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Erick felt lighter than air as he raced to his workshop ‘home’, almost dancing around slower travelers on the road, somewhat because he had to dance to avoid them for he was invisible when moving, and somewhat because he was ready to have some fun with mana crystals. When his turn on the main road came up, Erick rapidly decided on a specific series of experiments that he needed to set up first, probably involving one-way mirrored [Force Wall]s that he could place around the entire property, because there were people camped outside of his home.

He did not like it when people camped outside his home.

Erick stepped off into the golden wheat, stalks of grain rustling all around, as he whipped around the property and hopped across the low wall, onto his land, completely avoiding the campers. A quick verbal command to the dungeon placed his weaponry into his storage, inside his house, without him needing to actually go inside, as he walked around to the front of his cottage estate.

“Hello there!” Erick called out, from inside his property line. “What brings you all here today?”

Seven visible people were camped outside of his wall, though there was only one actual camping tent, and the tent was only big enough for two people. The majority of people were on chairs, probably taking shifts, as most of them didn’t look to be with each other at all. Erick counted at least 4 groups among the people here.

At Erick’s voice, they all jumped up at once, some were faster than others, and were already raising their voices to be heard over the rest.

“We’d like for you to join—!”

“The Red Barons invite you—!”

“The Wood Warriors have openings for—!”

Erick spoke louder, “I’ve signed with the Iron Bandits.”

Instant disgust among some people. Instant regret among others. Some people spat out questions concerning how the fuck the Iron Bandits had gotten here first, while others complained about monopolies on all the good crafters.

That last comment prompted Erick to say, “I’m not looking to delve, or to get into politics of the companies down here. The Iron Bandits’s offer was for me to be able to sell to whomever I wish to sell, and I will be doing that, for they have already given me a mana chamber to play around with. They’ll be here later to install some furnaces and whatnot. I plan to flood the market with [Rejuvenation]s, first. Then comes specialty items, perhaps. Mostly, though, I will not be here. Come back tomorrow if you want something special made, and I’ll maybe tackle that spellwork, if it interests me.” Erick added, “And with that out of the way: Is there anything else that needs to be said? Otherwise I would very much like to get on with my projects.”

Almost every recruiter went from confused, to intrigued, to wary and weird. Many did not know what to make of Erick’s declaration that he didn’t want to delve, so most of them didn’t know how to approach him anymore.

One woman with white hair and wearing leathers, spoke first, “Welcome to the Glittering Depths, Ashes Woodfield. Have you figured out a pricing structure for your creations yet?”

“Nope. But I will. If you have suggestions, then I’ll hear them tomorrow or some other day. Thanks for coming out, though!”

The white-haired woman gave a small bow, and was the first to depart. A few others considered saying small words, or even very large words to try and tempt Erick their way, but then they thought better of that action and did what the white-haired woman did; they left.

Soon, the wheat field outside of Erick’s property was empty again.

And Erick went into his house, grabbed the mana cube from Storage, and went to the first floor of his mage tower… And then he stood there for a moment. Was the tower a good spot for the cube? The upper floor was 4 meters away, so the cube would fit on the stone ground, and the tower itself was 8 meters across on the inside so there was plenty of space otherwise. But was this area good enough for both the cube, and the metiron workshop?

Erick looked up at the beams that formed the second floor, and at the bookshelves he had up there. It was a library space, but… Did he need that library space? It wouldn’t be a good idea to build a library over a place that heavily used fire.

“I don’t have to have the library up there,” Erick decided.

And then picked a spot at the side of the room, put the cube down, and—

“Actually. Time for my first experiment.”

Instead of channeling mana into the cube directly, through physical contact, Erick tried releasing his aura into the air, to send mana through the air to the cube.

This did not work.

His aura dissipated under his skin, like it had on all the other floors. He could somewhat use his aura to craft magic inside his body, and inside a mana chamber when that mana chamber was filled with his mana, but there was no aura control outside of his body. Now that was certainly a function of the Glittering Depths, and not how mana usually worked.

So Erick sat down, touched the cube, and began channeling mana into the thing…

His mana regeneration in the dungeon was only 22,500 per hour, though, and only with his [Meditation] necklace activated. This would take a while. Maybe he did need to do some delving, if only to get that number up. Skipping 3 floors meant he was missing 3 floors worth of ‘MP up!’s.

It took nearly half an hour, sitting there on the floor with his hand on the cube, to put 10,000 mana into the cube. It was easy to tell when he was done, though, because words appeared in the air.

Meta Diamond Creation Chamber activated. Please step away for full deployment.

Erick stepped back—

As soon as he was four meters away, the cube expanded, going from small size to full size in a split second. This should have caused an explosion, Erick thought. But there was no air displacement, or any physical repercussions from that quick of an expansion at all, which made Erick think that perhaps the ‘mana chamber’ Rebecca had given him wasn’t actually an expandable and shrinkable cube, but that the 10,000 mana was to power a Spatial Magic effect. The miniature cube went somewhere else, and Erick ended up with this mana chamber, ready for use. Did the small cube go back into circulation in the dungeon’s random loot tables?

Anyway!

Erick smiled brightly, and said, “Storage, every meta item but my bracelet of [Self Rejuvenation].”

Instantly, all of the metairons on Erick flickered away, and deposited themselves into the storage room, which was outside the mage tower...

And then Erick went and retrieved his Amulet of [Meditation], because that had vanished with all the rest, but he needed that one to better spill mana into the air of the chamber. He also put his belt back on, because—

He had briefly exposed his core.

There might have been people long-range mana sensing him outside his house.

Ah.

Shit.

Erick grabbed his own mana inside his core and [Return]ed to ten seconds ago.

The world tore as Erick once again stood in his tower, wearing all of his meta gear.

Erick breathed a little, feeling odd about what had just happened. The [Return] felt mostly normal. But Erick should have known not to remove his belt, which hid his core. He was not used to having to worry about that, ever, except here he was, making a tiny mistake that would out him as a… dragon. Well. How big of a deal would that be, actually? Kinder already knew he was a dragon. And they already had dragons in this dungeon, so people knew there were dragons in here. No Benevolence dragons yet, though, according to Kinder. Which was a whole other issue. Which other dragon was down here?

Eh.

The other dragon didn’t matter, and it probably didn’t matter if people found out he was a dragon, either. Erick was just being paranoid. He was going to get outed soon enough, but it was better to put that off for as long as possible.

Since Erick was once again wearing all his gear, Erick physically went to the storage box and placed his extra metamonds there, to ensure that they weren’t messed up by the mana chamber metamond creation, all the while thinking about this mana sensing issue. He wasn’t very well protected inside his house right now, was he? No he was not.

According to Kinder, people could not come onto his property without his permission, and they could not mana sense onto his property either. Erick had even seen the messages from the dungeon saying as much. While that may or may not be true, Erick didn’t really want to test that right now, and he couldn’t really see any invisible people on his property. Taking Kinder or the dungeon at their word was not something he wished to fully do, but he probably had to, for now.

Erick had thought about putting up some one-way mirror [Force Wall]s when he saw the people standing outside his property, and while yes, he would be doing that, there was another layer of security he could enact to ensure privacy, according to Kinder.

… Erick mostly believed Kinder was a good guy. But.

Erick said to the air, “Dungeon. Decrease mana density of my property to 80%.”

Decreasing mana density to 80%.

The air suddenly felt dry, like all the moisture was actively being sucked away, directly from Erick’s own flesh and the world around him. It was a pinch upon the soul. And then it was over.

Erick’s mana sense had turned ephemeral. He could still see all of his property, and even some of the space around, but mana sensing the air inside his property was more difficult, and his actual range had dropped to maybe 450 meters. The mana outside of his property remained completely unaffected, though.

“Drop mana density of my property to 50%”

Decreasing mana density to 50%.

A full body pinch grabbed Erick and shook his senses, draining him of power and mana. Floor 1 had been 80%, and his range had been 400 meters there. Floor 2 had been 60%, and his senses had dropped to 10 meters there, but here at 50% his senses dropped to 4 meters in every direction.

It was good enough.

Erick had gone for the 50% option because his personal mana was already down to half, because of the earlier [Return], which had been done in haste and in a dungeon environment which shut down outside magic almost completely; it had cost him more than expected to make that magic. His remaining mana was good enough for another 2 [Return]s, though, for Erick figured he could compensate for the tearing oddness he had experienced; it was just a bit of temporal sickness.

Anyway. He could walk around his house with this level of mana density and not feel bloated, or worried about people spying on him from the outside. This was fine. Later, he would have to actually approach Kinder about that ‘artifact of [Renew]’ that would allow him to keep a full core. Kinder had offered that as part of Erick’s deal to leave the second floor behind, but he hadn’t actually given it to Erick yet.

… Well. Could he fix that problem right now, too?

Erick said to the air, “Dungeon. Please alert Dungeon Master Kinder that I am interested in that artifact of [Renew] that he spoke about earlier.”

Automated message from Dungeon Master Kinder: I have set up this message to automatically trigger when you asked about that artifact. That artifact does not exist. What I will be doing instead is allowing you special exceptions to connect to the Script in the barest of ways. This will allow your own mana to come to you, from the Script. That mana will still equalize with whatever mana density you’re currently inhabiting, for I cannot change that.

If you break my dungeon with outside magic, then I will be exiling you. Please do not break my dungeon.

As soon as the message appeared, Erick began to feel something loosen inside. His core mana began to climb a fraction, as the Script supplied him with mana. Gradually, his core equalized with the 50% mana density of the air around him, which meant that Erick had spent a lot more mana on his [Return] than he had planned to spend… Hmm.

Hmm.

Anyway.

With this ‘connection’ to the Script, this was like how cores and mana worked in Ar’Cosmos. You couldn’t gain mana from the Script inside Ar’Cosmos without having a core to begin with, but once you did, your core regained mana based on the power of your core.

Erick said to the air, “Thanks, Kinder.”

There was no response.

Erick went into the mana chamber, closed the door, and began channeling dungeon mana into the air—

He stopped, opened the door, and went and got some books to read while he channeled; this was going to take a while. His dungeon mana only came back at 22,500 mana per day, or 6.25 mana per second while [Meditation] was active. Metamond creation was mostly waiting around for his dungeon mana to actually produce a drop of solid mana, and that took time. Once he got some mana crystal books, Erick grabbed a chair and went back into the mana chamber.

As Erick sat down, he cracked open his book and metaphysically tapped his bracelet of [Self Rejuvenation], opening up the mana therein to the chamber itself. As white glows faded into the air, filling up the chamber, Erick flicked on his amulet of [Meditation], and the white glows began to move faster. The chamber was still dark, though, so Erick couldn’t read right yet, but it didn’t take long for the white circles of the interior of the chamber to begin to glow and provide light. Once that started, Erick flipped through his book and picked up where he last left off.

He found his spot, and started reading.

- - - -

Half an hour later the mana of the room began to saturate, and Erick could move his aura through the mana instead of having his mana fall apart just beyond his skin. It was an odd way for aura control to work, but Erick supposed that’s how the dungeon allowed it to work so that people only made spellwork inside these rooms; to enforce the metiron/metamond Second Script that Atunir was trying to showcase.

And so, Erick extended his glowing white aura (which was also different, because normally his aura was clear unless he wanted to show it off) through the air, into the density of liquid Benevolence-flavored mana in the center of the mana chamber. As he touched that collection of liquid power, Erick hummed a tiny song of Elemental Healing, causing a rippling effect through his aura, changing his white glows into something more cerulean. It was rather easy for him to make a [Rejuvenation] metamond, because his dungeon-granted Benevolence was prone to lingering positive effects, and [Rejuvenation] was a lingering, positive, full-body effect.

Some Mana Altering made up the difference between Benevolence and Healing.

With a bit more aura control and shaping, Erick flickered more actual Elemental Healing into the droplet in the center of the chamber, to begin to form the actual spell. Whatever white glows remained in the air began to filter out of the collection point, while more cerulean blue power filtered inward. Four points of mana became the basis for Elemental Healing to inhabit the body. One remaining mana was to time the release of Elemental Healing properly, and to ensure the other four mana did their job properly. The five point spell was not a large spell, but that’s all [Rejuvenation] needed to be, because it wasn’t focused on healing anything in particular. It was just a buffing spell, basically, and in a very specific way where true intent or specific actions were not needed, or wanted.

Then Erick blasted the collection point with intent, crystallizing mana into magic.

A tiny cerulean dot of a metamond coalesced into the air, taking a great deal of the blue glows of the chamber with it, and implying a whole lot of stuff with that simple action. That exact same thing had happened all the other times Erick had made a metamond; that dimming of a specific element, almost like it had drained out of the chamber. Which it had.

First, Erick plucked the new metamond out of the air and used his ring of [Identify] on it.

Rejuvenation, instant, touch, 5 mana per cast

Grant a touched target increased healing, condensing a week of recuperation to 10 minutes.

So that was good. Exactly what he wanted to make. The little cerulean dot glowed, while the interior was filled with fractals like a pane of artistically-shattered glass. It looked normal; just like the other ones Erick had made before. Except now, Erick could really try to understand what had happened in this creation.

There had obviously been a mana drain in the air, which would account for the lessening of Elemental Healing glows in the air. This could only mean that, even though Erick had made a 5 point spell, the crystallization of that spell had taken a lot more than 5 mana. How much more, though? According to what Erick remembered of his previous experiments, and this one here, it had taken…

“Maybe 400 mana? 425, to crystallize?”

Erick flicked his aura at his bracelet and began to pump more Benevolence mana into the air, to restore what was lost, because it wasn’t just the Elemental Healing that had been taken. The Benevolence in the air had decreased, too.

Erick tried an experiment with his next [Rejuvenation].

He barely put any effort into that creation at all, simply crushing Elemental Healing together to see what popped out.

Harmful Healing, instant, touch, 47 mana per cast

Cause unknown healing effects in the target, with a greatly increased chance of causing cancers and other malignancies. NOTICE: Using this spell on yourself or any other friendly target will heal them once, and use up one of their Saves. If the target has no more Saves, then this spell will allow the target 2 minutes of life, and then they will be forcibly resurrected on the entrance floor, where they will be expelled from the dungeon to receive proper treatment.

Erick smiled a little bit at the brilliant little gem in his hands. That was a pretty insidious little spell, and it looked no different than [Rejuvenation]. Higher mana cost, much different effect, and proof that Erick needed to actually try to make Healing Magic down here; the Script wasn’t here to smooth over bad outcomes, and, his Wizardry didn’t smooth over bad outcomes, either.

It was time to see exactly where the line lay between good, useful mana crystals, and bad, harmful mana crystals, and what sort of oddities Erick could make on that spectrum.

- - - -

Erick calculated a few different things that told him almost nothing at all, but which fell in line with what was generally known with mana crystals.

It took about 500 mana to make a basic meta-diamond, with the cheaper final-cost ones costing less atmospheric mana to create them. [Rejuvenation] took about 400 mana from the chamber, and only cost 5 mana to activate. [Harmful Healing] took 650 mana from the air, and cost anywhere from 30 to 65 mana to activate. By really focusing on actually making [Harmful Healing], and not some other Healing spell, Erick was able to make a [Harmful Healing] that only took 30 mana to activate, and which drained 500-ish mana from the air.

So that told him that directed thoughts created spells with less mana costs and mana-from-the-air, which was pretty much his experience with mana anyway. It was good to know that some baseline understandings remained the same.

But every single cerulean gem he produced ended up being the same size.

Erick started to wonder why that was. Shouldn’t a spell that cost 650 mana from the air be bigger than one that cost 450? The mana density of crystals was a variable thing, of course, so that accounted for some of it, but not all. The fractals inside [Rejuvenation] were a lot less intense than the fractals inside [Harmful Healing], though.

And normal mana crystals did not have fractals… Or at least that’s how it was according to the books Erick had gotten from Kirginatharp, and from other sources.

“So obviously there’s some sort of crushing going on,” Erick mused to himself, as he held up one [Rejuvenation], and one of his larger [Harmful Healings]. “Some sort of… inner infinity? Instead of expanding outward, the gems expand their magic inward? Well that sort of makes sense.”

All metamonds were round things, and a little squishy when they were inside a mana chamber. Outside of a mana chamber they were perfectly spherical and hard as, well, diamonds.

All the shapes for mana crystals inside the books were of normal crystal shapes, and all normal mana crystals expanded outward as they grew. But meta-diamonds expanded inward… Somewhat.

Erick’s staff, with its fist-sized iridescent white metamond, was a clear outlier, but that spellwork was also the largest metamond spellwork Erick had done so far. Staring into the interior of that gem was like staring into a kaleidoscope funhouse without end.

So now Erick needed to do some tests with making bigger and bigger spells. Just cramming everything he could cram into—

Well. No.

Actually. Erick needed to do something actually constructive. And so Erick crushed all of his [Harmful Healing]s and took half an hour to change them all into [Rejuvenation]s.

That satisfied his bargain with the Iron Bandits! Now, moving on…

Erick decided to make Bolts of every possible flavor, and begin mushing them together just to see what happened.

- - - -

[Fire Bolt] with an [Air Bolt] became [Plasma Bolt], which was a rather normal occurrence. All three spells had rather normal-looking [Identify] results, too, because Erick didn’t spend more than a single moment making any of them, and so they were simple.

Fire Bolt, instant, long range, 5 mana

A bolt of fire unerringly strikes a target, igniting them for fire damage.

Air Bolt, instant, long range, 5 mana

A semi-invisible bolt of air unerringly strikes a target, and might unbalance them.

Plasma Bolt, instant, long range, 10 mana

A bolt of plasma unerringly strikes a target, enveloping the target in highly damaging plasma for a short time.

One gem of glowing red fractals, the size of a thumbnail. One gem filled with vaguely magenta fractures. Together, they became one gem filled with bright pink fractures, which wasn’t any bigger than the original two gems. So there was definitely some condensing happening there.

Erick broke that [Plasma Bolt] and the room filled with the thousand-ish mana of the original two Bolts. With that much saturation, re-condensation happened almost instantly…

Erick could have stopped that recombination. But he decided not to. No aura touched the liquid mana. No intent reached the pink glows—

The gem coalesced again, all on its own. It was a little larger than it had been before, so something was happening there, too. Odd. Erick [Identify]ed it.

Uncontained Plasma, instant, touch, 50 mana

Release a burst of plasma.

“… I’m pretty sure that one would literally blow up in my face if I tried to use it.”

Erick crushed the gem, releasing the mana back into the air.

This time, he put intent into the working, to make a Bolt exactly as he had made through the combination of the Fire and Air magics.

A pale pink dot once again coalesced out of the air. It was the same size as the previous [Plasma Bolt] had been —small as a thumbnail— but did it [Identify] the same?

Yes, it did.

Plasma Bolt, instant, long range, 10 mana

A bolt of plasma unerringly strikes a target, enveloping the target in highly damaging plasma for a short time.

Erick frowned in concentration. “I think I need to take pictures, or something, to compare the interior fractals… Could I make that here?”

Making such a spell under the Script would be rather difficult, but Erick knew how he would do it. There’d be Particle Magic involved, for sure. Some light to scan, and then some polymer-drawing/drawing from the CO2 in the air, to lay down a copy of an image onto a sheet of plastic paper that the spell would create at that moment…

Or maybe, Erick could take ready-made paper, some light or maybe Elemental Radiance, and scorch an image into that paper—

Ah.

Erick had actually planned to make a one-way-mirror [Force Wall], hadn't he? So he could stop people from spying on his property.

Ah. Let’s do that, then…

A few hours later, and after deciding that he didn’t want to make a simple mirror and that he wanted to make something much more useful, Erick had to stop with his experiments because he was getting lightheaded, and he rapidly realized that the mana chamber didn’t have any vents for air.

Erick burst out of the chamber, breathed clearly for the first time in an hour, laughed a little, and then went back in to collect the few hundred meta-diamonds he had made. All of those metamonds went into the front room and Erick went back into the mana chamber.

He’d return to the property-illusion spellwork when he felt like it, but otherwise, there were so many other things that were much more fun right now.

- - - -

A knocking broke Erick from his focus.

And then he realized that anyone knocking on his door was at his door, which was inside his property, and no one should be able to do that? According to Kinder?

Erick was partway through condensing the next metamond but he didn’t have to finish, so he opened the door to the mana chamber and all the mana in the room flooded out into the 50% density of the house—

Another knocking.

… Not at the door, though. More like, in the air?

Erick went to the front door and opened it up.

A group of people stood at the edge of his property. They had wagons filled with crates and boxes of all sorts. Rebecca was there with them, standing in front, shining in her silver fullplate. She saw Erick at the door, and then she smiled, and knocked on the empty air in front of her, at Erick’s property line. The air vibrated at her gauntleted touch, sounding much like the knocking at a front door.

Ah. So the property line was rather solid, then. Good to know.

“Hello again!” Rebecca said, “We’re here for the first exchange of hopefully many.”

“One minute!” Erick went back into the house and made sure he was presentable, and that he had on the right metamonds to hide himself from mana sense, which he did. And then he went back outside, rushing to the gate, saying, “Welcome, welcome. You’re all invited in.”

Rebecca smiled and stepped through the empty air, onto the property line. “I am eager to see what you’ve made, and also to set up all the stuff we spoke about. We’ve also got a full setup of blankets, pillows, some extra furniture, and otherwise. And a bunch of metiron to sell to you, and money to exchange for [Rejuvenation]s.”

“That all sounds really great! Thank you.” Erick waved them forward. “Come on in.”

Rebecaa moved forward and her people followed as she asked, “Where would you like your workshop set up? It cannot be outside. We don’t get rain all that often, but it does happen rather regularly.”

Erick led the way into his house. “This way.” He moved toward the mage tower, saying, “I was wondering if you had the capability to retrofit the mage tower into a full workshop, with all the stuff I found in Marii’s tower on the second floor. I liked that setup. You will have to knock out the second floor.”

A pile of a good 500 gems sat on the dining table, there in the middle of the front room. Erick gave them no mind as he passed them by, but Rebecca’s eyes went wide as she took them all in. And then she moved right along.

“Oh sure.” Rebecca followed Erick into the mage tower. She looked up at the wooden floor overhead, and said, “We can open the tower up. Shaping spells are another rare drop, but we have all of those available and usable by our people, and they’re easier to make than [Rejuvenation]s. Speaking of which…?”

Erick smirked. He went back to where the gems sat in half-organized piles on the dining room table, like precious stones being divided after a heist. There was probably some better way to organize them, but Erick didn’t really care to do that right now. He knew which were which, anyway.

Erick gestured to a pile of cerulean spheres, saying, “There’s 30 of them there. I would have made more, but I didn’t care to. I would be fine with making actual bracelets, too, and I will be doing that as soon as my workshop is properly created.”

Rebecca stared at the gems, her grin turning a tiny bit surprised and overwhelmed, the corner of her mouth rising to show a rather long incisor. “Ah… This is rather amazing— May I [Identify] one?”

“Oh sure. Go ahead.”

Rebecca stepped forward and plucked a cerulean gem from the pile. The words for [Rejuvenation] appeared in the air, exactly as Erick promised. Rebecca chuckled. “We need to get you some more resources!”

“I would like to speak to others who have had success with metamond creation. You know they’re mana crystals, right? These things cannot be made on Veird, but they can be made here.”

Rebecca’s eyes glinted as her gaze fixed upon Erick. “Not many people know that… But of course you do.”

“The mana crystals here are different from how they usually are, and I want to find out how, exactly.”

Rebecca looked at Erick for a moment longer, then said, “I would speak of this some other time, in a more private setting. For now, would you like to get your workshop installed?”

“Of course!”

Rebecca motioned for the first of the workers to come into the house, while she asked Erick about money for the metamonds, and Erick agreed to what he had already stated; 150,000 gold apiece. An actual Bracelet of [Self Rejuvenation] would work better than a wand of the same, and Erick offered to make and sell those for 250,000, but while the Iron Bandits’ coffers were deep, they weren’t that deep. Or at least they weren’t deep enough for Rebecca to approve such a sale right now. Other people might take him up on the offer, though.

To pay him for 20 [Rejuvenation]s took little more than Rebecca saying, “Payment of 150,000 gold from the Iron Bandits to Ashes Woodfield, per [Rejuvenation] metamond, to be carried out now.”

The 20 metamonds vanished from the table, and some ghostly writing appeared in the air in front of Erick, indicating the transfer. The gentle rain of coins sounded out from the storage room, and Erick smiled.

“I didn’t know it would do that?” Erick stepped over to the storage room. “… Ah? I guess the transfer is mostly in a banking sort of way? I don’t see millions of gold on my floor, or in the chests.”

Rebecca stayed outside of the storage room, as she said, “Tell the dungeon to display the current gold total.”

“… Dungeon: display current gold finances.”

Balance: 3,000,000 G

“Well alright then.”

The words began to fade almost as fast as they appeared.

Rebecca said, “We don’t carry gold around too much, except to bring it in to deposit into storage and to use in some of the places around town. For the smaller amounts. Some people take their gold out to Veird, but Greendale has a pretty aggressive tax rate and they’re rather pushy about it, too.”

Erick smiled as he said, “Feel free to look over the other gems if you want, or I can tell you if I might have something you want.”

“We have store space in the main square if you wish to set up a store. We’ll sell everything you make for you, for 5% of the final cost. Or, if we purchase what you make, then we’ll pay you the full cost.” Rebecca said, “But honestly, except for the [Rejuvenation]s, most people can make their own necessary magics, or they find them as special rewards in the lower levels of the dungeons. Commissions for specialty items are probably where you would be making your most money, and unless my information network is malfunctioning, you told everyone that you desired to do specialty commissions yesterday.”

“… Yesterday?” Erick looked out the window. It was still bright as noon out there. “… Has it been a full day already?”

Rebecca smiled gently. “It’s been about 13 hours since last I saw you, Ashes, and the sun doesn’t set down here all that often.”

“I need to get home.” Wood groaned and snapped in the other room, echoing throughout the house as stone flowed like rushing sand. The workers wouldn’t be done for another hour, at least. “... But I can wait a little while longer.”

Rebecca said, “They’ll work quickly, but not instantaneously. Besides, there are still some small matters to discuss… Unless it is vitally important that you get back right now?”

“I can wait a little while longer.”

A nod. “I’ll keep it short, then. If you wish to have us act as a front for your commissions, then we can do that, too. We’ll take 5% of the commission fee from that, but other than that, we can handle all of the customer-facing aspects of that interaction.”

“… Well now. There’s a nice idea. Sure. I’ll agree to you all sorting out the commissions for me, but I’ll decide what I want to make, and I’ll have the clients meet with me or the other way around, on my own time schedule.”

“Agreed. Now about the specialty items that the Iron Bandits want made, if you’re available for that?”

“Sure?”

“Bracelets of [Hidden Wind]. All the Health metamonds you can make. Reflective shields. And the largest, best [Blood Corruption] weapon you can make, which will allow us to infect a target and then run away, letting the monster die on its own without us needing to put ourselves in close range danger.”

“Ah… Hm.” Erick went to the table of metamonds, and plucked out a few pastel pink and black and white metamonds. “[Hidden Wind], of varying strengths. Health is easy enough to make. Reflections are fine; I can make those. The [Blood Corruption]… I’ll make one, and you can report back to me how it worked in the field before I make more. I’m not comfortable making weaponry, but I understand the need for it. I would much rather make buffing or defensive magic.” Erick [Identify]ed his belt. “Like this.”

Belt of Many Functions, attuned artifact, 50/50, 50/50, 50/50

Blessed Memory, self, perfect buff, 1 mana per minute

Your mind is a palace.

Eternal Benediction, self, perfect buff, 1 mana per minute

Your body is a fortress.

Benediction of the Unseen, self, perfect buff, 1 mana per minute

Mana does not record your presence unless you desire it so.

Mana Density Multiplier: 75%

Rebecca read the air and her eyes went wide. “… I feel we might need to reevaulate the level of requests we can ask of you…” She went quiet for a moment, then reoriented, saying, “Forget the [Blood Corruption]. Let us discuss buffing magic…”

Half an hour later, Rebecca’s people (who were now Erick’s people, in a way) had placed groceries in the pantry, [Eternal Preservation Ward]s all over the kitchen, a bunch of new furniture here and there, and also, of course, they had remade the mage tower into a proper workshop. Erick was out one second floor library, but now he had metalworking furnaces, an anvil, hammers of all sorts, chain and pulley warehouse-crate movement systems attached to the tracks high up, and a much, much less chance of anything burning up, since the entire interior of the mage tower was now layered with stone.

It looked professional.

And, according to what Erick could see, there were no spying magics nestled into any corners here or there, though he would certainly be going over all of that with a fine-tooth look later. He bid Rebecca and the rest of the Iron Bandits farewell and escorted them off the property.

Once Erick was alone again, he said, “Dungeon: Remove all of my property permissions granted to anyone else.”

Done.

And that was that.

Erick had a few sheets of paper with some buffing magic requests from the Iron Bandits to fulfill next time he was back, but for now, he exited the dungeon.

As Erick stepped out of the dungeon keep, all of the inquisitors were gone and the sky was full of stars. Ophiel tackled him lovingly, and Erick sent warm affection Ophiel’s way, and soon they were off, into the sky, headed back home.

- - - -

Erick spent the morning making pancakes for everyone. Kiri would have taken her pancakes to-go, because though she had barely gotten any sleep, she needed to get back to work, for people depended on her, and she wanted to be depended on. She was the Gatemaster, now, even though House Benevolence still hadn’t announced that to the world, and likely wouldn’t until after Yggdrasil’s resealing went well.

But Erick couldn’t see Kiri like that; halfway run down. He offered her, “Would you like Ophiel to give you some [Hasted Shelter]s every now and then?”

He had offered her this option once before. She had said ‘no’, then.

But this time Kiri froze, as the pure desire to say ‘yes’ almost caused her to say yes. She knew ‘yes’ was the easy answer, though, and not one that she should actually rely upon. “… Yes, for a good night’s sleep. But then no. Phagar still doesn’t want me using Time Magic.”

“You can rely on me more than you do.”

Kiri smiled softly. “I know. Thank you, anyway.” And then she stressed, “So about that Shelter for the next 16 hours…”

Erick chuckled.

Soon enough, Kiri went back to bed, for a truly good sleep.

After Kiri got back to work, which was only 20 minutes after Erick cast the Shelter, Erick decided to sleep, too. His bed was comfortable, and Ophiel twittered in a little bit of joy upon the headboard as Erick fell asleep. He was not in a [Hasted Shelter], and that was kinda great.

- - - -

Erick returned to his home in the dungeon with a current goal and some secondary goals that would come later. Eventually he’d begin making some [Rejuvenation]s and Bracelets of [Self Rejuvenation]s to sell in town, but before that, he wanted to obscure his property with illusion magics.

But there was a problem.

“I can make a wand of illusion, that makes a wall that I have to recast every once in a while, or I can make a wall of permanent illusions that I never have to cast again, or I can make a mana crystal that automatically casts the illusion wall for me… Which might be possible.”

Erick looked around his workshop. It looked great; it was very ready for the creation of whatever Erick wanted to create. Rebecca had even left behind some metiron ingots for Erick to make whatever he wanted to make out of them.

“… The wand is too easy,” Erick decided.

He was going to go for the impossible magic; the metiron and metamond that made its own spellwork, automatically. You couldn’t do that on Veird. But according to what Erick had read of mana crystals…

“It should be doable here… Maybe.”

Erick got to work. First, he made some basic metamonds that would serve as tests. He ran into a problem on his very first creation.

Force Wall, instant, medium range, 50 MP

Create a stable, stationary wall of hardened mana. Lasts a long while.

Standing in the mana chamber, holding the metamond, Erick read the description floating in the air again, then said, “You were supposed to be colored and fading through the spectrum to visually show your remaining stability.”

… Maybe he needed to plug it into a wand to see if he had made it right. [Identify] and even Script boxes didn’t always tell the whole story.

So Erick exited the mana chamber and went to the forge. Making a wand was easy enough, but making a single one would still take Erick a good hour of various prep work and the final execution, while making ten at once would only add another half hour to his workload.

So Erick made ten wands.

After cooling down a wand, Erick slotted the [Force Wall] into the wand, and [Identify]ed it.

Wand of [Force Wall], attuned artifact, 100/100

Create a stable, stationary wall of hardened mana, directly in front of you. Lasts a long while. 50 mana per cast.

A test outside the house produced a flat wall of transparent white Force, positioned perfectly up and down, and perpendicular to where Erick pointed. This was different from how it was in the Script. With this metiron, there was no ability to shift the angle of the wall, or to shift the shape; what Erick put into the wand was what he got.

Which was perhaps part of the problem.

Erick looked at the octahedral wand, with its white gem at the base, and muttered, “I should have primed you with coloring first… And a whole bunch of other stuff.”

Erick discovered another nuance of metirons that he had known, but which hadn’t really registered until that moment, when he needed to dismiss the [Force Wall] to take the direct route to his front door.

And the Wall didn’t cancel.

“… No canceling of set-and-forget spells in metirons, eh?” Erick frowned. He looked down at his wand, and at the metamond he had made and set into the hilt. He narrowed his eyes at that glowing whiteness, and mentally commanded it to cancel; for the metamond itself to unravel.

Nothing happened.

He tried again.

Nothing.

“… I guess… The mana crystal is out of my power once I make it? Well… That’s certainly a difference.”

Erick wasn’t sure how he felt about that.

Erick walked around the Wall, and went back to the workshop. An hour later, he came out with another wand in his hands. This one was also octahedral, but its gem was twice as large as the original had been, and it was much more prismatic than white.

Wand of the [Prismatic Wall], attuned artifact, 500/500

Create a stable, stationary wall of hardened mana, directly in front of you. The wall registers damage done to sections through progressive color fading, starting at white, then fading through blue to red. Lasts a very long while. 100 mana per cast.

The first white walls that Erick had put up were still there when he cast his new spellwork upon the front yard. As magic took hold in the air before Erick, it took the shape of hexagons, like a hundred small shields interlocking, spreading out from left to right in a slightly curved shield 5 meters in every direction.

Erick evaluated what he was seeing. Among the first things he noticed was that this Force Magic didn’t have any mana density modifier, so it would work well in 0% mana density air. So that was good.

And then Erick went up and tapped one of the hexagons. It remained white.

He punched the hexagon.

It rapidly flashed from white to… Only barely purple. Erick smiled at that. And then he punched it seven more times. When he was done, that section of the wall was translucent blue, or roughly 10% weaker than it had been when it was first cast, if Erick had made that magic correctly, anyway. He felt he had.

His punches weren’t worth much down here in the Glittering Depths, where his Stats and innate power as a dragon were quite lessened. But he still wore his Belt of Many Functions, and that still had his body enhancement magic going strong, so he was punching… Quite a bit above his weight class. Erick wasn’t sure how much damage he could do with a punch, but it was enough to put a dent in a very, very well made [Force Wall].

And now, he had a [Force Wall] that should fade through colors as it lost spellframe cohesion. It was the perfect tool to test the veracity of the theory that mana crystals could automagically cast their own spellwork, because if the hexagons stayed white, then that meant that the spellwork was fully strong, all the time.

The metirons and metamonds were already capable of constantly casting a spell when it affected a body, but ‘the body’ was a very solid magically-identifiable baseline, which gave off mana all the time, so that made sense. A designated spot of air, or something as ephemeral as ‘a property line’ was not easily understood by magic at all.

… Now Erick just needed to figure out how to make ‘a property line’ magically recognizable.

… The dungeon was doing it, after all.

And look! The dungeon was also creating a nice demarcation line at his property line, with a mana flow differential.

For his first test, Erick went to the wall of his property and set the wand atop the tumbled stone, half inside his property, half outside. With the mana density in the property at 50% and the mana density outside at 100%, this might work.

Maybe, the wand would cast magic on its own if Erick left it there long enough…

It was a long shot! But it might work that way!

Erick watched for a few minutes, both with his eyes, and with his mana sense.

And nothing happened.

Maybe it needed something more to get some automatic magic happening. How about just a gem? No metiron? Erick could place a single gem on the property wall, too. So Erick went back into the house and made himself another [Prismatic Wall] metamond.

With a new 6 centimeter-wide prismatic marble in his hand, Erick went to check on the wand he had left sticking halfway off of his property. And he paused.

“Ah. Well. I should have expected that, in retrospect.”

The wand was gone. Someone had stolen it.

Erick just laughed. And then he laughed more as he went back to the house and tried to think up some different source of mana flowing possibilities.

“How about a series of wands, each pointing at each other in something of a circle…” Erick hummed as he sketched an idea on paper. “It can be that rune for [Renew], with the [Prismatic Wall] gem at the top.”

… Might work.

A few hours later, Erick had a prototype. It flashed lights, it poured mana in a contained circle, and it leaked everywhere, while the suspended, untouched [Prismatic Wall] gem hung in the gap of the [Renew] ring, and did nothing at all.

“So that’s not working.”

… Could be a problem with mana containment, or with efficiency, or Erick could be completely wrong about how this worked. He could at least work on containment better.

“How about something to gather ambient mana and flow that ambient mana…”

Well that required Erick to put a Domain into a metamond, which was yet another difficulty...

- - - -

Three days later, Erick had flooded the market for [Rejuvenation]s so much that the cost of that metamond dropped to 50,000 gold per creation. He had also fulfilled all of Iron Bandit’s initial orders, and broken in his workshop rather well.

It had been 14 hour days in the dungeon, and 8 hours outside, and it had been wonderful. It was perhaps the easiest political and managerial time Erick had ever had on Veird in recent years. Only his time in Spur had been this nice. This simple. This full of magical experimentation!

Erick hadn’t solved any of his problems at all. But it was fun!

Erick wanted to continue the trend. He also wanted to help people with the ridiculous amount of money he had made, though, so to that end, he called up Kinder and requested a meeting.

Kinder stood in his living room, saying, “To what do I owe the pleasure of your request for a meeting?”

“… Well that’s a weird way to speak, when all I wanted to do was ask if you’ve got time to talk.” Erick moved on, “I’ve got nearly 30 million gold here, and I want to use it to fund practically any good thing that anyone wants to do inside Utopia. Classrooms, buildings, art, whatever. I haven’t been to the arcanaeum because… Well I don’t want to.” Erick added, “But if they could use this money, then I’d give them some of it, too.”

Kinder looked at Erick for a moment—

And Erick realized. “Oh. You thought this was… For something important? Oh. Like very important.” Erick frowned. “What happened?”

“Nothing that someone who isn’t interested in demonic murders should care to involve themselves with.”

… Ah. That shit with the inquisitors the other day. That shit that Erick was specifically not getting involved in. Kinder hadn’t wanted Erick to be a vigilante, either. And now here he was talking about that stuff again.

Erick sighed. “There was another noble murder, and the inquisitors are blaming the Glittering Depths?”

“Incorrect. There was an attempted murder, and the inquisitors are blaming the Glittering Depths.”

“I told Greensoil I wasn’t going to get involved with that, but you want me involved? I thought you didn’t want me involved either.”

“It’s what I thought you were originally here for, and I did not imagine me asking you not to involve yourself would have actually worked at all, so I was prepared to let it happen and pick up the pieces afterward.” Kinder looked at Erick. “If I correctly understand the rumors about Benevolence dragons… I thought you were here outside of your own accord. Are you actually, truly here to play around with mana crystals? And for no other reason?”

“… Well I thought I was here to play with crystals. That was the goal.” Erick frowned. “Tell me where to get involved.”

“No. I need plausible deniability that will hold up under a truthstone, for my position in this world is rather tenuous. The previous Kinder was outed from his power because he failed to recognize all of the threats a dungeon master would face, and I will not end up like him… So now that I have done enough, for now, let us turn our attentions to your desire to donate.” Kinder said, “We’ll take all of the money you want to give us and see that it is spent wisely on the city.”

… Did Erick want to leave all of Kinder’s unsaid warnings uncommented?

Yes he did.

“I’d like to be able to give you half of it, and then have a full accounting for where the money went afterward. All the rest will likely be donated to Utopia when I leave, provided I know it will be used for the good of all and every individual.”

“Done.” Kinder bowed a little, then stepped back, saying, “Thank you for what you have done. The delvers are diving deeper than ever with all those healing bracelets. The Iron Bandits are going to celebrate passing floor 200, soon as they can beat the boss. You should see about joining them, shouldn’t you? … Or not. Not my place to pry.”

And then Kinder vanished into a swirl of darkness.

Erick stood in his living room for a moment longer, thinking.

Okay.

Well… Maybe he didn’t need to be ‘involved’, but he could certainly check out the town? See what was happening? Find out some stuff?

Sure.

As Erick raced outside of his house, he passed the [Illusionary Wall] that sat just inside his property. As he glanced back all he could see was the property wall, and a field of golden grains where his house lay. The illusions worked rather well!

Erick had not been able to make a self-casting magic out of mana crystals like he had hoped, so he had simply created an array of metirons and magics that he cast every time he went out, or came back home. It was honestly something of a hassle to do that every time, and to waste time attuning and unattuning metirons, and charging them with his mana, but it was nice to be able to hide his property from all out outside observers; to not worry about anyone accidentally seeing that he was a dragon except for the dungeon masters and otherwise.

He’d figure out auto-magical mana crystals eventually! It just hadn’t happened yet.

As he hurried down the road, invisibility-inducing wind swirling around his body as he stepped fast, Erick considered that he hadn’t actually been in town in the past three days. He hadn’t seen Rebecca, or anyone else, really, except for when they stuffed paperwork into his mailbox, outside his house, or when a trio of Iron Bandits came around to pick up all the new [Rejuvenation]s and other small spellworks Erick had made. He had been into town once, to drop off even more bracelets, but… Not much more than that.

Ah.

Oh. Shit. He had almost turned into a hermit, hadn’t he?

Well magic was awesome, and forging metal was fun. So it was no wonder he had lost himself to spellwork for a while. Quilatalap was rather busy these days, too, buried under his own pile of exciting new magics.

- - - -

Erick stepped into delver square, where the tower led to the dungeon entrance floor, and where hundreds of adventurers milled around between all the various shops at any one time. About fifty were outside at the moment, with more of them at the guildhall and many sitting out under the everpresent sun of the sixth floor. Nighttime didn’t exist here, which was doing all sorts of weird things to Erick’s rhythms, but he had been doing weird things to his rhythms for a while, and so the always-sun wasn’t that disturbing or different.

What was different was the fact that people didn’t crowd Erick, or run up to him, or treat him as anything more than just another guy… Admittedly, that was because Erick had already set up a system at the Iron Bandits magic shop for people to get into contact with him, and Erick wasn’t taking any weapon orders—

Two people saw him and smiled wide, as they held up their forearms and waved, showing off cerulean-jeweled bracelets. Erick smiled and gave them a nod. It was good to know people were using his spellwork down here.

Erick headed for the Iron Bandits’ magic shop, first.

The door jangled as Erick stepped through, into a land of display cases filled with silver metal and colored crystals. The two clerks working right now were Dowry and Chesti, which Erick was rather sure were not their real names, but a lot of people didn’t go by their real names down here, so these two women didn’t stand out too much with their odd names. Both were with customers right now—

Dowry noticed Erick right away, and profusely apologized to her customers and then she stood tall, and waved to Erick. “Ashes! Welcome! Is there something you need quick help with?”

The two people with Dowry looked like young delvers, without much silver on them. Could be they didn’t walk around with the real stuff, like Erick. Or they could be people from Utopia. They definitely recognized the name ‘Ashes’, though, and they stepped away, almost saying that they were going to move on—

But Erick said, “I’m just here to pick up the specialty orders, to see if there’s anything I want to do. It shouldn’t take long.”

Dowry happily stepped a few steps down the display case line, bent down, and retrieved a folder from behind the partition. “Right here!”

Erick took the folder and glanced at the insides. Some of what he read interested him, but he’d get to that later. “What sorts of stuff do you want more of in here? Anything in particular?”

Dowry said, “In the second half of that folder are some possible requests. Bracelets of [Hidden Wind] that allow each user to see each other are high on the list, and would be wonderful to let us push past 200. We’re experiencing some small problems with people not being able to see each other when they move, so it has caused some wipes, so if it is possible to fix that issue, we’d love to get that sort of stuff from you.” She delightfully added, “Otherwise, your Benedictions are proving themselves a hundred times over! Thank you, Ashes.”

Erick considered…

[Hidden Wind] was not an Illusion-based spell; not exactly. It was more subtle than that. It twisted shadows and light, and allowed a person to windstep. Certain spells could see through it like it was an illusion spell, though. Like [True Sight].

On Veird, the [True Sight] in the Script had a medium range, and only revealed stuff inside that medium range. If someone was a hundred meters away from a tunnel in a wall that was covered by an illusion, and they [True Sight]ed that area with the tunnel, they would not see that tunnel until they got closer. Of course, that was not the whole story with [True Sight], as the spell actually functioned inside one’s entire mana sensing range. If one’s mana sensing range was very long, or if one used special-made [True Sight] spells, like alongside a super long range [Witness], or from a Familiar like Ophiel, then [True Sight]'s range was pretty damned far.

But when there was no manasphere, then there was no [True Sight]. [True Sight] was not actually Scanning Magic, but it was darned close, and Scanning magic was incredibly intense in mana costs.

[True Sight] was theoretically possible here in the dungeon, but every dungeon floor of the Endless Depths had a 0% mana density, so [True Sight], which relied on having direct, manasphere-filled line-of-sight with a target, did not actually work, here in the Glittering Depths.

… How to fix this?

Erick’s eyebrows furrowed.

Could he ‘solve’ the range issues on [True Sight]? In a manaless environment?

At first glance, Erick would have to say ‘absolutely not’. [True Sight] didn’t work that way.

But if he solved that issue, then he could possibly extend the range of [True Sight] to infinity.

… But honestly, for this [Hidden Wind] team-combat issue, he could probably just add in a Benediction-class buff to improve the perception of everyone using [Hidden Wind], and let them each notice each other that way. Erick could already notice anyone inside a [Hidden Wind] or otherwise, and that was mostly due to his own buffed perception and the lingering effects of his Script-granted Perception. No need to go the complicated route of extending [True Sight] out to infinity.

… But what if he did make an infinite range [True Sight]? What could he see out there?

The only immediate thing that came to mind were the moons. One could already see worlds on those moons if they looked at the moons while Meditating. Maybe there were actual illusions to see up there, though; on Hell, and the Silver Star, and Celes.

Hmm.

And since one could see the ‘true nature’ of the afterlives on the moons while meditating… Was that a way to make [True Sight] work well at infinite range? Or were the meditation-induced sights on the moons already based on some sort of basic [True Sight]-esque action?

Or were those moon sights only visible due to the alteration of the self that occurred when meditating, which allowed one to see things that weren’t there, and the absence of a manasphere connecting the moons to Veird did not matter at all?

… Could he do a [Cascade Imaging] [True Sight]? Go the radio wave route?

“You know, it never even occurred to me to make a [Hidden Wind] that allowed easier visual communication between people who were also using [Hidden Wind].” Erick said, “The very idea of it… Has brought up a lot of questions for me, like how to make [True Sight] work without a manasphere, and the nature of how meditation allows us to gaze upon the moons to see the afterlives of demons and angels and the gentle peace between.”

Dowry was completely lost. “Uh! Good luck with that!”

The other woman working the counter, Chesti, was not as lost as Dowry, but she needed some guidance and all the customers in the store were now looking at Erick and Dowry. Chesti asked softly, “Not to pry, but how are [True Sight] and meditation related?”

Dowry admitted, “I have no idea how seeing our ancestors and [True Sight] are related, either.”

Erick grinned, and found himself perfectly fine with explaining, “Meditation leads to mana sensing which leads to [True Sight], but [True Sight] requires you to put yourself out there, which is why [True Sight] has a range of your mana sense range, while Meditation just changes yourself so that you can let the mana flow through you, to renew your well of power. [True Sight] is almost Scanning Magic; Meditation is ‘receptive magic’, though that isn’t a real thing and I just made it up, but the sentiment is true enough.” Erick said, “And so, making [True Sight] work inside the Glittering Depths, where there is no manasphere to put oneself into, is impossible.

“Maybe.

“I’ll have a solution to your viewing problem soon, but it likely won’t be what you’re expecting and there will be some rearrangement of [Hidden Wind] spellwork itself.” He looked at Dowry, “Or maybe a proper team will need to include some better body strengthening spellwork? So that they don’t need probably-impossible magics? How about a [Benediction of Sight]? You can just see people doing [Hidden Wind] if you do that.”

Dowry didn’t know a whole lot about how magic itself worked, but she had a great deal of personal experience dealing with the 10 metamond basic restrictions of the Glittering Depths. While other people were considering Erick’s words, Dowry easily said, “Including [Hidden Wind] in the top teams was already a stretch. There’s not a whole lot of space for people to make even more room in their power sets… So if you can make [Hidden Wind] better itself, that is the solution we would appreciate the most.”

Erick nodded. “Yeah. I figured. Okay. Well. I’ll think about all that.” He held up the folder of project ideas, adding, “Thanks!”

- - - -

Now that Erick thought about it for a little bit more…

Erick turned back around, and went back into the Iron Bandits’ magic shop.

Chesti spoke up first, “Uh! Welcome back, sir.”

“It occurs to me that someone probably already invented a way to [True Sight] through the manasphere, and if not here, then back on Veird, due to the Quiet War and people wanting to spy on Hell.” He asked, “Know anyone I should talk to about any of that?”

Chesti blinked a little, unsure what to—

Dowry spoke up, “There are rumors that Clarice has [True Sight] spellwork that works down here, but she’s a recluse who refuses to work with anyone. Maybe she’ll work with you, though?”

Chesti looked to Dowry, and said, “I don’t think those rumors are true.”

“Well they might be?” Dowry said. “I don’t know.”

Erick asked, “How does one fight illusions in the deeper parts of the Endless Delve, anyway? It just now occurs to me that illusions are probably exceedingly powerful down here.”

Chesti raised an eyebrow, while Dowry hummed a little.

And then Chesti said, “Rumors have it that Clarice got as strong as she did by having some sort of way to combat illusions. I don’t think it’s [True Sight], though.  Most people mostly bumble around and try not to die to things lurking in the dark, and then fight back when things appear.”

Dowry spoke up, “Invisible wights are an undead enemy that appears on almost every undead floor past 60, and they’re just about the most deadly thing until you get to floor 130 and the invisible enemies start to appear on almost every floor. It’s actually a status that some enemies just have. Like. That’s what they are. [Invisible], all the time.”

“The best way to combat that is to be invisible yourself,” Chesti said, “And then never get caught.”

“That breaks down past 150, though,” Dowry countered. “Past that point the enemies start to be able to see through all forms of obfuscation magic. Bosses, for sure. Smaller enemies usually not, though, so [Hidden Wind] is still a very fantastic magic.”

Erick had a minor revelation at that small interaction.

Erick laughed. “It occurs to me that I’ve been making Bracelets of [Self Rejuvenation], but I have no idea what you guys actually go through down in the deeper floors. I should rectify that!”

Dowry spoke up, “You should come to the company house! You haven’t been yet, have you?”

“Just for a delivery… I think I will do that next, though. Thank you, Dowry. Chesti.”

Both women bowed.

Erick left and headed toward the Iron Bandits’ company house.

- - - -

The Iron Bandits were the largest delver company in the Glittering Depths, with 1 out of every 4 delvers being an Iron Bandit. Most of the former-NPCs of Utopia who wanted to delve were even a part of the Bandits. They had the largest apartment building just outside of town, while their company house inside town also reflected their power as a group, for it was almost a guildhouse all on its own, with a five story main structure and a good fifteen side structures all located in a very large city block.

The Iron Bandits compound sat three streets away from delver square, smack dab in the middle of one of the largest communities of Utopia, so there were people everywhere. Only a third of them looked to be veirdians, while the rest looked like utopians; Erick could tell based on the level of gear they had on. People who had made it through the five first floors of the dungeon all had really nice gear on, with special functions, from full suits of platemail to large chainlink cloaks and otherwise. The utopians only had one or two pieces of gear.

The people at the doors recognized Erick right away, even though he had only been here once, and only to drop off an order of [Self Rejuvenation] bracelets. It had been an order of 50 bracelets though, and Erick saw that both front door guards now wore one of those bracelets.

Erick smiled as he asked them, “Those bracelets working well for you?”

“Yes sir!” said one of the guards. “Are you here to see anyone in particular? Let us find them for you, sir.”

Erick kept smiling. He called these people ‘guards’ in his mind, for that’s what they were, but perhaps ‘bouncer’ was more appropriate; they were here to ensure that only fellow Bandits got into the clubhouse. “I’m actually looking for whoever wants to tell me about what sorts of threats are faced down in the dungeon, to give me a better idea of what sorts of magics I could be focusing my creation efforts on.”

One guard looked to the other—

The first guy said, “I think Miss Fellhorn would want to be involved.”

The other guard said, “Can you come with me, sir? I’ll tell Miss Fellhorn you’re here, and we can… I’m not sure. Want to see the building? Have you been here much before?” He stepped inside the company house.

And Erick followed. The first guard bowed a little as Erick passed.

The second guard led Erick through a marble guildhouse, where people milled around on business of sorts, and tellers took requests from delvers or people looking to delve. The first room was the largest, and was practically a guildhouse on its own, with great big leaderboards and portraits of important people on those leaderboards.

The top delver team was, of course, plastered on the wall in big letters, because the top delver team of the entire dungeon was in the Iron Bandits. Their leader was a mountain of a man named Tom Dugout, while their team name was the ‘Iron Swords’, and though Erick didn’t recognize the names of most of the people on that deepest delving board, their caster was named Bob Woodvale, and Erick had seen that name elsewhere. Erick only had to look to the left to see that name in the expected second location.

Bob was on the Most Decorated board, along with Erick. Erick’s portrait was at the top of the Decoration board at 4200 Decoration, though. Bob was further down, at 3250. Clarice’s name wasn’t even on that board; just the words ‘Not Affiliated’, and her number of 3450.

“Would you like a tour?” repeated the second guard.

“I don’t really need that,” Erick said, “I’ll take a meeting office, though, and some paper and such for some note taking and ideas. I didn’t come into town today prepared to do this sort of meeting with Rebecca or any of this planning, but when I went to pick up your commission requests from the magic shop, I decided I needed to actually speak to delvers.” Erick chuckled. “So now I’m here.”

“Oh! Well then you might want to talk to the top team, too. Want me to inform— Oh! Mister Tom Dugout of the Iron Swords is in the building, at the gym. Miss Fellhorn would want to speak to you too, if you don’t mind that?” The man gestured to the hallway that led to the meeting rooms. “Four is open! I’ll find out where people are and have someone your way as soon as possible.”

Erick nodded. “That’ll do.”

Erick went to room four.

Not two minutes later, a very worried young woman came in, carrying papers and pens, saying she was there to deliver all of that and to take any refreshment requests. Erick thanked her, and said he’d take some of whatever she felt appropriate; he was probably going to be in the room a while. And then Erick started reading about commission requests.

The secretary returned quickly with tarts, small sandwiches, and various drinks both hot and cold, and set them to the side, before excusing herself again.

Erick munched on finger foods as he thought. And then he started writing down some preliminary ‘solutions’ to the problems posed by the commission requests. Most of them were simple complications of easily made items, where someone wanted a specific thing, but they didn’t know how to get there with the resources they had. In every case, those complications made the item creation a whole lot harder.

There was one simple request for a breastplate with as much Health as Erick can possibly stuff into it. The requester had managed to make armor with 15,000 Health, but they could go no higher.

For that one, Erick imagined they’d be happier to have a [Regenerating Health] breastplate, or similar, but maybe they’d want Health that was stronger. Perhaps some absolute damage reduction would do good there, and also work well for Erick, actually. He needed to recreate the absolute damage reduction he had on Veird, as a dragon, but which he had lost inside the Glittering Depths…

Lots of interesting little problems here!

- - - -

Rebecca knocked on the half-open door to the room as she pushed it open, smiling brightly as she said, “Welcome to the company house, Ashes. I was wondering if I needed to go out and invite you again.” She stepped into the room, and a man stepped in behind her. Rebecca said, “This is Tom Dugout, the center of our highest ranking delve team to speak with you, since we heard you want to know about what it’s like to delve deep in the depths? And about commissions?”

Tom was a brickhouse of a man. Here was another guy who Erick suspected might have been using a whole lot of [Alter Size] to be a lot bigger than a normal guy. He was still not nearly as big as even the smallest orcol. He certainly seemed smaller than he actually was, though, as he quietly gave a half bow, saying, “Sir.”

Erick stood, saying, “Hello, Tom. Nice to meet you. And yes, Rebecca. I’ve already got some ideas for these commissions, but I was suddenly aware that I have no idea what it’s like to delve in the deeper parts of this dungeon. Like this one:” He sat back down, and grabbed one of his workups for the over-15,000 Health commission. Nothing he had written down there would give anything away about himself, but he needed to know more before he went further. “Here we have a request for a breastplate with more than 15,000 Health. Which would be a better solution to this commission? Do you think some absolute damage reduction like the dragons have would work well, effectively making every point of Health go much, much further? Or some regenerating Health like in the Breastplate of [Regenerating Health]? Or maybe some general body buffing magic would work better? Health is a lot more than a simple shield before your body takes actual damage, after all. Or should I just try for as much Health as possible, as the commissioner originally requested?”

Tom took a moment to collect Erick’s barrage of questions—

But Rebecca got there first, near instantly asking, “You can make an absolute damage reduction magic?”

“Oh yes. It’s all about ethereal Force and overlaying the body. I’m sure I can do that.”

Rebecca said, “Then that’s the one we want.”

Erick smiled. “Do you know the commissioner?”

Tom looked at Rebecca. He wanted to know who the commissioner was, too.

Rebecca said, “They’re our number 4 team; the Easy Daggers.” And then she realized Tom was in the room, and rapidly added, “And I’m sure Tom would have another opinion to add. I would stick around too, if you would have me, Ashes. You are a delight and surprise whenever we talk, and I would talk more… But I don’t actually delve all that much. So I know I will not be as useful as Tom. And I’m currently busy. Some other time?”

“We’ll talk some other time, Rebecca. Thanks for bringing Tom.”

Rebecca gave a smirk, and a small bow, and then stepped away, saying, “Talk to you later, Ashes.”

“Please, Tom. Have a seat.” Erick sat down. “Do you have an opinion about this Health commission?”

Tom glanced backward, and then stuck his head out of the door a little, before he came back into the room and shut the door, whispering, “Miss Fellhorn is a very competent boss, but she is terrifying.”

Erick raised an eyebrow. “She is?”

And then Tom realized he was bad mouthing Rebecca. “Sorry. Please… Uh. It’s not my place to say. Could I start over again?”

“… I need to know if I should look out for myself here, Tom, and what you said was concerning.”

“I was being… Not truthful. Fellhorn is great. She’s just a very intense woman. Have you ever been around a person who can guess your every inner thought, and yet you knew they weren’t a mind mage? Fellhorn is like that. She’s been fantastic for the company and we wouldn’t be where we are without her, but she’s… I suppose I shouldn’t be prejudiced against her. It’s just terrifying how she could probably kick me out of this company, even though I’m a founder.” Tom furrowed his brows. “Sorry. I shouldn’t be speaking of her like that. She’s a good person, trying her best. We all are.”

“... Fair enough. I appreciate the warnings, though,” Erick said, moving on.

Tom nodded, quietly thankful that Erick let the conversation move on, and then he moved on, too. “The absolute damage reduction would be best… I think. I heard about it a few times and some enemies have it, but… Never had the option to use it myself. I’m not sure how that stuff works exactly.” He glanced at the door to the side of the room.

Erick saw the moment where Tom felt it odd that Rebecca had known about absolute damage reduction well enough to instantly ask for that, because yes; Erick’s absolute damage reduction option was the best option.

Erick explained, “Absolute damage reduction works simple on Veird; it prevents around 100 to 250 damage from every single attack. This comes into effect before things like [Defend]… You’re from Veird, aren’t you? Or are you native?”

“I’m from Veird, though I’m glad I don’t live there anymore.”

Tom said that with such easy conviction that it caused Erick to smile.

“You’re, what, 45? You know how it was before the Wizard, right? It’s not that bad out there these days, is it?”

“I was poor as shit out there and couldn’t do shit for magic, even though I was great at swords and shields. Good enough to almost become a Paladin of Atunir, too, but…” Tom moved on, “Now that I got other people making magic for me I’m getting pretty far in life.” Tom fell silent. He had briefly been outgoing there, but he was nervous about this meeting, and he knew his mouth was running away from him.

“… Well it’s certainly nice for me to share my spellwork with others, directly. I’ve got a good knack for this stuff, though I’m not so great with the martial stuff. You’re probably great at that, though, being on the top delve team.”

Tom gained a true smile. “You’re selling yourself short, Ashes. Top of the Decoration board and you ain’t been here a month! I’m glad you came in. Miss Fellhorn said we weren’t allowed to approach you on our own…” Tom dispelled whatever thoughts he had about Rebecca, and said, “I got lots of information about fighting, and lots of desires and reasons for all those desires. Wanna hear?”

“Yes, I do want to hear. Please speak upon an average set of monsters, the ‘bosses’ of the main floors, and whatever challenges you’re facing that must be overcome with spellwork— Ah! And I understand you’re on floor 200… Haven’t passed it while everyone else was looking elsewhere, have you?”

Tom smiled, and said, “We haven’t passed it yet; you’re one of the Bandits now, and you’re a part of our endless delve success, too!” And then he got a concerned look. “Uhh… You do feel like a part of the company, right? If you don’t then I need to fix that. Usually we go out drinking and partying and whoring with the new guys. It’s great fun if you want to come?”

Erick chuckled at Tom’s complete earnestness. “No thanks. I have a boyfriend out on Veird. I’m just here in Utopia to play around with metamonds and magic.”

“Oh okay! That’s great, too. If you change your mind I can bother you again some other day. We’re always going whoring and drinking; ain’t nothing better in life, if you ask me.”

Erick gently shook his head, unable to remove the small grin from his face.

Tom leaned forward, happily saying, “So! Monsters! There’s all sorts of shit down there in the deeper parts, and sometimes we have to reroll the floor if it proves to be too tough, or if we’ve tripped over some traps that cannot be smashed. Like there are floors that get flooded and we’re swimming under spiked ceilings, while decay eels try to bite our asses, and Bob desperately needs to switch out some of his utility gear to [Waterbreathing] blessing us. It’s tough to hold my breath for over 10 minutes while fighting and of course Walter’s lightning magic ain’t no good anymore. But we get it done, minimal injury, and then the water turns to acid. And that’s when we all realized it was acid the whole time, and all the Health in our gear is gone! So I’m there, my dick burning off just like everyone else’s —save for Irene, cause she ain’t got one— and everything’s getting hard to see, and...”

Erick recognized several things about Tom, as the muscular man spoke. He wasn’t book smart, and he didn’t know much about the creation of magic, but he was a good fighter, who cared deeply for his people, and who took care of his people as best he could. He had a Bracelet of [Hidden Wind] and a bunch of other high-end gear, all made for him by his teammate Bob, who was second highest on the Most Decorated list before Erick bumped him down to third. Erick kinda wondered why Bob wasn’t making more gear for everyone, and he even asked that.

Bob wasn’t an archmage, according to Tom, but he was from Songli, and he had almost become a Singer before he was kicked out for failing to pass the Singer tests for 5 years in a row. Singing magic didn’t work so well down here, but Bob was very good inside a mana chamber if he had some metamonds to start with. That was quite different from Erick, who was able to mana alter his mana into whatever he wanted.

Erick definitely had to speak to Bob after hearing he was a would-be Singer, though.

Tom smiled at that. “Bob’d love to see you! He’s always busy with his kids, though, so he ain’t never here.” He laughed. “We went whoring to this bordello like we always did, you see, and he met a girl, he fell in love with her, and they settled down and Atunir reversed her un-fecundity and now they got 3 kids! They’re all happy. Lot less time for delving, though.”

Erick grinned. “Good for them. So you were saying about the boss of floor 200?”

“RIGHT! So that bastard’s a right piece of work. I think it’s self-healing adamantium, but Bob and Irene thinks it’s holyite, but the time period is from the Old Cosmology, back when adamantium was white, right? RIGHT! So the monster is all white metal, but it can’t be holyite, and I know what it feels like to cleave holyite and this ain’t holyite, my guy…”

Erick listened for a while, all the while developing ideas for spellworks and writing down a few of those ideas, just so that any potential spies watching this meeting would see him taking those notes and think him less capable than he was. Erick’s mana senses were just as blocked on some people out there as their mana sense was blocked from viewing him, but they could still see his dent in the couch where he sat, and the papers in front of him. It wasn’t paranoia if people really were out to get you!

As Erick listened to Tom, he made some more plans for what he was going to do next. ‘Speak with Bob’ went high on the list, but he could do that some other day; it wasn’t necessary right now. He was certainly going to seek out Clarice Icewind, because, according to Tom, Clarice had solved the [True Sight] issue.

“Oh yeah. Don’t have the faintest idea of how she did it, but we partied with her years ago and she had the [True Sight] working even back then. Course she never told anyone about it, and now everyone believes you can’t do it. By Atunir’s tits, Bob hates Clarice for never sharing!” Tom laughed. “We tried to get her to come to the Bandits all the time, but you know how she is.”

“Huh.” Erick asked, “Ahh, no? I’m not sure how she is?”

“Well it’s the Riamite situation, ain’t it?— Oh! Sorry. You’re new! Right.” Tom shrugged. “We make a point to try and get everyone to join our Company, because we want to be the strongest and pull from the resources of everyone, to raise up everyone— You a Xoatist at all?”

“… Ah. No. Not really.”

“Eh! Rebecca is the biggest Xoatist around here, and most Riamites are. And we try to be inclusive, and so, we got Riamites in the Bandits… Means we have the most problems with the Riamites when they go bad, and the inquisitors have been up our asses ‘cause of that shit ever since then. Rebecca makes a point to take care of those guys, though, ever since they tried killing the dungeon masters and body snatched people from the inquisition in order to do some shit inside Greendale.” Tom frowned. “Damn red bastards. And we gave ‘em a chance, too! That’s what the Xoatists believe, right? But shit! We can’t all be Wizards, I guess; that dude’d probably have done better. Anyway; that’s why a lot of people are scared of Rebecca, but she’s good people… Anyway... were we talking about? Oh yeah! Clarice! She don’t want to be part of anything to do with the Riamites, so she won’t join with us, even though we tried to get her here every way we could think.”

That was a great deal of information.

Erick knew he needed to see Clarice now, and since it appeared that Tom would talk and talk and talk, Erick had to say, “Where is Clarice? I think I need to go have a talk with her about [True Sight].”

“Right! Sorry. I get off on tangents. Clarice has a house far, far down the main road. Bout ten times the distance to your house, I think? You’re pretty out there, but she’s all the way out there in the golden sea.” Tom rattled off, “There’s about five houses all on a small mountain belonging to a group home about halfway between Utopia and Clarice’s house. The road to Clarice’s house is hidden by some special magics so you won’t be able to see it, but you will be able to see the sign for it on the left; the dungeon won’t let her hide that for whatever reason.”

Erick nodded. “Thank you for your help today, Tom. I’ll see about getting you an absolute damage reduction metamond for you to try in your belt, but I’m gonna have to pass on remaking your armor for now; I don’t want to mess it up.”

“I got extras! I can send you a fullplate to enchant, if ya want?”

“... Ah. Well. Yes. I do want that, actually.”

Tom smiled friendly— And then he looked around at the empty food plates and drinks, which Erick had eaten about half of, while Tom had eaten the rest. He asked, “You got food at your place, right? We try to make sure people get food, but it doesn’t always happen like it should.”

Erick smiled. “I got food, Tom. Thank you.”

Tom was a good guy, as far as Erick could tell. Erick almost asked him why he had chosen to name his company ‘Iron Bandits’, which was still a terrible name, but that felt like an invasion, almost.

- - - -

As Erick exited the Iron Bandits company house, he considered his next move.

There were probably people on Veird who had solved the [True Sight]-through-a-vacuum conundrum, like Kirginatharp, and Erick would be asking him that later— Ah! But actually. Now that Erick was thinking about it, he wanted to bother Quilatalap with that question. Yes. That was a better idea.

Quilatalap probably needed a break from overwork!

He would go see Clarice Icewind first, though. She was here, and Quilatalap was far away.

- - - -

The run to Clarice’s property didn’t take too long.

Tom had been right; the place had been far, far away from Utopia, or anyone else living anywhere out here. All Erick could see in every direction was golden wheat under blue skies, the road leading back to Utopia, and one lonely street sign, sticking up from the side of that road.

There was no side path beyond that sign —just more golden grains— but the sign clearly read ‘Clarice Icewind’.

So Erick stepped into that wheat, and the wheat parted like an illusion disturbed, and soon, Erick was walking through not-wheat, like the golden sea was actually some sort of sea, rippling all around him—

Erick hit the edge of the path and hit actual golden wheat.

He angled back toward the hidden path. Finding his way through the illusions was not too difficult, and eventually he ran into an invisible wall, so he had definitely hit Clarice’s property. Erick’s land had the same sort of protections around it to keep out uninvited guests, and to prevent spying of all sorts. Erick’s mana sense did not end at the edge of the property, though. According to his senses, all the wheat he had walked through and all the wheat directly ahead was all real.

Erick had no idea how she had made such realistic illusions, but she had made them. Perhaps they were Elemental Mystical, or Fairy? Could be.

Erick knocked on the empty air.

And he waited.

And he knocked again, and again, and again. Slowly, methodically, patiently and hard. Knock, knock, knock—

The illusions shattered and a woman stood right in front of Erick, on the other side of the solid air. She wore a tunic and brown pants and had dirt on her gardening gloves, while rows of vegetables grew just inside the property line. Clarice’s house was almost exactly like Erick’s, but it had a whole bunch of nuances to it that showed someone had lived here for years and years, from the painted flowers curled around every door and window frame, to the stained glass in some windows, to the octahedral white stone mage tower that was also three stories tall. All the rest of the house was tan stone, just like Erick’s; the mage tower was clearly a secondary addition. Clarice seemed like she was doing okay for herself.

The woman herself looked to be about 35, with blonde hair done up in a bun, tan skin, and bright amber eyes.

She also looked rather furious.

“Fuck you! Go away, Ashes.”

Erick smiled, and said, “According to Atunir you’ve had a major [Witness] experience on the fifth floor. I’ve had a lot of my own experiences on the first and second floor, but Kinder asked me to skip to Utopia, so I missed out on what could have happened on the third, fourth, and fifth.”

For a moment, Clarice’s anger held out, and then she saw Erick’s sincerity, and her eyes went subtly wider. Anger mellowed. Doubt crept in. But she was interested in whatever Erick had to say.

Erick continued, “I couldn’t help but overhear that you stopped pushing deeper recently, though I admit I only heard all that through mana sense spying on everyone near me all the time, so maybe I got the story wrong.” Which was true, but it wasn’t like Erick was purposefully seeking out information on Clarice; she and her fall from first place was just the major topic around town. “Sorry if I killed your drive to delve, but since a bunch of other stuff came up recently, I decided to seek you out about that, to wish you further success, and to see if you’d be up for talking about other concerns of mine.”

Clarice had a scrambled expression, like she was unsure of everything right now, so she defaulted to her basic mode of operation, “I don’t like to talk to people in the Iron Bandits—” She figured herself out. She glared at Erick. “You’re not going to try and recruit me, are you?”

“Absolutely not. I only joined the Bandits because they were a quick way to get to experimenting with magic here in the Glittering Depths, and they were a quick way to help as many people as I could with [Rejuvenation]s. My real life is still out there on Veird, but I came here to play around with mana crystals, and then a bunch of stuff happened aside from that need. You can’t really make mana crystals at all on Veird, you know.”

Clarice took a metaphorical step back, and judged Erick again. “… You can’t really make mana crystals here in the Glittering Depths, either. The ones we make in the mana chambers are specifically internally infinite crystals, because that’s how the chambers make them. The ones you sometimes find down in the Endless Delve are actual mana crystals that expand outward just as much as they expand inward.”

Erick’s eyes went wide. “Do they actually automagically cast magic down there, too?!” He looked around her house. “Is that how you have these good illusions working even out there, in the path to your house?”

“… Please come in, Ashes. I’ll make some tea and we can talk for a while.”

Erick happily stepped onto Clarice’s property, saying, “I accept your invitation.”

Clarice frowned a little at Erick’s enthusiasm, and then she sighed, and walked toward her house, taking off her gardening gloves as she asked, “You've been to the arcanaeum in town yet?”

“There are a great many places I have not been to at all. I’ve only really been to the Bandits company house, and only twice. I actually felt I was at risk of becoming a hermit before I received an impetus today to pause my experiments and go meet other people, with you being one of those people.”

Clarice reached the door to her house, paused as she looked at Erick, and then she went inside.

Erick followed directly into the mudroom, which was another difference between Clarice’s house and his own. Erick kinda smiled at that space; he hadn’t been in a mudroom since his home back on Earth, all those years ago, where winter and snow required his house to have one, or else he and Jane would have tracked mud all over the place. There was no need for a mudroom on Veird, though, when [Cleanse] was right there in the Script.

“Shoes off.” Clarice hung up her gloves onto a hook by the door and then she kicked off her shoes. She gestured to some slippers by the door, saying, “You can use those,” as she stepped onto the clean floor of the house in her socks.

Erick did as requested, and then followed her into the house. “Are you from Songli?”

Songli had mudrooms. Not many other places did.

“I’m not answering that.” Clarice gestured to the dining table, saying, “Cookies if you want ‘em. They’re only a few days old. Sit down. I’ll be back with tea.”

Erick smirked as he sat down.

Clarice disappeared into the kitchen, and since the manasphere of her property was around 65% by Erick’s estimates, she did actually disappear; she was still right there, making tea. Or at least that’s what she looked to be doing, because the tea pot was moving, and some water and tea leaves were getting put in the proper places. Erick could mana sense the property now that he was inside, but Clarice had some obscuring magics on her person, just like Erick.

“So where do you want to start?” Clarice asked from the kitchen.

“How about with how you’re planning to murder me just because I came here to talk to you about your [Witness] experiences in the dungeon?”

Silence.

Erick could mana sense what Clarice wanted him to mana sense. He heard what Clarice wanted him to hear. But he recognized what was going on long before he got to this point.

As expected, but in an unexpected way, Clarice came out of her kitchen carrying what Erick would succinctly describe as a crystalline affront to geometry. Floating crystals made of displaced space hovered around a silver bar in her right hand, like she had stuck her hand into a kaleidoscopic part of reality and made it hers. All the rest of her was covered in silver armor, with a long cape. Erick hadn’t seen her put any of that on, nor had he seen it in the manasphere, or in the kitchen, but here she was primed for killing him.

Clarice calmly stated, “There are two ways this could go. You tell me of your experiences on the first and second floor. Or you die, and get sent back to the entrance floor, without any of your gear, which I will destroy in the process of killing you. It will be physically painless, but the loss of your gear will happen. It will be a punishment for whatever scheme you’re trying to do here and now.”

Erick almost wanted to grin, to try and disarm this situation with levity and quiet calm, but he felt that any of his usual response to being threatened with not-death would not be well received. So Erick calmly said, “In my first vision on the first floor, I stood upon a guard tower and saw the horrors of Riam slowly encroach on my city of Iben, for the Emptying had caused the farms furthest from Iben to fail, and now the nearby farms were failing, too. I made the decision to go join the resistance, to try and fight back against Riam’s aggression through whatever political and smaller interference I could manage.

“What found me, instead, was a grand adjudicator of Riam, known as Fyuri Riamiteer, who killed my best friend, Markie, his wife, Sofie, and then she turned Markie into a cannibal before releasing him upon me. And then she started her true reign of terror on the Ramblewood Arcanaeum and University. She started with a massacre of students, and rapidly moved on to executions of professors and otherwise.

“She moved on to killing Iben next.

“By that time I had long ingratiated myself into her circle. For a decade I had been able to use the information I gathered at her side to find the Resistance and then hide them from her. I pretended to love for ten years, while she acted like she loved me, too, but both of us were acting, and for very different reasons. Fyuri was incapable of love. Completely incapable.

“All the while I plotted against her, building power, until finally things progressed too far, and I acted. She was going to call down red lightning to try and destroy the very land of Iben itself, to turn it into mana for Riam to consume.

“In the dungeon, she was the shadowcat boss monster at RAU. In the memory, she was something similar. In both dungeon and vision I killed her with a white-lightning guard’s mace, and then made sure she stayed dead.” Erick’s voice was trembling with quiet rage there at the end, as something deep within threatened to overwhelm if he let it. But he wasn’t going to let it. Erick continued, “Floor two was a hundred years later.

“In the dungeon I made a very good bolter. In the memory, I made a super weapon and dedicated each kill to whatever good god might listen, in hopes they would come to Insten to help us throw off Riam, and restore Insten to its former glory. I don’t know if anything came of that prayer written in silver metal, but I do know that in both memory and dungeon I almost single-handedly cleared the entire battlefield of the plains. Scout helped.”

Clarice stood by the doorway to the kitchen, silently listening and watching Erick as he spoke. Displaced kaleidoscopic crystals slowly rotated around her hand. Her eyes were hard in the slits of her silver helmet. Her breath was shallow. Small facts added up here and there for her, but the primary thing Erick saw was that she lost the will to kill him. She believed that Erick was telling the truth. As soon as Erick mentioned the shadowcat, and Iben, and ‘Ramblewood Arcanaeum and University’, and finally the weapon of the gods…

That staff had done it for her. Erick didn’t have it with him, but everyone had seen it, and that included Clarice. Like a revelation in a dream, she believed.

Erick finished his story. He waited.

Clarice stated, “Rebecca is the shadowcat from the first floor.”

It was a punch to the gut.

“Oh.”

“And you’re the Summoner,” Clarice said, with reverence.

“… What?”