D.E.M.O.N.S: Getting Summoned Weekly isn't so Bad Chapter 2217 Clean Plates

--- Kat ---

Appoline was able to determine a few things about the Momentary Lily that was hidden away, as well as point out a few other neat plants that were hidden away in the area... but the issue still remained that getting close to any of them was a good way to be sliced to bits. The only person capable of getting through it was Lily, but even Appoline agreed that it would be best to wait until the defences were up before coming back. Kat was a little worried about getting back in, but Appoline assured her that the plant would remember them so it would be fine.

The main issue was that even if Lily was able to navigate through herself... harvesting such a plant was no easy thing. Appoline wasn’t even entirely sure what self and effective ways to do it were available. The point was NOT to kill the plant. As Appoline put it ’No reason to burn down your house just to warm up a bit’. At the same time, the poison was a longer term issue and it might be able to sneak in and disrupt the lily’s habitat. If it DID moving it would become much more important... and nobody knew how to do that safely, for the person moving it or the plant.

So they’d ended up making their way back, with a few less valuable ingredients of course, and gone their separate ways. Well, as separate as you can really be while in the same general area. Appoline set up her alchemy equipment in one of the dorms furthest away from the entrance, but on the same side as the trapdoor down to the lower level. Kat on the other hand, found Lily and spent some time just snuggling with her while watching the main door.

Guard duty essentially. It wasn’t glamorous or interesting, most of the enchanters were carving stuff in other areas as well to make it even more of a boring time. Still, Lily had been watching diligently and it was Kat’s turn to give her some rest. The standard guards were still watching sure... but Steel didn’t have the best confidence in them. It had already been proving that if the cabal wanted, they could field some impressive agents. Sneaking past Rank 1 guards wasn’t that hard without a ward to help them out.

Kat wasn’t sure where Brook had ended up, she must have been working somewhere else. Keeping an eye on her for mistakes was possible... but only if Kat left the main area. Unless? Kat moved the hand she wasn’t using to gently stroke Lily with off to the side and then transformed it into water. From there, Kat moved it a bit until it was behind her... and tried to work out if she could see around it.

The answer was a solid... maybe. Without her head transformed it seemed that she didn’t consciously register what was going on with the water. She could feel it behind her and tell she was in control but it wasn’t clear if that translated to being able to see through. Kat couldn’t tell... but why would this water be any different to the water she had when she was completely transformed?

Kat sucked in a deep breath, calming herself a bit and then went to transform half of her face before realising that was a horrible idea. Worse came to worse when transforming just an arm would be a temporary missing hand. Now that she knew how to blend the water at the edges to prevent her nerves screaming it was barely an issue.

Doing the same with her BRAIN? That wasn’t a smart idea. Not without active medical supervision. So instead Kat focused on simply changing on of her eyes. It... was going? She managed eyebrows, nose, lips, a finger which wasn’t even anywhere near her face, an ear, and a few other areas of her anatomy but turning a single eye into water seemed like it was going to be difficult. Perhaps some of that was due to trying very hard not to catch her brain up in the transformation, nor any of her skull.

Hours ticked away as she tried this, but eventually gave up and started to work on dinner. There wasn’t really any cooking to be done. Most of the food came pre-prepped but there was some things to do. Slicing the fruit and vegetables, as well as getting the sauces ready but that was all done a lot faster than Kat had originally intended. It was done early enough that Kat ended up packing everything back up to keep it fresh. Apparently the plan was to eat a bit later then she normally did. It wasn’t really anything worth worrying about.

With that determined though... Kat started to go around, Lily sleeping on her shoulder, and clearing up the extra rooms. Some of them had already roughly been cleaned out, with anything easily grabbed or completely broken thrown into the ’trash’ box to be processed later. That still left a bunch of rooms without anything being done to them yet and a number of smaller bits of rubbish left behind because they weren’t making it harder to work. Kat had barely started when the small bits of dust her cleaning picked up caused Lily to sneeze, waking her up.

Kat paused what she was doing to move Lily to arms for a bit, gently running her fingers through Lily’s fur until the sneezing stopped and Lily was properly awake. *

Kat wasn’t entirely sure she believed Lily... but it did line up with what she knew about cats so it was reasonable enough not to raise a fuss over. Though considering she’d seen Lily sleep all day before there was probably more layers to that statement. Regardless, with Lily fine Kat got back to cleaning. Lily did have to fold a small shadow cloth over her nose to help keep the dust out but that was so easy Lily didn’t even need to focus on it. Simply imagining it getting pinned in place and then pushing a bunch of mana into it to keep it active for a while was enough.

Over the next hour Lily would occasionally need to focus on her shadow cloth to refresh its duration but it was more from a sense that it might run out soon. It never actually fell off, and she was able to mentally poke Kat when she spotted a bit of trash that needed to be cleaned up. Kat was mostly gathering things up, but some of it got frozen and shattered. It did mean things were kinda dusty at times, but Kat didn’t have anything to deal with that for the moment.

Lily helped out a bit, but not too much. Unlike Kat, Lily was far happier to just laze around. There was also the fact she wanted to mentally review some of her spells again, and perhaps consider expanding the ones she could cast. Probably not, but she was thinking about it at the very least. Some refinement for her shadow teleport would also be great but testing that more was a risky gamble. Perhaps if there was a good section of time where she knew Kat was free so that she could spend some time with Thyme safely Lily would go for it, but they were meant to be actively guarding stuff right now. It also sounded rather painful.

Kat got so lost in her cleaning that Kat ended up missing dinner. Nobody thought to mention it to Kat... mostly because half of the group missed it as well. The guards remembered, ate, and then went back to guarding. Carl was the one working on the main room so he saw that food was being distributed... but everyone else missed it for one reason or another. Apparently the guards were feeling a little petty or something. Or perhaps this was just some hazing Kat didn’t know about, Carl was participating after all.

The only reason Kat even noticed was because Lily wondered what time it was, and if Kat was going to help with dinner. Upon realising that nobody had grabbed her for it, Kat checked the food remaining under the guise of grabbing some for herself and Lily... but around half of it was left, implying that she wasn’t the only one who was skipped over. Kat ended up handing out plates of food to everyone that hadn’t eaten. It’s how she found out that the guards were the ones who ate without informing anyone else. Nobody seemed to care overly much... but they did at least thank her for the food.