Chapter 57

Night of Day 12 since entering the gnome’s warren

I fell asleep. I’m really tired. I think I fell asleep before my head even hit the ground. I went to bed before the others, but Asakura and the gnome guards are still watching over me. Today I felt the need for rest and for crashing into sleep early.

When I wake up I’m in the dream state.

The familiar training ground that I’m in now feels good. Except that I can’t use it to its fullest right now. All I can do is a waiting game and hope things will be fine. I want to be and do more but I have limits.

There’s no way around it. I have to make something happen. I’m totally desperate and at a dead end.

I have to find Fox Girl, where she’s sleeping and wake her up. It’s my best chance. She probably won’t like it. But what choice do I have?

Of course I have the patience to wait for three days to heal or whatever it is. But the problem is all the loose ends and problems that are still happening during all that time. People will still die while I’m trying to heal up.

I’m in the training room. I have stored away the note pages that Fox Girl wrote in my item box area so they won’t be lost or damaged. I get my weapons ready just in case. The dwarven war hammer is hanging from my belt, while I keep the fireman’s axe ready.

I have no idea what will happen by anything I try so I want to plan for surprises.

Let’s see how did Fox Girl do it? Getting to her for help is my only chance it seems. I have to figure out two problems.

First, where is she within the box?

And second of all, how do I get to her?

I’ve been going over every inch of the wall in the training room inspecting the masonry. I’m looking for anything I can use to try to find ways into other rooms. After an hour I realize that this strategy won’t get anywhere.

I used the hammer also to tap places in the wall to check for secret doors or hidden spots.

The walls physically within the dream state won’t help me figure out how she got from room to room. I have to go over it piece by piece and start over from the beginning. That’s very difficult because of the mental block of thinking of hating to start over, but it’s all I can do.

It was like she did this gravity well thing through the wall when she moved us around. So she probably had to think about where she wanted to go right? I also wondered…wait a minute. It probably wasn’t a real gravity element she’d used but just felt like it from bending space time, I reasoned.

It doesn’t go well so I shelf that idea for awhile. I decide to come back to it later when I’m fresher and have other perspective or more power to deal with it.

There’s something I want to try first.

I open up the spatial inventory demon item box. Then after that I also open up the hidden area of the box.

I make it on my agenda to trick Fox Girl into revealing more of her skills to me. If I can emulate the paladin’s skills then wouldn’t it be even more useful to emulate Fox Girl’s? Her skills would also be very practical I’m sure.

Fox Girl’s power or one of her powers is altering reality right? That means she’s probably good at illusions and stuff like that. Of course she has many tricks. She’s so cunning I probably haven’t even seen a tenth of her moves. Every time I see a move that she can do is a potential win for me, since I can figure out and try to take it apart. Even if I can’t copy or emulate all of her moves, even if I only get one out of ten it’s still a great increase in utility and power.

That’s a plan for a future day too. But it will have to wait till I’m cured.

But inside the box there are so many things I don’t know still.

What if she’s been tricking what I am seeing? I can’t throw anything away and I have to be careful what I do with anything in the box. Some things might not seem as they are.

But I have an idea of something to try.

After opening up the item box pocket dimension so its facing open towards me I reach out down into the dirt, picking up several handfuls of sand I place them all in a big pile on the table. Of course I’m picky so I pick the cleanest best looking sand. I also avoid particulates that look like the broken crystal parts that I have.

I don’t want to mix them up. I also don’t want to be cut by some of the sharper shards.

Carefully I pick up a good amount filling my fist. Then I start sprinkling it over the empty spots in the demon box’s inventory system. If I’m right then if there’s something there that she’s made hidden, or made me unable to see it will push the sand away from it revealing it.

I don’t need to sprinkle sand over everything, but just spots that look like they’d be the next thing to be looked at. But there are other issues too. The storage area of the crystal graveyard was in one of the slots is an area I don’t want sand to be mixed in with the crystal fragments.

So I avoid that area but work around everything.

Piece by piece sand goes over each slot without any problems.

But when I get to the area where the four original crystals were at that I first received I make a discovery. The fifth slot over, which is right after the fourth slot bends the sand around it pushing it outward and away as if there’s some kind of invisible bubble there! When I poured sand into that slot, none of it falls into the spot where it should.

WOW!

Bingo.

There’s definitely something there.

I’m so excited I forget to breathe for about ten seconds. Then the air comes out in a big huff. I can feel that I’m getting close. I stop pouring the sand to get a better look and get closer. I feel around. There’s something there. But it’s like there’s also not just the optical effect but something else there too.

When try to pick it up suddenly I lost my train of thought.

What was I doing? I’m very confused. I feel like I was doing something but find myself staring into blank space. This isn’t like me.

I forgot. Why can’t I remember? It was like something just made me all lost. I don’t know what I just lost but I feel like that feeling when you are trying to remember something and it’s on the tip of your tongue.

Wait a minute. What was it? What was I doing just now?

I do remember how desperate I am. I can’t remember why I was desperate though suddenly. What was I doing?

Parts of it start to come back to me. I was very desperate to find someone…who was it?

The idea hits me like a truck of bricks. Oh that’s right. I’m in trouble right now; I have to find Fox Girl. It’s my only chance.

Why. Why it is my only chance though? I was desperate for a reason? Oh something happened to mess up my thoughts.

What was it again? I lost my thought. What just happened? I’m again facing the blank wall in a stupor. It looks like I’ve been sitting there for awhile and I see many piles of sand in front of me.

But why was I collecting sand piles? Was there a reason for that?

Think…what was I doing? And why I am so disorganized all the sudden?

I was doing something to find her I realize after fumbling around for another twenty minutes.

Oh yeah I was desperate. But why was it? Why was I in such a feverish state to fight forward?

I need to pour sand in the box to find the hidden crystal. I snap my fingers remembering it.

Oh wait I did that already. Or did I? I see the sand in the item box slots. But I see many piles of sand. I only needed one, not ten or more. Why would I do that?

Why can’t I concentrate?!

What the hell is wrong with me?!

But if there’s sand already in the box I must have done that already. But did something make me forget? I wasn’t normally a person that would forget things. I had been about to reach into the box at a particular spot.

Oh…it’s coming to me now. There’s something in the box. I’m about to touch it but suddenly I wait. I can feel a sense of warning ticking in the back of my mind. The warning isn’t ticking from the box or from a person but the warning seems to be that something doesn’t feel right.

This happened several times in a row with forgetting and trying to remember what I was doing! But because my ‘INT’ (Intelligence) stat is so good, I kept circling right back to where I was at the beginning before discovering it!

I realize the warning is my inner sense making me think that I shouldn’t have forgotten and had a stupor of thought. There was no reason for that many sand piles too. They are the big clue and I finally realize what it is.

That’s right. I’ve got it now. Everything is clear to me now.

Fox Girl booby trapped her crystal now to have some kind of memory stun or memory reset trap. But I’d been so desperate to find her and wake her up that I’d triggered the trap many times in a row. That was why there were a dozen or more piles of sand. It must have gone off at least twice, but because I was so desperate to save people I’d kept circling back at it more than once. I’d fallen for the same trap probably once for every sand pile, I realized then after that.

She’s good. Only someone really smart would think of a trap like this. It’s so subtle too that someone could go over it many times without any hint of it.

But wait; is there only one trap or several?

Clever…oh so clever; I really liked her even more now. Not only had she made her crystal invisible, but also having a repeating memory stun! So I had to figure out how to be able to touch and interact with her crystal without her memory pulse going off.

Letting her go free would be stupid. She’s too valuable.

But then I glimpse my watch.

Holy shit!

I’ve not only made her memory pulse going off many many times, but I can’t believe how much time I’ve lost! At least two more hours have passed.

WOW!

Her memory pulse is a lot better than I thought. But it’s scary! I could have been here the whole night tripping over it again and again before discovering what had been happening. I was caught in a perpetual loop for awhile. If I hadn’t stopped it I could have been there for a day or more because I’d been so desperate to find her.

Was that also similar to what she’d done to fight off the orc boss? Of course he probably wasn’t clever enough to find the soul crystal in the first place. So maybe she’d done a similar trap inside the dream state somewhere else.

So I try something else. The sand gets pushed away so it’s no good. It does reveal the crystal but not how to interact with it safely. Because it’s invisible I can’t just dump it on the ground or I could lose it. It would also be a mess to clean up the spilled broken crystal shards too and I didn’t want to lose them; they may be useful for research in the future.

Maybe if I pick it up with something else. That might even cushion me from the trap!

I sprinkle some drops of water over it from the water skin I’d received from the gnomes. This time the effect of her trap can’t push away the water. The droplets run down the side and the crystal finally appears.

Sweet!

But the memory pulse is still there. I still can’t pick it up. But I don’t need to. I can just try to interact it this way without triggering it. Since it’s finally revealed by the flow of the water going down around it I can look down at it, but just not see a full image. It’s just a top view.

Sure enough it’s a naked beautiful two tailed auburn haired Fox Girl in a beautiful crystal shard.

Wow that’s amazing.

Victory!

Of course the trap is still there, so I frown.

Her hair has a distinct look and color to it. Like the others she lacks ability to dress herself.

Now I can begin the next phase. I can use the crystal to find her.

The same thing should work for Sunghee too right?

But visiting Sunghee won’t help me save people yet, till I can figure out how to get her chains taken off. The only person that can do that is Fox Girl. But just finding her and getting there won’t be good enough either. I have to gain her confidence in getting her to show me how to get Sunghee’s chains off.

Being really careful to not touch Fox’s crystal I have a good idea that everything that strengthens my connection with her will also help me to duplicate the gravity well travel between different parts of the box. Because I’m scared of resetting the trap all over again I lost another hour doing calculations and logic reasoning on trying to determine a safe approach and the minimum needed safe distance without actually touching her crystal.

It pays off in the end but I’m terribly afraid the whole way; she’s a fierce opponent after all.

I hold my finger over Fox Girl’s crystal, within an inch of it but without touching it while picturing the gravity well opening up and a hole in the middle of it.

To my surprise I made it work.

Sweet!

Of course I’m not sure if this means it’s a new type of skill or just something that is part of the box’s skills? I’d have to think about that. There were still so many things I didn’t understand yet.

Not only have I figured out the trick to traveling between the prison cells in the dream state, but having Fox Girl’s crystal will also help.

I hurry forward shutting and closing the inventory box as I jump through the gravity well portal. Again the vertigo makes me sick for several minutes. It’s a nasty feeling that eventually leaves.

It doesn’t help that I was already tired before feeling that.

When I finally pull myself to my feet I’m surprised by what I see.

This room isn’t like the others. It’s not even a dungeon.

How is it like that though? It should look like an orc controlled dungeon if that was the previous owner…unless he never touched this place?

That had to be it. This place doesn’t look soiled by orcs or any other creatures yet.

I’m in some kind of mansion. To my surprise it almost looks like a gigantic tatami room that you might find inside of a Chinese castle room for royalty or maybe a Shogun’s palace. It has beautifully polished wood panels in the humongous room with only a dresser in each of the four corners.

Of course there aren’t any people here or guards, but I can’t just assume that what I’m seeing is real or true. What if there are other dangers too?

The only thing I can see in the middle of the room is a richly done gigantic four poster wooden bed. It’s a bit puzzling since there seems to be a curtain hanging over the bed. Apart from the dressers, and the huge bed there is nothing else here.

It looks too clean and unspoiled for the orc boss to have ever been here. I doubt he would have gotten past the memory reset trap too.

That’s a good thing though.

Do I dare approach? I wonder if she has other traps here too. I need to consider carefully.

The floor looks open and clean but do I risk it? Fox Girl is too smart to let me just walk right up to her on a bed right? The question is if she anticipated anyone could get past the memory trap.