It turns out that ‘what was next’ was not as exciting as I’d hoped.

I still had to attend and be a hardworking member of Granton’s Haverbark Prayer Group, or else Granton might connect the dots between his house blowing up and an employee mysteriously disappearing the next night.

Thankfully, Adam considered it to be at least half-related to my GTA work, so I only had to do half-days at the GTA for the next little while.

It was like being in witness protection but still living at the scene of the crime.

I now had sufficient time to sleep, so I took full advantage of that blessing for the first few days. I also didn’t give up on the executive spa, though I wouldn’t touch Pen’s soaps with the ten-foot pole. I was wily and stubborn enough to keep using the spa, but not stupid enough to mess with the soap.

You gotta know your limits.

It may sound like I’m painting a picture of happiness and frivolity, but it wasn’t quite like that. Granton returned from his business trip with a fury that sometimes flared up while he was at the church. I was mostly in the clear, seeing as I was his one and only Rendar worshipper, but some of his more dispensable employees were berated and cursed if they took one wrong step or offered up poorly seasoned meals to their respective Deities.

I had planned on reading up on Melie, the God of Health, for my own purposes, but with my busy schedule, I was stuck making other people stronger, rather than myself.

Is this what it’s like to be in poverty? You’re stuck just trying to make ends meet, so you can’t claw your way out?

Adam had me doing admin work at the office — I was this world’s analogue equivalent of a printer retrieval service and errand boy, which meant my writing hand was permanently sore and liberally smudged with ink.

Alternatively, I smelled like six different variations of coffee or juice, and had sauce stains on my shirt from a particularly messy lunch. I swear, some people would request the juiciest, most explosive meals just to see what new piece of food-art I’d paint on myself that day.

I trudged down to the Haverbark Bank one morning and opened an account. Haverbark was right at that perfect population size where there was one version of everything. One bank, one grocer, one blacksmith — they all just called themselves ‘The Haverbark ___’.

Have a little imagination, people.

I would be paid two thousand dura a week, which on a per-day rate was bang on equivalent with my prayer income from Granton. I couldn’t work out if that meant Granton was paying me well, or the GTA was paying me terribly. With a blown-up carriage and a used bar of soap on my conscience, I wasn’t in a position to negotiate.

Finally, when I was sure my hands would be stained black with ink forever, Adam called me into his office.

“Marcus! How’ve you been? Heard anything about the Granton case?”

“Morrrrning. I’m alright, and no, have you?”

“Not yet. I think the Litigation team is trying to get all their ducks in order first, but they’re taking their sweet time.”

“Seems like it. Granton still shows up to the church, but he’s pissed off all the time now — remind me what the GTA will do to help me if he finds out I blew up a few of his rooms?”

“Uhhh, we will...wish you luck?”

“Great.”

Adam tapped rapidly on the table, remembering what he called me in for.

“Ah yes! I’ve got a job for you — for us. Guild called Cavern, out west a while. We’re going to accompany them on a dungeon raid to check that the amount of resources they claim from each dungeon matches their estimates. They’re an important guild, definitely up there in size, so rather than calculate the exact value of all the stuff they pillage from every single dungeon they go in, we help them generate an ‘average dungeon value’. That way, they can just tally up all their completed raids, multiply by the average, then report to us. Sound good?”

It was a dense information-drop, but understandable.

Count the loot, tick the box. Easy.

“Wait a second, why do we have to go in with them? Why not just wait outside the Gate and count the loot as the carts come out?”

“We used to do that, actually. Then someone realized it was stupid, because guilds would just leave a bunch of loot inside, then their average dungeon value would go down, less tax, blah blah blah. Anything else?”

“Do we get a carriage this time?”

###

We did not.

Once again, I sat astride my little horse, thinking it would more aptly be described as a donkey. I wished there was some kind of [Horse Riding] skill, but I’d sat on this thing for hours and not felt the telltale buzz of my Navigator.

When Adam said, ‘out west a while’, he wasn’t kidding. We rode all day, dragging a path through the plains. I tried closing my eyes and praying in my saddle, but only got off one or two shaky words before I nearly slipped off. I had to settle for training my [Observation].

I squinted off into the distance at the rolling hills and swirling clouds in the far north. I wasn’t sure exactly how I gained EXP the first time — wasn’t I always observing things? — but I must’ve done something right with the perpetual squinting thing, because I felt my arm vibrate.

Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

{Observation : Level Up! Current Level: 2}

{Observation : Level Up! Current Level: 3}

I checked the Navigator to see my current buff.

Observation (3):

{Measures the sharpness of the user’s eyesight, and ability to identify anomalies. Keen users can anticipate their enemies' movements.}

Current bonus: +25% Viewing Distance

Not bad. It was a noticeable difference now — I could make out the snow-capped hills a little clearer, and looking up, there were way more birds than I noticed before. What had been dots in the air prior to my level-ups were now winged creatures.

“What’re you doin’ back there, ya weirdo?”

I adjusted my posture. My neck had been craned back, my mouth open, and my face scrunched from looking at the sun.

“Working on my [Observation] since there’s nothing else to do.”

“Gods, you never take a break, do you? Not keen to just look around and see the nature?”

“That’s exactly what I’m doing, it just so happens that I’m improving my eyesight at the same time. I want to see Granton coming from a mile away when he works out what I did.”

“Tsk.”

We camped in a clearing amongst the reeds. It was like a crop circle — one clear space among the sea of green-grey grass. After a cold dinner, Adam unrolled his bedspread and climbed on, then produced a broad green hat from his pack and laid it over his face. Within minutes, he was snoring.

I lay awake and panicked.

I would pray tonight on Granton’s behalf, but if he showed up to the church, as he had been doing more and more recently, he would wonder where I was.

Hopefully, if he saw the EXP coming in regardless, he would be happy for me to ‘work remotely’.

It was a tentative plan at best, more of a gamble and a weak effort to deceive my own better judgement.

But a plan is a plan.

Is that more self-deception?

I eventually settled on just doing the best I could, so I spent yet another sleepless night praying on behalf of the man I intended to send to jail.

In the morning, a few more hours of butt-bruising on my donkey placed us within viewing distance of a city called Anpar. It absolutely dwarfed Haverbark in every way. Technology, infrastructure, size, population, you name it.

There was a Guild Taxation Authority here too, and yes, their office was nicer.

Adam mentioned we were here to support their investigation, not run it ourselves. In earlier years, Pen had built some rapport with the team leader of today’s raid, so Adam and I were coming along as her representatives.

We were an hour late, courtesy of my donkey, so we didn’t have time to stop off at the Anpar GTA building first. Instead, we clopped along the city streets behind three carriages and six grondbeasts, savoring the new sights.

Even further behind us, the non-combatant members of the GTA followed. Admin staff held checklists, the Anpar graduates voraciously took notes, and scientists toted measuring devices in sturdy metal cases.

I felt a surge of pride to think that at Haverbark, I was responsible for all facets of my work, though I will admit, the scientist’s gear looked a bit more sophisticated than anything I’d used.

We steadily tied in with Cavern. Their members fell into our ranks like a tumbleweed picking up dust, and by the time we joined the main raid team, our GTA folk were far outnumbered.

The raid team stood in files outside a forty-foot Gate.

The shimmering barrier between our world and theirs wisped and curled, tidal waves of magic separating us from whatever treasures and titans lay inside. The raid leader spotted Adam, waved an arm so laden with armor he looked like Michelin Man, then called out to his guild.

“Listen up! We are now entering the gate at 11:04am, projected raid duration is two hours and forty-five minutes. If the boss remains alive after three hours, we will be retreating and calling in reinforcements. Make way for and protect our collectors, and do not impede the members of the Guild Taxation Authority that we have with us today. Anyone caught making their analysis difficult will answer directly to me.”

A few of the Cavern members nearest us glanced our way. Some nodded, others sneered.

“Good luck and fight hard! Onwards to Min’s Glory!”

The team moved forwards. First to enter were the most heavily armored members, then those with lighter armor but weapons that looked sharp enough to cleave the world in two. At random intervals, darkly dressed warriors zipped in through the edges at speeds surpassing anything I could imagine achieving with [Aerobic Endurance].

Adam noticed me watching.

“Those are Scouts. They perform reconnaissance, exploring dungeons and looking for places of interest whether it be loot, boss rooms, traps, really anything that helps the main team. It’s a ridiculously dangerous job, they’re literally weaving between dozens of monsters every minute, none of which they have the firepower to destroy. Pays well, though.”

We went in with the collectors. I closed my eyes as I walked through the Gate, waiting for the squishy feeling it gave me last time. It wasn’t as bad as I expected, and I opened my eyes to a sight that would’ve made a jeweler’s heart flutter and pop.

Every wall of this immense cavern was studded with jewels. Rubies, emeralds, topaz, the whole kit and kaboodle. Sitting in this room was more money than I’d ever come across in my life. Only meters to my right sat a ruby as big as my two fists clapped together, and the Cavern members trundled past it without a hint of interest, like it was a talkative person on the train.

The first monster to round the corner had six spindly legs that clanked along the dungeon floor with a sound like metal pipes colliding. Its head and body were situated on top like a spider, but instead of eight eyes, it had a turret-like weapon at the front of the head that swiveled round, blasting out heavy projectiles.

It flinched when it met us, and immediately sidestepped to the wall from where it plucked a million-dollar emerald, crushing it and sucking up the dust from the floor with a snout like a mosquito’s proboscis. Immediately, it excreted a yellow gas from the joints in each leg.

The gas wafted over the group, and some of the closest combatants pegged their noses. Others took the hit with a grimace, but when it hit me, my knees buckled.

If I had been the first person to enter a dungeon like this, and I’d smelled the concoction currently assailing my nostrils, I would’ve turned around, went back out the Gate, and told everyone that it was impossible.

Pack up your bags, go home. No one must ever enter this dungeon.

I won’t describe it for you — I don’t have the words, no one does — and I care too much for your ability to eat dinner and exist in this world without the dread of encountering this scent hanging over you for the rest of your days.

Adam grasped my wrists and pulled me up. I was busy gagging and rapidly swallowing saliva. He and the other GTA members were just about shitting their pants with laughter. Every one of them had a set of pegs — GTA-provided pegs — over their nostrils.

I’d been fucking hazed.

I hadn’t been hazed since college, but this made a keg stand or a naked run through campus look like a generous reward. I snatched a set of pegs from Adam’s outstretched hand, retched a few more times, then locked it over my nostrils.

There was a sour taste in my mouth from the lingering smell of emerald-gas and my breakfast almost exiting my stomach, but I stabilized.

Sufficiently recovered, Adam handed me one of his daggers.

“Sorry to do you like this, but you’ve also drawn the short straw task-wise. Someone needs to get up front with the raid team and keep an eye on them — make sure they aren’t pocketing any jewels and hiding them from us. It would usually be someone a lot stronger, but I haven’t shown you how to use these tools yet, so...yeah. Good luck. Don’t lose my dagger.”

Out of the frying pan, into the fire.

Sometimes it seemed like Adam was genuinely trying to kill me.

I trudged forward into the stink.