A bit earlier, after Fayette and Olivia had finished dealing with their one [Guard], they were nearing their target. The factory lay silent around them, no more [Guards] walking the grounds. The silence grated on Fayette. She was getting more and more curious about the [Doctor] she was working with every moment, and after they stepped into a long corridor she could no longer hold it in.

“Should a [Doctor] be doing stuff like this anyways? You really got that guy good. Isn’t there like a do-no-harm oath or something?”

Olivia spared her a small glance but kept her focus forward. “Hmph. Maybe for those university pissants. Always so high and haughty. Doesn’t stop them from focusing on greed instead of their work.”

“Have you done stuff like this before then?”

The woman slumped down a bit. “—no. I haven’t, to be honest. I wish I had. Hearing you lot plotting something like it was natural, I wanted in. I need this.”

“Need it? What makes it so important?”

Olivia’s sunken eyes turned to her, and she sighed. “Being a proper [Doctor] is not that pleasant, you know. It’s very frustrating.”

“Really? Isn’t helping people nice? I always feel good after cleaning. Bringing things to order feels nice.”

“Well, maybe. But for me, it’s just always felt so futile.” The woman looked up at the pipes running above the corridor, reminiscing. “As a [Doctor], you are always behind the curve, reacting, desperately trying to stay the symptoms.”

She turned back to Fayette, and this time there was anger in her gaze. “It’s frustrating, you know. Treating people, trying to help them, and knowing that you can’t get at the true cause, and it will bring more patients. Once, I was working at a village which had a bandit problem. There were frequent clashes—injured people coming in. Missing legs, arms, eyes.”

She turned back forward. “I treated them, but new ones didn’t stop coming in. The bandits were still out there after all. It felt futile, no matter what I did, more people would keep coming, injured. Then, some hunters came through and dealt with the bandits. It was done, the town threw a party for them. Know what happened to me?”

“...They thanked you for your services?” Fayette tried.

Olivia laughed, a bitter angry laugh. “Ah, if only it were so. No. I failed to treat a few people. People that mattered—important ones. Folk got angry. Blamed it on me, because they didn’t think I was a proper [Doctor]. I had to run away from there.”

She gestured at the room around them. “This? It’s finally cutting directly at the source, treating the cause, not the effect. It’s nice. Something I needed.”

Fayette nodded, mulling over the words. She understood, in a way. She had thought many similar things before. A [Maid’s] work was also about dealing with effects, and she had only recently moved to causes. Killing the rats lurking beneath the city was one thing—getting rid of their source another.

But, she couldn’t help feeling she was missing something. She looked at the pipes running above her her, one single component of this giant factory, which was one factory in a giant city. A small speck in the grand scheme of things. Was even this enough? How much was she really doing with something like this?

She shook the thoughts out of her head. She could think on it later. Now, she had a task to complete, and complete it she would.

They stepped out of the corridor, finally arriving at their target: The boiler room. Huge metal tanks were lined in rows, with a locked storage container that reeked of Magicoal in one corner. Below the tanks were the furnaces, vast things below which a channel ran, a channel than ended in coppery pipe, low on the ground.

No fires burned at this hour, but a black, oily sludge was still steadily dripping down from the furnaces, down into the channel where it mixed with the water flowing within, then being carried into the pipe. Fayette could smell the same acrid scent she had felt down in the undercity. There was no doubt about it—this was the source.

It felt odd. This one little pipe, in this one big room was causing so much harm to people. In a way, it reassured Fayette. If such an insignificant thing could cause harm, why couldn’t a humble [Maid] put a stop to it as well?

She looked at Olivia and nodded. “This is it. It’s the same smell.”

The [Doctor] frowned, and went to inspect the furnaces, as well as the channel leading out of them. She took out a test tube, collected some residue into it, then sealed it. She nodded at Fayette. “Alright, I’ve got some samples for myself. Let’s see where this pipe leads.”

Fayette traced it through the room, and saw it lead forward, down another corridor. This one had a locked door safeguarding it. Luckily, the [Guard] had been kind enough to provide a key.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

She walked to the door and tested the key on it, and it slid right in, clinking in a satisfying manner. The door swung open, and the pair headed further in.

“How far in do you think we should make the breach?” Fayette asked, examining the corridor around them.

Olivia hummed in thought. “I think... We’ll need to head out forward at least a bit more. I would like to have a more open space somewhere, where it would feel natural for something important to be. I think our decoy has the best chance working in a place like that.”

“Makes sense. Let’s move on then, though we can’t go too far. Have to stay on this side of the hill so it all runs off into the correct direction.”

They walked a bit further, diligently following the pipe, and the corridor opened up, widening for a bit.

“Is this our spot?” Fayette asked, already lowering her bags to the ground.

“I think it should work.” Olivia answered. She bent down to examine the ground below the pipe and wiped off some dust. The corridor steadily descended down, and the brick flooring had been replaced with bare stone.

It didn’t look too tough, Fayette estimated. She pulled out a canister from her bag. “No point waiting around. Let’s do it?”

Olivia thought for a moment, then walked back from the pipe, slowly backing away behind a bend. “All yours.”

Fayette smiled. She rather liked the current plan to be honest—blow up a little hole into the ground and pipe, cover it up, and let the factory runoff go where it really deserved to. She marked a proper spot, then placed a canister of explosive by the pipe. It wasn’t that deadly of a concoction, but should work well enough to get them started here.

With the explosive in place, she then took out a cloth pouch filled with reagent. She uncorked the canister, threw the cloth pouch inside, then bolted, running back behind the bend as fast as her legs took her.

She made it just in time and managed to cover her ears before an explosion sounded out, filling the corridor with loose dust. Fayette coughed in the haze for a bit, then took out her broom and activated [Sweep Dust]. Nothing like a proper [Maid] to clean up after an explosion.

She swept the loose dust up, then walked back to the explosion site, collecting the dust along the way. It took her a bit of time to get it all collected into a pile and visibility restored into the passage. Olivia crept up from behind her, coming to inspect their work.

The pipe had been burst open along a segment, and the runoff was gushing down from it, making the acrid stench even more prominent. It was running right into the hole they had just made into the ground.

To be honest, it felt underwhelming. All this work, for the sake of one burst pipe? To be fair, their strategy was reliant on things not being too noticeable. It would take time for the runoff to really seap into the ground, and start bringing joy to those deserving. Fayette could almost imagine it. Let the Nobles deal with the rats next time. Enjoy your own filth.

“Is it good enough? Do we have to blow the ground open more?” Fayette asked, walking beside the [Doctor]. She had a few more canisters of the explosive with her, just in case the first bunch didn’t do the job.

“I think this should work well enough,” Olivia answered, then pointed down their fresh hole. “See that? It’s not bare stone there, that’s dirt. See how the runoff is already seeping into it? It’s going right into the ground.”

Fayette squinted down the hole and saw it was true. The runoff wasn’t pooling up, so their task should be a success. At least the first part. Next—the coverup. Mireille should be acting now. Better hurry up.

“Can you get the tarp out?” She asked. “I need to clean up the remnants of the explosion. Still a lot of traces remaining, we can’t have that.”

The [Doctor] nodded and started opening up the tarp Mireille had made for them. Fayette, meanwhile, got to cleaning. It was a pretty quick job: gather up the dust in the room, then wipe off any visible stains and burns with a bit of her [All Purpose Cleaner]. Once she was finished, Olivia threw the tarp over the break in the pipe, and then they secured it over the hole together, covering up all of their work.

Fayette took a step back to examine their finished work. She wasn’t honestly sure whether this was a stroke of genius or complete foolishness, but it was the best ploy that Mireille could come up with. There was no visible sign of their sabotage visible, just a segment of the pipe covered by a large tarp.

A tarp with “DO NOT REMOVE. IMPORTANT MAINTENANCE” written on it.

“Does this type of stuff really work?” Fayette asked. It felt too... blatant.

“You would be surprised.” Olivia answered. “People like to have simple days at work, and follow instructions. I doubt anyone will be removing this for quite some time. I don’t think anyone who would dare would even be allowed down here.”

Fayette nodded, still feeling nervous. She however wasn’t feeling that nervous about the tarp ploy to be honest, she trusted Mireille’s judgement enough for that. What she was really nervous about was a deeper feeling within, that soundless calculation she could sense.

She had not gotten an experience notification yet.

She could, however, feel it. It was connected to her class, so it was like an itch just outside her reach, intensifying. It had never taken this long before.

She had done all this because it felt like the right thing to do, the right thing on her [Maid] path. But was it really so? The message would reveal it. Not seeing it filled her with anxiety.

Olivia was already jogging away, so Fayette turned to follow. They couldn’t tarry. However, Fayette’s mind was not with the operation at the moment.

The calculation was still going on, measuring, judging, weighing. The sound of the runoff flowing through the pipe was clearer to her now. The sludge was seeping down into the ground, away from the undeserving district of before.

A proper household took care of their own filth. No proper [Maid] should accept irresponsible waste dumping, Fayette was sure of that. She clamped down on her nervousness. I am not wrong. This is the correct thing to do, and even if the system disagrees, I won’t—

[Put that trash where it really belongs! Darn, that’s going to end up being a lot, won’t it?]

[Level up: You have reached Maid level 15! Congratulation!]

[2 Skill points gained!]

[Progress towards next level: 10%]

Fayette stumbled on her feet. Two whole levels? It had really liked that. L-level 15? But doesn’t that mean—

[Tier 2 class upgrade unlocked! 5 different options available!]