“I’ve got to make sure and thank Spreen later,” I thought to myself.

There had been a steady stream of people selling scrap wood and stone. At one point, my patrolling cats had picked up on the sound of a building falling over before someone brought me an entire roof. I decided not to question if the two events were related and paid the person who was probably a troll.

More than half the people who had just gotten paid turned around and tried their luck at Carmen’s Blind Hydra booth. Apparently word had spread quickly about Jasper’s win and there were more than enough people who wanted to take a shot at it. I quickly had the opposite problem with mana than I had the week before and needed to spend it fast enough to make sure I didn’t hit the cap.

“Ok, time to look at upgrades again,” I thought as I opened the UI.

First thing’s first, I needed to fix this building. Rats had mercifully become less and less of a problem especially with people coming in and out, but it had still been a nuisance. With all of the new materials (especially the entire roof the troll had brought in) I now had enough wood and stone to fix the building.

“Ok highlight everything aaaaand confirm,” I muttered to myself as I hit ‘Yes’ in the menu.

Relief washed over me as it felt like I had just taken a spa visit in the span of a second.

“Whew feeling better and looking better too,” I sighed as I took note of the restored and re-varnished wood as well as the stone that looked like it had been newly carved. Masoned? Whatever, it was fixed.

“All right, now let’s do something with all of this mana,” I said before scrolling through the menu when the new option crossed my eye.

“Well expanding seemed to raise my mana cap last time, and I’m honestly curious about what expanding ‘in’ means,” I thought before selecting the odd option.

Suddenly a feeling reminiscent of having your sinuses sucked out filled my head and fortunately faded quickly.

“UGH! that was horrible- woah…” I said as I looked around and realized that the inside had gotten much bigger.

It felt different than the last time. My perimeter felt the same, but I definitely had more space.

“Wait a minute, I’ve got to double check this” I thought before issuing new orders to a cat inside and a cat I had patrolling just outside.

I had the two of them start at the door and begin to walk at a steady pace around the perimeter of my building.

“Did I just get bigger on the inside?” I wondered as the two cats began to step out of sync.

Just to be completely sure, I took the point of view of the patrolling cat and compared the size of my building to the other buildings next to me.

“Yep, just bigger on the inside. Well I guess this is a good way to raise the mana cap without being completely obvious,” I thought remembering the wizard that had come by not that long ago.

She didn’t seem to be particularly dangerous or threatening, but she apparently had an assistant and that meant that she was strong enough or had enough resources to warrant one.

“Ugh, why didn’t this thing come with a tutorial or at least a manual,” I thought angrily as I skimmed through the menu for the millionth time.

As I scrolled through the menu, I noticed something new in the character cards.

[Twin Lucky Cats Scion]

>Level 1 Scion

>Twinned soul Lvl 1: two bodies, one soul; magical effects applied to one body effect both; other minor effects apply

>Fortune magnet Lvl 1: certain situations cause treasure generation

>Stealth (+)

>Magic (+)

>Intelligence (++)

>Skills:

-Telekinesis Lvl: 3

>All other stats in normal parameters for common feline

>Spend mana to level up?

“I’ve got some spare mana. Might as well,” I thought before selecting the new option.

Nothing much seemed to change except for Level 1 Scion becoming Level 2 Scion.

“That was anticlimactic,” I thought, “I’ll have to ask Midnight and Carmen if they feel any different.”

Moving on to the Build/Craft section of the menu, I decided that all of the new space I had just made needed some sort of purpose. I had thought about making a dealer’s table to try to get a game of cards going, but since my scions were the only ones with any sort of fine control, it would have to wait.

I didn’t want to overwhelm Carmen in case two groups came in looking to play Blind Hydra and whatever this world’s equivalent of Poker was at the same time. Midnight was too busy running the trading post and wasn’t exactly a people person at the best of times.

I’d have to make something that was automated or at least didn’t require much oversight if I wanted people to gamble more.

“Roulette? No, you’d still need someone to make sure no one was cheating. Slots? It’s a good start, but I have no idea how to build one,” I thought, wracking my brain for ideas before being struck with an epiphany.

After much swearing and several failed attempts, I had managed to build something resembling a working coin pusher using several blueprints I had gotten from the clock. You had to wind it up to get it started and it only lasted for about two minutes at a time, but it still worked.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“So what’s this you’ve been working on, Mr. House?” Carmen purred as she watched my creation materialize.

“It’s a coin pusher game,” I said, “go ahead and wind up the crank.”

Carmen wound up the crank and thankfully the middle shelf began to move back and forth.

“You put a coin here at the top and it displaces the coins that’ll be on the bottom until they eventually fall into this bucket where you can grab the coins,” I explained.

“So what’s going to stop people from just using copper to get as much silver and gold as possible?” Midnight chimed in.

“Hmm I may need to change the size of the slots depending on the value of what’s in the machine,” I said.

“Perhaps we can have a few gold pieces in the copper machine so that people who are more risk adverse will be tempted to play,” Midnight suggested.

“How interesting Mr. House,” Carmen said, “we’ll get so many more gamblers that way. Sometimes if we have a big group, I can’t get to everyone.”

“Exactly!” I exclaimed.

“Well what are we waiting for, House?” asked Midnight, “let's set it up in the new space and let's get going.”

“Not so fast Midnight,” I said, “we’re going to need to make some rearrangements to the layout.”

“What's wrong with the current layout?” Midnight asked patiently.

“Well it worked for the size we had, but trust me on this one,” I replied as I pulled up the menu and began moving things around.

What I ended up with was a horseshoe shape with Midnight's booth at the back and Carmen's booth to the side with a few of the coin pusher games separating the two booths to promote a certain flow of traffic. It would require opening and closing the left and right barn door depending on when people were entering or exiting, but maybe that was something I could automate later.

Once I got my bachelor's in engineering.

At the college that existed back on earth.

That I'm probably never going back to…

“House?” Asked Midnight.

“Huh? Yeah what's up?” I asked, snapping my attention back to Midnight.

“I assume you finished moving things around and then you just stopped,” Midnight said.

“Yeah, sorry I’m done,” I said.

“So why did you rearrange everything?” Midnight asked.

“Well let me ask you this, why do people show up in the first place?” I asked.

“Mostly to see Midnight,” Carmen answered.

“Correct,” I said, “there aren’t many people who show up just to play Blind Hydra.”

“Ok, but most of them see Carmen right after me,” said Midnight.

“Also correct,” I said, “which leads me to two points. People show up here to get paid and when they think they have some extra cash, they try to have fun and gamble.”

“Still not seeing why we needed to rearrange everything,” Midnight groused.

“Well if you show up with some scrap and turn it in to Midnight, you’ll need to exit by walking past Carmen and the shiny new coin pushers,” I said.

“Oh just like walking past food on an empty stomach,” Carmen observed.

“Exactly,” I replied.

“So what are we doing about the wizard?” Midnight asked.

“I’m still working on it,” I lied, “I tried to level you up, do you feel any different?”

“My telekinesis feels a bit easier,” Carmen suggested.

“Not much of a change here,” Midnight said flatly.

“Guess I’ll have to put a lot of mana into leveling you guys up if I want to see some progress,” I sighed.

***

“Years of study in advanced thaumaturgy and the best tools we have to try to detect fluctuations in probability is dice,” Alma said into her speaking stone from the side of the warehouse district closest to the docs.

“You should really look into the history of scrying and divination,” Hilda suggested from the interior side of the warehouse district, “It wasn’t much better than what we’re using now.”

“Yeah but I can’t imagine writing a paper saying that we used dice and haphazard spell lattices that are held together with twine,” Alma sighed.

“Oh come now, you’ll never write a paper if you think like that,” Hilda laughed, “we didn’t use shoddy spell work and dice, we used an improvized spell lattice to measure interference between a simple scrying spell and a known target.”

Alma sighed again, “It’s still not what I had in mind.”

“We could have taken the time to iron out all the wrinkles, but in that time this creature could have nested and we’d have a very angry and territorial luck elemental to deal with,” Hilda pointed out.

“It would be easier to scare off something before it makes a nest,” Admitted Alma.

“Precisely,” noted Hilda, “now let’s see if we can’t get some good readings from our shoddy spell work.”

“Beginning readings,” Alma said as she activated the spell attached to what was essentially some dice in a jar.

“Simple scrying spell showing 100% accuracy, no interference detected,” Hilda said.

“Looks like I’m getting some interference over here, 80% accuracy,” Alma replied.

“Wonderful, fan out and be sure to record when you get a change in the interference,”

“Yes ma’am,” Alma replied.

Hilda just rolled her eyes and kept walking.

“Just had a spike in interference; 60% accuracy,” Alma reported, I’m on the corner of 25th and 12th street.”

“Noted, just had a reading myself,” Hilda replied as she marked their locations on a city map taking a moment to thank whoever designed the layout of the warehouse district for choosing a grid system.

“40% accuracy, we’re getting close,” Alma said excitedly as the sending stone began to cut in and out.

“60% accuracy,” Hilda replied, “stop when you get to 20% we don’t want to stumble into this thing’s lair by accident.”

“Acknowledged,” replied Alma.

Hilda was feeling quite pleased with herself that her makeshift detector was working well and with some more time, she could have gotten it more stable and elegant.

Had she still been in academia, this could have been a wonderful paper by itself, but in her older years her tolerance for massive egos had grown incredibly short. Alma would need to be the one to write it if she could ever convince the poor girl to take the credit.

Her current trail of thought came to an abrupt end.

“Oh dear,” Hilda said to herself before talking into the speaking stone, “Alma, has the spell lattice failed on your end?”

“I think so,” replied Alma, “did your detector shoot back up to 100% accuracy?”

“Yes, hang on, I’m doing a check,” Hilda said as she pulled out a pair of spectacles.

Much to her chagrin, the spell lattice was still in tact.

“Hmm the spell weave is still stable,” Hilda observed.

“Same on my end,” Alma noted.

“Must mean that something happened to the source,” Hilda said.

“Do you think it’s gone?” Alma asked.

“Something tells me it’s not, but meet me back at the tower,” Hilda replied as she pulled out a bit of string and tied it to the stub of charcoal she had been using and began drawing circles.

“What are you going to do?” asked Alma.

“We might have a good idea where this thing has made it’s nest,” Hilda said as the last circle overlapped the other three, “I’m going to see if I can’t pay it a visit.”