Corvayne strode into New Kansas bar, moving seamlessly from a bright exterior thrumming with music into a dark place where the vibrations became twangy beats. He wasn't sure where it was was between electronic and country music, but it sure wasn't dancing music as all of the patrons of the bar or club were seated in dim booths, lit by a variety of neon beer signs. Corvayne was second in, Big Red having told him to stay close, but it felt like every eye in the bar was on them. Corvayne guessed forty people, a mix of 'mortals' or and a few that his senses picked up as dangerous in some way. Not that he needed to find new enemies: He could feel the Horsespit trio's eyes on him as he settled into a stool one down from Big Red.

He gestured for Bombshell to take a seat between them. The barkeeper looked over at him, and it was a little odd to look away and back and see the same middle aged man there rather then an entirely different gender and species. Corvayne did his best to keep his poker face.

"Water. I'm the designated detainee."

Bombshell laughed too loud at the joke, bending over at the bar. [[Unity]] had a small spike of displeasure followed by the man seeing a whole conga line of brown robed disciples filing in, then interest at the titanic truck now blocking the street in front of the bar. A mug of water slid his way, as did the Horsespit trio.

Corvayne met their rather displeased eyes, but they filed past him without comment or action. Still, he kept his eyes on them, and they all had their eyes on him. It was just like old times. The whole world vs Corvayne. He'd just do what he did before in the village; Keep his head down. That meant getting the attractive woman paying him too much attention to latch onto someone else and slipping out of the bar for a few minutes before one of the three sect goons picked a fight with him. Or any number of people at the bar who had tiny pinpricks of... what? Jealousy? A few hints of interest. No danger sense, yet, but he was going to have try something risky to get some time to actually communicate with Gylwin. Even if it was as simple as sneaking out of a bathroom.

The problem was he'd be going past the trio to get there. So he planned his route as he sipped water and watched the other acolytes start spending the little savings the sect gave them on cheap booze. One of the shovel pushers had a guitar he stored in his hat, which Corvayne guessed was a storage device, and started strumming along with the piped in music. He wasn't bad, but he wasn't great. Maybe Corvayne didn't like country music? Oh, there was a girl with a positive feeling that the boy on stage was connected strongly with, she was clapping and whistling to him. They probably were a couple.

One of the Horsespit boys, the spindly one, grabbed a handful of unopened peanuts and tossed them at the stage, hard enough to disrupt the song and nearly knock the musician off his stool. Corvayne, trained on books and movies, expected everyone to start swinging, but the guy and his girl just laughed and he hopped off the stage to sit across from her. Corvayne focused on the link for a few minutes and caught nervousness. They were NOT a couple yet, but should be?

Bombshell was asking him something and Corvayne had to mentally rewind the conversation. Something about what floor he was from.

"Zero."

"You are pulling my leg handsome!" She said with a laugh, leaning into his shoulder.

"No Ma'am." He turned back to his water, as if he was lost in deep thoughts. She kinda reminded him a little of Seru before she had started growing. Not as crude, but still coming on too strong. Big Red took a sip, and Corvayne turned a little to meet his gaze.

"I came from Minus five all the way up. Grew up in a dungeon town, you know. Sect founder Dusky Creekwood himself passed through town, and I had the gall to ask him to train. Well, he handed me a shovel and told me 'Show me you won't hurt yourself with this and then we'll think about an unloaded flying sword.' and here I am, a few hundred years later, handing you young firehides a bunch of shovels."

Bombshell started telling a yarn about hitchhiking up from floor 20 trying to make it as a singer or dancer, and she was down on her luck before she joined up a few years back.

"I probably would have quit shoveling and gone home, but I wasn't raised to be no quitter." She flashed her eyelashes at Corvayne, but he just nodded and turned around to put his back to the bar.

"It's not quitting if your homesick."

"Are you homesick? Miss your folks?" She leaned in and put a hand on his arm, which caused Big Red to clear his throat. The old Walrus was annoyed at Corvayne. He'd have to flip that link, he needed them distracted.

"Well, Boss Bramble here reminds me of my pop. Man of few words, but said them loud and meant em, and you listened and tried to do right by him, and sometimes he was hard...” Corvayne mentally tried to remember the sort of cowboy novel speeches dusty guys gave about dads they hated. For some reason it was not very hard. “... but he was a man who thought if you can keep your chin above water when it's hard, well, I figure you can keep your chin above water the rest of the time too. Isn't that what he taught you too, Miss Bombsh-Miss Hill?"

He was so used to throwing links that he did a little flip, moving some of the hunger and attention that was his way, both by concentration and his own words, causing the blonde to look back at the old geezer who had a crush on her.

"Ya know? It's kinda funny, I've worked in the stables a long time but I hardly talked to you... can I call you Red?"

Big Red Bramble's smile could split a log, and he puffed his chest out while taking a drink, probably trying to remember a few good lines that didn't involve telling someone to shovel faster or they'd be pulling the tool out of their ass, which was his go-to it seemed. Instead, the man rallied, perhaps taking Corvayne's queue to go quiet and mysterious. Corvayne was sort of copying Grunt when he was at a bar, who probably learned it from someone else. Not that it mattered, it was starting to work.

"I don't mind. But you know, talking about home... lotta hard memories... friends we buried with their hats and boots."

Corvayne pretended to pay rapt attention, mostly to make sure every time Bombshell looked back he was sufficiently boring that she'd keep looking at Red who was talking about his moms monster soup, and how his father got injured one season of migration in the dungeon when a Goataxe pushed him into a trap that had spawned in the searing area, and that he was forced to leave the safe area-

He felt a tug on his work shirt and saw one of the girls, one of Big Bessie's brushers, the quiet one, make a little gesture off to a table. Corvayne shrugged and gave Big Red a nod, which the man barely noticed as he stared off into space while giving Bombshell the side eye.

He was tempted to speak like a Fistful of Daoer and say 'What can I do ya for?' but he was not a cowboy, no matter how much time he spent in the desert.

"Can I help you? Corvayne." He stopped a little short to keep her from taking him too far from the bar. She moved over to a table then looked around nervously before gesturing for him to sit. Corvayne did not.

"Bi-You." She stated her name. "Don't get involved with Bombay. She's trouble."

No crush, or hunger, or hint of lies. Just concern. He was surprised to realize he saw it in her face and tone, and that [[Unity]] was more checking his work then just giving him answers.

"No worries. I know exactly what sort of trouble she is going to bring, and I'm trying to pass it off to Red, to be honest." Corvayne's eyes saw two of the three Horsespit cousins drinking and talking hunched into each other, but not the third. He moved to put his back to a support by the booth.

"No, I mean... bad things seem to happen when she's around."

Corvayne shrugged. "I don't plan on being around her, unless she moves up to guard duty. You know I'm due back in my cell after this little adventure."

"You are a prisoner? ... ah, so that's why they gave you strawberry pants."

Corvayne forgot he was wearing them. "Correction, that's why they let me keep them. But you said bad things?"

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

"Some guy she was interested in and fooled around with her? Got kicked by the Spool spider the next day."

Corvayne nodded. "There's lots of warnings around the pens for the reason."

"You don't get it, they didn't need them! All our animals are intelligent and have been tamed for years or even decades."

"Okay. What happened to him?"

"He got sick, couldn't keep up with recruitment, killed himself. At least that's the story."

"I'm guessing there's more?" He looked at her then kept his eyes moving. Third Cousin... came back from the bathroom. He relaxed a little.

"Yeah, another boyfriend got run over by a shit cart that somehow got out of control. They blamed one of the monsters kicking it..."

"But Bombay was also there. Let me guess, he vanished or died?"

"They said he washed out, but I-" There was a hesitation. Oh. She liked guy number 2. "He would have wrote. I'm looking for him, because he's from Neo Nashville. I don't think there's another place he would go."

"Anything else?"

"A stage-hand turned cultivator drowned while skinny dipping.” Guess that's what they called Tower-Folk. “Two years ago, a one-in-a-billion named monster tore a guy apart. There's other people who just... go away... when she's around."

"Maybe Big Red is taking out his competition?" Corvayne tried to sense malus but the man was distracted from him. A possible way to beat unity? If you're not really thinking about it, you can't emote towards it.

"No. Senior Bramble is only on the floor... I mean he's only present at the bottom run of the stables because of something Master Cumberland asked him to do. He usually only walks our area once a month."

His fault probably that he was more hands on then before. "Okay. I have never been interested in dating Bombay, I already got two girlfriends and an 'it's complicated' I'm juggling. Also, since you were kind enough to warn me, I can try to find your friend. Assuming that we don't have Boss Bramble drag me back the moment I step out of the bar. How attentive is he?"

She looked over at the bar, and Corvayne saw him drinking booze out of a glass boot the size of a bazooka.

So at least for a while he had some room, it looked like. And he did sort of want to solve a little mystery about Bombshell, or at least help a lovesick girl get over it. Maybe meet her old flame?

“Looks like he'll give us an opening. If he's near, we can find him.”

She blinked, then her eyes narrowed. "Are you trying to trick me into becoming a hostage?"

"Every single cultivator in this bar, you included, and even a few of the 'mortals' are higher level then me." He did not mention that he spent a lot of time training against a level 200 plus super spider assassin. He was going to reveal how well he fought when he was strolling out the door, so to speak.

Bi-You looked over to the bar and pointed at one of the other shovel jockeys, one of the nicer ones who didn't give Corvayne too much shit for accidentally hitting them with a fine spray of cow-pie. Dilligent too, as the guy always came in with bleached white robes, even if they didn't last long.

Sensing the attention almost, the young man looked over and stood up, taking another sip of his water. Corvayne gave him a few more points. There was more then a 0 percent chance this entire operation was some sort of trap to get disciples drunk then punish them the next day for indulging. Water was the right choice for the first outing.

Looking at the boy, he figured the kid was probably in his teens, not at the point where stats locked aging, yet also looked much older. Some of it was how carefully he got off his stool, and how he walked with a slight limp in a leg, or the faint sense of loss that [[Unity]] hinted at. Corvayne shifted his visison, and essence sight instantly pointed out points of energy flowing through the boy that looked like they had been chewed on by a squid (Mr Squidgglesworth had a certain amount of destruction that, from a guide he picked up on a tower run, was just something young squids had when bored). The same way a bored pet might rip up loose cords, something worked the kid over internally and snapped a few lines.

As if reading his mind, Bi-you spoke. "Little Spur had his cultivation crushed by his rival after his fiancee betrayed him and they left him for dead, but even though his old master kicked him out, he was welcome in our sect. He HAD been called a young genius in the Red Line Blade Sect, but now he's stuck down on this floor."

"This is as high a floor as I've ever been on."

"Oh right, sorry. I forgot your a mortal."

"We are all mortal in one way or another." Corvayne mused as the boy joined them.

"Greetings Corvayne-of-the-Stables." Up close, Corvayne noticed the was a little area where essence sight was blocked on his finger. Probably some artifact ring... for a faint moment Corvayne was sure there was an extra person at the table, but his hackles fell. Clearly the kid was probably also using some weird non-standard system that essence didn't like.

Bi-you had a small flash of attraction towards the boy, but smothered it under worry for her original boyfriend. Spur was a little wary of them, to which Corvayne formed a link and soothed a little bit with honest intentions. There was also something else, a sideways attention. Maybe something like the Gylwin fragment in his own head?

The girl looked between them. "Corvayne thinks he can find Knot-Loop-Lace."

"I have a talent that lets me find things. Meet me out front." He refined his compass to Knot-Loop-Lace's name and got a pretty good bearing about two miles off, somewhat back the way they came. The upgrade also offered some help with navigation and was pointing to the bathroom. Corvayne started striding very quickly towards the men's room.

The heavy oak door, opened to a dingy white tile floored bathroom with all sorts of barn wood and rusted signs decorating the walls. It kinda reminded him of his prison cell, given the stalls had longer saloon doors. If he had his storage ring, he'd have stolen one to get slightly more privacy. He paused a moment and took a leak, then washed his hands.

He was moving towards the wall to see if he could squeeze through the window when the bathroom door slammed against the wall.

The Three Horsespit cousins strolled in, spurs clicking against the tile, and at least one of them cracking his knuckles.

"Well, well, well, if it ain't the shit slinger himself, Corn-pain."

That stopped Corvayne a moment from just diving through the window. "Yes? Why would you act like it's a surprise? You saw me go into the bathroom and followed me. You also could have just talked to me in the bar."

The looked at each other.

"Well, we noticed you've been paying a lot of attention to Miss Hill... if you know whats good-"

"She is all yours."

"Huh?" Corvanye thought it was the thin one that blurted it out, as he was looking at his cousins for backup. Unity was telling him this wasn't how it was supposed to go in the three's minds.

"I'm literally trying to run away from her. I don't want to fight you. You can go tell the bar you kicked my ass, I don't care." He was confident he'd win for some reason, even though he knew they had a speed and strength advantage. Something about them felt small.

"Listen, little level 30. A fight? With US? You'd be dead in two seconds flat. Us boys didn't get carried up to this floor. We-"

Corvayne was bored. He spun and jumped, using Gravity to hang for a moment as flipped the latch on the window, then used [Cross Skill: Flows-Like-Water] to slip out the small space it occupied. He landed with a thud on the wet concrete outside the bar, the cooling night air a shock after all day in warm places. He looked both ways in the dingy alleyway, then jogged towards the lights and huge back wheel of the truck, meeting up with Bi-You and Little Spur.

Bi-you grabbed the sleeve of his work shirt. "Corvayne, be careful, the Horsespit cousins are-"

"Are probably on their way." He simply walked around a tire under the truck, and heard scrambling footsteps back towards the alley. Did one of them say 'He musta gone that a-way?'. Maybe. He stepped out from the truck tire and lead Little Spur and Bi-you over to the crowd out front of the next bar, all at the same casual speed of everyone else moving between bars on the street.

Once the bars and crowd vanished he switched to [[Agility]] to run, ramping up as Little Spur showed he could move quickly for at least a short burst of a few blocks.

They were now away from the bright lights of the bars. Near them was a dark office for a plant of some sort, lit blue-green by artificial lights and with red glowing lights. The sound of music had faded as he guided them to a place they could slow for a moment on a walking path near a nearly dry drainage river.

He let his compass point to where the trio was, and they seemed to be going the wrong way. Snapping back to his target, it was pointing to a fenced off area on the other side of the stream. There were lights coming from facilities inside the fenced area, scattering through the fall woods forming lines of white and black.

"Sorry, you had to slow down because of me." Little Spur bowed and Corvanye waved it away. He was looking for what his pathing was trying to get him to, aside from the bridge.

"Don't sweat it. You seem like a decent guy." He switched back to [[Vitality]] and strolled across the bridge, taking a moment to glance behind them and make sure he didn't see a trio of angry cowboy cultivators three blocks down, or Big Red. He compass checked his would-be parole officer and the man was almost dead straight in the direction of the bar, and there only the tiniest change moving it to Bombshell.

How nice was it to be able to use it to track potential enemies!

Over the bridge, across a street running along the fence and into patchy grass, Corvanye found a hole that had been ripped into the fence. The crunching under his feet of dry leaves bothered him from a stealth perspective. On a hunch, he looked upwards and saw Gylwin's red eyes roll before she vanished.

Bi-You pointed to a sign. "Najamura Heavy Mana Chemical Co? He's in the plant?"

It would explain why it smelled a little like gunpowder. Corvayne gingerly stooped his head and stepped through the gap in the chain link fence, waiting for the others while he paced back and forth and breathed onto his hands to warm them up, his mind using the few steps to guess how far the quarry was.

"It's not pointing at the building." Corvayne felt his stomach drop. The marker wasn't moving. Hopefully they'd find him sleeping in the woods.

Bi-You was practically pushing at his back, while Little Spur was clearly distracted by something, to the point that he drew a thin blade, no hostile intent leaking. "Corvayne, there is something here."

Should he bother trying to lie? No point. "You should be able to sense the thing hanging near us isn't hostile."

The boy mumbled something, then slowly lowered his weapon. "If it sneaks, it has something to hide."

He could feel irritation from Bi-You that he wasn't moving faster, so Corvayne crunched through the leaves, moving around trees and only slowing to make sure that Little Spur wasn't pushing himself to hurt his leg more.

He stopped when he spotted overturned dirt with a withered hand sticking out of, as if to just drive the point home that their quarry was dead. Before he could try to prepare Bi-you, she stepped impatiently around him, and in what felt like a half second she went from grumbling about slow mortals to falling to her knees and gasping as she put a hand on the dirt.

Corvayne looked at Little Spur. "That hand looks like it was mummified. It could be my power has the wrong...."

"Is it ever wrong?" The cultivator said quietly, giving him perhaps the first real look eye to eye. The clarity in his gaze made Corvayne respond in kind.

"No." Corvayne said firmly as the girl they were with started wailing upon finding a dirt encrusted copper necklace, one she produced a match of from around her own neck. The smell of the shallow grave was a strange sort of mix of blood and something savory that reminded him of Grunt's take out.

He took a step back to avoid having his stomach growl, and cast a glance back and up into a tree to which he raised an eyebrow. Gylwin's face appeared with her extra spider eyes a moment later, but they closed and she shook her head before she blurred back into invisibility. Not her work. No easy answers.

Little Spur, looking at the weeping girl and the dead body, matched Corvayne's thoughts at the moment. "Well... shit."