 3 spiders she torched. There weren't any parts big enough to carry home, so she simply ate the bits she could find straight from their corpses.

She was in a rush because over the last few days, between her spells increasing the mana in the air and the corpses she left behind, monsters had started moving back into this part of the dungeon. They sensed prey and found easy food in the leftovers she couldn't take home. 

Despite her skills and her confidence in her reasoning abilities, it was burning her hand on a stone while picking at a corpse that solved one of her dilemmas.

The stones in the area were also being burned away by the fire spell she used, but the rocks were more hardy than the flesh of monsters. As they slowly burned away into ash, they also absorbed the heat during the fight and retained enough to burn flesh in return. Though this was not a mana flame, but regular heat.

Hmmm…

She let out a knowing grunt, something so obvious it bordered on genius came to her.

She hid from monsters twice on the way back; she didn't want to risk using more mana before she gave her idea a try. Waiting outside her stone door was the sturdy icebox she conjured on a day she had mana to spare. Inside were enough spider legs and a hefty chunk of fatty meat from an 'armoured caterpillar '. For her to feel comfortable abandoning the search for today.

It took over an hour to get back from where she had been searching, still no sign of an exit or dead adventurers. Although she did notice a simple side room with a broken chair and a skeleton of what looked humanoid. 

She made a mental note to go back there, she wanted that wood, and a femur could make a good bone knife, but it was a nest for tarantulas. She saw a dozen empty egg sacks; she wasn't up for that risk right now.

On her return, she got to work, she had to experiment and with no idea how many iterations it would take to make it work, she was left in a rush. Her darkvision spell could only give her maybe two more hours of daylight.

She cleared a section of the floor, roughly in the middle of the length of her tunnel, but still off to the side, close to but not against the wall. I need to keep my running track open. 

Once the space was level and guano-free, she began to work some golem clay, shaping it into a two-foot-wide, one-foot-high circle and then to sit atop that she made another that would only cover two-thirds of the lower one. Before adding a flatshelf and finally capping the whole thing on top.

She would have to leave it to dry for a few days, or risk the water trapped inside the clay turning to steam and cracking the thing. She could, of course, speed things up by every once in a while using a warm wind spell for a minute or two, whenever there was mana to spare.

She took another moment to stroke her pride, thinking of the stone oven that, unlike her 'more capable party members,' would not be able to heat without wood for fuel. She had it worked out.

She knew that fire magic would be too destructive, slowly thinning it until it collapsed under its own weight. With a smug grin, she glanced at the burn on her hand that held the answer. She chanted the words to a spell, 'magmaflow'. 

It was an advanced spell from the earth class, it used a large amount of mana, but it was not a destructive spell. So once she filled the bottom of the oven with it, it would take several hours to cool to room temperature. Easily fueling the oven without degrading the stone or using up the breathable air.

A lot of mana for sure, but it's dual purpose so it's fiiinnee. 

With a sharp nod, she agreed with herself. It was for cooking her food and heating the cave.

Cooked food supplied more calories than raw meat, and she would need less calories per day to stay warm: double gains from one creation. Not to mention the taste of grilled meat was superior, and she would not need to use detoxification magic on herself anymore.

Health ++

Comfort ++

Food stores ++

Mana levels +-

- - - - 

Removing a clay jar from her stove, she carefully rendered and cleaned the fat she had been boiling. The fatty meat of the armoured caterpillar was tasty, and it did wonders to improve the texture of her 100% meat diet. But she had another plan today.

Her mana had been at max for the last few days because of all the sleep she had been getting. Yet even if she had 15 hours a day of darkness to sleep in, she still had no desire to get more than 10 per day.

So she got to work turning the valuable resource of fat into something more than food. She created a gallon of tallow, the most important part of a commoner's candle. Tallow candles burned dimmer than beeswax, and they had a smell of burning fat. But despite its tendency to drip more than the expensive kind, it still made up 95% of the candles in the world. And tonight that marvel would line her walls.

She took a length of her spider thread and dipped it into the tallow she made and tried to light it with a small fire spell. She cursed. If only life were that simple.

Spider silk from monsters as strong as the ones in this dungeon was resistant to fire, so she couldn’t use it as a wick for her candles. Well, A-grade thread was not the only thing she had at her disposal; she could use her own hair, like she did when she first arrived. Or she could even disassemble her clothes. She had a sturdy robe, a light undershirt, two knee-high socks and cotton panties.

These were not enough to last indefinitely, but she could buy some time until she found an alternative. She’d start with her undershirt and move to the socks next. After that, she would use her hair, avoiding her robe as that was magically resistant to fire.

Me time ++++

 - - - - -

It wasn't like sleeping on a mattress or under a feather blanket, but she was warm when she closed her eyes. The feeling of a full belly and the taste of hot meat broth to top it all off was amazing, though she did lament not having salt. 'I wonder if I can improvise by rinsing a few kidneys, do spiders and caterpillars even have kidneys?' She did remember tossing out a bladder when gutting one.

The instant her head hit the almost-soft mound of guano she used as a pillow, she fell asleep. This time she didn't wake until past noon. She missed half of the usable hours for exploring, but she didn't care. She was calm and relaxed for the first time in a week, she wasn't keeping track, so the days might have even reached double digits.

The little village girl tasted the comfort of a hot meal and a warm bedroom, so she decided that there was more to do than eat, hunt, and search. While doing the morning routine of brushing chunks of guano from her hair by hand, the memory of the hatching room came to her.

It was filled with an abundance of spider silk and egg covers; they practically lined the walls. She pictured rolling one of those fluffy egg-sacks under her head.

The trip wasn't long, her practice at the village stealth game came in handy. As she slipped past a golem and a tarantula team. The monsters had stopped appearing alone now; the dungeon was clearly changing in response to her not playing along and just dying. Twenty minutes there and forty back. 

She pictured quickly grabbing five or six and running home, but despite their large size, they weighed practically nothing. So she grabbed the chair she'd originally planned on using to cook one meal. 

She'd already thought of another use for it. And also that femur, a shoulder-blade, and several ribs, tucking them inside an empty egg-sack and wearing it like a backpack. Then after sawing nearly two dozen sacks free from the wall using her pretty bad stone knife, she dragged them behind her.

All in all, it was a quick and easy trip. After getting home, she quickly crafted a crude pillow, and in a spark of inspiration, she tied a few dozen shorter silk strands to the tip of a rib-bone. It was a little macabre, but it was an effective analog for a feather duster.

She felt like she was on a roll, two new luxuries made for the day, and some new materials on hand. She spent a minute thinking of what little jobs her mother made her do back when she was still a village girl. One stood out; it took up the most time out of any chore, and there was not a single person in the village who didn't do it.

Spinning thread was a skill that every girl with the exception of royalty, learned young. Thread was one of the most important items in the world. Fine thread was used for everything. Yarn was 12-15 strands of thread wound together. And rope, in turn, was 12 strands of yarn. The fabric to make a simple set of clothes would take 2-3 miles of thread.

The giant tarantula egg sacks were large, fluffy balls of spider silk, long and durable. All she had to do was lightly tug on a strand, and it would begin to unravel. Luckily, the silk that made up the egg-sacks didn't have the natural glue the adults used to trap prey.

Thread was spun using any long fibers you could find, pulling them and twisting them together. A skilled woman could make 40 feet of excellent quality thread per hour. But this spider silk was strong and already very long, so if she wasn't too picky about quality, she could easily make 200 feet per hour.

So in the dim light of her caterpillar tallow candle, she spun thread from spider silk at night. 

After a few days, she had enough to make a simple net hammock.

Comfort +1

- - - - -

With her liberal use of thread, she was able to do many simple things to make her time a little easier. She started by hanging some monster meat to dry, she suspended them from the ceiling on some homemade yarn as close to her stove as she could. 

With the water jars nearby, she felt like she was building a real kitchen now. She no longer needed to risk scavenging as often.

Food stores +1

Today, for the first time, she felt like hunting for sport. Not because she was in need of food or something life-threatening, no, because she wanted to do something fun. The search for a Golem was on. 

She equipped her egg-sack backpack and rolled up her 'rib cage sledge' that she would use to drag her large haul of heavy clay back home. She bit onto a long piece of spider leg jerky, letting it hang from the corner of her mouth as she gnawed at it for the next hour.

She trekked through the winding passageways and past the empty rooms of the stone labyrinth, searching for her quarry. She wasn't interested in the juicy spiderlegs or her prized fatty meat. She was out listening for the familiar "thud... thud... thud..." of the footsteps of the heavy clay golem. It took a while, but the search didn't bore her, or leave her with the usual dry mouth from stress and nerves. She smiled. 

Grinning as she turned her head to the side, she spat the last mushy clump of spider jerky onto the floor. She disappeared into a Migurd-style stealth crouch, her eyes locked on her prey. If she were a beastfolk, her ears would have done so too. 

She mentally prepared her tried and tested combo for clay golems: a beginner-tier water spell on the floor, making its feet slick, a beginner-tier ice spell locking its knees, a beginner-tier fire spell making its head brittle. And lastly, a beginner tier stone cannon to crush its skull... 

This whole combo took 30 seconds and used less mana than a single intermediate spell. She had perfected combat against the monsters on the floor.

After killing one, she grabbed several pounds of terracotta-like clay, piling it high on the sledge she unrolled from her backpack. It was a strain dragging so much back home, but if she stocked up now, she wouldn't need to find any in the future.

Now she could make large amphora to fill with water to save mana on days when her magic was low. And her new prized possession was a Tajine, one like her mother used for nearly every meal. Now she could eat her monster meat in more ways than just grilled. Thank goodness for another flavour.

Water stores +1

Sanity +1

A chair, bowls, cups, and plates. A little crude but luxuries nonetheless.

Comfort +1

- - - - -

Her cloak was handcrafted, tailored to her, adventurers her size were rare after all. She had many specifications, making it rather expensive. It had to be resistant to fire magic, something she insisted on after one trip into a dungeon. And it needed a little flair; she had the buttons custom made. 

The three buttons that let her clasp it at the neck, across the bust, and where the ribs meet. The buttons were large and made from separate materials; the top one was a Millis gold coin, the middle button was an Asuran large silver coin, and the bottom a green ore coin from the Demon continent. She thought it clever when she had them crafted, as an adventurer, she could live in comfort for a week with food and lodging on any continent by just pulling the right button free.

But now the green-ore coin was what she needed. It was the hardest metal at her disposal, and it was meant to bring her comfort, and now it would give its life for just that. She pulled the bottom button free, the powerful jerk snapped it from her traveling cloak. 

With a few hard but carefully aimed strikes, she hit the edge with a rock until the hard metal finally formed a sharp edge.

Then, with the calm and patience of someone who had nowhere to go, she spent three nights slowly scratching 17 grooves into a rib bone. It was not ideal, it was not pretty. But it was a comb.

With a satisfied smile, she removed the ribbons from each end of her knee-high braids, and she slowly unwound the plait for the first time in weeks. She closed her eyes, scooping the locks over her shoulders to pool in front of her. In a simple ritual of meditation, she ran the comb through.

Over...

and over...

and over...

There were no monsters, there were no dusty cave walls, and there was no sinister dungeon boss holding her friend hostage. There was only long blue hair that wanted to line up neatly and form new, perfect braids.

- - - - - 

Once she made those candles, she saw an opportunity, each idea and innovation helped new ones come to mind. And with each successful creation, her motivation to make another grew.

Rendered fat had many uses.

Liquid fat was great for frying, adding more flavours to her life.

Solid fats were very versatile, there were the candles of course. She used some to lubricate the area where her heavy stone door rubbed against the wall she put up. Making it a tiny bit easier to come and go. 

Pecumin was an important part of travel rations. By desiccating meat to a point where it was nearly inedible, she crushed it into powder, then mixed it 50/50 with fat, and had a ration with a near decade-long shelf life.

And then there was the reason she trekked back to the spider's nest, to retrieve a broken chair. The same reason she'd been scraping and collecting the hair from the legs of the giant tarantulas for the past 4 weeks. She needed some potash. With it, she could finally create the alchemical miracle of civilisation.

It took ages to collect enough burnables down here underground. With the one chair, the four or five pounds of random roots she dried out, and the nasty pile of hair she lost twice because the illusion spell deemed it dirt. She finally had enough to make one bar.

Burning the items to ash over her lava stove, she collected it carefully so as not to lose any, then she boiled it for an hour, dissolving it, discarding anything that remained floating or formed a sediment at the bottom. 

Then over a day, she boiled, dried it, and crushed the remaining cake into a fine dust. Then, doing her best to match the weights, she added 1 part potash to 7 parts fat and 3 parts water. Heating it up but being careful to never let it boil, she stirred it for an hour. 

She made sure to keep adding tiny amounts of water, ensuring that it never went dry. She could have settled for 30min, but this was her only batch, and she wanted every last atom to combine.

It took a month, and she could only make one, but this was worth more to her than gold. She wanted to use it right away, but during the slow process of collecting and processing the materials, she dreamed of it. 

There was one more job before she could truly appreciate it. Walking to her hammock, she placed it on the shelf she wasted mana on making just for it.

Letting it dry and harden for a day, she prepared the final part.

- - - - - - - 

Just one more thing.

She'd worked for nearly 200 hours on little projects around her cave. It had finally become comfortable. It was warm and dry, her bed was a soft hammock of the finest silk. She had a pillow and blanket. She had a magic stove and a fully stocked pantry, if she chose, she didn't even need to hunt for a week. She had tableware and cutlery crafted from bone and mandible. Her nights were lit, and she had a hobby. She was wearing an undershirt and panties she knitted herself.

Now there was one last creation that would turn this cave from a comfortable refuge into a home. The design was already made, the materials planned out, and on a stone tablet she shouldn't have wasted mana making, she had a sketch. She made a soot and oil-based ink in hopes she could replicate the glowing magic circles that lit the stone hallways. But alas, the spell wouldn't hold mana without magic paper.

But that left her with time and a sketch board, and with so much time to plan, she worked herself into a fervor about the idea.

Equipped to the nines with her handcrafted gear, she set out on her second hunting trip for fun. Today's target, an ‘Armoured caterpillar,’ but a large one, one wide enough for her to stand arms outstretched and still not touch both sides of its shell. Though she found and killed a dozen monsters, she never found one of the size she was looking for, eventually retreating home to try again the next day. 

There was an area she'd decided early on to avoid because it resembled a grand hall devoid of furnishing. But the large space was a gathering place where she'd seen over 20 monsters at once, if she was going to find a monster the size she wanted. That was her best bet.

It was a bad idea, a personal project talking her into looking for a crazy fight. She’d mastered one-on-one combat with all three monster types here, but looking for trouble with a dozen, and all mixed together, was a crazy idea.

But she was not thinking straight. She was a genius after all. And mastering her surroundings did nothing to temper her ego. Meeting the traveling mage showed her she was better than the whole village. Meeting her first party showed her she was better than the guild. Meeting her teacher in the magic academy showed her she was better than the faculty.

And the explosive growth of her genius pupil showed her she was the best teacher. She had forgotten about her second student and how subpar she was as an instructor. If her genius student were here, he would have talked her out of the risky idea.

But as a mage at the King-tier, she needed the outside influence to humble her. So with a little prep, she fought an unnecessary battle, winning it with ease. “Ha ha ha...” She rested her hands on her hips and pushed her flat chest out. She didn’t know it, but she had the confidence of a demon empress.

When the adrenaline faded, she made a smarter decision. The fight left her mostly out of mana. She worked with haste, finding the largest ‘armored caterpillar’ and hacking away at the joints. Finally whipping the blood and viscera off her ‘bone knife,’ before sliding it into her backpack.

Rolling the large and unruly circular segment of carapace was exhausting. She was left panting hard when she made it back to the tiny hole in the stone wall that led off to her refuge. Fuck! All her planning and all her work on the project, and she forgot about the crawl.

After moving it away back down the hall to keep her magic from damaging it, she used an unwise amount of mana to blow a hole in the wall. The shaking and sound of ceiling blocks crashing to the floor just out of sight reminded her of why that was a bad idea.

She had to widen her front door as well, but the rolling stone was still large enough to block it off.

“Aahh!!! Finally.” It was the last piece. 

Her lips curled into a simple smile as she rolled her prize into 'Casa de Survivor.'

It was a little big, and it would block her training track, but this was non-negotiable. She was installing it no matter the cost. She created another stone slab on the floor for it to rest on before packing some firm clay along the edge where the carapace touched the slab.

She would still have to wait for the clay to dry, because she didn’t have mana to waste after the fight to obtain the armored segment. She settled on stewing herself some meat and heading to bed early. The sooner she fell asleep, the sooner tomorrow would come.

The next day, she poked at the clay to assess its condition and deemed it firm enough for a trial run. To prevent the clay from rehydrating, she coated it with some more of that ever-useful rendered fat. 

Once she filled it with water, she would have a lovely round bathtub. A little small for a human, but for her, a 40-year-old teenager, it was spacious; she could sit inside comfortably, and if she stretched her legs out, she could just barely hook the opposite edge with her toes. She heated some water on her stove and had a hot bath for the first time in several weeks.

She planned on washing her clothes later, leaving them to soak once she was done. The preparations were already done, and she had dreamed of this day for the moment she teleported onto this cave floor covered in damp bat droppings.

Everything was waiting. Her comb was ready for clean braids. Her soap had hardened and been shaped. The water was heated and steaming up her home. 

She had no towel, so she refilled the lava chamber of her oven to warm the whole room. Air drying in a sauna sounded pleasant.

As she gingerly lowered her leg over the side and into the water, she let out a pained grunt through her teeth. The water was at her limit for heat, slowly acclimated to it as she added more Roxy to the water, one limb at a time.

Even before the soap touched her skin, she felt the vile muck and sweat dissolve, floating away from her. With her arms hooked over the side of the bath, she lowered her torso into the water, leaving only her arms and head unsubmerged. As she relaxed, her body naturally floated to the surface, her pert breast and toes emerging from the water.

She knew she was imagining it, but it felt like the dirt that fell away left her lighter. Closing her eyes, she finally felt comfortable. The heat she absorbed from the water turned her face and arms red as sweat tried hard to cool her off.

As her body temperature kept rising, approaching levels that were unsafe for the brain. It tried to dump the excess heat; the hot water made every part of her flush with blood, a natural response.

She finally felt safe, free from the constant stress and her body heating up. Her loins were warm and flush. Before she knew it, the hand that was rubbing the grime from between her thighs had kept a steady rhythm long after the dirt was gone.

She’d pictured herself wasting away in the cave, never to be found, never to be held. Her hands seemed to move on their own. One between her thighs and one on her chest. At this point, she saw no reason to fight it; it was only natural.

Leaning back, her head hooked over one end of the bath and she bent her knees to hook the other with her toes.

She stared past her knees, through the steam. For some reason, she remembered when her student used to peek in on her while she bathed. Once, he playfully said he'd marry her if she'd let him watch. But she brushed it off as a growing boy trying his luck, joking that he should ask again in ten years.

Her eyes closed on their own, and she bit her lip, her fingers doing what her desires demanded. Tears ran down her cheeks; she was so tired of being alone, not just the last month in the cave. She was tired of always being alone. 

It should have been about 10 years by now. Using his father's features to age him up a bit, she tried to imagine how the young man would look today.

Her breathing hastened as she pictured his face hovering just past her knees, lightly obscured by the steam. If he poked his head in the bathroom now to sneak a peek at her, she wouldn't chase him off again.

As her back arched from her climax, her eyes opened slightly. She pictured him there clearly, watching her being so vulgar here in this dungeon. His mouth agape, eyes wide with shock, watching her shamelessly give in to her urges. 

"Master!" As she buckled into her hand, her toes curled over the edge of the bath, she could hear him too. 

"I'm sorry! I'll wait here." 

The intensity of her abdominal muscles contracting made her kick hard, breaking the clay seal between the caterpillar shell and the floor. The bath drained rapidly, and she pictured him slipping on the wet floor. Wait, why would I picture that in my fantasy? That’s stupidly realistic. 

She shot up, looked straight at the mirage, the post orgasm estrogen cementing her desire to accept his proposal a decade after it expired.

 "Rudeus? Is that you?"

As the young man struggled to his feet, completely soaked through by her dirty bathwater. She hadn’t got around to washing her face yet, so the twin tears that rolled down her cheeks left an undeniable trail. She could climb from the tub herself, but seeing him, she felt that maybe there was merit in waiting for ‘charming’ after all.

"Do you realize how long you've made me wait." She lifted her hand in the most princessly way. Waiting one last time for him to help her up.