Vee’s fingers ached as he pulled the strand of ectoplasm in his hand tight before connecting it to the frame of the ghost he was working on. This would be the ninety-fifth – or was it ninety-sixth? – lesser ghost that he’d made that day and the strain of his continued skill usage was starting to take its toll. A voice in the back of his skull, which was growing louder and more insistent with every passing moment, told him that he’d overestimated his abilities. You won’t reach your goal of finishing two hundred ghosts by the end of the day, it said. You’ll be lucky to make it to a hundred with the way you’re going. Why not just give in and stop now? Your hands will thank you, and your head won’t be long behind them.

Indeed, just then Vee felt another set of aching twinges in his forehead. Closing his eyes, the [Ghost Maestro] savored the sensation of soothing relief spreading across his senses, then shook his head and resumed his work. Too many times throughout his life had he given in to that siren’s voice, tempting him with rest and a mute acceptance that projects could be done later when he’d given his word to the contrary.

Two hundred ghosts, he’d said, and the [Ghost Maestro] refused to stop working until he reached that number or passed out. Every minute he spent wallowing about how much there was left to do was time not spent getting it done.

Growling to himself, Vee pulled and twisted until the pieces of the ghost tightened enough for him to call them functional, and he set the minion to the side. Unsurprisingly, it lacked the careful craftsmanship of his earlier efforts, and looking at the group of ghosts on the floor of his workshop, Vee couldn’t see anything but flaws in his work. Unlike the ghosts he’d bought from the union, his own creations were not uniform, consistent things. The joints are spotty and the sizing is inconsistent. Not that any of that will probably matter tomorrow.

After all, adventurers weren’t going to be stopping to compare the distance between the ghost’s shoulders and its head in the middle of their runs, they were going to be destroying them as fast as possible or running away. Some degree of spottiness was to be expected, but did that make it okay for him to accept such obvious problems? If only he’d tried harder from the beginning…perhaps if he started over he could –

Perfection is the eternal foe of good, he reminded himself sternly, dismissing the thought of starting over as the folly that it was. Though the words felt as thin as they always did, Vee repeated them over and over again until he’d convinced himself of their value and the urge to cast everything to the side in favor of a blank canvas dissipated.

Taking a deep breath, Vee collected his willpower once more and picked up a cube of refined ectoplasm from the bench next to where he stood. It did no good to dwell on the fact that more than half of the cubes he’d allocated for the work were still there, so Vee didn’t. Instead, he simply squashed the energy between his palms and got to crafting. The ectoplasm was a bit like saltwater taffy, easy to twist and pull but prone to getting stringy and brittle if it “dried” in one shape too long. Forming the ectoplasm into a square that would serve as the basis for a cube, the [Ghost Maestro] found himself pitying his poor fellows who worked with the union. They must get so bored, he thought, doing this type of work every day.

Once the torso for his current creation was roughed out, Vee reached down to the small bag on the other side of his desk and picked out a tiny crystal shard. It was more of a crystal crumb, really. A couple dozen of the dungeon’s tiles had been damaged by the renovation process – thanks [Excavation Crawlers]! – and according to Hanako, repairing such low level crystals really wasn’t worth the time and effort of doing so. Instead, it was easier to simply make replacements for the ones that’d been damaged and discard the scraps, but Vee had seized them for his own work.

Feeding them to the slimes aside, he’d been sure he could find some other use for them, and had decided to experiment with the low-level ghosts he was working on. He really wanted the dungeon to have a stronger frost theme because of Alforde’s [Glaciernaut] class, and so set about trying to make lesser frost ghosts.

By socketing the sliver of crystal near the ghost’s core with a clever bit of sigilmancy that he’d found in chapter two of an old book he’d found in the city library, he could give the creature a small measure of elemental physicality. In this case, his ghosts were slightly cold to the touch, like a refrigerator, and their strikes should feel like getting hit with a cold breeze. Hopefully. The effect wouldn’t be as potent as if he’d used a full skill crystal for it, but hopefully his efforts would make his ghosts a little more useful than they might be otherwise. In a way, the process was like a poor man’s [Enchant], but only useful for ghosts and other spirits.

If everything worked the way he hoped it would, there were things he could do with such a technique down the line.

[Plotting +1]

Shaking his head, Vee stopped his thoughts from traveling any further down that alluring rabbit hole. He needed to focus on the now – or at least the somewhat-immediate future – and that meant cranking out ghosts as quickly as his aching hands and pounding skull would let him. If it came down to it, he might even need to stop socketing the crystal slivers at all, since the process was somewhat time consuming.

Down below, the [Dungeon Master] heard the sounds of rumbling construction and smiled as he resumed his work. Despite his physical discomfort, his soul was light. Crestheart was reopening tomorrow, and it’d have more than just a new floor to boast about.

In the bright, cold light of the next morning, the resumption of normal business happened with little fanfare, despite the fact that it probably deserved some. A crowd of adventurers lingered inside the tower’s bottom floor, gathering around leaning tables and sitting in somewhat precariously balanced chairs made of old Westown scraps as they sipped on herbal tea and snacked on homemade petal biscuits. The mood was serious and the talking kept to a minimum, but there were a few adventurers here and there who simply couldn’t help themselves and filled the air with idle chatter. Most of it, apparently, surrounded the bandits.

Vee expected plenty more of that in the days and weeks to come. Thanks to the efforts of Do and the rest of the [Dungeon Maintainers], the tower’s lobby had been upgraded to the Lobby – a temporary name, while Vee and Reginald thought of a better one – and while it wasn’t quite the full service consolation café Vee envisioned having eventually, it was a place where adventurers could come in out of the snow and enjoy some snacks or camaraderie before entering the dungeon.

It'd take some time to fill the empty shelves on the walls and expand the menu beyond its meager fare, but that was fine with Vee. The bandits, of course, threw something of a wrench into his timetables for both those things, but with the open call having been made by the adventurer’s guild, he suspected they were a problem that’d be resolved sooner rather than later.

The pink tea and brightly colored biscuits currently for sale were cheap to make, due to the fact that virtually all of their ingredients came directly from Juniper’s shop or home garden. The [Herbalist], who normally made potions for the dungeon to sell in addition to running her own business, had thrown together both with gusto when Vee had brought up the idea of opening the Lobby with the dungeon’s new floor. Wintertime was a slow season for her, she’d said, and she was excited about the prospect of tapping new markets of her own, since adventurers weren’t her typical clientele outside of funeral processions.

For the time being, the overwhelming majority of the fleurs brought in by the Lobby would go right back out again to pay for the materials used and Juniper’s time, but by the end of winter the Lobby would be an important contributor to Crestheart’s business and connect to the grandiose plans cooked up surrounding Kai’s “Verdant Construction”.

Or at least, the [Dungeon Master] hoped things would work out that way.

In addition to regular refreshments, the tattooed and bespectacled [Herbalist] was working on creating a potion with longer lasting effects that could be imbibed long before starting a run. Once she worked out the final kinks – Vee doubted any adventurers were interested in projectile vomiting ten minutes after consumption – they’d go up for sale.

Letting his challengers “pre-potion” made Vee somewhat apprehensive, as depending on the potency, he might have to modify the dangers of the dungeon to make sure that he wasn’t trading expensive dungeon rewards for a few extra fleurs at the door. However, Reginald assured him that the plan was a good one in principal and Alforde – in a fit of bravado – insisted that he would defeat every adventurer who came through Crestheart “even if they drank a cauldron full of Juniper’s potions”. As such, Vee was inclined to encourage the [Herbalist] in her experiments and looked forward to seeing what she created, though he couldn’t quite eliminate all of his concerns.

Once back in his office, Vee looked over the day’s applications as he got ready for the first run to start. Most of the adventurers who’d come were low-level – the highest he saw was a level 14 [Squire] – but there were 29 of them in total and they’d all paid for the chance to battle Alforde. He recognized plenty as having tried the dungeon before, but generic names and faces bled together in his mind and he couldn’t exactly recall how their runs went.

That might have had something to do with the fact that he hadn’t slept, though. True to his word, he’d stayed up all night making ghosts, and though his hands were too tender to properly hold the cup of tea in front of him and his head felt as if it would split at any moment, he’d finished his task. Two hundred lesser frost ghosts had been taken into the bowels of the dungeon to be used as pack fodder. He prayed that it’d be enough to get them through the day.

The first adventurer was a young girl carrying a pair of twin clubs who Vee had never seen before. According to her application, she was a level 10 [Fighter], and Vee thought she looked no older than sixteen or so. However, despite her youth and lack of experience, she stood straight and charged into the dungeon as soon as the door opened with her clubs raised high. Even the auras didn’t deter her.

Vee didn’t bother to activate [Boost Drops]. For one, his head hurt too much to do so just then, and for two he didn’t think that she’d make it far enough to be justified. He had four uses of the skill each day, and it was important to make them all count.

Despite the girl’s enthusiasm, it was rare for an adventurer to do well on their first foray into a dungeon, and the [Fighter] proved to be no exception. Though she fought valiantly against the first pack of ghosts that attacked her, she quickly succumbed to their chilly grasp and gave up before clearing a single room. Her chin raised in defiance, she stomped out of the dungeon.

Up next was a man with prematurely graying hair and a gut that made it clear he enjoyed his beers and fried food. According to his application, he was only a level 9 [Brawler] – his primary class was [Laborer], in which he was level 22 – but he went into Crestheart with the same frantic energy as the [Fighter] before him. With no weapons but his fists, the man punched his way through two rooms before collapsing in a heap and asking for retrieval.

It was only when he saw the third adventurer for the day that Vee braced himself to endure the worsening headache and activated [Boost Drops] for the first time. The Salamander entering the dungeon carried a polearm that had a blade on each side, and wore the brightly painted chain link armor of a [Scaledancer]. He cleared the first floor with ease, chopping Vee’s ghosts into ectoplasm scraps with a series of movements that were as dazzling as they were deadly, and bounded down the stairs to the new obstacle course.

Rubbing his hands together, Vee willed himself to stay awake and activated the first of his levers to spring the traps waiting down below.

It really hadn’t been that long, but Gawain and Piper above, he’d missed this.

Main Character Sheets:

Vee Vales

Primary Class: Ghost Maestro (Locksmagister University), Level 28

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

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

Might: 12 (+1)

Wit: 31

Faith: 21

Adventurousness: 7

Ambition: 13

Plotting: 16 (+1)

Charisma: 12

Devious Mind: 20

Leadership: 16

Guts: 12

Intimidating Presence: 9

Citizenship: 20

Public Relations: 5

Alforde Armorsoul:

Primary Class: Hammer Afficionado (Self), Level 21

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

Tertiary Class: Dungeon Champion (Oar’s Crest), Level 14

Additional Class: Glaciernaut (Sacha Silverblade), Level 3

Might: 37

Wit: 12

Faith: 25

Adventurousness (Bound – Vee Vales): 8

Endurance: 17

Intimidating Presence: 13

Heart of a Champion: 7

Citizenship (Bound – Vee Vales): 8

Vigilance: 5

Vanity: 2

Reginald:

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

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

Secondary Class: Loudmouth (Self), Level 40

Tertiary Class: Majordomo (Vee Vales), Level 14

Additional Class: Announcer (Vee Vales), Level 6

Might: 1

Wit: 32

Faith: 10

Ambition: 26

Greed: 22

Deceptiveness: 27

Manipulativeness: 35

%#[email protected]%@@

Loyalty: 45

Patience: 9

[#&%%%@%!#@__--#%]

Citizenship (Bound – Vee Vales): 7

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