Quiss sipped a tankard of the bar's…

Well, not its finest, but the stuff that would get him drunk cost-effectively. The place had become far busier since the scourge of adventurers had moved in. Durence was too small to have more than a few drinking places, and this was the only one that did alcohol.

So, at every place there were rowdy rule-breaking idiotic people whose life choices were so bad they could only hope some random hole in the ground would make them rich. Some had tried to take his table when he went to get another drink, and Quiss forgot what happened next, but he faintly remembered smoke with some ash occurring before they quickly moved away.

There was no respect amongst these people, none at all.

They complained about everything.

'The inn lady charged too much!'

'There's no quest board!

'All the shop prices are outrageous!'

'The local Dungeon is insane!'

'My mother never taught me to tie my own bootlaces!'

Quiss would never be so boorish as to openly complain and whine like a child.

"Move over, you lump," Ruli grunted, as Quiss tried to take up three chairs by himself, putting his legs up.

"I don't want to sit next to you! You hit me," he said with a glare. She went to sit on his foot and he quickly moved it out of the way before her massive rear could crush it like chalk beneath a boulder.

Quiss would set Ruli on fire if it would have done any good, but the girl was both tough and mixed blood with a demon. Fire didn't really do much more than make her hungry for smoked meat.

"Can you believe all this?" Ruli said, and Quiss sipped more of his lukewarm swill.

"People," he agreed with disgust.

"I always wanted this town to become popular when I was younger, but I guess I didn't know what I was asking for," she sighed.

Quiss opened his mouth to release a vicious mockery when he saw Ruli had a strange look on her face, a sort of sorrowful remembrance that she quickly tried to hide behind her own drink. He swallowed back the witty comment that would have torn her apart and looked away.

"From what I heard, you came back from your adventure all sour and down," he said, and she snorted.

"I got 'lost' for the first few months of the journey, and by the time I arrived in the capital, I found out my name was like cursed mud, and almost no guild or group would take me on," she agreed. She raised her mug as if to toast.

"Cheers, Mum," Ruli said with a grunt.

It could have been worse, Quiss thought. She could have been a child of one of the 'other' people to found this town.

Mila Darknessbane was one thing.

The Tarnished Prince Durence was another.

"You hearing this?" Ruli asked, subtly nodding to the table next to theirs where a group of five rough men in cloaks with beards spoke of trekking through the woods for sometime.

Quiss tilted his head and managed to pick up the conversation.

"-Spider alone. It's triggered if we make too much of a hassle in that room. I got a tip for three Silver from someone who's been lower, Sir Grim, that the storeroom to the west of the Cursed Lake contains a secret passage, but it's only for those who want a challenge," one of the men said, getting curious looks and grunts from all around. Quiss soon realized the group actually consisted of the next three tables, putting their number closer to fifteen.

"I would rather just clear the floor properly first. Total avoidance of the first room, get in and through, turn east because I'm not willing to fork out twenty daggers so we can explore that lake room and 'maybe' find a secret passage," one stood up, and he looked to be the one with the serious face and sorrowful eyes.

He would be the leader or a prince in hiding from some failing kingdom. Those types had an aura to them.

"The mud room is easy enough as long as we move in a careful and ordered means, the Mushroom Forest…" another trailed off, and there was a collective silence for a moment.

"I heard Dragon Fang, a guild from nearby, set it on fire," another spoke up, and Ruli grinned savagely into her mug.

"They'll be back on their feet, but two of them quit that day. Extreme cold isn't good either for that room, but we can always try going out of the other rooms. Bribing and acting passive seems to work sometimes," the first one said grimly.

"What's the point if we don't get anything valuable to sell back? Monster parts and materials are the rarest finds in Dungeons," someone argued, sounding angry.

"You've been reading too many Dungeon stories in the back of the wagon, idiot," the sorrowful one said and put his hands on the table, which was covered in roasted meats and drinks.

"For those new here, let me tell you that cutting down bosses or unveiling a secret passage isn't how we as a guild make coin. It's figuring out what can be harvested and reliably. A woodworker doesn't give two hoots about some magic axe you made out of some golem, nor does a businessman have any use for the tales of bravery you tell to your mates in this pub. You want coin? You figure out what this Dungeon can give and how often. If you're all too stupid to stop swinging your weapons for two minutes to figure that out?" He stopped to give everyone a look.

"Then you can all head home and see how well cutting down dragons pays when you didn't think about transport, sellers, or interest," he jerked a thumb to the door.

"Glory fills the soul, thinking fills the pocket," another cheered in agreement. Quiss tuned them out to look at a darkened corner of the pub, a place where it seemed like the candles had been extinguished and someone had raised a silencing spell to block sounds as well as some blurring spell to obscure the documents on the table.

The people around this table numbered roughly six, wore mismatching pieces of armor, and looked to be drinking water or sticking to a light sandwich, unlike the others. Their eyes never left the table as they murmured at each other, even under the silencing spell, as if they still feared being overheard.

The aura they put out made Quiss' skin prickle unpleasantly.

He recognized only a few pieces of their equipment. Not a single one of them was wielding anything less than a brand new piece of equipment from a high numbered dungeon floor. Everything they wore or used looked to be new enough to not have any dings or bangs.

None of it seemed personal to the owners.

"Calcs give me the creeps," Ruli said, spotting what Quiss was looking at.

"Six is a lot for them," Quiss agreed. As far as he remembered, they didn't like to make up more than three at a time, each member using wildly different tools to avoid conflict when they performed their weird treasure hunting rules.

Calculators used to be just a branch of local bank branches, organizing and sorting different items in a logical manner. Quiss recalled his teacher had said they were there to help everyone ensure they were getting a fair price for their sales.

It was an innocent start.

Innocent until they had a group split off, taking their very important ledgers that stored what magic item or weapon performed slightly better or worse with them into the night.

Quiss guessed it had gone from a job to an obsession. He didn't quite remember why but they were completely focused on finding magical tools with infinite growth.

Quiss just didn't like them because they would sell their own mothers for a tiny improvement. Sure, Quiss would sell Ruli for a +4 peace and quiet, but that was only human. One of them looked up and looked at Quiss and his staff nearby. He pulled out a thick book and seemed to know exactly what page he wanted and then smirked as he whispered something to his friends.

It seemed they had decided Quiss's staff was of lesser make and thus… lesser value.

"I'm not sure why they're here," Ruli interrupted Quiss' sudden violent thoughts.

"What?" he blinked at her, having to sadly push away fantasies of setting their books on fire in front of them while laughing.

"Calcs only come running when news of rare or unique treasures come floating out. They don't' usually deviate from their 'farms,'" she said with distaste.

"It's a new dungeon; why wouldn't they come and milk it?" Quiss asked, focusing back on his booze. Ruli didn't look convinced.

"Because Calcs don't want hard work if there's a chance for no reward better than what they have. Calcs are lazy because they want to be sure they get something before they put the work in," she murmured.

"What? The joys of adventuring and trekking through mud for fun isn't enough for them?" Quiss asked sarcastically.

"Sadly not," came an oily voice, and Quiss didn't jump as Japes appeared before their table, holding a delicate cocktail glass with an olive on its rim.

"Stuck between you and them, my sense of right and justice can only take so much," Quiss grunted, and Japes seemed to take it as a compliment. The potter sipped his drink with glittering eyes.

"Calculators carry a sacred mission, don't you know?" he said easily, and Ruli leaned in.

"Oh?" she said with a tone that gave nothing away.

"When the golden queen fell to madness, not all of the bank was under happy management. I hear that the one that saw the golden queen as true took a leaf from some books and fled into the night. The perfect sword, the perfect shield, the perfect- so on and so on. They're more like a nomad research group at this point, indoctrinating their young and those they lure into their camps. I, personally, find such perfectionism in things like a 'sword' as beneath us as people but to each their own," Japes said conversationally.

"And how would you know that?" Quiss asked, eyes narrowing. Japes smiled and drained his glass, playing with the olive like a marble.

"I just happened to be making a deposit at the bank on that fateful day," he admitted and strolled off.

"Do you ever have the feeling that that man has caused more chaos in this world than most?" Ruli mused, and Quiss frowned.

Ruli noticed and stared at him.

"What?" she nudged him, and he slowly looked at her.

"The Golden Queen, Durence's mother… she was never 'stable,' but she didn't go off the deep end until a thief made his way into the castle and stole her fabled sword, right? That very day, she accused the bank of treason and also feeding the poor?" he asked slowly.

"Psh, and how would Japes stealing some magic sword affect anything? The man can barely enter a room without curling someone's hair in terror," Ruli waved him off.

Quiss wasn't so sure.

---

Yattina checked over the He-Ro robots, ensuring the G-Metal plates inside were fused with their black box safely. Even with her new rank, Yattina couldn't open the black box without permission.

The G-Metal shimmered, but there was a lot of internal damage due to their proximity to Delta. Yattina shivered as she stared into its dead eye, her stomach feeling tense as if remembering how one of these things stabbed her not long ago.

She continued to decommission the He-Ro units as best she could.

The piece of G-Metal continued to make her new eye feel strange. The pieces were both real yet undefined in terms of truth and mana. They looked like metal but were closer to the shed skin of some insect.

Their insides were hollow in terms of purpose. Something had discarded them, but Yattina really wanted to know what had caused these metals to exist.

She hummed in her lab as she opened a folder. It was one of the many new pieces of documentation she now had access to thanks to Caline's 'gracious' stepping down.

It was mostly information she had already presumed about the He-Ro units, but she had learned something new.

It seems the supply of the 'G-Metal' was not infinite. This surprised Yattina due to how much they had used in the construction of different projects. The metal was either in 'low supply' or 'in over abundance,' at any given time.

The original supply came from the tri-owner of Fairplay who stepped down many years ago. He had brought enough G-Metal to the table to construct the HQ, the machines they used, and a lot of other things like their portals.

Yattina squinted at the piece of paper. The names of the owners outside of Director Ripdoy were impossible to find, and on this paper, the person's name was only listed as 'Allota Crock.'

A clear codename.

Yattina hoped so anyway.

Who would use the name 'A lot of pots and containers' as a name? She reached over to open a mini-cooler by her desk, needing some refreshing pickled newt coffee, and accidently ripped the handle clear off the container.

Between the medical tools she used to help that Silver man and now this…

She was breaking everything thanks to her blooming core.

Someone had even asked her if she was going to get a Core Weapon, and the very idea repulsed her. She had just gotten this complete beautiful piece of herself back, and feeling it now?

Yattina just couldn't understand why anyone would want to tear it apart.

Her adorable student appeared at the entrance of her door, and he looked… shocked. On his chest was a glimmering two-fingered badge.

By the rules of the company, Yattina was required to have a second-in command, and since she only had Lim on her team, he had to get promoted. Someone pointed out that she could have gotten Caline the job and Yattina laughed in their face like a pig, needing to shuffle off before she began wheezing and looking undignified.

"I brought bagels and squirrel shoes," he said, and Yattina was impressed. The shoes were made of elder squirrels as well! Someone knew their monstrous rodents very well in this town.

Yattina had never bought herself anything aside from books as a luxury, but she decided to try something new for her promotion.

The problem was she had no clue what to get, and so she laid the task on her second-in-command.

"Where did you get the shoes?" she asked as she slipped them on. They were very comfortable.

"A crazy old woman was throwing things at that woman who guards the Dungeon. Ruli? I think they knew each other, and she threw the shoes at me and told me that if I was going to stare, I could at least look fashionable," Lim said, sounding a little numb at his experience.

"Lim?" Yattina began slowly, sipping some of her coffee that made her stomach ache, but her mind became alert.

"Hm?" Lim looked at her, ready for a lesson or a quiz.

"I never thanked you for coming to my aid in the Dungeon; you didn't have to do that," she said softly. It felt weird, to be actively reaching out to another human being and trying to convey her feelings to them.

Weird and a little scary.

"You're my captain! You know a lot of things, and you make me feel smart even though I get a lot of things wrong. I should be thanking you! No one else gave me the time of day," Lim beamed back, and Yattina blinked, trying to make a normal human response to such naked affection from someone.

"I appreciate the fact that two humans copulated together and created you. Hurray for reproduction!" she said, raising one hand into the air.

"Can we not mention my parents 'conjugating'?" he asked with a pained look, and Yattina snorted.

"Not what I said, but if it's conjugating, I can show you how that's done!" she offered, deciding some education wouldn't go amiss! Lim looked red in the face and backed up.

"I've never… conjugated or stuff!" he said in a panic.

"Nonsense, I'll conjugate with you," she said factually and pulled out some books to show the purpose of conjugating verbs. When she looked up, the space Lim had been occupying was empty, and her door was closing silently.

"You can't escape it! Everyone conjugates! It's natural!" she called after the fleeing boy.

Honestly, Yattina was getting better at this casual talk everyday. Soon, she'd be able to approach strangers in quick succession without making animal noises and fleeing for the shade.

On her table, the shining pieces of broken G-Metal shimmered.

---

Delta paused as a party stood outside Fran's boss room door. They had managed to put Fera to sleep with a gas and snuck past.

"Everyone, pre-plan buffs. I want full blessings, speed enhancement, fortitude potions down the hatch," the leader called as everyone began to empower themselves.

Delta put a hand to her mouth.

They should have really waited until they were in the room before using all this stuff…

Boss room passive activated: Scaling

Their buffs would wear off. Fran's increase would not.

Ah well, it was all a learning experience!

---