Morgana: Everybody Loves Large Chests (Vol.4)

by Iliev, Neven

  “Keira, one more thing before you go. Can you forego your after-class walk and be back here by sundown?”

  “Whaaat? But the night breeze feels so good around here!”

  “I know, but yesterday I heard more news about that crazy vigilante that appeared recently.”

  “Hm? Oh, you mean that Sandman character? Isn’t he one of the good guys, though?”

  “He kills people, Keira! There’s no way that’s a ‘good guy,’ no matter how you look at it!”

  “So, what, he should just have a nice chat with the murderers, rapists and slavers?”

  “No! But, I mean, surely even they don’t deserve to be killed off without a fair trial!” the elf argued.

  “The only reason you can say that sort of thing is because you’ve never been a victim.”

  Keira’s uncharacteristically cold words and grim expression made the elf realize she said something she shouldn’t have.

  “I’m… I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to-”

  “It’s fine. It’s not your fault.”

  The elf had momentarily forgotten that her new sweetheart carried some deep scars from her childhood, despite being only sixteen years old. The beastkin had already stated that the whole reason she came to this country in the first place was so she could escape her past, so Rowana felt terrible for unintentionally digging it up. Sure, she didn’t know the specifics, but she didn’t need to. All that mattered was that she would be there for Keira the moment the oddly energetic and slightly airheaded girl felt like sharing her sorrows.

  The beastkin grabbed her shortbow once more, made sure her backup dagger was on her belt, and turned towards the exit to the hovel.

  “I’ll be going then. See you tonight,” she said in a dry, monotone voice while looking over her shoulder.

  “No you don’t! Let me make it up to you!” insisted the elf. “What sort of girlfriend am I if I send you off with a distraught face like that?!”

  “Rowie, I’ll be okay. You don’t have to-”

  “Nonsense! Just have to think of something good… Oh, I know! I’ll make your favorite steamed salmon for dinner, so look forward to it!”

  “Really?! Alright! You’re the best!”

  Seeing her lover cheer up in an instant was enough to put a beaming smile on the elf’s face.

  “I am pretty great, aren’t I?” she declared smugly. “Go on, now. And stay safe out there, love!”

  “I always do!”

  Keira walked out the front door in high spirits and breathed in the fresh morning air while looking up at the sky. Far above her head was the loose canopy formed by a dozen or so hylt trees, much like the one Rowana’s house was attached to. These magnificent plants grew to a dizzying height of nearly a kilometer and had served as traditional homes to the elves since time immemorial.

  Or at least that’s how it was here in Azurvale, the capital of the Ishigar Republic. Elaborate residences of various sizes and shapes were carved into the side of the tree’s thick trunk or built along its colossal branches as if they were streets. Countless suspension bridges connected one hylt tree to another while sprawling wooden walkways spanned between neighboring limbs forming plazas.

  All in all, about a third of the city’s eighty thousand residents lived inside or around the colossal tree trunks, though only up to an altitude of about two hundred meters. The rest of the locals made their homes on the ground, where they were surrounded on all sides by the hylt trees’ gigantic, exposed roots. This created a natural wall, turning the city into a nigh-impregnable fortress. For not only were those roots tens of meters thick and just as tall, but the Ironbark that covered every part of a hylt tree was heavily resistant to both physical impact and magical bombardment.

  Rowana’s house wasn’t built on the ground. It was a cozy little hovel built into the side of the hylt tree’s colossal trunk, near the upper edge of the district’s residential area. This placed it a good one hundred and forty meters above ground level, which was more than a little inconvenient to someone like Keira. She, like all new arrivals to Azurvale, had been unused to living in a city with a third dimension to it. That hadn’t lasted last long though, as the aspiring adventurer had already gotten used to navigating this strangely vertical place.

  The catgirl took a running start and leapt without hesitation from the large wooden platform that served as Rowana’s front yard. A sea of dull-red rooftops sprawled out beneath her as her small body dropped towards them like a rock. Her arms reached out and grabbed one of the many vines that dangled from the street-sized branch directly overhead, her forward momentum causing the rope-like plant to sway back and forth wildly. Undisturbed by the erratic, lateral motion, she wrapped her legs and arms around it and let herself slide downward with practiced ease.

  Once she reached the end of it, she threw herself off and landed deftly onto the slanted roof of one of the buildings that was erected at the ground level. Taking another small run, she leapt down from the three-story-high rooftop, kicked off the wall of the neighboring building to redirect her momentum and landed on the mossy ground with a small roll for a perfect ten-point landing.

  *THWACK*

  “Ow!”

  A wooden cane bonked her on the head.

  “What gives?!” she protested while turning around. She discovered her assailant to be a wrinkled old elf with balding gray hair, a slightly hunched back and a peeved look in his eye.

  “Oh, it’s only Pedro,” she mumbled while rubbing her head.

  “Don’t ‘Pedro’ me, you hooligan!” he admonished her. “How many times do I have to tell you to stop doing that sort of thing!”

  “How else am I supposed to get down, then?”

  Although cozy, Rowana’s small house was located in a really awkward part of the neighborhood. Keira had to go all the way down to ground level or climb up to the thick branch further up the tree if she wanted to access any of the city’s shops, guilds or services. At the very least, the government had installed a robust plumbing infrastructure into every tree, so those living in the upper levels didn’t have to worry about clean drinking water or waste disposal.

  It was also no surprise that Keira’s vine-swinging shenanigans were by no means the standard method of changing one’s altitude.

  “Use the public elevators like the rest of us!”

  That particular function was fulfilled by the devices the old elf shouted about as he waved his cane around. There were dozens of house-sized floating platforms that served to provide the city’s residents with easy vertical access to all major levels of a hylt tree. One merely had to patiently wait at a designated station for one of those enchanted slabs of Ironbark to float by. The automated elevator would stop briefly to recharge its mana and let people get on or off of it before moving onto the next stop along its route.

  “Those elevators don’t stop anywhere near our house!” Keira protested.

  “Then use the damned walkways! That’s what they’re there for!” Pedro kept scolding her.

  Those who were unwilling or unable to use the elevators still had the option of traveling up and down the large ramps and staircases that spiraled around the trunk of every hylt tree. That was how the elves of old typically got around before those magical floating platforms became commonplace. All things said and done, the number of people in Azurvale who performed elaborate acrobatics just to get from A to B could be counted on one hand.

  “But doing it my way is much faster!” the catgirl insisted as she stood up. “Besides, it’s super fun!”

  “Fun?! You’re going to get yourself killed if you keep it up. Not to mention, you’ll ruin the roof tiles of my inn. And my guests are already complaining about the racket you make up there every morning. How are you going to reimburse me if my business suffers because of your careless behavior, huh!?”

  “Crap! That’s right, I’m late!”

  The girl then suddenly remembered the whole reason she had to land on this geezer’s building in the first place.<
br />
  “I can’t waste my time around here. Catch you later, Pedro!”

  “And for the last time, my name is not Pedro!”

  Keira ran off towards her destination while magnificently ignoring the elder elf’s protests about some ‘crazy whippersnapper.’ She’d be in big trouble if she missed today’s outing, as Faehorn was about as strict as an instructor could get. Even if she managed to catch up with the rest of her group, she’d likely still have to suffer some sort of punishment for her tardiness, the scale of which would be directly proportional to how late she was.

  That’s why she wasn’t using just her legs, but ran through the streets on all fours. Beastkin like her had a natural aptitude for quadruped running and an innate agility that made them considerably faster than any other enlightened species. Keira demonstrated these traits magnificently as her graceful, coordinated movements allowed her to move at nearly double the speed of her ‘human’ way of running. Granted it was also far more tiring, but this was an emergency.

  In her haste, Keira ended up causing quite a bit of trouble for the people she passed on the streets. She ducked under carriages, leapt over stalls, swung around street lights, charged between people’s legs and other such unbridled behavior. While she didn’t really cause any property damage, that wasn’t to say she didn’t startle the crap out of a lot of bystanders.

  One such person was a stocky elven housewife who was carrying a bucket of water when the beastkin girl suddenly zoomed past her at breakneck speed. The old woman got startled, causing her to drop her bucket on top of an old, disused well she was walking past. Although the rusty grating covering the top prevented the bucket from falling through, the clean water inside it ended up spilling out into the dried-up water hole. And although the old housewife was more than a little perturbed at this turn of events, the one who was the most upset about the situation was a certain fiend at the bottom of that well.

  “GAH! What the fuck?!” Kora screamed as the cold water splashed over her head.

  “Be quiet, you moron!” Xera chastised her in a harsh whisper. “This area is off limits, remember?! Nobody’s supposed to know we’re down here!”

  “Yeah, I know, I know.”

  The two demons continued scouring the old, disused tunnels as they had been doing for the past week or so. The reason Xera and Kora were down there to begin with was because their master had been searching for a good place to establish a hidden lair ever since it infiltrated the city twelve days ago. It couldn’t just pick any old place for this, because it wanted to make a home base using the dungeon core it had stolen from the Spire of the Jade King. The blue crystal orb had shrunk down to about fifty centimeters in diameter once it completely lost its MP charge and had been sitting quietly in Boxxy’s Storage ever since.

  However, in order to properly establish a dungeon, the crystalline core needed to be installed in an environment that already had a high concentration of ambient mana. The ex-mimic had learned that those colossal plants the elves used as living spaces were magical in nature. They pulled vast amounts of mana up from the soil in order to sustain themselves, which sounded like just the thing it was looking for. After all, there was bound to be an overflowing stream of magical energy coursing through the ground somewhere near or under those gigantic roots.

  That space was where this ancient, decrepit series of tunnels came into play. Unfortunately, it was unmapped and in horrible disrepair. Searching through this literal maze of tight, winding passages based on nothing more than simple assumption was not the most productive use of Boxxy’s time. The shapeshifting monster was already hard at work establishing a new identity within the city, so it had neither the opportunity nor desire to waste time and energy on a wild-goose chase. Thankfully, it had two entirely subservient demons who could be volunteered to do the grunt work in its stead.

  “I just don’t see why that damned pipsqueak was the one who got the fun assignment,” Kora complained as she cleared out a collapsed section of the tunnel.

  “Because she actually knows the value of gold. Unlike you, who only knows the value of a tight hole.”

  “… Okay, can’t argue with that.”

  “Besides, it will be a good opportunity for that girl to spread the Progenitor’s name, not to mention practice her anti-personnel combat.”

  Fizzy’s current assignment was something of a win-win-win, no matter how one looked at it. Well, provided she didn’t go and get herself killed while fulfilling her duty, but that was unlikely. Mostly because the Rank Up she underwent upon hitting Level 25 of her Metal Golem Job had made her far too durable to fall to the rabble she battled.

  “Yo, bubble-butt,” Kora called. “I think I see something.”

  The fiend had just opened a small hole in the pile of rubble blocking their way and was peering through it. Xera leaned in and put her cheek next to Kora’s in order to get a look for herself. And indeed, just as the red-skinned meathead had said, there was a lit torch visible on the other side of the tunnel. They heard distant shouts echoing down the corridor, though they couldn’t make out the words.

  Having stumbled upon a possible target, the succubus immediately contacted Boxxy through their telepathic link.

  “Master, sorry to disturb your practice, but I think we found another group down here.”

  Xera and Kora were hardly the only ones skulking through these ancient sewer tunnels, as many gangs and other unsavory elements often hid out down there. This was the third time the two demons had discovered such a place. The first time was when they stumbled upon an illegal slave market. With the second occurrence, they found a weird underground pub that could only be described as a wretched hive of pickpockets, thieves, con artists and other assorted scum and villainy. Needless to say, none of those people survived their encounter with Boxxy and its familiars.

  “Have you been spotted?” the shapeshifter inquired.

  “No. Not yet, at least. But we can see lights and hear voices.”

  “Then stand by and keep an eye on things. I’ll come clean them up in a few hours.”

  And it would appear that ‘Mister Sandman’ was about to make yet another appearance.

  Part Two

  “Snack, get ready for the transfer.”

  Boxxy’s sudden telepathic communication caught Xera slightly off-guard. She and Kora had been on standby for the past couple of hours, ever since they found traces of life in the old sewer tunnels. Of course, in their case standby meant that the fiend was exploring some moist tunnels of her own. However, as fun as the act was, it was hardly the ideal position for what was about to happen next, so the fiend hurriedly pulled out of Xera’s ass and put her manly side away.

  “Ready, Master,” reported the still out-of-breath succubus.

  Several seconds passed in silence as Xera braced herself for what was to come. Her body suddenly started shaking, vibrating even. It grew blurry, almost as if it were out of focus, and then grew slightly transparent. There was a soft, barely-audible popping noise followed by a puff of thick, green smoke that came out from around her feet with a vague scent of sulfur. The smoke cleared a second later and Xera was gone. In her place was a faceless, child-sized, black-skinned humanoid monster.

  Boxxy grumbled slightly as it curled up on the floor and wrapped itself in its favorite chest-shaped shell. Even if it had gotten more or less used to humanoid forms by now, this was still far more comfortable. It was just a pity that it didn’t get a lot of opportunities where it could assume this form in peace since it had to work on maintaining a fake identity.

  “What should I do, Master?” Xera asked through the telepathic link.

  “Stay out of sight until I have to go back. This shouldn’t take long.”

  The doppelganger pretending to be a mimic, pretending to be a chest had just used a Spell called Transfamiliar. It was a type of teleportation that allowed the Warlock and one of its familiars to change places by tapping into the reality-warping energy of the Beyond. The spell employe
d radically different principles to the more traditional spatial magic, which was why it differed in function and application.

  As for how Boxxy had obtained knowledge of this oddly named Spell, that was because of its most recently acquired Warlock Skill.

  [Demonic Insight]

  The Warlock’s connection with the demonic realm allows him to tap into the unstable powers of the Beyond.

  Requirements: Level 35 Warlock, Demonology

  Type: Passive

  Range: Self

  [Effects]

  Grants knowledge of a Demonic Spell at Level 1, 3, 6, 8 and 10 of this Skill.

  Increases the effectiveness of the INT Attribute by 1% per Level of this Skill.

  This was the monster’s third demon-related Skill after Summon Familiar and Demonology. It was a natural choice to strengthen its familiars further, especially since Snack and Arms were the main way it applied its Warlock Job. Both of them were excellent minions that were just the right combination of dependable, flexible and expendable. Also, the demonic duo would soon gain an extra member, as the monster’s Demonology Skill was poised to reach Level 8 within the week. Hitting that milestone would give Boxxy access to a third summoning contract, and it was eagerly anticipating having another minion around to do its bidding.

  Unfortunately, the Demonic Insight Skill didn’t seem particularly useful on its own. The rather modest boost to the monster’s INT Attribute was welcome, but the Spells it provided seemed oriented towards utility rather than defense or offense. This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, though.

  Transfamiliar, which was gained at Level 3 of the Skill, was quite the convenient Spell, although it did have an obnoxious, long chant. At least that drawback was alleviated somewhat by the Chant Reduction Skill the mimic had acquired at Warlock Level 30. This passive Skill did exactly what its name implied, allowing the monster to activate all of its Spells a bit faster by skipping certain parts of their chants without affecting their effectiveness.