“Would have thought you’d be too important to bother with the likes of me,” Marlon said, shifting uncomfortably on his bench.

I wasn’t the cause of his discomfort. Well, I was ultimately, but the reason he looked so nervous was sitting beside me. I didn’t need a guide to visit the information broker this time, and I could probably take care of myself. That didn’t mean I wanted to be bothered by the rough crowd that hung out in this tavern, so I’d brought along an escort.

“Is my companion making you nervous, Marlon?” I asked. He looked at me sourly.

“Last time, Cloridan brought you here. He’s a local - I know where I’m at with him. This time you’re bringing in this slab of Arryenn muscle, so who knows what to think.”

Kyle just smiled. He wasn’t wearing his full armour or carrying his shield, but at Level Five, he was just starting to project that aura that I’d first noticed on his grandfather. An aura of power, of danger. I supposed that I had that too, but it was difficult to tell. I was pretty sure that no one in this room was over Level Four. Maybe if they’d spent time on the wall, but they didn’t look the type.

“Don’t expect anything, Marlon, and you won’t be disappointed. We’re here for the same reason as before.”

“The Fangs aren’t around anymore, but I’d have thought that you knew that already,” he said shiftily.

“Something wrong with that?” I asked. “They sounded like they were everyone’s problem.”

“More like…” he dropped his voice and looked around. “I had a thought that you had something to do with that.”

I kept my face expressionless. “Where did you hear that?”

He grimaced. “Don’t need to hear anything. Someone goes down, someone goes up, doesn’t take a genius to figure out the connection.”

“You want to be careful who you pass that speculation on to,” I said coolly. “Someone could get the wrong idea.”

“Oh I’m careful,” he said bitterly. “Not like anyone smart enough to pay for that can’t figure it out on their own.”

“Why even bring it up then?” I asked.

He glared at me sourly. “You’re paying for smart, so it does me no good to me to play dumb.”

“I suppose.” I looked him over carefully. Something seemed off about his demeanour, but [Intrigue] wasn’t giving me any warnings about deception. He was just upset about something? I decided to continue.

“You’re aware of the upcoming trade deal,” I said, not making it a question. He nodded impatiently. “There are two parties trying to sabotage it,” I continued. “I want to know what they’re up to, who they’re talking to.”

“Who are we talking about?” he asked.

“Tonet of Naldyna and Captain Hector Rodakis.”

“Toriao’s secrets!” he swore. “Are you trying to get me killed?”

I frowned. “I’m not asking you to up against them.”

“You might as well be — starting with a Priestess. You think I want a God on my case?”

“I have some reason to believe that she’s not acting in Naldyna’s interests on this,” I said.

“You think that a Priestess is going against her Goddess?” he asked incredulously. “I can tell you she ain't, on account of the Temple not being on fire.”

“Not against, just that Naldyna doesn’t hold an opinion on this matter,” I explained.

“Got your own in with the Goddess then?”

“In a way. I’ve talked with her Champion about this, and she’s in favour of the deal.”

“No way is the Chosen of Naldyna in this town.”

“Not in, correct. I spoke with her outside. She’s in the area, I think because of Isidre’s presence.”

“Whom you are also on a first-name basis,” he noted sourly. “You’re acquainted with some very dangerous people there.”

“If you say so,” I said with some amusement.

“Your funeral,” he muttered under his breath. “So what you’re saying is that Naldyna isn’t going rat me out to her priestess if I start a watch on her.”

“I think so,” I said. “Obviously, don’t try infiltrating the Temple…”

“Like I was going to do that.”

“Then you should be alright. If I’ve figured out the rules of this game they’re playing then they don’t reveal stuff that affects the actual play. If you focus on what she’s doing to sabotage us, then you should be fine.”

“Easy for you to say. Feels weird for a Church to be interfering with things though. I guess with Chosen wandering round there’s going to be all kinds of strangeness.”

“Quite. You don’t have any problems with the other name?”

He scowled. “He’s even more dangerous if he finds out. Until he settles in though, he’s got no way to do that.”

I nodded. “He’ll probably be trying to set up some kind of network. I want to know who’s in it, and what they’re telling him.”

“So this is going to be more of a steady retainer than a one-off payment,” Marlon said. I couldn’t see the gold coins in his eyes, but [Bargain] could hear them in his voice.

“Indeed.” I dropped a small stack of coins on the table. “Each week, but I expect results.”

Marlon’s eyes glinted, but he didn’t take the coins. “You know, the good Captain is from the capital. Likely he’s got more gold than you do.”

“You won’t be taking his gold,” I said confidently. I put an extra coin on the stack though, awarding him the point.

“Why not?”

“If Hector scuppers the deal, and throws us into a war with the Tribes, your income — not to mention your life expectancy — is going to drop precipitously.”

“There are ways to profit from war.”

“Please, it doesn’t even compare. Plus, I’ll wager that Hector is doing this with an eye to getting the Nobility re-established here.”

He scowled some more, but like most commoners, he had no love for the nobility.

“Are you really that different, though?” he asked.

I shrugged. “Judge for yourself when I’m done. I’m not going to set myself up in the tower. The profits from the trade deal will get spread around. Among the merchants, mostly, but you know that their gold gets spread around.”

He looked unconvinced, so I kept going. “Taxes taken by the Council will be spent on improving the city. Where do Nobles taxes go?”

He sighed, defeated for the moment. “Their pockets.”

I was surprised that I didn’t get a notification for a Social Contest, but that must all have been in the context of a [Bargain]. I left the money on the table and stood.

“I’ll see you next week then.”

He looked up. “I may have some… expenses.”

I shrugged. “Clear them with me first, if you don’t want to risk them coming out of your pocket.”

He nodded slowly, and I left.

Kyle wasn’t exactly our espionage expert, but he knew enough to make sure we were well clear before he spoke.

“He didn’t say anything about it.”

I sighed pensively. “He wouldn’t have if he had noticed, probably. We’ll just have to wait and see what Cloridan finds out.”

I’d left Cloridan there, invisible, to see what Marlon did after speaking to us. My own bit of due diligence. Cloridan said the man could be relied on, but I'd feel better if we had eyes on him, at least some of the time.

Sometimes, I thought I might have my fingers in too many pies. The rest of the time I knew it to be true. Adventurer, Enchanter, Trader, Politician… part of me wanted to just pick one and stick to it. Some of it, though, was necessary.

While it felt like adventuring was a hobby that was distracting me from my other pursuits, nothing could be further from the truth. Adventuring was my real job. It paid in experience and gold, and I needed both, badly. In this world, that wasn’t so unusual. Most nobles had some sort of access to a Dungeon, and they made sure to get the most out of it. Resources and Levels, the key to power here.

So that was why I found myself again at the bottom of the Forbidden Laboratory before a week had gone past. I’d managed to finagle an earlier slot, since I’d be busy next week with the new traders arriving.

This time we’d gotten lucky, and Felicia was gloating over her new Spatial Bag. It had been a good run… but we weren’t finished yet. This part wasn’t strictly necessary for anything, but I really wanted to know.

We stood around the Core, with everyone maintaining a careful distance. I conjured a Phantasmal cage around the sphere. Open at the top, and with a solid floor, it looked awkwardly placed but it was firmly wedged in and would last long enough.

I came forward with the other cage that I’d carried all the way down here. It carried a rabbit, that we’d found topside. Well, hunted. It had taken all the skills of an invisible Cloridan to sneak up on it and grab it unharmed.

The rabbit was a natural spawn, not part of any dungeon. I’d been a bit nervous bringing it in, but everyone reassured me that it wouldn’t cause a break — and even if it did, the Dungeon was at a low ebb at the moment, getting run to completion every day.

The rabbit’s cage was a Phantasm as well, of course, so once I placed it over the other one, I could dismiss it, dropping the rabbit neatly in the cage with the Core. I could have dropped it right on top, but that felt… wrong somehow. There wasn’t much room in there though, so we didn’t have to watch the rabbit hop around for very long before it touched the sphere.

And disappeared. We all blinked in surprise for a bit.

“Alright then.” I dismissed the cage, and we all watched the Core for a bit longer. It didn’t do anything. With [Sense Mana], it was clear that there was a lot going on, but I’d be hard-pressed to judge if it was different something.

“Are you going to try and become the Master of it?” Felicia asked.

“…No? No. Make one change at a time and see what the effects are, that’s the rule.”

“Effects?”

“Well, we were speculating that this Dungeon was pretty boring because there was no real intelligence behind it, right?”

Felicia shrugged. “Well, that’s what Rhis insisted was the case. I don’t know though. Of all the dungeons we’ve seen it’s been the most varied.”

“Yeah, but when you know it’s just mashing on the random monster button the whole time… he’s got a point.”

We’d all learned by now that arguing with Rhis about this was pointless, and a good way to waste half an hour in a seemingly endless rant. He wasn’t here though.

“So, we need to see if having a rabbit as a Dungeon Controller causes changes. Is a Dungeon better, or worse for having a controller?”

Cloridan frowned. “It changed already though, remember? The first time we went through, it changed up all the traps.”

“I’m starting to think that wasn’t a coincidence,” I told him. “I reckon a God might have put their finger on the scales to make things harder for us.”

Everyone got a little nervous at that thought. “Why not worse — or why not try again, if someone was trying to kill us?” Kyle asked.

“One thing I’ve noticed about the Gods is that they’re really keen to counter each other. From what Fyskel said, it’s possible for one of them to sneak something by the others, but the bigger the change, the more likely one of them will notice and stomp on it.”

“Which means doing it twice is out of the question,” Kyle mused.

“Doesn’t mean they won’t try something else. But if they’re limited in what they can get through, we should be able to take care of it like any other random danger.”

“I wonder,” Felicia said. “If there is such a thing as a random danger for us.”

“Maybe not,” I acknowledged. “But if we can’t tell the difference, we just have to take things as they come.”