The auction soon started.

Gruff and rough men—and a few women—shouted out their offers for masterfully crafted new weapons and armor, or those taken as spoils of war during a raiding excursion or another minor clash at the border. Deals were made, and many people departed when they got what they wanted.

"Ladies and gentlemen, it is time for a brief intermission before we move on to the more exquisite items," the graying man announced. "We will continue in one hour."

Most attendees got up to leave the auction hall, but a few stayed seated and took out canteens to drink from or closed their eyes to take a nap.

Half of the security staff immediately left for their break, while another half remained standing in their posts, waiting for their own turn.

Will and a handful of the other new hires remained in the hall with two of the regular guards as well as the graying host.

Suddenly, the eyes of some of the "sleeping" participants snapped open. They, along with a few of those who had been drinking, stood up and started to throw around suspicious objects before rushing toward the exit.

With a loud, hissing sound, the thrown items went off and started to disperse thick, white smoke.

"Guards!" The old host roared. "Catch them!"

The remaining guards stiffened before they acted. Two of them—the heavily armored regulars—were the first ones to move.

"Ivan! Gianni! With me!" the old man shouted. The regulars halted and turned around. "The rest of you, keep going!"

The hirelings followed the order. Will got out and saw several people running in different directions. He chose one that nobody else was chasing and sprinted as fast as he could.

A thought occurred to Will, and he slowed down to a walk, speaking a short incantation.

Invisibility (II) triggered.

One of his slotted spells was used up, and Will's figure became partially transparent. He was about to dash forward once more but thought better of it.

Wait a second! These runners are an obvious distraction. Even if I catch one, he's not going to know anything, he realized.

Will slowed down to a walk and moved next to a wall so as not to stand out. Alas, the thought had come too late. Several onlookers were already staring at his strange form.

He ignored the stares and stood still, taking in the small square in front of the building. Smoke was billowing out of the auction house, smelling faintly of some unknown chemical, but it didn't seem like an irritant.

Seconds passed. More smoke started to billow out from the alleys beside the building. Will was surprised.

Why is it coming from the back, too? Will wondered. Is it the vault?

He jogged into the alleyway and slowed down when visibility plummeted thanks to the smoke.

The path turned at the end of the building, and the white smoke got even thicker. There were several hot little items on the alley floor that glowed faintly and hissed rather loudly as they spewed out more smoke.

Will ignored them and slowly walked around the narrow area.

Suddenly, he heard a thump right next to him. Will froze.

Keeping his movements slow, he glanced toward the noise and saw a form of almost his own height reaching up and pulling at something. There was a faint clicking sound when that something came loose and was caught by the suspected thief.

The thief turned around and jogged across the alleyway. Will sneaked after him with soundless steps until he heard a door open and close straight ahead. He froze for a moment before hurrying ahead.

Will located the door and raised his hand on the handle, but then he hesitated.

If he's waiting right behind this door, I could be in danger, he thought to himself.

He let go of the handle and murmured a short, quiet incantation while waving his hands.

Arcane Armor (I) triggered.

A slotted first-level spell was expended, and Will felt some uncomfortable tingles when an invisible armor of force sprung up around his skin. His half-invisible form remained just as half-invisible.

The next spell, slotted at level two, was cast almost as quickly.

Mistform (II) triggered.

Will's already blurry form became fainter and even less discernible.

He pulled the handle, and the door opened. The dark corridor it opened into seemed empty. It meant the thief now had several seconds' headstart. Will closed the door behind him before proceeding quietly.

The hallway was almost totally dark, although Will's half-elven eyes were already adjusting to the low amount of light available. Yet he almost stumbled when his foot struck the first step of a staircase.

Will quickly climbed up and grimaced when a couple of the steps creaked under his feet. He emerged in a messy, empty room and immediately saw an open window leading to the other side of the building.

He peeked out and looked down. A man climbing down a rope stared right back at him. He had a bag over his shoulder and a long wooden staff tied to his back.

Will pulled his misty head back inside. Crap!

After just a second, he heard another thump from below, so he peeked out again. The figure had left the rope hanging behind and started to run away.

Fuck!

There was no time to think. Will extended his hand and spoke another trigger while staring after the man who was about to turn the corner for the next street.

A magical, willpower-based attack struck the thief the moment Will uttered the final syllable.

Mental Shackles, Minor (III) triggered.

It was a third-level spell—one that was decent against strong targets and tyrannical against weaklings. He didn't know if his target was weak or if he'd been simply taken by too much surprise to resist it. In any case, the spell had a very limited effective period.

Will got on the rope and jumped off it as soon as he dared. He landed smoothly and flexibly on the cobblestone pavement, feeling briefly surprised at how easy the maneuver had been. 16 Dexterity rocks!

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The thief was still staring straight ahead, unable to take a single step forward. Unable to move a finger, really. His whole body was shaking from exertion, but he just couldn't will it to move.

Will grabbed the staff and whisked it into his magical inventory. It took exactly one slot. He grabbed the satchel on the man's shoulder as well and tried to use his inventory again, but it just wouldn't accept the container.

He turned around and ran the other way as fast as he could. There weren't other people on the little street he had emerged on, but the next one had more traffic.

Will slowed down and canceled his concealment spells, put the satchel inside his robes, and hugged it against his stomach. He started walking like any other pedestrian while trying to keep his breathing relatively level.

He hadn't heard any running steps behind him yet, but it had been dozens of seconds already, and his spell had surely ended a while ago.

He soon turned into another narrow alley to take out the satchel again. It seemed to be stuffed with some cloth, but when he pulled on it, Will heard glass objects clinking against each other.

Wrapped in the cloth, there were five small bottles in total, all of them containing an orange liquid.

He took the potions and willed them into his inventory. They stacked neatly, leaving two empty slots. He took the piece of cloth out of the satchel and crumbled both items up. This time, both of them disappeared obediently and took one slot each.

This is some game logic...

With his suspicious deeds done, Will quickly walked back to the auction house, seeing a few others returning from their chase.

"Any luck?" he asked Adil, trying to look nonplussed.

"None," the dwarf replied gruffly.

"I lost mine, too. I don't think they would have told us anything useful anyway."

"Yea. Mine was a skinny boy. I bet his clothes were stolen from richer people."

"Well, we did what we could."

While they waited for the smoke to clear, someone returned with a prisoner in tow. It was really just a teenager who kept wailing dramatically at the rough handling.

"What's gonna happen to them?" Will asked curiously.

"Forced labor," Steve who had arrived at some point answered. "Mining, perhaps. Or, if they're lucky, just cleaning the streets in chains."

"Oh. Those. I thought they were slaves."

"No. We don't have slaves here."

Ten minutes later, they went back in. The graying host looked furious.

Will saw that the enchanted glass had been broken on the display case holding the mace. The mace, however, was still present.

On the other side of the stage, the case where the staff had been standing had merely been opened without breaking the glass.

"What happened here?" Adil asked.

The host merely glanced at him with a frown but didn't give an answer. The dwarf didn't ask again.

The two regular guards were the last ones to come back, both of them out of breath. Will had thought they'd stayed inside with the host, but apparently something or someone had lured them out as well.

"We lost the staff and a batch of potions," the host finally explained. "There's no hiding this, so we'll be putting up a bounty."

"What kind of potions?" Will asked.

The man glared at him, but Will didn't care. He knew he was acting suspiciously, but he needed the information.

"Healing potions. Orange grade." He got his answer after a beat.

Will nodded in thanks, wearing an impassive face. Just a second later, he had to suppress a grimace when a second thought occurred to him.

That was unnecessary! I could have tried Identifying them on my own. It was yet another spell in his book he hadn't gotten around to trying out yet.

The rest of the auction was uneventful. The temporary security guards received a full pay of three silver despite the mishap. It wasn't much, but it would last him a few days even if he stayed in the nice room. Will thought it worth the few hours invested, even if he discounted his unexpected windfall.

Still, while helpful, three silver were ultimately peanuts.

"Do you happen to have any other jobs in store?" Will asked his two acquaintances when they got out.

"Nah," Steve answered. "But something is bound to turn up again."

"Boy," Adil spoke after a moment. "That lightning of yours. Can you hit any harder with it?"

"Sure," Will answered, thinking of an electricity-based second-level spell. "I can kill people with it if I have to. Or monsters."

"Now hear me out. On the frontier, there's this friend of mine. He's also a mage..."

---

Will returned to the inn he was staying at and to the privacy of his rented room.

He took out the stolen staff and chanted for a few minutes. Identify!

A tooltip-sized window popped up, containing a minimal description of the item.

Quarterstaff +0.6

Durability 24/31

"Hmm? Plus oh point six?"

In Caverns & Monsters, the strength of a magic weapon or armor would always be expressed by a whole number.

The fractional figure made sense when he thought about it. This was a real world, and the truly game-like features were limited to his interface. There was no reason items crafted by a real person would stick to a neat and discrete order. Even +0.6 was probably a rounded figure.

In any case, a +0.6 staff was decent enough to keep for now. To match his supposed level of 14, Will would have liked to have magic equipment in the +2 or +3 range, but there was no way to know if items like that were even available here.

He left the inn the next day, bought a few necessities, a cheap horse, and a two-hour lesson on how to handle it. He then rode further east, toward the border.

The trip was supposed to be short when riding horseback in comparison to having the horse pull a cart. However, his horse wasn't as fast as the other riders who sometimes passed him by.

Will got down to feed and water the animal more often than the other travelers around him did, but it didn't make it move any faster.

The next morning, the horse felt even slower, and in the afternoon it stopped, lay down, and promptly breathed its last.

"Fuck! There goes my twenty silver!" Will raged. "Did I fail my Animal Lore check? A half-elf should have two levels in it by default, right? System! Skill list!"

No such list appeared despite his vehement requests.

It turned out he had no idea about horse health. When he'd asked for a riding lesson, he'd revealed his ignorance. It only made sense he would be sold a sick animal.

A wagon he had just overtaken approached him again. "Get out of the way!" its driver shouted at him.

"Do you have eyes, idiot?! It's dead! It can't fucking move!"

The wagoneer grumbled while he slowly and carefully steered around the corpse while also trying to avoid getting his wheel stuck in the soft earth on the shoulder of the road.

Will spent ten minutes trying his hand at his levitation spell. Very slowly, he floated the horse corpse out of the way and into the forest that the road passed through.

Well, at least it took me pretty close before dying, he consoled himself.

He took out all of the horse feed he had stacked in his inventory and dumped it on the ground. He used the freed-up slot to store his thick bedroll instead.

Next, Will walked. He still ended up having to spend one more night outside before reaching his destination.

Will expected his legs to be killing him by the end of the trip. He was happily surprised when they were only sore.

Perhaps my decent physical stats and even my total level are good for something, he realized.

It wasn't defined in canon how high-level characters got more hit points and higher saving throws even if their ability scores didn't change. Perhaps their bodies just grew supernaturally strong?

After all, warrior types could basically brawl their way into demigodhood in C&M.

Will walked through the small border town, sometimes stopping to ask for directions due to the randomly winding streets, despite seeing his destination looming ahead.

Finally, he crossed a drawbridge and entered the grounds of a somewhat impressively sized castle. It was surrounded by higher stone walls than the rest of the town, which still got a shoulder-height one that was further extended by a wooden palisade.

A guard escorted him inside a small stone building near the gate, where Will had to wait given that he didn't possess a proper clearance to enter the castle. A runner boy was sent to fetch Adil's friend to deal with his matter.

A particularly short dwarf of perhaps four and a half feet followed the boy back.

Unlike anyone else Will saw around, the dwarf wore a robe. It didn't look as luxurious as his own, but it clearly signified a different status. As a typical dwarf with a big beard, his age was difficult to estimate, but Will thought he had to be older than Adil.

"You're a friend of Adil?" the dwarf asked.

"Hello, Singer Limul. I only briefly worked with Adil, but I managed to convince him of my talents."

"That may be so, but Adil doesn't really understand magic."

"Perhaps. But he certainly seems to appreciate strength and straight talk," Will argued with a shrug. "I knocked people out with my spells, and I didn't waste his time with bullshit."

"Which spells?"

"I showed him some lightning, but I have others, too. Pure magic projectiles, fire spells, and chameleon-type concealment. Also some lesser tricks against weak targets."

Limul raised his brows. "Sounds like a fairly wide repertoire for someone so young."

"I'm not all that young." Will pulled his hair back to reveal a pointy ear. "Half-elf. Almost forty years old."

"I could see that a minute ago. Your features are relatively obvious. Young elves tend to obsess over a single type of magic until they master it. Have you already done that?"

Will shrugged. "I doubt I can call myself a master of anything yet. I like variety. Perhaps my human side dominates?"

"Hmm. In any case, since Adil sent you, I'll give you a chance. But I'm warning you, it won't be an easy job."

"He mentioned there's a war, but he said it's just weakling raiders, and that mages will be pretty safe in the backline."

"He's got it mostly right, but you shouldn't assume war is predictable, even if it's been going on for twenty years."

Will blinked. "Twenty?"

"Indeed. There has never been real peace since the Sunny Hills War. It has only cooled down to a border scuffle."

"I see. Well, I'm good as long as I'm not forced to take stupid risks."

"Fair. Come! I'll take you to the lieutenant general."