“So,” David said at the breakfast table and looked at them in turn. “What are you two doing today?”

Micah scarfed down some oatmeal he had helped make and thought it over. Today was Tuesday, so he said, “We’re going to check out the entrance to the Salamander’s Den with Lisa and Mave.”

Ryan looked up from his own bowl and frowned. “We are?”

Micah saw his confused expression on then realized, “Oh, right. You weren’t there. We talked about it on Saturday, but then I, uhm— You know? With everything that happened, I completely forgot to mention it. Sorry. Is it okay if we go?”

Ryan seemed to consider.

Micah had to wait anyway as he got ambushed by yet another yawn. He knew he wouldn’t have gotten much sleep without being woken by an angry red glow in the middle of the night anyway. Now, he was tired after getting up at six freaking a.m. when Ryan had tried to sneak out for his morning work-out and run.

Micah had been half-awake anyway and joined him. He’d promised himself, after all, he had to do better. He just wished he could do better at seven a.m. or maybe eight. Either that, or that he would get some Stats to help him out soon. Didn’t [Alchemists] get stuff like [Vitality] and [Constitution], too?

At least, it had been worth it to hear Ryan sing with the morning birds. He didn’t even seem to notice that he did it. Or rather, notice that Micah was watching him do it. It was kind of cool, so Micah didn’t say anything out of fear that Ryan would stop.

“And these Lisa and Mave are qualified to judge the structural stability of a collapsed Tower floor and a temporary wooden construct built by a second, unknown party how?” David asked.

“Nice sentence,” Noelle whispered.

He shot her a grin. “Thanks.”

“Uhm, Mave has a decade of experience climbing the Ruins of Anevos as a [Housemaster],” Micah explained dutifully. “Oh, and he’s an adult, by the way. I think he’s thirty-two or thereabouts? But Lisa won’t tell me what level he is except that it’s ‘higher than thirty.’”

He made air-quotes around that and scowled, but David whistled in admiration and Noelle’s brows shot up. Was thirty much? Micah thought you were supposed to be twenty by twenty. Even if leveling got harder the higher you were, thirty by thirty shouldn’t be so hard either, right?

“Uhm, so he’s been in plenty collapsed structures,” Micah went on and frowned. Wait, weren’t Ryan’s parents also thirty-two or thereabouts? Then they were the same age. Mave seemed so young and immature compared to them. What level were Ryan’s parents? Would that be too impolite to ask?

“And he has all sorts of Skills to deal with that kind of stuff ...” he mumbled.

“He does?” Ryan asked.

Micah was beginning to wonder just which one of them was still half-asleep, but couldn’t make much of a case for himself when he stifled another yawn. And Ryan was just left-over awkward from yesterday, he knew … and maybe last night. Micah hadn’t meant to shout and wake him up. He hoped Ryan still didn’t think poorly of him and that he wouldn’t have any nightmares while he stayed here. What would he do when he lived in a dorm?

“I guess it’s okay then,” Ryan said.

David seemed to consider as well and shrugged. “Worst case, you get lost and we’ll know where to send the queen’s search to find you. Best case, you get us some fire crystals to hoard like chipmunks.”

The queen’s search. Or more officially, the Lost Queen’s Search and Rescue. Micah didn't have much trust in them. It was the organization that tried to find missing people in the Tower. They hadn’t found him or his siblings.

But he did like the idea of helping Ryan’s parents keep warm, so he smiled and pointed out—with his spoon, “Or treasure. Last time I found a treasure chest in the Salamander’s Den, it had a fancy pillowcase, a healing potion, a summoning crystal, and a mana ring in it.”

He went back to eating his oatmeal but the table went silent. Slowly, Micah looked back up. “Hum?”

“That’s, ah, quite a lot of treasure for a first-floor find, bud,” David told him, scratching his cheek awkwardly.

“It is?”

“Yeah. It is,” Ryan insisted. “You got growing boots, a quiver of arrows, and some crystals from a third-floor chest. We got a shield and some dirt from a second-floor chest. First-floor chests usually only have ju—uh, weak magical items or high-quality mundane ones.”

Micah thought it over, but he really didn’t think it was so much. He’d given half of it to Lisa. The pillowcase was useless. And Gardener had donated the healing potion like was proper civic duty. Although, its bottle had been enchanted with—

Micah’s eyes went wide and spun on Ryan. “Did I leave my enchanted bottle here?”

“What? Yeah, it’s— Oh.” He seemed to catch on and his expression turned somber. “Yeah, it’s safe, Micah. You left it here, remember?”

Micah groaned and ran his hands over his face, grateful that his father hadn’t smashed it with the rest of his things. He’d have to do another inventory on what he had here soon. Soon, but not right now.

“Everything okay?” David asked them.

Noelle had one eyebrow raised as well, spoon at her lips.

“It’s just, his dad broke—” Ryan began to explain.

Micah sat up and interrupted, “Everything’s fine. I just thought I had forgotten something, but I didn’t. So, uhm, treasure! I did fight a Kobold and break the floor to get that chest.”

“Well, let’s hope you don’t have to do that again for the next one,” Noelle told him as she stood up with her empty plate. She never let Micah get her dishes. “Okay?”

“Oh. Okay,” Micah mumbled.

“... But do bring us back some treasure,” she added, a nudge in her voice.

He perked up. “Yes, ma’am.”

That was breakfast at Ryan’s house. It had only been a day, Micah was still trying to figure out how to act, and it was plenty awkward, but not unbearably so. He could always find a chore to distract himself with, like—

“AH!” Noelle shouted and threw her plate at something.

They all three jumped up at the sound of ceramics shattering and looked to see what had happened. Somehow, Micah couldn’t imagine Noelle frightening at a mouse. Instead, they spotted a small, glowing red tail poking out of the corner behind the stove.

Whatever it belonged to drew it up and it disappeared.

Something was hiding there, behind the stove.

“Monster,” Noelle said.

“You two pull the stove aside, then back off,” David said, brandishing a knife from its block. “I’ll kill it. Noelle, stay back.”

Ryan nodded, but paused mid-step instead of doing as his dad told him. He frowned and said, “Wait, I think we know it.”

“Know it?” David asked him.

Micah caught on and used the moment of confusion to plaster himself to the ground in front of the stove. He crawled forward, probably the only one of them who was slim enough to fit, and spotted another bit of red that drew back even tighter to hide.

He recognized that color. Behind him, David was protesting loudly. But carefully, Micah called, “Sam?”

There was the sound like a waterdrop falling.

Ryan pounded on the door of the Chandler residence, a deep scowl on his face.

Micah stood beside him, a little anxious. The other guy seemed angry. Really angry, which was surprising since his parents had been pretty lax about the situation, once they had explained. Sure, they had been confused, a little uncomfortable, and obviously upset about the break-in, but not angry.

Hopefully, Ryan wouldn’t get into a fight with Lisa over this.

When Mave opened up, Ryan demanded, “Where is she? We found her pet.”

He jerked a thumb at the Salamander Micah was hugging to his chest. It seemed bigger now. Heavier. Had it grown? Could summoned monsters grow? Well, Lisa was feeding it properly. It was also wearing a collar with her home address and the words, Just let yourself in through the gate, on a dangling tag.

Would people really be nice enough to return a patterned crystal to its owner? Maybe if they expected a reward ...

“Lisa!” Mave called back. “The prince and his wizard are here. And they’ve brought a dragon!”

Wizard? Micah wondered.

A second later, Lisa barrelled down the staircase, almost stumbling into the wall, and dashed forward to mug Sam out of Micah’s arms, calling, “You found it!”

“Found it” was a relative term, though. It had taken ten minutes of tempting it with crystal shards to draw the Salamander out of its hiding spot. And every time it had eaten one, the beast had tried to dart back out of sight. Eventually, Ryan’s patience had snapped and he’d dragged it out by force.

It was a good thing that Sam didn’t bite, or Ryan just might have bitten back.

“Found it?” he asked now. “Did you lose it?”

“Oh.” She looked up, uncertain. “Yes. No. Uhm, I gave it instructions to go find you a few days ago but not let itself be seen, and then to, ah, come back when it had delivered a message. But it must have followed the orders in order, so it got stuck on step two. I’ve been searching the entire city for its crystal.”

The two boy’s eyes wandered up as they tried to process that. So Sam was supposed to deliver a message to Ryan, but … it couldn’t because it wasn’t allowed to let itself be seen? What kind of a stupid loophole was that?

“Are you telling me that thing’s been stuck behind our stove for the last few days?” Ryan asked, his conclusion from that statement.

“The stove?” Lisa asked, curious. “Was that where it was hiding?” She seemed completely oblivious to Ryan’s anger. Rather, it looked like she was enjoying the tidbit of information and was thinking over its implications.

And were the implications? Had Sam intentionally hidden in a warm place? Out of a technical reason or did it imply a preference? Did preference imply sentience? If not, what technical reasons did the Salamander have for hiding in a warm place?

Micah almost let himself get distracted until Ryan snapped, “Yes, that’s where it was hiding, Lisa. Behind our damn stove. It gave my mom a heart attack.”

“What?” she asked and nearly squeezed Sam’s eyes out. It gurgled a protest. “Is she alright? Did you get to a doctor? What about the baby?”

Her honest concern seemed to mollify Ryan because he said, “No, a … a figurative heart attack? It’s a figure of speech, Lisa. It scared her, is all.”

“Oh.”

“And she broke a plate,” Micah pointed out. “I had to stretch to get all the shards out from behind the stove.”

“And she broke a plate!” Ryan affirmed with renewed vigor. “Micah had to crawl under the stove to get it all out!”

“You people are weird, you know that?” Mave asked, still standing in the entrance area behind Lisa.

His words seemed to defuse the situation because they realized this was weird to be arguing about, so Ryan sniffed and started nudging the grass next to the walkway. Mave started putting on his shoes, frowning at Ryan kicking, presumably, his lawn, Lisa headed back inside to go get her stuff, and Micah was still a little stuck on how he was a wizard.

“So you sent Sam across the city, where he might be discovered, captured, cause a panic, or destroyed … to deliver a message?” Ryan asked when she came back, a quarterstaff in hand and slipping a squirming backpack on. She wasn’t fooling anyone with how she “hid” Sam in public.

“Yep. Lots of people use summons as messengers. Even in Westhill, right?”

“Summoned animals. Not monsters. And you’ve also been sending Sam into the Tower on its own?”

“Yeah.”

“... Why?”

Micah was wondering the same thing.

“To test out its capabilities, of course,” Lisa said. “And, you know, to level?”

“And what if you lost its crystal?” Ryan asked her.

“Then I would look for it until I found it. And if it were destroyed, I would mourn for it. Obviously.”

That seemed pretty … callous, Micah thought.

Mave shepherded her out and closed the door, then placed a hand on its wood.

He frowned as he kept an eye on that, but asked, “What was the message? We didn’t see any message attached to Sam.”

“Oh? It must have lost it then. It just said, ah, ‘Hello?’ I just wanted to see if sending messages was possible. I’ll know better next time.”

“Next time?” Ryan asked. “You can’t just send your summoned monsters to break into other people’s houses, Lisa.”

Mave lifted his hand again and a sheen of light spread rapidly over the door. In a second, it had covered it entirely and vanished. Lisa was explaining to Ryan how Sam didn’t understand the concept of “breaking and entering” and Ryan was arguing that Lisa should write out her commands and read them back to herself before she gave them, but Micah was too focussed on the casual display of a Skill to pay much notice.

Was it some kind of ward? What would it do? How long would it last?

Just as surprisingly, Mave looked almost the same as he always did. He wore his clean uniform, his shirt tucked in, and brown shoes polished to shine instead of any kind of equipment. He didn’t even have a weapon on him and just rolled his sleeves up as he led the way to the gate.

Micah guessed a level thirty climber didn’t need weapons to fight mere wolves on the fourth floor.

As they headed out, he also hung up a sign that read, Back by sundown, as if they got customers here. Where was Garen was that they had to hang up a sign when they left? Teaching Anne, maybe? On which floor or which mansion?

“But it, uh, started glowing red hot in the middle of the night when I wore it to sleep,” Ryan was telling Lisa about his wristband on the way to the Guild. He had given LIsa the same explanation about its capabilities as Micah yesterday. Apparently, Lisa was known as a bit of an appraiser at her old school. “Is it supposed to do that?”

“Magic is shaped by the mind,” she answered him. “You probably had a dream where you saw the color red, so it shifted to glow red. I’m surprised it was even glowing at all, since you should have run out of mana regeneration by then. Maybe you unconsciously fed it from your capacity? As for the heat … it’s perfectly efficient in its output. It shouldn’t be emitting heat unless you make it. Are you sure it wasn’t [Hot Skin]? Control on Skills slips easily during sleep, after all.”

Ryan shook his head as he slipped the wristband back on, but mumbled, “Maybe.”

“So whether or not the item was worth it depends on how much you paid for it,” she finished.

Micah shot Ryan a glare, still hung up on that. He had three gold coins waiting in his chest in Ryan’s room and felt like he should be spending them on something useful for the Payne family.

Then again, that was only worth half a year’s tuition at the climber’s school. And it wasn't even counting everything else he would have to pay for, like food, clothes, books, equipment … If he didn’t get any of the merit-based scholarships he had applied for, how was Micah going to pay for any of that?

His glare withered when he thought about that. He distracted himself with pestering Lisa into giving them advice on the wristband.

Her advice came in the form of the words, “Just push mana into it.”

Micah explained that, to them, moving mana felt like trying to twitch your ear when you biologically lacked the muscles to do so.

“You have the muscles to do it,” she said. “They’re just frail and weak right now. You need to exercise them.”

Strangely enough, that actually seemed to motivate Ryan because he subtly flicked his hand a little bit while they walked.

Again, Micah didn’t say anything.

They reached the Tower and its portal quick enough and Lisa told him, “Apples. You’re up.”

He perked up. “Huh?”

Oh, right. He had to bring them to the fourth floor. He had never done that before, though. “Uhm, hands?” he asked and held his hands out for Ryan and Lisa.

Mave gave him an amused look and took Lisa’s other one.

He closed his eyes for a moment and simply thought of [Savagery]. As the glass cut into his skin and he brought the shard down on the wolf, he took a step forward and found himself in a mist-covered forest.

“Huh,” Maverick said and looked around a bit. “Good job.”

The man patted him on the shoulder and Ryan gave him a smile, so Micah couldn’t help but smile, too. They were right where they wanted to be.

Suddenly, Mave took the lead in easy strides.

“Shouldn’t we be coming up with a battle plan?” Ryan asked as they hurried after.

Their responsible adult frowned back at them. “What for? Nothing’s going to attack us. I have [Repel Pests].”

“Have you ever noticed how there are no flies around to bug us when we train at my place?” Lisa asked them.

Well, Micah did now. The Chandler residence suddenly became twice as attractive a place to be.

“And that will keep away wolves?” Ryan asked him.

“If I want it to,” Mave said. “And they’re more like coyotes this close to the entrance anyway.”

Micah frowned as he kept pace. “What’s a coyote?”

“A smaller wolf,” Lisa said as she unslung her pack. “You don’t get them here. They rarely travel this far south.”

She pulled her Salamander out with one hand and set it on the ground. Sam ran a fast circle around its smiling [Summoner] before it sped off ahead of them to explore. Lisa seemed happy to let it.

Micah glanced at Ryan, but his face was set. He didn’t know if the other guy felt as uncomfortable as he did right now. It felt weird to be walking through the Tower like this. It reminded him of how he had aimlessly wandered around the Salamander’s Den until he‘d been bitten. But as he looked around, he really couldn’t see any wolves nearby. He couldn’t hear any, either.

“Do all [Housemasters] get that Skill?” Micah asked after a few minutes of boots crunching subtly on the forest floor.

Keeping away monsters seemed incredibly useful if you wanted to get places quickly … or if you wanted to be a pacifist who foraged for Tower materials, like the lemon balm Micah plucked as they walked passed.

He rubbed some between his fingers and smelled it. Thankfully, it was actually lemon balm and not some nefarious copycat that would give him a rash. Or worse.

“No,” Mave answered and looked around. “We usually get [Repel Lesser Pests], which keeps away useless bugs and rodents. But I’m not a [Housemaster] anymore. I’m a [Custodian]. Hey, Lisa. Give me your staff for a moment.” He waved a snatching hand behind himself.

Lisa frowned but handed it over.

Maverick turned a slow circle then and searched the distance, bobbing the staff in hand.

The others slowed to a stop as they watched both him and the forest around themselves, hands on their weapons. Was there a monster nearby after all?

Suddenly, the man drew the staff back like a javelin, ready to strike, and Micah thought, Of course, the Tower isn’t going to let you be a pacifist. Mave took aim and flung between two trees. The throw punched a hole of fresh air into the mist as the staff shot off. A second later, a whimper echoed from the distance.

Mave grinned. “Got it.”

“Did you just … throw a staff at a wolf?” Ryan asked, glancing in the direction of the sound.

Micah gaped at the man.

“One of them thought it was tough,” Mave said as he headed off. “It kept on hovering just outside the reach of my Skill, like a nagging fly. Unfortunately for it, I can throw farther than that. My aim is pretty good, too.”

Micah gaped some more.

They crossed what was easily a hundred meter stretch until they stepped through another pair of trees and found the downed wolf on its side, still panting. Its shoulder looked dented, like Mave had shattered the bone and caved its body in with the throw. But the damage had to be worse than that, or the wolf would have limped off on three legs already.

“Where’s my staff?” Lisa asked him.

“Must have bounced off,” Mave told her. “It’ll be around here somewhere. Anyone got a knife?”

Ryan offered one to his grasping hand, but Micah had a better idea. He brushed past the man and drew his own dagger, calling, “Ryan, look. It’s fully-formed.”

Ryan walked up behind him as he crouched next to the wolf. It looked at him tiredly, like it couldn’t move a muscle except to breathe. When he got close enough to touch, it snapped at his hand.

Micah punched it. In the face. With a knife. “Bad Prowler!”

Then he held its head back to reveal its quivering neck. He remembered pressing his hands up against another neck like that once, in fear and disgust, and slipped his knife inside to open it up, searching for something.

“It should be here somewhere …” he mumbled.

“Can I just point something out?” Mave asked. “That’s disgusting.”

“Are you looking for the, uh, red worms?” Ryan asked him, his voice seeming a little hesitant himself.

Micah nodded and searched around a little more, but … it was just dead flesh and blood now. He found its throat, but that was no demon worm. There was nothing there. He’d thought— Had it just been his imagination?

“Red worms?” Lisa asked as she walked up with her staff in hand. “Ah, are you looking for its blood spirit?”

Micah frowned at her. “Blood spirit?”

“Aren’t those rare?” Mave asked.

“Spirit?” Ryan added. “As in, a Treant or Golem?”

Lisa rolled her eyes at the barrage of questions. “No, they’re not strong enough to create flesh golems. These ones are symbiotic. Yes, they are rare because blood is usually inside the body of a living being, and living beings create their own spirits. And why are you looking for it, Apples?”

So those grinning antlers he’d seen were spirits? They were the first spirits Micah had ever seen and he hadn’t even noticed. He felt kind of disappointed.

“Uhm, I thought Ryan could mimic them to make copies of himself,” Micah mumbled, remembering a stupid idea he’d had about pranking people with a bunch of Ryans (“What do you mean, Lang, you didn’t know Ryan had a twin?”). He was disappointed to see the idea die, because—

“I can’t mimic spirits,” Ryan said.

Exactly.

Lisa shook her head. “That’s what their symbiosis is for. The wolves create the simulacra. The blood spirits give them detail and control. You think an animal could create a perfect simulacrum of itself?”

She smiled at him.

Micah rejoiced. And the dream lives! He spun on Ryan, who looked contemplative, which, in his case, showed itself in the form a softer scowl. Or maybe it was a soft scowl? If the spirit wasn’t at fault, then Ryan hadn’t been able to mimic the beasts for some other reason …

Oh.

Micah frowned. Why shouldn't Ryan be able to copy spirits, though? The red worms certainly looked like beasts. “Lisa?" he asked. "What are spirits?”

What Micah knew about spirits, he could count on one hand. They were magic beings, but not monsters. Even his parents wouldn’t speak ill of them. Most of them lived in the Tower. [Mages] and some other Classes could interact with them. They created Treants and Golems like toys to play with and be broken. Some of them had names and were like people.

That didn’t tell Micah what they were.

“Good question,” Lisa said and glanced back. “I have no idea. I’m trying to learn more about them myself. For Sam.”

He followed her gaze to where the Tea-cup Salamander climbing up a tree a few yards away. To get a better view? Some spirits had names and were like people, Micah knew. Did Lisa think she could give Sam a spirit to make it … what? Sentient? Sapient? How would that help it survive on its own?

“I would argue animals should have an easier time of creating simulacrum,” Mave said as he crouched down on the wolf’s other side. “Since they act instinctively, rather than fussing over their actions with a self-aware mind.”

He placed one hand on the dead beast’s fur. Its throat stopped bleeding. Some of the blood actually seemed to flow back inside the wound. The rest slipped off the wolf’s pelt and tumbled off the grass below.

Lisa shrugged. “Maybe you’re right. But if so, no such animal has evolved yet. Or at least, none that I know of.”

“And you know everything?” Mave asked her.

Micah was still a little stuck on the open wound that wasn’t bleeding. What kind of Skill was that?

“Hands,” Maverick told him.

“Huh?”

“Your hands. Give them here.”

Micah frowned at his blood-tipped gloves, but he slowly held them out anyway, curiosity outweighing propriety. What did Mave want with them?

The man didn’t seem to mind the blood and just tapped both his palms. After a moment, the blood just … fell away. Along with any kind of dirt. His gloves were perfectly clean underneath.

Then he asked, “Anyone got a sack?”

Having Mave around really was useful, Micah noticed as he watched the man carry the sack over one shoulder. It looked easy when he did it. The wolf inside wasn’t even bleeding, thanks to some cleaning Skill he had used. Nothing attacked them during the rest of the journey, either.

Micah wondered if more traditional climbing Classes had just as much utility as the [Custodian] showed. And he wondered if there was some sort of trade-off. Were [Housemasters] weaker than regular, actual combat Classes? What about [Alchemist]? Could Micah make that into a combat Class? What would he lose, if he did? What Skills did traditional alchemists get anyway?

Maybe he should drop by Ben and Janet to ask them sometime soon.

Those thoughts vanished when they got to the section of the forest where the trees had been felled.

“Is this the place?” Lisa asked.

Micah nodded. He'd only needed to give few directions during the trip. It seemed Mave had remembered his description from Saturday. They approached the cave entrance and saw a massive set of wooden stairs leading down into the darkness.

“Mave. You’re up,” Lisa said.

“And you really know about this stuff?” Ryan asked him.

“I’ve spent months at a time in the Ruins, kid,” he told him. Ryan visibly bristled at the “kid” comment. “Even if I didn’t know, I have enough Skills to deal with it ignorantly.”

He stepped up to the cave and spoke, “Oldest stone, I implore Thee. I wish to pave a road for a guest to my house, the youngest lady in my company. Please, make way for me and mine.”

They waited a moment. The forest was silent behind them. Sam fell off a tree. Nothing happened.

“Performance issues?” Ryan heckled with a smirk. “I hear it happens to the best of us.”

Mave shot him a glare and scratched his cheek awkwardly. “That should have worked,” he mumbled and turned back. “Lisa?”

Lisa sighed and mumbled, “Your words were untrue. I have a two-year-old cousin, remember?”

“Oh? Oh!” Mave turned back to the cave. “Forgive me. I meant to say, fairest lady in my company.”

He bowed a little.

The effect was immediate. His voice seemed to reverberate in the darkness. Where it passed, splinters snapped to the rough beams they sprout from and the wood itself straightened and became rigid, moving, tightening, smoothing out as if by magic.

Even the stone moved subtly. Cracks came together, the ceiling rumbled as something heavy shifted above, and dust rained down on the steps, but it didn’t cling. It slipped off to its sides along with any other dirt that had clung there before.

When it settled on the floor, Ryan and him were still staring. They needed a moment to react.

“What was that?” Micah asked.

Ryan’s smirk was gone. “Was that earth magic?”

The man just grinned. “So impressionable. You flatter me. But I think I like it. Hey, maybe I should become a teacher. How about it Lisa, want me to teach earth magic at that school you’re going to? I bet not even you know how to use it.”

She rolled her eyes and headed inside.

“Wait, is it safe?” Ryan asked her.

“Yes, it’s safe,” she told him and walked down the wooden steps.

Sam ran down the wall instead.

Mave swept his arms towards the cave and said, “After you.”

They glanced at each other and slowly headed inside, guided by a glowing wristband held high and a light Lisa had summoned over the palm of her hand.

Still, Micah had to ask, “What were those words? Was it part of a Skill or some kind of spell incantation?”

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“It was an incantation,” Lisa answered ahead of them. “A stupid one, too. It’s the vocal aspect of mana.”

Mave shrugged when they glanced back at him. “Words that remind me of butlers and ancient history work best for me. The spell is called [Roads of the Empire] after all. Do you see any empires around here?”

He seemed so casual and classy about it, it was hard to feel embarrassed for him. Rather, walking there in his spotless clothes, polished shoes, and still-tucked shirt, with a heavy sack he carried like nothing, Micah was actually impressed.

It made him wonder if Ryan and he would seem that cool once they were professionals and level thirty. With that in mind, he was mindful of his posture as he descended.

They eventually met the red light of the Salamander’s Den and another set of stairs leading up. There wasn’t a single splinter sticking out, a testament to Mave’s spell. As they climbed, the other three seemed to look around curiously, then glance at Micah every other moment.

He was suddenly doubly mindful of his posture.

They reached the treasure room and he broke the awkward silence by blurting out, “I found the chest over there.”

He pointed. But of course, there was no chest there anymore. The room had been swept, that mountain of rubble cleared and replaced, again, by a smaller set of stairs. The boulders were simply missing. Where had they gone?

Nobody commented. Ryan just looked uncomfortable. Lisa picked Sam up again and was trying to balance it on her staff. Mave seemed content to let them explore ahead of him.

They climbed one last narrow bridge and found what should have been a network of rabbit holes they would have to crawl through. Instead, it had been broadened to head height and dotted with support beams.

Micah could walk through easily. He took the lead before Ryan could stop him and Lisa slipped in line behind him. The tunnel only went one way along a slight curve. A small step at its end and Micah stepped into the warm halls of the Salamander’s Den.

Just like the rest of the ruins, it had been cleaned, its rubble collected into piles and walls patched. But even so, it seemed somehow … diminished without its fire essence. It wasn’t nearly as red.

“Wow,” Lisa said as she stepped out behind him.

Ryan frowned silently.

Mave mumbled, “Huh. It’s actually still here.”

Micah didn’t know why the actually of that sentence rubbed him wrong, but it did.

As he looked around, he spotted something curious, a foldable table next to one of the piles of rubble.

“Why did they need a table?”

“Maybe they were mapping out the place?” Ryan offered.

That actually seemed like a good idea, if the Tower really wasn’t changing anymore. Micah knew [Explorers] were loving it.

“So what now?” Lisa asked. “I’m not exactly looking forward to fighting Salamanders again.”

Micah frowned at her. “Would you even fight them? I mean, with Sam?”

She shrugged. “Sure. I’ve made Sam fight other Teacup Salamanders.”

“You have? Where? How?”

“Training dummies,” she said. “And arenas. I’ve been testing out how it fights against all sorts of things.”

Ryan butted in. “And Sam wants to do that?”

Lisa froze up a little. “Sam’s a construct,” she told him with a little edge in her voice. “It doesn’t want anything.”

Mave clapped his hands to get their attention. “So we found the Salamander’s Den. Cheers. The first tunnel here is … moderately stable. Monthly maintenance should keep it up. So unless you throw a fireball at the ceiling, you won’t have to fear collapse. The rest of the place looks like it’s in better shape. The question is, what do we do now? Do we go home?”

Micah looked around but didn’t see any monsters. He wondered if Mave was still repelling them.

“Uhm,” he started. “We can get fire crystals from here. You need them for Sam, right?” He turned to Lisa. “As treats? We also wanted to get some for Ryan’s parents for when it gets colder.”

“They were just joking, Micah,” Ryan said.

“What? Really?”

He nodded.

“Oh.” Micah tried not to let his disappointment show. “But, uhm, we can get some anyway, right? As a surprise. And you can further your [Salamander Path] here and … we can maybe look for Kobolds?”

He remembered two people from the Registry questioning him on what had happened in the Tower after he got back, telling him that Kobolds didn’t appear on the first floor. He remembered Ameryth asking him if he had actually fought a Kobold, just like how Mave had been surprised that the floor was actually still here. Micah would love to see the look on people’s faces if he found proof.

“So fire crystals and Kobolds, huh?” Mave asked. “Sure, why not? You want to split up to map this place out?”

Micah nodded. “I went that way last time and headed left at the first intersection but didn’t find anything, so I would go the other way this time and then another group could maybe take the right instead.”

“Great,” Mave said and glanced at his wristwatch. “We can meet back in, say, four hours?”

“I … don’t have a watch,” Micah admitted. He turned to Ryan, but he shrugged because he didn’t have one either.

The man frowned. “How can you go into the Tower and not— Oh, right. You’re poor. Nevermind.” He shook his head as he stepped up and started taking off his own watch. It looked expensive.

“Hand,” he said again.

Micah was still a little stuck on the “You’re poor” comment as he dutifully held his hand out. He hadn’t told Lisa that he had run away from home yet, so how had Mave known?

The man peeled his armor back as he fit the watch on, making Micah’s skin tingle like at the barber’s shop.

“You know how to read it, though, right?” he asked. “Four hours.”

Now, Micah knew how to react. He scowled. “I can tell the time. Thanks. What about you?”

Mave slipped an even more expensive-looking watch on a chain out of his pocket and clicked it open.

“Oh.”

That settled, he headed off with Lisa. A few steps in, he asked her, “Why are you following me?”

“We’re splitting up, right? I’m coming with you.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Yes, I am.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Yes. I am …”

“No …”

Micah watched them walk off, squabbling like brother and sister. Except that Mave was twice her age. Maya, his eldest sister, was only twelve years older than him, he knew. She was twenty-seven now, right? Would Micah be able to squabble with her like that one day? What about Aaron?

When Mave and Lisa had disappeared around the bend and Micah was still staring, Ryan nudged him a little and asked, “Everything alright?”

“Yeah,” he told him honestly. “Let’s go fight some Salamanders.”

Ryan led the way and, for the first time, Micah experienced what any other Early Bird or first-year student might have. He wasn’t there alone.

As they slowly mapped out the way, Ryan seemed to want to give Micah some pointers on how to fight Salamanders, but it was hard to adapt his sword and shield lessons to Micah’s barely trained use of a dagger.

Micah only knew one dagger form and a few free motions. He only knew two sword-fighting forms that he practiced maybe once a week ... with a stick.

Ryan knew a lot more than that and even a few spear and quarterstaff ones. Apparently, schools taught a broad education.

In exchange, Micah tried to teach him how to treat Salamanders like alleyballs, but Ryan already knew that trick. So they did the obvious thing and switched weapons, then taught each other to fight like one another.

Ryan looked awkward with the dagger for some reason Micah couldn't explain. He had better luck with the hunting knife, because the blade made him look fierce when he got up and close with Salamanders to stab them.

Meanwhile, Micah really liked being able to bash stuff with a shield. It reminded him of bashing stuff with a treasure chest.

“You could try a flail or mace if you like bashing by proxy,” Ryan told him. “Or, you know, just a staff.”

Once he went to a school, Micah would have access to training weapons. He could try them out, then, before he decided on anything.

They switched again and tried out knife and shield—which was actually pretty nice—while Ryan tried sword and knife. He said it was stupid and that sword on its own would be better.

Micah tried it himself and agreed.

Knife and knife was equally weird. He thought he could make it work, with a little practice, but he didn’t want to. Having one hand free to do things was much more valuable, in his opinion. Especially since he was an [Alchemist].

That left only one thing.

Micah watched in amusement as Ryan tried and failed to hit charging Salamanders with his slingshot. His aim got better and better with each one they fought, but this time he had already missed four shots in a row. He gripped a glue-ball too tight in frustration and it burst.

Unfortunately, it was filled with one of the more physical glues instead of essence-infused waters.

Micah took the slingshot from him while he cursed and glued the charging Salamander up, then helped Ryan wash his hand off with a little bit Archertoad oil that Lisa had collected for him and a towel. The oil from the beast's skin apparently dissolved their own spit.

As soon as his hand was free, the guy gripped Micah’s dagger and stomped toward the beast with murder in his eyes.

“Wait!” Micah called. “Don’t you want to, you know, meditate on it?”

Ryan frowned back at him. “I’ve fought literally hundreds of Teacup Salamanders before, Micah. There is nothing new to meditate on just because we restrained it with some glue.”

It wasn’t actually restrained, Micah saw. It was still inching toward them.

“You said the same thing with the Honey Ant,” he protested. “But you only have the Salamanders’ scales and traction. What about their poison? You could try getting something like [Numbing Spi— Uhm, Touch? [Numbing Touch]? Or [Paralyzing Touch]!” Micah covered his slip-up with a fake smile. “It might not help against monsters, but you could use it to numb wounds, or play pranks, or, like, in self-defense?”

Ryan squinted at him but gave in with a shrug. He walked over and sat down in front of the beast, saying, “Hold it still, though. I don’t want it opening up my neck while my eyes are closed, okay?”

Micah dutifully sat opposite Ryan and picked up the Salamander. He used one hand to wave one of its legs at Ryan and the other to hold its mouth closed so it couldn’t snap at him.

It was just an angry little cousin of Sam, he made himself think.

Ryan peered at it and pulled its mouth open a little to see its front teeth.

“How does its poison even work?” Micah asked.

“Venom,” Ryan corrected him. “It’s like a snake. It has two hollow teeth that inject the venom when it bites. Unmade use magic, or essence, I guess. Fully-formed develop an actual substance.”

“And there’s a difference?”

“Big one,” Ryan mumbled and nicked the beast. It bled light. He sighed. “I do not want to develop actual venom spit, Micah. I want to copy its magic and adapt it for my own means.”

He grinned a little and slipped his glove off. Before Micah could react, he pried the beast’s mouth open and let it bite him.

“Ryan!”

Micah wanted to tug the Salamander away, but that was a bad idea while it had its teeth in Ryan’s hand.

“Relax, I’ve been bitten by them dozens of times,” he said and wrenched the beast’s jaw off. He shook his hand a little as blood welled up in the wound. “The feeling is familiar. Keep an eye out while I meditate on it, okay?”

“... Okay,” he grumbled.

Really, this was his own fault, Micah thought as he bent left and right to peer past him. He had wanted him to mimic the Salamander’s poison. Of course, Ryan would let himself get bitten to better understand the effect. Micah would have done the same.

So he sat there while the other meditated and, every other moment, checked to make sure nothing was sneaking up on them. After a few minutes of nothing, the guy’s eyebrows furrowed in a familiar expression. He opened his eyes with a sigh and shook the scowl away.

“Did it work?”

“No. Nothing. But I remember the feeling now. I’d … almost forgotten. I can meditate on it later.”

“Oh. Okay, then.”

Micah finished the Salamander off, pocketed its warm crystal, and got up. They had been goofing off for too long, they both knew, so they switched their weapons back. Micah said a heartfelt goodbye to the shield, and Ryan said good riddance to the slingshot. Then they spent an hour searching more earnestly for stairs, an exit portal, treasure chest, or Kobold.

They found exactly none of those things.

There were some rooms Ryan said should have been antechambers to stairs, but the walls showed either nothing or just mouths of rubble. They also found some holes in tunnels that were the same, as if there had been tunnels leading up from there that had collapsed and spilled forth.

Ryan made them avoid those areas since Mave wasn’t around to check on how stable they were.

But they didn’t even encounter that many Salamanders, sometimes going for three or four tunnels until they spotted another one. It was like they were in the abandoned ruins of a town outside the city. And with every empty room they passed, every pile of rubble he saw, every time they fought a Salamander but no Kobold, Micah’s hopes sunk a little more.

Where was everything?

Even just a treasure chest would have been nice. He knew they were supposed to be rare, but they were searching.

Ryan told him sometimes walls with lots of crystals veins could indicate a hidden space, but none of the ones they pried at were like that. And there weren’t much other hiding spots in the stark tunnels they walked through.

Micah really did want to bring something back to Ryan’s parents. Not just to thank them, but because he would never be able to proudly present loot to his own parents. He knew it was wrong to replace them like that in his thoughts … but if Ryan’s parents could be proud of him when his own couldn’t, why shouldn’t he?

Either way, it didn’t matter, because Micah wasn’t going to bring anything of value back to them.

When two and a half hours had passed, Ryan estimated they were about five to six miles into the floor and said they should turn back or they’d be late.

And even though the Salamanders were slowly getting bigger and more fierce, Micah still reluctantly agreed. At the very least, he was happy for himself about what they had found, the loot he carried in his backpack.

Thirty-seven fire crystals, two of which had Salamander scales sticking to them, one small bottle filled with a bit of poison, and its source, a fully-formed Teacup Salamander, barely damaged.

They also had a Prowler, which was bound to be worth a lot. Having a whole day to spend in the Tower was awesome, if only for those things, Micah told himself. He was beginning to see how some people could make a living off of this and resolved to find a treasure chest another day.

So by the time they got back, they were both smiling a little. Both those smiles vanished when they spotted the small sack of gleaming crystals Lisa and Mave had dumped on the floor between them.

“Mm, is it blue?” Lisa was asking, leaning against the wall.

“No. Can it bite a head off in one go?” Mave countered.

“No. Mm, can it breathe fire?”

“... Yes. Go again.”

Were they playing a game? How long had they been waiting?

“Mm, is it—”

“AH! They’re back!” Mave suddenly called, pointing. “Too bad we’ll have to stop. I guess I win.”

Lisa didn’t seem to care because she called, “And, did you find anything?”

Had they found anything? Micah wondered as he ignored her and walked past to crouch in front of the treasure. What about what they two had found? There were easily twice as many crystals lying in there than what Micah had in his backpack. And they weren’t even all from Salamanders!

Micah picked one up and asked, “What kind of crystal is this?”

It glowed white with tiny hints of orange and blue and looked half-molten, like someone had dripped wax over it. But there were others, too. One was a mixture of brown and orange and kind of familiar. It reminded of him—

Micah’s face scrunched up. Was that a type of insect essence? He threw it back inside.

“Mave found an entrance into the Dripping Teeth,” Lisa told him. “He killed some Wax Golems until he got bored.”

“I’m sorry I could not find your mythical first floor Kobold,” he added casually. “Are you sure it exists, kid?”

“Yes!” Micah snapped.

They all looked at him and his face started to burn. “Uh, I mean. Yes. It does. I have the scars to prove it.”

“Okay …”

Just then, something burst out of the sack of loot and Micah dodged back, but Lisa and Mave seemed unconcerned.

Sam pushed the cloth over as it broke free, spilling crystals onto the ground, and rolled around with a fire crystal held to its chest. It was gnawing and licking at it, but not getting very far. Was it too big to chew?

That reminded Micah of something and he glanced back to see if Lisa was looking.

“Dripping Teeth?” Ryan asked, drawing their attention. “Do you remember the way?”

Micah quickly pulled a bloody glove off and offered Sam a leftover flesh crystal shard from this morning.

“Here,” he whispered. “You can have it.”

Sam licked the shard off his palm, tickling him, and Micah smiled and said, “Roll over.”

Sam ignored him. It went back to gnawing on its fire crystal.

Micah’s smile fell.

“We have a map,” Mave said proudly as he pulled a folded piece of paper out of his back pocket. “You can add what you found.”

When he handed it over, his shirt stretched back over his wrist and Micah remembered, “Oh, your watch.”

He quickly slipped off his other bloody glove and figured out how to unfasten it. It was just like a mini-belt, he figured. He'd never worn a wristwatch before, but as he handed it back with his thanks, he knew it was something else he would have to buy soon.

They crowded over the table with a pen and Lisa explained the markers they used for their map. But the only real mark on it was the entrance to the Dripping Teeth three miles in, the stalactite-filled second floor that harbored arm-sized centipedes, Wax Golems that looked like tiny, monstrous people, as well as some monsters from adjacent floors, like Teacup Salamanders and spiders.

Ryan wondered if they could find an entrance from there, since it was safer than fighting the wolves.

Micah disagreed.

“At least there, you can use the archer method and hide in trees. And I need wolf crystals regularly. All you have to do in the Dripping Teeth is slip in a puddle and hit your head to die. It’s darker, too. And the centipedes can ambush you from anywhere. Oh, and some Wax Golems can cast [Sparks]!”

Really, Micah just didn’t want to fight giant centipedes in a dark space. But Ryan gave in to his badgering arguments.

“We have to head back soon anyway,” he said, “if we want to visit one of the loot tents for the wolf.”

Lisa and Micah both frowned at that. “I thought we were going to process it ourselves,” he said. He could make a Stamina potion out of Prowler parts. And they could always sell the rest somewhere in the Bazaar, right?

Mave and Ryan frowned, and Mave asked, “Why? It’s a waste of time. We don’t need all of the wolf, do we?”

“I could make stock with its spare parts,” Lisa offered.

“And its pelt?” Ryan countered. “What about clean-up? Plus, we still have the Teacup Salamanders.”

“We don’t want to reveal those,” Lisa argued on.

Micah wanted to join her and argue that it might help him level to do it himself, but he saw Ryan wrinkle his nose as he spoke, so he threw his hands up and relented, “Fine! We’ll go to the stupid loot tent.”

Three against one, Lisa was outnumbered. Loot tent it was.

----------------------------------------

Two fully-formed Teacup Salamanders, one hundred and eighteen fire crystals total—which they kept hidden on Lisa’s insistence—twelve tiny Wax Golem crystals that Lisa said were filled with “candle essence”, three Teeth Crawler crystals that Micah said were filled with “ew essence”, a fully-formed Prowler with a shattered shoulder, and a little bit of lemon balm.

That was the haul they approached one of the loot tents outside of the Tower with, one of the temporary structures Micah had spotted in the distance during his first visit to the Tower.

These tents weren’t operated by the Guild themselves, he knew. The Climbers Guild mostly employed administrative, academic, medical, and combat personnel, as well as a few people for their in-building restaurants and rooms. They often acted as a middleman. They didn’t employ the type of Classes needed to process monsters themselves. Instead, they rented the space in front of it to the people who did.

But Micah had a learned a little bit about the Tower’s economy in his preparations for the entrance exam and the most important thing he remembered was this: People didn’t want every little thing he could find in the Tower. Some things were simply junk.

Things that had use were bought. Things that had no use weren’t, not even by the Guild. He couldn’t just approach the receptionist’s desk with a fully-formed spider he had found and sell it. He could, however, sell its crystal since those didn’t require processing and were relatively easy to transport and store.

But of course, if only useful things were bought, climbers would focus on getting those so they became less valuable as supply outweighed demand. And the things that nobody got, but were needed by a few individuals—like alchemists—were retrieved via request or niche companies.

And thus, the Tower economy was born.

As they headed towards the tent, most loot Micah saw in other climbers’ hands, or poking out from sacks, or in the one case, even being transported in what looked like an old bathtub on someone’s back, were monsters that people would actually want to eat or had use for. So not rats or giant centipedes.

He knew the Gardens had their own loot tents, so that removed most of the things coming from there. And while the tent paid well for monsters, they paid only for what they wanted, down to the parts. That meant selling a whole monster might not earn you much more than just selling the parts people wanted.

In exchange, they did offer to free selective parts from the monsters for climbers, but at high fees for the workers.

Otherwise, Climbers hired by the loot tents’ companies worked in shifts and came out in rough intervals, which their group had managed to avoid, Teacup Salamanders were a rarity nowadays, and a lot of Climbers dressed or partially dressed monsters themselves in the Tower to have less to carry.

So that left mostly Honey Ants, some types of spiders, various Treants, some Myconids and Shroomish, Earth Boars, one alligator a man was carrying over his shoulder, a few fourth floor Salamanders—which looked a lot like smooth alligators themselves—various large birds strung up by their feet, a few massive slugs carried in sacks, and a woman who had a tank strapped to her back, which was filled with large lobsters that still seemed to be alive and were splashing about in its water.

Micah wondered where she had gotten those from. Then if lobsters were as tasty as people said. What about giant lobsters? And anyway—

“How are they still alive?” he mumbled.

“Hm? It takes time for them to unravel,” Lisa answered, as if she had known his thoughts. “Some people can keep monsters alive for years outside for the Tower, with the right alchemical preservatives and spells, of course. They don’t do well in captivity, though.”

Huh. Another topic to research someday.

But what was truly fascinating—at least, to Micah—was that they all barely left a trail after them. The area and lawns closest the Guild were spotless. Closer to the Tower, the ground became filthier.

Micah spotted some cleaning workers near the tents and some other near the entrance to the Guild, but somehow, despite sometimes coming out of the Tower drenched in blood, climbers all seemed to value keeping the area around the Tower as clean as possible.

When he asked Ryan about that, he said, “It’s what we’re taught in school. It’s just proper.”

Mave nodded in agreement.

Lisa didn’t seem to have heard.

They got closer to the tent, but Mave kept on walking, saying that they would get a better deal at the next one.

Micah suspected he just didn’t like the people who ran the first tent. He spotted a large sigil over its entrance that looked a lot like Mr. Faraday’s loopy-loops. It was the same sigil that was painted over some of the city’s gates and said “Hadica” in the family language of the … the … uhm?

The entrance exam was over. A lot of what Micah had learned was already leaving him. “Does that tent belong to the Madins or the Gardeners?”

“Madins,” Mave and Lisa said in unison, both with the same cranky tone.

Ha! He’d been right. They didn’t like them.

The next tent they went to belonged to the Bluths, Mave explained. Micah didn’t think he had heard of them before, but they had to be doing well if they could keep up with the Madins so close to their tent.

As they got closer, the smell of a butcher’s shop got stronger, but not by much. Micah wondered how if so many people were bringing monsters in to be processed. Shouldn’t the smell have been overwhelming?

He strained his eyes a little to catch the essence of scents and smells in the air and saw tiny specks of color, which might have looked like colorful flowers up close, drifting away from the tent’s thin walls. They seemed to conquer and push away other specks.

Micah looked at Mave and saw the same effect coming from him, but much, much stronger. When he looked at him, it wasn’t just clouds of glitter in the air. Micah could almost imagine a field of massive flowers spinning like mandalas behind him. Had it always been that strong?

Micah blinked the effect away and asked in surprise, “Hey, does someone here have an aura for the entire tent?”

Mave gave him a weird look and said, “Of course.”

High standards, then?

They passed through the entrance and saw … a lot of tables, water, and blood. And a lot of workers handling it all.

The loot tent was sectioned off into different areas, Micah knew, where people with both the [Worker] and [Butcher] Classes worked efficiently in cutting up single types of monsters into parts and passed them onto colleagues, who sorted them into boxes, crates, tanks, and palettes with water or ice.

Micah even saw what he assumed was a [Miner] or [Sculptor] with a hammer and chisel breaking an intact stone golem into parts. How had they killed it without breaking it?

Ryan wrinkled his nose, so Micah got out his perfume potion and wordlessly handed it over. He got a surprised “Thanks” in answer. Ryan sprayed both himself and Micah once and handed it back.

“Hello, my name is Kasey,” a woman with a wide smile approached them from a podium, wearing a name tag, blue apron, and gloves. “Welcome to the Bluth Treasure Station. Is it your first time here? Can I help you find your way around?”

“Long absence for me,” Mave said and pointed back. “First time for them. I’m just orienting myself.”

“Ah. Welcome back then, sir. Can I help you find anything?”

“We have a Prowler,” he said and lied, “and two wee Salamanders we found in the Dripping Teeth.”

Her eyebrows went up a small fraction and she pointed. “Prowlers are in the middle-left. For Teacup Salamanders … you’ll have to go to the regular Salamander station that way. We stopped offering a Teacup Salamander station just three weeks ago, I’m sorry to say, sir.”

“No problem, Kasey. Thank you,” Mave said and headed off.

Lisa followed without a word, but Micah and Ryan both said “Thank you” in passing.

Then Micah’s eyes were glued onto everyone and everything they passed. In his mind, he saw ingredients. So many ingredients he would love to use.

The [Miner] was now freeing the golem’s crystal heart from its body while trying not to harm its veins, which were also valuable, though brittle. Micah knew he could use those parts to create a basic mana potion. He also knew how much they cost and wondered if he would ever be able to afford them without a license.

At another station, he saw a tower of crates that reached to his chest, each filled with Sapling corpses like apples. Next to it were wagons filled with Treant parts. If he’d been able to snag just one of those, Micah would have been able to make [Barkskin] potions for Ryan and him for a week.

At the station they approached, he saw a sign listing non-negotiable fees and values that all seemed strangely exaggerated.

Instead of consulting the sign, Lisa and Mave talked it over with a [Butcher] and found out, they wouldn’t get as much money for the wolf as Micah had hoped, because the value of the things he needed—its heart, lungs, crystal, and a few slices of meat for Lisa—carried about half of the wolf’s worth and they still had to pay the [Butcher] for cutting and packaging it all.

Mave was about to strike the deal when Micah glanced at the sign again and spoke up, "Uhm, I'd be happy with the just the crystal."

Removing the crystal cost the least of all the fees.

Lisa frowned at him. "Don't you want to make a stamina potion?"

Three gold coins. Micah shook his head, "For what? It's much more expensive than something like an agility potion and it won't be much better. I ... don't have any use for it, so I'd rather sell the whole wolf and put the money to better use. I mean, there are other potions I haven't made yet, right? Cheaper ones."

The [Butcher] raised an eyebrow, politely impatient. "So just the crystal then, sir?"

Mave frowned, but said, "And her two slices of meat." He jerked a thumb at Lisa.

"Very well."

Micah tried to avoid looking at Ryan, who was hanging a little back from the station anyway. Thankfully, Lisa had ordered the meat, because that gave them an excuse to hang around and watch the man work.

He easily cut it up into parts, drained the blood, and pushed them over, where his colleague further cleaned it, laid slices of meat in ice, the pelt in a rack, put some innards into a bucket, bones into another, and the rest into a waste bin.

The alchemical parts he cleaned and handle more carefully as he put them in a separate box filled with ice. Micah glanced around then and spotted ice-filled containers at most of the stations. Where did they get it all? Didn't it melt?

Lisa's slices of meat got wrapped in wax paper put into a small paper bag, which Lisa eyed like a wrapped present. Micah knew what was for dinner at her house tonight.

He dragged her over with one hand pinching his nose to peer into the waste bin and even she agreed that she would have little use for the parts in there, aside from maybe making stock with them.

Micah wondered what they did with it.

Just then, the [Butcher] dumped a ruined shoulder bone into the bucket with the others. It fell to pieces halfway there, having been broken by Mave’s attack.

Micah looked over at where the man was accepting some wooden chits from the [Butcher] after he had appraised everything's worth. He handed them to Ryan, who happily went to trade them in at a nearby cashier station.

Micah wondered how someone with an aura of illusionary flowers spinning behind him could muster enough force to shatter bones like that.

[Aura of Spring] … Micah frowned a little. It was aura of spring, though, not “spring cleaning”, right? Not freshness or flower scents. When Micah thought of spring, he didn’t just think of cleaning up the house during a sunny weekend. He also thought of chaotic weathers that couldn’t decide if they wanted to be hot or cold, rainy or dry, frozen or misty, windy …

Micah remembered Mave’s throw punching a ring of fresh air into the fog. Spring could be like that, too? Cold mornings where the grass might even be frosted. Rain. So much rain. And winds that bent trees and brought storms. Lightning and mud.

Micah remembered a pretty bad storm they’d had last year. For hours before it hit the city, there was a tension in the air. He could almost imagine the same effect in Mave’s [Aura of Spring]. A cold wind buffeting the spiraling flowers, throwing their petals back to reveal mud underneath, their colors dimming as clouds formed overhead, that tension running between it all, the tension of muscles right before a javelin toss, of a Stormfront a mile away.

“Sir?” the [Butcher] said to Mave. “Your aura.”

A chill had brushed over their station. The blood that had flowed so freely in the water before now looked dark and heavy, almost like mud.

“Oh, sh—ishkebab,” Mave cursed. “I’m sorry, sir. That was not intentional.”

Immediately, the effect vanished again and shifted to barely visible flowers. The [Butcher] didn’t really seem to mind either way and went back to his work.

“Don’t worry,” Lisa said. “It wasn’t you.”

Mave shot her a glare. “Lisa, I told you to not mess with my aura.”

She held up her hands innocently. “It wasn’t me, either.”

The man frowned and slowly looked at Micah. “Him?”

“Me?”

“Magic is shaped by the mind,” Lisa repeated.

Instead of being offended, Mave suddenly looked impressed.

“I— What? I didn’t know [Aura of Spring] could do that,” Micah protested.

Now, the man’s expression shifted to bemused. “What, you thought spring was just flowers and soap?” He shook his head. “No. Spring is a storm.”

A tiny breeze of that passed through his aura again. Micah thought he might have even glimpsed lightning. But while impressive to look at, for him, he didn’t understand what the Skill could do. Did it just change the way people perceived the area around him?

Micah asked. Surprisingly, Mave answered.

“Anything,” he said. “I can shape spring to a storm to boost strength, to put myself and others in the mood for battle, to make strikes echo like thunder, or to create an affinity for nearby spells. Or I can think of spring cleaning to keep a house dust-free. Vague Skills have broad interpretations, broad effects. Don’t let others box your understand of them into one meaning only.”

Micah was definitely going to keep that in mind for the future. But the Skill sounded impressive.

“Uhm, what level did you get that Skill at, sir?” he asked, tentatively. “If it’s not too rude to ask.”

Mave smiled. “It might be to some people. It usually it to me, but I’ll let it pass. I got [Aura of Spring] at level 28, when my [Gardener] levels got consolidated into my main Class.”

Micah’s eyes went wide. Oh. So it was a valuable Skill, then.

When they found and cleaned the wolf's crystal and laid it into Lisa's paper bag, they headed off and met Ryan halfway, who held three coins proudly, the equivalent of fifty-two iron coins. Micah knew they would have to split that money four ways, but seeing it, he didn't feel so bad about giving up on the wolf parts.

They went to the Salamanders station next and got a surprised look by the woman working there, who asked them where they had found two fully-formed Tea-cup Salamanders in this day and age.

Micah suspected a whole lot of people were going to fruitlessly search the centipede-infested Dripping Teeth to find more soon, because Mave lied and told her that was exactly where they had found them.

He felt kind of guilty about that.

But then the woman began to butcher the Salamanders and that feeling was replaced with curiosity. Its scales were large and durable, unlike any animals’ scales that Micah had seen before. You could actually hold a single one. They felt warm, then hot. He wondered what they were made of.

She plied them off one by one instead of cutting them like a snakeskin, then cut off the skin and dumped it into a waste bin. Apparently, nobody wanted that.

One table over, the fourth-floor Salamanders’ skins were cut off entirely, though, and placed into containers. What qualities did they have that Teacup Salamanders didn’t?

She then held a bottle into their mouths, squeezed, and tsked when no venom came out.

Micah had done that to theirs already. He hadn’t known Lisa had done it to hers, too.

She sliced off a few pieces of meat, feet, two fangs, tail, and bones by scraping off of the meat. And apparently, those were the only useful parts, because she promptly dumped the rest—almost half of the Salamanders—into the waste.

Micah’s eyes went wide at that and he asked, “Is nothing else useful?”

“Venom, hollow fangs, feet, tail, bones, and especially scales are the usable parts of Teacup Salamanders,” she listed. “Some select parts of its flesh can be eaten without problems. It’s spicy and a little sour. Tastes great. But the skin, meat closest to the skin, and few organs that they have are known to cause digestive issues; stomach aches, the runs, or worse. We dump those. Climbers have died eating entire Teacup Salamanders in the Tower before.”

Oh. That was ... good to know.

“How much do we owe you for processing the parts?” Mave asked her.

The lady looked surprised. “You don’t want to sell any of it?”

“Kid’s an [Alchemist],” he said and glanced up at the table. “It’s cheaper than buying them in the city.”

“What about the meat and bones? Those aren’t alchemical ingredients.”

“They aren’t?” Micah turned to Lisa.

She nodded. “Their inedible meats barely have any useful patterns or essence at all, aside from maybe a tiny bit more venom essence. The same holds true for their edible ones. A little bit of fire and venom, but not much else. It’d be like scraping at the bottom of a barrel for drops of water. And that’s for regular [Alchemists]. Since you’re working with only [Infusion] …”

That again? Micah scowled.

“And the meat tastes great. Would be a shame to waste it in some weak potion,” the lady said. “You can’t make much with first floor ingredients, right?”

He knew she hadn’t meant it—she seemed pretty forth-coming—but her blunt words still hurt.

“Don’t you want it, Lisa?” Ryan spoke up from the figurative peanut-gallery, since he was hanging back a little from the group.

“Fighting Salamanders is one thing,” she said. “Eating them?”

“What about, uh, research?” he called.

“I already know their biology in and out.”

That settled it.

They sold the meat, bones, feet, tail, and half of the scales. The latter three because Micah didn’t have a use for them today and they weren’t planning on going back to the Salamander’s Den anytime soon, since they still had to train for Saturday.

That brought them a total of fifty-seven iron coins as they left the loot tent, waving to Kelsey as they walked past. With their monster parts neatly cut, packaged, and organized, saving the time and effort of doing it themselves, and having to sell everything they didn't need in the Bazaar afterward, Micah found himself liking the service.

Mave disappeared down the hall when they got to Lisa’s place, calling back that she could give him his cut later.

“What cut?” Lisa called. “You’re still getting by paid for today!”

“I did most of the work, I want my cut! In fire crystals, lady!”

Micah promptly wasted his few drops of Salamander venom trying to add a numbing effect to his various healing potions. Unlike the Cataracts’ venom, he had thought it might work because the two things could work in tandem. Healing and pain relief. Perfect, right? It still turned to essence sludge that drifted around like flakes of dirt in water.

Lisa refused to offer her bottle of Salamander venom so he could make numbing ammunition out of it and took the four hollow fangs for herself—to experiment, she said.

That left Micah with a whole bunch of scales. He did some searching around in his recipe book, found an interesting potion that he would love to make as a surprise for Ryan, and asked Lisa how it could even work. Its use of salamander scales seemed counterintuitive to him.

“Observe,” she said as she placed a single scale on a napkin. Then she held a fire crystal to it. After a few moments, she took both off and showed him the napkin. It was slightly damp.

“How?”

“Pure hot scales would kill the beasts were they alive,” she said. “Though they aren’t, which makes me wonder why the scales bothered with this. But they have three different heat resistance functions, one of which can convert heat essence to sweat essence to create an enhanced perspiration effect.”

Sweat, Micah translated. The scales could convert heat to sweat.

Micah had just one question. Well actually, two. The first being, How? which he knew might not have any practical use, even if Lisa knew the answer. So he asked the second one instead, “Can Ryan do that, too?”

Ryan paused in where he was doing pull-ups in the doorframe and saw them both staring at him.

“What?”

While Ryan meditated on his [Hot Skin] Skill, Micah went out to buy some ingredients: Some herbs that could grow even in the snow, wax from fully-formed Wax Golems—next time, he was going to make Mave fight them until he found one—and some sheep wool.

Then he used his Salamander scales as a base to make two Potions of Lesser Heat Resistance and two Potions of Lesser Elements Resistance, which combined heat, cold, and humidity resistance with toughness. Micah wondered if that made it a tier four Stat, but Ryan said all it did was help you rough it when you slept outside.

Micah drank the first dose and waited an hour until its Skill wore off, then drank the second, confirming that they both worked. But while he still had [Lesser Heat Resistance], they already made Ryan drink his.

“And?” Micah asked with a smile when Ryan set the bottle down.

They waited for a moment, a minute, two; Ryan shook his head, saying, “Nothing. Sorry.”

“And you’re sure you got the doses right this time?” Lisa asked him.

Micah nodded. He was sure about it this time and had even added a little extra as a buffer. He just wasn’t sure if he should be smiling or not.

“Then it’s settled,” she said. “[Hot Skin] probably has [Lesser Heat Resistance].”

“Probably?”

“It could be that something else went wrong. But we might be able to get the confirmation elsehow,” Lisa said. “Ryan might be able to get the Skill by meditating on [Hot Skin].”

“He can?”

Ryan actually nodded then. “I had a [Mage] classmate who got the [Firebolt] spell from a level up even though he didn't know how to ignite mana into fire. And he meditated on it and reverse-studied its script to get the spell [Create Fire]. This should be similar, right?”

“Exactly.”

That made Micah wonder if he had anything he could reverse-study. But he knew how he should feel about the potions by now—disappointed. So he wouldn’t be able to make a heat resistance effect for Ryan after all? That sucked.

“But the potion should still do something, right?” he asked.

They must have seen it on his face, because Lisa said, “Maybe?”

Ryan looked like he wasn’t sure whether or not he should lie and say that he was feeling colder already. Thankfully, he didn’t. Instead, they just waited until the hour was up and had him drink the other potion, which also didn’t give him a Skill.

“[Hot Skin] already covers two-thirds of what the potion would do. You based the potion on Salamander scales, which Ryan copied to get the Skill,” Lisa explained. "And the other effects are too diluted to give him anything else."

"Oh. So maybe with a different recipe...?"

"Maybe?"

Micah was happy for Ryan that he might get new Skills soon, but he still felt a little … useless.

It was late anyway, so they packed up and left. As they got closer to his house, Ryan told him he was happy with the breeze potion.

Micah gave him a fake smile and showed off some of the fire crystal that were his part of the loot.

But he knew he hadn’t anything back for Ryan’s parents. He hadn’t found a treasure chest, he’d made no new useful potions, and he hadn’t found a Kobold either. He had no proof for what had happened in the Salamander’s Den back then.

And he hadn’t seen his family today. At all. Not even Prisha.

He still smiled, though. So he was surprised when, at the dinner table, Ryan dumped nineteen fire crystals, eight candle crystals, and one mist crystal into a bowl in front of his parents out of nowhere. Micah’s share of the loot. Then he dumped thirty-two more fire crystals and twenty-one iron coins on top. His share of the loot.

“There’s your treasure,” he told them. “You loan sharks.”

His parents smiled, then thought better of it, and leaned back with sneers, asking, “Fire crystals? Where are we supposed to do with these?”

“We can keep each other warm at night," his mother said. "Where’s our money, eh?”

“We told you, we want our money!”

Micah smiled a little bit, too.