"You... settled on top of a dungeon?" Symon asked.

"It was not intentional," Temuri chuckled, misinterpreting the source of Symon's confusion. "We simply picked the only location that could support any crops, unaware of what lurked below."

"Quick, what's a dungeon?" he asked Keelgrave. He was familiar with the general concept of a dungeon as a place filled with monsters and treasure from video games and movies, but he didn't know how closely that aligned to reality here.

That... could explain a lot of things. They'd both found it strange how few monsters there were out in the grass sea, especially considering the mana levels were good out there. But if this dungeon had even more mana, it stood to reason that most of the monsters would have migrated there.

"So you settle here, eventually find out there's a dungeon, then... Lady Renske dies out of nowhere?"

Temuri's face darkened, the deep lines around his eyes screwing up painfully. "Aye, in essence," he said, a far-off look in his eyes. "The dungeon claimed her manor in the middle of the night, and that was the last anyone ever saw of her."

"Damn, I'm sorry. She must have been an impressive woman to be remembered so fondly after all this time."

"That she was," Temuri said, visibly steeling himself. "She would have been killed by the dungeon monsters, so I only wish I could have buried her body properly. But alas, none of those who tried to revisit the manor have ever returned."

Durga the innkeeper had mentioned something similar, although he hadn't known any details. "I take it this isn't common knowledge, then?"

"Just the three of us, and Merab. He's the foreman of the mine," Temuri answered.

"I trust you will keep our confidence, yes?" Lado said. "If word got out, Brackstead would be torn apart for its resources. The only reason you are being told this much is for saving my father's life."

"Of course, I'm no stranger to keeping secrets," Symon replied. The existence of the dungeon explained a lot of the recent strangeness, and he suspected it had something to do with the recent appearance of a Baron from the empire, too. "Are you sure no one else knows? Isn't that why the Baron is here?

"Yes and no," Lado said. "The dungeon possesses a myriad of natural treasures; rare ores, plants, and monsters with valuable components, but we do not actually delve it. Much too dangerous, and we have no true combat classers. Instead, we mine around the circumference of the dungeon in relative safety, extracting only mana-enriched iron. It is our sole export, so the trade ships simply believe we struck a large vein of mana iron. Lucky, but nothing out of the ordinary."

"Hmm, how confident are you that he doesn't know?" It seemed a little too convenient that the Baron would show up and unknowingly claim land with a dungeon on it, given their rarity and value. The simplest explanation usually tends to be the correct one, and in this case, the obvious explanation was that the Baron knew of the dungeon and wanted it for himself.

"As sure as we can be," Lado replied. "We all know nothing good would come from the existence of the dungeon becoming widespread, not without a proper means of defending it from those who would take it, so I know that Merab wouldn't have let it slip. And if any miners had put it together, he would have informed us already. You might not suspect it of a mining foreman, but he's an intelligent man."

Symon still wasn't sure he was completely convinced, but he decided to take their word for it. A thousand little coincidences happened every day without him noticing, so what was one more? "And what can you tell me of the Baron himself? I presume you've interacted with him?"

"Barely. He simply showed up one day without warning, getting dropped off along with his guards and some supplies. The Baron might look fancy to us commonfolk, but Father suspects the Baron isn't doing as well as you might think — he wouldn't sail halfway across the world for some mana iron if he wasn't desperate. Plus, the ship must not have been his, considering it didn't stay behind, and he doesn't have any of those fancy guards some nobles do."

"And then he just took over the town?"

"He waltzed right in like he owned the place, told us the town was now his land, and demanded a new residence be built for him and his men. What would you have us do, tell a noble and his dozen loyal combat classers no?" he said with venom in his voice, though Symon doubted it was directed at him.

"I'm not judging you guys, it sounds like you didn't have much of a choice. There was no bloodshed, though?"

They both shook their heads, but it was Temuri who replied. "No, it would have been a slaughter if we resisted, so we didn't. Ah, yes, that's another thing I should mention — he had no Inquisitors with him. They would have been present if he was aware of the dungeon's existence."

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Keelgrave supplied, pre-empting Symon's question.

Symon nodded in response to both Keelgrave and the living man. "I see... so what has he actually done?"

The father and son shared a glance. "Nothing, as far as we can tell. There are vague promises of developing Brackstead into a powerhouse, but he hasn't done anything beyond giving speeches and commissioning a nicer place built to live in. He hasn't even entered the mines, just talked with Merab about iron outputs. There was plenty of patrolling around, and they — the guards, that is — killed a few monsters in the nearby forest, but they've barely bothered with the mine."

"Perhaps you are right after all, and he really doesn't know the truth," Symon said, not fully believing his own words. "Either way, you have both been very helpful, but I should give you some time to rest, Temuri. My magic is quite strong, but it's no replacement for a good sleep. Speaking of, would you two keep the extent of my healing here between us as well?"

After agreeing to a mutual pact of secrecy, Lado showed Symon to the guest room they had loaned to him and explained where the side door was to safely exit the house. He retreated back to the study his father had remained in with a final thank you for healing him.

The room was small and had been disused for quite some time judging by the general dustiness, but the bed was comfy enough. Almost anything would have been better than a thin bedroll on the ground anyway. He didn't spend much time appreciating his new accommodation though, as his mind was whirring with all the information he'd gotten from the ex-mayor and his son.

Symon was glad he'd finally got some answers from someone who knew what they were talking about, but he couldn't help but feel like he had more questions than what he'd started with. What had truly happened to Lady Renske? Why did the Baron arrive in Brackstead mere days before Symon did, despite the village exporting their valuable mana iron for decades now? For that matter, did he really not know about the dungeon? If so, what were his plans for the village?

And perhaps the most important question... what, if anything, should he do about the Baron?

They'd never met face to face, though his guard captain had surely told him about his encounter with Symon, so he couldn't simply hide away. The Baron shouldn't have any reason to want to hurt Symon, but he also wasn't completely convinced he knew what the man's plans were. A meeting seemed inevitable, though he didn't know how he should present himself. Unassuming and boring could work. He would of course keep the true extent of his healing magic a secret no matter what, but he could deliberately portray his magic as even less impressive by only using small amounts of vitality at a time and feigning a lower vitality capacity.

A weak healer could be easily taken advantage of, but would also be underestimated. He doubted the Baron would want to let a healer, even one appearing weak, slip through his fingers, but this would probably take the form of wanting to hire Symon, not something nefarious — at least, as long as Symon acted agreeable. Not the worst outcome, and he'd probably be able to find out more details on the Baron this way, but would he be allowed to leave on the next trade ship?

Conversely, he could take the opposite strategy. By portraying himself as stronger than he truly was, and by actually becoming stronger through training and growing his vessel size, he could make himself too big of a risk for the Baron to get involved with. The problem here was that there was no way to grow quick enough to be able to ignore the Baron and his guards. If his bluff was called, it would be over for Symon. Even if he involved his Dumosan friends, they were outnumbered three to one. Perhaps it would be enough to make the guards think twice about causing problems for him, but it wasn't a permanent solution.

No, an aggressive approach just isn't feasible, while playing weak puts me too far into the Baron's control. But if I can do a bit of both...

He would do his best to appear as a simple and humble healer, while secretly training his skills, mostly his two class abilities and his Swords passive. This would hopefully insulate him from the scheming and politicking for as long as possible, then when he was inevitably drawn into it, he'd be strong enough to survive. Also, he could build up his reputation with the villagers by providing free or cheap healing, making the Baron less likely to cause issues for the beloved healer. It was an overly pragmatic way of saying that helping people would mean they would help him in turn. Healing those who needed it was something Symon wanted to do simply because it was the right thing to do, not for any external reward, but he'd take any advantage he could get.

And it did feel good to use his healing to save a life. Technically, Atabek had been the first, but Symon wasn't counting that considering he was partially responsible for distracting the man and getting him ran through by the razor stalker in the first place. Temuri's lungs had been literally rotting away inside him — shit, that's another thing to investigate too — so he wouldn't have lasted much longer without Symon's intervention. He'd always joked that the reason he'd recovered from the illness that would have been a death sentence for most was because he couldn't die without repaying the doctors, nurses, and all the other hospital staff for their efforts.

This had taken the form of wanting to do what they do — saving lives. Now that he'd done it for the first time, he felt... a little empty. He'd gained incredible powers, but he'd lost a lot in the process. Even ignoring the cursed and uncontrollable nature of his draining, it was hard to want to celebrate when his parents and few friends were, well, he wasn't even sure how far away they were. In the best-case scenario, the bare minimum time he'd need to return home would be measured in months, and he was starting to feel that was a long shot. Keelgrave had told him about mages with space magic who would be his best starting place, but even portals between cities were rare and expensive, so the chance of being able to go back to Earth seemed slim.

It was a rare discipline of study, for an already rare type of class, so little was publicly known about them. For that matter, magic in general seemed less common than he'd expected. There was nothing overt, no fireballs or people flying around through the air. That would change in a bigger, richer, and more developed city, but it still struck him how mundane the people were. Sure, the builders he'd encountered were easily carrying large buckets of stone that must have weighed half a tonne between just two men, but there wasn't anything flashy. If he extrapolated the ratio of mages to non-mages based on the village's population, then picked out the ones willing to help him, then found the ones actually capable of it, presuming it was even possible to teleport back to Earth in the first place...

Symon might have to start thinking of this new world as a permanent home.