A day earlier…

  Ki had just finished the isotion tree houses. More nymphs joined her to keep an eye on the humans. It had only been a day when people started freaking out about people who came back from the wastes showing signs of feather growth. It was hard to tell the difference between malnourished and sick humans. Some of them even had csses like ‘survivor’ which let them get skills to not need as much food or water. The stone ax tribe must have had some hard times if the shamans were okay with their children getting a css where the main benefit is avoiding death by starvation or dehydration.

  Anyway, the handful of people who were supposed to be male but seemed to be turning female, or showed signs of feathers starting to grow were in isotion so they couldn’t infect anyone else with bird flu. Ki had some free time on her hands before Alex and Fufi showed up. After hearing that Luna was the one who reactivated the dungeon, the nymph wondered what it was like. Merumeru had drained the water a while ago so it was accessible. The first few days no one messed with the dungeon. It was a sore point and all the tribes people thought that they might be punished if they went in again. Also, that one girl with the mermaid pendant was the only one who really had much experience in it. Most of the stone ax tribe couldn’t swim. Rumors going around showed that they still thought it was an underwater dungeon. For Nymphs being submerged could be good and bad. A water nymph, or a nereid wouldn’t have any trouble spending indefinite time under water. However, Ki was a forest nymph. She wouldn’t drown in minutes like a human but it wasn’t ideal. The worst case would be if it was salt water. Wood nymphs didn’t handle salt water well at all. Chatting with Fufi and Alex revealed that it wasn’t an underwater dungeon for them. Ki ran a hand through her long green hair and pondered over the obelisk in the adventurer’s guild basement.

  “Hmm, I wonder if it is even an option to begin with,” Ki said aloud in the dimly lit basement. She pced her hand on the pilr and it broke apart into floating spinning chunks. The parts orbited in a circle in the air. As they spun, a portal appeared in the middle.

  “Oh, I didn’t think that would work. I remember when I was a child my father told me that the dungeon portals in the kingdom only worked for humans.” Ki called for another nymph to come down and approach the portal.

  The flower-haired nymph opened the trap door, walked towards the portal and it went back to being a pilr. “I’m sorry cousin Ki, the rift doesn’t seem to like me.”

  Ki shook her head. “Don’t worry, I thought it wouldn’t like any nymphs but it seems like after getting a css I’m different. At least I think so? Who knows, maybe I just don’t know how the kingdom was running things before it fell. My dad was just a baron in a border region after all.”

  The two nymphs parted and Ki entered the rift. “I really hope this doesn’t count as leaving my tree. Foolishly walking through a portal and having your soul severed from your body would be an embarrassing way to go.”

  Ki felt a pang of nausea upon magically transporting to another pce. Her eyes adjusted to the new environment. She looked around and took stock of her surroundings. She was standing on well trimmed grass. A wn? The wn surrounded a log cabin. A gravel road went from the cabin to a rger dirt road. A run down wagon was parked alongside the dirt road. At the end of the wn trees grew all around. They also grew alongside the road. Ki approached the house and saw a sign hanging from the door.

  It said, “Your magical girl is sick. Demons are coming to eat her brains. Create a cute garden to protect her rest so she can get better.”

  The green-haired nymph boggled at the sign. “What a weird dungeon. I was expecting caves, levels and a boss, not this. Anyway, I wonder how this works. Are demons going to just start coming in from the forest? If so, which type?” She was fairly confident in her ability to fight most opponents in a forested area. A root strike would turn most grounded creatures into skewers.

  Ki approached the wagon and called out, “Hello I’m Ki is anyone in there?”

  A fat man with brown hair, a zy eye, wearing a tunic and a cauldron for a hat waddled out from the wagon. “Hello senorita! I'm Manuel el loco, welcome to my shop.”

  Ki tilted her head, “This is a shop? What does it sell?”

  Manuel lifted a cloth, showing the wares of the wagon. “I sell seeds! Let me show you my wares.”

  The inside of the wagon was lined with shelves that had many packets of seeds. Each had a price written on it.

  “I don’t have any money though.” Ki sighed.

  “You don’t have any money yet! Sometimes those greedy demons drop coins when they die. I’ll give you some basics in hopes for future business.” Manuel handed the nymph two packets.

  One of them had an overly cute looking drawing of a sunflower and the other a cute looking drawing of what might be witch hazel.

  “Thanks Manuel, I think we got enough pnts around here to do the job but I’ll give these a chance when I get to it.” Ki accepted the seed packets.

  “Give them a shot, you won’t regret it!” Manual boomed, then proceeded to ugh insanely.

  Ki quickly made her exit back to the cabin and patrolled around the wn. After doing a loop and coming back around to the cabin door and saw a new sign sitting next to the first one.

  “Wave incoming, prepare your defenses.”

  “Hmm, should I pnt these seeds from that suspicious human?” Ki wondered aloud. The nymph tested her root strike ability using the trees around the wn and it worked fine. A root shout out of the ground more than twice the size of a man.

  The pnts in the area alerted Ki to a demon wandering in from the forest. The nymph listened in to what the tree sensed. The demon seemed to be small and not able to fly. She had a few ideas as to what kind of monster it could be but these trees were not used to being around much of anything considering that they had only been in existence for less than a day.

  A few minutes ter and the ugly little thing shambled into view. Ki didn’t even want to let it get on the wn much less into the cabin. The monster was a gremlin. Gremlins are like flightless imps. It was an ugly little four foot thing with red skin, dark cws, and sharp fangs. She attacked with a root strike.

  A root struck the gremlin from below unching it into the air.

  Surprisingly, the gremlin didn’t get impaled. A floating ‘0’ hovered over its head from the strike. The ugly thing nded with a thump and another ‘0’ appeared.

  The thing chittered inanely and kept trying to advance.

  Ki struck the red skinned demon time and time again with root strike but all she could do is knock it back. It was a stalemate.

  “Stupid demon. We’ve killed thousands of you back in the war. Why won’t you die?!” Ki grit her teeth in frustration. After enough time of trying the same thing over and over and getting the same result, she tried to do something different. Ki pnted one of the seeds in the wn and used her pnt growth skill to get it to full size.

  A strange yet cute sunflower grew out of the ground. Instead of having just a big yellow circle there was a smiling face. It looked like someone drew bck lines on the flower part of the pnt. It swayed back and forth slightly.

  A new sign next to the two already there on the cabin caught Ki’s attention. It was rger and had a symbol of a sun with the number 1 next to it. Below there was another line.

  Sun collection: 1

  To test the theory, Ki pnted one of the other seeds and used her magic to grow it to full height. A witch hazel sprouted out of the ground and began flowering. Only it didn’t look quite like a normal witch hazel. The flowers were pink and heart shaped. Like the sunflower, it seemed cuter than it should be. Both pnts swayed slightly to a non existent wind.

  “So far so good, maybe that Manuel guy isn’t bad. It is hard to take a guy who wears a cauldron on his head seriously.” Ki touched the pnts, one with each hand to figure out what they could do. “Oh, it looks like the sun flower empowers the garden. That is what that sun icon with the number must mean. It is how much sunshine is stored up.”

  The gremlin advanced onto the wn. The thing gibbered in some infernal tongue that made no sense to the nymph.

  Ki grimaced. No one wants demons on their wn.

  The witch hazel’s flower petals dropped to the ground and a pod full of seeds opened up. With a ‘pew pew pew’ sound, the seed pod fired a staccato of small projectiles at the gremlin.

  The seeds struck the demon in rapid succession. The number ‘-1’ floated above its head with each strike. Instead of blood and gore, the projectiles produced pink hearts, blue bubbles, and yellow sparkles upon impact. The gremlin fell down, defeated.

  As a bonus, the wn didn’t get stained. The gremlin faded from existence after defeat.

  The rest of the wave had those little buggers coming from every direction. Ki pnted more pnts all around the cabin so that there wasn’t an angle that could be attacked where the witch hazel didn’t have.

  The wave ended with none of the gremlins making it to the cabin. Ki felt a rush of power wash over it. She knew from her short time as a human this was a level up. She checked her stats and she was a level two Baroness of Beauty. And she acquired a new skill.

  Empower Flower:

  Range: Inside caster’s domain.

  Duration: One minute per level.

  Description: Adds +1 cuteness per level of the affected pnt.

  Cost: one sunshine.

  “Hmm, I think I see the point of this dungeon. Just because root strike is really good that doesn’t mean it is everything. I shouldn’t rely on racial skills for everything. Why even get a css if I’m just going to default to how things were before?” Ki smiled back at one of the smiling sunflowers. “Well, I better head back. Alex and Fufi should be here tomorrow.”