The day’s runs finished, and Vee found himself sitting across the table from Zeiken while Reginald and Alforde helped him put away the day’s earnings.

Though the pile of fleurs wasn’t as big as Vee would have liked – only twenty-one adventurers had challenged the dungeon that day – the day’s shards of chaos take was great. One of the skeletons Marked by [Boost Drops] had left three behind when an adventurer blasted its bones apart with a miniature tornado, and after adding the thirteen from the day’s runs, the dungeon now had seventy-eight in total. [Boost Drops] was really paying off in a big way, and better yet, Vee hadn’t felt as…empty as he had casting it for the third time today as he had the day before. He hoped that eventually he’d be able to use the skill a fourth time each day. It didn’t seem too different from [Walking Walls], after all, but only time would tell if his ability to control it increased with extra usage.

Once the money was put away, Vee turned to the salamander.

“Thanks for waiting. Now, let’s talk about what you want to do for Crestheart.”

Zeiken nodded and reached over to his door. “It’ll be easier if I show you. Hang on just a second.”

He opened it and looked around, as if he could see something beyond it that Vee could not.

The [Dungeon Master] blinked and tried to silently activate [Third Sight], but he’d never been great at using his sight skills without invoking them by name, and couldn’t manage it. As such, when Zeiken reached through the door to grab something, it looked as if his arm simply disappeared into thin air.

“Ah, here it is,” Zeiken said as he drew out a thick folder and dropped it on the desk. He opened it up and turned it around so that Vee could see the contents of the materials inside.

On top of the stack of papers was a well-used map. It was faded and battered, covered in a series of strange red and green squiggles. Most of the red markings were on cities and roads Vee knew well – both Oar’s Crest and Bardis were surrounded by big red circles – but the green lines and shapes were all out in the wilderness where only truly horrific monsters and crazy people lived. Vee was curious about the markings, but Zeiken didn’t give him a chance to ask any questions. Instead, the salamander ran his claw along the road to the southeast of Oar’s Crest, passing by Amespool, Yew’s Rise, and Old Narluc before stopping at Shontsdale.

“If you make me your [Dungeon Liaison], this is where I’ll go first,” Zeiken explained. “All of these cities have young, growing dungeons that haven’t yet joined any official circuits. Like Crestheart, they don’t have enough floors yet to meet the minimum standard set by the union, but that won’t last forever. There are rumors that a couple of the [Dungeon Masters] in these towns have been meeting for the past few months. I want to go and talk to them, put some lines out into the water and see if anything bites, you know? If they’re planning something big, I’ll try and get them to include Crestheart in it. I take it you haven’t really reached out to any of your peers, right?”

Vee nodded sheepishly. “I’ve been meaning to find time to write them a letter, but there’s just been so much to do that I haven’t gotten around to it yet.”

Zeiken flashed another one of his unsettling grins. “That’s fine. I wasn’t expecting you to. I ended up arriving here in Oar’s Crest a lot earlier than I’d originally planned, so you’ve still got a long way to go. However, that’s proof that you need my help. It’s clear to me that you’re doing your best here with the dungeon, and I think it’s running well. However, if you’re going to find any measure of long-term success, you’ll have to find ways to expand. With your current earnings coming from such a small number of adventurers, there’s no way you’ll be able to keep up with your repayments if you don’t reach new markets fast.”

Though Vee found the salamander’s tone a bit too blunt, he couldn’t deny the logic of the argument Zeiken was making. The numbers didn’t lie: even with the combined earnings of Crestheart and all of his other ventures, Vee knew that he had maybe six or seven weeks until he was unable to keep up with Sacre’s schedule.

“Well?” asked Zeiken. “What do you say?”

What did he stand to lose? Zeiken wasn’t even asking for any money up front, and the seriousness with which he'd explained his idea was a mark in his favor. Vee couldn’t explain why, but he felt confident that the salamander wasn’t angling to screw him over or betray him, and a nagging pressure in the back of his skull urged him to accept the offer.

Vee looked at Reginald – who didn’t have a ton of options available for expressions of resigned acceptance but did his best all the same –and at Alforde, who gave him a thumbs up. The [Dungeon Master] sighed and decided to accept.

“Fine. The job is yours.”

[Faith +1]

Zeiken’s grin widened, and his eyes twinkled as he stood back up. He bowed low and stayed like that for some time, and when he straightened once more, he picked up his door.

“Thank you,” he said. “You have unlocked a brighter future, Vee. I’ll gather my supplies and leave right away.”

Once the salamander was gone and his footsteps had faded from the stairwell, Reginald looked up at Vee and sighed.

“I’m telling you, he might be serious about helping out, but he’s crazy,” the hat said.

As the trio headed back into town, it started to snow. Vee grinned up at the fat, fluffy flakes falling from the sky. Though snow always meant trouble back in Bardis – the city was full of steep hills and people who might as well have turned into [Idiots] as soon as a thin layer of dust touched the ground – Vee loved the stuff. He had many fond memories of building snow knights with his brother and having fierce snowball fights with the other kids in his neighborhood, even if he didn’t much care for the cold that came with the flurries.

Pulling his hands into his sleeves and blowing on them, Vee led his friends to The Grinning Pig and ordered a hot bowl of soup.

Not many people were in there that night, and so Big Simon came over to chat as the food was served. The burly kitrekin hissed a little bit at the sight of snow outside.

“Hate that stuff,” he growled as he pulled over a chair from a nearby table and sat down. “Winter is the worst season of the year by far.”

“Does Oar’s Crest usually get a lot of snow?” Alforde asked.

Big Simon shrugged. “Some years we get a coupla feet, other years we get barely anything. Luckily the roads area all pretty big and most of the city is flat so we don’t have as rough a time of it as some places do, but it’s never fun. Just the thought of snow makes me shiver.”

Turning around, Big Simon clasped his paws to his mouth and hollered back to the kitchen. “Oy! Atlas, toss a few more logs on the fire, would you? It’s getting cold out here!”

The [Cook] did so, and soon the room was so warm that Vee had to take off his coat. He shoveled spoon after spoon of his soup – a rich red broth with bits of crumbled meat, onions, and cabbage – into his mouth while Big Simon told them stories about the worst winters he’d ever seen in Oar’s Crest. Some of them were actually pretty horrifying, and Vee hoped that this year wouldn’t be that bad. When he finished a harrowing tale of a friend who’d lost his tail to frostbite, the kitrekin stood up, returned his chair to the table he’d borrowed it from, and bid them a good evening.

When Vee finished his meal, he dug a few bronze fleurs out of his pocket and dropped them on the table before putting his jacket back on. Reginald wasn’t a proper snow hat, but his brim would keep the snow out of Vee’s hair on the walk back to Sculla’s, and that was as much as the [Dungeon Master] could hope for.

Outside, the snow had slowed down a little bit and didn’t look like it was going to stick. Or at least, that was what Reginald declared as they made their way to the boarding house.

Sculla was in her regular spot on the stairs, and if the snow bothered her, the ogre gave no sign of showing it. She grunted at them as they passed and sent a smoke ring into the air. Once again, there were no boxes to be moved, and the trio went up to their room.

Sitting on his bed, Vee’s thoughts turned to the ghost he’d worked on in the lab. He couldn’t say that inspiration had struck him, but he felt as if it’d be a waste to not work on the designs now that he had a bit of time. Grabbing his notebook, Vee started to sketch. Even though he couldn’t truly render any of his ideas perfectly, he could get the gist of them down so that he had something to work from once he got back into the lab.

Drawing big shapes and scribbling over them, Vee started to come up with a concept for a better version of the tank ghost he’d tried to make when the dungeon first opened. Other than Alforde and his Reflection, Crestheart didn’t have any powerful single threat monsters that dueled against adventurers. Instead, the dungeon relied on swarming packs of weaker minions to wear down and eventually overwhelm challengers. It was a good approach, but Vee wanted to give himself more options. Especially since he suspected that the snow would only add to the delivery woes of his next shipment from the union. Once again, there was that nagging pressure in the back of his skull. It had to be a skill. Maybe [Big Picture]?

The sigilmancy required for a minion to be a proficient duelist was well beyond what he could accomplish, even with his additional [Ghost Maestro] levels. However, he believed that his skills had improved enough that he felt confident in his ability to stack multiple sheets of ectoplasm over the ghost’s body without causing other weaknesses, such as a lack of mobility. They’d form an armored layer that would let it tank plenty of hits from challenging adventurers. It’d be a different way of wearing them out.

[Congratulations, you are now a Ghost Maestro, Level 26]

[Devious Mind +1]

As he sketched and refined his designs, Vee eventually found himself drawing fewer arms. Instead of spooky and impressive, having more than four arms on a ghost simply made it look like a big spider, and that wasn’t what the [Dungeon Master] was going for at all. After all, if he wanted spiders, he could buy spiders. He wanted something that unequivocally said ghost. It seemed like four arms was the limit for that particular goal.

When he looked out his window as he prepared for bed, the snow had stopped but a dusting remained on the buildings. Through a gap in the clouds, the twin moons glowed with silver light, and Vee shook his head as he put his notebook down on the floor.

Laying down, Vee laced his fingers behind his head and closed his eyes.

Main Character Sheets:

Vee Vales

Primary Class: Ghost Maestro (Locksmagister University), Level 26 (+1)

Secondary Class: Dungeon Master (Oar’s Crest), Level 17

Tertiary Class: Guy-Who-Takes-Things-WAY-Too-Far (Self), Level 5

Might: 10

Wit: 26

Faith: 19 (+1)

Adventurousness: 6

Ambition: 12

Plotting: 15

Charisma: 10

Devious Mind: 18 (+1)

Leadership: 15

Guts: 11

Intimidating Presence: 8

Citizenship: 16

Public Relations: 4

Alforde Armorsoul:

Primary Class: Hammer Afficionado (Self), Level 20

Secondary Class: Right-hand man (Vee Vales), Level 12

Tertiary Class: Dungeon Champion (Oar’s Crest), Level 12 (+1)

Additional Class: Clunker (Vee Vales), Level 1

Might: 32 (+1)

Wit: 11

Faith: 24

Adventurousness (Bound – Vee Vales): 8

Endurance: 16

Intimidating Presence: 11

Heart of a Champion: 3

Citizenship (Bound – Vee Vales): 6

Vigilance: 5

Reginald:

Primary Class: Core Spirit (Unknown), Level ???

--~%@(%[email protected] &% (*$ #&#e !i$$ (#$%#$%#[email protected]!)~--, #[email protected]& ????

Secondary Class: Loudmouth (Self), Level 39

Tertiary Class: Majordomo (Vee Vales), Level 11

Additional Class: Announcer (Vee Vales), Level 6

Might: 1

Wit: 30 (+1)

Faith: 10

Ambition: 25

Greed: 21

Deceptiveness: 28

Manipulativeness: 35

F^#$#$%@#

Loyalty: 44

Patience: 12

[#@$%%^*!#@__--#%]

Citizenship (Bound – Vee Vales): 4