Chương 175: Chapter 180: Names

The door behind us closed and I started to give them a tour. The place was quite empty for now, but it would get filled up soon, Rhea promised me. Apparently it looked too sterile and needed a woman's touch. Yea, not happening. All the talks about fixing up the place ended when we reached the dungeon.

"If I didn't know you, I'd never enter this place with someone else," said Rhea.

"Maybe you don't know me that well…" I said in an ominous tone.

"Fuck off Eli, you're not the type to chain us in a cell, it's more likely that you'd just disappear, I'm sure it would be too much of a bother for you to have to deal with prisoners."

"You are not completely wrong, but I don't keep prisoners here… but pets." We arrived in front of the two cells containing the snake eggs, the two girls were looking at the things flabbergasted.

"What the fuck are even those?"

"They are beautiful…" said Rhea.

"Can I have one?"

"Nope, those would be loyal only to me, sorry, I have no idea how to imprint them on you." I lied through my teeth, sorry Rhea, I'd find another monster for you to play with.

"Pity, but I'd like some fluffy murder machine I can pet too sometimes… just to let you know, my birthday is near."

"I'd have to disappoint you with these then, they are not going to be fluffy at all, they are the eggs of the big snake I hunted some days ago. There were hundreds of powerful monsters battling outside of its lair for claiming these eggs, and the poison crystals."

"Some snakes are really soft to the touch…" Alya remarked.

"Not these ones probably, the big one had reverse hooks that would tear your skin off like a cheese grater, probably worse even."

"Are you really going to keep them? What if they become dangerous for the others?"

"I got some guides from the store, they should follow my commands pretty easily, and making them dangerous was exactly the reason I got them in the first place so…"

"I have a question, why are they so different? I mean, one is white with green cracks, the other is black with… grey cracks?" I took a better look at the black egg, actually the previous green cracks like veins became darker and darker, now they didn't shine like before, but they emitted this deep grey hue. I noticed that the curses in the items I placed on the egg were nearly gone, eaten by the egg, the surviving curses were weak and on the verge of dissipating, very interesting.

I started to take out all the weapons I cursed the past hours, Alya's stat boost netted me a great deal of curses that now would feed my snake pet project. I placed them all around and on the egg, then I took out Alya's gift.

"This is for you," I said while I transferred the curse in my grimoire, it was quite hard to move, this thing was vicious.

"What is this?" she asked in reverence as she took the greatsword in her hands.

"Something that would serve you better than that thing you're using right now. It's called Crimson Edge, it had the effect of focusing your aura on the edge of the blade, it was cursed but now it's perfectly fine to use." This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version. She unsheathed the blade from the scabbard.

The long hilt of the greatsword was polished steel wrapped in dark red leather, a ruby was embedded in the crossguard, while the blade was at least a palm in width, and nearly four feet long, a beast of a weapon, given that it was quite thick too, totally not similar to how greatswords in the Middle Ages were made, but here we had stats to make up for the weight of the weapon, and Alya was clearly managing to use it as if it weighed nothing.

She gave it a couple of practiced swings, then activated her skills on the blade, the aura and the flames that before sheathed all the sword, even the flat of it, now were channeled all into the edge, which started to glow a deep crimson. The ruby was alight too, and the sword started humming with power, I could easily tell that this thing could cut me easily as it was, the power now was much more focused, and therefore dangerous.

"Thank you Eli, I don't know what to say…"

"Say nothing about it, it's time that we step up our game, we all need to get stronger and better equipped. I have the means of saving us a ton of points, I should have done this sooner, and avoided letting people spend points for nothing."

"That may be, but thank you anyway, this thing is a beauty."

"You're welcome."

"Where is my present then?" asked Rhea, a hint of mischief in her eyes.

"We are going to get yours in a bit, I found many things useful for a ritualist, but I didn't really know what would be better for you. There was a grimoire in particular that caught my interest, something that would let you deploy rituals instantly, not dissimilar to what you do with your magic circles, but I wanted your input before buying anything."

"I was joking you know? I don't need you to get me anything…"

"But I'm not, we need to get you more stats, and good equipment, everybody actually, and I would remove the curse on everything, then we would have saved hundreds of thousands of points, and I could give a good meal to my new pet." The girls turned to look at the eggs again.

"Does it really eat cursed items?"

"For now, yes, I'm trying to see how this would go. The black one already was a mutated variant, now it's totally going to be different from its sibling, but I'm sure the white one wouldn't become less powerful. With the cores he would absorb, he would get a ton of nourishment and its venom would become something else."

"Ok… all of this is really important but what are you going to call them?" Rhea's question left me thinking.

"You didn't choose names yet?" Her tone was pretty accusatory, as if their names were at the forefront of my problems…

"No, but if you have some suggestions I would take them." Alya was still swinging her new toy around while Rhea started shooting out a long list of names. I stopped her before she could get worked up too much and told them to follow me again, this time heading towards the cellar.

"So this is the blood honey? And the crystal honey?" asked Alya while looking at the barrels of the thick blood-smelling thing.

"Yea, I'm sure that it would give us some sort of boost if we eat enough, for the crystals though, I don't know…"

"Well, I'm still too full so I would pass on those for now, but tomorrow I'd take some if you don't mind."

"Of course I don't, actually I was planning on giving enough for the boost to all the members of the vanguard, at least. The others, we'd see…" The girls looked at each other, then Rhea said to me, "Eli, don't you think it would be good if the people in the group got enough for a boost too? At the end of the day, we are in this together." I knew what they were talking about, but actually I didn't believe they should get rewarded to do the bare minimum.

I would keep this resource as a reward for those who really put in the work, after all, crafters didn't really need as many stats as fighters. I told them what I thought and I got mixed responses, Alya was actually agreeing with me, while Rhea was more of a good Samaritan than I thought.

"We need to prioritize, Rhea, not everyone is going to be loyal to us, and we are a budding organization. We need to have some sort of payment for those who work with us, the more we go on together, the more people would be dissatisfied with just this communist kind of doing we had until now. Keeping this in reserve would only help us in the long run when we would need to reward someone, or use it as payment."

I could see that she didn't agree, but it was me who retrieved this resource, and I would use it as I saw fit.

"Now, how about we try it ourselves first?" I took out a spoon from my satchel, the feeling of putting my hand into it and touching the item I was searching for was always strange, no matter how many times I did it.

"Ok, gimme that, I hope it doesn't taste like blood…" With that she took the spoon from my hand and scooped up some honey, it was very thick, and very ominous-looking. As I looked at it I remembered how it was made and I felt a bit queasy at the production method, but I would eat it anyway, I wasn't going to pass on that thing despite its origin.

"Ok, here goes nothing." I heard Rhea mutter before eating the thing. After a second she swallowed and a surprised expression appeared on her face.

"Damn…"