I Am A Table [LitRPG Isekai Progression Fantasy]

He leaned back just a hair. One of his sturdy legs extended a mere inch into her path.

Predictably, Lena's foot caught Blorbo's leg. A startled "Oof!" escaped her lips as the platter tilted violently. The pastries became airborne for a glorious, messy moment before splattering across the workshop floor, strategically dodged Griesa and the customer's face for plot-related reasons, and, crucially, all over the side of Reginald, directly obscuring the corner where the foreign symbol lay hidden beneath layers of grime.

"Fiddlesticks and cabbage leaves!" Lena exclaimed, staring at the sticky carnage. She immediately set about trying to salvage the least-smeared pastries, but only made a bigger mess as a trail of cream and jam marked her movements.

Griesa's face contorted into a low growl. "Lena! By the gears of the grand-daddy clock, what in the name of…!" Her words devolved into an incoherent string of frustrated grumbles as she surveyed the pastry-strewn workshop floor. Then her anger morphed into outright panic.

"My Hidden Locker Detector!" she shrieked. "My calibration-grade aetheric conductors! The miniature flux capacitors! If the sugar gets into the internal mechanisms, it'll short-circuit the whole analysis array!"

She dropped to her knees and began frantically wiping at the precious, palm-size device with the corner of her sleeve, muttering desperate incantations about molecular adhesion and dielectric integrity. Both the customer and Lena stared in bewilderment. Lena put the platter (still full of cake pieces and splattered cream, of course) onto Blorbo's surface then said, "Let me help!"

Ew! Put the sticky stuff somewhere else!

[Debuff: Sticky Sugary Surface]

What?

Blorbo clicked on the notification.

[-3 AGI until surface is clean of sticky sugary substance]

How does that even make sense? The cake is splattered on my face. I don't run with my face.

"No!" Griesa said, "Don't touch anything!"

Just then, Kurix, the tiny rat perched on Griesa's hat, performed an astonishing leap and landed with a soft thud beside the jam-smeared Hidden Locker Detector. From seemingly nowhere (at least nowhere detectable for someone with only 26 AGI), he produced a minuscule, exquisitely woven piece of cloth. With a frantic diligence that mirrored Griesa's own, Kurix began to meticulously clean the delicate device.

As his tiny paws worked, one of them inadvertently brushed against a small, unmarked button on the side of the contraption. The Hidden Locker Detector emitted high-pitched whir.

A beam of shimmering light, thin as a spider silk, shot out, scanning the workshop walls with incredible speed.

Immediately, a tiny piece of parchment, curled into a scroll, ejected from a slot on the device. It unrolled slightly, displaying a list of coordinates and what looked like numerical entries. Griesa, still hyper-focused on wiping a glob of cream from a lens, lunged for the scroll. "Don't!"

But Lena, surprisingly quick, snatched it first. Her eyes scanned the contents, and her jaw dropped. "Griesa!" she yelped. "Why do you have 37 hidden lockers in this room?!"

"I'm not keeping portraits of handsome men in them or anything!" Griesa yelped more loudly than Lena.

"Wait." Lena squinted as she pulled the scroll closer to her eyes. "Why does this mini-table that this lady is holding have a hidden locker?" She turned to the customer. "Do you know about this?"

Finally! Asking the right questions now!

"No," The customer said. She sounded genuinely surprised.

Lena's eyes glinted. "And do you know what we do with hidden lockers?"

"No…"

"We open it!" She pointed a finger into the sky. "And I have just the spell for this! May I have a look at your table?"

"Okay…" The customer hesitantly gave it to her.

Okay, but can you at least clean up your mess first…

Lena took the mini-table and flipped it around, but the hidden compartment is, well, hidden. However, Lena had a different approach, one born of both magical (probably) intuition and an almost pathological inability to follow conventional thought.

She didn't immediately prod at the side where the pastries had hit. Instead, she ran her hands along the very edges of Reginald, then closed her eyes.

"Why do you close your eyes when you're trying to find something?" The customer asked.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

"I'm feeling it," she replied.

Her fingers ghosted over the Konjacwood. Then she began to… tap. Her taps weren't hard, percussive ones, but soft, almost musical rhythms, moving along the underside of the tabletop, then down the inner face of the legs.

What are you even doing, Lena? This is never going to work.

Her fingers paused on a spot near the bottom of one of the rear legs, where it met the table's base. "I found it!" She declared.

What? How? You didn't even look at the thing.

Lena carefully rotated Reginald so Griesa and the customer could see. Her finger pointed to a section near the very bottom of one of the mini-table's rear legs, where it met the base. At first glance, it looked like nothing more than a subtle ripple in the wood grain. The Konjacwood here was slightly darker, that was all.

"See?" Lena puffed her chest.

She then pressed her thumb into the seemingly solid wood. With an ethereal chime, a small, perfectly integrated section of the leg—no larger than Blorbo's non-existent thumb—unfurled outward. It pivoted smoothly on an invisible hinge, revealing a tiny, deep recess within. It was a perfectly concealed miniature locker interior lined with a dark, velvety material.

What? Who the heck puts a miniscule locker at the bottom of a table LEG? What's a locker so small is gonna do? It can't even hold a nut!

"Wow!" The customer gasped.

"You know you could've just asked me to scan for the cabinet, right?" Griesa asked.

Lena just grinned. She pulled out her tiny wand and started chanting the lock-breaking spell the robed mage had taught her.

Her voice, usually prone to accidental volume surges, became surprisingly focused.

Wisps of soft pink light, like miniature, curious smoke tendrils, drifted from the tip of her wand. They didn't strike the lock but danced around it, swirling and intertwining pinkish-colored magic.

With a final, almost inaudible pop, the small recess within the leg fully unlatched.

"Nice!" The customer exclaimed. "Your magic is so good!"

"I can do it too! I have a piece of gadget for lockpicking too!" Griesa threw her hands up.

"Shall we see the contents?" Lena beamed.