It was the last afternoon before they planned on leaving for the sixth floor when there was a knock at their door, the first they had heard since they got there.
“Huh.” Tulland looked up from the ground, where they had been playing a game of stones with actual stones they had harvested from the river. “Think we should answer that?”
“Probably. Right now, we have every system protection we’ll ever get,” Necia said. “Can’t get better than that.”
“And if it’s a danger, we’d be better off knowing about it. Fine.” Tulland struggled to his feet. “I was losing anyway.”
Tulland cracked open the door to see a very small, very nervous looking hooded man standing there, glancing left and right as he nervously clasped a package to his chest.
“Hello? How can I help you?” Tulland asked.
The man noticed the door was open then, and looked directly through it and through Tulland like he wasn’t even there.
“I… If you are there, princess, I can’t see you. There’s some kind of enchantment on this place.”
“Oh, for the love of the sun. Fine.” Tulland stuck out his arm, put it on the man’s shoulder, and pushed him gently out of the way before exiting the privacy protections of his house.
“Oh, there you are. They said you would be,” the man said.“Who?” Tulland looked around. He had taken great pains to keep the number of people he knew in this place down to three. One of was a friend who was attempting a floor, one of them was a known murderer they were trying to avoid, and one of them was a part-time shop keep. “Because there are only a few people that could have told you and most of them are bad news for me.”
“It’s nothing like that. I promise. I really do.” The man swept aside his cloak to reveal what was either a very short sword of a very long dagger, mounted on his belt just opposite a leather bag. It was the bag he went for first, luckily. “It’s just they were saying… there was a princess who lived here, and her monkey. And that she’d buy anything. And nobody wants to buy this.”
“I’m the monkey, I guess?” Tulland asked.
“I guess.” The man looked embarrassed. “Anyway, it’s this that I’m trying to sell.”
From the bag came an object much bigger than the bag should have been able to hold, a sort of mushy, fibrous thing that had a certain might be meat feel about it that Tulland didn’t like at all, particularly as the thing, whatever it was, was gently pulsing in the man’s hand.
“Pulled it out of some kind of lizard of the seventh. You know the seventh. It’s randomly created to suit the person challenging it, so you probably won’t see one of these again,” the man explained.
“One of these what?” Tulland asked.
“One of these… honestly, I’ve been calling it the meatrock. Watch.”
The man set the big lump of horror on the ground and pulled his dagger, something Tulland’s danger reflex hated but that he avoided reacting to, if only because it clearly wasn’t aimed at him. The man made several quick swipes at the rock, each of which barely left a scratch.
“So you can’t cut it? It’s just as big as it is?”
“Basically, yes. I’m a speed class, so I don’t know for sure that someone stronger couldn’t cut it. I just know I can’t.” The man looked up at Tulland with hope. “Anyway. I have no use for it. I was kind of hoping that… You know. I could get something for it. Anything, really.”
Tulland hated this thing. It was the weirdest, most bury-me-in-a-field-and-never-return looking object he had ever seen. He was entirely unsurprised that the man had been unable to sell it to anyone else, and Tulland himself wanted to kick the man off his porch as soon as possible with firm, unmistakable instructions to never return.
Except for Farmer’s Intuition. Dammit. It’s going crazy.
Inside him, every bit of the skill that guided his farming decisions was absolutely screaming for this thing. It had to have it. It would be enraged at him if he didn’t say yes to the man. For the first time, Tulland doubted the nature of his own skill, honestly wondering if it might be trying to trick him into some horrible mistake. But if it was, he was in big trouble anyway. Any time his skills chose to betray him, he’d just die. There was no point in doubting them so long as he couldn’t change that fact.
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“What do you want to get for it?” Tulland asked.
“No idea. Anything useful. Generally useful is the best. Weapons, single-use defensive items…”
“Food?”
“Food works if you have it. It would have to be a lot.” The man pulled himself up to his full, not-that-impressive height in what Tulland thought was an attempt to look strong and trustworthy. “You know. Because there’s only one.”
“Ah.” Tulland kicked the meatrock doubtfully. “I might be able to work something out. With the princess, I mean. Could you wait here?”
“Oh? Absolutely. Yes. Please ask her.” The man plopped down on one of the chair-like objects in the yard. “I’ll wait.”
Tulland walked back through the door to find a Necia who looked very much like she had just got done with a round of laughing herself into tears, and who seemed like she was just about to start another one.
“What?” Tulland asked.
“Nothing. It’s nothing.” Necia wheezed. “Nothing I’d expect my monkey to understand.”
“I was hoping you wouldn’t hear that.”
“Of course I heard it. I’m only few feet away, Tulland. Although I think asking you to estimate the distance might be a little unfair.”
“Necia.”
“Too hard on your simian mind.”
“I’m going now,” Tulland said. “You have fun in here.”
“Oh, I will. Is that thing really worth buying?”
“Maybe. Farming stuff.”
“Farming stuff. Right. Well, let me know. I’ll just be in here trying to figure out where we can get banana seeds,” Necia laughed. “You know, for my monkey.”
Tulland shook his head and stepped back out into the daylight.
“She says we could trade for this.” Tulland watched the man’s eyes light up as he pulled out one of the trading packs of food he had been making that week. After figuring out that the briar fruits could be more or less dried, he had been taking to mixing them with the grains, creating food that was not all that great but would certainly keep a person alive. “But you have to sweeten the pot somehow.”
“I would if I could, but I don’t have anything else.” The man’s shoulders slumped as he looked at a week’s worth of provisions slipping through his fingers. “Just my gear and this.”
“Then I don’t think we can do business.”
“Oh! Wait!” The man jumped up and caught Tulland’s arm as he turned to go back inside the house. “I forgot. I have information, if that’s your thing. It was a bigger deal on my world than it is here, but I think it’s still valuable.”
“What kind of information are we talking about?” Tulland asked.
“Floors, especially the sixth,” the man claimed.
“Personal experience?”
“Better. Ancestral knowledge.”
Tulland blinked.
“You’re going to have to break that down for me,” Tulland said.
“I’m a Spymaster. It’s a hard class to explain, but it’s popular on my world. We gather information, on opponents and the world. The information we gather makes us more effective with both. And we have skills related to sharing information, or hiding it.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning that went I got here, I found a sign that previous Spymasters had been here, and that sign led me to a secret deposit of information. Diaries, accounts, that kind of thing. Centuries worth.”
“Lots of them, it sounds like?”
“Don’t get too excited because most of the information was redundant. Let’s just say that it looks like Spymaster stops being a very effective class for climbing the tower after the seventh level, and I have no idea why. That’s why I want to sell this. Any little advantage might help me move a bit further.”
“Alright.” Tulland tossed over the food pack. “Tell me what you know about the sixth floor, I guess.”
“I’ll do better than that.” The man focused for a moment, then looked back to Tulland. “You should have got a notification.”
Ley Raditz is requesting permission to share information. This information sharing is protected under the safe zone regulations and, as part of a transaction, is guaranteed to be accurate to the best of his knowledge. Accept?
“You’re called Ley Raditz?” Tulland asked.
“The one and only.”
Tulland accepted the request, and immediately got another pop-up, this one informational in the style of normal system descriptions of things and places. He glanced at it for a few moments, confirmed it was good, and looked back to Ley.
“Good. Nice doing business with you. And, Ley? If you find more information, we’d probably buy it. At good prices.”
“I’ll consider it. Good luck, Tulland.”
“Good luck to you.”
Odd guy.
Determined. He’s right that his class isn’t very well suited to advancing. It was never meant to be a solo combat class in that way.
Oh, it’s that weak? What’s it for normally?
Not weak, Tulland. Powerful in ways not limited by the individual. The Spymaster can fight, but its primary purpose is supporting armies. A single Spymaster can make an entire fighting force better. Their value is incalculable.
And they let one come here?
Every world, Tulland, is a different place. And there’s no telling who that man was, on his. He could be a great hero, or a convict escaping a worse punishment. It hardly matters.
That’s nonsense. Of course it matters!
It mattered there. Here, the only thing that matters is how far he will delve into the dungeon, and what he’s willing to do to push just a bit further. And, as on all worlds, what he manages to send back for the betterment of all.
Not all worlds, though. We know that.
Do we?
I mean, whatever you are doing isn’t for the betterment of all.
No? Ah, yes. I’m something sinister. Something horrifying. But tell me this, Tulland. What did I actually do? What were my specific crimes, as you understand them?
Well, you…
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