Rum woke up feeling thirsty. Thirsty for water this time though. He stumbled out of his bed – Amez’s spare bed – and went out the back of the shop and into a backstreet where he found a town well. Unlucky for him there was a bit of a queue, and he ended up doing his new morning magic routine of “Become Clean” and “Renew Clothes” while waiting in a line like the rest. His robes changed color this time, which was interesting. Did the “Renew Clothes” spell basically give him an infinite wardrobe, if it changed clothing each time he used it? This time he gained a fancy purple robe with a silvery star symbol on the front. What did he look like now? Some kind of high-up scholar? That must be it.

Finally it was his turn to use the well. Rum grabbed the rope, letting the bucket fall down and into the water. He pulled it up roughly, spilling some water back into the well. As he pulled Rum noticed people looking at him from across the street. They probably weren’t used to a mage using this water source and became curious. But Rum just drank heartily of the water as if making up for several days of dehydration.

In fact that might be the case. He thought to himself.

Lastly he splashed his face wet and poured water over his neck. An undignified display perhaps for a high-status University mage, but quite reflective of the inner poor homeless person Rum was used to being for the last 6 years.

His beard, his face, and the upper portion of his robe wet; Rum looked up towards the sky. The sun was approaching noon. Oh this is bad! I might miss my meeting with Elrith and her adventurers!

Rum turned away from the well and ran through the streets of the city like he was being chased by a beast. Everyone around stopping to see where this bald-headed powerfully built fine-robed mage was heading. Rum quickly got tired though, and the stamina draining struggle against time made him pull out of his mind one of the few other spells he’d made during his 6 years in isolation. A truly unique spell that was as much trouble as it was useful, but desperate times calls for desperate measures.

“Self-Running Legs!” Rum yelled out loud, and of breath. And as he finished the phrase he also felt a sudden force take hold of his legs as a shimmer of green energy instantly lit them up. Suddenly his legs were no longer able to give up. Case in point: he had no stamina, and at the moment he wasn’t even able to regenerate stamina. As he started running full speed again, he also had a quickly increasing pain all across his legs. But at least he didn’t – and he even couldn’t – stop. This was Self-Running Legs: a piece of magic Rum had created as a consequence of running away from so many dangerous enemies over the years. It was a method of last resort though because the spell was so unyielding it could knock him unconscious and make him run unconscious through the night to get where he wanted. It exhausted him extensively and his legs always collapsed when he reached his target, while he became incapable of standing for a few minutes or up to several hours.

Rum had been nearly an hour’s walking distance from his target, but with Self-Running Legs, Rum was making it there in what felt closer to 15 minutes. Or at least so he was guessing. He had no accurate method of telling time, but the houses and shops were flying by fast.

And at last he arrived! The garden area with the giant statues was the next street over! Rum’s Self-Running Legs pulled him through to the gardens and then through the gardens themselves in barely any time, leading Rum into a square whereupon he saw Elrith, the little human, leaning on her giant crossbow right next to a beautiful large water fountain. Rum was exceedingly exhausted, but he was still able to make out what would have to be the other members of the party, and there were 3 of them. 2 of which were dwarves. One of the dwarves a female with blond thick pigtails down her neck, a large bosom covered by leather body armor mixed in with small metal plates. On her back was a backpack, something which reminded Rum he had forgot his backpack. Also he had forgot money. Actually he had forgotten everything. Anyways, lastly this dwarf lady had a pair of mean-looking one-handed axes at her belt. A woman dressed for brutal close-range battle in other words. The dwarf beside her, a male, had a half-long beard with 4 braids, wore the same type of backpack, and a similar style of armor but with much more metal plates. Instead of the smaller one-handed axes however, he was leaning on a large doubled-bladed two-handed battleaxe with what appeared to be large magical runes engraved along the blade, and written in blood-red ink. Lastly was the third of what appeared to be the party members. It looked to be a human male fully clad in thick polished metal armor, except for his feet, and the small area of his head where appeared a young clean-shaved face that was also the first to fix eyes onto Rum as he came running. This man too had a small backpack, a short-sword resting at his belt, a medium-sized oval shield held lazily in one hand, and a short-spear which he was slightly leaning on.

As Rum stopped in front of the crowd and just in front of Elrith he very predictably collapsed. However, the momentum from Self-Running Legs caused Rum to fall face-forward, weakly grabbing hold of Elrith. With his much larger body, the result of this was Rum unintentionally pushing Elrith with himself straight into the fountain water.

Within a few seconds, as Rum was drowning from his own exhaustion, he suddenly felt somebody pull him by his numb and unresponsive legs. Rum was dragged out of the fountain and onto the dry sunbaked streets. As he was spitting out some water he also heard another gasp of breath and saw the male dwarf fish out Elrith who apparently had been crushed into and under the fountain water by Rum.

“WHAT– ” Elrith took several gasps, “–WAS THAT ABOUT!” Elrith looked at him in shock while continuing to try and breath properly. Rum still couldn’t stand up, but at least he could – although barely – speak. “Sorry” he whispered out in-between his own heaving breaths, “it was Self-Running Legs”. Elrith looked at him still shocked and also clearly uncomprehendingly. After a few more breaths, Rum decided to give her the short version: “It’s a spell. Forces my legs to take me to a location. After it’s over, I can no longer stand up straight.” Elrith just shook her face and commenced with trying to squeeze water out of a shirt she was wearing.

For a minute Rum just laid there, trying to regain his strength. Elrith, the dwarves and the human were talking between themselves meanwhile, but Rum didn’t really hear what exactly they were saying. Finally, Rum rolled over, and pushed himself to sit on his knees to face the party.

“Your mage is here.” He smiled, and bowed in courteous manner in front of what he hoped was going to be his party. His attempt at a bow was a bit shaky from his exhaustion, but it was showing respect that he was trying at. Especially since The Heart-Piercer was currently not a in a good mood.

Elrith just continued squeezing water out of her shirt while giving Rum The Mage angry glances.

As Rum was starting to get his strength back he attempted to stand, and somewhat, he succeeded. His legs were a bit off balance though, and his attempt looked for the first few seconds like severely drunk person trying to improvise a little dance.

“I got your spell, Heart-Piercer.” He finally said, putting both his fists at his sides, trying to project pride in himself.

At this turn of subject Elrith forgot the fountain: “You did?” she said, rather surprised.

“I told I would, didn’t I! I have created a spell which will shield your minds against confusion. Your heads are now safe with me, and safe from evil witches.” Rum nodded enthusiastically at his own words, a prideful little smile on his face.

“Well that’s good, isn’t it guys?” And Elrith turned expectantly towards her fellow party members. They all looked up at Rum in surprise and nodded approvingly.

“What about the lightning magic? You have a spell against that too right?” the armored human asked, revealing a puny voice hiding behind his battle-ready gear.

“Uuum” Rum suddenly, and quite instantly, lost all the pride he’d just had. A pained expression creeping onto his face. “Sorry, no, I forgot about that one. I was just so caught up with the complexity of this mind restoring spell that I totally forgot about the anti-lightning spell. But surely that is not that important, you just have to avoid stepping into the lightning magic?” Rum tried for an awkward smile, but the crowd was not buying it. Elrith’s face went from positive surprise to disappointment.

“That is not good to hear Rum.” She said in a disappointed tone. “That spell would’ve been very useful. And without that you’re not upholding our deal. Didn’t we agree on 2 spells for today? Both of them? I’m not sure we can take you with us now that you only have 1 of the spells we need.”

Rum’s face suddenly grew a little bit desperate, and very insecure smile started occupying his face. “Well I don’t think you can get this spell anywhere else. This is a really good spell. If you think you might get hexed by those witches, I wouldn’t be without this.”

Elrith just shook her head in a negative reply, not buying the attempted sale.

“Okay but look: I can be very useful. I have powerful magic, I promise! Magic that is much more powerful than my level would suggest! I have even gotten paid hundreds of gold coins for a single cast of a spell once, and it was a spell that I made! I’m a good investment for your team, I really mean it! Take me with you today, and I’ll make up for it!”

“Hundreds of gold?” Elrith looked at him skeptically. “Prove it. How can a spell from a level 8 mage be worth that much?”

“Well…” Rum tried to figure out how he was going to prove his point. “The spell is a bit problematic you see. I’ve refrained from using it for good reasons. It’s just a little bit too good.”

Elrith rolled her eyes and pointed at Rum: “I smell a liar” she said, cold-stare. “If you can’t prove this spell, can we even expect that you made the one spell against confusion? If you can’t prove it, you are just words.”

“Yes but… I will need a target to cast it on, and well… Do you really want me to prove it to you?”

Elrith made a slow nod, a commander’s firm expression on her face. Rum sighed a little nervously.

“Okay. I’ll show you.”

Rum pointed his finger at Elrith:

“Positive Mind” he said blankly.

A golden-yellowish misty stream of magic flew from Rum’s hand, through the air, and straight into and around Elrith head. It created a little golden cloud that existed for but a moment before violently being sucked in through Elrith’s nose, ears and gaping mouth. Elrith slowly blinked her eyes repeatedly, then shook her head and made several twitches of her nose, while flickering her tongue in her mouth. Finally she looked up at the group, a big happy smile making its way across her face.

“What was this spell? I feel so… optimistic. So much energy even! Is this joy?” Elrith’s demeanor took on a dazed form, like she was partially stuck in a happy day-dream, floating on a soft pink cloud.

“What did you do to her?” a rough deep voice suddenly sounded. Rum turned upon hearing it, and saw that the interrogation came from the male dwarf who’d pulled Rum and Elrith out of the fountain.

“Yeah, what did you do to me mage? I don’t recall feeling like this just a moment ago. Your magic, it changed my mind somehow. I’m feeling lighter, brighter, but also a bit distant, as if I can’t properly sense myself, or focus.”

The entire party looked at Rum with mild hostility, and Rum couldn’t help but just drag his hand across his face dejectedly.

“Positive Mind is a spell which does what it sounds like: it makes a person feel sort-of happy whether they really are so or not. I don’t entirely understand how it works myself, but through testing I believe it forces the subject to mainly focus on positive – optimistic – thoughts. People with a negative mind may feel like they’re not really there in the head because of this, since they are unable to express their negative individuality. Positive Mind magically creates hopefulness, a belief that things are or will soon become good, and consequently it will make people feel like what they’re doing is valuable, that they themselves do good things. In other words it makes people diligent, and more likely to trust themselves and others.”

“Somehow” Elrith spoke hazily, “even when I hear my mind has been tampered with, I don’t feel bad about it. I feel good about this… so this has to be a good spell right? Is this what people would pay hundreds of gold for? I can understand why.”

“Actually” Rum began again, taking on a lecturing posture, “you guys should probably not tell anybody about this spell, because I know for a fact that some people will do crazy stuff for this magic. When you get back to yourself Elrith, you’ll probably feel a lot different about this spell. And at that time, you will probably also understand that most people wouldn’t want this spell cast on themselves. But, if they are the wrong kind of person: they might want it cast on others. Spouses in bad relationships might want to cast it on each other, or bad parents on their children. But as it suppresses the personality of the person, it can really be as much of a cruel spell for those want to make others cooperate more with them, as it can be a remedy for those who suffer illnesses of the mind. It’s not an evil spell, just a spell with a lot of evil potential and few known genuinely good uses.”

Everyone went quiet for a bit as Rum finished explaining, and for a few moments nobody said anything at all. Then Elrith broke the silence: “Well, should we go to the dungeon then. No business just standing around here all day, is there?” She took on a big happy smile, swung the crossbow over her back, and started walking down the streets in the direction leading out of town.

“Oh” Rum was surprised, “So I’m in then? I made it into the party?” He started walking slowly after her, and with a small smile as if already expecting a positive answer. Everyone else besides Elrith just glanced at him with their own eyebrows just as baffled as he was.

“Your spell is quite impressive I must say, and you have that anti-confusion spell right? I don’t see why not! Stroll along mage and help us bash some skulls!” she almost shouted, an excited expression on her face.

Slowly, one by one, the others decided to tag along, not knowing exactly how to deal with this situation as long as Elrith was in her special magical state.

The party walked out and past the city gates which marked the end of the walled section of the city. The city had since these walls grown immensely, and the outer portion of the city was now larger than the inner portion. Out here were many new settlers, among which was a Dwarven Quarter next to and carved into a mini-mountain, as well as a mecha-gnomish quarter which consisted of a small sea of tiny houses stacked on top of each other and with a network of magically enhanced iron horses transporting the gnomes at high speed between the different portions of their settlement. One of these iron horses, which they called “locomotives”, riding on a trail of iron bars, even let the gnomes travel almost instantaneously to and from the city gates. These mecha-gnomes were not to be confused with another even smaller quarter known as the Wild-Gnomish Quarter, and which was really just a gnomish enclave in the last and perhaps largest quarter known as the Green-Elven Quarter. These wild-gnomes were pretty much the opposite of their mecha-gnomish relatives, as they preferred solitary lives in small communities spread about forests or sometimes adjacent to human villages. Wild-gnomes preferred a simple life, and were very protective of animals, up and to the point that human villagers would be abducted and tried for crimes against animal-kind if it became known to the wild-gnomes that they’d been mistreating their pets or herds. And the wild-gnomes always knew, because they were excellent spies that would watch over the activities of humans, and they were devious, as they’d recruit little children to tell on their parents if anyone mistreated a house pet or part of a herd. The green-elves meanwhile, the only major elven population in Ermos City, was a tall patient nature-loving race which cultivated many gardens of exotic plants, and giant trees onto which they shaped most of their houses, or sometimes fastened and rested their houses on giant boughs. Only a few green-elves chose to live on the ground, wherein the wild-gnomes had their burrows hidden in-between bushes. Due to all this greenery, the Green-Elven Quarter was also frequently known as The City Forest.

Rum knew the history of all of these races in Ermos City, he’d learned about them in lessons on dungeon history, which had been a part of his Magical History class. All of these races came to settle here to escape the proliferation of dungeon lords to the south which had invaded their original habitats and filled it with roaming undead, demons and untamable monsters and -beasts. Over the last hundred years the area around the ruins of the lost cities, which were filled with the remains of past evil lords and -ladies, had grown to contaminate an ever larger area, consequently squeezing out the remaining settlements there. The only populations still known to inhabit that area now, as it was these creatures were pretty much everywhere there now, was a few villages and small towns which had been made into miniature fortresses, patrolled by low- and medium level guild parties, with some additional security from the counter-raids by the guilds. This fact reminded Rum that Jorteg’s dungeon was one of the newer dungeons that had been threatening to expand The Desolate Lands, as they were known, to reach even further up north. The first few undead raids into remote villages associated with Ermos City had already began, and were rumored to come from Jorteg’s Dungeon. The information he carried about this though was roughly ten years old, it had been a great disturbance among the people at the time. And now, ten years later, much time has passed since those first reports of undead raid parties crossing the border into the Lands of Ermos.

The party – Rum’s party? – was now walking down a major highway leading out of the city from the city gates. On the left side and a bit in the distance was The Little Mountain, home to The Dwarven Quarters. Closer to the road, but still a bit ahead was The Mecha-Gnome Quarters, from where one could hear the sounds of fast-moving locomotives and see smokes and fire rising into the air, creating thick dark cloudy trails along their paths. The iron-horses and the iron wagons they pulled were small though, only large enough for the gnomes to use. Rum, keeping pace behind Elrith, saw one of those little locomotives as it ran past and next to the highway with a speed that broke the air itself, creating a sudden sharp gust of wind towards the pedestrians. As the last iron wagon rushed past Rum he also witnessed a group of younger mecha-gnomes screaming in delight, their little gloved fists up in the air like they were cheering on the iron-horse. The locomotive gone Rum looked to the right side of the road: there, not too far away, was The City Forest – the great neighborhood of the green-elves. Only their great trees very truly visible though, and the wild gnomes who lived around the roots of the trees were not visible from this distance. Rum sighed a little in quiet appreciation. It was sights such as these that made Rum truly feel like he was now once again living in a cosmopolis: a city of many different cultures and many different peoples.

After a while Rum took his gaze off the horizon and looked behind himself: there strolled along the two dwarves, side by side. As they all were walking Rum would occasionally catch them glancing at him. However, mostly they were just small-talking to each other about the other people on the highway, the merchants, farmers and other armed groups, probably guild parties.

Behind the dwarves in turn, and furthest in the back, walked the heavily armored human male with his spear and -shield. Rum figured the man would probably have more in common with him than with the dwarves, since they were both male and both human. But on further consideration he also thought about how different the lives of mages and non-mages were, and that perhaps the human male couldn’t really identify with Rum, and this kept him at a distance. Either way, Rum felt like everyone were more or less walking by themselves, except for the dwarf duo. A rather lonely situation if Rum were to be honest.

The party marched on for about half an hour at least before they were approaching the end of the city’s densely populated areas. There were still a significant amount of people walking on this highway, but these people were mostly either coming from far away settlements or were returning from far away settlements. The city itself and its people were rapidly becoming something that was behind Rum’s new party.

Speaking of Rum’s new party, Elrith had suddenly stopped. Rum walked up to her, walked in front of her, and tried to make eye-contact. Elrith had a strange look on her face like as if she was severely constipated, or possibly thinking about something very hard. When she after a few seconds saw Rum’s smiling innocent face, her expression turned into a frown.

“Why am I here?” she asked with words so sharp calling her Heart-Piercer seemed highly appropriate.

“You wanted to go to the dungeon? Right?” Rum continued smiling innocently.

“Okay. Let me rephrase that. Why are you walking with me to the dungeon. Wasn’t I really mad about you for some reason?”

“Oh” Rum dropped his smile. He figured this could’ve happened, he’d just been praying it wouldn’t have happened like this. The rest of the party were now gathering around the mage and the crossbow carrying woman.

“Are you back Heart-Piercer?” asked the armored man.

“She seems to be back to her usual self” responded the dwarf woman, searching the face of Elrith.

The Heart-Piercer ignored them in return though, and just stared menacingly at Rum.

“Elrith,” Rum started saying cautiously, “I was asked of you to demonstrate a very powerful very valuable spell that I had. You insisted. And so I demonstrated it. It just seemed natural that the target of the demonstration, would also be the one requesting the demonstration. Now that you’ve tried my spell for like an hour, what do you think?” Rum tried to put on a smile again. “It’s pretty cool huh? It totally changed your attitude for this whole hour; nothing but happy determination for dungeon diving!”

Elrith slow-paced up to Rum, then sighed heavily and buried her face in her right hand. Then, suddenly out of the air, her left hand knocked Rum straight into his testicles and Rum fell onto his knees. And as he sat there, moaning in pain, Elrith hit him again with her left hand, this time straight in his nose, and Rum grabbed his face and leaned backward starting to crawl away from the woman.

“Have anyone ever tried to tell you before not to use magic on them without explicit permission?” she hissed.

“It might’ve been mentioned once or twice in my life.” Rum said through a bloody nose.

“Then don’t do that again, please. If I ask you to demonstrate, but I don’t know what I’m asking for, then you first explain to me, and NOT JUST CAST THE SPELL AT ME WITHOUT PROPER WARNING!” she walked up to Rum and started kicking him in his sides. This didn’t hurt Rum so much but it did seem to let off some steam from Elrith, which finally ended it all with a sigh and marched up to her team.

“Okay. First things first people. This idiot is an idiot. But I can’t deny his magic could come quite in handy.” She sighed again. “Who here would want this idiot to join our party on a probationary basis. If he does well on this dungeon dive and the next, he’s in. If not, his level 8 ass can go join up with Ermos’ Finest Adventurers and start from the bottom killing roaming skeletons near the guild bases to the south-east.” All the party members now looked over at Rum.

“But we don’t even know what other spells he got? Maybe that thing is the only thing that he’s good at.” asked the armored man.

“That’s a good point” Elrith replied and nodded, “What other spells do you actually have, mage?”

Rum stood up now and mumbled to himself “Restore body”, a green misty light flowing out from all across his body and directing themselves towards Rum’s nose and testicles. The healing done, Rum also cast “Become Clean” for extra measure.

“I got a variety of potentially useful spells.” Rum stroked his beard, “They are mostly aimed at survival out in the wilds though, or convenience, but with a bit of creativity I imagine they could find surprisingly many uses both inside- and outside the dungeons.”

“And they are?” Elrith questioned impatiently.

“Well, let me recall.”

Rum’s Mental Spellbook

Cool Body

Cools down an individual’s body.

Warm Body

Heats up an individual’s body.

Body Thicken

Makes an individual larger in every dimension by temporarily adding fat and various extra tissue.

Skin Toughen

Makes an individual’s skin harder to penetrate, for instance by means of piercing, cutting or scratching.

Muscles Grow

Makes an individual significantly stronger.

Become Clean

Cleans an individual’s whole body.

Cleans clothes or cloth-like items (for instance bags or bed sheets).

Renew Clothes

Repairs clothes or cloth-like items (for instance bags or bed sheets).

Gives a new appropriate design to the clothes or cloth-like items (for instance bags or bed sheets).

Positive Mind

Makes an individual gain confidence in the future, in others and in themselves, leading to a potentially excessively optimistic attitude that steers the individual’s mind to narrowly focus on the benefits of a situation.

Is prone to make individuals become seemingly diligent, brave and short-sighted because of their excessive belief in their own agency and the future.

Impedes the expression of particularly negative character traits of individuals, potentially leading to temporary partial personality death.

Restore Mind

Removes effects that impede the efficient functioning of the mind, including diseases of the mind/brain or magical curses.

Clear Mind

Makes an individual more clear-headed.

Can make an individual seem more intelligent by making it easier for the individual to engage in intelligence-based tasks such as abstract pattern-recognition and systematic thinking.

Self-Running Legs

Magically takes control of an individual’s legs, and forces the legs to run towards some destination.

Is prone to make the individual run beyond their physical capacity, causing them to become severely exhausted and potentially become unconscious from exhaustion.

While never witnessed, there is a real possibility that this spell could make an individual run itself to death if the individual is unable to stop the spell.

Restore Body

Heals simpler injuries, such as broken legs, cuts, scratches and bruises.

Removes most of the effects of less severe conditions, such as the common cold, migraines or tired nerves.

Effective against blood loss and skin tissue damage.

Filter Body

Makes an individual’s body into the perfect filter for harmful substances. Anything the spell deems abnormal for a body becomes separated from it and is rushed out through available nearby orifices, such as mouth, nose, ears and other openings of the body.

Magic Blanket

Spawns a thin magically sustained layer of see-through fabric that is bound to the casting mage’s mana, draining it very slowly while in existence.

Magic Shoes

Spawns a thin set of magically sustained shoes that are bound to the casting mage’s mana, draining it very slowly while in existence.

Softify

Makes any surface significantly softer to lean on or touch by means of distributing magically sustained fabric that is bound to the casting mage’s mana, draining it slowly while in existence.

Channel Bio-Energy

Instantly burns biological energy, for instance fat and carbohydrates, turning it into freely manipulatable energy, which can for instance be used to make sparks for a fire.

Beast of Burden

Turns an individual’s body into a flexible apparatus for pulling or carrying very large items, very heavy items, or very many items.

The individual’s strength, and the constitution of their bones, drastically increases at the cost of dexterity and intelligence. The body and mind all organize under the principle of acting like an ideal beast of burden, causing the individual’s mind to focus intensely on their task of carrying.

May be used to make slaves and captives more cooperative as the intense focus of the spell may undermine rebellious thinking.

There is a possibility that an individual will try to carry something for which their body – not even with magically reinforced bones and muscles – is capable of carrying. And as a consequence, in the worst scenarios; people may even come to crush themselves to death.

Make Rotten Edible

Restores most of the edibleness of recently rotted food.

Make Water Drinkable

Purifies contaminated or dirty water until it becomes mostly drinkable.

Mana Ghost

Creates a magical body that can study a living being, or the magics of a living being, and convert its essential characteristics into a form of mana known as a “mana ghost”.

May briefly paralyze a none-magical person being mana-ghosted, or even a magical person with little control of their own mana.

“Of course all these spell have variable levels of effect depending on how much mana I put into them. For instance the Positive Mind-spell that I cast on you I only gave the bare minimum of magic, which made it last for an hour. However, with a large dose of mana the spell can last for several days!”

The party were a little bit overwhelmed by all the details of Rum’s magical arsenal. Not that it was much of an arsenal though, he didn’t really have any offensive spells per se. Though if worst came to worst he guessed he could force a person to run to the other side of the world, which could kill them unless they had incredible endurance. He was also a big guy, so if he wanted to he could use his Muscles Grow and Body Thicken spells to overwhelm somebody else his strength and mass, while protecting himself against their weapons with Skin Toughen. At best his offensive arsenal consisted in wrestling people to the ground, or literally force them to run away. He could also punch them he supposed, that was pretty violent. Punching somebody enough could even kill them.

“Okay,” Elrith finally started saying, her expression appearing a little bit fuzzy from all the information. “that’s a lot of spells you have there. I notice that there aren’t any offensive spells though? And your defensive spells seem not that useful to people with armor and weapons to protect them. I like a healing spell though, even if it seems to be limited, it would cut down on our potion-consumption, which is an economic nightmare for all dungeon parties. It can make an initially profitable dungeon dive into the start of a debt trap for the unlucky.”

“But don’t just think about the spells I have now people, remember Elrith, I wanted to come with you guys to make more spells. I’m a spellcrafter! Maybe this dungeon will teach me my first offensive spell even!”

Elrith just nodded, and then looked at her fellow party members, waiting for their opinions.

“I must say” the male dwarf said, “that you do seem a little bit useless Rum when it comes to fighting. But I listened carefully to the spells you told us about, and I hear a few there which could very well become handy I think. Does Filter Body help against poisons?”

“Yes!” Rum exclaimed, happy to be judged valuable, even if it was just a bit valuable.

“Then you have my vote Rum, at least for now.”

“Okay people, Rulli says he’d want Rum to join on probationary terms. Anyone else want to say yes, or no?” Elrith looked from the female dwarf, back to the armored man, and back again to female dwarf.

“I suppose I agree with my husband.” said the female dwarf. “I would’ve wanted a bit more firepower from this guy. But at least his defensive spells should avoid us having to babysit him in the fight.” Elrith nodded approvingly.

“So Gilda is in… Darmon?” The Heart-Piercer stared at the armored guy, whom Rum supposed must be called Darmon.

“I guess I’ll agree with the others. Would’ve wanted a better fighter, but not gonna lie that I’m looking forward to not using so many healing potions just for the minor scratches and cuts.”

“Fine then!” Elrith smiled firmly at her party, then looked at Rum. “You are in then mage. For real this time. But before you get all too happy, let’s get the paperwork done first eh, shall we?”

Elrith knelt down and fished out several rolls of paper from her backpack, spreading the first of them out across the bag to reveal the text. She also fished out a quill and a bottle of ink.

“Please read through and sign your name. I got these papers from our guild this morning, hoping you’d got both spells. But here we are nevertheless, and I’m thinking the same conditions as last. To summarize, you will have to join the guild we belong to, which is The Mecha-Gnomes’ Revenge.”

Rum raised an eyebrow. “Is that really what it’s called?”

“Yes, you haven’t heard of it?”

“No, is it new?”

“I suppose, it’s 18 years old, but it started to get much bigger the last 5 years after the mecha-gnomes voted in the new director: Roovalup Gigalut. After that they started mass-hiring non-mecha-gnomes and poaching parties from other guilds with lucrative contracts, and now we’ve gotten really big. The fourth largest dungeon guild in all of Ermos currently, and aiming to be the largest!”

“Okay” Rum just tried to digest this piece of information, and tried to imagine the implications of working for the mecha-gnomes.

“I promise you that working for the mecha-gnomes can be very fun. Every 6 months the mecha-gnomes arranges The Great Zerg where everyone from the lowest to the highest level adventurer can join to completely bust a dungeon, eradicating anything and anyone inside that are evil. And best of all, we are all paid to join! It’s a very good opportunity for the low levels, who often can’t get enough loot to pay for their living expenses.”

“Oh wow, that’s cool I suppose, though I’m not sure zergs are a thing for me. I mean, that’s basically like participating in a larger battle right? Would be difficult to get anything interesting done in those situations I think.”

“Well we have other benefits as well. The mecha-gnomes have deals with the dwarves, so that we can buy extra cheap metal gear from them. Very good for low-to-mid level adventurers. Of course, as a mage you don’t use much weapons or armor. Hmm. Actually I can’t really think of many benefits that are beneficial for a mage. But anyways, this is a great guild and we also have feasts where the low levels are welcome to join, and you can meet many cool adventurers there!”

Rum stroked his beard, evaluating the situation for a moment. “Let me just read it myself, and see if it’s something for me. Is this paper here it?” he picked up the first paper roll which’d been spread out on Elrith’s backpack. “This is about the guild membership?”

“Yeah, that’s the one. There’s also one here about the probationary membership with my party. And there’s another one for you to report your party membership to the guild.” She held up the two other paper rolls.

Rum quickly read through all the paperwork. Nothing particularly bad stood out to him, besides a guild initiation fee of 1 gold which he had to pay within a month of joining, a duty to report loot to the guild with an accompanying 10% guild tax on the market value of the loot, and a duty to report annually for an assessment of character level. Interestingly enough, people below level 20 were exempt from reporting loot and paying guild tax for the first two years of their membership, as long as the loot wasn’t particularly valuable. This was probably part of the mass-recruitment initiative that Elrith had mentioned.

Rum ended up signing all the paperwork and promising Elrith to go visit the guild headquarters in The Mecha-Gnome Quarters, which was also nicknamed Iron City from its architecture with widespread use of metal as building material.

And thus, with paperwork signed, guild membership to be made official, and probationary membership in a dungeon crawling party established, Rum and his new buddies-to-be continued down the highway, at a some point crossing into grasslands, before reaching a forest, and eventually: the mouth of Jorteg’s dungeon.