After a three-hour wait, during which Kir took stock of his body and discovered this floor barely gave him any internal feeling of mana overage, everyone began to stretch and awaken. Kir straightened his stance and reached up to shake Stella gently on the shoulder.
"Five more tis, pet... Give that rich, juicy mana- bwah!"
Kir’s shaking had disturbed Cheshire, who had reacted by climbing up Stella as she awoke.
"Team eting," Kir said, and Stella launched into her usual routine of complaining and stretching languidly as soon as she landed on the ground.
"I was having a nice dream," she concluded. "I think I have so ideas for a sequel to those books I wrote about you."
Eventually, logs were dragged into place so everyone could sit by the now-smoldering fire.
Noir cleared his throat as soon as Kir sat heavily, crossing his legs in front of him. Cheshire landed atop Kir’s mane of red hair, snapping a bit of jerky out of the air when Sam threw it to him.
"Alright Black Sheep, looks like we tested the dragon and got burned on this one," Noir started the eting off. "Dungeon’s broken, heading back to Sousport is probably out unless you like hiking- Yes, Caroon, I know you like hiking..."
At so point in explaining their journey, Noir had told Kir where he thought they were, exploring a dungeon where Ledot had already dood one of his teams with brutal tactics and a lack of caution.
The mouth of the dungeon was in the Frontier Forest of the Landsend Peninsula. Kir had sohow managed to co out even further away from Norneau than where he’d begun. If he traveled due north, he’d even run into Darlbridge. The only settlent near there was a permanent campsite of adventurers exploring the forest. It was where Ledot had recruited his first team, and nobody knew exactly what direction it was in, only that it was north and sowhat centered on the peninsula.
Kir and Stella were both agreeable to staying with the Black Sheep, at least to see them safely along. Their presence gave the group sothing they would need to both avoid trouble and find the camp: altitude.
Before Kir could volunteer to fly, however, Stella pulled his ear. "I don’t think you popping out those wings is a good idea," she said. "Let handle the flying." Kir found himself agreeing, knowing for sure now how people would react to his being a "hybrid." When the ti ca for Kir to lay out his abilities, he left his wings out.
With the basic plan decided, the conversation moved on to more pleasant subjects. Like the pile of horns, animal parts, and mana stones that had been gathered.
"So, Kir, I wouldn’t want you to think badly of your ti with the Black Sheep. We normally do equal fourths for extra money but all of that got taken. And as you can tell from the pile, we didn’t have a lot in camp. Most of the good stuff was on Ledot and I hope he’s soone’s bitch in the underworld. Since you saved our asses and got us free of those contracts, I think it’s only fair you get a good part of what we make when we can sell this stuff." He looked to everyone and they started bobbing their heads in affirmation.
"Before that though, we should decide on if we want to sell the location of the dungeon. I for one never want to see the inside of another, and the Serpent Sea Syndicate probably won’t spread it around, nor will they like it if they find out we’re alive and had sothing to do with the collapse. To that end, I say we sell the info and get as far away from Sousport as possible once we’re done in Montmorency. All in favor?"
Everyone raised their hands. Kir did too once he was prompted.
"Agreed then. That’s all I got, anyone got sothing they want to add?"
Kir smiled a bit awkwardly. He’d barely known these people for hours but he liked them, the sense of found family they had with each other resonated with his experience of being an orphan. "Actually, I have so things I could contribute to the pile, if you all wouldn’t mind."
From his dinsional storage, Kir started to remove his spoils from the deep dungeon.
So of the animal parts, like horns, drew curiosity. The filants from the crab-like grotesques filled Noir’s eyes with stars. His specialty was making enchanted clothing from his own wool, and the filants, aside from getting him more excited than Kir had ever seen, were "Perfect! More than perfect! The things I could do with this!"
He was still drooling over the mana crystal fibers when Kir brought out the crystallized bird skull.
"Those are soul stone grade..." Noir said, handling the skull like it was the most precious thing in the world. There were at least two kilos of crystal embedded in the skull. "Deified soul sapphire..."
Kir was unfamiliar with the term.
"What? No way," Stella said. "I worked a magic shop for decades, aning I can tell what’s a mana crystal by sight. Those things don’t register at all."
Kir looked again at the skull. Oddly, even knowing they were soulstones now, he did not feel any temptation to consu the mana inside them. Perhaps that was because he was full from the dungeon, or because the skull reminded him too much of the corpse collector’s main body. He didn’t have the heart to tell everyone there had been piles and piles of soul stone-grade sand that he’d ignored...
"That’s because they’ve settled. Mana sight would just see them as voids, but the color in this case is deceptive. You can only tell for certain by-" Kir sensed as he drew from the mana in a tiny crystal, and suddenly all of the crystals lit up from within as they absorbed mana from the dungeon, restoring their equilibrium. "These are so stable... They must have been there for the equivalent of thousands of years! No... tens of thousands!" A sad look suddenly ca over Noir. "This is too much... We can’t take this from you..."
"The fuck it’s ’too much’!" Caroon said. "If he’s really sharing and this isn’t so demon’s deal, I’m not saying no."
Evidently his hatred of demons - justified by a history of being bought and sold through demonically diated contracts - stopped at his coin purse.
"Can we even sell that?" Namosa asked. She was looking at the skull with a look like she considered it a threat. "We’re fugitives."
"Only in Sousport," Caroon replied.
"Sweet place... too..." Sam added.
As the party bickered back and forth, Kir ruminated.
If it got Kir an inroad to helping Caroon change for the better, he didn’t think he would mind sharing with him. The desire to help the family that was the Black Sheep was strong in Kir, even if he suspected he wouldn’t get far without Caroon wanting to change. The situation reminded him a bit of Lugh, and Kir wondered if everyone had made it through the Norneau dungeon, and how much surface ti had passed. He hoped it wasn’t much.
The continuing argunt brought him back to the present, where he raised a hand for silence.
"It’s fine. We’re in this together, and I want to see you all succeed just as much as I want everyone here to get out alive. If we’re all heading north, we could also travel together to Norneau. If anyone will buy it off of us, it’s the Academy."
People shared expressions, complicated looks were the only indication of how the cogs were turning in their heads. Sam seed the most fine out of everyone, their thoughts nigh unreadable with their mask on. Kir realized he hadn’t once seen them take it off.
"Okay..." Noir finally said, awkwardly, a pained look on his face as he handled the skull. "One priceless skull covered in more money than we’ve seen in all our lives put together... added to the pile." He gently placed the skull on top of the fluff of mana thread before looking around to the original Black Sheep mbers.
"Sixty?" he asked.
"Sixty," Sam agreed.
"Fifty-five," Namosa countered.
"Fifty," Caroon finished.
"What’s happening?" Stella asked, looking around as she jutted out her chin slightly.
"We were just trying to decide how much to give you two once, no, if we can sell this stuff. Soul stone grade crystals are hard to move..."
"I don’t care about money," Stella said. "You can all pay with your bodies if you want..."
There was a collective shudder. Kir didn’t think it was entirely from fear. Caroon looked away, grinding his teeth, and Kir realized his ears had turned red.
"Any percent is fine," Kir said. "Just treat like a Black Sheep," he smiled, hoping to defuse the awkward tension.
Every one of the original Black Sheep looked at each other. They shrugged together. Then spoke at the sa ti.
""""Twenty.""""
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