Tundra showed them a weird comedy mask shaped blob of void resting against a tree.
"I found this over here. I wasn't sure what it was, but I didn't want to bother Ellen with it, so I thought it'd be better to show you two."
"I see. now the thing is, what do we do with it? It's not like we can just throw it back into that void lake, we don't know what touching it will do to us," Kopna said as she stared at it intensely. For some reason, something about the mask was giving her some bad vibes.
Hirune walked over and crouched above what the other two saw as a normal comedy mask, as for her, she saw a small fully black jester plushie.
She picked it up and held it near her face inspecting it, confused as to why they found this little plushie so intriguing. Sure, the plushie was cute and all but it certainly wasn't anything to gawk at. Though if she was being completely honest with herself, finders keepers losers weepers, she was keeping that plushie.
Kopna and Tundra gasped all of the sudden as if Hirune had just made some groundbreaking discovery by picking up the plushie/comedy mask. In fact, Hirune thought they looked as confused as a baby trying to understand taxes which got a hearty laugh out of her for the first time in a while.
"How did that turn into a plushie when she picked it up?" Kopna asked while looking at it a little closer.
"Maybe it's a reaction to her artifact? I mean she was the one that summoned The King in Yellow making this lake, so it'd make sense," Tundra said as he started looking around for any more of those comedy masks or any other weird item made of the void.
Hirune was just hugging the plushie now, cuddling with it. It was way softer than Gregor, which was surprising. Speaking of Gregor, he stayed back in the base to protect it.
Kopna tried to touch the plushie. Her arm instantly jolted back as she felt as though her hand was getting ripped to shreds.
She winced and clutched her hand, "How in the world are you touching that?"
Tundra smirked and rested his hand on the plushies head, the instantly jolted back too, "OW! I thought I could touch those things now."
"Nah, a kiss on the cheek only gives a small amount of the devourers energy to your mouth. I'd have to kiss your hand in order for you to be able to touch the plushie."
"Well, is there a way to easily see if there's any more of those things around here?" Kopna asked.
Hirune and Tundra both raised an eyebrow, "You think there's an easy way?"
Kopna sighed and started looking around with them for more void items. It took until night fall for them to find what seemed like all of the items, which coincidently were all comedy masks. They brought all of them around a campfire Clint made after he was done on the grill. In fact, Clint set up the entire camp while everyone else was busy.
Ellen and Kala were getting out the marshmallows as Hirune went up to each item and touched it, turning them into jester plushies for everyone else. Kala nearly chocked on one she was shoving in her mouth, Ellen just blinked a couple of times before shrugging it off, and Clint was sleeping.
Hirune bunched them up and smiled, now she had a bunch of small jester plushies. Then all of the plushies but one mixed into one and disappeared; or at least it seemed like they disappeared. Unlike the others, Hirune now saw a tall shadow jester whose shape constantly morphed slightly. Not one single silhouette could be made out yet it always maintained the rough outline of a jester, yet you could still tell it was a jester due to its hat, though this jester wore a smiling comedy mask.
Hirune pointed at it, "Do you guys also see that?"
"See what?"
Hirune tried to touch it, but it easily jumped out of the way, fell on its head, then proceeded to do cartwheels away before stopping a good distance away from her. She raised an eyebrow and devoured the distance between them and tried to touch it again, yet this time, it copied her and devoured the distance between itself and the middle of the lake, then stood on it.
For everyone else, Hirune seemed to be trying to grasp at air, which they found pretty concerning. Though what they thought didn't stop her as she devoured the distance between herself and the lake. The jester easily slid away from her as if it was skating on ice.
Before falling into the void, Hirune thought fast and used the teeth of the devourer's jaws to keep herself above it. She kept pursuing the jester like this, until she nearly fell forwards into it the lake, were the jester grabbed her, pulled her back up, turned into a liquid and shot itself directly at her with enough force to send her back to the camp.
She gasped for air as she slammed into the ground and screamed in pain for a solid minute. She looked down to see that luckily there was no injury, though now, there was a tear in her dress that exposed the skin right above her hip, which now had a pitch-black smiling comedy mask mark on it.
It kind of looked like a tattoo even though it wasn't.
Kopna instantly ran over and made sure she was okay. She was too concerned with Hirune's well-being to notice the mark near her hip. Tundra also rushed over, while Ellen just stared at the jester plushie as it started to rain.
"I see... I guess the Shadow Jester is quite a good edition to the party," Ellen muttered under her breath before looking at Hirune.
Kala overheard this and made a mental note to tell Hirune this just in case, though it'd be of no use as Namulenza was already explaining.
'Nice, you got the Shadow Jester! He's the most useful card you could've collected, as he knows all, yet he knows not. What does that mean? Oh, how I wish I myself knew! He's impossible to predict but believe me if he gives you directions or gives you a callout, trust him. Though I should warn you, he's limited your powers by a lot now. After all, holding a secondary artifact so strong within you takes a lot of Ichor, in fact he takes up most of your remaining Ichor right after my triple artifact.'
'Ichor? Isn't that the golden blood the gods in Greek mythology bleed?'
'It used to be, until Vereta changed Ichor to be a magical source after she obliterated the pantheon. You see, the Ichor kept on multiplying and they were already dead, not just that but the very small amount of mana humans had wasn't enough for them to even hold artifacts within them, nevertheless use them. So, most people that consumed artifacts before she turned Ichor into every human's main energy source for artifacts died.'
'That's interesting, but how come when I consumed the Shadow Jester, he left a mark and you didn't?'
'Well, you already resemble me enough, so making you have a four-pointed star on your neck would visibly make you a mini me.'
Hirune sighed and looked up into the stary star as Kopna noticed the mark above her hip. Seeing this, Kopna instantly started yelling and asking when Hirune got a tattoo.
Hirune not wanting to deal with her yelling, fell asleep.