“Welcome to my tower!” I declared with my arms spread, then cursed internally as realised I had done the exact same thing with Tear. I hoped she didn't notice. From the look she gave me, she probably had, but I pretended I hadn't and continued. “There are some guest rooms on the 5th floor, feel free just to pick one. Also, the pool is below our feet. I'll let you know when dinner is ready, so relax, explore, see what's around.”

Lupia was standing, looking dazed, and I waved a hand in front of her face, which seemed to refocus her.

“What's with the amount of mana in here?” she demanded, sounding shocked.

“There's a mana spring in the pool,” I replied.

“What pool?”

I sighed, and repeated what I had said previously.

She nodded, and I excused myself, checking my cell phone's clock readout as I headed up the stairs at a decent pace, which, for me, was rather fast. I grabbed a few bits and pieces off my walls, and rearranged a few, then dropped back down the central shaft, using my depth vision to see which floor Lupia was on and to land on the floor above it. She was in the kitchen, Tear was with her and seemed to be giving her a tour, so, coincidentally, I landed on the narrow ledge on the guest rooms' floor.

I stepped through the door in the wall enclosing the central shaft, entering into a small (2m wide) toroidal communal space that acted as a hub for the other rooms on the first of two subfloors. 10 doors led off, equally spaced, around the room, one to the proper entrance hall with its red tiled floor and coat stand, the one immediately to the right to a kitchen, containing a Frost Metal fridge set during forging to remain perpetually cool but not sub-zero like Ice Chests, though it wasn’t stocked with ingredients yet, a sink, stove, table and chairs, drawers of implements, and all the other trappings required. All the other doors, except the one to the right of that one, led into 7 compact bedrooms with double beds, a bedside table on either side, a weapons rack and shelves up on the walls, two small chest of drawers, and a small door and partition separating an ensuite, white Smooth Marble shower, toilet, and basin, all included.

Fancy grey wallpaper, painted white, covered the walls of each room, the ceiling painted a light blue. The floor was blank, smooth obsidian, waiting for the carpets I had arranged to collect in town a day from now. Until then, I had placed a few small rugs on the floors of each of the bedrooms. Light was provided by Glass Lanterns, wired up to light switches by the door and on either side of the bed. All the doors had bolts on the inside.

The last door opened onto a wide, doubled-back staircase up to the upper subfloor, leaving enough room for a second entrance from the main tower stair as it passed. A 1 metre wide ring corridor, floored with Stone Slabs, ran round the tower wall, left bare obsidian with a wide strip topaz gemspark just below shoulder height, and a matching corridor, with a few pieces of communal furniture against the walls, encircled the walled-off central shaft. 10 bedrooms, matching those on the floor below, linked the two like spokes on a wheel, doors on either end, allowing access to both spaces.

“This wasn't here yesterday,” Tear commented as she poked her head in through the door to the entrance hall. I gave her a light wave from where I was leaning back against a sofa and put on my best house agent persona. “Come in, come in! Have a look around, tell me what you think; if you have any improvements, or suggestions, do tell!”

Tear gaze me a slightly questioning look “Why are you being so cheery? And the floor's a bit bare. Other than that, it's nice.”

“I've had some practise since I made your rooms, so I'm better at it now. Speaking of which, would you like me to touch up your rooms?”

“No thanks,” Tear refused, “I like them the way they are.”

“Your choice,” I shrugged, then nodded at Lupia who followed her in. “All these rooms are free, just pick any one you'd like, some do have some rugs in at the moment, if you'd prefer a less plain floor. To answer Tear's observation, I haven't collected the carpets I've bought from Gavin yet; they're due to arrive tomorrow, so I'll get them after we've finished with the adventurers.”

She nodded, catching her breath with one hand on the doorframe. “You have a lot of stairs,” she huffed, “you two must be very fit.”

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Tear snorted irritably. “Bah! I'm the only one who uses the stairs, Lyte uses the quick way.”

“There's a quick way?” asked Lupia hopefully.

“I do also use the stairs, thank you very much. And the quick way uses these,” I leant forwards on the sofa and lazily half extended a wing.

“Oh, you're a birdman! I had no idea! Wait, no, you have a human face, not a beak. I'm confused,” she exclaimed, her voice trailing off into a mumbled mutter.

“No, I'm not a birdman, I'm just a guy with wings.”

“...that seems really useful,” Lupia sighed. “Especially with all these stairs.”

“Don't complain too much,” Tear half-scolded, “this is only the 5th floor; I'm on the 20th. I have to deal with way more stairs than you.”

“Yes, and you could use the quick way down, but you don't,” I cut in before Lupia could respond.

“Yeah, cos I don't fancy dropping 200 meters!”

“Your 'quick way down' is to jump!” Lupia exclaimed, shocked. “Isn't that dangerous?”

“Yeah, but not for her, she's immune to fall damage.”

“I've still not forgiven you for how you tested that!”

“Oh, come on, it wasn't that bad.”

“You threw me off the top of the tower! Twice!”

“...I'm not going to question this anymore,” Lupia said hopelessly.

“Good choice,” I said as she wandered off to take a look around and pick a room. I stuck my tongue out at Tear, which made her laugh as it didn't work very well with a face mask, then walked down the tower stair and back up the stairs to the kitchen subfloor, where I started some dinner preparations, namely mixing up some dough and kneading it.

I left it to rise, then realised I didn't have several of the ingredients, so I headed back to the top of the tower, out through one of my doors, then spent about a minute flying back to the town, where I found that all the grocery stores had closed for the night, so I spent another 5 minutes flying to Durell at close to top speed. Luckily, I managed to find a place that sold what I needed within minutes of entering the city, which was good, because I only had an hour in which to get back.

I returned back to the tower and dropped off my latest acquisitions in the kitchen, before splitting the dough, rolling it out, then chucking it into a nearby Frost Metal fridge. I could have just used the pizza from the game, but this was more fun.

By this point, it was nearly time for the duel, so I headed up the central shaft. I found Tear and Lupia chatting on the sofa in the guest room communal space. It was good to see Tear making friends; from what I'd heard, she'd been betrayed by her last set and I'd been worried that it might prevent her making new ones. Thankfully it seemed her natural sociable personality was overpowering her street urchin mistrustfulness.

“It's about time for the duel to start,” I told them.

“Has it been that long already?” Lupia asked, surprised.

“What about dinner?” whined Tear.

“We leave in five hours” I muttered to myself in a French accent, then coughed and spoke more loudly “I'll make dinner after, it won't take long, don't worry about it.”

“Which won't take long? The making of dinner, or the duel?” Lupia asked astutely.

“Both!” I grinned.

I chatted casually with the two as we headed downstairs and out the door. A simplistic ring had been pegged out with some broken twigs, and the adventurers were standing round it. Dranner was standing apart from them, just inside the ring.

“Yo!” I called as we approached. He gave me a disdainful look.

“Hurry up!” he snapped irritably, “I've been waiting!”

I checked my internal clock. “Still got five minutes,” I said nonchalantly, “but sure, we can start early if you want.”

Thora approached as I stepped into the ring, seemingly acting as the adjudicator. “Do ye know tha rules for the Osmus School of Dueling?” he asked me.

Surprisingly enough, the knowledge the God of Reincarnation had given me did cover that topic, so I replied in the affirmative. In the Osmus rules, there were only three ways to win: first blood, surrender, or ringout. Killing your opponent was not allowed. I had no idea why I had that particular bit of knowledge over others, but it was useful in this specific situation.

“Good. In that case, Ready Weapons!” he called.

Dranner picked up his sword; he was using his usual weapon: a massive two meter, full hand width buster sword-style weapon.

“I wanted to ask earlier, but are you compensating for something?” I asked, raising an eyebrow and pulling out the Breaker Blade, “...because I know I'm not.” The Breaker Blade had the 'Massive' modifier and was easily twice as tall as me and as wide across as my shoulders, so it dwarfed Dranner's weapon.

I paused in the motion of lifting it to my shoulder and looked at it. “Actually, I don't think I'll fight you with this,” I said, holding it with one hand and indicating the massive slab of metal with the other, “you might die if I just dropped it on you, so I'll use this Muramasa instead.” My tone was Condescending in the extreme.

The massive weapon in my hand vanished, replaced with a deep oceanic blue katana with a golden hilt and cross guard.

“Don't insult me,” he ground out through clenched teeth.

“Why? Because you can't tolerate even a few small insults? Or is it because you've realised that I've been putting you off your concentration so you wouldn't be able to fight me properly, even though it wouldn't make a difference? Why don't you try it? It might improve your chances of winning!” I laughed.

I could almost hear his teeth grinding from across the ring.

“Hurry up and start this Thora! I want to destroy this asshole!” he snapped at the dwarf.

“Ah, right,” the dwarf cleared his throat and raised his voice: “Let the duel begin!”