A Soldier's Life
chapter-162

Chapter 162: Party Dynamics

While Raelia was still focused on the headless gnoll, I went and cracked open the chest. Over thirty large pieces of silver spilled out, and buried underneath the coins was a heavy silver chain adorned with a large sapphire. It was an ornate piece of jewelry, etched with images of birds and fairies along the chain, with two fairies holding the gem. The azure gem was shaped like a flattened egg, and its cut made it appear as though flowing water was trapped inside when light shone through it. It was clearly evident that it was an artifact. I scooped up all the coins and the necklace, placing them in the manticore pouch Maveith had made for me while I waited for enough of my aether to recover to bring out the collector.

Maveith was dragging the bodies of the gnolls away from the water source. I searched the chamber, noting that the stream running through it was the most interesting feature. It emerged from one wall and exited through a small whirlpool at the other end. There were no fish, which was disappointing since I had hoped to harvest another assortment of essences. The bushes showed no signs of fruit either.

Confused, I yelled across the room at Maveith, “What do you think the gnolls were eating?” Every room had contained something the dangerous monsters could survive on.

Maveith walked around a bit and replied, “Rats or large moles. There are some small bone fragments in the scat over here.” He was stirring it with a stick.

Raelia had recovered her wits. “Dungeons do that to minimize the aether required to maintain the creatures populating their rooms. There should be something in here for the rats to eat as well, probably one of the plants.”

We continued searching, finding a few holes in the soil. Maveith uprooted one of the bushes, revealing large, dark bulbous tubers hanging off the roots. “Is that a potato?” I asked, suddenly excited.

Maveith washed one off in the stream and cut it in half. The dark purple exterior revealed brilliant purple flesh streaked with white. Maveith looked confused. “I’ve never seen a purple potato before. Maybe it’s poisonous.”

Raelia walked over, took it from the goliath, and sniffed it. “This is a vitelotte potato. They are a delicacy with a nutty taste. You boil them, mash them with browned butter, form them into small discs, and fry them in oil or fat.”

Did the elf just describe tater tots? Maveith showed interest and looked at the bushes. “Eryk, how many potatoes can you store?”

I pointed at Raelia, indicating her size. “I just freed up some space. About that much volume.” Raelia did not appreciate my joke and gave me a hard stare. I took out the collector and approached the line of gnolls that Maveith had piled together. The elf followed, intrigued by the collector.

Kneeling over the first corpse, I placed the collector down and, without looking at her, asked, “Never seen a collector in action before?”

“Of course I have,” she replied, offended at my remark. “They are just rare to see outside the Adventurer’s Guild, since they are extremely rare to find in dungeons and how to artifice them has been lost.”

“I thought the Telhian artificers made them?” I said as the blue smoke was pulled from the body, forming a dark yellow major essence of dexterity. Raelia inhaled deeply in shock at the density of the smoke.

“None that are currently alive,” she said tersely. She gawked at the essence. “A major essence from just a gnoll?” she whispered.

I sounded a little smug, knowing something she did not. “The dungeon has not been disturbed for centuries. Creatures here are more likely to yield essences, and larger ones at that.”

She watched in disbelief as every gnoll yielded the same dark yellow essence of dexterity. I placed each one in the bag as I went. After I finished with the last one, I tossed it to her, and she nimbly caught it. “Only one of the gnolls was killed by the fireball.”

She quickly pieced together what I meant. Angrily, she spat, “What! How is that fair?! You told me not to help after the fireball, and the two others caught in the blast could not even move when you executed them!”

Was I teasing her too much? “You’re complaining?” I asked seriously. I could see Maveith walking over quickly to intervene after the griffin rider yelled at me.

The elf stormed away like a petulant child. Maveith’s hands were dirty from harvesting the potatoes, and his deep voice rumbled in concern. “We need her help, Eryk. She was extremely helpful in the fight, taking three gnolls out of action before it started.”

“Sorry, Maveith. I shouldn’t tease her like that.” I took two of the spheres from the manticore pouch and handed them to Maveith. “You can give these to her. Tell her you convinced me she deserved them.”

“I told you the pouch would be useful,” Maveith said, grinning. Was Maveith making a joke about the pouch holding the spheres?

“Yes, it is very nice. I’m still a little squeamish when I think about what it used to hold,” I said to my friend. Maveith studied the black pouch but did not seem to understand my discomfort.

Maveith approached Raelia, who was trying to clean herself near the stream’s drain. He gave her the two essences. She looked at me for a second before turning her back to me. I consumed one of the dark yellow essences, feeling a tingly sensation spread, focusing on my fingers and toes before dissipating. Dexterity should improve my fine motor control.

I started helping Maveith harvest the potatoes. When he uprooted a large mole from one of the plants, I yelled at him to catch it, but it quickly burrowed into the soft soil. So, there were moles, not rats. With my aether recovered, I sent the pouch to my space and retrieved the small mirror from my barber’s bag.

I walked over to Raelia, and she looked up at me, curious. At the moment, she had no anger in her eyes after Maveith had given her the two essences. I offered her the mirror, and she was shocked and embarrassed by her appearance. She immediately began scrubbing her face. I left her, amused that she was concerned about looking good in a dungeon. Who did she need to impress?

Maveith and I had a huge stack of dark purple potatoes on the tarp. Raelia, now looking much better after cleaning up, offered to wash them in the stream.

“Great, Raelia. I’m going to clean up myself on the other side of the chamber.” I crossed the room, planning to bathe out of her sight. “Maveith, you should bathe too. We don’t get many opportunities in here.” Maveith nodded and joined me.

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As we stripped, I took the opportunity to hand Maveith two of the lesser healing potions Raelia had. “Two lesser healing potions, Maveith. In case you need them during a fight. Let me know when you need more essences as well.”

Maveith’s deep voice was filled with gratitude. “Thank you, Eryk. I have been taking one essence every day like you told me to. I think they are working. I feel faster already.” I arched my left eyebrow at him because I knew that even if he had taken all thirty-eight lesser essences, he might have only raised his quickness attribute by one point. It would not have affected his quickness potential at all. He was fortifying the attribute, and training it would be easier, making it less likely to decrease over time.

It was strange how filthy you could get inside a dungeon in just a few days. The stream had a sandy bottom and was only knee-deep but cool and refreshing. I had no soap left, so I used an abrasive wool sock as a washcloth and gave the other to Maveith. “You can keep that sock,” I told the goliath after watching him use it to wash every body part.

“Are you sure?” Maveith asked. He looked up and muttered, “I think Raelia is spying on us.” I turned and saw a brief flash of movement sixty feet away.

“Maybe she was planning to roast us with a fireball while we bathed,” I chuckled, but suddenly, unpleasant images of being burned like the gnolls filled my mind.

Maveith’s face scrunched. “You should not antagonize her so much. We need her, and I like her.”

Looking at Maveith, I could not see the nearly eight-foot goliath being intimate with the elf, who barely stood over five feet tall. I erased all thoughts of it. “I’m just testing her, Maveith. We need to find out if she can control herself—and if she’s likely to turn on us.”

Things were quiet for a while, and Maveith laid out to dry on a boulder while I floated in the water. Soaking in the cool water felt amazing. “I am done!” Raelia yelled from the other side a few minutes later.

“How much time do we have left, Maveith?” I asked the goliath, who was putting on his damp clothes to join Raelia.

Maveith considered., “We have been in this room for less than eight hours.”

“Okay.” I moved to the shore and pulled out several items for Maveith to cook with. “I’m going to enjoy the water for a bit, but you two can start a meal.”

Maveith nodded and looked at everything, considering. “If we are going to fry the potatoes, I need some fattier bear meat.”

I searched my space and added some belly meat to the mix. Maveith nodded and took everything across the room. I soon heard the two of them talking softly on the other side of the chamber. I dozed off in the water, even though I had not meant to.

“Eryk, the food is ready,” Maveith’s deep voice called above me. He whispered, “She tried really hard to cook. Say you like it.”

“What?” I asked, leaving the water. “Are you sure she didn’t poison it?” Maveith’s face scrunched in displeasure.

“She is eating the food as well. It is just a bit salty.” Maveith confided.

I dressed and sent my armor to my space for now. We had time before our next encounter, and the freedom of movement was welcome. They had set up a nice little camp, and Raelia had stacked the cleaned potatoes neatly. The dark purple made it look more like a pile of rocks. I just hoped they tasted better than rocks.

Dinner consisted of grilled bear meat and purple hamburger-sized potato patties. Raelia looked expectantly at me as I took two patties and sandwiched some meat between them. The meal had a good crunch to it, and it was flavorful, but as Maveith had warned, it was quite salty. I summoned a canteen and took a long pull of water.

I was honest with her. “The texture and flavor are good. Just a little too much salt for my delicate palate.”

She reddened, and Maveith shot me an unhappy look. Raelia softly said, “I thought the salt was flour by mistake.”

“An honest mistake,” I consoled her, rather than teasing her further. I would not say my own cooking skills were spectacular. I needed the entire canteen to wash the meal down. Whether my new sustenance ring was working or my body simply did not need a second portion, I opted for a raw apple to cleanse my mouth instead.

Maveith started cleaning the pots in the nearby stream, leaving Raelia and me facing each other. I decided to put her mind at ease. “If we encounter anyone from my Mage Company, I’ll put you back in my dimensional space.”

Panic flashed across her face, and she tensed, looking like a frightened rabbit ready to bolt. “Is it that bad in there?” I asked, genuinely concerned.

Raelia paused, slowly calming down. “I…I…I do not remember. No time passed for me. However, I was unconscious the second time.”

There was a brief silence while Maveith clicked the pots he was cleaning in the background. “It’s the only way out for you. I promise to release you when it’s safe outside—my word is good.” I could see the doubt in her eyes. “And on the bright side, if someone kills me, everything in my dimensional space will be tossed out, freeing you anyway.”

“Really? I do not know how space magic works. It is an extremely rare gift. Did you use space or void magic to remove the gnoll’s head?” I sensed she was trying to dig for information. She was not particularly good at it, or maybe her accented Latin revealed her interest.

“I don’t know any void magic.” and produced the head of the gnoll at her feet, hiding a grin, and got the reaction I wanted as she jumped up. It was a bit childish, but it proved to Raelia that I had not used void magic to kill the gnoll.

The gnoll blinked, its face sneering, unaware it did not have a body. But with just a few heartbeats, it stilled. Raelia cursed me. “Why would you do that without warning!?” Maveith looked disappointed as well. How was I the bad guy here? Raelia stared morbidly at the head, fascinated, contemplation written on her elven features. My guess was that she thought she could be next.

I broke the awkwardness brought on by my own doing. “Let’s check out the next room.” I sent all the potatoes to storage, and Raelia’s eyes bulged as they disappeared. If the ring of sustenance worked as advertised, this could mean years of potential food stores for me.

I equipped my armor again, and soon, the three of us were walking down the only other exit from the room. It took a few minutes before we reached a familiar-looking room with tall, elevated stone shelves and a small fountain in the center. It was almost identical to the last safe room we had found.

I had everyone wait five minutes before entering first. Raelia went straight to the faded elven writing on the wall. “This is good,” I said, looking around. “We can spend a day here getting some sleep without worrying about getting attacked.”

Raelia turned to me. “It is an old script, but I had no difficulty reading it.” I was going to tell her I could read it too, but I let it slide, as my Elven reading level was probably that of a six-year-old. “It says the next room contains gnolls, followed by phase spiders, and then a blizzard lizard room. It also mentions that the stairs to the third level are two chambers beyond.”

I looked up, confused. “Wait, it says it’s called a blizzard lizard?”

“No, but I thought that is what we were calling it,” she said, a humorous smirk on her face. Maveith nodded, confirming the name.

“Okay, fine. Can I use the thermal stone to heat the magical rings enough for the spell forms to show up?” I asked the griffin rider.

She thought about it. “I think so, but even if not, it will not damage the ring.”

“What about these?” I pulled out the silver ring from the frost salamander’s chest, along with the gold ring I found by the ruined wagons, the large pink stone ring, and the large sapphire necklace.

Raelia’s eyes widened, and her jaw dropped as I casually laid them out. She might have recognized one of the artifacts. She looked from me to the items repeatedly, disbelief etched on her face.

I calmly asked, “Do you know what any of these things are?”