by Iliev, Neven
“Uhm… Uhm!”
The spider-girl suddenly let out a quiet voice that sounded surprisingly youthful, though she failed to actually say anything with it.
“I’m… Uh… My name is… Tktktk… that is… Err… Tktktkt…”
Her mandibles clicked and chittered audibly as she tried and failed to articulate her thoughts. It seemed to be some kind of nervous tick that she couldn’t control, as she grew more flustered the louder it got. This, in turn, only made the chittering more intense. It took her a few seconds of increasingly awkward stammering before she realized she was getting nowhere. She closed her eyes, took a few deep breaths, and finally managed to introduce herself to her new master.
“My name is Dreaheath Uniolphial Maramakartor!” she rapidly squeaked out. “I look forward to servicing- I mean, serving you!”
Just as Boxxy expected, it was another pointlessly long name that was difficult to pronounce. It was both bothersome to say, and a potential hindrance when things got heated in battle. Much as it had done with Xera and Kora, it decided to give its third familiar a thoroughly uninspired nickname of her own.
“Your name is now Claws,” it firmly declared.
“Un-understood!” she shouted. “I shall work myself to the bone for you, tktktktkt, Master Morningwood!”
“Good. I look forward to seeing you in action. For now, let’s set some ground rules.”
It quickly gave the newcomer the same set of standing orders it gave the other familiars.
First and foremost, she was to protect its life, and inform it the instant she detected anything or anyone that was a legitimate threat. Secondly, she was to never undertake any action that would compromise its cover as either Keira or the Sandman, unless she had been expressly ordered to. This stipulation included the indiscriminate murder of civilians, as that sort of thing tended to attract the wrong kind of attention. Thirdly, she was to listen to and obey Boxxy’s non-demonic followers, which was to say Ambrosia and Fizzy, to the best of her ability, so long as what they wanted didn’t violate either of the previous two points.
These were the main ones, though each major rule also had a bunch of supplementary stipulations that covered all of the details and what-ifs the shapeshifter could think of. It didn’t trust its familiars not to mess things up, even if they didn’t mean to, so it resorted to carrying out what was essentially a sermon every time it had to summon one of them. Neither Snack nor Arms tried to conceal their displeasure at hearing the same old boring instructions all the time, but Claws’s attitude was different. The nervous spider-girl seemed surprisingly earnest, replying to each statement with nothing more than a hesitant nod of affirmation.
“Alright, I think that’s everything,” Boxxy stated as it wrapped things up a few minutes later. “I’d like to give your abilities and skills a proper tryout right away, but it’s almost dawn and I have a gullible elf to attend to. We’ll put off the field test until tonight, but I feel confident you will not disappoint me, Claws.”
“O-o-of course not, tktktktkt!” Drea quickly added.
“Good! Now then, I’ll leave you to get better acquainted with the others.”
With that settled, Boxxy started focusing on the Transfamiliar Spell.
“Uhm! Master! I have something else to say!”
It was then rudely interrupted by the stalker’s loud outburst. The shapeshifter wondered what could be so important that she couldn’t just use the mental link between them. Or rather, if what she wanted to say was something of actual substance, then surely telepathy would have been a preferable method of communication to plain speech. Still, it wasn’t in any sort of rush, so it decided to humor her for now.
“What is it, Claws?”
“W-Well the thing is that, uhm… I uh… Lo-tktktkt… Lo-tktktktk… Huff, huff, huff!”
Drea started hyperventilating, but managed to pause and steady her breathing, much like how she had done earlier.
“I LOVE YOU!” she loudly blurted out.
“That’s nice.”
Her sporadic and highly unusual confession seemed to fall on deaf hinges, as Boxxy replied in a thoroughly casual and uninterested tone without missing a beat.
“I’ll be going now.”
Drea stood in stunned silence with her arms and sickle-legs wrapped around her as if she was hugging herself. Her mouth opened and closed multiple times, yet no sound left her throat. She was so speechless that even her mandibles failed to produce their nervous chitter. This carried on until Boxxy traded places with Xera in a puff of smoke. The succubus barely caught a glimpse of the stalker running away on all tens, no doubt on her way to hide in the darkest corner of the Dryad’s Domain.
The confused seductress looked at the others. Ambrosia smiled with a bit too much enthusiasm. Fizzy hid her face in her hands, as if trying to shield herself from taking any cringe damage. Kora just stood there with an oddly worried look.
“Okay… What did I miss?”
The Boxxy Show couldn’t be broadcasted outside the Beyond and the only thing her master had told her was that it had contracted a stalker demon. As a result, Xera had been left almost completely out of the loop.
“This might be bad, bubble-butt,” Kora spoke up. “The new girl, the one that just skittered away? She just yelled out that she loved the boss.”
“You’re sure of this?” the succubus asked in a stern voice. “She said she loved Master? Those words exactly?”
“Oh, yeah. Loud and clear. The boss just brushed her off but… yeah.”
“Ah crap, this might get ugly…”
“What’s the big deal?” Fizzy butted. “Are you getting jealous or something?”
“Of course not, don’t be silly.”
Xera felt quite confident in her position as her Master’s tastiest Snack, and that was as close to a genuine romantic relationship that thing would ever commit to. The thing that concerned her and Kora was something else entirely.
“Then what’s got your panties in a bunch?” the golem insisted.
“Stalkers have a hard time telling the difference between affection and appetite.”
In other words, Drea’s confession most likely meant that she didn’t want to date Boxxy, but to dine on it.
[General Information]
Dreaheath Uniolphial Maramakartor
Stalker (Hornet), Female, 814 years old
Level 39.79 Stalker
Level 27.14 Rogue
2284/2284 HP (+4.0/sec)
1465/1565 MP (+1.7/sec)
[Attributes]
STR 234, DEX 644, AGI 586, END 410, INT 293, WIS 175, MNT 586
[Stalker Skills]
Stalk – Lvl 10.00 (MAX)
Counterspell – Lvl 8.10
Rending Claws – Lvl 7.52
Blood Gorger – Lvl 5.76
Detect Magic – Lvl 4.08
Magic Resistance – Lvl 2.75
[Rogue Skills]
Assassination – Lvl 9.75
Misdirection – Lvl 7.29
Evasion – Lvl 6.26
Silent Sprint – Lvl 4.62
[Other Skills]
Webspinner – Lvl 6.77
Venomous Sting – Lvl 6.77
Part Two
Keira ‘woke up’ the next day as per usual. She had her morning interactions with Rowana, making sure the elf felt loved and appreciated. She played a bit with Minic, who had very nearly been forgotten about back in the dungeon, and fed it some dried fruits that the couple had bought the day before. The catgirl eventually began to leave the house in order to attend Faehorn’s Ranger course, but Minic seemed strangely determined to follow her outside. The mini-mimic had apparently grown overly attached to what it probably saw as its ‘bigger cousin,’ and would not settle down unless Boxxy was nearby.
“Why don’t you just take him along?” Rowana suggested.
“I don’t think mister Faehorn would appreciate me bringing a pet to class. Especially not with our line of work.”
“Okay
, tell you what. Since I have the time, why don’t we both go? If this Faehorn character doesn’t let you look after it during the day, then I’ll bring it home with me.”
“But someone might try to steal it again!”
“Yip!”
The catgirl hugged the gilded box closer to her chest, as if to protect it. That was actually genuine concern on Boxxy’s part, since it already considered Minic to be part of its collection of shinies. The shapeshifter was certain it could handle another theft attempt, as long as it was around. A weakling like Rowana, however, stood no chance. Actually, that was also a good point.
“You might even get hurt!”
“Sweetie, please. I’m not some frail damsel that can’t take care of herself,” she insisted. “Believe it or not, I’ve been living alone for years. The thug from yesterday just caught me by surprise, that’s all.”
Indeed, though the elf’s Alchemist Job wasn’t a combat-oriented profession, it still afforded her certain means of self-defense. Her father had taught her to always have a small arsenal of capsules and vials hidden on her person whenever she went out. These contained a selection of adhesives, gasses, acids, and elixirs that could fend off an assailant while she either escaped or called for help. Admittedly, it had been a long while since she’d had to resort to these measures, but she felt confident that some random hoodlum wouldn’t get the better of her again.
“Really? So you’d be fine with Mr. Faehorn finding out about our relationship?” Keira argued.
“Uh…”
“He’s really sharp, Rowie. I’m sure he’ll be able to instantly tell that you and I are girlfriends.”
It was a bit of a low blow on Boxxy’s part, but it wasn’t above some using some mild manipulation to get its way.
“Alright, fine,” Rowana conceded. “I’ll make sure Minic stays put. Hand it over.”
The elf took the living jewelry box from Keira and held it tight against her chest. The critter struggled a bit, but settled down when it felt her chest-pillows press against its underside. This let Boxxy to conclude that, as odd as it seemed, the genderless Minic definitely liked breasts. Well, the thing was technically part demon, so it didn’t seem unreasonable for it to have certain urges. Unless, of course, the doppelganger misunderstood its tastes, but now wasn’t the time to speculate on such trifling details.
Having resolved the matter of pet care, Keira left the house and made her way to the Central Consortium building. This time, she used the regular walkway rather than swinging around on vines, as she had gotten an earful about it from Rowana. Having to pretend to care about her opinion, the shapeshifter resolutely climbed up the large, circular staircase all the way around the outside of the hylt tree. Once it got to the upper branch, it rode one of the floating elevator platforms down to the ground and proceeded along its usual route from there.
It arrived to class fashionably late in accordance with Keira’s character, then proceeded to make nice with the rest of the trainees, not forgetting to pay special attention to the tasty-smelling Lia. The green-haired elf opened up after yesterday, and confessed she had been targeted by bullies during her childhood because of her quarter-human lineage. She claimed this experience helped her partly understand what she imagined Keira and Rowana were going through.
The whole conversation was quite touching and slightly emotional. Boxxy’s head wasn’t in it, because of the troubling reports it received regarding its new familiar.
According to Snack, Arms, and Ambrosia, Claws apparently tried to build herself a lair or nest of some sort, which involved webbing up a part of the dungeon’s interior. Her stalker body allowed her to produce a near-unlimited amount of sticky spider silk that shot out from her palms in thick, sturdy ropes. She could also discharge the same stuff from the tips of her claws in thin, fine strands. The stalker was then able to spend MP to alter the strands’ elasticity, thickness, or stickiness at will, all as part of her Webspinner Skill.
Boxxy initially failed to see this as an issue. Those webs were conjured entirely through magic, which meant they would disappear into nothingness after a short while. However, a stalker’s webbing seemed to be special. Apparently, this sticky silk could persist for weeks or maybe even months if left undisturbed, even if the demon that created them was sent back to the Beyond. Still, the Dryad’s Domain had been established within an incredibly spacious cavity in Ambrosia’s trunk, so it wasn’t as if Claws’s hobby was getting in the way.
The real trouble had begun when Snack realized that her new co-contractor’s webs looked, in the succubus’s own words, ‘deliciously flammable.’ She had then proceeded to test this theory out by flinging a Fireball at the barn-sized mass of stalker-silk that Claws had spent all morning making. Snack’s hunch proved right when the entire thing went up in flames, blazing out of existence in a matter of seconds. This naturally made the spider-girl incredibly pissed off, as she had been planning to mope about in her new spider-home until Boxxy returned to the dungeon.
The shapeshifter’s orders prevented the stalker from resolving this matter by murdering the ever-loving crap out of the slutty pyromaniac. Claws instead handled this dilemma by paralyzing Snack with her Venomous Sting, wrapping her up in a cocoon of webs, and hanging her from a high branch somewhere outside the dungeon. The succubus eventually recovered enough to burn off her bonds, but the two of them were clearly at each other’s throats.
Arms, on the other hand, had reached some sort of silent agreement with Claws, and the two avoided each other completely. A physical confrontation between them was just impossible, as the fiend was the worst type of combatant a stalker demon could go up against—stubborn, sturdy, and armored enough to deflect her attacks. Even if Claws’s natural weapons were sharp enough to slice through meat and bone, they were nowhere near durable enough to penetrate the metallic plating that fiends could manifest.
Bottom line was, while Arms and Snack got along with one another, Claws was left as something of an outcast. Boxxy decided this could not be allowed to continue, as it was steadily learning that interpersonal relationships could make or break an otherwise outstanding adventurer team. That wasn’t quite the same as a group of monsters and demons bound together by a bunch of magical contracts, but some of it still held true. Even if the three demons could be ordered to work together, true cooperation was not something that could be made possible through contracts alone.
Come to think of it, didn’t something like this happen before? Boxxy thought back on when it first acquired Arms, and the outright hostile way she treated Snack over the next few days. Although the then-mimic lacked the mental capacity and emotional understanding to notice or care about their relationship, it could not recognize just how bad it had been. The succubus and fiend had not gotten along the slightest, and that was putting it lightly. Though they still bickered about this and that every now and then, their relationship had become significantly less hostile since then. The catalyst that allowed for such a thing to happen had been Boxxy’s permission to allow its familiars to sort their issues out among themselves as fellow demons.
Therefore, the solution to this latest interpersonal conflict was a simple one.
“Just for today, I’m allowing you to kill, maim and murder your fellow familiars all you want.”
The shapeshifter sent the same mental command to Snack, Arms, and Claws. It then made sure to turn on the auto-repair function of the dungeon’s Terrain Sculpting module, and told Ambrosia to record what was about to happen with the Surveillance Net. This put a temporary strain on the core’s MP reserves, but it would allow Boxxy to review the footage later and get a better idea of what its demons were capable of. Ideally, the shapeshifter would’ve liked to observe the festivities as they unfolded, but was currently preoccupied with the hunting and tracking exercises that Keira had been assigned.
The truly difficult part of Faehorn’s classes was practicing the Marksman Martial Arts. Activating them was simple enough, almost as if casting a Spell
with one’s body, but the problem was they could trigger the Chaotic Disposition Skill’s random magical effects. There was this one time when the Skill caused a small, localized earthquake around Keira, or when it suddenly turned her body invisible, but not her equipment. Boxxy had been able to keep such side-effects hidden for the moment, but that Skill was an accident waiting to happen. After all, something like a newbie Ranger suddenly bursting into flames for no discernable reason was bound to invite the wrong kind of attention, especially if said newbie emerged unscathed. The young doppelganger was therefore forced to make every plausible excuse it could think of to avoid using any of those Martial Arts while other people were around.
Since part of the day’s exercise was a light hunt, Boxxy’s Ranger Job finally reached Level 15. It picked up the Whisper Wind Skill, which could be used to stealthily communicate with others at long distances. Boxxy was not very enthusiastic about it, as it really didn’t need such a Skill. However, it was a necessity for fitting in as Keira. Faehorn was training them up to be scouts and spotters, so this Skill was mandatory in his opinion. If it wasn’t for that guy, Boxxy would have definitely opted for the Magic Arrows Skill instead, which could be used to conjure specialty ammunition out of thin air. But, in the end, the Ranger Job’s main function was to serve as Keira’s cover, so it was not that big a deal if Boxxy picked up a few less-than-stellar Skills. Besides, it wasn’t as if these abilities were completely useless. Whisper Wind could, for instance, be used to stealthily communicate with Fizzy or the shapeshifter’s Mirror Images, who couldn’t hear its mental commands.