B3 Chapter 61: Magnificent Fanciness

“Ooooh, cold.” Another mouthful of wine slid down her throat, freezing her from within without any of the expected discomfort. What sort of snooty process they’d used to give it such an effect, she had no idea, nor did she particularly care. All that mattered for now was that it tasted good, and it was getting her drunk. As an unnecessary but appreciated side-effect, it also made her feel fantastic, courtesy of its buff.

You have drank from Rime’s Descent, Thrice-Blessed Ice Wine.

You have gained a temporary well-fed buff.

Mana regeneration improved by 300%

+10 to all stats

+30% to experience gain for ice-related skills

+200% to the effect of all Ice Magic

Now, Nadja was well aware that the outside observer might have viewed what she was doing as questionable to say the least. “Najda,” they might say, “why are you guzzling the most mind-bogglingly expensive wine down like it’s bottom of the barrel swill?” And it was a fair question! She definitely got it.

What Nadja had only learned far too late, however, was that there was no booze in this gods-forsaken mansion. She’d made triply sure of that by checking every nook and cranny of the place (an endeavor which had made her feel very heavily like gutter trash -- why were the clothing-filled closets larger than anywhere she’d ever lived?) Regardless, whether Verin hadn’t gotten around to stocking it or she just kept all her liquor on her person, the entire place was pitifully dry.

Had Nadja considered that possibility sooner, she would have snatched a few bottles of moonshine from the bar on her way out. Unfortunately, she’d been a bit preoccupied at the time with the whole “war” thing, which meant the only alcohol she had on her was the bottle she always kept on her. Especially having been raised around thieves, even the thought of leaving the impossibly expensive bottle unattended almost gave her a panic attack.

So with all that in mind, what was she supposed to do? Be sober during the war?

Perish the thought.

And hey, it’s not like I’m about to finish it. Even after a good few glasses, the bottle seemed just as full as it had started, doubtless owing to some rich-people spatial enchantment.

All that to say: Nadja was presently lying in a disgustingly comfortable bed getting drunk off of horrifyingly expensive wine.

The first two glasses, she’d spent fretting, in small part for herself, but mostly for the people who were not currently in a magically warded noble’s house. Rock was hardly in any position to be fighting right now. Was he going to be okay? Was Ava? Were her regulars? Hells, was Elphaea?

She really did care. Truly. However, there was only so much continuous worrying a person could do, especially while getting increasingly drunk. By glass three, her thoughts had shifted onto an entirely separate track.

You know whose fault I bet this is?

In comes the king shouting all about kidnapped daughters and unthankful Protagonists. It wasn’t hard to figure out the likely culprit for all this mess.

Fucking Tess did this, didn’t she? Not that I really get what her deal with the king is, but she did this, didn’t she?

This, quite naturally, resulted in the next two glasses of wine being dedicated to thinking about what Nadja would say to Tess if she was here right now. By the end of the fourth glass, she was happy to report that she would absolutely destroy Tess if they had an argument right now and it went exactly like the ten hypothetical ones she’d just had in her head. Truly, Nadja was a force to be reckoned with.

With the fifth glass, she extended her grievances farther back, dredging up everything she thought she’d gotten over by now.

It’s just- Does she think I’m an idiot? Coming to me to apologize, and then when I call her out for full-on knocking me out, she just denies it? Like, come on Tess! The room wasn’t that big! What am I supposed to believe here, that your magical third person was conveniently invisible?

She would have liked to see Tess even try to pass that lie off. Every thief knew that the only person in Ftheran with a true invisibility skill was the Shadow of Fther-

Nadja paused mid-gulp as though the ice-wine had frozen her brain this time.

The Shadow of Ftheran. The one that Tess said she ran into the day we met. The one that stole the scepter in the first place. Holy shit. You don’t think that-

Other details that Nadja had dismissed started bubbling up to the surface: there’d been a second guard that had been knocked out, one that Temrin had sworn Tess couldn’t have caught up to with how long it had taken her to beat him. Everyone had figured he was just trying to make it sound like he put up more of a fight than he actually did, but what if he was actually telling the truth?

And of course, there was the other thing. The more annoying thing.

I don’t actually remember her ever doing anything to me. If anything, the last thing I remember was her looking kind of surprised…

Glass six was devoted entirely to swearing.

When her impromptu diatribe bore to a close, Nadja calmed herself with glass seven.

See, that doesn’t even make sense though! That’s dumb. Why would the Shadow be there? Why would they be friends? Tess doesn’t even have friends from Ftheran!

I mean, that’s not entirely true. She has that one friend. The one who was with her the first time she came into the bar? Not like she was the Shadow though. She’d been wearing priestess robes! And the Shadow was a dude. At least she thought he was. Probably.

“Ughhh. No! I’m not thinking about this right now.” It wasn’t the time!

And more pressingly, was this wine stronger than normal? Between her Bartender class and her Drinking level, seven measly glasses of wine should have barely given her a buzz. Except, she was feeling a buzz, wasn’t she?

“Mmmm. If I’m going to serve this, I should really figure out just how alcoholic it is.”

For purely scientific, investigative reasons, Nadja tested glasses eight and nine.

Her finding: Woooo! Yup. That was some good wine.

The system thought so too!

Drinking has reached level 35!

She hadn’t raised that skill since the last time she’d had the wine! If that wasn’t a sign to go for glass ten, what was?

In fact, a skill leveling up was a cause to celebrate, wasn’t it? Nadja flung herself out of bed, deciding it was well past time to throw a dance party. Or oh! Not just a normal dance party! She was in a mega fancy house, wasn’t she? That automatically made it a ball.

Nadja slow-danced from room to room until, halfway through glass eleven, she gasped. How was she supposed to be at a ball if she wasn’t wearing a ballgown? A horrible oversight.

Thankfully, Verin’s closets weren’t as poorly stocked as her liquor cabinets. Glass twelve was, quite naturally, for trying on absolutely everything in Verin’s wardrobe. She settled for a gaudy, skin-tight, snowflake-patterned dress. The negative space of the snowflakes was all cutouts, revealing an outright scandalous amount of the skin beneath, but who cared? She liked it!

“Good! I am a very fancy noble lady now.” Rock would have a field day right now if he saw her like this. She really was the Baroness of Emer’Thalis!

“Bow tiny peasants! Your magnificent fanciness approaches!” She wasn’t sure how nobles were supposed to be addressed, but “magnificent fanciness” sounded about right, didn’t it?

Appropriately garbed, she continued her dancing, the increased Dexterity from the wine’s buff pushing her to try more and more daring moves. She twirled. She jumped. She leaned back with sinuous grace, flexibility, and-

“Whoops.” She splashed a solid fourth of glass thirteen on the dress, turning a single section of it crimson red. That didn’t feel very fancy. She switched to drinking straight out of the bottle after that, corking it with her thumb whenever she wasn’t actively sipping from it.

Naturally, no ball was complete without music to dance to. Had Nadja thought to bring one of her instruments (and possessed a few more hands), she would have played something nice to set the tone. Failing that, she had only her voice. She made good use of her Intelligence boost to craft incredibly deep and insightful lyrics on the fly.

“Fancy, fancy, fancy, ball. This is Nadja’s fancy, fancy ball.” Exactly how long she kept up her song, she couldn’t say. Through the parlor. Through the kitchen. Through the master bedroom. Through the other master bedroom. She was a creature possessed! The dancing queen! She closed her eyes and let loose, swinging her body this way and that.

“I’m a silly snooty noble. Fancy, fancy, fancy-”

It was right at that moment when abruptly and rather loudly, someone cleared their throat.

Nadja’s eyes bolted open. She spun towards the noise, nearly stumbling to the floor.

Standing there in the doorway -- to a room that Nadja swore had just been empty -- was one particularly vexed looking homeowner.

“Miss Nadja. What an unexpected surprise. I’m afraid I’m currently quite occupied, but I find myself so unusually baffled that I must ask regardless: Is there a reason you are presently dancing through my home, in my dress, drinking the wine I gave you, singing about how ‘fancy’ you are?”

Nadja tried to speak. She really did. Her brain, unfortunately, wouldn’t let her. It was far too busy checking if she had any skills that could let her run away or possibly off herself right that very instant. Sadly, she did not.

Thankfully, before she could shrivel up and die, Nadja remembered exactly why she was here in the first place. Her mortification was temporarily placed on hold as righteous indignation filled its place.

“Welllll soorrrry. I don’t know if you noticed, but there’s a WAR going on outside, so… yeah.” That explained that.

Somehow, her thorough explanation did not suffice for the nitpicking noble. Verin made not a motion save to furrow her brows.

“Is there truly, or is this a product of the inebriated imagination? Who would be fighting a war here? I was made to believe it was a rather stable region.”

“Yeah, well, me too! Then the gooood ol’ king of Ftheran shows up shouting stuff about ‘foreign powers’ and ‘kidnapped daughters’ and WOOSH! War.”

This, it appeared, was very far from the answer Verin had been looking for.

“If you’ll excuse me for a moment.” She ducked back into the room she’d come from. Almost immediately afterwards came a shout that filled the entire mansion.

“WHAT?”

A figure clad in black garb and sporting all manner of daggers burst into the room.

With a start, Nadja realized she knew the woman.

Ooh! That’s the girl Tess came with to my bar that one time! Her friend from Ftheran!

The one that definitely couldn’t be the Shadow of Ftheran because she was a priestess, not some sneaky thie-

For what felt like the millionth time today, Nadja’s mind ground to a halt.

“Hi Nadja. Bye Nadja.” The girl sprinted by her even as Nadja’s drunken thoughts strove to catch up.

Friend of Tess. From Ftheran. Black clothes. Daggers.

“MOTHER FUCKER!”

It was her, wasn’t it? She was the one who’d screwed everything over for Nadja! Without a second thought, Nadja charged after the fleeing rogue, wine bottle still tightly clutched. “IT WAS YOU, WASN’T IT? DON’T RUN! GET BACK HERE!”

She vaguely noted it as Verin reappeared in the doorway and shouted something to her, but she paid it no mind. And once again, when she followed the rogue down the stairs and out the door, she had the momentary feeling like she should be considering something, but she ignored it.

No, right now, she was on a mission! As she watched the black-clad figure run away from her, only one thought graced Nadja’s fancy head.

I’mmm gonnna catch youuu!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Even before he reached the treeline, one thing was overwhelmingly clear to Rock.

The battlefield was a mess.

Clusters of forest shadows dashed from tree to tree, firing arrows out into the invading force with abandon. Unable to leave the woods without losing most of their class bonuses, they were barred from engaging at melee range. It was a weakness the humans did not hesitate to exploit, a handful of archers and mages launching flaming arrows and fire spells from afar. Aided by skills, wherever the attacks landed, trees began to smoke and smolder, or in some cases, immediately catch fire.

It was a testament to his people’s training that the ash-filled treeline wasn’t the most chaotic part of the battle, either.

Lacking any semblance of discipline, the majority of the invading forces simply surged forth, not even attempting to form a line. Dozens of scattered fights were taking place in every direction he looked, with solo adventurers or adventuring parties treating the army as if it were one giant group of dungeon monsters.

Monsters, however, were rarely as cunning as people were, nor were their skills quite as varied. He would have liked to see the adventurers winning a one-sided battle, but with the shadows trapped in the forest and the army’s size advantage, things were looking bleak.

Or at least, they had been.

With the roar of a caged beast finally let free, Rock charged forth. Hot on his heels, Hartha followed, with Elphaea choosing to remain behind.

“Rally! To me!”

Commander’s Aura. Cohesion. Every shadow’s attention snapped towards him as his people unconsciously found themselves falling into place. The very sight of him sparked a chorus of cheers, both for his visible recovery and for what his presence signified.

And if his tribe had been happy to see him, that was only doubly true when they finally caught sight of the woman behind him.

“The heart has returned!” he bellowed. “Form up! We advance!”

It was true that Foresters lost most of their strength outside of the woods, but that was no longer a problem. With Hartha here, her class skill, The Forest Walks, would take care of it. Even the desiccated deadlands would be considered woodland as long as she was nearby.

That wasn’t all, either. As the shadows practically flew into formation, countless forest fires were snuffed out all at once. More flaming arrows and fire spells arrived to reignite the flames, but vines and roots shot out from the earth, effortlessly batting them away. Nor were the vines purely defensive -- Rock watched as a soldier tried to dash through a gap in the fighting to enter the forest only for a root to snag her ankle and throw her back.

As for the soldiers who’d already entered, a few far-off shouts of pain made it clear that there was no running from a dryad in her own domain.

At last, a real battle! A time to be a commander!

He was ready! Everything was in place! Hundreds of his kinsman were spread out behind him in tight formations, ready to cut through the disorderly army before them. They would witness first hand the folly of underestimating his people!

Right as Rock was about to signal their advance, though, something caught his eye.

There, far off to the side. Someone had just run out of the forest.

For a moment, he assumed it was one of the soldiers, as the figure was clearly a human.

With mounting dread, however, Rock realized he knew that particular human.

As Nadja, clad in a wine-stained dress and carrying nothing but a bottle of wine, drunkenly rushed into the sea of fighting, Rock cursed.

Damnation. What in the hells is that blasted girl doing?