Hand in hand, they walked off into the sunset and lived happily ever after.

THE END.

Sighing contentedly, Alforde closed the book and set it down on the pile to his right. There were a half dozen other books there, precariously balanced and seemingly on the verge of falling, but the armorsoul knew they wouldn’t take a tumble. Turning to his side, Alforde looked at the stack of remaining reads and picked up another one.

It was the first book in a series about a young woman working as a [Muse], and Alforde hoped that it would be interesting. After all, he’d grabbed the rest of the books too, and would have hated the waste of doing so if the first book ended up not being worth his time. Though, to be fair, he probably would have read them all anyway. The night was still young, and the [Dungeon Champion] really wanted to catch up on his reading. It helped keep him feeling normal. Heck, just then he would have been willing to give The Castle of the |Gray Mistress| another shot, even if he’d never managed to make it past the first introduction of the [Scrubbers].

Sixteenth time was the charm, right?

Probably not.

The armorsoul flexed his pauldrons as he opened the book on his lap. To Alforde’s surprise, he was genuinely having a good time while Vee was out on his date with Luna. Truthfully, the [Dungeon Champion] had forgotten the simple joy of sitting back and letting himself get engrossed in a book over the past few weeks, and he relished the “new” sensation of flipping page after page of someone else’s adventure. Reading was peaceful. It was totally different from practicing with his hammer or fighting in the dungeon. He was starting to understand that all three were necessary. They were like puzzle pieces in that regard.

Naturally, this line of thought prompted another sting of shame. It was an increasingly common occurrence, as Alforde wrestled with the fact that he’d let himself get so dragged into fighting that he’d totally ignored his favorite hobby.

Alforde let the sticky negativity flow through his plates. To be a champion was to accept the bad with the good. He believed that. Truly. However, he was also cognizant of the point where it stopped being productive, and shook his helmet to chase the last dregs away when he reached that point.

Yes, he’d made some mistakes, and was working on accepting the fact that he’d been heading down a bad path, but there was nothing to be gained by beating himself up about it. As much as he might like to, Alforde knew that he couldn’t change the past. Dwelling on regrets would get him nowhere.

Instead, he’d just have to do his best to keep from making the problem worse. Right now, that meant reading. So long as he didn’t overcorrect and trade one bad habit for another, he’d be fine. Echoes of Sacha’s voice echoed throughout his helmet.

Everything in moderation. To be a champion is to be perfectly balanced.

Repeating the words over and over again, Alforde worked his way through the first couple chapters of his book.

It was just okay. Decent side characters and pacing, but the main character was a bit too dumb for his tastes. Oh well.

Across the room, Reginald was clearly having a horrible night. The hat was bitterly resentful of the fact that Vee had left him behind. He’d whined and complained non-stop for the first hour or so that Vee had been gone, but had now taken to simply sulking on the table and flashing a forlorn grimace in Alforde’s direction every few minutes.

Alforde felt bad each time he noticed it, and wondered if he should provide a running commentary for how things seemed to be going based on the emotions he gleaned through his bond with Vee. Most of the surging impulses were nervous energy, but there were occasional flares of elation too. Ultimately, Alforde decided against sharing anything. If Vee wanted to tell them how things went when he got back, that was his business. Alforde smiled to himself as he thought up a new little Sacha-ism of his own.

To be a champion is to not be a gossip.

He wondered if his mentor would like it, and resolved to bring it up the next time they spoke.

His book got a little weird. After an exciting battle with a series of [Gryphon Knights] taking on a four-headed dragon, the narrative was awkwardly sidetracked by a half-baked romantic subplot. Alforde was tempted to write a polite, but firm letter of complain to the [Author]. Perhaps he’d do so in the morning.

As the clock approached midnight, a new and totally bizarre sensation surged through his bond with Vee. It was a warm, fuzzy feeling, and Alforde couldn’t help but chuckle as the distinctly pink emotion flooded his senses.

“What’s so funny?” Reginald snapped. “Some bit of subtle word play in your book?”

The hat’s eyes were scrunched tight and his felty mouth curled into a grimace. He looked desperate for information.

Despite his previous certainty about what was and was not his business to share, Alforde’s willpower wasn’t enough to resist the hat’s pathetic expression. Shaking his helmet conspiratorially and lowering his voice, Alforde said, “Nah, it’s Vee. I think he just got Infatuated.”

Instead of being excited, as Alforde had expected, Reginald let out a howl that would have put a wolf to shame and thrashed his brim on the table.

“It’s not fair,” he moaned. “Can you imagine how awkward that date must have been, with Boss stumbling all over his words and Luna looking like a ripe tomato? Why didn’t he bring me along? I would have had so much fun! You know, you could have taken me out to follow them, Big Guy. We could have made it work!”

“I don’t think so,” Alforde said icily, and the temperature in the room dropped ever so slightly. The new skill – which hadn’t fully formed yet but definitely had [Chill] somewhere in the name – was one that Alforde wasn’t sure he liked all that much, but he could feel in his boots that it’d be useful one day.

“Spying is wrong,” the armorsoul said matter-of-factly, feeling his hackles rising ever so slightly. “Vee and Luna deserve their privacy."

[Right Hand Man +1]

Reginald cocked an eye and looked slightly less morose.

“Is that so, huh? Interesting.”

And with that, the hat fell silent once more, staring up at the cloudy sky as he often did and pondering things that only he knew about. Alforde felt his temper ebb, and returned his attention to his book, though he found himself wondering if Reginald had been simply trying to get a rise out of him. The hat had been doing that with increasing frequency of late, and the armorsoul wasn’t sure how to feel about it. On the one gauntlet it was annoying and tedious to deal with, but on the other, Alforde found that he appreciated Reginald’s concern. He suspected that the hat had been the first one to notice that things had been teetering on the edge of…not good, and was grateful for the oversight.

Not that he’d ever say so. Reginald could be unbearably smug even when he didn’t have a good reason, and Alforde wasn’t going to hand him a great one.

Anyway, the pair remained as they were after that until Vee finally came back, humming a happy song and smiling like a man who’d had just a touch too much to drink.

“What a wonderful night,” Vee sighed as he poured himself a glass of water and sat down on his bed. A tiny pink butterfly flew in and landed on his shoulder, though Vee didn’t seem to notice. “A wonderful night indeed. How have you two been?”

Alforde barely had time to answer before Reginald launched into a long and bitter tirade about the “really rather terrible injustice” of having been forced to stay at the boarding house during Vee’s date. The armorsoul watched his best friend raise his eyebrows and shook his helmet and returned to his book as Vee tried to console his [Majordomo].

The conversation went deep into the night, and Alforde finally decided that he should try and go to sleep before the next day’s runs. Carefully marking his page, the armorsoul got up, deliberately walked past Slammy without touching it on his way to his corner, and settled down to rest. As he drifted off into a dream, he heard a familiar voice echoing inside his helmet once more.

To be a champion is to –

***

Vee’s knees ached as he crawled around the floor of his lab to fix the third and final Mr. Chills. This one had a broken base, which caused it to get stuck at extremely awkward moments during fights. Prying away the outermost part of ectoplasm wasn’t too hard – he simply used [Shape Ectoplasm] to pull it all into a small sphere – but attaching a new piece was a huge pain. Eventually, Vee resorted to hanging a pair of ectoplasmic ropes from the ceiling and hoisting the big ghost up into the air. It worked really well, and he wished that he’d thought of it sooner.

He blamed his lack of foresight on the fact that he was rushing to get everything done in time so that Crestheart could finally open up for the day. He’d stayed up too late talking to Reginald, and slept through his alarm as a result. Everything else had spiraled out of control from there.

“Boss, the adventurers out there are starting to get impatient,” Reginald called down from the office, and Vee glared up at the ceiling. “This isn’t the time for perfection!”

“I know, I know,” the [Dungeon Master] growled as he slapped the last few touches onto Mr. Chills Number Three and asked Do to come get the ghost. “Hopefully they’ll all hold up until after the day’s runs so I can give them a proper repair.”

With his makeshift attempt to keep things working finished, Vee headed up to the office and sat down at his desk. He hadn’t had time to fix the traps that had broken down the day before, and he marked which tools were unavailable to him for the day’s first run. It was about a third of them, which was not great.

A man draped in an impossibly red cape strode up to the entrance and raised his hands. His garment wrapped itself around his body, and it was business as usual as he entered the dungeon.

Vee looked down at the application in front of Reginald. The adventurer’s name was Tyler Lusiden, and he was a level 21 [Sanguine Gentleman]. Like a bat, he flew through Crestheart’s first hallway and early rooms, rapidly dismantling skeletons and ghosts with a large set of crimson claws that seemed rather like liquid. Once he was safely through to the second floor though, he landed hard and gasped for breath. Clearly, he’d exhausted himself through his efforts. Without feeling a single shred of remorse, Vee waited until he was sure that the man’s guard was completely down, then jammed the nearest button to open up the hallway’s walls. Without precise tools, he’d have to make do with blunt force.

A tide of elementals and ghosts poured into the hallway, and the [Sanguine Gentleman] was quickly overwhelmed.

“Better luck next time!” Reginald called out. “We hope to see you again real soon, adventurer! As a head’s up, you’ll find the nearest exit down the hall to your right. Hurry up now, we’re already running behind today.”

The [Dungeon Master] smiled as the man left and Do and the rest of the [Dungeon Maintainers] reset the first floor for the next run. He looked down through the viewing crystal at the next runner – a young man carrying a thin sword – and knew that despite the boy’s appearance, he was a prime candidate for [Boost Drops].

Vee closed his eyes and used the skill, paying careful attention to which minions got marked as a result. He shuffled his packs as necessary and waited for the run to begin. With the sensation of a key slotting perfectly into place, Vee felt a new skill solidify in the base of his skull. A notification appeared in the air before his eyes, and the [Dungeon Master] smiled as he leveled up.

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

[Boost Drops charges + 1]

[Your Walking Walls skill is now more powerful!]

[You are now better at assessing dungeon challengers!]

Well, that was nice, Vee thought. More shards of chaos were always a good thing. While he wasn’t yet sure what he’d do with a stronger version of [Walking Walls] – he’d have to do some testing to figure how it differed from the old version – he immediately got a better sense of why this second adventurer had been a good decision for [Boost Drops], thanks to his new assessment abilities.

There was something combative in the way the boy stood. It hinted at a burning desire to prove himself worthy, and there was a weight to the adventurer’s posture that reminded Vee all too much of the proverbial chip on the shoulder. The eagerness in his steps, and the fury in each flick of his sword flashed like lightning, and it wasn’t long before Vee felt as if he’d been staring straight at the sun.

Though he was no stranger to having his vision modified by skills, Vee found himself overwhelmed. Closing his eyes and taking several deep breaths, the [Dungeon Master] waited for the radiance to fade. In the comforting blackness of his soul’s mirror, he looked for a way to turn off this new sensitivity. Sadly, there didn’t seem to be one, which meant that he had no choice but to wait for his brain to properly catch up and get used to the new sights.

Standing up, Vee made his way to the window and looked down at the gaggle of adventurers outside to test the potency of this new blessing-slash-curse. Thankfully, it didn’t seem to work outside Crestheart proper, as the gaggle of waiting challengers looked no different than they should have.

I can work with it if it’s only active for people in the dungeon, Vee thought.

“You okay, Boss?”

Vee turned around and saw his [Majordomo] staring at him with a worried expression.

“Yeah, I think so,” Vee said as he gave his eyes another rub for good measure. When he gazed into the viewing crystal once more, he noted that the flashes of light were somewhat weaker than they’d been before. Hopefully that meant he was already starting to adapt.

Otherwise he was going to need to start keeping an ice pack handy to cover his eyes with between runs, and that didn’t sound like fun at all.

Main Character Sheets:

Vee Vales

Primary Class: Ghost Maestro (Locksmagister University), Level 29

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

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

Might: 13

Wit: 31

Faith: 21

Adventurousness: 7

Ambition: 14

Plotting: 18

Charisma: 13

Devious Mind: 22

Leadership: 17

Guts: 13

Intimidating Presence: 10

Citizenship: 20

Public Relations: 6

Determination: 1

Alforde Armorsoul:

Primary Class: Hammer Afficionado (Self), Level 21

Secondary Class: Right-hand man (Vee Vales), Level 12 (+1)

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: 20

Intimidating Presence: 12

Heart of a Champion: 6

Citizenship (Bound – Vee Vales): 8

Vigilance: 6

Vanity: 2

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: 37 (+1)

$#&*[email protected]!!

Loyalty: 46

Patience: 8

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

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

@#[email protected]%%^

Citizenship (Bound – Vee Vales): 7