Chapter 34 - Introspection

As it turned out, the keyword was “introspect,” which hadn’t even been within Lillia’s top ten guesses. Havoc chimed in with it as an option just as Lillia was getting to ‘display.’
“Introspect?” Lillia asked after the text in the mirror changed from short snippets to long explanations. “Why would it be introspect?”
“Beats me, kid,” Havoc said. He was still on the other side of the room, now attempting to climb into the pieces of Sir Nobody’s armor that Lillia had poured out of her inventory for him. “Just heard some adventurers say it upstairs.”
“Inspect, I’d get,” Lillia said, “but introspect?”
“What’s that even mean?”
“It means to look inside yourself,” Lillia answered. “Which kinda makes it make sense for looking into skills but—You’d figure it would be ‘inspect’ or something.”
“Guess so.” Havoc grunted. Something metal splashed. Havoc cursed.
“Wait, Havoc. You said you heard adventurers say it all the time. Is there a mirror in your room?”
“Of course not! Who would want a mirror in their room? They’re so easy to break.”
“Yeah. True.” Lillia lied. Of all the arguments worth having with Havoc, this didn’t seem like one of them. If someone couldn’t understand the inherent importance of checking their hair in the morning, then there was nothing worth talking to them about in terms of fashion.
“So did they have mirrors?” Lillia asked. She only asked the question aloud because they were already talking. If the adventurers had been in Havoc’s room with a mirror, that meant they would have had to bring a mirror in themselves.
Time for Lillia to find her way back to Rickshaw.
Assuming there was a way back. Resting would bring them to the Architect, and they did not have Vianaffir or any of the other weapons Lillia had earned. They had a rusty knife, some scraps, and whatever Havoc could do in borrowed armor.
Well, first it was time for some introspection. That was a possible solution.
“Introspect: Heiress’ Blessing”
The mirror housed the new wall of text. Lillia read out loud.
[Heiress’ Blessing - Support: Enhancement]
[The Princess designates a champion as she sees fit.]
[Once a party member or friendly creature has been marked as champion, they receive several benefits while they can see the Princess, the Princess can see them, or they are within [60] feet of the Princess. These effects last a short time.]
[When under the effects of Heiress’ Blessing, the champion gains immense bravery and any wounds received heal over time. The benefit of this healing effect grows greater if the Princess is injured, based on the degree of the injury.]
[If this ability is self-cast by the Princess, she temporarily receives the benefit of bravery, but no other effects.]
[The Princess can only have one champion at a time. The Princess can only have a champion if she is alive.]
“That last part is ominous,” Lillia said. During her explanation, Havoc had offered the occasional ‘uh huh’ but most of his responses had been grunting from struggling with the armor. “And how am I supposed to keep track of sixty feet?” Lillia asked.
“Come on. You know what sixty feet is, kid.”
“I can assure you I don’t.”
She heard Havoc get up. “You’re telling me, you don’t know how far that wall is?”
Lillia looked around to the three walls she could see. No, she didn’t know how many feet each of them was away. “I can’t see what wall you’re pointing at, Havoc.”
“This one,” Havoc said as he came around the corner. He hadn’t managed to get any of the upper half on yet, but he’d strung some of the lower plates from Sir Nobody’s armor together.
He didn’t look like a knight, but at least he was only indecent in the courtly manner.
Lillia checked the wall. “Twenty feet?”
“Thirty-five,” Havoc corrected. “Give or take a foot on either end.” Havoc adjusted the codpiece. “Don’t you royal types get educated?”
“Of course. I know how to measure something.”
“Then how far away is that wall?” He pointed at another one, behind Lillia.
“Twenty feet,” Lillia said without turning to look at it.
“That’s right.”
“Really?”
“Of course not,” Havoc said. “You ain’t gonna get better at this if you don’t try.”
Lillia sighed and turned back to the mirror. For the sake of decency, she’d wrapped the cloak around herself, but now it was a sopping wet reminder of the person who’d given it to her. She sneered at the lilac fabric. As her focus broke the text on the screen dismissed itself.
Lillia looked from the mirror to Havoc.
There was, technically, one very obvious way to find out what “champion” meant.

Find this and other great novels on the author’s preferred platform. Support original creators!

“Hey Havoc?” Lillia asked.
“Yes?”
“I name you my champion.”
There was a brilliant flash around the hobgoblin. He jumped, sending several hastily strapped-on plates splashing back down into the shallows between pools. Once it cleared, Havoc was covered in a thin veil of rose-gold sparkles. He tried to rub them off. Lillia giggled.
So that was what happened when she named someone else her champion.
“Is that one of the abilities you were talking about?” Havoc asked. “Does it have to be this glittery?”
“I think it looks good!” Good was a stretch, but maybe better. At least it was somewhat of a fashion decision.
“Can you take…” Havoc checked both his arms and then held up a hand to stop Lillia from testing. “One second.”
“Okay wh—”
Havoc dragged his claws across his left arm. Blood spilled down into the pool.
Lillia shrieked. If she wasn’t already standing on one of the pools to look into the mirror, she would have fallen into one.
The wound on Havoc’s arm stitched itself shut, blood retreating back into his body. The hobgoblin frowned at the wound, lifted up his claw to strike again.
“No, don’t!” Lillia said. “Don’t do that again! It was awful. Stop. Stop.”
“Oh, come on, Lillia, you’ve seen enough of my blood,” Havoc said. He wound his arm back up, but stopped as Lillia started to struggle her way out of the pool, fighting both the weight of the cloak and the need to keep it wrapped around her as she extricated herself in the water.
“Don’t!” Lillia heaved herself onto the shore with all the grace of a lilac whale. “Didn’t it hurt the first time?”
“‘Course it hurt. I was bleedin’ like hell.” Havoc lowered his hand as he watched Lillia worm her way across the shallows.
“Then why would you do it?”
“Gotta know now when it’s safe. Right?”
“Why would you do it again?” Lillia pulled herself up, crushing chitin in her hand as she did. There were still tears in the chitterpede battle gown from her battle with Eisel.
“Measure twice, cut once.”
“Then cut once, Havoc!” Lillia said. “We only have so many lives to go around. I don’t want you getting sepsis and dying.”
“Sepsis?”
“From dirty water.”
Havoc looked down. “Water’s clean.”
“You haven’t seen what came off me last time I was in here,” Lillia said. Just thinking about the caked-on blood and bug guts made her shiver.
Havoc nodded along with Lillia and dropped it once it was clear the thought was bothering her. Twice, as he shifted around, he had to adjust the way the ill-fitting armor sat on him.
Eventually he walked over to Lillia on his way to the mirror she’d been using. He laid his hand on her shoulder as he did, just for a moment.
Lillia didn’t have time to dive in for the hug.
Havoc sat down on the edge of the pool beneath Lillia’s statue. He looked into the mirror for a long time. The princess watched as he traced some of the wrinkles on his cheeks with his claws.
“Been a while since I had one of these,” he said. “Look the same as I did when I came here.” The idea sat there for a moment. “More tired, maybe.”
Lillia sat down beside Havoc. When the two were sitting, she wasn’t that much taller than he was, her legs were just much deeper in the pool. “I look a lot worse than I did when I got in here,” Lillia said. “Missing the hairclips.”
Havoc stopped tracing lines to shake his head. He didn’t see Lillia smiling at her success behind him. The head shaking slowed and Havoc spoke up. “What was the thing you used to save me?”
“The skill?” Lillia asked.
“Yeah.”
“Introspect: Emergency Knighting,” she said. There was suddenly a wall of text on the mirror. She didn’t read it at first. “That’s the skill.”
“That make me a knight?”
“Makes you an adventurer,” Lillia said. “I think.”
“You think?”
“Well,” Lillia almost bit her tongue. How much was she supposed to tell Havoc? He…worked for the dungeon and using the skill on him had been subverting it.
At least according to Eisel, but fuck that guy.
“I don’t think it was supposed to work that way, but it did,” Lillia said. She laid her hands in her lap as she spoke. “Doesn’t really matter how it was supposed to work, does it?”
“Think it does,” Havoc narrowed his eyes. Lillia hadn’t known him for long, but his skepticism of something that had saved him fit perfectly into the Havoc-shaped space in her head.
The wall of text still pulsed in the mirror. The interface was trying to ensure that Lillia knew it was an answer, but would she have even tried to save Havoc the same way if she had known how things were “supposed” to work?
There was a better way to figure it out.
“Havoc. I name you knight.”
“Lillia, how long does th—”
“I grant you this title, along with the status and privilege that come alongside it.”
There was a bright flash between them that somehow touched neither of the pair. It was too much light for Lillia’s eyes to process, but she didn’t feel the need to look away.
The air around Havoc sizzled. The hobgoblin recoiled from Lillia and he checked his hands. Once he was sure they were still there he shot up and patted down each part he cared about. Head. Codpiece. Stomach. Legs.
Lillia shook her head at the typical male order of priority. Just as she was about to comment, her attention locked on something above Havoc’s head.
[Havoc: Blacksmith - Level 14]
“You’re Level Fourteen?!”
“I have a level?” Havoc looked up to try and see what Lillia was looking at.
“What the hell! I’m level… four,” Lillia said. She hadn’t figured out whether any of her recent suffering had been worth a level in the eyes of the dungeon.
“I have a level?”
“You’re a Level 14 Blacksmith,” Lillia said with venom she usually reserved for court.
“Blacksmith?” Havoc echoed. “What kind of class is Blacksmith?”
“It’s better than Princess.”
Havoc looked over to Lillia. “Did you hear the same thing you read to me?”
“I don’t know if that ability is good, Havoc,” Lillia said, “and Blacksmith sounds more like it belongs down here than Princess does.”
“Well—” Havoc clicked his tongue and nodded along with Lillia’s point. “I don’t know if it’s good either. At least compared to what the other classes might be able to do.”
Lillia thought about it for a moment. If Princess and Blacksmith were going to be something, and neither of them had enough context to judge properly, then Lillia saw no reason they could not decide both classes were strong.
It sounded as empty as ‘believe in yourself.’ Because it was.
Havoc waved at the air in front of himself. Once. Twice. “How the hell do you get rid of this thing?” Havoc asked.
“Look past it,” Lillia said. As she said it, there was a mix of pride and stone in her stomach. On one hand, she was helping someone else learn something she’d just started to get the hang of. On the other hand, if she were the mentor, they were in trouble.
Havoc stared at the far wall. “This is going to take some getting used to.”
“How long do you have?” Lillia asked. She checked the mirror.
[Addendum - If Emergency Knighting is cast on a friendly creature outside the Adventurer system, they are granted the status of Adventurer and set to an appropriate level and class for their person.]
[Like the other effects of Emergency Knighting, this effect lasts until the next Rest.]
“Until we rest at the Hearth,” Lillia said, “or here. Which is apparently also a Hearth.”
Lillia made a mental note to ask Rickshaw about that when she saw him again.
“Okay,” Havoc said, “and if we need to sleep here. How the hell are we going to get out?”
Lillia stopped looking at the mirror. “Pardon?”
“Do you see a door, Lillia?”
“When I rested, I was brought to the chamber outside with the…” Lillia trailed off.
“Spellmite Architect?” Havoc suggested.
“Yeah,” Lillia said. They didn’t have weapons.
They wouldn’t be able to get past the Architect.
If there was one place she’d been so far that the Hearth couldn’t reach, it was there.
Havoc rested against the pedestal of Lillia’s statue. As he leaned, he looked up to it and then nodded approvingly. “Well. It’s been a while, but I’d better get to work then.”
Lillia was busy staring at herself wrought in stone and being jealous of her hair. “Work?”
“I have the blacksmith class, Lillia. I should be able to make something,” he said. ““You still got that bloodfang?” Havoc asked.
Lillia looked up.
He flexed his claws.
“Then let’s make a way out.”