A Sky Full of Tropes [Reincarnated Psychic Child LitRPG]

[Can you hear me now?] I think.

[Yes, I can still hear you,] Pinion's mental voice replies. [What's the point of this, anyway? If you're trying to test distance, I don't think this room is big enough for it to matter.]

[No, just which skills I have active. It should be fine, though. Failing all else, I can communicate with Alex and he can communicate with you. We can test it further when I leave the hold.]

I go to turn Pinion over to Aunt Rosemary and see how my companions have been getting on in the meantime. I find her in the training hall along with Melody. I pause just inside the doorway to make sure I'm not interrupting anything potentially volatile, but they're just talking.

"Hey guys," I say. "Meet Pinion. Pinion, Melody, my party's new Bard."

They exchange greetings and after a few minutes of small talk, Pinion stays with Aunt Rosemary and Melody accompanies me back toward the hearth.

Melody says, "I appreciate the opportunity to work with an Epic Teacher and get my future build hammered out a bit better. Your metalworker replaced the crank on my hurdy-gurdy, too. He said I could get an upgrade to bronze if we make a trip to a nearby dungeon and collect some tin."

I readily agree, as we'd wanted to do that anyway, and gather the rest of the party for a meeting.

"The Copper Mine was a good warm-up," I say. "Before we head to the surface and start hitting your music puzzles, let's hit up the source of tin my uncle's party found when they were exploring the area. We'll be able to make some upgrades with that. It's in orc territory, though, so we'll need to be careful."

"How much of a problem are these orcs?" Melody asks.

"Griza, our Legendary goblin friend, had been going to try to make contact with them," I say. "Has anyone heard anything about how her quest went?"

"Aye," Hearthkeeper Garnet puts in. "She visited the village of Brenig and came back. She said they were stubborn idiots who would still probably attack any stray group they thought they could get away with, and that it might be best to subjugate them before anyone gets hurt. She got a sense that they were strong, though. She didn't think they had any Legendaries, but suspected they had several Epics."

"Well, they probably won't pit Epics against us, at least," I say. "They'd send a group closer to our level so that they can get experience from it. My uncle reported that the boss of the tin dungeon is only Heroic, so with any luck, we should be able to clear it. If we run into trouble, I should also now be able to communicate instantly with the new gnome I just spawned. His name is Pinion and he'll be staying in Hebron for the time being."

Do I need to station an offshoot soul in every location I might care about? I am having difficulty in seeing why I should not. My skills aren't even being strained by this since I reincarnated this ghost legitimately into a fully living flesh-and-blood body that can sustain itself.

Let's not rush this, though. Let's see how things work out with Pinion before we start making more. There could still be unforeseen problems or limits I don't know about yet.

Plus there's the fact that one shouldn't forget that just because these souls also saw memories of one particular life on Earth, it doesn't mean we're precisely the same people. We lived very different lives. I trust that none of them would deliberately go against our collective interests, especially given that my objective is to let them do whatever they want. I would prefer not to micromanage, anyhow.

Before we go, Copper insists that I unlock Knowledge (Metallurgy) and is baffled at how I haven't acquired it by now. I hadn't actually tried analyzing metal that deeply, but there are so many skills that I kind of forgot about it. It's not like I've been following a coherent school plan, despite Aunt Rosemary's best efforts. All my working with metal left it on the cusp of unlocking, though, and just requires a push of actual instruction before the notification pops up.

We don't take any Basics along this time, just our new group of Elites and our Heroic mom escort. I take a look at the party screen as we're preparing to leave.

It's a bit of an awkward setup, but no help for it. Anise isn't so far above us that she'll reduce our experience too badly, especially if she's hanging back in a different subparty and letting us handle what we can. And if I can get some more juicy civilization building Deeds, I'll catch up with her in no time.

I summon a [Ghostly Watcher] to scout ahead and keep an eye out for orcs or monsters, and test my communication link to Pinion at regular intervals. He might get annoyed about it, but he acknowledges that it does need to be done.

We follow the directions that had been left by the higher level explorers and locate the dungeon in question without running into any orcs along the way. In the center of a vast cavern lies a walled village with a castle in the middle that resembles a medieval fortress rather than a modern Hearth.

A pair of humanoid figures stand guard at the gates of the village, and I take a good look at their auras before we get close enough to aggro them.

Despite the humanoid form, they don't look like human souls. They aren't even as complex as the soul of a young goblin. They make me think of puppets with just the barest semblance of life.

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We take out the two Tin Soldiers in short order, and I examine their metallic "corpses" to see how useful they might be to us. Sadly, I'm to be disappointed. Their armor and swords are fused to their bodies and not easily removable, and my new [Metallurgy] skill is unimpressed by the material.

[Ugh,] I mutter telepathically. [Unless I can find a spell or something that separates alloys into their base elements, this stuff is going to be useless for making bronze. Let's leave the Basic corpses.]

[Let's see what else is in here,] Basalt adds. [The explorers did bring back some tin from here, so it has to be around somewhere.]

The village is full of more pewter people, like life-sized animated toys. If they can talk, they don't bother saying anything to us. They all simply attack us on sight, even the workers.

"Why are they so hostile?" Melody wonders.

Anise shrugs. "They're monsters. Why wouldn't they be?"

[There's often alternative ways through dungeons,] I tell them. [Maybe there's a way to pacify them that we can try on the next run. For this run, let's just clear out everything.]

I detect a stronger aura waiting for us in the smithy, and pause outside the doorway to scan it.

[We weren't especially quiet,] I comment as I send along the status window. [He definitely knows we're coming and is ready for us. He's low Heroic and I'm not detecting any interesting aspects. We can probably take him, but Anise, stand ready outside in case we need assistance.]

Anise nods, and the rest of us charge into the building.

The Heroic Tin Bladesmith stands over two meters feet tall and has an extra arm attached to its chest, and is triple-wielding a massive sledgehammer in its right hand, a sword in the left hand, and a giant set of tongs in the middle hand.

I am in no way going to get close to that thing when I can simply blast it with lightning from where I stand. It's not as effective as it was against the lower level monsters, but that's to be expected.

Melody's Bard song seems to be making everything we do a little bit better and easier and I'm not quite sure how yet. Does hearing hurdy-gurdy music make me want to electrocute things more? I don't know, but the monster's left arm seizes up after my attack, hindering its attempts to poke my friends with its sword.

The party takes the boss apart in due order, and we collect our loot. The boss chest in the smithy rewards us with a 1 kg ingot of pure tin in addition to some coins and a ball peen hammer of +1 Dexterity.

We continue clearing the village, finding more minibosses in the inn, barracks, and stable. We defeat them all one by one and take a break for lunch before entering the palace. They've been great practice for our coordination, but the difficulty is bound to spike once we go inside.

The enemies inside the palace are Tin Guardians rather than Tin Soldiers, and while they're still just Elite, they're at least twice as tough as the village guards. We defeat two more minibosses (the head cook and the butler) before we go upstairs and reach the final boss's office.

The Tin Dictator bears a very shiny sword and a very shiny mustache. When we engage him in combat, he opens his mouth and a horrible soul-wrenching voice emerges and speaks the word, "KNEEL."

The Incantation hits us harder than the smith's sledgehammer, and Hemlock instantly buckles.

[Shake it off!] I send my party. [It's just a skill!]

The Tin Dictator turns to Hemlock and says, "SERVE."

Hemlock climbs to his feet again only to stand at the construct's side, awkwardly holding his dagger like he's actually going to fight us.

"Hemlock, it's a blasted monster," Rowan says. "Snap out of it!"

Annoyed, I tear at the mental effect with Sorcery (Defiance), wearing away at the monster's spell with pure Willpower. It takes several seconds to purge the Heroic Incantation's effect, during which Rowan is having to parry Hemlock's ineffectual attacks as well.

The Tin Dictator lets out a haunting laugh once Hemlock is free from its charm spell. "DANCE!" it demands.

The rest of us manage to resist this one, but Melody is left spinning about and kicking her legs. The dance probably makes it slightly more difficult to play, but she keeps playing anyway.

"I'm good with the dancing!" Melody says. "Let's bring this thing down!"

I point my copper rod at the boss and let forth another blast of lightning in between my companions' attacks.

The Tin Dictator turns its attention to me with an uncanny grin, and says, "DIE!"

My muscles seize up. The sword comes at me, but Rowan is in the way with his sword and shield, not letting anything through. I shake off the effect, it not actually being strong enough to make my heart stop with a word or anything, and continue to send electricity at it.

Basalt removes a leg with his axe, followed a moment later by the head. The Tin Dictator lies in broken metal pieces like a toy that had been thrown against a wall and stomped on. Melody abruptly stops dancing, almost falling over with how suddenly she regains control of her legs.

The Deed for our first clear of this dungeon is only worth maybe 1% of the progress from Elite to Heroic, but I'll take every dribble I can get. My skills have benefited greatly, and we've gotten several tin ingots from boss chests along with various minor loot. Jade steps in to detrap and pick the lock on the final boss chest at the back of the Tin Dictator's office.

Now that we're no longer in combat, I take a closer look around. It's like a dollhouse, though. The desk is empty and the filing cabinets are full of blank paper. I will still consider a ream of blank paper to be useful dungeon loot, though, so I take it anyway. The books on the shelves are mere decoration as well, having neat bindings but not a word written inside. I take those too. I have a library to write, after all.

Jade gets the chest open to reveal a pile of coins, two tin ingots, a lead ingot, a cookpot, and a ring. She passes me the latter two to identify.

"Just a straight +1 Charisma on the ring," I say, examining them. "And the cookpot has a bonus to… cooking."

"I don't know what I expected," Jade says with a laugh.

"I'm sure Garnet will appreciate it, at least," Basalt says. "Is that lead? I suppose we ought to take it back. It might be useful for something. I'm not sure what, but it would be good to have some on hand if we need it."

I pass the ring to Melody, since she's the only one of us here with a Charisma-based build.

Just then, the voice of my ghost pipes into my mind, [Just spotted a group of orcs heading for your dungeon. Five Elites. They don't know you're in there. They're just looking to run the dungeon themselves.]

[Too bad for them that we already killed everything,] I reply, then relay the message to my party.

"Five Elites?" Hemlock says. "We can totally take them."

"Yes, but should we?" I say. "My mom could totally take them by herself. We're enough stronger than them that maybe we could just talk to them."

"What would that accomplish?" Hemlock says. "Do they even speak Common?"

"It might accomplish them stopping attacking our hold," Basalt says. "We can try, anyway."