Chương 156: Names

Teleporting back to Dawnhold before anyone noticed I'd snuck back into my old bedroom, I made myself breakfast and waited for Cluma to turn up. What was the point of buying a place of my own if I couldn't face staying there? It was a place to store stuff, but I'd never been lacking in that regard. It was a convenient spot to teleport, but while that was nice, it wasn't vital. I didn't really have any friends of the sort I'd invite over for a meal.

Really, I'd only rushed to buy the place because Cluma had badgered me about it. I suppose that made it obvious who held the reins in this relationship... Then again, it was common knowledge on Earth that cats had slaves, not owners. Peering at my half-eaten bowl of cereal, I was reminded that Mum had put a cooking enchantment on my maid dress. A rank four enchantment in orichalcum, nonetheless. How much difference would such a thing make?

I hadn't equipped myself for the dungeon yet, so I instead switched to my maid costume and made a second bowl. I could certainly taste a difference, and this wasn't even 'cooking', as such. I'd just poured milk over some cereal! Once again, the System was being silly. Did it actually change the cereal in any way, or was it manipulating my perception of it?

I was tempted to assume the latter; people's tastes varied, and I struggled to imagine a change it could make to the cereal that would universally be considered an improvement. But if the System was messing with my sensation of taste based on someone's cooking skill, what else was it doing? Could someone get a beauty skill that made me perceive them as pleasing, regardless of what they actually looked like?

"Oh? You're wearing that around the house now?" asked the thin-air behind me.

"Eep! How long have you been there?!" I exclaimed, spinning up my active [Mana Sight]. Dammit, the front door in this place was too quiet. I'd accuse Cluma of picking the property on that basis, but there wasn't any way she could have known in advance. It wasn't as if the documentation in the merchants guild included squeakiness of the front doors.... And now that I was considering it, was she really invisible, or was the System messing with my sight?

"Only just arrived. What're you up to?"

"An experiment. Don't worry, it involved no danger whatsoever. Apart from to my manly pride, maybe. Taste these two bowls and tell me which tastes best."

"Pretty sure you didn't have any of that to start with," snorted Cluma, tasting my cereal.

"That one," she answered the moment the second bowl touched her tongue.

"Thought so. Mum and Grover enchanted this dress with a cooking enhancement. I was just seeing what sort of difference it made. Turns out to be quite a big one."

"On the dress?" asked Cluma, grinning.

"Yes? Why, want one?"

"I bet Mum would, but that's not the point. If it's on the dress, why are you wearing everything else?" I looked down at myself, causing my pair of bells to jingle.

"Ah," I agreed. I'd put the complete outfit on without really thinking about it. Just like accessory enchantments, clothing enchantments couldn't be stacked. Putting a cooking enhancement on every item of clothing wouldn't have helped. Unlike accessory enchantments, even different enchantments mostly failed. Comfort, durability and sharpness were fine.

Resistances interfered a little, with the effect that only areas covered by a particular item received the protection, hence why I had lightning resistance on my armour as well as the glove. Skill enhancements just outright failed. If multiple skill enhancements were present, the item providing the most coverage won. Although, now that I considered it, I didn't have any skill enhancement enchantments on my armour or new weapons, so while delving, that slot was still free.

I needed to get a pair added to my underwear. Dismantling? Were weapon skill enhancements something that could be added to clothing? What about mana control?

"Anyway, aren't you going to change into your armour?" asked Cluma, eventually spurring me into moving. Cluma had turned up early for the day's delving trip, having regained some amount of enthusiasm now that the monsters weren't complete pushovers, and catching me willingly wearing her maid costume had only boosted her elation further. We ended up visiting a further three floors. Floor eleven had giant rattlesnakes and twelve had dire rattlesnakes.

Why the snakes felt the need to advertise their presence, I had no idea; I was fairly sure Earth rattlesnakes used their rattle to warn off predators, not to alert their own prey. Given that I could pick them up with [Mana Sight] anyway, the extra rattling made no difference, but it still seemed stupid. Floor thirteen had rope snakes. They were a dark brown, textured to blend in with the bark of the trees. Despite being under five centimetres in girth, they were insanely long.

Twice as long as the anaconda boss, easily.

"I don't get it," commented Cluma, slicing one in half that was wrapped between a pair of trees.

"Do they expect us to walk into them, like a cobweb?"

"Yeah, none of the monsters we've seen today have made sense."

"Just when I thought things were starting to get interesting." Given their length, even trying to locate and dig out their cores was more trouble than it was worth. We walked on, still following the walls, when [Danger Sense] flared. I spun around, failing to see anything, nor did [Mana Sight] reveal anything near... No, it did! That twig over there had suddenly lit up, as had that root, and over by that rock... What I'd assumed to be a collection of detritus snapped closed in a noose.

Cluma leapt, successfully avoiding it, but I was too slow, finding my ankles pinned together. What I'd thought to be a thin, broken branch, dangling from a tree and resting on the floor, turned out to be yet another section of snake. I was yanked upwards into the tree canopy, the body of the snake wrapping around me, pinning my arms too. The head of the snake rose up in front of my face, mouth open wide and fangs glistening with venom.

I had decent base strength, a rank four enchanted orichalcum ring, [Strength] and [Superimpose]. The snake had five centimetres of squidgy flesh. It was obvious which one would win. I pulled an arm free, snapping one or two of the snake's coils in the process, and grabbed the snake behind its head as it lunged at me. A squeeze was enough to end it.

"Oh. I was too slow," commented Cluma, landing on the branch behind me, daggers drawn, ready to perform a heroic rescue. A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

"I suppose I deserved that for mocking them," I said, trying to disentangle my legs.

"They are higher level than the goblin king, so it stands to reason they'd have some trick."

"Yeah, how did it do that? Until it started moving, it didn't react to [Monster Perception] at all! I couldn't smell it, either, but that was probably because it was half buried in mud."

"It was invisible to [Mana Sight] until it started moving, too. Another thing Sara neglected to tell us about." Or maybe it didn't even count as an unusual ability? Dawnhold had the goblin assassins, and they were just as bad as this. Worse, even, since they didn't become visible when attacking. Ambush monsters were likely common. I'd missed it with my active [Mana Sight], but I was mostly doing active scanning for the purpose of tracking Cluma, and hadn't been looking for the snakes.

Staying in the tree, I concentrated, trying to pick up more of the things. There were plenty of signals, but that had been true earlier, too. Were there any that were trying to hide? Yes, I could see another one waiting in ambush. Scarily, it had no active mana flows. To even my active [Mana Sight], it looked just like a twig. The only giveaway was that twigs weren't normally thirty metres long.

"Well, I can sort of see them, now that I know what I'm looking for," I commented.

"Still, keep alert in case I miss one."

"Yes, yes, you already made certain to drill into me the lesson to always stay alert. You're the one that just got caught, not me." I had no comeback to that, so I dropped from the tree and resumed our walk. The disguised snakes weren't particularly common, and the first one had actually been better hidden than most. The majority of the others we came across were more obviously unnatural. Even if our esoteric senses couldn't pick them up, regular sight was sufficient.

Reaching the portal to floor fourteen, we once again returned to Dawnhold. Once again, I failed to sleep, and teleported back to the village. I rolled over, my bed rustling, only to hear my door clicking open. I spun around to see Mum looking down at me.

"Feeling homesick?" she asked.

"How? Shouldn't you be sleeping?" I whispered.

"It didn't take a genius to tell that your bed had been slept in last night," she pointed out, entering my room and closing the door behind her.

"I decided to wait up, in case of a repeat. Do you want to talk about it?" I wasn't sure that I did want to, but I probably should do.

"I couldn't sleep," I admitted.

"It was too quiet."

"Didn't you live on your own back on Earth?"

"I did, but after more than fourteen years of Dad's snoring, I suppose I got used to it." Or perhaps this played back into my earlier thoughts about not being mentally forty. I was Peter, not... What was my Earthen name again? I frowned as I tried to bring it up, but completely failed. But Erryn had given me back those memories... Why couldn't I...

"What's wrong?" asked Mum, picking up on my confusion.

"Did I ever tell you what my name was on Earth?" I asked.

"I don't think you ever mentioned it, no," she answered. I frowned further. That was a rather fundamental thing, so surely I should have mentioned it at some point while talking about my life on Earth. I could remember my parents' faces, their names—Paul and Thelma—my house, all the personal details that had previously been sealed by Erryn. Then where was my name? Did Erryn not give me all of my memories back? But why my name?

"It's probably not important," I lied.

"I'm sure I'll get used to living alone again at some point, but thanks for checking up on me." That little mystery did as much to spoil my sleep as the homesickness, and by the time the next morning rolled around I was very poorly rested. I'd even tried pinging not-Blobby telepathically, but she had no idea what was going on either.

"Are you okay?" asked Cluma when we met up the next morning, immediately going for a comfort-hug. Was it a good sign how easily I was able to tell her different varieties of hug apart these days?

"Your ears are all droopy, and you're frowning."

"I didn't sleep well. Say, have I ever told you what my name was back on Earth?"

"No," she answered with a pout.

"And when I asked, you were really evasive about it."

"Wait, what? You asked?"

"Yeah, you don't remember? So, are you finally going to tell me?"

"I... can't. I don't know it myself."

"Hah. You forgot your own name, and were too embarrassed to admit it?"

"Yeah. Let's go with that. It's as good an explanation as any." Cluma squinted at me, easily picking up that there was more to it than that.

"What's going on?" she asked.

"I noticed last night that I couldn't remember my Earth name, but when I thought about it, I couldn't remember ever thinking about it before. I've never noticed that I didn't know it. And now you tell me that you've outright asked about it, and I don't remember that either."

"Okay, that is rather weird," Cluma admitted.

"Why have you noticed now, then?" I had no idea. It had been a random thought that alerted me to the fact, but I shouldn't have gone so many years without thoughts like that ever bubbling to the surface. What had changed more recently? Even Erryn's death was years ago. It could be some lasting effect from her that was only now starting to wear off, given how Law-like the apparent effect on me had been, but why? I couldn't think of any motivation for her to give back my memories while leaving out my name.

Was there anything else I was missing? Would I be allowed to notice if there was?

"I don't know, and that's kinda scary. Do you mind if we visit the twins today?"

"Sure. It's been far too long since I saw them." We teleported to the Sapphire Peaks, where in a spot of novelty Tirrani was out and Dennacta was house-sitting with the twins.

"Good morning," I greeted the three of them. Tennacti charged Cluma, hugging her around one leg. Cluma swept her up and clutched her to her chest, resulting in a burst of giggles. That girl must have gained [Xenophilia] by now, but was still too young for my [Analysis] to prove it.

"Morning," answered Dennacta uncertainly, staring first at Cluma, and then at my head. Dirrana duplicated his staring exactly.

"May I ask..." Dennacta continued before cutting himself off. Right. The only time I'd visited here since getting them, I'd been wearing my helmet, and Cluma hadn't visited at all since her unsolicited hair dye. Tennacti must have been in too much of a hurry to notice.

"It's a long story. Short version is that Cluma had an accident that turned her hair black and her eyes violet, and I was responsible, so I let her stick these ears on me as payback. I think they're cool, though."

"Then why do you keep asking me if you can take them off?"

"The principle of the thing. Even if you said yes, I'd probably keep them."

"I don't know how you haven't evolved [Xenophilia] yet," she muttered.

"Because I refused the tail?"

"Hmm..."

"Anyway," I interrupted in an attempt to get back on topic, "Tennacti or Dirrana, remember when I asked your names, you wrote your new ones and said you'd discarded your old, can you actually remember your old names? You don't need to tell me them, just if you're able to remember them." Dirrana immediately looked confused. Tennacti looked up from Cluma, where she'd managed to climb on top of her head and was happily playing with her ears, before donning a matching expression of confusion.

Picking up his board, Dirrana wrote out a simple, "No."

"And have you ever noticed that you didn't remember?" As Tennacti started to look concerned, Dirrana wrote out another, "No." Just like Cluma had apparently done to me, I'd outright asked their Earth names, and they'd deflected without even noticing. I hadn't thought it suspicious at the time, and even looking back, nothing about their reaction had seemed unnatural. Unusual, yes, but not unnatural.

"It's the same for me," I told them.

"I only noticed last night. I remember the names of everyone else, though. What about you? You remember your children?"

"Dafydd and Owen," wrote out Dirrana immediately, leading me to shudder. One of those names was completely unfamiliar to me, but the other... Owen. That brought back bad memories. My murderous younger brother.... Wait. It couldn't be.

"Do you remember each other's names?" Both nodded.

"Thelma," wrote out Dirrana, causing my vision to blur as my eyes teared up. Tennacti jumped down from Cluma's head, spreading her wings and managing a controlled fall even if she was far off from being able to fly. She picked up her board, but I interrupted her writing. I already knew what she was going to write, after all.

"Paul?" I asked, even though I already knew the answer. Tennacti dropped her board in amazement, and both twins stared at me.

"So, my Earth name was Dafydd," I whispered as the shock started to settle in.