Guild Master Baen peered through the one way mirror in his office on the second floor, looking down over the guild house's common room.

The princess's visit had been swift, yet illuminating. He had thought perhaps some merchant had their wards fail and subsequently secured Lorence's services, approaching him away from the Guild to avoid paying their fees, possibly including a bonus for his silence to avoid embarrassment, and the fines. No one wanted to admit they had rats crawling in and out of their stockroom unless they absolutely had to.

Taking outside jobs wasn't against the Hunters' Guild charter, but not something they endorsed, either. Their steep fees ensured both their clients and their members enjoyed certain protections, should complications arise during a job. To be fair, Lorence rarely if ever required such aid.

Still, Lorence seemed happy for once, his coin pouch full to bursting, so Baen had seen no need to pry further. The kid had been dealt a rough hand, only managing to draw some better cards once he formed his Bond. They weren't the best cards, but they were enough to earn a living without putting in much effort, a jackpot for any kid from the slums. The city had a standing bounty on rats, to prevent exactly the problem it now faced. Lorence barely had to exert any effort to get some meat on his plate and coin in his pocket.

Yet, these rats were smart, or at least some were. They apparently figured out money and commerce, then found some idiot willing to sell them food, when by law every food store in the city warded against vermin. No law against selling food to vermin, of course, because why would they even need such a law?

He made a note to write a letter to the Merchants' Consortium, smirking as he considered how they would react to the news of an independent, unlicensed cheese vendor operating in their city.

Clearly, not only could they purchase cheese, the rats also managed to outbid the city's bounty, paying the city's only decent rat catcher to stop catching rats. Not too surprising the intelligent rats could afford such a bargain, given the amount of treasure supposedly buried within a week's travel of the city. Stupid, paranoid pirates, unwilling to trust in the idea of banks. No doubt most warded against various types of detection when hiding their treasure, but only the most devious of minds would think to protect their hoard from a horde of rats.

…The Guild's own vaults might need updating, now he considered the issue. He grew cold, thinking what these rats might be getting up to under everyone's noses. He quickly wrote out an order, offering to match the city's bounty for rat heads—they used to buy the tails, until a few generations ago when one enterprising individual took advantage of his Bond's healing capabilities to defraud the city of a small fortune before he got caught. Now they used Truth Stones to confirm the kills, but the bloody tradition of collecting heads had stuck.

After sending out the new order, he began penning his letter to the Merchants' Consortium, outlining the problem and asking if they would be willing to match the bounty as well, while also mentioning the unlicensed cheese vendor.

Alchemist Evroult Van Aelst tapped his mana barometer with a frown. The manasphere had taken a dip for the past week. Nothing too unusual, as eddies of mana were known to ebb and flow. Yet for the past several hours his workshop had flooded with mana, as if it sat within a dungeon. He noticed the phenomenon just after all the hubbub about those rats flooding the streets came and went. Now the barometer sat at zero, for all intents and purposes. He might as well take a break, as his mana condensing formations needed something to work with. They couldn't create something from nothing, and nothing was all he had at the moment. He couldn't successfully concoct a single potion in a mana dead zone.

With the dungeon nearby it should only be a matter of time for the problem to right itself, but in the meantime he'd be losing inventory without the means to replace it. Not just him, but every tradesman who relied on a bit of magic in their craft.

Something needed to be done about those rats, certainly, but first he needed to get his hands on one to see if they caused the mana surge. If so, well, he wouldn't mind keeping a few safely caged in his basement. And if not, he'd have to keep on looking, see if he could find the source of the disturbance. Maybe the rats were just following the mana? There was talk of them buying cheese, but people would make up all sorts of things just to gossip about them. Like that talk about there being multiple heroes up at the palace.

Idiots! Idiots everywhere, these days. The Empire had the right idea, forcing kids to get real educations. Their studies proved each generation started off just a bit smarter than the last, smarter and smarter parents producing smarter and smarter kids, by nature or nurture it mattered not.

Silas sat on a barstool at the counter of a tea and sandwich bar on the Academy's campus in a new silky soft outfit the same shade of green as his eyes. The button up shirt had a stiff Mandarin collar and wide, flared out sleeves, as did his pant legs. The fine emerald embroidery made it seem as if green vines sprawled across his shirt and pants.

He had a few more sets of clothes in his inventory, with more to pick up in a few days, but for the moment he was done thinking about clothes.

"Sorry," he told the bartender, a tall dark skinned teen with close-cropped brown hair and a long, wispy Fu Manchu mustache trailing down his chest, "Run that by me again? You mean to say the clock shifts a little bit every day?"

The guy bobbed his head side to side in a gesture of 'yes and no.' "Noon is at noon every day, when the sun is directly overhead. This marks the first hour of the afternoon. One A, followed by two A, three A, all the way to ten A, for ten hours of afternoon. Though in our corner of the world sunlight won't last the full ten hours past noon, not even in summer."

Silas nodded. He understood that much.

"After the tenth afternoon hour, ten A, the ten hours of night begin. One N, Two N, and so on." He paused. "Are you following me this time?"

"Yeah, sure."

"So, at what hour of night will midnight fall?"

"Midnight. Half a day past noon. Fifteen hours of your thirty hour day beyond noon. Ten hours of 'afternoon' plus five of 'night.' So six at night? Six N?"

The bartender grinned. "Right. Okay. So, after night naturally comes morning." He waited, as if to see if Silas might argue the point.

"Naturally."

"As night turns to morning, so does one day turn over to the next."

"Wait. Not at midnight?"

"What does midnight have to do with a new day?" He shook his head in disappointment, wrapping one of his facial tails around a finger. "The new day starts with the dawn. Or before it a bit, rather, as most working folk need to be places by dawn."

Silas nodded. He could almost follow that logic. "Sure."

"So, the first hour of the morning is when the clock towers go off all across the city, at least during the summer. We're in winter now, so the morning bells first go off at three M, with sunup not until well after four M."

"Yeah, I understand all that. But go back to ten M. How is it not an hour long, to round out the thirty hour day?"

"Because a day isn't ever exactly thirty hours long, from one noon to the next. So, the final hour before noon arrives once more needs to be a bit flexible. The flex hour, we call it. Depending on the time of year, it might be a bit shorter or a bit longer than a true hour, but it starts twenty nine hours after the previous noon, and it ends at exactly noon, when the sun is overhead once more. Right now the flex hours are getting a bit longer every day, and will keep that up until spring."

Silas rubbed his temples. "...and your calendar is always four hundred days. Don't you have to add or remove an extra day every now and then, so it all keeps lining up more or less the same and your seasons and such don't get off?"

"What? That'd be crazy."

"Yeah. That would be nuts."

Silas had just assumed the 'flex hour' mentioned in the headmaster's note was some wizard's reference to midnight, or perhaps dusk.

But it wasn't, and the man wasn't available, when Silas had wasted the day away being productive, getting told what clothes he should wear. Which…had almost been nostalgic.

Mostly he played around with his Interface and nodded his head. To him clothes were clothes, as long as they were comfortable, and he had to admit he felt some comfort wearing his new loose, flowing clothing.

Only, these clothes weren't just clothes. They were magic clothes, with enchantments for self-resizing, self-cleaning, and self-repairing. Also not 'just clothes,' light armor was considered a standard part of one's wardrobe in these parts, no matter your status as a combatant. Silas had two sets on order, one for fancy occasions and another meant to be functional, though they'd both be functional.

He shook his head and sighed.

Crazy new world. Crazy new rules. Crazy new timekeeping.

Status Silas Aegis

11y 3s 19d 15h

L13 (397/455 XP) H: 30.0/30 (30/day rest)

S: 30.0/30 (30/min rest)

M: 20.0/20 (20% eff.) AP:

STR:

AGI:

END:

VIT:

PER: 1

29

29

30

30

29

(+10)

(+10)

(+10)

(+10)

(+10)

WIL:

WIT:

SPI:

AFF:

CHA:

20

20

20

20

12 SP: 1

Gaming 29

Mana Sense 29

Obscurity 29

Pain Resistance 29

Programming 29

Sight Reading 29

Eve 25

Interface 24

Gaming Necessities 19

Mana Magnet 19

Pestilence Resistance 19

Piano 19

Poison Resistance 19

Sleep Resistance 19

Bargaining 14

Help 13

Language: Artean 12

Chemistry 9

Summon Character 9

Countdown to the End 3