I offloaded almost everything. As tempted as I was to keep the the survivability buff only kicked in when the User was in combat. If anything, as a glass cannon-less cannon, it might be more dangerous for me to use. If it was harder to tell how hurt I was, it could easily lure me into a false sense of security to the point where an eventual tactical retreat—and the subsequent vanishing of the effect—could easily mean death. A situation I needed to avoid at all cost.

Still, it was somewhat painful, placing it on the table with the rest of the pile. Unloading felt like the living equivalent of a human clown car, taking item after item out of my inventory and placing them on the pile. Kinsley gave me a “really?” expression as I pulled out a small bounty of identical swords, only becoming interested once I withdrew the staff. I kept two of the monster-amphetamine I’d scored from the flowerfangs and sold the rest, as well as all the equipment from the gnolls. The two tokens of achievement were valueless, according to Kinsley, which struck me as odd. They had to serve some purpose, but said purpose was unclear. I also kept the mask.

All the while, Kinsley’s eyes kept flicking towards the back of the room behind me. I didn’t turn to look, only tilted my head slightly, checking the spot with my enhanced peripheral.

Nothing.

But wasn’t an all-seeing eye. Just a particularly observant one. It hadn’t gone off when enemies were around, just when they were aware and actively hostile. There could be a User in that back corner with some sort of cloaking ability, watching—but the quest hadn’t changed. I was stumped.

What if it didn’t change in some situations if I, personally, wasn’t aware an objective had been failed? In Dungeons and Dragons, figuring something due to out-of-game clues—that you failed a quest and finishing it was a waste of time, for instance—would be considered meta-knowledge, something your character wouldn’t necessarily know and therefore shouldn’t act on. If you were playing correctly, you’d stumble through the rest of the quest despite knowing you’d already failed, only able to act on that knowledge once your character became aware of it.

What I couldn’t figure out, and now seemed like a glaring hole in my accumulated knowledge, was whether the quest system was meta or mesa. From my experiences so far, there was a wealth of conflicting signs pointing to either as a possibility.

Again, Kinsley looked to the back left corner of the room, her eyes flitting immediately back down to her hands as she began tallying up the spoils. “Surprisingly decent haul. Should be able to get another level from this alone.”

“Puts me nine over you. The XP from the dungeon was something else.” I gave her an empty smile to wash down the lie.

Kinsley’s eyebrow shot up. “Ten levels from a single dungeon seems ridiculous. Feels like I’m the one getting the short end of the stick here.”

“Contract’s a contract.” I shrugged, waiting for it. And like clockwork, there it was, another nervous glance.

We settled up, the total with Kinsey’s preferred pricing coming to a whopping 29,837 Selve. I was giddy at the number, but my enthusiasm was dulled somewhat by another reality coming to bear.

If I don’t get to the bottom of this, I can never come back here. Both my merchant access and immediate plans are fucked, and Selve is useless without a merchant. I can be paranoid sometimes, yes, but I’m not even using and something is clearly off. Either figure it out or burn this bridge.

“Thanks. That was enough to push me over a level.” Kinsley moved everything into her inventory except for the wide-screen computer monitor, which had garnered none of the attention or questions I’d expected it to. She struggled to lift the old CRT with a grunt and replaced it with the widescreen monitor from the dungeon lobby.

“What was the perk?” I asked.

“Hm?” Kinsley replied, glancing over at me. A small hand went to the back of her neck, screaming discomfort.

“You texted me about a perk. Said it might be useful?”

“Oh, right.” She swiped through her menus, eyes barely focused. “Merchant’s… Shroud. ‘Makes the merchant more difficult to track through traditional methods, only easy to locate when they choose to be.’”

I blinked. That sounded like a weaker version of Double-Blind’s secondary effect, only it sounded like merchants could turn it on and off at will. “I mean, yeah. That’s your core issue right now, isn’t it? They keep finding you?”

Like a trapped animal, Kinsley’s gaze slid to the corner once more. If she kept being so damn obvious about it, the person in the corner was going to be forced to make a move.

“Kinsley, hello?” I tried.

Kinsley jumped. She fiddled with her hair, her legs dangling below the chair. Somehow, she forced a smile. “So you think I should get it then? The perk?”

“Yes. Now, if you have the feat points.” I drummed my fingers on the table. This was burning precious time and the longer I waited, the more things were going to escalate. “Let me see the trade screen.”

My justification for enchanting the instead of my crossbow was that I could always buy a new crossbow. But I needed one badly. The sights on my common crossbow were terrible, and the target penetration left much to be desired. Kinsley’s stock had more than doubled, much of it far beyond my price range, but the options within my range were more numerous than before. There was a rare , which was a full-size crossbow enchanted with an aura of fear, but it was almost thirty-thousand Selve, and would thoroughly clean me out. Moreover, on further inspection, I was pretty sure it was manually cocked. The idea of elevating my target’s fear level and using that elevated fear to make them more susceptible to was enticing, but not enough so to upend my mobility.

I narrowed the filters and searched specifically for the quick affix. And that’s when I found it.

Description: Dull silver and cold to the touch, this weapon is native to a mana-rich plane where temperatures never rise above freezing. Creatures struck with projectiles from this weapon will find their body heat slowly sapped away until the projectile is removed.

Item Class: Uncommon

Item Value: S20,000

“The way you’re looking at the item screen is really creepy,” Kinsley commented.

I quickly wiped the smile off my face. But it did nothing to diminish my delight. How was this thing uncommon? Granted, there were downsides. It didn’t look overly reflective, but silver would be less stealthy than black. Maybe I could find a covering for it. It would probably be useless on anything ice related. But on regular flesh and blood enemies? It solved one of my primary misgivings of using the weaker crossbow. That being said, if I missed a kill shot, the small bolts and low energy were more likely to piss my target off than do any real damage. This actually incentivized non-lethal shots in situations where I was unlikely to score a one-hit kill. Anywhere particularly painful—groin, nerve clusters—where the target would have great difficulty removing the bolt. And if it was a critical hit, that was even better. A shot to the neck would leave my target with two options. Remove the bolt and bleed to death, or leave it in and freeze from the inside out.

The best part? It had actual sights.

“Do you have any non-standard ammunition? Something barbed?” I asked.

“No. Most of the tabs have updated inventory as I’ve leveled, one at a time. Ammo hasn’t been through rotation yet.”

Kinsley fidgeted, reminding me that there were other concerns and that my time was limited.

I proceeded to buy in bulk, spending as much of my Selve as possible. I focused more on non-perishables, jerky, dried fruit, five bottles of cheap brandy and…

“Kinsley, the toothpaste is right here. Under the iodine.”

“The fuck?” Kinsley squinted at the general goods tab. “I swear I scrolled past that thirty times looking.”

“Well, problem solved.” I added an extra tube of toothpaste to my list and bought it. As I loaded my haul into my inventory, packing whatever wouldn’t fit into separate bags, I was watching the young merchant out of the corner of my eye. Her small hands were clasped together tightly, fingers turning white.

I handed her the toothpaste, still holding the same empty smile. “Quest complete.”

“Thanks…” Kinsley said. She took the tube with shaking hands.

I had to admire how cold-blooded it was. Even if she was a terrible actress. Whatever fate was waiting for me when I left, she was using me to boost her trade level as much as she could before I was permanently out of her hair.

I tilted my head slightly, looking in my peripheral for something I could use. There were two parallel shelves in the corner, one significantly more rickety and degenerated than the other. Another test case. Could I use Probability Spiral on something I held in my mind’s eye, without focusing on it? There was probably a range limitation, but I was within twelve feet of the corner.

The inside leg of the shelf collapsed, and Kinsley startled as it tipped over, crashing.

I kicked the shotgun across the room, grabbed the crossbow off the table and spun, holding it straight out towards the fallen shelf and strafing counter-clockwise, distancing myself from the corner and cutting off the exit.

“What’s in the corner, Kinsley?” I asked, my voice unnaturally calm, watching for any sudden movement out of my peripheral in case she tried to go for the shotgun. She was panicking but not moving. In the meantime I searched the mess of metal and boxes filled with paper, finger on the trigger, scanning for the outline of a person.

“Matt! It’s nothing!“

“What’s… in… the corner?” I asked again.