Stronger.

It is early in the morning. The others are still asleep and Fresh is out in the living area. She pushes herself up off of the floor. This is her twelfth push-up now, in her second set of movements.

She sits back, letting herself breathe for about fifteen seconds, before she gets back into position and starts working towards another twelve. After this, she wants to do some other exercises for her core and legs.

The spriggans are next to her, copying her movements.

Fresh exhales, pushing herself up again.

“One -”

Stronger.

Fresh stands down in the basement, looking at the fistfuls of harpy-powder that she has yet to make anything out of.

She had a bad dream this morning. She doesn’t really want to think about it, but she knows that the way to feel better about what she saw and felt is to just… become stronger.

Grabbing a few fistfuls of the powder, she puts it into a bowl and then throws in several sips of their world-tree mineral water, mixing it together into a thick paste.

Fresh looks around herself. She needs a mold of some kind.

So, she sets to work, making a mold out of an iron bar. It’s just a simple, rectangular brick of metal with an indent in it, carved to look like a dagger. She notices how light the iron-ingot seems to feel. She can lift it pretty easily with one hand. She recalls the days in the north when this would take both of her arms and great effort.

(Fresh) uses: [Craftsman: Metalworking {Extract Material}]

She isn’t super strong, she isn’t really a great close-combat fighter. Unfortunately, given the delay of her curses, she isn’t that great of a long-distance fighter either. She needs to find something that she’s good at, something that she can do to be useful all by herself, when Shamrock, Jubilee and Basil aren’t there to bodyguard her.

She takes the bowl and pours in the mixture of harpy-dust and mineral-water into the mold, watching the oozy, thick substance plop messily out of it.

Fresh holds her hand out over it.

In a sense, it’s a very familiar recipe. It’s like the bone-weapons that she had made back in the north, out of goblin teeth. Feathers aren’t exactly the same as teeth, but they’re close enough. Witch-magic thankfully allows for a lot of flexibility in these things.

(Fresh) uses: [Witch-crafting: (Bone Dagger)] [Blackfeather Flat-blade](Masterwork) Having been made in half of a full mold this is a dagger with both a blade and a hilt that are completely flat on one side. Its razor-sharp edge carries a deadly gleam to it, akin to the talons of a harpy.

8 DMG

+4 DARK DMG

Use: At the cost of 1 HP per use, apply this weapon’s MELEE-DMG to your next spell-cast. Weight: 0.46kg Value: ???

Fresh flips the mold upside down, looking at the odd dagger. It’s completely flat on one side, given that it was poured flat into the half of the mold. She picks it up. It certainly isn’t ergonomic. But in a way, she likes it. It’s pretty nifty looking.

She stares at the dagger for a while, before setting it down.

- Stronger.

She needs it to be stronger.

The girl digs around through her inventory, shaking out her wet arm and a just as wet bottle of harvest-moonwater. The dagger uses a health-point based effect, so harvest-moonwater makes the most sense to use here in combination with it.

Picking up the dagger, she just dunks it into the bottle, rather than her usual sprinkling of it.

[Blackfeather Flat-blade]{Holy}(Masterwork) Having been made in half of a full mold this is a dagger with both a blade and a hilt that are completely flat on one side. Its razor-sharp edge carries a deadly, cold, moonlight gleam to it, akin to the talons of a harpy flying at midnight.

8 DMG

+4 DARK DMG

+2 HOLY DMG

Use: At the cost of 1 SOUL-POINT per use, apply this weapon’s MELEE-DMG to your next spell-cast. Weight: 0.46kg Durability: 20/20 Value: ???

She sets the dagger down, her fingers tapping impatiently against the wood of the workbench. The moonwater effect is really good. It has a bit of extra ‘free’ damage now as holy, plus instead of health, the effect now costs soul-points to use. Which means that for her, she could use it for free…

- Stronger.

Fresh lifts her hands, holding them above the dagger.

(Fresh) uses: [Curse Item{Hair of the dog II{GLASS - Jubilee}}] [Hair of the dog II - Glass]{Curse of the red-water} All applied spell DMG afflicts: STATUS: [BLEEDING 2]

She stands there, alone in the basement, staring at the dagger, listening to the bubbling of the cauldron filling the room with sound. The sound of the bubbling water reminds her of the bad dream she had.

- Stronger.

Fresh lifts her hands above the dagger again.

(Fresh) uses: [Curse Item{Hair of the dog II{HOLY - Basil}}] [Hair of the dog II - Holy]{Curse of the secret wish} All SPELL-DMG caused by the effect applies SOUL-BURN equal to your LOV.

The dagger seems to curve and to bend, as if the pressure of the spells and the enchantments were compressing it like two hands bending it into a curved shape as its unable to fight against the force of the spells pulling it together. She narrows her eyes. More. Stronger.

(Fresh) uses: [Curse Item{Hair of the dog II{MONSTER - Shamrock}}] [Hair of the dog II - Holy]{Curse of the single-path}

All SPELL-DMG applies IMPACT-FORCE equal to a value of -

(STR * SPELL-DISTANCE)

Hallow light shines around the basement, the conjoined glows of the many magics and the bubbling cauldron coming to meet together to fill the dark underground room with a heavy ambiance.

The metal of the dagger groans and creaks as it bends and gnarls, twisting like the body of a dying man whose muscles are tightening in broken, wrong positions.

- Stronger…

(Fresh) uses: [Curse Item{Hair of the dog}]

“Are you good?” asks Jubilee, sitting at the breakfast table.

Fresh nods, lowering herself down. “Just doing some squats, Jubilee,” she says. Jubilee rolls their eyes, but Shamrock gives her a thumbs-up. “I wanna be ready.”

“Ready for what?” asks Jubilee.

Fresh shrugs, holding her arms out in front of herself. “I dunno. Just ready.”

Basil looks over from the kitchen. She’s in charge of breakfast today. “Didn’t you work out earlier?” she asks. “I thought I heard you shuffling around.”

“I did,” nods Fresh, lowering herself down again. “I’m working out again.”

“…Are you okay?” asks Basil.

“I’m fine, Basil,” reassures Fresh. “I just… I dunno, I feel like doing stuff today. I had a bad dream so I wanna get stronger.”

Basil and Jubilee exchange a look and then both shrug. Basil returns to her cooking and Jubilee returns to their book. Shamrock comes over and pokes her side.

“Tighten your core,” he instructs.

Fresh nods, doing her best to tighten the muscles there as she lowers herself down again.

It is is the middle of the night of the new moon.

Cold, damp air surrounds her as Fresh hovers on the first floor of the now reset dungeon, sitting atop her broom by herself. A curled, twisted, jagged piece of dense, sharp metal is held in her free hand, her other holding onto the shaft of the flying broom.

She lifts a finger, pointing at the single spriggan standing there on floor one of the central-dungeon.

“Pakew?” it asks, looking up her way.

Fresh nods, knowing that the dungeon-spriggan knows that this is just business. “Pakew.”

(Fresh) uses: [Malediction]

The dagger in her hand shakes as the spell travels through it, collecting the many effects together into a bundle of wild-magic and then, an instant later, the spriggan just… stops.

[ You got {96/850} Experience ! ]

Black blood streams out of its deflating body that is flung up into the air, crashing against the ceiling of the dungeon as it’s violently thrown against it, already dead. Its body, filled with melting, goopy insides flops down to the floor like an empty sack filled with nothing but mush.

Black-water leaks out of it, splashing across the dirt of the dungeon floor.

Fresh stares at the deflated thing for a moment and then flies to floor two, not bothering to stop as she lifts her hands towards the two monsters there.

- Stronger.

She has to get stronger. If Veli can get strong enough to survive this world, to find a happy, safe place, if he can put his old self behind him, then so can she. The fact that she hasn’t done this with clear, focused intent before, the fact that she hasn’t been putting in serious effort into protecting her friends, her new life by getting more powerful, by grinding through the dungeon, Fresh has realized in a very spontaneous fashion, was the last proof of her lack of self-worth.

She never really tried to get stronger, to protect what she has collected as her own because she didn’t think she was worth it. Just like back then, just like nearly a year ago, when this all started, she had felt a feeling of unworthiness, of weakness, of self-hatred. Back then, she felt that she didn’t deserve good, nice, warm things. Not someone like her. Someone who is dumb, ugly, stupid, terrible, selfish - someone who is worthless like herself.

Fresh flies to floor two of the dungeon, lifting her hand, not stopping as she casts her spell and flies towards floor three.

(Fresh) uses: [Malediction]

[ You got {101/850} Experience ! ]

[ You got {106/850} Experience ! ]

She’s sick of it, she’s sick of that person who she was, that person who still lives inside of herself somewhere, in some dark corner of her being.

And so she’s just going to have to get stronger. Strong enough to kick that thing out of herself, strong enough to fight the hero, to fight the fountain, strong enough to deal with herself when she’s in a bad mood and strong enough to not fall apart when she has a dream like the one she had last night. A dream in which she woke up in her old bed, in her old life. She had dreamt that it was a perfectly normal, perfectly average day in her perfectly average, lonely, sad existence. She had dreamt that she was running around her old house, looking for her friends, trying to use her powers, trying to make things and to be useful and to be happy.

But by the time she stumbled into her old bathroom, looking into her old mirror, she realized that none of those things had come back with her and that she was, once again, undeserving of such things in both her eyes as well as those of any god that might be watching. She was alone, she was back where she started and in that dream, before she was brought back to reality, she was certain that this time, nobody would come to take her away.

Fresh enters into floor three of the dungeon and then lifts her hand as she works mercilessly on becoming stronger.

She’s never going to go back to that place, to that person again. She’s staying here, if the world likes it or not.

(Fresh) uses: [Malediction]