You have defeated Reynard Moore in an Intrigue. You have earned 125 XP

[Intrigue] Level 2 acquired through use

For gaining a skill level you have been awarded 1 XP

I looked at the notification for a long time before dismissing it. Interesting. No one had mentioned that Intrigues were a thing. From the looks of it, it was half of the points that I would have gotten from killing him. Not a bad deal - I could theoretically Intrigue him multiple times, while I could only kill him once. Of course it had taken quite a while to complete this one, while it only took two minutes to shank a monster.

I was sitting in a carriage, making small talk with the other passengers as we made our way slowly from Aldwich to Anchorbury. In a weird reversal from what I knew about the history of my world, carriages were one of the slowest ways to travel. The fastest way available to most people was running. That was how I’d gotten from Oakway to Aldwich - carrying my possessions on my back.

But that was how the poor, and adventurers, travelled. When I left Aldwich, I was a merchant, and comfortably well-off. After arriving in the city, slipping invisibly through the gates, I’d shed my disguise, and purchased clothing suitable to my new station. Then I found out that Aldwich was of sufficient size to boast a salon that offered bathing and beauty treatments. Heaven!

Anyone looking for the desperate adventurer Katherine Meland would never connect her with the merchant’s daughter, Kandis, of the Hammond Trading Company. After that there was the matter of my next destination.

Everyone had told me that my choices were between the Capital, where the wealth and power was, and the border, where the opportunity and experience were. North and west of Oakway, the settled farmland slowly changed into less settled farmland, and then forests and hills. There were a few outposts of civilisation out there, but they were embattled forts holding back the monsters and trying to carve out new settled lands. Dorsey, the capital of the kingdom, was actually quite close - only three days by carriage south-east from Aldwich.

I’d decided to take neither of those options. Instead, I’d opted to travel west from Aldwich into the neighbouring province. I hoped my destination - Anchorbury - would be enough of a city that I could find books, Alchemists and Enchanters to help me develop my less stabby skills. Felicia didn’t know my plans - so she couldn’t be forced to betray them - but I’d promised to write in a few months, once I’d gotten myself established.

In the meantime, I had this journey. Four days was a long time to be cooped up and jostled around with the same people, but at least it was a chance to practice my social skills. And there was something else to occupy my time.

I couldn’t examine it in the carriage of course, but that night, in the privacy of my room at the inn, I took out the Dungeon Core and examined it with both my eyes and with [Mana Sense]. It had shrunk to about 10 centimetres across, but it was still filled with complicated mana machinery, all whirling away. As an experiment, I pushed mana into it, like I would a mana gem.

Everything went white.

Then, some things appeared. A modern looking desk, with a glass surface and a couple of fancy office chairs. A man was standing on the other side of the desk. He was wearing a business suit - I couldn’t see his face, as he was looking away, but the big pointed ears poking up on the top of his head marked him as a beast-kin of some sort. He turned around.

“Oh, hello!” he said. “You’re the one who took the core!”

I looked around. At him, at the nothingness, at the desk. None of this made sense. “I’m Kandis,” I said. “Who are you?”

“I ah… don’t actually have a name,” he said brightly. “I’m a fox!”

“A fox?” I repeated. “Not a fox-kin?”

The man looked down at himself, and then put his hands against his face, feeling what was there. “Ahaha… that feels weird.” he said. “Yes, a fox. A long time ago, I was the first being to find the Oakway dungeon core after it had formed. I tried to take it back to my den, and somehow became the Dungeon keeper.”

He paused, as if reminiscing. “There have been a few upgrades since then. Not least this one! I’ve never had a humanoid body before!” He grinned at me, apparently delighted with these events.

I needed to sit down, so I did. The chair was soft and comfortable. As I sat down, words lit up on the desk’s glass surface

Insufficient Mana for Dungeon Construction

The fox watched me closely as I sat, and then looked at the other chair. He very carefully moved over to it, and then, just as carefully, sat down. He looked very happy with the result.

“First time sitting down?” I asked. He nodded happily. I sighed - this was all too weird. Acting on some strange impulse, I said, “You can also do this,”

and spun my chair around.

“Whooooo!” he cried, spinning around.

“Don’t do it too much,” I cautioned, “It will make you sick.” I didn’t stop him continuing though, which he did until he fell off the chair. It took him a bit to figure out how to get up, but he eventually got his feet under him.

“I’m OK!” he cried. My eyelid twitched. I’d just realised we were both speaking English, not Latorran. I wanted to ask, but I knew the answer already. He’d been upgraded with my language, along with the body and the suit.

“OK… first thing, you need a name.”

“A name? Oh good! What name shall I have?”

“Do you have any preferences?”

“I get to choose? I thought people got named by someone else?”

“Where’d you pick that up?” I asked. It was a weird detail for him to know when he didn’t even have a name.

“People in the Dungeon would say stuff occasionally to each other. ‘Blame my parents for my name’ that sort of stuff. Oh, and sometimes someone would do something notable, that would cause their party members to give them a name.”

“Well, its true, but thats because most people get named when they’re babies, before they can speak. You’re… able to speak, so you should choose your own name.” I was going to put ‘an adult’ in that sentence, but I couldn’t bring myself to say it.

“Are you sure? You’re kind of like my mother, when you think about it…”

“No. No to that, and no to being your mother. I’ll veto anything you come up with that sounds stupid.” He pouted, but seemed to think seriously about the question.

“Should I pick a name that I heard in the Dungeon, or something that I never heard?”

“Either is good.” I said. “Names are supposed to be somewhat unique, but theres a lot of repetition. Each culture has its own rules for names, but you’re not part of any of those societies, so I don’t think you need to be bound by them.”

“I see,” he said. After a pause, he continued. “How does Rhis sound?”

“Its fine,” I assured him. “Short, unique and easy to say.”

“Then… my name is Rhis.” he said, getting a feel to it.

“Well then, Rhis, what can you tell me about why I’m here? What is this place?”

“This place…” Rhis’s voice trailed off as he considered. “I think its the same place I was in before, only changed because of you. Its where you control the dungeon from.”

“Where I would control the dungeon from…” I echoed, “… if I was to take your place.”

“And if there was enough mana to run it, which there isn’t.” Rhis agreed.

“What would happen to you, if I did that?” I asked.

“I think… that I would stop existing?” Rhis said, uncertainly. “Or maybe I could take over your body, since you wouldn’t be using it. I’d definitely give that a go.”

“Lovely. Well, I already refused to take the position, so I guess this remains all yours.” I gestured to the emptiness. “What do you do when I’m not here?”

“Haven’t you always been?” Rhis asked, looking puzzled. “You only just took the Core, after all.”

I stared at him. “Its been 4 days since I took the core.”

He looked a little shocked. “Then… I guess time doesn’t pass for me when you’re not using the core? I guess I won’t have to worry about getting bored?”

“Wait, so if you need mana to exist then…” I focused on my own mana store. Sure enough, I was spending mana. Slowly, at slightly less than my replenishment rate, but I was definitely supplying the mana to run this… whatever it was.

“One more question, do you have any idea what a mage might want with a dungeon core?”

“The only use for cores that I know of is to build Dungeons,” Rhis shrugged. “Maybe they want to build Dungeons?”

“Maybe.”

“Do you want to build a Dungeon?” Rhis asked hopefully. “I could run it for you, if you don’t have anyone better.”

“I don’t know what my plans are Rhis,” I smiled at him. “But I can’t think of anyone better to run a Dungeon for me.”

“Why, thanks!” Rhis said, pleased. I smiled again, and cut the connection.

OK that was weird. I thought to myself, safely back in my room. So I’m now responsible for an uplifted fox? The thing was, I did feel responsible. I’d taken the core for my own reasons, but I hadn’t thought there was someone in there I could talk to. Whatever I ended up doing with the core, it would have to be something that took Rhis into account.

A problem for another day… or another year. For now, I concentrated on practicing Illusion, spamming [Static Image] to put paintings on the walls and fancy carpet on the floor. I didn’t manage to improve [Illusion Magic] but there was one benefit.

[Creativity] Level 2 acquired through use

For gaining a skill level you have been awarded 1 XP

The system was still mistaking my memories of art for original works. I wasn’t sure what use [Creativity] was going to be for me, but I’d take it. I could recover around 120 points of mana overnight, so once I’d spent that much, I allowed the illusions to fade and went to bed.

Four days later, and Anchorbury, was distantly visible if you leaned out the carriage window. I still hadn’t levelled up [Illusion Magic]. Level 4 was really hard to reach! Maybe the lack of stress had something to do with it. Or maybe I needed new spells to cast. Of course, to get new spells, I needed to improve my skill, so… it just went around in circles.

I decided to focus on setting up in Anchorbury - well, if I was going to. I had been quizzing my travelling companions for details of our destination, and I had a pretty good idea of what was ahead. One thing that made me pause was that Anchorbury wasn’t a free town like Oakway, but ruled by a noble family.

Exactly what that meant in practice, I would have to find out, but I could already see one difference, namely the massive fortress that squatted on side of the city. The walls that surrounded the city had been extended to link with the outer wall of the fortress, but it was completely separate from the larger city. The city itself was much larger than Oakway, with tall walls running around the entire perimeter, leaving only a few gaps for gates and for the river that ran through the town. I wondered how they dealt with water-based monsters… perhaps there was a grating?

As we entered the town, there was the usual inspection and queries as to who we were and what we were doing. It was a bit more thorough than at Oakway, but I was quite capable of lying through the bits that I needed to. I didn’t show them my adventurers guild plate, as I’d thrown that away some time ago. Apparently at the border or the capital, I’d need to show papers of some sort, but this was still the lackadaisical hinterlands.

We disembarked at the travel companies office off of the main square, and I arranged for my luggage to be held in their storage until I worked out where I would be staying. I would have actually been able to carry the large trunk that all my dresses and adventurers gear were stored - my mere 3 Strength was enough for that level of superhuman feat, but it would have been awkward to tote the thing around town.

I’d just started to head off exploring, when someone stepped into my way.

“My my, what a delight we have here!” the man said. He was fairly young, younger than me, but obviously old enough to be called a man. The most obvious thing about him was that he was richly dressed, but had terrible taste. I mean, jewels sewn into a waistcoat? Also obvious was why he was accosting me in the street like this. You see, I’d learned some things about Charisma, and how it was perceived in this world.

Charisma wasn’t just about looks. Being beautiful was definitely a part of it - as I was reminded every time I looked in the mirror - but it was also about force of personality. And there was considerable variation in how those aspects were applied. A person with 6 Charisma might have a six in looks and the same in personality, but they might instead have only a four in looks and a much stronger personality. And, of course, it went the other way around as well.

So when arseholes like this saw a beautiful woman, they tended to think - or at least hope - that her beauty was a sign of a weak personality. The sort of person that might be bullied into some kind of compromising position. Whoever was responsible for this world had somehow made it worse for women than mine. Of course, my looks were the real deal.

“I’m sorry, did you address me, or did you just pass wind particularly loudly?” I asked loudly, and then watched as he froze in shock. [Charm] didn’t want me to act rudely, but I was in charge, so the skill dutifully provided me with the best way to act rudely. The exact dismissive tone and sneering face to best discommode this noble in front of his friends. Because of course he’d brought backup along when he went out to harass women.

[Charm] also gave me the timing to interrupt him just as he was managing to get a retort out.

“I’m sorry, I don’t have the time to wait for you to figure out how to talk. Why don’t you write it down and have your father pass it on when I meet with him tomorrow?”

“My Father? You-“

“Count Lowell. You are Aubert Duvost, yes?” I interrupted again. Invoking his father had put him off-guard. Normally, he would have been the one to do that. “He mentioned he had a wastrel son in his correspondence, and you certainly meet his description.” From the way his face went red, and his hand went to his sword, I was pretty sure I’d guessed right as to who this was. He wanted to kill me… and he probably could have, legally. This was his family’s town after all. What stopped him was the thought that I had some business with his father, business that he didn’t know about - and that he would be punished if he interfered with it.

Under the circumstances, my rudeness was transformed into confidence. Confidence that my business with his father was so important his father would see him shamed and humiliated rather than offend me. He still hadn’t broken off though, so I increased the pressure.

“Lets see, how did that description go?” I idly wondered aloud, as he struggled to control himself. “Foolish, check.” He flinched.

“Rude. Check.” His friends were laughing at him now. I could tell that he noticed.

“And terrible taste in fashion.” I paused, letting my gaze run over him. “Definite check.”

You have defeated Aubert Duvost in a Tier 3 Social Contest! You have earned 20 XP

What? What was that?

Aubert seemed to get a similar message, as he slumped, losing his arrogant bearing.

“I- I shall inform Father that you have arrived in town.” he managed to get out. He turned to leave, and his coterie went with him, half of them looking abashed, while the others were still giggling.

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” said a voice from behind me. I turned, to see that it was one of my travelling companions speaking. “Your business with the count may well be affected by his son’s account of you.”

“I don’t have any business with the Count, Master Brooks,” I replied lightly. “I only knew his name because you were so kind as to warn me about his son on the way here.”

Master Brooks’s eyes widened at my audacity, and he let out a choked laugh. “Then I hope even more that you know what you’re doing. The lordling won’t be back until tomorrow, but if the Count finds out that you’ve humiliated his son…”

“It shouldn’t be a problem,” I said airily. “I’m just passing through and won’t be here by the time he finds out.” That was another lie though. I was pretty sure that Aubert wouldn’t want his father finding out - and I wasn’t here to do business, so the Count had limited recourse to interfere with me. I might end up running, but the time to do that was when it was necessary. Still it couldn’t hurt to leave a rumour that I was leaving town…

Master Brooks shook his head, but he gave me a small bow of respect as he turned away. It was time to check out the city!

One day later, I was moving into my own modest dwelling. Like my last place, I’d rented it for a month, but hopefully I’d get to use it for the entire lease this time. Meant for a crafter, it had stone walls for the workshop area, with a second story made of wood for living quarters. It was perfect as a private space for me to study and to practice rune-crafting.

Both those pursuits required money though. I had a fair bit, but it wasn’t going last forever - or long at all, if I had to start buying more enchanting dust. So I’d checked out the local Dungeon as a way to make money - and gain XP. Results were mixed.

This Dungeon was owned by the local Lords - the Duvost family, but it was open to the public. For a price. There was a charge to get in, and all the loot had to be sold to the Duvost company store. That meant there was no guild presence, which I wasn’t sure if I liked or not. I was on the run after all, so if I signed up I’d have to lie again. On the other hand, with certain notable exceptions, the Guild had maintained a certain amount of control over its members, that I thought was lacking in this town.

From what I’d seen, the delvers (they weren’t guild members, so they couldn’t call themselves ‘adventurers’) were a rougher bunch than even Reynard’s crew. More desperate too - Reynard may have complained about Oakway’s low level, but it was fairly easy to make a living there. Here, with the Duvost’s skimming as much as they could off the top, it seemed like it would be harder.

Still, they did seem to manage a living, so the next morning, I went to try it for myself. [Disguised] as a man, I’d booked - you had to book - a slot for the second level which meant starting at second bell. At the appointed time, I showed my token to the gate guard, and they let me in.

I was only allowed as deep as the second level, though I wasn’t clear on how they’d check for that. I was allowed to kill anything I liked on the 1st level, but if someone booked that level they were allowed in about half an hour before me, allowing them first chance. However, when I’d booked the first three levels for the next week were all untaken, making me believe I’d have free reign of the first two levels.

Of course, that meant that most people thought the first three levels weren’t worth their time. But, it was only one gold - the same price as a map of a single level - so I’d see for myself.

God, that was excruciating. I thought to myself when I got home. The dungeon was undead themed, which on the first level meant lots and lots of zombies. They were only Threat 1, so they were easy to kill, but I only got 3 XP for each one. I must have killed 20 before I found my way to the second level, only to find… more zombies. These were called ghouls, and were a bit more animated…. and were Threat 2. I had an easier time finding my way on this level, as the next group had passed me while I was exploring, and they left a trail of ghoul parts that led right to the next level. It also meant that I missed out on the second level boss fight though.

The worst part was that undead apparently have a ‘detect life’ ability which my [Greater Invisibility] didn’t work on. That wasn’t a problem with low level creatures like that, but it was probably also true for the higher level undead further down. The monsters were too stupid to fool with regular illusions as well, which was saying something since they’d worked with lizards.

Basically, my magic was useless there, and I was just a Level 3 with a nice knife. Oh, and lets not forget how… messy killing zombies is. I needed a bath. No, I needed to wash, and then have a bath.

Fortunately, that was one amenity I could manage. Water was easy - there was a public well that you could take from, but even easier, was to get a large barrel delivered. My crafting area had both a large double door for such deliveries, and a drain that led to a bona-fide sewer. Not all Latorran cities had a sewer, but Anchorbury had been built by the Empire long ago. I still hadn’t read the history of how (and why) the last lot of Worldwalkers took down the Empire, but if they had sewers, they couldn’t be all bad.

I got out of my armour and then scrubbed it clean of zombie-bits, then let it dry and filled a bathtub with fresh water. Hot water was no problem, thanks to the fire crystal I’d picked up in the Oakway dungeon. I’d learned one of the things you could do with it, which was make heat. I activated it and dropped it in the tub to do its thing. It wasn’t long before I had a tub full of steaming water, and I could finally take my bath.

Soaking in the hot water, I contemplated my situation. I hadn’t been keeping track, but I thought I was very close to Level 4. Liam’s rampage had netted me at least 4000 XP, and my solo adventures had been pretty rewarding as well. I had to be on at least 9000 XP, which meant a few more zombie runs would put me over. The low level delves were tiring, and disgusting, but they were pretty easy. And they did net me a slight profit - copper coins and as many rusty weapons as I could carry.

So it was probably worth doing another run, at least until I hit Level 4. For now though, I resolved to focus on study, and Enchanting.