“It could be worse,” I mumbled, scratching the bare skin over my ruined left knee. It had healed up nice and smooth, hadn’t it?

Weeks had passed since I lost my leg, but it still felt so hard to accept. Sure, people became cripples all the time. But me? Never once in my life had I imagined that it would happen to me. It felt unreal.

I sat on the edge of my bed, staring at my stump. If I closed my eyes, I could almost pretend to wiggle my toes on the foot that didn’t exist. Funny. For all the wild magic in this world, none of them was able to regrow my leg. Oh, the Inspectors could have healed me easily—that I did not doubt. But they would not do it out of pity, and so I suspected that I would stay disabled for the rest of my life. It wasn’t going to be a long life anyway.

Sharp knocks on the door jolted me out of my daze. I took a deep breath, then grabbed the socket for my prosthetic leg and fastened it around my stump. Next came the leg itself, with a series of clasps that felt unnecessarily complicated; I struggled to close them in the right order.

“Randel,” came Imaya’s voice from outside, “are you ready yet?”

“Almost!”

The final part of my prosthetic leg snapped into place with a satisfying click, and I could feel the leg vibrate softly as the components within came to life. Satisfied, I patted my mechanical knee and leaned forward to stand up. The leg moved with me on its own, having guessed what I was about to do.

I had Devi to thank for this too. She was the one who had gone back to the collapsing Dungeon to retrieve the remains of my left leg. I hadn’t known it back then, but for Players without mana control these Golemancy-powered limbs were useful only because of Necromancy. My splintered bones within the fake leg guessed what I was doing based on the movement of my other bones, and the necromantic construct forwarded this information to the golemantic components. It was much like Computer Science, except with magic—which meant that there was basically no difference. Programming computers and programming goletons were both about the same arcane science in my eyes.

I walked back and forth by the bed, testing my balance. If I wasn’t careful I could stumble easily; sudden, unexpected changes of directions were harder for my fake leg to cope with. The prosthetic was also heavier than a flesh-and-bone leg, which was something I still had to get used to. I teleported Soul Eater into my hand, transforming it into a walking cane within a couple of seconds. My shaping speed had improved a lot after my misadventure in the Dungeon. I had no explanation other than that the second shade was making a difference. My fingers hurt, and I noticed that I was gripping the cane’s pommel too tight. I forced myself to relax. I then walked to the door and opened it.

Imaya was standing just outside in casual clothes, wearing a pair of round glasses that suited her rather well. I noted with some amusement that she was barely taller than the Thardos couple she was chatting with: Gura and Nikote, if I remembered their names correctly. They were holding a pair of Thardos babies each, talking animatedly up until they noticed me. Their whiskers twitched.

“Hello,” I said, feeling awkward.

“Good evening, Painter!”

“Evening, Randel!”

They retreated quickly even as they greeted me, as if they were afraid to get in my way. I let them go with a sick feeling in my stomach. I was too tired of futilely trying to change how these people regarded me. Story of my life, wasn’t it? I turned to Imaya, who regarded me with a cute little frown.

“About time you came out,” she said. “Erika should be here already.”

“Yeah. Sure.”

I locked my apartment up, then walked out to the central hall of the second floor. The place was lively as ever; my building became a popular place for those who had lost their homes during the sweller invasion. The rooms were completely full and the communal areas were crowded with makeshift bedrolls too. It had mixed feelings about it; I certainly hadn’t planned for any of this when I bought this building, but it felt satisfying to put the extra rooms to good use. I hoped I’d be able to get my empty rooms back, though. With the help of the Dungeon more and more new homes were being rebuilt and the water shortage was about to be solved too.

I had left the management of the building to Maa and her Shrissten friends. There were quite a few troublemakers trying to take advantage of the situation, but the looming lizard-people did a pretty good job at keeping at least some semblance of order. They were intimidating on their good days and downright terrifying when it was time to get serious.

I paused briefly as I reached the staircase, bracing myself. My prosthetic leg wasn’t actually too bad at climbing up and down the stairs … but I had fallen down a couple of times, and that had left me wary. Which was stupid, because I was sparring with Devi at much more dangerous places.

“I don’t get you,” Imaya said from beside me. “If it’s so much trouble, why didn’t you keep Soul Eater as your leg? I know you’d lose your teleportation that way, but that’s a small price for being able to walk properly!”

I slammed down the bottom of my cane and began to descend the stairs.

“This world has all sorts of cool steampunk-style prosthetics,” I said, forcing a smile on my face. “I don’t need Soul Eater when there are so many great alternatives around. See? You almost cannot tell the difference.”

The whirring of the mechanical components was probably louder in my ears than they actually sounded. The light metal casing of the leg was painted black to match Soul Eater, complete with orange highlights at the edges of the plating. As a piece of golemantic technology, it looked amazing. Compared to Soul Eater though? It felt cheap and fake.

“I suppose it’s petty vengeance,” I quietly added as we took the next flight of stairs. “It feels like the Inspector expects me to connect Soul Eater to my body, so not attaching it must really annoy her.”

“And … you think that’s wise?”

“Definitely not,” I said, “but when did that ever stop me? It’s a balm for my soul.”

Something that I really needed, now that so many things were eating my soul away.

“Huh,” Imaya said, giving me a worried look. “Okay, well, we’re friends so I won’t judge you—”

“That’s nice to hear.”

“—but you’re being dumb, you little rebel.”

I raised an eyebrow at the admonishing tone, though I didn’t particularly mind it. Imaya was feeling more and more comfortable in my presence once again, which I was glad for. She wasn’t exactly back to her bubbly and excited self – and perhaps she would never be – but she was coming out of her shell nicely. Unlocking her third Ability had helped a lot with her confidence, and managing the Dungeon was keeping her busy and giving her purpose.

“You’re late,” a voice cut through the entrance hall as soon as we arrived.

Erika was dressed in her pristine office clothes as always, her fingers drumming on the dossier in her arms. She must have come here straight from her office. Her rectangle glasses couldn’t quite hide the dark rings under her eyes.

“Hello to you too, Erika,” I said. “Sorry for our tardiness—it’s Imaya’s fault.”

“What?!” Imaya said.

“I’ve got a busy schedule,” Erika said, tucking a lock of graying hair behind her ear. “No offense, Randel, but—”

“Come, let’s walk while we talk,” I cut her off, heading for the basement. “Erika, I think you work too much.”

Our business relationship was … complicated. All I had asked Erika to do was to handle my money and help me get more properties, but she hadn’t been satisfied with just that; she had gone ahead and set up a property management office for my real estates and founded a rental agency under my name. Now she was recruiting more and more people to her – technically our – company, as well as overseeing the work of those she had already hired. During my part-time job at the bountyhouse I had learned that Erika held strict work ethics, but I hadn’t realized that the woman was a real workaholic. As someone who was often called the Mad Painter, I could testify that Erika was absolutely insane.

“I have little free time lately,” Erika admitted, “but I’m also probably the happiest I’ve been in a while. I like the challenge.”

“Well, that’s good,” I said as we took yet another flight of stairs. “Just don’t let the stress get you. If you wanted to take a few days off and go on a holiday, I would find it perfectly okay.”

“Holiday? It’s barely been eight cycles since I started working for you.”

“That’s already longer than any job Randel held in his life,” Imaya piped up from behind us. I gave her the stink eye; perhaps she was getting too comfortable around me. I let the matter slide, this time. We arrived to the basement and my collar projected a holographic message in the air.

> You have entered the Dungeon: Randel’s Refuge

> The Dungeon Core of Randel’s Refuge has been restored.

My very own Dungeon. Randel’s refuge, not the Mad Painter’s. It would hopefully convince everyone to stop calling me mad—at least, that was what I had thought before realizing that only Players could see the Dungeon’s name. I was still mad about how unfair that was.

The basement was one of the eight entrances that my Dungeon could have. Brick walls fused with stone as the back of the room turned into a wide tunnel. It could certainly use some cleaning up with all the mess that the children had left behind.

I led the way down the tunnel, a row of evenly-placed luminescent mushrooms lighting the way. A minute later we arrived to the central cavern. It wasn’t as grand as Stonehearth had been, but it was nice enough; a smooth circular chamber about the size of a football stadium. The smell of fresh bread greeted us immediately, coming from the bakery right beside the entrance of the lower gallery.

What I called the lower gallery was basically an elevated perimeter all around the Refuge. Neat stone houses were lined up along the wall, many of them already inhabited. They had a nice view of the center of the cavern. Imaya was still working on the buildings down there, but the Refuge already looked great from this height. Sure, Imaya scrapped many of the designs that I had drawn for her – customized houses with flowing stone archways and adornments were painstakingly difficult to create – but I was satisfied with the results anyway. The houses had basic rounded shapes much like what we had seen in Stonehearth, but their layout resembled Fortram. Eight straight avenues lead to a wide square in the center, and there were two circular main roads that divided the place into three rings. Keeping to the number eight and making the place mirror the city above made the construction much more cost-effective. Dirty Inspector shenanigans without a doubt, but I let them have their fun this time. I would rather raise more buildings than quibble about the layout.

To complete the look of the Refuge, we had luminous plants growing everywhere. Although it was technically possible to grow them only at specific places, I had too many brilliant plans to waste my time manually placing each of them. At least the plants were uniformly clover-like, as opposed to the jungle of mismatched plants in Stonehearth. Another important change was that instead of the radioactive greenish-blue hue, the clovers were emitting warm yellow light. It had been tempting to go overboard with the colors and create a literal light show, but I didn’t forget that people would be living down here. Letting go of inconvenient artistic choices had been the most difficult part of building this place.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

“Impressive,” Erika said. “Is this really a Dungeon? I expected it to be more … dark.”

“What you see is actually darker than usual,” I said. “The plants dim their light for the night and glow more brightly during the day.”

Erika stood silently for a while, her eyes taking in the stone town.

“This changes everything,” she said. “I thought this would be a grimmer place, more unpleasant to live in. I’d have to inspect the houses from the inside too, of course. And water is a problem—”

“There’s an underground river running beneath,” I said. “The water is clear and drinkable. No plumbing, though—I have no idea how to do that. We dug a bunch of wells for now. In time, I think we’d even be able to transport water up to the city. We’ll need engineers for that, though.”

“I’ll make bringing in specialists a priority,” Erika said, nodding. She seemed to be fired up. “Randel, you should have shown this place to me sooner. The sheer amount of possibilities that a place like this can—”

A sharp caw from the bakery made her jump and look back where an Avarii stood behind the bakery’s window, handing a bag of pastries to Imaya. The bird-man waved with a clawed hand as he noticed us, then turned back to Imaya to accept her credit card.

“I owed a favor to some Avarii Players,” I told Erika. “I returned it by allowing them to open shops next to each entrance of the Refuge.”

“What do you mean by each?” Erika asked. “How many, precisely?”

“Uh… Currently, there are four corridors leading to the surface.”

“Yes, but was it four you gave them permission for or was it each?” Erika said, glaring at me in a way that made me feel very small.

“It was a friendly deal,” I hedged. “Nothing was put to paper… Anyway, let’s go to the control room! It’ll be easier to discuss these things there.”

To Erika’s credit, she groaned only a little before waving for me to lead the way. I set out with a brisk limping walk down the gallery, escaping while I could. Imaya caught up to us a moment later, using her Reckless Dash to glide over in a blink—and almost drop her pastries as she arrived.

I enjoyed our brief stroll along the wide road of the gallery. There were quite a few refugees spending their time outside, and so the air was also filled with constant chatter and I was filled with hope that this place could indeed become livable. Sure, people tended to fall silent wherever I went – rumors about the Mad Painter were way too exaggerated – but I was confident that in time they would see me differently.

There was already one good quality that I was known for; I didn’t discriminate against non-humans. Almost half of the refugees were Thardos or Shrissten, two species that were generally the poorest. The demand for their magical talents was low because Sound and Light magics were easy to learn and use. The Refuge had quite a few Avarii too, but I suspected that was mostly because of my deal with Kiriri and Kavak.

All of this meant that the chatter around me rarely meant human speech. It consisted of high-frequency chittering by the Thardos, caws and chirps and color-changing feathers by the Avarii, as well as growls and hisses and pheromones by the Shrissten. I didn’t mind it—no, that was actually putting it mildly. I liked it. I found it difficult to explain why, but I liked it. Learning more about alien cultures was certainly inspiring, but that wasn’t the only reason. I stopped Erika and Imaya for a moment, watching a group of Avarii perform their daily prayer dance by the side of the road. Their movements were full of kicks, taloned feet swinging and colorful skirts swishing as they all danced to a silent song. I moved on before too long, careful to not disturb them.

All things considered, I was glad that I had been able to do something … well, good with the money I got from the System. Helping so many people was a new thing for me, and I was unsure what to think about it. I didn’t do this purely out of the kindness of my heart; I supposed it just felt good that I did something that other people appreciated.

An unfortunate side-effect was that all of my unearned money reminded me a bit too much of my parents. Adding to that feeling was that investing in real estate and gaining influence during the reconstruction of the city was exactly what I imagined my father would have done in my place. It filled me with unease, but … well, we believed that this made plenty of sense. Part of us liked to pretend that as long as we were clever enough we would be able to survive, but we knew better. We needed power. Physical and social both.

A small fish wouldn’t be able to evade all the larger fish indefinitely, no matter how smart they thought themselves to be. Creating our very own pond helped somewhat, but it would be even better if we could take the entire lake for ourselves. We were getting close to it too. We might have lost the last battle, but we now saw that there were more than one way to take the city.

“That’s a weird thought,” I mumbled, frowning.

“What is weird?” Erika asked.

“Oh, don’t mind me,” I said, waving dismissively. “My head is so full of ingenious ideas that I don’t even know where to start explaining them! We better not get into the extent of my thought-fullness.”

There was a beat of silence.

“Randel, this makes you look worse than just admitting that you were talking to yourself.”

“Yeah, so?”

“So I’m just reminding you,” Erika said. “Haven’t you been complaining about people calling you Mad Painter?”

Ouch. To be fair, I didn’t think that talking to myself was a very sane thing to do either, but … Erika could be right. She oftentimes was, actually. This bitter pill would have been easier to swallow if Imaya weren’t chuckling at my plight. Thankfully, we arrived at the portal room and I could change the topic.

The wide room that opened from the gallery was just one of the several portal rooms in the Dungeon. I fully intended to adorn the place one day – preferably with lots of wall paintings – but for now, it was just a simple circular chamber with large black disks of stone hanging on the walls. Imaya took a piece of chalk from the basket by the doorway, then stepped to the nearest disk and started working on it.

“The Dungeon has its own rules,” I explained to Erika. “We wanted to build a control room that is hard to get into for people other than us, but there’s a limit on how difficult the Dungeon is allowed to be. It cannot be unfair, so for every extra barrier we raised, we had to give something for the adventurers in return.”

“I’m afraid you’re losing me,” Erika said. “I’ve never been in a Dungeon before. What is Imaya doing?”

“She’s solving a riddle, so to speak,” I said and took a piece of chalk too. “She’ll open a portal to the control room by drawing the matching symbol. Come, I’ll show you how it works.”

I limped to an empty disk on the other side of the entrance, then drew the number eight on it. I added an infinity symbol that intersected the number, then encircled them with one quick twist of my arm.

“That’s a nice circle,” Erika said. “Any Bolob would be proud.”

“Thanks,” I said as I moved on to the next black disk. “It’s one of my many talents. I mean, as the Dungeon Master in a Dungeon of portals, it makes sense to be the fastest portal-opener, right?”

At the other side of the room, Imaya grumbled something under her breath that I decided not to hear. It sounded vaguely insult-like. She was in the middle of scrubbing off part of her drawing with the side of her palm.

“Can anyone open these portals?” Erika asked.

“Yeah,” I said, holding the chalk out to her. “Wanna try?”

“No, thank you. I’m fine observing.”

I shrugged, then turned to the disk to draw a matching symbol for my previous one. To make another point to Erika, I made the symbol much smaller this time; the size of the drawings didn’t matter, as long as they matched each other’s shape. Minor differences were tolerated too—otherwise Imaya would have never been able to get to the control room on her own.

I took a step back when I was done, and a moment later a pair of portals flared into life with swirling purple and gray colors, filling both stone disks. I walked into the closer portal and came out of the other, grinning at Erika who watched this with wide-eyed wonder. It felt sobering, in a way; even though Nerilia was Erika’s world, I was already more used to certain aspects of it than she was. Portals were everywhere in my life – especially with Devi around – but for an average citizen who kept herself well away from Dungeons, this was something new and incredible.

“Yes!” Imaya cheered, raising her arms victoriously as her portal opened. She jumped into it without waiting for us. I sensed Erika’s trepidation as we walked closer to Imaya’s portal.

“After you,” I told her. These hand-drawn portals closed themselves if no one used them for about a minute, so I was glad that Erika didn’t hesitate too much before taking a deep breath and stepping into the swirling lights. I followed her through—and nearly bumped into her as she was rooted in place right in front of the entrance.

The control room looked like the rooftop of my building. Night had fallen outside, and so the arching ceiling mirrored the colors of the night sky with the large moon bathing us in amber light. The sides of the room were less realistic so that anyone could see the edges of the room, but even so, it was easy to make out the surrounding buildings—as well as the large gorges and devastation that the giant worms had left in the city.

In the middle of the otherwise empty room, Imaya was already sitting in her favorite cushioned chair with her legs resting on the top of her mini-fridge. Her eyes rowed across the large holographic screens in front of her while she cradled the apple-sized control crystal in her lap.

“What—what is this place?” Erika whispered to me as if talking too loudly would disturb the illusion.

“I told you, it’s the Dungeon’s control room,” I said. “With the help of the control crystal that Imaya is holding, she can now build the Dungeon without pestering me for the Dungeon Core.”

“I wasn’t pestering you,” Imaya said without even looking up from the screen. “You should be more thankful for my help, Randel. Without me you’d still be wondering whether DPs were something edible!”

That wasn’t necessarily true since I had the knowledge of the shades whenever they deigned to share it with me—but Imaya didn’t know about that. Still, I couldn’t deny that she had helped a lot in figuring out how everything worked; the Dungeon came with no instructions, and so her expertise was invaluable.

“What are DPs?” Erika innocently asked, much to her doom.

“Dungeon Points,” Imaya said. “It’s what we can use to unlock new features of the Dungeon. Buildings, traps, monsters—alright, no monsters because Randel doesn’t want any. But any unique structure costs DPs, which sucks because DPs are a limited resource; you can only gain them if people die in your Dungeon. But don’t worry, we aren’t killing people here! We were lucky that a bunch of DPs carried over from the previous owner. Anyway, aside from DP there’s also Dungeon Mana, which is a renewable resource. I think this Dungeon regenerates an abnormally large amount of it too because we’re so close to the World Seed. Dungeon Mana is used to—”

I reached over Imaya’s shoulder, touching the control crystal with one hand and pointing at the wall with the other. I willed a short corridor to appear. It popped into existence immediately, the stone in its place disappearing as if it had only been a mirage. This elicited a sharp gasp from Erika and an indignant yell from Imaya.

“Randel, what are you doing?! You can’t just—”

“That cost us a small amount of Dungeon Mana,” I spoke over Imaya. “Erika, as you can see it takes barely any effort to expand the Dungeon. If you’re going to work with Imaya, you may need to adopt a different mindset regarding construction costs—they are not what you’re used to.”

“I understand,” Erika said, nodding. She turned back to the pouting Imaya. “And I think I understand why you’re helping Randel. This all seems very … exciting. “

“Right?” Imaya asked, brightening up. “It’s fun, even if Randel is a real jerk sometimes. Come, I’ll show you the map of the Dungeon. Look how awesome it is!”

She sprang to her feet and waved the control crystal around, dismissing the various screens and summoning a large holographic model of the entire Dungeon. Half-finished tunnels leading nowhere, chambers both large and small here and there, disjointed places connected only by portals. It was a mess, made worse by all the moving parts. The majority of the Dungeon was beneath the lower ring of Fortram, which rotated one way—but we had also tunneled into the middle ring, which rotated in the opposite direction.

“This is where we are now,” Imaya said, pointing at the deepest point of the map. “There’s an underground river above us, which comes from nowhere and goes nowhere. I know it makes no sense, but—”

I stopped listening to her as an odd movement on the ceiling caught my attention; up on the night sky, in front of the moon, something was moving. Approaching. A dark silhouette, surrounded by ambler light; an ink-black cloud with glowing green eyes. A shade?

We transformed Soul Eater in an instant, turning cane into a sword and sword into a dagger, ready to throw it. This got the attention of Imaya and Erika too, who looked up just as the shade slammed into the ceiling above—and broke right through. We held our ground as the dark cloud landed in front of us, pulling its shape together until it looked as if our shadow had come to life. Yet there was something odd about the shade’s presence, something … fake.

“You’re not a shade,” we said—and found our body unable to move.

“The time has come,” the faux-shade said in our Inspector’s voice, sounding close and intimate like a whisper in the ear. “Do not disappoint.”

> Quest received: Shades of the Moon

An eyeblink later the apparition was gone, allowing me to move again.

“What—what was that?!” Imaya asked. She was holding Erika as they huddled beneath the holographic map. I opened my collar’s Quest tab to read the details of the newest entry.

> Shades of the Moon

> Description: Seven shadebound Players arose and Nerilia has become a world much too small for them. The time has come to prove their worth. Only one may be left standing beneath the Moon!

> Objective: Be the only shadebound alive.

> Reward: A conversation with your Inspector and a small favor.

> Shadebound Players remaining:

> Amelie

> Location: near Summerville

> Kadir

> Location: Skyward

> Olga

> Location: middle of the Southern Deserts

> Randel, the Mad Painter

> Location: Fortram

> Ryder

> Location: near Fortram

> Tanaka

> Location: Skyward

> Victor, the Monster

> Location: the ruins of Phalak

“It’s bad news,” I said, looking up worriedly. “Really, really bad news. Even the System has started to call me Mad Painter.”