“…Well, it would depend on what happens during those few minutes, and the attack.”

“So far I’ve mostly been trying to, uh, craft contingencies, for recovering your body if,” when, “Deskari kills you.”

She gives a sigh of grim resignation. “If you could, in fact, manage that, that would be very useful. Fiducia Rathimus, at the Temple of Abadar, is likely to have a scroll of Raise Dead, if he and his temple survive the attack more or less intact.”

Ooh, that sounds plot-relevant Even if she can act without consequence in throwaway timelines it’s still really important to remember that she’s dealing with real people and not video game NPCs.

”That sounds—more expensive than I expect to be able to pay for.” Maybe she can leverage this into asking how to obtain Valuable Objects.

“If you in fact have my body, I expect you to be able to convince him that I’ve authorized you to draw from my personal account for the specific purpose.” Terendelev doesn’t have the kind of money with the Church of Abadar to significantly affect Crusade funding, but she does expect to be able to pay to have herself Raised the once.

“Okay, got it.” Not super helpful for the shrink item situation, but still good to know.

“If she has your body,” somehow; it wouldn’t exactly fit into most bags of holding, “she should turn it over to the Church of Iomedae immediately.”

“That might not be possible, under the proposed circumstances.”

“As soon as it is possible, then,” he says, but even that is a compromise he doesn’t look thrilled by.

Lucy really hopes she doesn’t have to interact with this guy much after she gets past the demon attack for real. He’s so deeply unpleasant.

She still needs to figure out the oil of shrink item thing. Or figure something else.

…Hmm. Her mind has continuity across saves. In Groundhog Day, the protagonist was able to learn to play the piano across loops. Could she learn to read spell scrolls? The scroll of shrink item was a lot less expensive than the oil.

For that matter, even if she can’t, if there’s a chance of succeeding without having any idea what she’s doing, she can savescum it.

Even if so, she’ll still need to acquire Stuff to sell; the scroll is cheaper, not cheap. Which means either convincing Hulrun or Terendelev to part with something, or stealing stuff after the attack starts.

Well, she can’t work on “steal stuff after the attack starts” until the attack starts.

“What would you say if I claimed to have a weird ability to turn valuable objects into other valuable objects of roughly equivalent value?”

“That you had made an infernal compact with Mammon.” Or, like, a devil under his purview, more likely, but whatever.

“…Is there any version of that claim that wouldn’t immediately make you arrest me.”

He gives her a flat look. 

Well, this iteration is also a wash. Not that that’s surprising. Man, this guy is so hard to work around.

Eventually the demons attack again.

As expected. Now, to see what stealable objects there are…

“Blimey!” Suture has showed up again.

Lucy is really getting concerned by this guy’s interest in her. Like, it’s conceivable that he’s not a demon and just has a weird name and friends with weird names for some unrelated reason, but Lucy does not super want to bet on that!

She turns to look at him and notices something. “Hey, is that a spell scroll?”

“…Yes?”

“Inventory,” she says, reaching out and tapping it.

Her inventory now has a Scroll of False Life in it.

Great! She pulls it out and attempts to read it.

…

Oh no. It’s fucking gibberish.

Well, that’s not entirely fair. “Gibberish” would imply that the scroll largely consisted of what she could identify as text, which…is not the case. Regardless, she has no idea what to do to make this thing do magic.

“How do I…operate this?”

He’s not even gonna ask what she did in order to steal it. “Give it back, and I’ll read it for you.”

“No, no, I don’t need the spell cast, I need to learn how to read scrolls.”

“Now?”