The area outside Beastden reminded me of a video I had seen of the base camp at the foot of Mount Everest back on Earth—minus the snow, of course. Oh, and if all the climbers were cosplayers with really legitimate-looking armor, robes, and weapons. The comparison fell apart when I noticed the little blue genie-like naidu, the tomte, and the various other offshoots of human I could see from where we stood. It was amazing how quickly my mind could get used to things like this.

I recognized somebody out front wearing a dark green adventurer’s guild uniform. She had the recognizable gold patch folded down on her skirt, too. She had blonde hair and straight bangs cut above her big, eager eyes. Next to the grizzled adventurers and warriors—most of whom were sharpening weapons, strapping on armor, or buying food and supplies before heading inside the dungeon—the innocent girl looked utterly out of place.

“Hi!” she said, bouncing a little on her toes as we approached. “Here to register your hunt?”

“Uhh,” I said, looking to Lyria for help.

She shrugged.

“Yes,” I said.

“Great! My name is Belle, by the way. You can check your accomplishments with Bo’Katar over there—” she pointed to a grumpy naidu with black facial hair shaved into odd, vertical patterns on his blue face. He was sitting on a pile of silky pillows beside a dimensional box attached to his ankle by a chain. He also had a pair of lenses sitting on top of his head.

“You guys have a traveling naidu?” I asked.

“First dungeon?” Belle asked. If there was any sting in the question, she took it away by winking and smiling. “It’s okay. Me too! Honestly, this is terrifying, right?” She let out a sudden burst of giggles, then swallowed hard and stood straighter. “It’s going to be fine, though. They said it’s really rare for stuff to come out of the dungeon. Rarely happens. Though if something rarely happens, that means it happens sometimes, right?” She made a sound in her throat, then plastered on a shaky smile. “The guild life, right?”

“Yeah,” I said. I felt sympathy for her. She was a level 1 Wood, and I imagined she wouldn’t stand a chance of surviving if something came out of Beastden looking for trouble. But I didn’t know how that would happen with the number of people here. Maybe in a scenario like the one Bloody Steve told us about?

I supposed if anything came out of that hole for her, it meant very bad things had happened to the scores of people who seemed to be inside, trying to clear it out. “This is our first,” I admitted.

“Okay, well, you just stay sharp in there. Don’t forget that dungeons like to toy with people. They can and will change, okay?”

I nodded, though I had trouble imagining a dungeon toying with me. I’d been warned by enough people now that I knew I needed to keep cautious.

“Come check and see if you earned accomplishments at any time,” Belle continued. She was referencing a small scrap of paper she’d pulled out of a pocket somewhere. I noticed her nails were chewed to the nub, and her hand shook. “Report any accomplishments to me. You’ll get guild points for them. The better the accomplishment you get in service of the guild, the more points!”

“What are the points for?” Lyria asked.

“Well, you get cool little embellishments on your rank badge for earning enough points.”

I had to pretend that wasn’t reason enough for me to care. Cool little embellishments? I was in. I was so fucking in. If she said we got trophies for our room, somebody was going to have to hold me back from charging in there before she finished her speech.

Lyria gave the girl a dry look. “And what if we don’t care about playing dress up?”

“Yeah,” I added, deepening my voice a touch. “What if we’re not worried about… silly little badges?”

The way Lyria’s eyes shifted to me said she was seeing right through my ruse.

Oh well.

The girl cleared her throat. “Well, there’s other benefits, too. The higher your standing in the guild, the better rates of pay you get for completing commissions. And you’ll eventually get access to the guild treasury if you ever reach 'B' rank. You can spend points there to claim rewards, and the points you spend won’t decrease your rank. Your rank is based on the total points you’ve accumulated, not how many you have in your possession. Make sense?”

“Yeah,” I said. “What are all the ranks?” I asked.

“Oh,” Belle said. “I keep forgetting you’re new! They start at ‘F,’ no offense,” she added apologetically as she looked at our barebones badges. “Then ‘D,’ ‘C,’ ‘B,’ ‘A,’ ‘S,’ ‘SS,’ and finally ‘SSS.’”

“Got it,” I said. “So we tell you what accomplishments we get and you’ll award us points. Anything else we should know?”

“Yes! Thank you for reminding me. There’s a small matter of dungeon etiquette.”

I gave her a look. “Dungeon etiquette? Really?”

Belle shrank a little, then glanced down at her paper with notes. “Well, yes. Inside, you’ll find a multi-leveled space. Dungeons are unpredictable and change, but the dungeon’s heart is typically the deepest point. Creatures near the heart are the most affected and will be the strongest. You’re in luck, though, because our initial scouts are reporting this dungeon seems to top out as an Iron level threat. That means there will be plenty of sections full of Wood level threats for you two to play with. Er, I’m sorry. They keep telling me not to call it playing.”

“Right… You mentioned etiquette, though?”

“Oh! Gosh. I’m always forgetting what I was talking about. Dungeon etiquette. Yes. If you find other individuals working in an area of the dungeon, asking for permission to move past them is considered polite. If they decline, it’s good manners to accept, move on, and find an unoccupied area to clear. Oh, and if you happen to find anybody being killed, brutalized, or maimed, we highly encourage you to help them. We give five ‘call balls’ for free.”

She produced five marble-sized balls from a pocket and opened her hand for us. I took them carefully, noting they were soft and squishy but oddly warm. “What are these?”

“Throw them hard enough, and they’ll break, releasing the magic within. Use them if somebody needs extraction. It may take some time, but a guild representative will eventually come to collect the injured party… or the body.”

“Alright,” I said. “This has been… helpful. Thanks, Belle.”

“Just one more thing…” Belle said with a wince. “I know this part sounds bad, but I assure you, I’ve been told it’s really not common. But, um, regular law doesn’t exactly apply in dungeons. I guess it’s too hard to prove people weren’t influenced by dark mana, and there usually aren’t any witnesses… So, just consider that a friendly reminder to practice your dungeon etiquette! You never know who might be stark-raving mad with dark mana corruption!”

“Okay,” I said quietly.

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Belle bounced on her toes, smiling and closing her eyes. “Good luck in there! If you hear anything about monsters planning to come to the surface and kill the support staff, please let me know, okay?”

I had to bite back a smile. “If I hear monsters talking about coming to the surface, I’ll definitely let you know.”

I shared a look with Lyria once we were away from the girl. “Do monsters talk?”

“Not that I know of. Come on, we should buy some rations.”

We wove through the increasingly busy camp. I inspected everybody but didn’t see a single Silver, which further supported Belle’s information about the dungeon topping out at Iron. I guessed it wasn’t worth a Silver’s time to come to a place like this and scavenge for scraps.

“Was that part about not being protected by law in there news to you?” I asked.

“No,” Lyria said. “It’s one of the dangers of a dungeon. Opportunistic types tend to use them as places to deal with grudges. And, like she said, dark mana can do weird things to people. Sometimes, you really can’t blame them. People just get twisted by it.”

“Great,” I said.

We stopped at a large wooden boat that had been dragged to shore. A man sat cross-legged behind it. An armored man with bulging muscles stood beside him, arms folded over his bare chest. Some kind of security, I guessed.

I scanned the goods on display in the little boat. I saw bandages, food, water flasks, and empty bags. “Have any potions?” I asked. After all Belle’s warnings, I was suddenly a little less worried about saving my money than I had been in Thrask. If I could get more healing potions or something dangerous, I thought I might dump all my money into the extra security.

The man shook his head. “Sold out. A big expedition just went in a few minutes ago. They bought all the good stuff. Had a few noble lords with them. Didn’t even blink when I gave them ridiculous prices,” he added with a crooked smile. “Robbed them blind, and they didn’t care. Honestly, kind of took the fun out of it…”

“How much for the rations, then?” I asked.

He displayed stacks of thin crackers, dried meat, water flasks, and some stringy vegetables that looked like spaghetti.

“1 silver per stack. 1 silver per water.”

Considering he just admitted to quoting crazy prices, I took a stab at negotiating. “How about 25 copper?”

He pursed his lips in thought. “25 copper. But only if you spend at least four silver. I want to get home and restock, so I’ll cut you a deal for helping me clear my inventory.”

I pointed to 4 silver’s worth of rations and water.

He shrugged. “Alright, then.”

Lyria offered to pay, but we ended up splitting the cost.

Once we had our rations, I quickly took stock of my potion situation. My Alchemist’s Kit still held the Flipweed mixture I’d been practicing with on the road to Thrask. I had four pheromone sacs, which might not be useless within the dungeon but would undoubtedly be limited in use. Unless the place was full of carapax, I supposed.

I had some raw Flipweed left. I could use it to brew another “Potion of Life,” which caused random objects to come alive briefly and cause chaos. I wondered if that would fall in the “not applicable” bucket for my Silver Scream effect, unless it could turn organs inside a creature into living things trying to break free.

That would be pretty deadly, even though I doubted it would work.

I also was down to fifteen glass vials since five of mine had broken when I was hurrying to use them mid-combat.

I had a tough decision to make. With my explosive Bombroot, fire-igniting Dragon’s Tail, venomous Viperlilly, and restorative combination of Lifebloom and Condensed Hearts, I could create a powerful array of potions. But with only 15 glass vials and one Alchemist’s Kit, I couldn’t store them effectively without a great deal of waste. It took about 10 vials to hold the contents of one full potion from my kit. I’d have to dump the majority of three potions to have a small reserve in vials.

Unless…

I eyed the water flasks from the merchant’s display. He had maybe twenty or so more of the flasks, and I guessed each one could hold roughly half the contents of my Alchemist’s Kit. We had bought enough water for a week or so in the dungeon already.

With my Flipweed, I had five potions I could brew. One could stay in my Alchemist’s Kit, but I’d be free to swap it out if I had enough spare flask space to transfer it. With my 15 glass vials and each flask holding roughly half a potion, I needed to buy about 7 flasks. One to cover what my vials couldn’t hold brought me to 2 potions capacity, and the remaining 6 would cover the last 3 potions. But there was also a chance I’d find more herbs inside the dungeon. If I didn’t have extra flasks, I’d have to waste potions to test it out.

“How much for all those flasks you have left?”

The man raised his eyebrows. “Planning to be pretty thirsty in there?”

“4 silver?” I asked.

He frowned. “That’s less than 25 copper each.”

“And you’ll have almost no inventory left if I buy those. You get to head home with a cleaned-out shop. I get a little discount. Sounds fair to me.”

The man sighed but nodded his head, and we made the trade. Lyria insisted on splitting the cost with me again.

“Quite the negotiator,” she said as we walked toward the water. “But why did you want so much water?”

I handed her a flask and told her to drink as much as possible. She gave me a confused look but obeyed. I did the same and drank until my stomach hurt. Then, I dumped out enough water to have five empty flasks. I knelt down and quickly brewed all the potions I could, using my flasks to hold the excess. However, I slightly overestimated their holding capability and had to drain two more to hold everything.

I also noticed a slight issue with my plan. I wouldn’t be able to see through the opaque animal skin flasks. I’d have no easy way to know which potion was inside. I found a chalky white rock and used it to carve a little symbol into each flask, deciding on a quick label for each potion. “D” for Dragon’s Tail, “B” for Bombroot, “F” for Flipweed, “V” for Viperlilly, and “H” for the healing potions.

When I was transferring the Dragon’s Tail mixture—a bright orange liquid streaked through with tendrils of red—a drop landed on the water and started a small fire. It burned the water's surface like an oil spill and only went out after Lyria and I thoroughly splashed it.

“This stuff is going to be nasty with your bow,” Lyria said thoughtfully as I tucked away all my potions in my slip space.

I grinned. “Right?”

“Um, Brynn?” she said.

“Yeah?”

“I still have no idea how to use my new abilities. I think I’m going to start off with my Sword stone. We can train the Shield moves when we have time, and I’ll try switching over once I’m more confident.”

“Yeah, I figured,” I said. “Wait. If you can just switch corestones at will, why don’t people carry a spare Heart stone? They could use it to heal after fights.”

“I’m sure some people do, but there are a few problems,” Lyria said. “One, most people aren’t freaks of nature like you. They can’t simply pick up a new corestone and learn to use the abilities in half a day. Depending on their talent with mana, it could be months or more before they learned to use it. Even then, their grasp would be basic. Considering most adventurers travel with groups, anyway, it’s simply not worth it for most. The other reason is that you can’t endlessly switch between corestones in a short period of time. It’s called 'class fatigue', and you’ll start to feel it even after two or three switches within a few days.”

“Class fatigue?” I asked.

“I’ve never messed around with multiple stones before, but I’ve heard it makes your command over mana feel ‘slippery’. It gets worse the more you switch, and the only cure is to stop switching stones long enough.”

“Huh,” I said. So much for that theory. I guessed it was good for me, though. My dual-class ability would have been a glorified convenience if people could swap their classes too freely.

“Are we ready?” she asked.

I watched a group of seven adventurers descend down the sloping entrance to the cave, disappearing in darkness a few moments later.

“Probably not,” I admitted, “but I haven’t felt ready for anything yet, and we’re still standing.”

“Comforting,” Lyria laughed.

“One more thing,” I said. I produced the quiver from my slip space with the three Silver Scream arrows. I tethered to it, then used Elemental Projection to drip the Viperlilly poison on one, the Bombroot potion on another, and the Dragon’s Tail potion on the last. All it took was one drop, which the arrow absorbed like a sponge. A split second later, the clear glass shaft and tip filled with the matching color of the potion I’d dripped on it.

Cool as hell.

“Look on the bright side,” I said as we headed into the cave. “If we get enough achievements, we’ll get cool new badges.”

Lyria gave me a look. “I knew you were faking it when you pretended not to care about that.”

I grinned. “I was faking it so hard. Do you think I could get a badge with wings? Or maybe little gemstones?”

“Brynn?” Lyria said.

“Yeah?”

“Let’s focus on not dying in here. You can worry about your little badge later.”

“Fair enough,” I said.

I was definitely still thinking about the badge.