"Guild master or not, paying in crowns or even sovereigns, I have no rooms for a party of monsters and demis, miss. And I'd appreciate if you removed yourself peacefully from my establishment."

It was the fourth inn that refused to host Cless' party in Glauchester. The Dungeon City was huge, at least ten times as many people as Tambrill. It wasn't all human like the smaller neighbor but the presence of the non-humans or demis as they call was just a token. Half-elves, dwarves and gnomes. It was a little overwhelming but bearable. However, none of the innkeepers would even believe she was human.

Sovereign was the hundred crowns white coin she first saw when the heroes paid the bet on "how many of us will Cless identify" to Karen.

Maybe she should introduce herself as the queen of the Infernal Realm. Irritating. She returned to the wagon where her party was huddled inside.

"No luck?" Beastkin Silverfang read her face and made more of an affirmation than a question.

She didn't answer, opting instead to just shake her head and stare at a particularly interesting plank in the wagon's frame.

"Cless, we could camp outside," Venaris suggested.

"Sorry, sister. But no. We are sleeping under a roof today."

"If we can't rent, why not buy?" Vic suggested.

Good idea. Why not buy? She had money, and there's no way five hundred crowns couldn't buy her guild a place. She guided the golem around, asking for directions until she reached the real estate dealer. The only real estate dealer sanctioned by the city lord. The golem-drawn wagon drew a few curious gazes, but not as much as she expected.

Dismayed, she pulled the hood of her cloak up and told her guild, "I'll go negotiate. You guys stay inside."

Cless felt defeated already. She focused and turned on her Skills. [Lady's Countenance], [Dancer's grace]. People on the street stopped and parted just from her presence. She gracefully moved across the street to the building, focusing to keep her feelings in check. She just had to buy a house. Just that.

She opened the door and a bell hung on the door rang. Of course, there'd be a bell. The office was well-decorated. Leather upholstery, some paintings of the town's places of interest. The lord's manor. The guard keep. The Dungeon entrance. She was absorbed taking in the sights of the paintings when a clerk, a man in his thirties approached her.

"May I help you, miss?"

She blinked and fixed her poker face. Turning to face the man, she said, "Yes. I am looking for a place to buy in this town."

"Yes, you came to the right place. Miss..." He moved closer to get a glimpse of her face beneath the hood. The corners of his mouth twitched for an instant before he resumed his deadpan expression.

"Cless. I'm the guild master of the Blind Eye delver guild." The man tilted his head when he heard the guild name and she added. "Recently arrived. We came to try our luck in this fine town's labyrinth."

"A pleasure, guild master. My name is Anderson. I'm sorry I didn't hear about your guild. What kind of place are you looking for?"

She smiled and pulled her hood back. "I'm sorry, I got these in a criminal arson."

"Nothing to be sorry about, guild master. Please, have a seat. Can I offer you some tea?"

"Appreciated, Mr. Anderson."

She took a seat on an armchair. The well-dressed and polite man sat across her after pulling a rope dangling near a corner of the room. He took a good look at Cless, looking more at her clothes than her skin. She felt that he was evaluating her wealth by the quality of her clothing. Maybe she should've changed into something fancier. Too late now.

"Well, before I waste your time showing you places you have no interest in, guild master, may I ask you what is your budget and the size of your guild?"

"We have six members but I am looking to expand."

"Excellent," He clapped with fake enthusiasm. "Now, about your budget, how much are you willing to expend?"

"I have a budget as we need to buy furniture and other things, so why don't you impress me with something you seem fitting for my guild and then we negotiate from there?"

She could almost read this man. He was waiting for her to commit some kind of blunder and then rob her blind. While the two parties silently evaluated each other, a server boy with a tray poured tea for the two and with a bow, left. Cless sipped the tea and Anderson started some information gathering disguised as small talk.

"Where does your guild hail from, guild master Cless?"

There should be no harm in telling the truth. If you don't take into account the Inquisition that went that way and never returned. Yes, no harm indeed.

"We've been wandering around in the wild. Hunting orcs and harvesting the bountiful nature, mostly." She replied dismissively and gave him a stone-hard glare for an instant, to tell him 'don't pry further'. "Delicious tea, I must add. Could you show me the properties you have, please?

Anderson straightened himself and moved the teacups away. Spreading a detailed map of the town over a coffee table, he took a polished stick and showed her some properties. Glauchester was more than ten times the size of Tambrill. The walls were solid stone and it had large facilities for soldiers and administrative personnel. The lord of the town had his own manor on a hill.

Anderson described her some properties, pointing at them in the map. Cless pressured for prices and used her [Merchant Sense] to gauge how high he was putting them. Sky-high. The closer to the Dungeon and the Association building, the higher it went. She wanted to be closer to the dungeon so they wouldn't have to walk too much but it was hard to find somewhere large enough for them. As shopkeepers want to be as close to the action as possible, the area around the Dungeon and the Association is at a premium.

"Can you show me a place with room to grow? I give up on finding something near the Dungeon." She asked.

He took her through a parade of other places in the seedier areas of town. The slums. Near the river that takes the town's sewage out. All the way across town. The prices were still jacked up. Cless kept politely refusing even when he offered to take her there to inspect the property herself. She was not worried about the state the property was in because she could repair or rebuild the whole thing if she needed to.

"I don't care how the property is, Mr. Anderson. As long as I can rebuild the whole thing, I'll do it given enough time."

"I have a place already furnished, a real bargain. A fixer-upper but livable. A large manor, seven hundred square meters plus a backyard with a fruit tree orchard."

He pointed at an area that should have around ten to twelve thousand square meters. One large building shaped like an L and three smaller ones, probably a storage shed or a servant's house. It was in the northern part of town, near the gate they used to go to Tambrill but hidden behind a few rows of houses and sharing a fence with the back of the graveyard, the church on the other side of the resting place for Glauchester's inhabitants. It was not as far from the Dungeon as the slums or the seedier parts of town he showed her during his second wave of properties to show, probably a ploy to soften her.

She found the distance misleading as she traced the streets leading from the front of the property to the Dungeon district. Several blocks of houses and shops had their back to the property she wanted and the streets she would have to take to go there went around past the town center and then to the Dungeon. As walking distances around the physically impassible buildings went, it was as far as the slums.

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

"How much for this property? And is it occupied right now?"

She was skeptical. Why would such a place be unoccupied? Because of the graveyard? An undead infestation, perhaps?

"Four hundred crowns, guild master. The property plus the plot of land. And no, it is unoccupied right now. This place has no owner since the witch hunt fifteen years ago. The previous owners abandoned it."

Cless frowned and puckered her lips. Not a happy subject for her to remember. She focused on [Merchant Sense] and got a mixed reading. Four hundred crowns for a lavish manor and a lot of open space inside the town walls was a good price, but not for this property. She sensed Anderson was hiding something.

"What is the catch with this property?"

"People believe it to be cursed. It was almost burned down by the Inquisition but the occupants left before the mob could trap them inside. Some brave souls tried to live there the last decade but they either left or disappeared. I will be honest, this property would cost twenty sovereigns if it were in good standing."

That was a bleeding lie. "No, seriously. Is it the graveyard next to it? Is it infested by the undead?" She caught a faint wince from the man. Undead, is it? She was glad he had no idea of her class and that the broadsword by her side would give the wrong impression. "Undead huh? Is the church even doing its job properly?" She mumbled under her breath in a way he might have heard.

"No, no. You got me wrong. There is no undead infestation." He put too much emphasis on the infestation part.

"Four hundred crowns, I can pay that," Cless smiled. She was about to pull one on that man. "If that is the fair price and you agree to give me all the information you have about that place. Conditions for use of the land, former occupants, the fine print of the sale contract, taxes, outstanding claims to the land and any bounties related to the place."

This office was the only place to buy and sell property in the town and outskirts. Anderson was half salesman half civil servant. He would have all that information.

"Of course. Shall we shake on it?"

"On the condition that you agree to negotiate the price down to what we both believe to be a fair price for a place in that condition and disclose all the information, yes. Say I agree if you enter this bargain of your own free will. May the One God and your own conscience make you stutter if you try any falsehood. With this handshake, we agree to buy and sell that property at the negotiated price."

She extended her hand and her Skill, promptless. All the terms and conditions were laid bare and she made it clear to him what he was getting into. He took the bait, clearly happy to see that property sold. She felt her Skill settle their agreement. The usual notification played. That contract was worth 2,000 Experience Points.

"The land can be used as you see fit, you can even build on it. However, you cannot build higher than the Lord's estate. You would have to go four stories high to be able to do that. The mansion is in dire disrepair. The wood is rotten and full of termites." Anderson halted his speech and took a deep breath. He was probably figuring out that he was saying too much. "Ta-taxes, there's fifteen years of outstanding taxes to be collected since none of the former owners paid them. That amounts to seventy-five crowns... Oh."

She opened up a grin. "Go on, Mr. Anderson. I won't back out of our deal. This property is as good as already mine, I just want to hear everything about it before I close the deal. Go on as you agreed."

"There is a bounty from the Association paid by the church to fully explore the manor." Anderson was afraid but he couldn't stop talking. "A few... a few.... a few explorers disappeared through the years, and the Association hid the bounty. Unless you specifically ask for it, they won't show it."

Cless could shape behavior with her Skill if said behavior was specifically stated in the contract and it was something the person was able to perform said behavior. That was how she could make people forget things. A person can forget things, it is not beyond one's mental ability to put events behind them and move on, never to think of them again. What she was doing with Anderson was to put his conscious and unconscious mind at odds. Maybe if she finds a complete psychopath it wouldn't work but her Skill's commands cannot be denied. The "Absolute" in the name is there for a reason.

"Interesting. And do you have any idea of what is in there?"

Anderson tried to hold back the information but the pressure forced him to say. "Vampires. There's a group of vampires inside the manor's catacombs. Oh, dear. Yes, there are catacombs underneath the property."

She pushed some hair behind her ear and leaned forward. "Catacombs? As in burial chambers underground? Wouldn't it be part of the graveyard?"

"Th-th-the graveyard is part of the property, the church borrowed it."

"Is it part of the ten to twelve thousand square meters or did you reduce the property's size intentionally? And did the church pay rent or taxes on the land they borrowed?"

"No. It was a concession from the Lord."

"Good, let's not put pressure on the church. Tell me, how much is the bounty for the investigation of the property?"

"Thirty crowns." He sighed and probably gave up on holding back. "That is all that's known about the property. We don't have a map of the catacombs."

"That's fine. Shall we negotiate the price now?"

Cless and Anderson went through several rounds of talks. She knocked off the taxes, the bounty, and what Anderson thought to be the fair repair prices of the property and the graveyard. He took two deeds for the same property and showed her the fine print where, in the first one, the buyer forfeited the land of the graveyard to the church, probably giving up the whole property later because the whole place was a graveyard given the size of the catacombs. The other one, the real deed, showed that the catacombs beyond the surface limits were to be considered sewers and were the property of the City.

She ignored the trapped deed and went for the second one. They negotiated additional terms. That she would be able to wall-off the sections of catacombs that went outside her boundaries and that the lease of the graveyard would be negotiated later with the church, with her retaining the option of just claiming it back. Knocking off the taxes and the other conditions, she was able to get the price down to one hundred and fifty crowns. After discounting the owed taxes she wouldn't shoulder, Cless had to pay seventy-five crowns. The taxes owed were also reduced to three crowns per year with a ten-year exemption.

She took one sovereign from her pocket and placed it on the desk next to the contract. Cless and Anderson signed on it and she immediately tried to assign the place as hers with [Appointed Stronghold]. It worked. She could get a mental picture of the whole manor and even glimpse at the underground. There were several occupants in the catacombs.

After waiting for half an hour, Cless shook Anderson's hand and left with twenty-five gold coins and the notarized copy of the deed, including the seal of the Lord. She now owned a piece of real estate in Glauchester, a cozy rotting manor with its own spooky graveyard.

And a vampire infestation.

Oh, joy.