Celia suppressed a curse as the wagon hit yet another bump in the road. Yawning she sat up, grateful that her chakra had healed any soreness that sleeping on a moving wagon had left her with. Squinting at the sun she saw that it was just after midday, they should be arriving soon. After she had evolved her class into the second tier things had become both easier and harder for Celia. Easier on the one hand because now she had no issue making enough money to support herself. Harder because all of the easy jobs that she did for money were tier one hunts, which meant she wasn’t getting any experience from any of them.

The harder tier two jobs had her fighting monsters that would actually give her experience but they were rarer and often far from the city. Such jobs were often required parties of adventurers as well and for a variety of reasons, most of which Celia thought were stupid. For starters more people didn't mean that they were going to be better at fighting, Celia had seen quite a few novice adventurers practically tripping each other as they tried to fight the same monster. Some jobs involved exploring dangerous areas, which Celia felt like she would be great at but once again those jobs often called for a team of adventurers. How would a team of bumbling adventurers make for better scouts than her? True she had lived in a city her entire life and she wasn’t an expert at exploring the wilderness, but her class was supposed to be sneaky. Chi users were just supposed to punch things in the face.

Celia looked around at the other adventurers in the wagon and snorted unsurprised. Most of the idiots were trying to sleep as she had but some of them were talking in rowdy voices, and some of them had thought it would be a good idea to bring an entire barrel of beer. She wasn’t even sure how they had convinced the wagon driver to let them keep it, but she hoped they would get drunk enough to fall off the wagon and give her some peace and quiet.

Sighing Celia sat up and looked down the dirt road. It wasn’t long now until they reached the dungeon town, the dungeon was the whole reason she had decided to pack up her life and move out here. Not like she had much kept her in Corinth anyway except nostalgia and bad memories. The dungeon would hopefully solve her leveling problems at least for now; she had heard that dungeons were supposed to be the best place possible for leveling and training. Of course, she had never actually been to a dungeon before, but she had heard the stories just like everyone else.

The small dungeon town finally came into view and Celia was duly impressed. It had only been a few months since the town had been established but it already had a stone wall circling the place. She could see the tops of roofs from peaking over the wall as well, and a tall stone tower standing proudly above the other buildings. She recognized the distinctive tower, it was similar to the tower that the mage guild had in Corinth.

Their wagon stopped at the gate of the small town, and the assorted adventurers climbed out. They were a motley collection with mismatched armor and weapons, but still, most of them looked at least a little competent. Celia wore leather armor with two knives strapped two her sides and another knife in her boot. She had found knives were just easier to use, and they were cheaper than a sword too. Since she didn’t have any formal weapons training she figured she would stick to the basics of what she knew, which was knives.

Striding through the gate of the new dungeon city Celia smiled to herself. This was going to be a good day she could feel it, the dungeon should be opened to the public soon and she was more than ready to start delving.

This was a terrible day, Silas was in yet another meeting. How was he supposed to know where the proper place to put a warehouse was? Also, why did they think he knew anything about making a sewer system connected to a dungeon? He was good at throwing fireballs and spells around, not city planning.

Silas held up a hand, “You know what stop for a second.” The man across from him stopped talking for the first time in an hour and Silas took a deep breath. “I don’t know anything about building a city, that’s your job so here’s what we’re going to do. You do your thing and plan out the city and leave me alone about it, and if you mess things up enough for me or someone else to notice the problem then you're fired. If you do a good job you have free reign to plan things out however you like.”

The city planner, he never learned the man’s name, was ecstatic at the prospect. Apparently, he was used to working with nobles who wanted to be told about every step of the process so they felt in control of the decisions. Well, Silas had no problem leaving the plan up to an expert, he had been specially recommended by one of the local guildmasters so he should do a good job, hopefully.

Kira strolled into his office, he shivered a little at that, how had accumulated enough work to warrant an office? “Hey Kira, how are you doing?”

“I’m doing fine old man, and I see you’ve been doing a decent enough job of managing things. It was a pleasant surprise to find out you are actually competent when you want to be.” Her smile made him sink lower in his chair grumbling, of course, he knew somewhat how to run at least a town. He was hundreds of years old and he had picked up a few things having lived that long.

“Also Vance Storm has arrived and he has a letter from his father for you.” Kira handed over a thick envelope with the Storm family’s lightning bolt pressed firmly into the wax.

“Let's see what the Duke wants, hopefully, he’s replacing me though his son seems a little young to run a dungeon.” Silas’ worst fears were almost instantly realized, the lordling was not here to replace him, lord Storm was actually pleased that he was in charge and had decided to have him continue to run the dungeon for a while. The old mage slumped in his chair, the very picture of dejection, release from this position seemed a long way off.

Continuing to read the letter Silas bobbed his head, the Vance boy appeared to be here to train in the dungeon which was a perfectly good reason. However, reading between the lines, and armed with the information that the lordling had a chi class, Silas suspected that duke Storm was hoping this little excursion would give his son some much-needed confidence in his class. He would be away from his peers, the other noble families had shown little to no interest in this dungeon yet, and the lordling could grow stronger and get accustomed to fighting without someone hovering right over his shoulder.

Silas wasn’t sure if this plan was the best idea, he privately thought that the boy could have fought monsters anywhere to build his confidence and experience, but what did he know. “So where will the young lord Vance be staying while he is with us?” It wouldn’t do to break protocol when actually around a noble they got touchy about that sort of thing.

“He’s getting situated over at the knight's barracks, they put him in with the trainee knights.” As always, Kira knew exactly what was going on.

Silas could feel new wrinkles forming as he clutched his forehead. “They put him in the barracks? How much of a fit is he throwing about it?” The letter had said that the young lordling was supposed to remain incognito while he was here. If that was true maybe he shouldn’t have arrived in a carriage with his family seal right on the side. At least he had left the carriage a short way into the woods but still, inconspicuous and young nobles didn’t mix very well.

“Actually, he hasn’t complained once which is unusual. Also, he’s asking everyone to just call him Vance, not lord or sir or anything like that.” Kira shrugged, nobles were weird, she guessed noble children were just weird too.

Silas nodded slowly. “Okay, maybe we can hope he’s one of the nobles that isn’t a stuck-up child like we have to deal with normal?” The Bancrofts certainly fit that description. “Alright we’ll play along, just leave him alone and let him train with the other knight cadets. Maybe clue in Commander Smith about what is going on though? We don’t want to accidentally get a noble killed or it will be all of our hides.” Kira nodded and shuddered, the safety of a noble was not something you messed around with.

All the nobles were tier six high humans and were strictly protected by the kingdoms. Killing a noble carried a death sentence even if the killer was another noble, blood feuds tended to sputter out when the kingdoms came down on both sides like a hammer. The high humans were just too valuable to lose to stupid things like assassinations, even if they never leveled their race at all a high human would live for 1,000 years at the most, ten times the lifespan of a normal human. The kingdoms banked on the idea that the nobles would do something helpful for the kingdoms as a whole during that time and most of the time they were correct but not always. Regardless, dead nobles were bad for everyone’s health, especially if said noble was the son of a duke. He rather liked Mathias Storm actually but he knew full well the duke would have absolutely no mercy for anyone who got members of his family killed.

“Also tell Commander Smith that he needs to keep an extra close eye on Vance. We do not want any unfortunate ‘accidents’ on our watch.”

Kira nodded and stood up getting ready to leave. “Have you decided on a tax for the dungeon yet that’s the only major thing we have left to do right now? After that we can open the dungeon up for delving, the adventurers are starting to get a little impatient.”

“Of course they are,” Silas grumbled, well it was time to open the dungeon anyway. The permanent runic gate around the dungeon entrance had been fully installed. It's a good thing those things were paid for by the monarchs, they were expensive but well worth it. He didn’t want to have to fight off every creature in the surrounding forests that the dungeon aura would draw in. Sure he could kill them all easily enough but sooner or later one of the monsters would get lucky, and a lucky monster meant a dead human. It was much simpler with the runic gate not only would the gate be able to seal off the dungeon at a moment’s notice but it also dispersed the mana signature of the dungeon over a wide distance. There would still be an abnormal number of monsters wandering around the countryside, but at least they wouldn’t be swarming the city constantly.

Kira coughed loudly, and Silas looked up sharply, right taxes. “I was thinking we could just make it free to enter the dungeon.” There was a choking sound and Kira’s baleful glare made him quickly explain. “There’s no real loot coming out of the dungeon, and sure it does make for a great place to level and train but that's not going to bring enough people in. We need something that draws in delvers and eventually nobles as well. Think about it adventurers, and guild members too will come from all over the kingdom, maybe even beyond to delve in a dungeon without an expensive dungeon tax.”

“And that number of adventurers will naturally bring merchants and other crafters to our city to sell them gear.” Kira nodded slowly, catching on to the idea.

“Right who we can tax more easily and make up for any lost profits from not taxing the dungeon.” He had put some serious thought into this damn it.

“That’s actually a decent enough long-term strategy, but we’re going to be a little tight on money for a while until lots of adventurers start coming.”

“We were going to be tight on money anyway, there was almost no one here who could afford a normal dungeon tax.”

“You realize this is going to piss off all the nearby lords right? They’re going to have to at least reduce the tax on their dungeons to keep their delvers.”

Silas’ eyes glittered with suppressed merriment. “Oh that’s unfortunate I feel so bad for them”

Kira frowned slightly. “You could be a bit more subtle about things, old man. Anyway, are we ready to officially open the dungeon?”

Silas nodded happily, his beard bobbing on his chest. “Yup let the delving begin!”