Trulda looked up from her coffee and let her gaze wander over the city from the rooftop café: "I'd love to know where they get coffee here. Via trade caravans from the south? Won't that be a problem if trade is disrupted by the war?"

Weylan stopped sipping the hot drink: "Why? That stuff grows everywhere."

Trulda pulled her woolen vest tighter around her and looked up at the sky, which was cloudy as usual: "Here?"

"Of course. There's a field just north of the city where coffee plants grow."

"Seriously? In this weather? Is there a coffee roaster here in the city then?"

"Roasters... I have no idea. Making coffee is easy. We used to have one in our village. Have you never seen that? You take these little red fruits and spread them out on a dry cloth. After a week, they suddenly shrivel up and turn brown. The shell cracks open and you can easily separate the beans from the shell remains. Then you just have to grind the beans. There are these small hand mills for this. In our village, we once pooled together to buy one, which everyone then used. All you have to do is pour hot water over the powder."

"Wait... What about the coffee grounds?"

"What's that supposed to be?"

"The stuff that's left over when you brew coffee. The tough, bitter mass. You can't drink coffee without a filter."

"What should be left over? Powdered coffee beans dissolve completely. Have you never made coffee before?"

Trulda leaned back and laughed: "Of course. The gods of creation like coffee. They made it easy. Soluble coffee that you can harvest straight from the tree." She looked back at Weylan: "What about cocoa and vanilla pods?"

"Almost everyone has it in their garden. Grows like weeds."

"Sugar?"

"That's more difficult. You need sugar cane for that. They are these long stalks that grow straight up. They need a lot of water. I only know of one sugar cane farm in the whole plain."

"Can you buy ice cream here in the city?"

"Ice? You mean cubes of frozen water? What's that good for?"

"No. I mean ice cream. Cold mixtures of fruit or chocolate. Sweet, creamy and cold."

"I've never heard of that."

"Then it will soon occur to a revenant. Production is not easy without refrigerators, but..."

Weylan interrupted her: "There are fridges everywhere. You can find artifact mages who can make them in every major city. They're quite affordable. In a closed container, semi-precious stones are enough to hold the cold magic. I think you only need blue chalcedony for this. Only if you want to work with ice spells in the open do you need diamonds. Then, of course, it gets really expensive. Didn't the inn have an icebox?"

Trulda thought for a moment and then rolled her eyes: "Crap. Of course. That seemed so normal to me from home that I didn't even pay attention to it."

"Do you want to make this then?"

Trulda thought for a moment, but then shook her head: "I have a vague idea of how everything works. It would take me weeks in the kitchen to come up with a few halfway decent recipes. Especially without a blender, or do you have that too?"

"What's that supposed to be?"

"An appliance that grinds everything you put in it to a fine pulp. With a rotating blade at the bottom."

"Sounds dangerous. I've never heard of anything like it. But I'll ask in the baron's kitchen, maybe they have something like that."

"Don’t bother. Have you made any progress in your search for a better exit from below?"

"Not really. According to Selvara, a magical beacon will light up as soon as we reach the surface. Only visible to clairvoyance spells, but there are corresponding artifacts in the Adventurer's Guild, the Mage Academy and in some of the temples. A new dungeon that reaches the surface will be located immediately."

"That's right. The map in our guild finds quests itself. A dungeon would light up like a beacon. They'd have a queue of adventurers ten minutes later."

Weylan tipped another spoonful of sugar into his coffee, tasted it and then continued: "We would need a shield against clairvoyance magic. But Malvorik said that he needs a level 5 spell for that. One that he doesn't know and that would have to be active all the time. The exit beacon does not go away. He would have to turn an exit room into a shielding artifact. I haven't quite figured out the details, but shielding such a powerful magical beacon against specialized clairvoyance spells is probably almost impossible. Even for the most legendary artifact mages of the Cathurian Age. Whatever that is."

Trulda drank the rest of her coffee with relish and thought. "A shielded room... Or rather a shielded building..." She began to giggle uncontrollably.

"What, do you have an idea?"

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

"Forget it. It's unlikely to work."

"Come on. If you have an idea, come out."

"That won't do us any good."

Weylan just looked at her until she relented, "There's a system rule to prevent players from having it too easy to... well... peep."

"What do you mean?"

"Watching others when they're... you know..." She made a vague gesture.

"You mean..." He suddenly blushed and looked away.

"I think you understand what I mean. If two people are… busy, clairvoyance is blocked in the surrounding area. Since it's a system rule, it works absolute. No chance of getting through it."

"I... don't know much about it..." Weylan began to cough with a dry throat and managed to get a little redder. His cheeks were practically glowing. "...But we can't really use that. I mean, even if we implement a shift schedule in the room and..." he broke off.

"No. That doesn't work. But I had briefly remembered that bathhouses, saunas and brothels are permanently blocked against clairvoyance. Even if there's nothing going on or the building is empty."

Weylan sat up with interest: "Wait... That's a good idea. We could buy a building and open a bathhouse... No. Probably too expensive. Could we rent one?"

"Would be too dangerous. What if the landlord terminates the lease?"

"That's right. We need gold. A lot of gold."

"I'm surprised you didn't suggest a brothel." Trulda smiled mischievously.

He didn’t take the bait and just shook his head: "Then you and I wouldn't be able to enter it. Bathhouses have no age limit."

"You're quite optimistic. Do you really think we'll get this financed?"

"Not from my salary. Are there any quests that are particularly lucrative?"

"Quests up to level 5 usually give you basic equipment and experience points. As far as I could tell, the monetary rewards are designed to just cover expenses and bring your equipment up to journeyman level."

The assassin nodded thoughtfully: "Adventurers from level 6 are journeymen, from level 11 masters and from 16 grandmasters. There haven't been any legendary heroes with levels above 21 since the last plague. What would we need for journeyman quests?"

"The levels are only recommendations. But without the right equipment, the revenants have an extremely hard time. We had some whole groups that came back from too dangerous quests above spawn point. According to the guild's recommendations, journeymen need a complete set of armor suitable for their character class, a magical weapon and at least one protective amulet. It doesn't have to be anything particularly powerful, but monsters often appear at level 6 that can only be harmed with magical weapons. Amulets are needed against debuffs."

"What are Baffs?"

"Debuffs. Abilities that hinder you instead of hurting you. There are no basilisks with petrifying gaze at this level, but winter cats can cause frostbite at the lightest touch. Try fighting when your teeth are chattering and your muscles are too slow to move."

"Ouch. That sounds bad. Do these amulets really do anything?"

"That depends. The +2 or +3 amulets give you a bonus to willpower or constitution. There aren't any in that price range that boost both yet. Then there are protective artifacts against poisons and diseases."

"Diseases? Are monsters actively using that as an attack?" He looked disgusted.

"Mummies transmit mummy rot, plague rats spread a dozen different diseases with their bite, rot beasts have a breath that produces an instant form of diarrhea. Zombie wounds are also not to be underestimated if you don't wash them out carefully right away." She hesitated. "That would be all the ones I can think of off the top of my head. Other than zombies, none of those usually show up in journeyman level quests. At least, I haven't read anything about them in the reports."

"And for master level quests?"

"We'd need level 11+ heroes for that. There aren't any yet." She paused: "Tell me... as the quest giver, shouldn't you know better than me?"

"That would be nice. I don't get any instructions for this. I only get information when a quest needs to be issued and only for that specific quest. I can then make a few very limited changes to them. Options for the rewards, an adjustment to the type of heroes for whom the quest is to be tailored and things like that. The witch quest had three options: Resolution by combat, resolution by stealth, and resolution by diplomacy. I chose the last option, as solving by stealth would have placed increased demands on sneaking and picking locks. If I've understood correctly, the other solutions are still possible, but the clues and coincidences for the chosen direction are a bit more detailed."

"Practical. Can you also change other people's quests?” He shook his head. “I thought so. Too bad."

"Why?"

"We currently have the problem that we have some quests in the hinterland that nobody is taking. The revenants concentrate on quests that are particularly lucrative or that they hope will bring them good contacts in the city. Anything out of walking distance isn't even of interest to the druids." She thought for a moment and then added grimly: "Most of the druid players are probably former Min-Max Power gamers from the old non-AI games. They'll be quite surprised when their magical powers dwindle because they don't care enough about preserving nature. The AI is merciless. The only thing it punishes more are paladins who violate their code of honor."

Weylan didn't understand some of the terms, but was able to make sense of them. He shrugged his shoulders: "If a few quests don't get done, it's not a problem. That leaves more for the next batch of revenants... Wait... Are there monster quests among them?"

Trulda nodded: "Above all, lots of monster spawners have appeared. Nests, breeding dens or similar places where monsters spawn. They don't disappear if you ignore them. On the contrary. The monsters multiply and become stronger over time. The longer a monster spawner is not eliminated, the larger the radius in which the monsters can be found. Two farms and a small village have already had to be abandoned."

"Crap. Why didn't you tell me about it earlier? We should take care of it ourselves."

"The monster decimation quests are all level 6 and above. Some of the quests to destroy the spawners are even higher. Too high for us. We need more combat training, skill training and, above all, equipment. Your knife will hardly be enough. We don't have any elixirs or artifacts yet either. Malvorik wanted to take care of that."

"Malvorik is currently rebuilding the last glass things for his alchemy lab. It's probably more difficult than he thought, without an exact template. We simply can't afford that."

"Maybe a few blueprints will be enough for him. I'll check with the glassblowers. They might also have a few quests we can do."

"Didn't you actually get anything for the gnome quest?"

"What do you mean... wait..." Trulda's eyes darted back and forth for a while, then she grinned: "Yes, that's nice. The experience points will get me to level 5 despite the lost level, plus bracelets of parry." She pushed up her sleeve and showed the left of the two steel bracelets that had appeared hidden underneath. "If I parry a weapon with this, it won't scrape along it and hurt me anyway, but will be pushed away so far that it can't touch me."

"Did you also get the constitution bonus?"

"What?" No. Just the bracelets, XP and a hundred gold pieces. Nice."

"Then, with the duskgnomes' travel fund, we still have just under 300 gold pieces in the group's coffers. That won't get us far. Certainly not enough for a bathhouse."

The two of them finished their coffee, then Weylan reluctantly took his leave to go to his next lesson.

Trulda let her gaze wander over the streets. She needed a suitable weapon and already had an idea of what she would get. She got up and made her way to the craftsmen's quarter.