The rest of the night passes with pleasant conversation, good food, and an unbelievable view of the sunset. Miss S seems to be pretty happy with us being here with her, and when it comes time to sleep, she breaks off to one of the rooms and leaves us with a pile of baked goods to munch on. When the glass closes in behind her the entire room goes perfectly black, and after a moment, I pull out a stat coin and put it on the table in front of me.
“That was not much of a warning.” Illumisia says into my mind as she yawns wide. “Of course there are dangerous people working the darker sides of city management–I met a good amount of them looking for my messenger. Though it was nice to find out that they have influence over the guards.”
I nod in agreement as I stare down at my coin. “Makes the messenger disappearing feel more like a planned thing, that’s for sure. But why? Did the system put a bounty on your head while I wasn’t here?”
Illumisia shrugs. “Nobody has tried to claim it if it exists. I have not shown my power to anyone, as well, so they would have no reason to fear me.”
“How big were you?”
Her eyes trail to the top of my head. “Roughly as tall as you are, with my proportions at the moment scaled up to meet it.”
I snort and lean back in my chair. “No reason to fear you my ass. It doesn’t matter, though–we’re going to find out what happened tomorrow. Maybe it’ll give us some insight on how the city works, and if we can use that to our advantage.”
Pearl leans against something in her shell. “Do we really need this city?”
“It’s basically the starter city for all of humanity; I’d say it’s good to have a foothold here. Gisela and the other three must've been here at some point, too, so it’d let us know who comes and goes.” I set my coin on its edge, trap it under one finger, and flick it to send it spinning. “Do you think I can triple this thing? Or can I only double it, since that’s physically flipping it?”
The coin spins in place, humming against the wooden table as Illumisia makes a thoughtful noise deep in her throat. Nobody’s immediate answer tells me that I probably can’t triple it, since the act of flipping a coin is what doubles it. Just betting it on another thing would most likely triple how much it’s worth–not the actual stat inside. Or maybe I’m just completely wrong here. Ah, these things are pretty cheap in the scheme of things, so I guess I can afford to be a little wasteful. I’ll just go out and kill something powerful tomorrow to make up the Worth.
I smack the coin with my palm to stop it from spinning, then summon two more stat coins from my inventory. A number beside the amount of under-five coins I have stops me for a second, but I shake off the shock of seeing fifteen ready to use and set the three coins down on the table. If I can triple them, I’ll have more than a few left over.
“Illumisia, think of a number between one and three.” I say, then tap the leftmost coin once. Then the middle one twice, and the final one three times. “What number did you think of?”
“Three.” Illumisia says without hesitation.
The left and middle coins disappear in a flash of magic. I grab the one remaining coin, feel at it with my awareness, and get perhaps the most surprising possible; it has two stat points in it. Not one, not three, but two. How the hell is that even possible?
I frown and flip the coin over, as if that’ll help anything. “The hell is this?”
“A ripoff.” Illumisia suggests.
“The system messing with you again.” Pearl says bitterly.
Honestly, it’s just a plain mystery to me. Does this confirm that I can only double non-Worth coins by flipping them? And why the hell did the coin go to two stat points instead of being stuck at one?
“It shouldn’t have worked at all.” I mutter and lean on my elbow. “But there’s no point risking it further if I can guarantee the same result with a coin toss. Is this some unwritten rule of the system? Because if it is, this is flat out bullshit.”
“Agreed.” Pearl and Illumisia say at the same time. They share a look, even though they shouldn’t be able to see each other, and Illumisia motions for Pearl to go ahead. “Thanks. Personally, I think we shouldn’t even bother with it right now. The system obviously knows why this is happening, and it isn’t offering an explanation. When you have way more Worth to play around with, then we should take some time to test it out.”
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Illumisia nods. “That is close enough to what I was going to say. Now Shelby, I wish to go to bed. I am quite tired.”
I motion at the glass for her to go ahead. “I’ll be along in a while. Got to flip the rest of these stat coins so I can get all my stats up before whatever happens tomorrow.”
“You can do that from our room.” Illumisia insists as she stands and magic grabs me by the shoulders. “Remember that I am but a painted dane in our host’s eyes. I cannot do anything that would break the illusion. So you must come with me.”
Brushing off Illumisia’s magic is a labor on its own, and it feels like she’s putting absolutely no effort into it. Instead of fighting a pointless fight, I sigh theatrically to make my annoyance known and follow Illumisia out of the common area. It’s not like my skill recharges any faster based on which chair or couch I sit on, after all.
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7B/7M/10S/7F
I nod at my stats, then send my Class Card away. I’ve still got two undoubled coins that don’t have a restriction, and none of my other stats gave me a threshold skill when I leveled them up. Not sure what triggers that yet, but it could be the system screwing with me. Again. I glance down at Illumisia, half expecting my newfound Mind to tell me something new, but she looks normal. Annoyed, but normal.
“This is where we were told to come, was it not?” She lowers her nose to the ground and takes a long sniff. “It smells of cleaning chemicals and blood, though it is quite old. The timelines do not mesh.”
“Well, maybe your messenger didn’t die here.”
Illumisia shakes her head. “I smell nothing but blood and chemicals. There would be far more than that if someone was killed here–rather than that, I would assume someone was robbed or beaten here. Which is, most likely, why our host recommended this place.”
That’s… foreboding as hell. I glance around, looking for any eyes in the dark or magical shimmers, but–wait, no, there’s one right there. Just a few feet away. Approaching slowly and surely. Illumisia and I share a bemused look, and I summon two ghost quarters into my hand that I fill with shields.
“Try to keep whoever this is alive–actually, no, we do not need them alive.” Illumisia licks her lips and bares her teeth. “I have their scent. We can follow it back to wherever they came from.”
Probably Stonestep Solutions’ headquarters. But not their public one. I nod in agreement, pretend to study a brick that’s a little out of place on the wall, and brush my fingers against my leg. The brick’s weirdly put in there–like, it fits ninety percent perfectly, but there’s a chip in it that should definitely be filled with the mortar that surrounds it. It’s deep enough that there’s no way someone accidentally chipped it, and if it was like that from the beginning, the mortar would’ve plugged the gap.
Magic flares to my left. I press a shield coin hard between my fingers, and put up a dome around the three of us and the magical stain. The other one just keeps me safe from the dagger that slips into visibility and steams with purple froth that smells like death and leaves an acrid taste in my mouth.
I look up at the point of impact that didn’t even manage to dent my shield. “Nice try, buddy.”
The stain shimmers, then collapses. Behind it is a figure cloaked completely in loose fitting black clothing, obscuring their body so much that I can’t tell what species they are. Even their hand, which still clutches the dagger like it’ll pierce my shield any second now, is just a formless lump of shifting black fabric. For a second I wonder if it's even a person at all, or just some animated clothes sent to kill anyone who tries to get a closer look.
Then it turns around, lets out a yelp of terror, and runs full-steam into my shield dome. Face-first. The echoing crack gets a wince out of me as the billowy figure crumbles to the ground, blood leaking out from the folds on the cloth around their head. I slowly stand up straight and walk over to them, prod their body with my foot, and get a writhing convulsion for my troubles.
“They just concussed themselves.” I say in utter disbelief. “How the hell did they manage that?”
Illumisia trods up to them and nudges the bloody fabric with her nose. “Utter idiocy masked by unearned confidence. By the smells on this fabric, whoever is underneath has taken at least five different lives. Would you like me to end them, or shall we bring them along with us as a hostage?”
“Ooh, I vote for hostage!” Pearl says with a gleeful grin. “It’ll be fun watching them realize how screwed they are when we bring them to their own doorstep. Um, don’t forget to check their teeth and pockets. Having them kill themselves before we get some use out of them would be disappointing.”
There’s that cruel streak that so rarely shows itself. I lean down and maneuver the would-be assassin’s body into my arms, then drape them over Illumisia’s back. Her fur shifts slightly to hold our hostage, then without waiting for anything else, she walks right through my shield like it’s nothing. I blink in surprise, but shake my head a second later and follow her.
Can’t be surprised at how easily she does that. Just because she doesn’t look like it at the moment, Illumisia’s one of the most dangerous things on this world.
I follow her through the streets, ignoring the strange looks everyone gives us as we pass by. More than a few of them veer off into nearby stores they definitely didn’t plan on going into, and some of them beeline for guards who’re meandering around. I nudge Illumisia with my knee and motion at the guards. She nods and speeds up, following a trail that I can’t see further and further up into the city.
Honestly, I wasn’t expecting an assassination attempt so early. And it scares the hell out of me that this was Stonestep Solutions’ initial way of dealing with someone barely looking into them. It must mean that Illumisia’s messenger was involved in something way bigger than we thought–or that Stonestep Solutions is just that dangerous.
As a massive building like a giant’s rib cage turned on its back and filled in with stone so thin you can see through it comes into view, I honestly don’t know which possibility is more likely.