NOVEL NEXT 110 - Hints of Beatrayal[sic]
The work was routine enough to give Beatrice plenty of time to think and channel her magic into the Gem of Mental Fortification.
It wasn't like she was expecting fast results. She knew, better than anyone, that it could take years of channeling to fully Attune a Gem and start to see results, to even tap against the ceiling that was Awakening.
But she already felt smarter, her thoughts clearer, more nuanced, yet lacking in doubt-tinged contradiction, as her magic rebounded from the Gem, water upon a placid lake, and flowed back into her spirit.
This situation was still unfair.
At least she had something to do other than kill tediously.
Or was it re-killing? The Monsters were already dead, after all.
She was still getting a raw deal, though.
She had to stand here in this dank corner of the Dungeon, surrounded by the smell of oil and death, waiting for horrific undead monstrosities with their eyes rotting out of their skulls to emerge, so she could watch them eat each other and then kill them once they started to wear clothes and look shiny. And then she gave him the fruits of her labor, those hard-won polished Gems that brimmed with potential.
And her reward? A rock that made her think faster.
He got to sit in an office thinking up ideas. And he was going to keep most of the Gems and their value for his own household and his own county, when she was doing a lot of the hard work.
Yes, he was making it a lot easier by weakening the Monsters and holding them still and controlling their spawning, but she was sure she could replicate that level of control with the right magical techniques and a bit of grit.
He'd done her a favor in gifting her a Gem. Already she felt her thoughts racing with clarity, and new possibilities were opened to her.
But there was a limit. He may have given her the foundation, but further growth would be won through her own power. Soon, she'd have enough power to strike out on her own and try to make a fortune in the next summer's Dungeon Storm, wherever in the Empire it might have been, where it was far less likely to be so heavily regulated by the local nobles.
And if he wanted her cooperation here, then he'd simply have to give her more of a say in the work, a chance to move to a more strategic role instead of constant dirt-slinging.
He might've gotten an early start, but she fully intended to keep running and one day catch up.
Now she just had to figure out how to say it nicely. Being "nice" (as opposed to polite and well-mannered) had always been tricky for her.
As she was heading back, space opened in front of her, the world rippling like a mirage until a gate rimmed by blue magic appeared. She jolted back, wondering what foul mischief awaited her, but it was only Archmund.
"Unlocked a new power," he said. "Grab some coffee, take a break, and then get back to work. I've got a new technique to train you on."
She stepped through and dropped a handful of Gems of Physical Strength onto Archmund's desk.
"Actually, dear cousin," Beatrice said, leaning over his desk, "Let's skip the pleasantries and just talk, shall we?"
Beatrice held up a Gem.
"So based on what you told me, this Gem would buff my physical strength?"
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"Specifically your durability."
"Durability. And not like… speed or strength?"
Archmund shook his head. "It's an intuitive limit. Monsters can have their physical aspects divided into three subcategories: strength, dexterity, and constitution. The method I gave you made Gems that really increased Constitution, as opposed to moderately increasing all three."
"Wow. And you just figured out how to do this… here, in the last few hours?"
Archmund smiled mysteriously. "Something like that."
She kind of hated how he did this. It had been bad enough when one of her friends was a shifty, cryptic dork (Gelias). But now there were two of them.
Not that he was her friend. Family didn't count. It wasn't like Linus or Calla Granavale had been her friends, and anyways they were dead now. It was surprising Archmund wasn't more affected by their passing.
"You have any idea where Gelias might be?" Archmund said. "I tried to get the Dungeon to find him, but…"
"What, moving walls around to box him in?"
"Maybe once I pin him down. I haven't been trying to develop that capability, since it doesn't seem useful outside of here. Much. A lot of Dungeon powers are only really useful here."
She'd meant it as a joke. She hadn't realized he'd gotten that powerful so quickly.
She looked at his table, where a diamond hand was posed like a morbid statue.
"And that?"
"Well. That one has been useful. But again, only here."
He grabbed the diamond hand, and offered his hand to her. Uneasily, she took it.
He raised the diamond hand in front of him.
A portal opened. A perfect circle. On the other side was where she'd just been working, farming her minions.
He stepped through, pulling her along, and he knelt in front of the spawning pool to examine it.
"You're just showing off now. I was surprised enough when you just popped up right in front of me. Is there a reason you didn't do that sooner instead of making me walk back and forth twice?"
"Yeah," he said. "I only was able to do so in the last hour. My experiments were draining too much of the Dungeon's power and I wasn't making any progress, so I decided to do some personal experimentation instead."
"You really like hiding things, don't you?"
"I wouldn't say I'm hiding things, really. I'm just not sharing what doesn't need to be shared. There's no point in bragging about something that doesn't work."
Beatrice snorted.
"It's not like you told me your whole life story the first time we met," Archmund said. "I didn't learn you were my cousin for a whole week!"
"You forgot. I remembered."
"No you didn't."
"I did. I just forgot a bit because someone was smashing my face into the dust."
"Are you still mad about that?"
"I used to be able to beat you, you know."
He was silent for a long moment.
"Right. Well… work smart, not hard."
She was struck by how much he had much in common with Gelias. And now she wasn't sure how to bring it up.
She wanted a bigger role. She wanted more to do and more reward as a result. She wanted a chance to get more of the payoff. She wanted to do what he was doing — making things better and getting more powerful in the process.
"I want to work at a higher level," she said.
Archmund glanced at her before turning back to the spawning pool. She wondered if she could phrase it more clearly. The words abandoned her, because he was just so much more powerful than him.
"Have you ever heard of mayonnaise?" Archmund said abruptly.
"'Mayonnaise.' What?"
"Ah. Hmm. Right, that's not the word."
And then Archmund said the name of an exotic sauce that she'd sampled once upon visiting the Imperial Capital.
"I'm surprised you know about it," Beatrice said.
"I know how to make it," Archmund said.
"What? Really?"
"It's actually really simple," Archmund said. "It's really simple to make if you know how. In fact, any noble household could easily have their cooks make it for every meal."
"You can't be serious. If it was so easy—"
"Then why isn't it more common? Great question."
He was doing the Gelias thing where he asked leading rhetorical questions to come up with an obnoxious point. Strangely enough Gelias only ever really did that with her, and not Rory or Archmund.
"What would you say goes into a serving of mayonnaise?"
"Cream? Oil? Maybe a bit of salt?"
"Oil and egg," Archmund said. "Do you know how much an egg costs?"
She had no idea.
"Eggs are an important source of protein for the common rural folk, the salt of the earth, the people who don't matter to the likes of us," Archmund said, which was an odd thing for him to say but whatever. "Oil you can press from a good number of spare crops, so it's less of a concern. But the innovation is the technique and the knowledge. In the entirety of human history, in the two thousand years since the birth of Alexander Omnio I—"
"Human history stretches back far longer than that—"
"It was only in recent years… decades… whatever that mayonnaise became… invented. When all you have to do is slowly dribble oil into eggs that you're whisking furiously. Why do you suppose that is?"
She didn't see what this had to do with anything.
"Once you have the knowledge, it's easy to replicate," he said. "But it takes trial and error to get to that point. Trial and error that you can't spend when your eggs are rare, your oil is better spent as lubricant or for frying, and a slight mistake will poison you."
"This is ridiculous!"
His face darkened, and she wondered if she'd made a mistake. But she wasn't going to back down now.