No dream sequence from the divine body that was Eldath. My chest was a bit heavy from disappointment- seeing a beautiful goddess after nearly dying was enough reward for me, as much as I hated to admit it. Then again, just about every woman I'd met, save for granny, was more stunning than any woman I'd seen on Earth. Maybe it was the magic that ran through the very air here, or maybe the ugly simply didn't have kids here; I had no idea. Perhaps I was just easy and found everything attractive. Could I have been-

  THWACK

  "Wake up, you zy shit!" She shouted, kicking me in my stomach as I curled over from the initial hit.

  "Fuck! I'm up! I'm up! What?!" I shouted back, turning up to look at her. I was reminded again of how well endowed this shortstack was, and had to lie on my stomach to prevent myself from pitching a tent instinctively.

  It was likely the survival instinct from nearly dying, or perhaps because I'd had urges this body had needed to relive since I'd taken over it, but it took me a lot of forcing blood to my arms and legs to be able to sit up properly.

  She stormed away from my bedroll, stomping her bare feet on the now puddle-covered and damp stone flooring of the dungeon we were in. The room smelled like spring grass peeking through snow and approaching storms. It was all still pretty cold, all things considered- but not nearly as bad as when we had first entered, and especially not as bad as the fight against the Ice Devil.

  I was still reeling from it; clearly, given her anger, I must have slept longer than necessary.

  "How long was I out?" I asked, trying to fix my hair. It was slowly getting longer- I looked like a sheep with the amount of curls on my head. The horns only made me look more herbivorous.

  "Too long for my taste. We still have to split all this gear, and I was sick of waiting for you to get your beauty sleep. Now, hurry up and help me decide how we cut the rest of this up." She ordered, her voice still a bit shrill to my ears for my liking.

  Grumbling, I crawled out of my bedroll, stood up, and popped what had to be my entire spine as I stretched.

  Bucket looked over as I did and rolled her eyes.

  "Y'know, keeping a sword that close to your body as you sleep is how my cousin lost his gobbersmacker." She said, a smirk across her face.

  I gave her a confused look.

  Bucket's face also went confused, and fshed a deeper green on her cheeks for the briefest of moments, before she looked away, her eyes wide. Clearing her throat, she scratched the back of her head, squatted down, overlooking the gear.

  "J-just get your armor on so we can figure this out. I'm tired of sleeping where a devil was lounging for centuries."

  She sure as hell was bossy.

  I threw on my equipment before moving over to where we had moved all the non-attunement magical items.

  Many of them were rather ordinary, which is ironic for magical items. Others were quite handy.

  "Let's deal with these in order of rarity, yeah? And how useful they are to each of us. We can roughly split them 50/50, although as we were talking about yesterday, majority should go to me, since I came up with the idea and managed to be the reason we could kill that devil at all."

  Bucket seemed to have some sort of rebuttal, but her attention was more focused on the item in my pants rather than the items in front of us.

  "Hey." I said sternly.

  "What? You can't bme me. Its in my genes!" She shouted, her face going a darker green.

  "You said so yourself, we hardly know eachother. Should not be focused on that right now."

  She scoffed, her face still dark green with blush, but a huge grin on her face.

  "I'm surprised to hear that coming from you, pushover. I was sure you'd take every opportunity I gave you."

  I sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose. I had just woken up from spending an entire mental month in a Void I couldn't even describe properly. I was still trying to understand whether or not when I went in previously why I felt exhausted walking for so long, whereas this time, spending so long there, I barely felt a thing.

  "Look, we can worry about whatever odd sexual tension you and I have, if you could even call it that, when we get that anvil. We've saved eachother's lives on two separate occassions now, and we both owe eachother. I get it. Please, stop undressing me with your eyes."

  She was biting her nail as her gre was practically tearing my clothes off my body.

  "You do know you've done the same to me, right?"

  "Oh I do, that time when you broke into my room collecting 'samples' as you hung over me in my bed?"

  "I knew you'd like it when I did that. I wasn't sure if you'd help me unless a pretty girl asked you."

  I groaned, now just covering my face with both hands.

  "Is it your mating season or something? Are you ovuting? Is this normal for you? See big wanker and get all... whatever this is? This is out of nowhere." I said, actively creating some distance between us.

  She just shrugged.

  "I think I'm just a simple gal. Sure, you're not the finest looking guy, but you're easy enough on the eyes, you're clearly packing a greatsword down there, or I suppose more accurately a nce, and you've got enough brains on your head to give me some, if you know what I mean. Also, you suggested marriage like, a day after we met? Right? I think you're the one giving mixed signals here." Her giggles had begun, and clearly weren't going to stop.

  "Cool it! Holy shit, stop! No, ok? Not right now. We have WAY more important things to worry about right now. Go rub one out or something, god, I can't believe I'm saying this..."

  I stood up and walked to the other side of the pile, making more distance between me and the actively flirting goblin. Felt completely out of nowhere. I wasn't going to argue with her logic, and I suppose I was fttered, but I was pretty confident that sex between me and me would literally cause her death.

  Bucket legitimately left the room, closed the door behind her, and vanished into another area of the dungeon.

  I was grateful my passive perception score wasn't that high...

  I started sorting the items into piles, for her and for me.

  In my pile, I had: the Magic Detection Wand, the Scroll of Sunburst, the Decanter of Endless Water, the Manual of Iron Golems, the Unidentified magical ring, the Staff of Flowers, the Cast-Off Half Pte Armor, the Clockwork Amulet, the Wand of Pyrotechnics, the Pot of Awakening, and the Orb of Time.

  This left in Bucket's pile: the Shield of Expression, the Boots of False Tracks, the Rope of Mending, the Hide Armor of Gleaming, the Smoldering Padded Armor, the Cloak of Many Fashions, the Folding Boats, the Dusts of Disappearance, and the Potions of Animal Friendship.

  Next, I organized the equipment I would be wearing. I threw on the Boots of the Winternds- this was an awkward sensation, as I didn't really have feet to fill out the central boot part. I assumed it would eventually adjust as I attuned to it, but I could feel the warmth wash over me almost immediately. Sure, the pce wasn't super cold with the presence of the Ice Devil fading, but now it felt perfectly room temperature.

  It was a bit funny. Before, I had been so worried about freezing to death at night, and now, with my innate fire resistance, on top of these boots' cold resistance, I'd be able to venture nearly anywhere.

  I moved to equipping the Cast-off half pte armor. Much of this armor's protection was over my torso, which I appreciated. Ptes covered my arms, my chest, and my back. I had a set of pauldrons now, thicker gauntlets, and a good deal of waist and stomach pting. Basic greaves were strapped over the boots, and some minimal thigh pting I strapped down too- but it was more bare around my legs. Thankfully, it didn't interfere too heavily with the very baggy clothing I wore on my lower half. It took me about 15 minutes to get everything on, and I tried using its cast-off ability.

  It wasn't a mental connection with the armor, but more so a mix of flexing my back and squeezing my core at the same time, forcing some of the straps and buckles with the sudden bloat. With a few clicks and slips, the armor fell to the ground in its various ptes, falling off my body in just a few seconds, metal cnking on the stone.

  As Bucket walked back into the room, seeing the armor fall away, I could see in her eyes that she still had some dirty jokes to make. Giving her a furrowed browed gre, I just squatted down and began to pick up all the pieces before starting to put them on again.

  Bucket went to her pile and started gathering her items, throwing them into her regur backpack and into any remaining space in her Bag of Holding, fairly haphazardly.

  I had moved nearly all the treasure, gold, and valuable art pieces into the Portable Hole we got from the padin's corpse- any extras went into our 3rd Bag of Holding in our little duo. I had more room in the rest of my stuff, but for now, I just wanted to continue properly equipping all my gear.

  I'd hold my shield and my Staff of Fire; that was easy. Already had the armor. I put both wands into my belt, used some rope to tie the Orb of Time to it, wore the Clockwork Amulet around my neck, and slung the Staff of Flowers to my back, next to the Haversack. Both Bags of Holding were slung over my staff arm, and I put the unidentified ring onto my right pointer finger. Everything else went into the bags. The Belt of Frost Giant strength was great; it would skyrocket my athletics, carrying capacity, and it would even make using my melee weapons viable.

  I would need time to attune to these items, so while waiting for Bucket to take stock of all she had, I started to comb over what spells I could use.

  We had a LOT of older weapons, gear, and equipment from the enemies we killed, as well as almost every piece of rusted scrap metal from the pile in the first room. Fabricate would be nice just to test how it worked, and with my proficiency in smith's tools, it would come much easier.

  I would rather do that in a space where I knew I had no other pressing matters, and access to some stores or fully established shops. I wanted to reach a city where I could buy some items, access some raw materials, hire some workers, and so on. I wanted industry- but digging through Chagrin's memory, I knew the nearest major city was a much farther trek away than I would have liked.

  We'd be flying for now- Bucket would use the Neckce of Adaptation to chill in one of our Bags of Holding- and I would fly the distance or ride it on a Phantom Steed if I ever got too tired to keep flying. This would cut down on our travel time greatly, no more cutting through brush and avoiding roads- I could take the straightest of paths there.

  With everything item-wise sorted, it was now the determination of the split of gold.

  Accounting for the estimated sell value of the art pieces, the gemstones, the statues, and the golden objects, then adding in the money found throughout the dungeon, and finally the money from the treasure room, it accounted to a staggering 355,000 gold pieces and a few leftover silver, after converting it all to the proper value in gold.

  Keeping the same 60/40 split, I still had 213,000 gold pieces and Bucket with the remaining 142,000. With this amount of money, all manner of things were on the table. I could look into commissioning a fort, I could purchase magical items and materials, prepare numerous spells via Glyph of Warding, all manner of things- but living expenses were now very easily the least of my worries, thank god.

  I felt a wave of relief wash over me. I had magic items, better armor and equipment, more money than I had ever had in my entire life, and I had strength and magical prowess. Was it all enough? I had just started. Could there be danger out there that could threaten me? Undoubtedly, no? I mean, just thinking back on the various monsters in D&D, and being meta here, any number of terrifying things could still instantly kill me. Was this realm banced? Or was this just a stroke of dumb luck working with a really good pn? In the span of hardly a day or two, I'd jumped four levels, and now the bears or wolves that used to scare the shit out of me were 1 charge from my staff away from being toast.

  Bucket was busy fixing her own set of half-ptes now, after we had both packed up our gear. My mind was still foggy with dozens upon dozens of thoughts, but Bucket walked over, her gear cnking, her Bag of Holding tucked under her arm. She looked up at me, that damned smirk still wide across her lips.

  "Y'know, Chagrin, you're kinda cute when you're thinking that much. What's on your brain, moose?" She asked, tilting her head to the side.

  I didn't know whether to feel fttered and feed this sudden attraction to me, which I already knew was mutual and was actively denying it, or to scold her again for her distraction from the quest she was issuing.

  "Just trying to think of what I'll do after we get that anvil back for you. This is more money than I know what to do with." I said, scratching my chin.

  "Just you? I mean, I'd prefer it if we stuck together y'know. Our heads are better together than apart, and all that." She giggled.

  "I think you want much more than just our heads to be together, but I appreciate the sentiment. But I've been meaning to ask, seriously, where is all... this... coming from?" I asked, gesturing to all of her.

  She seemed to think for a moment, looking into the corner of her eyes.

  "Well," She paused. "I meant what I said earlier. Cute, brains, strategy, rich, lots of magic prowess, and hung as fuck. Kinda hard not for me to be attracted to that, y'know? I'd rather make myself useful to you than just have you drop me after all's said and done. You've saved my life, I've saved yours. Our debts to each other are paid, and you're already coming out of this with more than you put in.... I suppose I'm worried you'll leave." A small frown had crept onto her face with her st sentence.

  I couldn't help but match her expression. She was right- I had absolutely no further incentive to stick with her, other than to spread goodwill and get her some vengeance for what happened. She was likely the same level as I was now- odds were she could handle it herself without my help.

  I didn't like how what she had mentioned she liked about me weren't personality traits. Very superficial things for her to list off. That ticked me some, even if it was nice to be desired.

  "I appreciate that, Bucket, but I intend to see through to the end of our quest. I think for the time being, though, you should cool your top until you can find some better reasons to be attracted to me. I'm not leaving, but I just don't think we should be cruising that quickly."

  I said, crossing my arms.

  Her expression and tone changed rather abruptly with my words, and she started to giggle to herself again.

  "That means I can still tease you?" She asked, biting her lip again as she stepped closer.

  I stepped back, instinctively covering my crotch.

  "No, no, no... just... just um... gah..." I didn't have the right words.

  "Just do as I asked, and I think you'll be able to do much more than just teasing," I said, turning away to head for the exit.

  "Fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine, ugh, me. Whatever." She said, grumbling behind me. I could hear her take rger steps to catch up again, before we left the dungeon after about 2 days or so.

  Our trip had been extended, but now we had the tools to find what we needed. If it really came down to it, I'd be able to use Locate Object and Phantom Steed to locate the anvil. Even if revenge wasn't possible, recovery of her property was.

  ...

  As we stepped back out, it was early morning. The sun was peeking over the horizon between the trees, bathing us both in a bright golden light. The iron-soaked forest shimmered with reds, oranges, and browns, just like when we had left it all. Shrubs and ferns cast shadows, and the speckled view of pntlife was all the more appreciated after leaving that bloody, freezing cold, stone-hard dungeon. The fresh air filled our lungs again, with the smell of maple and earth rushing into our noses.

  The smallest coat of dew glinted back at my eyes in the grass surrounding the shrine. I knew it had only been maybe two days' time, but after spending a month in nothing but The Void, this was beautiful.

  Bucket stepped forward and just plopped herself into the grass, rolling around a bit and humming in appreciation of it all.

  I only kneeled for a few minutes, offering a quiet prayer to Eldath.

  Be it her, or some other gods, or God, who answered my prayer upon entry- they'd helped, I knew they had done so. I offered my thanks in reverence.

  ...

  Before long, Bucket had climbed into her Bag of Holding, and I hauled it over my shoulder with my other two and flew into the sky after letting my wings unfurl.

  I jumped off the ground before I started flying. Initially, it took me a few minutes to get used to the extra baggage, the newer armor, and carrying my shield and staff as I flew, but after a few minutes, I got the hang of it.

  This was more freeing than anything else I had felt.

  As far as my eyes could see, the continent sprawled in all directions. The forest we were in began to feel smaller and smaller as I flew higher and higher, the wind blowing in my hair and around my horns loud and rushing. My wings caught an updraft, and I soared higher than I'd been before, higher than when I'd fought those bandits with Shel.

  It wasn't cold, it wasn't hot- the elemental resistances I bore guarded me from the burdens of temperature. The Belt of Frost Giant strength I'd finally attuned to filled me with unnatural strength for my body- no physical changes I could note, but it was as though my muscles were supercharged. My back flexed, and my wings pounded again and again, sending me further and higher than I'd hope to be.

  It wasn't like flying as a passenger in a pne- it was like I'd become a bird. The world was accessible to me- I could go wherever I pleased. Without fear or worry of where I'd end up, or who I belonged to, or where I would need to return to, I could feel the breeze holding my wings aloft, the swish of my tail to turn or pull ever which way.

  Excitement caught in my breath.

  I smiled a shit eating grin- I couldn't help but ugh. I extended my arms out, taking it all in.

  I saw the sun to my left, cresting over a distant mountain range now, just between the peaks, as though they were pulling it out from the night before. I could see distant flocks of birds, I could look below and watch the trees sway and dance in the wind. I could touch the clouds, their frigid ice brush against my gauntlets and armor.

  Distant rivers, grassnds, forests, mountain ranges- a desert off to the south and the ocean far, far, far off over the horizon in front of me, endless blue beyond it all.

  Above me still, clouds and infinite blue sky. Above that I could only assume the stars, the cosmos... Was The Void somewhere up there? I knew the answer had to be no, but I could only wonder.

  I toyed about in the air for some time, steadily making my way to our destination now, only pondering this-

  Why would I ever want to leave?