Netori: Stealing The Hero's Party!

"I need stronger gloves," handing her tattered fire gloves to the blacksmith Reina, Aria glared at her intensely.

With visible confusion on her face, the red-haired woman wiped the sweat off of her forehead and just stared at the equipment she'd sold not long ago to the dark elf. Her eyes darting back and forth between Aria and the gloves, Reina was baffled beyond reason.

"The fuck you did to my gloves? Ate them and shat 'em out?" Throwing the ruined gloves at Aria, Reina picked her hammer back from the counter and turned to the red-horn iron resting on the anvil. Grabbing it with a metal pincer, she glanced at Aria once more before she began hammering. "I don't do refunds, much less stitch-up work anymore, just go get more gold and I'll make you something good.

What the hell did you even do to these ones anyway?"

"I tried to kill Helga, the barbarian lady," Aria responded, her tone as flat as it could be.

"HA! As if you could match someone of her skills, the damned bitch killed a dragon's nest all by herself once I heard," chalking up her talk to mere boast, Reina kept hammering the burning metal, but then something curious popped up in her head. "That reminds me..."

Letting go of both the iron and the hammer, she took off her gloves and turned to one of the locked shelves on the side of her workshop. Following her with her eyes, Aria watched as she took out a pair of iron gauntlets with obvious marks of intensive use.

"You want a pair of gloves, right?" Moving close to Aria again, Riena placed the gauntlet in front of her. "Since you so wanna kill the lady, why not use her old gloves?"

"These are hers?" Reaching for the gauntlet with squinted eyes, Aria slowly looked up at Reina's face. However, feeling sudden motion from the gauntlets, her eyes quickly darted right back down. "What the fuck?! They're moving!"

Dropping the gloves on the desk, Aria jolted back a few steps. The gauntlet wiggled around on the desk for a while longer, but even as they settled the eerie feeling they gave off didn't subside in the least.

"Like holding a tentacle, right?" Reina joked, grabbing the gauntlet in her hands again.

"What's wrong with those?!" Aria barked, her heart still racing from the sudden movement in her hand.

"Well..." Tossing the equipment in her hands, Reina took a deep breath. "I haven't been able to sell these since the old lady dropped them here in exchange for newer equipment, and to be honest, all I know is that they're either cursed by some spirit or hungry for blood. And since you seemed so set on killing her, why not take them?"

"But..."

"Ye don't have to pay upfront, how 'bout that?" knowing well enough that Aria didn't have enough to pay her, Reina wanted to get rid of it in a way she couldn't exactly refuse. "Just take it will ya? Yer basically getting for free for all I know."

Throwing the glistening gauntlet silver gauntlet at Aria, Reina successfully forced it over to the dark elf. Catching it with fumbling hands, Aria didn't know whether she should even put them on given their strange behavior. However, unlike last time, the gloves didn't move in her hand, which helped her get a closer look at their claw-like structure with black leather sewn over the palms.

The fingers had sufficient opening for movement with dark cloth visible underneath when the fingers were gripped. Without a doubt, the gauntlets were of exceptional quality, but not knowing what kind of curse they carried wasn't something to look forward to.

"Fine I'll take them, but if something happens and if they break it's all your fault," Aria warned the backsmith as she put the gauntlets on. To her surprise, they adjusted to her size and shrunk a little to fit her fingers just perfectly.

"Just take them, I have enough junk as is, but! Don't think those are free, I'll be expecting a payment eventually!" With that ultimatum from Reina, the dark elf decided to leave her shop.

'I might have to ask Helga about these gloves later.' She thought, stopping not a foot away from the smithy.

The gauntlet, while nice to have as her only pair was destroyed, she didn't have a clue as to what these were capable of. For all she knew, they might be cursed just as Reina mentioned, and that could also have been the reason why Helga got rid of them herself.

"I'll ask her after I smack that bitch's face with the-" Cutting her words was a muffled voice whispering inside her head. At first, the words were incomprehensible, but then the longer Aria focused the more they began to make sense.

'Diablos, en te artra enuyu?' Repeating those words echoing in her head, Aria felt a surge of power bleeding into her bloodstream. And the next thing she knew her eyes changed from violet to crimson and her screen of stats emerged in front of her on its own.

"Pact with the devil?" Were the words inked in blood and written beside them in brackets were the words 'Temporary status from the gauntlet of bloodlust'.

'A demonic equipment?! What the fuck?!' Realizing the nature of the gauntlet, her hands began to shiver. Staring at them with her body quivering with angst, Aria felt a sudden prick in her fingers and the gauntlet was slowly soaked in the color of her blood. 'What the hell was a goddess's Valkyrie doing with demonic equipment?!

And why did that bitch just sell it like it's a piece of normal equipment?!'

Freaking out of her mind, Aria attempted to take the gauntlets off, but as though needles had been pricked in her arms to keep it stuck, the equipment refused to leave, at least not without having to tear off her skin alongside it.

Stuck with the gloves in a city devoted to the goddess, fear gripped Aria's heart. Covering her hands with a pair of bandages, she didn't wait a spell before heading for Linkle's shop where everyone was bound to meet up once the day was over.

'AGHHHH! I'LL KILL HER FOR REAL THIS TIME!' Aria screamed internally, hoping to use her own equipment against Helga.