Chapter twenty-one

  Lord Tyler’s sn greeted Harmony as she stepped out of the shadows. The lord looked peaceful, a state she wished she could join him in but knew her mind wouldn’t let her. The letter she left about taking a breather sat unopened. She picked it up and shoved it int.

  Instead, she focused on ing up the lodge. Sinking into the menial tasks of her profession. Dusting, washing, tidying up. Tyler’s armor needed polishing, and while [Small Armor] wasn’t the same as the [Heavy Armor] skill, it gave her enough of a glimpse into what she should do to take care of it.

  They had another day at the lodge booked. The pn for a sed dungeon diving run had been oable, but now it wasn’t wanted or needed. Problems waited back at the manor, ones she had no idea how to solve. And if her new pet couldn’t behave for a day with her gone, her situation was hopeless.

  Only after the lodge otless did Harmony sit to rest her eyes.

  The crash of dishes woke her. Lord Tyler stood at what had once been, prior to the maid closing her eyes, a spotless food prep area. It was like a ary bomb went off, the victims of which y scattered across two ptes.

  “I made breakfast!” Tyler announced.

  Disasters piled upon disasters. “Thanks, my lord,” Harmony responded, almost happy at how simple this one was. A messy kit she could handle.

  “You were so beautiful sleeping there that I didn’t want to disturb you.”

  Harmony’s happiness from an easily solvable problem colpsed in the face of awkward pliments.

  “I unlocked my stats. I know the team is splitting up, but they did wager on it.”

  Harmony offered the distra while taking the pte. She picked at the poorly anized colle of food bits. As a failure in cooking, it was still better than some of her past attempts.

  “We’re actually pnning oing for lunch. They felt bad about leaving you for dead. It’s also a goodbye for Rose, who’ll leave for the capitol soon. If we don’t follow through on the wager, what’s the point of making one. I’m sure the team will be happy to use that to decide who’s paying for the meal. That means you got a new css skill?”

  Harmony nodded. “Hand me yss.”

  His juice, like hers, robably half warm. Harmony focused on [Cold Touch]. Chilling the liquid tion, but she wao avoid any risk of neantic spoiling and instead focused on the gss, letting the skill cool it until her fingers felt a little numb.

  “Your chilled drink.”

  That way, he expected the cold before taking the cup and drinking.

  “Oh, grandma will love this. She oftes transferring the ice, well now blizzard mage, to the capitol so she work on her post-evolution growth.”

  She flexed [Poise and Bearing] to remain impassive. If the matriarch loves this for the summer, then there will be no doubt that Bates will shift her role to be the woman’s personal maid, repg Astel. Moving on and up is iable. She wondered if Tyler realized that would mean he’d see less of her. Maybe one girl isn’t too different from another if Jessica is to be believed.

  “Cold drinks ay treatments. I’m sure the gods are having a good ugh at how we use our skills.”

  “Fire isn’t only meant to light the night.” Tyler tered.

  Harmony had read that book too, because it was Tyler’s. She’d miss all the new books he’d acquire if she was transferred. And Tyler wasn’t so... her beginnings of a positive thought froze wheched his eyes slip down to her chest. Tyler could grow up more.

  “I’ll o an outfit to have ready for lunch. Some time to foy leveling ges won’t hurt, either. Knock when it is time to go.”

  With [Style and Grace], the maid smoothly moved away from the meal. She sidered it less a retreat than a regrouping because the words had some truth. She’d used up her outfits and needed a ge there.

  “Oh… okay.” Lord Tyler stuttered a little.

  Harmo go of the social skill as the door clicked shut to her smaller room and allowed herself to slump down. So many things had happehat it was hard to feel settled, yearning for that reserved state she liked. In a spark of inspiration, she forced a synergy with [Cold Touch] and [Poise and Bearing]. The two wouldn’t normally synergize, but bridging them a little with the e stat. A cold, ung, detached feeling overcame her. The first thought was that if she killed everyone, her problems would disappear.

  Hyath, who’d been sn in the er, awoke in a panic. His energy booted her through their [Familiar Bond].

  The Neaumped to the side as her soul took a bludgeoning internally. The throttling shook her out of that dissociated state.

  Don’t be stupid, Stupid. Hyath chastised her verbally through their bond for only the sed time since gaining the ability.

  “Yeah, thanks.” She told the toad.

  He grumbled grumpily aled bat to sleep.

  Scary binations, scary potential, scary problems. Clearly, some things should not be mixed. It almost made the simple idiocy of Thibodeux’s focus on activations appealing. As much as there was the risk of metaphysically stabbing herself, she knew her method of using skills was who she was, and the stats she unlocked backed that up. Everyone agreed going against your nature led to stalled adva.

  She reached doetted her familiar, stroking the back of her already sleeping shadow toad. The love, amusement, g, and anger from her partner meant that she’d never be alone in this. She knew he wouldn’t want to be woken up again, so she swore off anything too radically different from what she’d attempted in the past.

  The flower dress had been hand washed and dried sihe abuse at the dungeon club. That didn’t mean it couldn’t be er. [Dust] with a little oomph behind it stripped out the ground in bits of dirt, leaving the whole thing a tad more vibrant even if it added a little extra wear and tear in the process.

  What she really wao do was modify it. The fiber and even some of the dye used were from dead materials. But like with books, it was highly processed, which made it difficult to manipute. These kinds of people she was joining for lunch rarely wore outfits more than a handful of times, and she didn’t want to show up in the same outfit she’d worn only a couple of days ago.

  The st time she’d tried modifying something like this was months ago. A lot has ged sihen. Skill levels, a way to empower an attempt, and now stats that could help with the process. Best of all, it should be a safe way to test how far she’s e sihen.

  She ran her hands across the dress. Pnt fibers and some of the flowers stitched into the dress were wool. All teically dead, but her css wasn’t feeling it. She leaned into her e stat to see what she could get out of it. It was like ing out clogged pipes, pushing and scraping until the old pathways opened. Even then, she could feel the e degrading, the link clogging back up.

  It created a time ch. [Beauti], style, from [Style and Grace], and [Manipute Dead] surged together as the neancer maid pulled at whatever synergy she could get to make her idea e to life, f it with her stats when she had to. She imagined a soft flowing dress simir to what she saw iriarch’s sketches. Colorful and fmboyant.

  The material thinned and softened, pnt and animal fibers mixing. Colors blurred together, washing out what had once been stitched flowers. Neantiergy surged through those carved and cleared es. It bent and shaped the fibers taking more power than ging the shape and color of hair and nails.

  So muergy, the first bit of pnt and animal cell mix ed u, being a ed bck spot.

  “Oh no.”

  ostasis kicked in, slowing everything down. She tapped down on the energy she used through the skills, but what she’d sent was already ing. The jagged bck spot expanded, and new ones bloomed. The soft texture she’d been aiming for became slick, bck, a looking. A hole started to form.

  “No. No. No. No. No.” She didn’t want to be forced to wear her peasant-like pants and shirt, her maid outfit, or the new armor. That was sure t back memories of the disastrous dive.

  [Mana Rotation] activated to boost [Renew Spirit]. She threw that into the mix, hoping to revitalize what was staying together and halt the new ges.

  The dress glowed as the skill not built to work clothing shoved into the rebuilt e and into the eic mix from [Manipute Dead]. While both neantiergies pyed almost opposite funs in affeg dead material, they weren’t pletely inpatible.

  It did slow down the destru of the material, but it tio ge into that shiny bck material. Inside of that flecks of bioluminesce bloomed from the [Renew Spirit], freg the dress like a sea of stars that emitted faint bits of pale green and blue light.

  The beautiful idea torn from the fashioches was wiped away with a wave of out-of-trol power, leaving a dress that looked nothing like what Harmony desired or wanted.

  She expected the bits of light to die off as the skills’ as faded, but they stayed. The es she had forced open filled, and the outfit settled. It felt as separated from her css as it did whearted, maybe even farther apart, as the process had snapped and broken some of the old history of death within the garment. Whatever effect she had forced upon it was done.

  Frustrated, Harmony forced herself to look at her failure with dispassion. The smooth bck surface ealing, refleg light more like a polished stohan a piece of cloth. She tugged at it, ae some minor shri was more estic tha fiber had been. Squeezing into it ossible. The motes of light made it enting, to the point where it looked like a fancy magical creation. Which she supposed it was, even if formed from skill usage gone wrong. More importantly, it didn’t look like something bought from a cheap store, and it wouldn’t show the massive amount of skin her maid uniform or the armor would.

  A pauper of options, she sighed, stripping, then sliding the thing on, squeezing into it, stretg the new dress with her body as she forced into the tight bits through the estiature of it.

  Tight but not restraining enough to cause her movement or attack skills to pin. The dress jaggedly cut off above her knees but hugged her all the way to that point, stretg but thankfully not riding up as she made a few test strides. The hole left a bare patch across her back but didn’t tear at all, merely stretg like the rest of the dress.

  The image she saw in the small mirror of the guest room was striking, unusual, and, while form-fitting, covered most of her skin except for below the knees and the swath across her back. [Style and Grace] and the [Beauti] skills agreed that it would do, though there was a hint that she could use make-up and work on her hair.

  Blue highlights and a touch of waviness. It was relieving to use a light toud get those simple ges made after the work from the dress.

  It would take months of tinkering to figure out how the new skills and her unlocked stats worked together to get the effects she wanted. She knew what she needed as an actual teacher, a tutor to help. An unaffordable and time plig dream, even if she didn’t have to worry about her new pet plig her life. Fear of someone barging into the lodge and taking her into custody came. News of what happened had to be spreading. It happened ho. If they were going to burst in, she k would have happened by now.

  Oask at a time. There was a lunch to go to and a new dress to show off.