Koren sipped his beer, grimaced, then took another sip. “You have anything less… awful?”

I chuckled. “Not with alcohol in it.”

“How unfortunate.”

I held up a finger. “On second thought, I think I might.”

The rich girl that was one part of the menagerie that had gotten me into this mess of owning the store had a thing for gin and tonics.

I went into the small kitchen area and opened the freezer. The bottle of Hendrick’s left over from when she spent considerable time here was still there.

“Here you go,” I said back at the table, setting down a glass and pouring some for Koren.

He sniffed it. “Flowers?”

“Something like that.”

He took a tentative sip, shrugged slightly. “I like how cold it is.”

“Great. So, this woman. This Gold-ranker. You think she’s a problem for us?”

“Perhaps. It’s not so much that, as I wonder what she’s doing here, and how she managed to get here. This is a NewCiv, so there’s no way she’s from here. And during the grace period gateways are limited to Steel and below.”

“Oh, I think you mentioned that before. The lottery. Wait, the tower staff are higher. At least some of them.”

He nodded. “They can’t fight.”

“Uh, they killed that coral monster.”

“They can defend themselves, but they can’t seek out conflict, can’t loot things. They’re very limited in what they’re allowed to do.”

“I guess that explains why they let me loot it. Sort of. Still kind of weird. I mean, sure, they know me better than they know you two, but not by much.” I shook my head. “Okay so the gateways can’t be used by anyone above Steel. Are you sure she wasn’t just a really strong Steel?”

“She was no Steel. I’ve seen Gold-rankers before. If anything, she’s even stronger than that.”

“Stronger than a Gold-ranker? I thought it was the highest. What’s beyond Gold?”

“Rumors and myth.”

“Okay… So how is she here?”

“I don’t know. But it worries me. Gold may not seem like a lot, it’s only a few ranks above where you are, but you don’t know the gulf that exists between those ranks. The gap between even Silver and Gold is monumental.”

“I got a taste of that with that avatar.”

He downed his drink. “The avatar may have been Gold rank, but it wasn’t a true Gold-ranker. A true Gold-ranker is unimaginably powerful. So powerful that I don’t even know what it takes to reach Gold. The Titan-class monster, the dragon Rilen took control of, as powerful as that was, this woman could annihilate easier than I can do this.”

He squeezed, the glass shattering in his hand, spraying shards.

When he opened it, all that remained was a rough marble made from the glass that hadn’t sprayed over the table and floor.

“Why is everyone so destructive to my stuff?”

“The question is,” Koren said, ignoring me, rolling the ‘marble’ between his fingers, “what is she doing here, and how did she manage to bypass the restriction?”

I sighed, sliding over the bottle and taking a drink, hoping no glass had gotten inside. “Well, I imagine with the broadcasts, people know the tower is Titan-class now. And this is a new world. That attracts people, right?”

“NewCivs are an attraction,” he agreed, “but even with a Titan-class tower, it’s strange someone as powerful as she is would be here. What could possibly be so compelling that she would break the rules so severely?”

“Can’t the system just kick her out? It must know she’s here.”

“I don’t know. There are lots of treaties that limit what it can do. That’s even more true during grace periods. And what’s she doing in the woods? Why’d she subjugate Rilen? I didn’t see any particularly powerful monsters out there. Though, perhaps that is because she killed them already.”

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“I’m surprised she didn’t detect you.”

He shrugged, tossing the marble from one hand to the other. “She may have. But I’m an Iron, what threat am I to her?” He set the marble down, picked up the bottle of gin, drained it dry. “None at all.”

“Oh, that was a lot of alcohol. I hope you don’t get drunk easily.”

“I’ll be fine.” He closed his eyes, opened them, blinked, frowned. “After a few minutes.”

“Lightweight,” I joked.

“Vyrania, on the other hand. I’ve never seen someone so resilient to drink.”

I frowned. “You know, she was supposed to be back by now. According to my map, I think she’s upstairs. Not sure what she’s doing up there.”

He looked up at me, life returning to his eyes, then looked around the store as if realizing for the first time we were alone here. “We have to find her!” He shot up from his chair, sending it flying into the wall, whereupon it shattered.

I stared at it. “I’m gonna need stronger chairs.”

‌

∎ ∎ ∎

The second floor had no sign of Vyrania, despite her dot being right next to ours.

Koren looked up at the ceiling. “Roof?”

“Maybe. I do have roof access.”

“Vy?” Koren called once we were on the roof. He shook his head. “I don’t see her. Or her mana.”

I didn’t see her either, and my roof wasn’t exactly sprawling.

I studied my map more, wondering if it was correct. As I did, I could feel something, like needing to push mana, or activate something. I did so, and the representation became three-dimensional, spinning around so that the levels of my store were stacked in front of me.

“Oh. Weird. She’s not above us.”

Koren looked up into the sky. “Clearly. The wings we received wouldn’t work out here.”

“No, I mean, she’s not up here. Or inside the store. She’s below it.”

“Basement?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. I’m pretty sure I don’t have a basement. Feels like something I would know about. And her dot looks deep below ground.”

We went back downstairs, looking around my shop, stomping on the floor, trying to find a hidden basement.

“It’s weird that her dot isn’t moving,” I said.

“Perhaps she’s napping.”

“I thought you didn’t need sleep at your rank.”

“We do, just not the obscene amount you require.”

“Oh, right.” Vyrania had told me that at least once. Maybe twice. I rubbed my eyes. “I could use some sleep, it seems.”

“You do look exhausted.”

After our search for a hidden basement entrance bore no fruit, we headed outside, walking around the perimeter of the shop, examining the area for some indication of a way under the store.

“She’s here somewhere,” I said frustratedly. I felt like in a video game when you can see the destination on your minimap but can’t figure out the way to get to it.

An iron-grip seized my arm and I was pulled up short.

I looked to Koren, who was studying the ground in front of us.

“What?” I asked, then after a moment saw what he was looking at: a rock. Or, something like a rock. It was grayish, yet there was a spectral quality to it that I couldn’t pin down. “What is that?”

“I’m not sure,” he said thoughtfully. “It looks like a fracture.”

“Fracture? It looks like a weird rock to me.”

“It’s something that happens when people try to create gateways.”

“Like the one here?” I gestured in the direction of the gateway I’d checked out earlier with Semermen, the one I could see only on my map.

“No, that is created by The Corporation. I’ve never seen one of theirs go wrong. It’s when others try to replicate it. I’m surprised it’s still here. They’re usually swiftly eliminated. Along with the ones responsible.”

He looked at me.

“Don’t look at me. I didn’t do it. Maybe it was that Gold-ranker you saw.”

Since it looked so strange, I opened my manasight and examined it. At first I didn’t see anything. Then I did, all at once.

“What did you just do?” Koren asked.

“Looked at it with manasight.”

He frowned. “You shouldn’t be able to sense it at all with your manasight.”

I shrugged. “I think I saw something like this before, though it looked a little different. That one was invisible to my manasight. Semermen called it an aberration.”

Koren, who wasn’t moving, somehow seemed to still further.

“What?” I asked.

“Nothing,” he said unconvincingly.

“Why do you seem worried? I don’t like it when you’re worried. It means something really bad.”

“Fractures happen when someone tries to open a gateway. They’re not dangerous, though sometimes with the right abilities or items you can use them to your advantage or even to access the nether. But aberrations are different. They can be very dangerous. This one looks stable though.”

“How can you tell?”

“It hasn’t swallowed us yet.”

I took an involuntary step back.

“If it was going to do it, it would have by now.”

“Then why do you still seem worried?”

“It’s just, they sometimes… warp areas.”

“Okay? Care to expand?”

“The safe zone might not be so safe anymore. Because, it’s not part of the same zone. It’s not even part of the same civ.”

“Oh great. Just when I was feeling safe.”

“It’s too small to matter. For now.”

“I thought you said it looked stable.”

“For now,” he repeated, then shrugged, heading off to inspect the ground near the store for any secret entrances.

“You’re far too cavalier about danger,” I called after him.

“I do what I can about what I can with what I have and don’t worry about anything else.”

I studied the aberration for a bit longer, then shrugged.

Koren was right. Nothing I could do about it.

I went further around back, the air suddenly growing cool as I entered into a long shadow.

I looked up at the source: the tower jutting up out of the back of my store. Its base wasn’t quite as hard to see as the rest of it, and actually had what looked like moss growing on it. Which was odd, seeing as how it had only been there for a day or two.

As I stared at it, I noticed a pattern.

I pointed. “What’s that?”

Koren, who was on hands and knees crawling along the outside of my store, knocking on the wall, stopped and looked at me. “It’s the tower we were so recently expelled from.”

“I know that. But there’s something there.” I tried looking at it with my manasight and was nearly blinded.

I stumbled back, covering my eyes. Which didn’t actually help.

Koren steadied me, having covered the distance between us already. He was staring at the base, grinning.

“Oh no,” I said. “If you’re happy, this is going to suck, isn’t it?”

“My dear boy, I do believe you’ve discovered a dungeon.”