Vee picked up a silver fleur and sighed as he dropped it into the storage chest. It made a small plink as it landed, and the [Dungeon Master] shook his head as he updated Cecil and dismissed the [Excellent Spreadsheet]. It hadn’t been a bad day for Crestheart, all things considered, but it hadn’t been a particularly good one, either. There were two stacks of paper on the desk in front of him where there should only be one; several adventurers simply hadn’t shown up for their runs, which meant that he had to classify their entrance fees as unearned revenue to either be refunded or used at a later date. It wasn’t a huge issue, since Cecil took care of it all for him, but it was still something of a pain.

“What do we do if adventurers keep skipping their runs?” he asked Reginald as Alforde picked up the box of fleurs and headed for the dungeon’s vault. The hat frowned.

“I don’t think we need to really worry about that,” his [Majordomo] said. “It was snowing pretty hard out there today, so it makes sense that a bunch of these small-timers would stay home and keep warm. Plus, with the open call making such good progress against the bandits over the last couple days I bet a bunch of the glory-chasers have lost all their motivation. They’ll coast toward a lifetime of mediocrity, telling themselves that they would have been somebody if only they’d been a little faster.

“Don’t worry about it, Boss. If it somehow keeps happening, we’ll just add a non-refundable booking fee to each application. Something like five or six silver fleurs. If an adventurer shows up and does their run, the fee will count toward their remaining balance so they won’t see any increase in total cost for challenging the dungeon, but we’ll still get something from the people who don’t bother coming by.”

Vee nodded. That seemed like a reasonable approach to the situation, and as far as he was concerned the matter was handled for the moment. Which was great, because there was another issue he had to take care of that probably didn’t have such a neat solution: Crestheart was running dangerously low on prizes.

Alforde had reported the shortage as he’d brought up the day’s earnings, and Vee had been turning it over in his mind ever since. In total, the dungeon had only eight pendants left, and they might not last until Vee managed to get his hands on some replacements. The [Dungeon Master] wanted Thien to make them, as he liked her work quite a bit, but seeing as the [Goldsmith] was nowhere to be found, he had no choice but to ask someone else.

Unfortunately, Vee didn’t have any idea of who that was going to be. His knowledge of the other crafters in Oar’s Crest was sorely lacking. He’d have to go and start asking around once he finished talking to Rortenferry.

Which, speaking of, it was almost time for that meeting. Vee stood up and pulled on his jacket.

“Alright, I’m going to head down to the lab,” he said as Alforde walked back through the vault’s portal and it disappeared behind him. “Are you two going to stay up here or head back?”

Alforde walked over to where Slammy was resting against the wall and sat down next to his hammer. “I’m going to read here for a bit,” the armorsoul said. “The light is better here than it is back in the boarding house.”

“I’m staying here too,” Reginald said. “I don’t want to have to listen to you two dither on about ghosts and spirits. Or worse, have to answer any more of the old guy’s questions. He’s persistent!”

“That he is,” Vee said with a grin. “Alright, sounds like a plan. I’ll be back up here as soon as I’m done down there, and we’ll head back together, okay?”

“Okay, Boss.”

“Sure thing, Vee.”

Vee hurried down the stairs and opened the door to his lab. Something crunched beneath his feet as he stepped inside. A closer look revealed that it was a cracked and broken piece of solidified ectoplasm, a leftover from one of his experiments. Vee scanned the rest of the floor, and saw that there were lots of similar bits here and there. Though he wasn’t exactly a bear for cleanliness, he couldn’t help but feel a little embarrassed at the sight of how dirty the lab was.

Walking back and forth, the [Ghost Maestro] hurried to try and clean up as best he could. He picked up half-built traps and stuffed them into one of his closets, stacked broken cages up against the wall, and organized his current experimental ghosts by size on the far side of the room.

Naturally, Vee didn’t own anything like a broom, so in a panic he reached out to Do and asked the [Dungeon Maintainer] to bring up a couple slimes to let loose.

They were burgeoning frost slimes, almost the size of his torso. They made a soft sucking sound with their every movement; it was obvious that they were hungry. Do set them down and let them loose, and all Vee had to do after that was stay out of their way.

Due to their enthusiasm, cleaning the lab didn’t take them very long. However, wrangling the gelatinous creatures away from Vee’s experiments whenever they decided that they were interested in trying some more active ectoplasm was a task Vee didn’t particularly enjoy. The bigger of the two wrapped itself around the newest test arm for upgrading Mr. Chills, and Vee snapped his fingers hard before it started to dissolve the ectoplasm.

“[Would You Kindly] knock that off? Hey!”

The slime ignored him, and Vee grit his teeth. A pressure in built in his ears, and when Vee spoke and snapped again, he felt a shiver of energy flicker through the room.

“[Do As I Command]! Stop it!”

The slime went still, and Vee felt his knees go weak. He leaned on the nearby table for support.

[Sometimes a firmer hand is necessary.]

[You can now use [Do As I Command].

[You are now a Dungeon Master, level 19!]

[Intimidating Presence +1]

Do gave him an uneasy look, and Vee smiled.

“Are you alright, Master?”

“I’m fine,” Vee said as he straightened back up. “Thanks for bringing these up, Do. They’ve been incredibly helpful.”

The slimes bounced back quickly from Vee’s order, blurbling happily as they scooted along the much-cleaner floor, and Do scooped them up in his broad arms to take them both back down into the dungeon when three polite knocks announced Rortenferry’s arrival.

The older [Ghost Maestro] looked tired, with a swaying, unsteady gait and dark bags beneath his eyes. However, his eyes sparkled and he wore a wide grin as he triumphantly lifted his right hand and showed Vee the tiny seed pinched between his thumb and forefinger.

“This is it!” he said dramatically as the [Dungeon Master] leaned forward to try and get a better look. “The key to your orchestra!”

It certainly didn’t look terribly impressive at first – or even second – glance, so Vee activated [Third Sight]. He braced himself for the swirling mass of color that such an important object was sure to have and saw…nothing.

He even blinked a few times and there was no change.

“Uh, Professor, are you sure about that?” Vee asked sheepishly. “It doesn’t look like anything special to me.”

“Of course it doesn’t,” Rortenferry snapped. “But I assure you that it’s going to prove critical in understanding why your fiends have managed to grow so much.”

He sniffed at Vee’s unchanged expression. “Most certainly, this is an ectoplasmic seed of some sort, but I can’t discern the specific type yet due to its small size. Purpose would make the most sense, but Obligation or Habit can’t be ruled out either. What’s most interesting about this seed is that I’m not even sure if all the fiends here in Oar’s Crest share the same type. Though this is the only one I’ve been able to harvest without it breaking, I’ve seen fragments of others that looked different.”

Vee rubbed his chin. There were a lot of kinds of ectoplasmic seeds – which were essentially crystalized emotions, feelings, or reasons that prompted ghosts or spirits to remain in the living world instead of dissipating into the ether – but Purpose, Obligation, and Habit wouldn’t have been particularly high on his list for the fiends to possess. He would have suspected Vengeance or Spite, given the way fiends were created, but if Rortenferry said otherwise, he wouldn’t argue.

“I didn’t even know that fiends could have ectoplasmic seeds,” Vee admitted.

“They’re not supposed to, which makes this even stranger and more interesting,” Rortenferry replied. “Technically speaking, fiends are Embodiments, which means that these seeds shouldn’t exist.”

Unlike other types of ghosts – like Shades, which were the leftovers of specific entities, or Expectations, which were the collective idea of a group of people – Embodiments were simply manifestations of a lone emotion. As such, they lacked proper anchoring elements, so individual entities tended to fade back into the ethereal soon after forming.

As he carried the implications of that reality through to their conclusion, Vee felt dumber and dumber by the second. Unlike what one would expect from such creatures, the fiends in Oar’s Crest continued to exist until they were destroyed. Heck, the adventurers guild had a permanent bounty on clearing buildings that they occupied!

Was there really enough anger, envy and hatred coming from the people of the city to sustain the large fiend population through what would have had to be hundreds – no, thousands – of despawns and respawns?

Vee didn’t think so. He had too many positive experiences with the citizens to even consider that such a thing was possible. Oar’s Crest had its problems, sure, but it wasn’t filled to the gills with anger and hatred. Or at least, he didn’t think it was. Maybe there were things he hadn’t noticed, but he couldn’t see a way for them to be big enough to keep the abandoned city filled with fiends.

He said as much, and Rortenferry shrugged as he tucked the seed back into his pocket.

“That’s what my gut says too,” the older [Ghost Maestro] said. “Which brings me to my current hypothesis.”

“And that would be?”

Rortenferry smiled and shook his head. “I’m hesitant to even say it aloud, as I have to admit that it sounds rather farfetched.”

“I’m not going to laugh at you, Professor. I trust your judgment and expertise.”

His old teacher’s eyes sparkled, and he playfully said, “As reassuring as your vote of confidence is, Mister Vales, I’m not sure my colleagues would be so accepting of my thoughts on the matter. It’s truly unique. Now, I won’t keep you in suspense a moment longer; I’m not convinced that the spirits in the abandoned parts of this city – let alone the members of your orchestra – are truly fiends.”

Vee’s eyebrows seemed to move of their own accord, and the [Dungeon Master] didn’t know how to respond. His orchestra wasn’t filled with true fiends? What the heck did that mean? What was Rortenferry talking about?

“Don’t give me that look,” the [Professor] said. “I know it sounds insane, but that’s truly the best conclusion I’ve come to. During my experiments and research, I carefully considered other possibilities for your orchestra’s peculiarities, and no other theories come close to this one. You remember the great words of Ignatius Doyle regarding the elimination of the impossible, do you not?”

Vee nodded. His [Professor] had been a superfan of the famous [Detective], and several of his quotes had lined the walls of Rortenferry’s classroom. Vee had read them all dozens of times when he should have been paying attention to the lecture of the day.

“But Professor,” Vee said. “If they’re not fiends, then what are they?”

Rortenferry shrugged.

“That, my boy, is a question I don’t have an answer for.”

Main Character Sheets:

Vee Vales

Primary Class: Ghost Maestro (Locksmagister University), Level 28

Secondary Class: Dungeon Master (Oar’s Crest), Level 19 (+1)

Tertiary Class: Guy-Who-Takes-Things-WAY-Too-Far (Self), Level 5

Might: 12

Wit: 31

Faith: 21

Adventurousness: 7

Ambition: 14

Plotting: 18

Charisma: 12

Devious Mind: 22

Leadership: 17

Guts: 13

Intimidating Presence: 10 (+1)

Citizenship: 20

Public Relations: 6

Determination: 1

Alforde Armorsoul:

Primary Class: Hammer Afficionado (Self), Level 21

Secondary Class: Right-hand man (Vee Vales), Level 11

Tertiary Class: Dungeon Champion (Oar’s Crest), Level 14

Additional Class: Glaciernaut (Sacha Silverblade), Level 4

Might: 39

Wit: 12

Faith: 26

Adventurousness (Bound – Vee Vales): 8

Endurance: 19

Intimidating Presence: 12

Heart of a Champion: 6

Citizenship (Bound – Vee Vales): 8

Vigilance: 6

Vanity: 2 (-1)

Reginald:

Primary Class: Core Spirit (Unknown), Level ???

--~%@(%[email protected] &% (*$ #&#e !i$$ (#$%#$%#[email protected]!)~--, #[email protected]& ????

Secondary Class: Loudmouth (Self), Level 38

Tertiary Class: Majordomo (Vee Vales), Level 15

Additional Class: Announcer (Vee Vales), Level 8

Might: 1

Wit: 33

Faith: 12

Ambition: 27

Greed: 22

Deceptiveness: 27

Manipulativeness: 36

$#&*[email protected]!!

Loyalty: 46

Patience: 9

[#&%%%@%!#@__--#%]

[email protected]#!! @#[email protected][email protected]#

#[email protected]$#

Citizenship (Bound – Vee Vales): 7