After leaving Frathar’s shop we headed to the hotel. It was still a bit weird to see most of the electric street lamps running. There were a few that were dark and some were missing completely. I could only assume it was damage from battle or from them sitting around for so long unused.

Part of me wanted to see what remained of my old house, but I knew it had been torched in anger after Fiona and I had escaped the first time. I decided that digging through the past was a lost cause and decided to leave it be and look toward the future.

We decided on two separate rooms. One for Ska and me and the other for Fiona and Martin. Her relationship with Martin was like an open secret, everyone knew but nobody spoke about it. Well, except me when I ribbed Fiona about it. I had gotten my sweet revenge so there was no point for me to keep hounding her over it. I was happy for the two.

The beds were nice, not super nice but nice. They weren’t pre-system manufactured beds. I imagined those had not faired well in the abandoned hotel. I wondered who had decided to keep it running after the system but decided that tracking down that sort of information was pointless and a waste of my time.

Unless the person that ran the place had a beef with me or I with them I saw no upside to having this info. Which reminded me that I needed to use my reaper title to scan for Stygian Order members.

After concentrating for a bit I got a weak hit far to the south, near the edge of my range. It vanished shortly after.

***

Stone was inspecting the fallout of the Chicago disaster. Nobody had predicted either side to walk away from this conflict alive but that was the problem with predictions, they weren’t a hundred percent accurate.

For the most part, their order didn’t involve themselves. Only when things started to spiral out of control did they get involved, as they did early on in the Chicago and New York conflicts. Mainly to weaken the efforts of the Black Dragons, leading to their predicted downfall. It happened much faster than they had predicted though and it was a scramble to keep everything from falling apart. It also earned them the enmity of a focal point or someone whom predictions seemed to gravitate around.

The predictions had been ninety-eight percent certain both parties would meet their ends at this battle. Having a prediction be that high was rare, and the only other time a prediction had gotten to that point was with the Entarior locusts.

That little mishap had prompted the council to authorize the use of a nuclear weapon to be deployed. Stone had seen to the deployment herself. None of the frightened townsfolk had even known she was there. She simply popped out through a portal, set the device, and left through the same portal. It had worked, successfully eliminating the threat but the cost was high.

Not that she wouldn’t sacrifice a million lives to save the planet. Hell, their order had doomed billions when they activated the System node ahead of schedule. It had been another necessary step to preventing organizations like the Black Dragon and others from fulfilling even more vile plans for the planet. Stone was shaken out of her ruminations when she fell through a portal. She hit the ground with a thump.

“What the hell!”

“Sorry, Councilor Stone, we had to pull you out, you were detected,” a worried technician said.

“Detected, detected by what?” she asked, not having spotted a single person within the city.

“Our analysts are trying to figure that out, but for safety sake, we decided it was prudent to pull you back.”

She brushed her clothes off as she stood. “Fine, I need to make a report anyway. Let me know what the analysts determine.”

***

Sleep came quickly and for the first time in a long time, I didn’t wake in the middle of the night, clutching my weapon. Not that it wasn’t close by. The shower was hot, an unexpected surprise, but it wasn’t as opulent it may have been. I mean the fortress had hot showers as well. But I imagined people would pay just for the shower alone.

I stepped out of the shower and was going to put my armor back on when I remembered it was still covered in blood. With a sigh, I headed back to the bathroom and began scrubbing the blood out of the armor. I made a mental note to tip the hotel staff for the inconvenience of having to clean up after me.

I was about to Imbue my staff with fire to help dry my armor when my gaze settled on the hairdryer. I walked over and clicked the power button and it hummed to life. Something about this simple act just made me so happy and I whistled a tune while I dried my armor.

I heard Ska groan in the other room. My whistling must have woken him up. He declined a shower, having cleaned off in the fortress. At least his hair had started growing out. He looked less like a mange-ridden cat with each day.

We exited the room and I knocked on Martin’s door.

“Go away,” he groaned.

I chuckled. “We will meet you downstairs for breakfast, get your ass in gear.”

I heard something thump against the door as Fiona replied. “We’ll be down in half an hour.”

The hotel had elevators but I wasn’t about to put my trust in them so we walked down the stairs and headed toward the bar slash café. My eyes fell on a man wearing frilly clothing and looking a bit overdressed. He was heading toward us but I didn’t see any weapons. Not that I wasn’t ready to pull my own out with a thought and pummel the man with my staff. I decided to use Identify… and got nothing. Weird.

The man stopped a few feet away and held out a paper card of some sort. “Pardon me, Sir, Lord Durbin would like to invite you and your acquaintances to dinner tonight. I will be your escort to dinner if you choose to accept this invitation.”

I eyed the unidentified man with caution but snapped the paper out of his hand with a quick grab. Seeing that its duty was fulfilled, the man popped, like a damn soap bubble, leaving nothing behind.

“Projection of some sort,” I mumbled.

Ska agreed, growling in annoyance.

The hotel staff behind the counter had watched the whole affair, eyes wide.

“Hey, you behind the counter, do you know who that was?”

“Hum… oh, that… that was the Lord’s messenger.”

Guess you can’t kill the messenger for delivering bad news if the messenger isn’t there. I looked at the card, it was indeed just a simple handwritten invitation to dine with his grace Lord Fancypants. I would talk with Fiona and Martin about it during breakfast. They were the diplomatic ones out of the bunch, not I.

***

“So, what do you two think?” I asked, over breakfast. Fiona and Martin had taken over forty minutes to come down but we weren’t in a rush.

“Well, in my world it wouldn’t be possible to refuse an invitation from a noble. I can’t imagine him having any ill intent though, otherwise, he would just have had the city guard round us up and toss us in jail.”

“Unless he thinks we’re too strong to do that,” Martin added.

Fiona let out a slight laugh. “Don’t get so high and mighty Mr. level eighteen. Kingdoms have ways of dealing with higher leveled individuals. You saw one deterrent on the walls.”

Fiona was right, anyone with a modicum of mana and even those without could use the weapons. I wasn’t sure I would survive a full-power attack from one of those things.

“Do you think we should go?” I asked.

She shrugged. “He probably wants something.”

“Well, we might as well go. Honestly, if Martin weren’t here I would just leave, but since he is, we can put him to work,” I added, smiling at my friend.

“Oh, ha…ha, make a poor guy work when he should be enjoying a vacation.”

I was going to make a quip about resting when you were dead, but with Fiona around, I thought it was in poor taste and kept the thought to myself. “Why do you think I brought you along, it sure wasn’t so you could bogart all of Fiona’s free time. Speaking of, will you have any available today to join us at the dinner?”

Her face turned beet red and that was enough answer for me.

“Ahem… anyway, I have to visit the Bazaar to speak with some people. Anyone care to join me?”

I got three negative replies and huffed. “Fine, I’ll meet you guys… and gal, back here around six. That should be plenty of time to get ready for this dinner.”

This Bazaar was much as I remembered it. It took me a good hour to find Victoria’s stall though.

“Hey Victoria, how’s my favorite skill seller and pixie doing?”

“Oh… it’s you. You here to mock my store again, or to buy?” the pixie asked.

“Ouch… that was like eight months ago.”

“…”

“I said I was sorry, back then,” Actually I can’t remember if I did apologize to her. “Anyway, I have a few questions about some skills I picked up.”

That was probably not the right thing to say as her attitude turned sour.

I tried to placate the glowing pixie woman. “Slow down, don’t get mad. I didn’t buy them from another vendor, I got them as part of my class.”

She stared at me intently for a second. “Hmm, Maw of the Void, not a class I am familiar with. What skill did you have a question about… and this information isn’t free. A thousand credits per skill.”

I hid a wince and paid the woman. “It’s a skill called Time Shudder. Does it have any harmful effects?”

“You shouldn’t have that skill,” she said, looking at me strangely, “what kind of class is your second class?”

“Um… I would prefer not to say.”

“Fine,” she harumphed, “it’ll cost you another thousand then.”

This time I grumbled my displeasure as I handed over the money. That seemed to pacify her.

“The answer to your question is yes.”

“… um, could you elaborate?”

“Hum fine. You can’t alter time without first taking it from somewhere else. Where do you think that time comes from?”

“But what about extended lifespan from having high endurance?”

She chuckled at this, “where did you hear nonsense like that. At most you may live a few years longer, depending on your race. Unless of course you break through your racial barrier to tier two. Even then it only adds a couple of decades.”

“So it’s too dangerous to use,” I mumbled.

“Hardly,” she said, flying around my head like a mosquito, “I doubt you could use it enough to shave a significant portion off of your lifespan.”

“Thanks… I guess. What about fate-based skills?”

“What about them?” she asked coyly, flying back to sit on her bench.

I handed her some more money and she smiled.

“Stay away from those, they are far more dangerous than time-based abilities. And only a complete fool would mix the two together.”

“Why is that?”

“Gods mainly. They don’t take kindly to people playing with fate. Unlike with time, fate affects everyone, not just the caster, even using simple level one abilities. Users of fate skills tend to die rather quickly when they dabble with fate.”

I decided not to mention Randy Cotton. “Thanks for the info, even if it was pricy.”

“Not a problem sweety,” she said with a big smile, “so you wanna buy any skills?” she greedily inquired.

“Not tod-… you know what, there is a skill I want to buy.”

I didn’t want people to keep asking me about my second class, I could imagine what would happen when word got out that I stole abilities from people.

“Do you have any skills to obscure my information from spells like Identify?”

“Sure, do you want the basic bland one that just blocks everything, or did you have something specific in mind?”

“Something that allows me to show fake information.”

“Ohhh, now we’re talking. I would recommend Obfuscate. It allows you to choose what the other person sees. There are other skills but they only make the person see what they think they should see. And if more than one compares notes, well, the jig is up.”

“How much?” I ask warily.

“For you… only five thousand credits.”

I paid the little devil in disguise. She had managed to wheedle out almost half my remaining funds during our short conversation.

I took the skill plate and checked it over.

Obfuscate: Passive ability, allows you to choose what information can be deduced through Identify or hide it entirely. Skill relies on your Intelligence stat and can be overcome by anyone with a higher Perception.

Dammit, she conveniently failed to mention that the skill could be seen through. Not that I had to worry overly much. Someone would need twenty-six Perception to break through. I quickly changed it to display my second class as something else. I had to think for a bit about what I wanted it to say. For now, I just chose Tempusmec, Randy Cotton’s second class. If I thought of something better I would change it.

It didn’t much matter to me, I got what I came for and I could drop the fake friend act and move on to my next goal.

Finding Old Man Trumbo took a bit of work. He wasn’t with the normal trainers this time around. Luckily some of the trainers knew where he could be located and I eventually found his stall.

“Ah, young man, you have finally returned. And with a second class no less,” he said with a raised eyebrow. “And a skill to hide what you truly are.”

I froze at this and he simply chuckled. “Relax, I have no issue with your class or need to hide it. Are you here to show me how you have grown over the last ten levels?”

“Yes, although, I fear I might disappoint you, I haven’t had time to practice as much as I would like.”

“Hmmm, let me be the judge of that, come on then.”

“What about payment?” I asked.

“That will depend on if I decide to train you further, now stop stalling.”

***

The sparring session ended a few minutes later with me on my ass.

“You have improved, perhaps not through hours of practice as you yourself admit but through combat instead. It is telling in your movements, the decisiveness to go for a killing blow is in every attack. It is not that path I would have chosen but sometimes life chooses for us.”

“So will you teach me?” I asked as I gulped in a deep breath of air.

“… No.”

“Huh… but you said you would teach me?”

“I said no such thing. And my teachings would only hamper you further. Your path must now be your own. Trust your instincts and you will be fine,” he replied sagely.

I wanted to argue with the man, pointing out that he had just handily whooped me in combat, but I stopped myself. I reflected on our duel and replayed the fight in my head. What I realized was that he hadn’t used a single advanced technique to win the fight. It had just been his decades of experience that led him to be the victor. I rose from the ground and bowed.

“Thank you.”

He nodded slightly in return and I walked out.