After Tom left, Alice barred the door. Looking back, she should probably have done that in the first place, but she had been blinded by the richness of the hotel. She had thought all that luxury gave her safety.

She’d been wrong.

The extra lock was a thin shield, but she felt mildly better.

"What’s wrong?" Prim asked. "He is nice."

"He’s nice right now.” Alice bit at her lower lip. It felt rough from mistreatment already, and she feared she was in danger of drawing blood soon. "Right until he spends those coins and comes back looking for more."

Or decides to skip that step and go straight to the hunters, she silently added, not wanting to upset her dragons.

"If he does that, we'll just give him new coins if he comes back,” Numi said confidently. “I can find plenty of them."

"This isn't about coins." Alice started to pace the length of the room, back and forth, her mind a whirl of anxieties.

Everything felt too big, too much, and she was so vulnerable. For a moment, she missed her old life. It had been dull with no bright future ahead of her, but everything from her sleeping arrangements to her two meals a day had been taken care of.

But she had no future there. Just the same day in, day out, hoping to catch the System's attention.

Well, for better or worse, she had caught the System's attention.

She had to believe that meant something. That she was capable of living up to her class.

"You're very worried," Prim said again. "Tell us what's wrong."

Alice nearly laughed. "Everything. I need to find work," she paused and shook her head, "No, first I need to find somewhere safe. This hotel is nice, but with the hunters out there… I'm worried. I couldn't even protect myself or you from Tom when he came in." She looked at her hands — slim, feminine, and lacking any sort of muscle. "He's just a kid without any skills of his own, and if he had attacked me… I don't know what I would've done."

Alice had no skills. Her dragons did, though.

"So you need a protector," Prim said. "That's what Tom told you earlier, right?" "Yes, but I can't hire one of those.”

Numi started to speak but Alice held up her hand to interrupt her. “I know, Numi, you've brought me a lot of coins, but I don't think there's enough money in the world to pay off an adult who ever found out that I had dragons."

That knowledge would be worth more gold than she could imagine. Dragons were the terrors of the kingdom, and though that certainly did not apply to her friends, she didn't think that she would be given the chance to explain herself, should they ever be caught.

Prim fluffed herself up, almost as if offended. "You certainly do not need to buy a bodyguard."

"What do you —" Alice stopped, then looked at Prim. Her eyes briefly unfocused as she glanced at her dragon's profile sheet. Mother of All. "You mean, you want to lay another egg?" she asked. "But we don't have another aspect token."

"Numi has leveled up several times, and so have you. I think your class is on the verge of leveling up again. We just need one more push."

Prim was right. Alice had thought so herself, and with a burst of chagrin, she realized she was thinking just the way she had been when she encountered troubles in her old life, with her old class. Deep in her heart, she still thought of herself as a General Laborer who strived for coins and power she would never have. For help she would never receive from uncaring high-classers and a mysterious System.

But now she did have that power. She needed to start thinking like She of Many Dragons.

She did have help, and she had options. Only, instead of leveling herself up, her power came through her dragons.

She turned to Numi, who was lounging across the back of a small, delicate, powder-blue sofa. Her stomach was still full, and from the satisfied expression on her green face, she had likely eaten some of those coins rather than putting them into her storage space.

"Numi, how did you do tonight?" Alice asked.

Instantly, the little green dragon went from somnolent and sleepy to alert and eager. "I thought you would never ask," she said, opened her mouth, and started plucking out coins.

To Alice's shock, though — and should she really be surprised, considering the area they were in? — Numi took out one silver coin after another from her mouth until she had a stack of at least 25 right in front of her. Then she started on the copper coins. Three more stacks of 25. By then, her stomach had shrunk considerably. The unusually proportioned stacks confirmed Numi had been eating occasional coins, too.

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The little green dragon gave her a smug look, then opened her mouth and pulled out another gold coin, then a second, and finally, a third.

"Numi…" Alice said, stunned. She swooped down and pulled the little dragon into a hug. Numi squeaked happily in her arms.

"You did amazing!" Alice said. "Oh dearest, I'm sorry I didn't check with you earlier… Were you uncomfortable holding all that in your stomach?" She looked at the coins again, realizing that there were certainly more than there had been before. Numi seemed a little longer, too. She was only a couple of days old but she had already grown.

"No, it was just all very heavy," Numi said.

"Well, that's a couple of days worth of rent here," Alice said, amused. "And that will give us time to figure out how to level you up." She looked at her profile, which included the two dragons.

Alice Turner

Age: 19

Class: She of Many Dragons

Level: 2

Rank: 1

Aspect: 2/2

Aspect 1

“Primordialis”

Level: 4

Primordialis' Skills: 3/3

Mother of All (Permanent skill. Locked.) : 1

Authority: 4

Concealment: 9

Aspect 2

“Numismatis”

Level: 1

Numismatis' Skills: 3/3

Currency Forager (Permanent skill. Locked.) :6

Lock-picking: 2

Spatial Storage: 4

Alice had gotten notifications on and off through the day but had learned to ignore them.

Prim was very high in her Concealment skill.

Numi had leveled up a few times too, but she could see that there was some ground to gain in her Lock Picking.

"Lock-picking," Alice murmured.

Alice looked around the room with new eyes. "It seems that these fancy classers would have a safe…"

"A safe?" Numi sat up, very interested.

"Look around the walls. I think that the attendant, Peter, should have shown me around, but he probably didn't think much of me," Alice murmured, and why should he? She had not been acting like a proper lady. Just a scared girl pretending to be one.

She needed to remember that she had power.

The dragons started hunting around. The room was very large so there was a lot of ground to cover.

Numi, however, who was used to looking within hidden places, was the one to find it. "In here!" she called happily from the closet.

Alice came in to see her pointing with her tail to a small dark safe with a brass lock in the closet.

The safe was open, of course, and ready to be filled with jewels and coins and then relocked by whoever was renting the room.

Inspired, Alice took one of the silver coins and showed it to her dragon. "This is yours if you can figure out the lock," she said, placing it in the empty safe. There was a note inside with the combination. But Alice didn't need to read that. She put the silver coin on the note, closed the door, and spun the lock.

Numi dived on it immediately, and Alice and Prim watched with interest as she pressed her head to the door and started spinning it back and forth.

"What are you doing?" Alice asked, amused.

"Figuring out the combination. I can hear the tumblers," Numi replied.

Alice looked at Prim, who shrugged. She didn’t know what that was meant to mean either. But this was Numi's skill, so she likely knew what she was doing.

Numi spun the lock this way and that. It looked random to Alice, but the dragon was focused and intent. She gave a happy little yip sound every time she settled on a number, then started working the dial in the other direction. Finally, in less than a minute, she swung the safe open.

Alice didn't have time to congratulate her before Numi leapt inside, falling on the silver coin like a cat on a mouse. She bit it in half and swallowed both parts in two gulps.

And, she had gained a new skill level out of it, bringing Lock-Picking to three.

Now Alice was paying strict attention, she felt a trickle of that experience feed from Numi to herself. It was similar to how it felt when she ranked up a level in her old Cleaning skill.

"Great job," Alice said, warmly. She felt as if she was on the very edge of leveling up… Just one more level should do it.

She looked at the safe, then frowned, knowing that it only had one combination and Numi had already figured it out. The little green dragon needed more practice.

An idea occurred to her, and she winced, knowing that it could backfire on them easily.

Just in case, she looked again at the dragon. "Do you think after you've rested, you can go out again and look for more coins. Perhaps you can gain another level in Currency Forager?"

Numi hesitated in thought and then reluctantly shook her head. "I swept this area pretty clean. I sniffed out every single coin for two blocks in every direction. I can go further away from the hotel, if you want…”

"No," Alice said, immediately. Something instinctual told her that she did not want her dragon to stray too far from her. But neither did she want to go out and accompany Numi herself, especially with the hunters poking around.

That brought her back to her original idea.

She bit her lip again. This time, she tasted a little blood.

"I… have an idea," she said, "but it's dangerous, and it will take all of us to succeed."

Both the dragons perked up and looked at her.

"What is it?" Prim asked.

Alice let out a breath. She could hardly believe what she was about to suggest. A couple of weeks ago this would have been unthinkable, but… she had changed. Everything had changed.

"We go to other suites… in unoccupied rooms," she said, "and we break into every single one of them, and their safes, until Numi levels up."