Dressed to Kill 2: A Monster Seamstress LitRPG, page 28
In the arena, there was no pack of wolves. No giant monsters to hunt. No, there was something much scarier.
Three different classes, a half dozen instructors, and a wilderness survival program.
Anna flanked me as I stopped at the exit from the Academy walls into the Range—a closed-off space of artificial wilderness for Practical Combat field fights. Victor had gone off ahead, and students filtered around me.
A dozen students were setting up tents, assembling fire pits, or chopping logs. Carts full of unprocessed timber had been wheeled inside. All of it smelled like smoke from wood fires and barbequed meat.
I found my own class gathered around Sir Stonehart.
He briefed us quickly. And then we went to work, picking stones out of a pile to assemble a fire pit and shoveling away dirt to dig it deeper.
Once that was done, he had us all—individually—cut apart logs. Not already pre-cut sections of the tree—we actually had to drag the logs off the cart, cut them apart, and then split the sections into firewood.
I hesitated nervously at the end of the wagon, switching into my highest strength set before dragging an entire tree through the grass. I felt the urge to laugh bubble up. I had never applied my strength to anything so mundane.
I looked nervously between the log and the rapier I had. I didn’t actually have any kind of slashing skill. I was impressed I was able to drag it at all—it was an entire tree. But my stats had long eclipsed the human minimum.
I looked around. Some people were splitting the tree with skills or even just raw, brute strength. Reluctantly, I laid a hand on the needle-like rapier at my side.
“Gwen,” Anna interrupted me. She was holding up a band saw; one with two handles. “Want to help each other?” she asked.
I looked behind her. Victor had attracted a crowd of boys watching him use his whip to snap apart chunks of a tree.
Caught up in everyone around me showing off skills, I had neglected to notice that there was plenty of equipment provided.
“Yes!” I said.
A moment later, we had a campfire going. Splitting the logs was easy, after. We were among the first to finish.
“Tomorrow, Practical Combat will start before noon. Show up. You’re expected to prepare your own lunch. Dungeon Management classes will take place halfway through the day and be taught entirely in the Range.”
“On day four, they’re going to release monsters in the Range while we’re having class,” Adrian casually informed us.
“Seriously?” Sandy asked.
“Seriously.” He nodded. “And you’re expected to hunt them and make your own lunch.”
“Not any of the monsters we’ve been fighting in Practical Combat before this, I hope?” Gerald asked, making a face.
So far in Practical Combat, we had fought crystalline golems, elementally aligned wolves, and a heavily armored armadillo that slammed bodily into us.
“It’s normally a really aggressive monstrous waterfowl,” Adrian said. “Like a big chicken.”
Dungeon Management class the next day involved a tour of the Range—the teacher showed off how quickly the grass regrew, even in damaged areas, and how the firepits seemed to fill in. We had to remake our own firepits the next day.
And make our own lunches.
Most of the Blooded Nobles had never cooked for themselves—any family with capital would have a proper chef. Besides boosting their stats, the food also magically tasted better.
Still, they at least provided ingredients today.
The classes being merged together for field trip training meant that Sandy’s team was in the same group as mine. Adrian, Gerald, and Cedric were not, though.
Adrian had left aside some core details about the waterfowl we had to hunt for our own food. Namely, they had both some kind of stealth skill, and a teleportation skill.
Anna raced ahead of me as we rushed toward a bird in a tree. This was not our first time doing this. We were sure the monster would exhaust its mana eventually. Clipped wings stopped them from flying away.
The monster was nestled in the branches of a tree, facing away from us. We were sneaking up behind it. It was far too bright out and the canopy too thin to use my stealth skills, and the monster had evaded me throwing my needles at it.
As Anna neared it, glowing gold with her movement-enhancing skills, the monster disappeared again.
“Which tree this time?” I shouted, looking up.
Elara was standing in midair on a near-invisible plane of force, clutching onto it with dear life as it was pushed around in the wind.
“North! It’s in the net!”
I raced forward, grabbing a thread hanging from the tree beneath the bird and pulling with [Thread Mastery]. The strings closed on the bird. It squawked. When the bird tried to teleport while tied, it shook the entire tree; the spell must have tried to apply to everything touching it.
“Got it!” I said. Sandy caught up a moment later. She wasn’t as fast as the rest of us.
Can you … ?”
“Got it,” Sandy said, jumping over and climbing up the tree. There was a snap a moment later. No experience points, though.
The only experience this class was giving this week was in practical survival lessons. We returned to camp with our last catch for our group. The rest were tied together near a firepit with a grill over it.
Instructors—postgraduate Nobles—circled the pits, showing students how to cut and prepare food. When one came over to us, Sandy grumbled under her breath the entire time about his instructions. I elbowed her.
Elara and Ash especially struggled to prepare lunch. Victor took no heed at all of the instructors, eventually eating messy strips of meat. After a moment, Sandy walked over and helped them.
“You guys are good at this,” Ash said.
“My mom was a butcher,” Sandy said. “And my dad is a chef.”
We showed both Elara and Ash how to cook.
“When it runs clear, it’s safe,” I said. I wasn’t sure that Noble immune systems were actually at risk, given their magically enhanced constitutions. “It’s kind of fun!”
I smiled at Elara. She looked highly disturbed.
“I would like to never handle raw meat again, I think,” she said.
We had to hunt our own food and prepare it for the rest of the week. And after the first hunt for waterfowl, we also had to boil and prepare our own drinking water. We enjoyed picnics spread out on a blanket. We still had to hunt and prepare lunch—one of the assignments for class—but we just gave it away.
Ash took a liking to grilling. And Victor took a liking to butchering, albeit in a way that was messy, unprofessional, and constantly grated on Sandy whenever she looked at him.
The days in Practical Combat continued to intensify and get longer. They taught us navigation, including using a compass, drawing a map, and scouting.
They weren’t just preparing us for time inside the dungeon, but time outside of it. Lower-ranked Nobles often spent plenty of time traveling between and upkeeping their smaller settlements—like Valjean in my hometown.
The day before the weekend would start our camping trip—we would spend it in the range, practicing setting and staying in our own camp.
I finished Marcus’s set the day before.
Chapter 30
My workshop in the atelier had grown cooler as I finished more and more pieces of the set commissioned by Marcus. Once the patterns were crafted, the magic that heated the room seemed to turn inward, becoming the armor’s resistance. Now it was almost chilly inside as I finished and added the last piece.
I watched, the moment of truth finally arriving.
[Quality Assessment: (Good)]
[Generating Skills … ]
Flaming Aegis V
Ignite Projectile III
Fire Resistance 50
[ATTRIBUTES]
SPD: -5
WIL: 0
STR: 30
DEX: 30
CON: 10
PER: 30
[+5 XP]
[High-quality materials have altered the stats of the completed set.]
Flaming Aegis V
[For a moderate mana cost, surround yourself with a veil of fire that mitigates attacks. Fight fire with fire.]
Ignite Projectile III
[For a small mana cost, imbue a launched or thrown projectile with flame. Can be cast mid-launch.]
I finally got a set with Ignite Projectile. Too bad it paled compared to Arc Bolt, especially using my threads of electrical mana.
Only five XP meant no level … yet. If we were able to hunt this weekend, or if combat classes had proceeded as normal, I might have gained a level. Only … where were the attribute points awarded by crafting?
The system opened another window as if it were replying.
[Crafting X activated.]
[Storm Archer’s Raiment can activate Crafting X 9 more times.]
[Permanent stat gain]
[Strength: +3]
[Dexterity: +3]
[Constitution: +1]
[Perception: +1]
My breath hitched.
I had a way to gain permanent stats without using my Wardrobe.
And if I crafted every charge from every pattern I had, I my baseline stats would match the Nobles at my own level.
The Nobles who’d been leveling so fast that they were leaving me behind would be falling behind me instead. I did the math in my head. The full stats of every set I had crafted so far—or at least the best ten of them—combined with the stats I would’ve gained from Crafting X?
The Nobles’ only advantage would be their combat skills.
The Nobility—even the Academy’s courses—claimed that it was bad economically for people to invest in their crafting skill—the one that came with their class.
But maybe they were just afraid of how strong a city of crafters could really get.
The morning of departure arrived without much fanfare. The night before was like a nervous, formal party, with dozens of fires burning through the Range. It was getting uncomfortably hot by nighttime due to all the separate firepits.
It didn’t help that several groups decided to see how large they could make their fires—one had eventually worked together to start burning entire logs before the instructors shut it down.
I woke in pre-dawn to commotion all around me, staring up at the canvas flaps of a tent. Soft orange light cut through the narrow opening, filled with the smell of morning dew and banked fires.
I switched into my school uniform and poked my head out.
The gate between the Range and the world beyond the city walls was open in the distance. A mob of dozens of people bustled around wagons. Beasts of burden—huge horses and oxen, mostly—were being fed and cajoled around a train of caravans and carts.
Some of them were being led inside the Range.
Around me, the other students were starting to wake.
The instructors had talked about this field trip as a training exercise—but there was clearly more to it than that. The amount of people and wagons visibly being dedicated to the effort was huge.
I started packing up my tent. Every day, they had made us pack and unpack our supplies, organizing them to make them easy to carry. It wasn’t a fast process. They started waking everyone as soon as I finished, instructing them to pack up.
The sun was up by the time half the tents were broken down. Assistants gathered up all the students from their respective classes, leading us to stand in front of Sir Stonehart.
I counted six classes forming separate circles around their instructors—but I didn’t see Gerald, Adrian, or Cedric. We had learned there was a second outdoor arena exactly like the Range—the others must have been on their own expedition.
I did, however, see Sandy’s team. They were obvious because of Elara. A floating platform of force piled feet high with supplies followed behind her.
Standing in the center of their circle was an almost mirror copy of Sir Stonehart, save for a different set of scars. They must have been twins.
“Pay attention,” Sir Stonehart said, drawing everyone’s eyes back to him. He was sitting on a log, using it as a chair. Assistants handed a piece of paper to each of us. “This are your assignments. Your first assignments as Nobles—Blooded or Chosen. Perform well, and you will earn merits. This is a graded task.
“Our class will be split into two, each provided a wagon of goods. You’re expected to work together on your own to scout the range around the wagon and defend it from attacks of monster swarms.”
“Monster swarms?” Victor blurted. Sir Stonehart just stared at him, folding his arms. After glancing around nervously, Victor continued. “The floor around the Academy doesn’t have any, does it? It’s too well maintained.”
“That’s correct.” Sir Stonehart’s face broke into a rare and vicious smile. “However, the Academy does not maintain every floor. Some are intentionally mismanaged to create the challenges needed to test Nobles. One of your goals for this expedition will be to cull a monster deemed too dangerous to allow it to continue roaming. And to do that, we’ll be descending to the next floor of the dungeon. The sixteenth floor.”
“But aren’t the monsters there …” another student blurted, trailing off at Sir Stonehart’s hard stare.
“You won’t be expected to fight anything beyond your caliber. This expedition numbers several hundred. Check your assignments and prepare to depart.”
My assignment was to man one of the flatbed carts. It was currently empty, save for a teamster smoking atop of it. All the carts were distinctly colored with different paints, and all of the paint looked positively ancient, some with just a few chips of color remaining. The wagon I was set to guard was purple and marked with the number twenty-eight in big, black paint.
I was reading the details on the page. There were tons of warnings about the different common threats on the sixteenth floor, all in tiny, nearly inscrutable text that I struggled to read in the morning light. The entire class was chatting awkwardly and nervously around me. Many of them had never really spent much time together, since very few people had overlapping classes throughout the rest of the day.
I wasn’t paying attention to their conversation.
We were to remain in positions flanking the caravan, managing the scouting for approaching monster swarms and preparing the teams to deal with them.
And we had to elect a leader for each of our teams.
I paused, staring at that part. That was bound to be a disaster in a room full of egotistical Nobles.
“We have to elect someone?” I asked, turning to look at Anna. She seemed wide awake. Her eyes were carefully scanning the crowd around her, and she kept her back to the wagon, making sure she could see the entire horizon. Victor stood beside her, eyes barely open.
It took her a moment to look my way and give me a single, definitive nod.
“A good way to force students to learn to work for someone else,” she said.
“Isn’t this going to be, like, a whole social issue?” I asked.
“Only for those with an ego,” she replied.
The chatter slowly intensified.
“You’re Anna?” a man—a Noble, dressed in leather armor rather than a school uniform—approached us and asked. He had the overbearing confidence common to the Blooded Nobility. Not to mention the expensive equipment.
Anna squinted at him, looking the man up and down. “I am,” she said.
“What’s your class?” he asked.
“Why do you want to know?”
“You have the highest scores. Are you going to volunteer to be our leader elect?”
The crowd had gotten quieter. Most of our class was staring at us. Victor stepped forward off the wagon.
“I’ll be the task leader.”
“No,” the Noble said without pausing.
“But I—”
“You’re barely passing your classes,” the Noble said. Then he turned to me. “Lady Gwen. I am Octavian of the House of the Long Shore.”
“Hello,” I said. “Where did you see Anna’s grades?”
How many Nobles exchanged favors and merits to manipulate classes like Adrian did? This was going to be exhausting if it became a whole political game.
Octavian stared at me for a moment before pointing at the sheet in my hand. I looked at it. Then I turned it over.
On the back was a listing of the rank and position of each student in our class. I had forgotten about the student ranks—they were very important during the earliest days of school, but they hadn’t come up again since. Maybe they would’ve been something to consider if I’d been forced to apply to Study Halls rather than having slipped into Adrian’s because of his interest in Gerald.
They separated the most meritorious students in each year, highlighting the top performers—grades, hunting, and homework all combined. Theoretically, someone who skipped half their classes could hunt enough monsters to make up for it and graduate.
At the top of the list was Anna, of course. Our scores must have been calculated from every class we were taking, because Victor never struggled in Practical Combat. Despite that, he wasn’t at the top. He wasn’t anywhere near Anna’s name. Or mine.
Right below Anna’s name was mine.
“Oh,” I said. “If you want to be leader …” I looked up at Octavian.
He waved his hands, cutting me off.
“Lady Gwen, I’m not asking out of any kind of scheme. This mission is actually dangerous—maybe not lethal, with the instructors present, but dangerous enough to be serious. No, I suspect—I’m positive we will lose marks if we elect someone below the top three in our class’s performance.”
I stared at him, mouth open and uncomprehending.
“If Liege Anna does not want to be leader—then it is up to you.”
Octavian stared at me. I hesitated. The idea that we would lose points for not picking the highest ranked in our class gave me a second idea. Would we lose points for not accepting the responsibility as well?
Our classes often talked about the Noblesse Oblige—the responsibility that came with our rights. I think that this was another test. Everything in the Academy was, and much of it was never said explicitly—like encouraging us to form Study Halls, and the system of student claims over resources.
