<h4>Chapter 1356 Chapter 1356 Tough Environments, Angry Peoples </h4>
?--- Marigold --- (Around the same time as Lily is negotiating with the crab)
Marigold was furious, "Why can''t I get out of these stupid fucking tunnels! It''s a god damned maze down here and I''m sick and tired of it. Sure I can see now that I''ve got a handy light source and I''m doing alright when ites to treasures but seriously WHY CAN''T I LEAVE!"
What Marigold didn''t know, and Thyme was ashamed to admit, was that the underground section hadn''t been set up properly with the teleportation enchantments. A number of entrances to the underground tunnels had been designed to open just as the started contracting to add in an extrayer to things, allowing for far more sneaky around if that''s what you wanted to do.
The problem was, the randomised teleportation setup Thyme had developed looked for a certain amount of connected space. This was to prevent identally trapping someone in a small space, or an unopened cave on a timer. The issue was, the underground tunnel system wasrge enough to not count as ''enclosed'' ording to the enchantments detection abilities.
This meant that Marigold was stuck down there with no way out until the entrances opened up and could be used as exits. Currently, Marigold was wondering what she was missing. She was under the impression that either there was some hidden switch to let her out, or only a few entrances that she hadn''t run into just yet. She was wrong on both ounts and Thyme had been debating if interfering and opening one would be against the rules.
In the end, the deciding factor was that Marigold was doing well treasure wise, technically in second ce. She had ten total treasures, though most were useless. On top of what she''d found earlier on, the spear and the miners hat, she had also managed to find a spatial ring to carry it all. A new set of boots, two useless vases, three bracelets and a cloak. It was a good hall numbers wise, even if she hadn''t found all of the best items.
The spatial ring she''d found was easily tied for the best storage solution, the bracelets all had their own transformations, though two of those transformations were probably useless. The spear was a big win and so was the cloak. Marigold hadn''t found out that it was a cloak of invisibility because during the test she''d identally destroyed the paper telling her what it was.
The challenge for getting the cloak had involved finding a way to get the treasure chest out of an acid pool in a dry room. Marigold being Marigold, she''d simply taken off the ''swimsuit'' she was wearing and dived down to the chest. She''d ignored the pain all the way down and grabbed the cloak easily. The problem was, while the chest and the cloak were resistant to acid, the paper note was only waterproof and it was eaten pretty quickly once the chest was opened and the acid started to get in.
It was also ''a shame'' that she''d put her bikini back on only for it to melt away into nothing. Truly, there was nothing Marigold could''ve done about it, and she was definitely upset that she was now naked with just a cloak. She wasn''t living out any sexual fantasies at all. Nope it was pure coincidence.
Other than the cloak, most of the chests had been annoyingly simple to grab. They''d just been in various corners of the tunnels. They were actually right next to hidden entrances, but as they weren''t open Marigold couldn''t know that. To her they were just chests down a dead end route. Usually not even ones with good loot in them.
So yes, Marigold was furious at this point. Walking around in only a cloak wasn''t any fun when you were stuck in dark caves with nobody to show off to. Sure Thyme probably had an illusion showing everyone what was going on, but she was also willing to bet Thyme was using special angles to censor things so that nobody actually saw anything they ''weren''t supposed to'' which, to Marigold, sucked a lot of the fun out of it.
Marigold let out a sigh as she found another dead end with a chest. Kicking it open she pulled out… a jar of candy? Marigold frowned as she turned the jar over in her hands a few time. "What… why is there a jar of candy here? Do I eat it? Is it alchemical candy? Do I care about the point enough not to try some and find out? Wait is the JAR the treasure or is the CANDY in the jar the treasure?"
Marigold tapped her foot a few times as she considered her options, "Fuck it," grumbled Marigold as she cracked open the seal around the lid and pulled out one of the candies. Sticking it in her mouth she was struck by the taste. It tasted great. She quickly stored away the rest of the candy when she felt her body shudder. Then between one moment and then next she went from regr sized elf, to giant crushed into a ball by tunnels that weren''trge enough.
"THYME! AS IF BEING STUCK DOWN HERE WASN''T ENOUGH NOW I CAN''T EVEN MOVE! I AM GOING TO SLAP YOU SO HARD YOU''RE TREE''S GOING TO FEEL IT! Well… that OR you''re going to give me a good massage, with those hot rocks and stuff. Oooh… yeah that sounds like much better revenge…" yelled Marigold before trailing of at the end.
--- Romilda --- (Around the same time as Lily is negotiating with the crab)
So that coral forest? Yeah, it turns out it was a trap. Romilda was now hiding out in the shadow of a rock. She''d stretched her metal of the entrance and was panting slightly. Dealing with that weird stingray thing under the sand had made hercent. She''d thought that they were the only danger to watch out for.
She''d taken to walking along the ground with tiny metal rakes shifting the sand up ahead of her as she moved. She''d been gathering a good amount of treasure, and killing those ambush predators when she''de across them. Amongst all of this, she hadn''t noticed the real trap lying in wait.
The coral had all been putting off this light dust. It wasn''t exactly easy to see, but it was EVERYWHERE and quite noticeable once you''d stopped filtering it out. When itnded on you, ittched onto the skin and then started to slowly inject hallucinogenic. Luckily, for a dwarf like Romilda they were too weak to deal serious damage or cause anything more than blurry vision and nausea…
But that alone was enough that her control over her metal had slipped up. Just a tad. Instead of raking through the sand she''d been ''raking'' over the top of it and stepped on one of the damned things. It had speared straight through her arm and while she''d killed it now, only her long trained reflexes had stopped it being a more serious issue.
So now she was holed up, hidden behind a metal wall and picking a bunch of spores off her exposed skin after doing her best to treat the wound she''d gotten. Luckily one of the treasures she''d found was a bag that seemed to contain infinite bandages. It didn''t let you put anything else in, but the bandages seemed to have some healing enchantment on them, or perhaps it was an alchemicalpound. Romilda didn''t know, and she didn''t care.
She could feel the wound healing already. In fact, it was starting to itch a bit, but she knew her body well enough to know that it was just at that stage of repair. Give it another few minutes and she might even be good to move around. The nausea also seemed to be retreating. Romilda wasn''t sure if that was due to the bandage as well, or if the fact she was no longer constantly exposing herself to the substance was giving her body time to deal with it all.
*Dammit, so much for showing everyone I''m not useless. I really hope I''m not the first person to get hurt. Still… five treasures. I''m not sure if that''s going to be enough to win it. Heck I don''t even know if that''s good progress or not because I''ve got nothing topare it to. I should''ve just been swimming further away from the ground. I was too obsessed with killing those damned things and checking for treasure around them. Sure I found two of my five treasures that way, but I think it might still have been the wrong call.
Gah, I hate this fucking biome. What I really need to do is get out of it as fast as possible but I can''t be certain I know where the exit is! I''m probably going to have to just pick a direction and head that way as quickly as possible but I HATE that idea. Still, even if I did know which way I''de, I''d be treading old ground and not finding any chests. Which has it''s own problems. This round fucking sucks! Who''s idea was this?*