Chapter Eighteen“You look like a cat Hyath dragged back to py with.” Ambrosia chided, handing Harmony a healing drought as she left the dungeon.

  He’d never do that. He doesn’t py with his food. A cast of [Renew Spirit] as she dowhe potion boosted its effectiveness. There were hours until dinner. “How did you find me? I thought you were busy with the band.”

  “I keep your schedule. When you described how you hahe first flot a pretty good estimate of how long it would take. More importantly, a little bird told me.”

  Spies. Friendly spies. She’d dohat at Coodly Manor as well, to make sure she was where she was needed when she was needed. It helped her take longer breaks iween so they could sck off together.

  Harmony grunted with a shiver as she bined her skills to reset herself. A slight tweak of the m routine. “Better?”

  “Much. I’m guessing problems with the sed floor?”

  Harmony nodded slowly. Ambrosia knew how much she loathed admitting weakness. This wouldn’t be the first task she’d failed at. It took a week to figure out how to deal with the garden gnomes when she’d been assigo that pest problem.

  “I kly who to start with,” Ambrosia tinued.

  Harmony totally trusted her friend, but something in the woman’s tone and twinkle belied a surprise.

  “First let's get you ged.” From a shopping back Ambrosia pulled out a garment bag.

  Excitement overshadowed suspi. Night might be spectacur to look at, but the armor had somehow morphed into a uniform more than a fashion statement. You only spend so many days wearing the same outfit without getting tired of it. “You’re a lifesaver.”

  “I know,” Ambrosia said with a wink.

  Hyath disappeared into the shadows to take a nap. Running around with Ambrosia wasn’t his thing.

  The yellow sundress with blue flowers was as close to the opposite of Night as could be. Rather tharavagant and out there it blended in with the crowd as the “in” thing for early summer. bined with a hat for shade, Harmony doubted anyone would reize her after a slight application of [Beauti] inspired makeup and a tweak to her hair color to a bluish tint. As without protes as it was, Ambrosia had knowingly provided a metal bracelet to calm [Small Armor]

  The Guild might be the choice for information, followed by Sir Maxwell and Prince Adric for their experiences with Nae’s Garden. She could maybe grill them harder on how they defeated the sed floor, or look at the guides again, but those were all dominated by team tactics. They would still be avaible after she ran about with her bubbly blonde friend.

  It helped that they didn’t ght to whoever the Ambrosia pnned for them to meet. Skewers with round mini-cakes soaked in syrup, short stops to peruse booths with colorful clothing made from soft wooze fur. It’s not that they didn’t go in a general dire. The meandering did stop. It stopped in front of a small training gym.

  Gyms in Naewauld weren’t as big a thing as in Hazeldown. You rarely recruited teams to help with the dungeon, usually, you looked for one specific skill or person to help your team be rounded out. This produced associations like the Grave Society. The ission had more of a stranglehold o battles and cracked down heavily on illegal matches. The guild was more active in the unity taking many of the roles gyms provide; Harmony suspected Hemlock pyed a role in that ck of support for Hazeldown. But gyms hadn’t been eliminated, merely reduced.

  Ambrosia produced Harmony’s Viridian gym badge to the doorman, allowing them uioned access.

  The mystery of why they were here tugged at Harmony until the coiled gray tipede she’d seen battling months ago, pers, greeted her with a chitter. Two men stood chatting nearby. “Jack?” They both turo face her. That’s whe a look at the short well-muscled young man standio the skinnier pet owner. “Mike!” Two former leaders of The Dig Boys in one pbsp;

  Both had their faces sched up as they looked at her. “Little off-White.” Cried Mike reizing her first. Harmony hated that niame. He’d stuck it to her while training her in the basics of fighting with a size disadvantage aing her covered in dust and dirt in the process. “Or is it Lady Off-White now?”

  “That joke would er if you ever actually mao write to me, Mikey Shrubert. Jack at least sent a note when he went off the the capitol.”

  The temperature in the room dropped slightly. Harmony pressed to trol it. The temptation of using [Final Silence] burned with her embarrassment from not realizing how angry she was about that until Mike spoke.

  “My woman didn’t want me sendiers to girls.”

  “Maybe if you focused less on the fact that I’m a girl and more that we were friends!”

  Jack stepped betweewo. “This is a gym, we don’t do this kind of fighting here. We’re all Viridian badge holders. This is where we go to support each other. Harm wouldn’t be here if she didn’t hat support.”

  “Don’t you mean, Lady White?” Mike corrected.

  Jack slugged him in the arm. “She didn’t ask for that. And she’s right you should have written. Groine when fag Beatrice.”

  “Sorry.” Mike winced while shifting bad forth on his feet.

  “What kind of help do you need?” Jack asked Harmony.

  “I need a way to defeat the pnt monsters on the sed floor and farther up Nae’s Garden. I was thinking of some kind of weed-killing poison.” That had been one of the tools Coodly Manor had used to maintain the grounds, and not all of the trip here had been browsing wears aing treats. That only slightly took her mind off the disaster that trip to the sed floor ended up.

  “Any group having issues just rents out a necro from the Grave Society,” Mike answered, still a little salty in his tone.

  “I have to climb the tower alone.”

  “No one has to grind like those crazy fners.” Mike barked.

  “Do I o ask you to leave?” Jaterrupted enough heat in his voice to get pers twitg and eyeing Mike hungrily.

  “No. I’m out.” He turned and gave Harmony a very mog bow. “Farewell, Lady White.” Before he stomped out of the gym.

  “I’d like to say I didn’t know what’s gotten into him, but I kly who has gotten into him.” Jack groaned. “To answer your question. Poisons and alchemical cos don’t work. There are always teams who are resistant t cursed csses, and who have poor skills for handling the garden’s lifeforriched pnts. They’ve all failed.”

  “The guides say poison skills…”

  “Skills.” Jaterrupted. “Skills work because it is part of you actively challenging the dungeon. You have a poisoimes as strong as a skill, but it’s missing that little piece of a person to make it work there.”

  “I should have selected [Rot].] Harmony groaned.

  “I’m gd you didn’t join those stinkers. That’s not the path for you.”

  “You smell them too?” Harmony half-whispered in shock.

  “Probably not the same way you do. I know I’ve alked about my css. I’m a tracker. I’ve got a nose for these things. Not all of them smell wrong, wet mulch, but many clearly select skills not because they fit them but because they were told that is best for the dungeon. That’s not you. Your smell has always been refreshing and it would have been a shame to ruin that.”

  [Poise and Bearing] covered any immediate repulsion from being smelled. Jack has always been kind and respectful, and one couldn’t always trol how their css and profession affected them. If someone o give others leeway, her faults put her at the front of that line. “That doesn’t help that I do need a skill to hahose woody abominations. Evolved challengers do it alone.”

  “They train specifically to hahis dungeon with their path, or buy skill stones in preparation if they ’t mao create one.”

  The ability to use a skill stone opened up with the st level. [Stride Against the Fall] and [Final Silehere hasn’t been a ce to adjust to them, like wearing a good pair of shoes in, as not to get blisters. Adding another ohat's too much too soon. Both of them feel weird. [Stride] doesn’t have a locus, it’s everywhere to a greater extent than the o-like of [Mana Rotation], while [Silence] is eerily quiet in its er of spaside her. She’d expected random muting of sounds, untrolble numbing in spurts like when she’d used it on herself. Instead, it waits. Skills never wait, evehere weren’t issues with authority they always acted up like unruly children when you first got them.

  “Thank you for the advice.” Jack, sweet as he was, only moved up here a month ago. Nose aside, he wouldn’t have the information she needed.

  “You’ll figure it out, Harm, you always do.

  With a slight bow of respect, Harmoreated outside.

  “Sorry, I thought you wao see Mike and some friendly faces from home.” Ambrosia apologized, now more friend than a personal maid.

  “I’d thought so too. Another familiar face from home might be more helpful. I don’t think I’ve introduced you to Len.”