Dennis was holed up in the room of an inn, organizing his thoughts on what they could do here. Dennis has finished sealing the area, preventing it from ever being seen. A set of potted plants, ones from the Goddess’ mini-forest surrounded him. Next he needed to figure out their next step.

So before they strategizing, he needed to see what they had on hand. He pulled a little rope with nine wooden beads attached to one end. It had a frayed end as if the rope snapped and pulled apart from something.

Nine-fold treasure of a nameless monk

Artifact, Fabled, Soulbound

Immutable. Allows one to store nine objects of any property, be it weight, size, or dimensional orientation.

Current objects stored (5/9):

-Yinu (locked)

-Port City Magia Kapool (locked)

-Corpse of Yi Goronac, the depraved god

-Devourer System

-A piece of true nothingness (locked)

“What sustains me is abound to me, I have nothing else to want” - A nameless monk

Dennis was carrying the things they needed to trade in Korilstadt in the rope, specifically the corpse and the system. It is bound to him, a gift from someone that constantly escapes recall. Everything inside the rope took literal decades of planning to acquire. It was okay though, establishing good relations with the people of Korilstadt was worth it. After all most heroes have ties to this place.

What he contained in the rope were four of the ten objects that started the whole age of chaos and the corpse of the god who played a huge part in it.

One artifact filled with the weight of history was Yinu, the righteous mother of twin stars. One barely alive, and hurt by a group called the arcana, the old one, the first one, the one’s who made sure everyone on his side was dead. They were beasts in their own right, almost reaching godhood, almost.

Another was the port city of Magia Kapool, a relic of the past better left forgotten. Despite being called a city the place could dwarf planets in size. Even just taking it out would result in insurmountable casualties, the heat, energy, and displaced matter would cause an extinction bigger than ‘the four days of silence’, an even where hundreds of sentient species just died. Not even the Godess of death knows what happened.

The third was the devourer system, one of the elusive paths to power heroes acquire. No amount of animancy or magecraft could take it away from them. Dennis wanted nothing of it though. He saw the terror that befell on the one who used to have it. No amount of power would be worth such sorrow. So once they had someone take interest on such a thing, he was happy to get rid of it. If anyone could control a system like this, it would be the people of Korilstadt.

Fourth was the piece of true nothingness. It’s actually useless to anyone else but the most curious of mages. It is as it’s name suggests nothing, not void or empty space, but actual nothing. No space is inside it. It’s one of his greatest treasure and he never leaves anywhere without it. It is perfect in measuring properties and states of practically anything at all, since it could be used as to compare the status of real and unreal objects.

The last one was not an artifact, but the corpse of a god. One that his Godess led him to. One of the things that helped him become a divine lich in the first place. The Divinity of godhood meant the ability to establish a rule, it could be anything and any concept at all. This one still has an echo of a meaning, one that cannot be removed even when the one who bore it has left. Being a God does not necessarily mean they are above reality or are incredibly powerful, it just means that they have such weight imposed into the world that it’s almost impossible to scrub all remnants of their presence. It could only be changed into another form.

Given the things Korilstadt wants, it’s safe to say that they are attempting to make a god themselves, specifically the republic itself. A country as a sentient God. Dennis would have never believed such a ridiculous claim before or even scoffed at anyone foolish enough to attempt it. Yet here he is, being the courier to such a project. Maybe he was wrong with his presumptions. Maybe they might know what they were doing.

How exciting!

Dennis unlatches a small sack from his chest. The box containing his shadow copies fell out. As it tried to fill the space between his fingers, he let go and it expanded almost touching the walls but never making contact. It was one of the best things his students ever made. Basically nothing could touch the object as it shifted it’s size to slip past any harm caused by baryonic matter.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

If it is in between an object and another, say two particles in the air, the box simply displaces itself and this effect activates when it detects anything with a certain density threshold, like skin, blood, or bones. mana, heat or plasma basically ignores the box.

It cost a lot of his personal cash and time to make something like this, in turn though, he had the best decoy anyone could ask for. He spent months cutting back on high quality souls for his upkeep and starved himself with runnerbird and instant mass produced souls. It was equivalent to what passing adventurers call instant noodles. He had to spend months using the instant noodle version of souls.

Back to the point though. Instead of pursuing them and impeding their escape, pursuers would instead try to catch the colorful shape changing impossible to grab box with a very vicious surprise inside. He calls it a red-herring box.

Now he just needed to find a way for Judith and him to acquire the most important thing, the reason why they came here in the first place. They needed a place to build ‘the Bar’.

He had a secret contact, a liaison if you will. He took out a roll of cloth from the small sack in his chest reverting to it’s original size. It had prepared markings sown into it allowing communication with the person who had a similar cloth made from the same thread as it. Fortunately one person had it, his elvish liaison, Benny, which is short for Bennival Elijhas.

He laid the cloth flat as the symbols glowed with a green light.

*Riing*

*Riiing*

*Riiing*

*Riiiiing*

Dennis was tapping his foot in impatience. He silently wondered if he took the wrong sigil.

*Riiiing*

-We're sorry; you have reached a sigil that has been disconnected or is no longer in service. If you feel you have reached this recording in error, please check the sigil and try your ritual again

Damn it. May be he just needs to position the cloth a different way. He tried putting it on a table while standing on top of a chair. He flattened out any creases in the cloth making sure it’s totally flat. Okay, one more time.

*Riiing*

*Riiiing*

“Hello?”

Dennis slightly hightened his voices pitch and loosened his throat.

“Hi, Mr. Elijhas this is the assistant of Den’nishash Gahlor. I was wondering if you had the list of open lots for sale for the inspection. We’d like a copy of the area, location, and plumbing capacities if that wouldn’t be too much of a bother.”

“Oh um *sniff*, hold on”

[Sounds of shifting paper followed by a loud sound of shattering glass]

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, yeah! I’m uhh I’m alright. Right um I’ll send a copy right away. Do you have a ritual circle nearby?”

“Give me a second” Dennis took out a circular ring of cloth that perfectly fit the outer edges of the sigil marked cloth on the table. He slid it over the top then heard a slight zapping sound. “All set”

“Great, I’m sending it over”

A green light pulsed over the cloth. A stack of papers slowly materialized above it. The papers contained the full list of potential locations that could house a bar away from prying eyes.

“Thanks so much! I’ll wire the gold to your bank account!” Just before Dennis was about to fold the cloth circle, a desperate voice called back.

Wait! wait! wait! Don’t put the call down just yet.

“Hmm?”

It’s just that umm could you put in a good word for me out there man? See the housing market is kind of a bust right now. Working as a realtor isn’t really putting food on the table anymore and I was wondering if Necra Mazoul had any accountant positions available.

“I mean you do make a good liaison, and I’m pretty sure you could make it out there on your own. Why?”

“Um”

“... Was it your wife benny? The one you keep telling me about in almost every conversation?” Even though I keep trying to bring up other topics. If only he wasn’t so good at his job, he’d have replaced this guy in a heartbeat.

“I*sob* it’s just *sobbing sounds* It’s just been so hard lately man. [sound of liquid being drunken out of a bottle] I just found out that my wife was actually umm a guy. She, I mean he, found out that he was one. I still love him and I want the best for him, so I decided to save up for the housing and the sex-change. I wanna surprise him with my own cash and not mooch off of him.

“He’s rich and all and I don’t want to seem like a burden. But work just isn’t paying the same as before, and with all the budget cuts happening finding a new job isn’t really viable. *Sob* [sound of liquid being emptied from a bottle] And with the upheaval in adventuring sanctions going around the different dungeon systems caused a wave dungeon towers that suddenly arrived.

“I just want to seem a bit less pathetic is all.”

Dennis really wanted to put down the call, but hearing his self-loathing is something Dennis could empathize with. But hearing a liaison trauma dump his issues to him ticked him off in a way, but he shouldn’t do that. It would hurt Benny’s feelings. Damned it.

“*Sniff*You see I took this job cause I thought maybe I could leverage my position a bit and get a good soul binder from Necra Mazoul. I’m worried if we get a bad one, my lover would lose their system. And like we just bought it recently too, and-”

Boy this guy just refuses to shut up.

After this, Benny talked for an hour straight amidst the sound of clinking bottles, while Dennis was forced to listen silently.

“Hey hey hey. It’s good my guy, tell you what we’re gonna go out to see some clubs and bars around the west gate of korilstadt tomorrow, you in?” WHAT THE HELL WAS DENNIS SAYING! He was only trying to be nice, but this was taking it too far.

“You mean it *sniff* I guess I could get out for a bit. [sound of bottle being capped]”

No please NO! Dennis debated imploding the ritual circle right then and there. He could just fake his and Judith’s deaths and scram. He could probably write this off as a travel expense and beg Wyatt for forgiveness later. HE STILL HAS TIME. REFUSE NOW!!!

“It’s been a while since I went out. Okay *sniff*”

Dennis was swallowing his throat struggling to control himself. “Great see you at sundown”

“Thanks man *sniff* Can I bring him along? He’d love to hang out with us. I know a good bar below the adventurer’s guild.”

NO NO NO NO “Sure why not haha” NO!!

“Thanks man you’re the best. See you around.”

The ritual circle emanated a soft green glow before fizzing out, ending the call.

Dennis fell from the chair he stood on and unto the floor, defeated.

“Gods damed it!”