It delighted me to be on the surface again. Everything was fresh, vibrant. I rode Argent’s senses as she led her crew up to the surface world.

The smell of the city was a deep ashy smoke cracked through with sour manure. The sights were too many to count. We emerged from a storm drain and scuttled through a storm of feet, nobody taking notice of yet more rats in the swarms that snuffled and searched through the gutters for rinds and half-chewed bones.

We were in a merchant’s district. The noblewoman’s dresses were flashes of luxurious color, and we hurried out of the way of carriages drawn by golem-horses made of stone.

I took particular note of a man in a sedan chair carried by two muzzled and chained creatures like a threeway cross between a man, a tusked pig, and a toad. Their chains were made out of gold and quite beautifully crafted, but the creatures underneath were miserable specimens.

We had two missions today. One was to search out whatever was directly atop my Dungeon, looking for potential haunts to inhabit. What I was hoping to find was a good place to burrow up into and take over, making a false front for a hidden entrance to the Dungeon. Creating a bridge between my little world and the world above would be an enormous risk - but so would be letting my growth slow.

More than once I had come out on top against opponents well above me in strength, but if I kept letting myself be the underdog, well, underdogs usually lose.

So today was the day to prepare for our incursion on the human realm. We scuttled through the wood shavings of a carpentry shop, explored the smells of a dozen market stalls selling everything from bone statuettes of the gods to fashionable boots that still stunk of the tanneries.

And we found our choice.

A small and nearly abandoned booksellers, the air nearly solid with the must of old books, the shelves thick with dust. We scurried along a rafter beam and watched the store's few customers shuffle through. We were not the only rats there.

It would be easy enough to empty this place out.

We departed through the high window, squeezing ourselves through the wooden shutters. Out into the world of the rooftops. Ash drifted from chimneys in grey pillars that smeared as the wind blew, and countless birds nestled here, guarding the little treasures of their nests and eggs. Worse things than pigeons resided up in the loose thatch roofs, of course. We skirted carefully around an owl starting to blink awake in the world-yellowing onset of twilight. Up here, everything was sloped and steep. The rich houses roofed in clay tiles were the worst; you could never trust that a tile wouldn’t slip loose underfoot.

I saw fish darting in the smoke of a chimney, strange grey eel-ish creatures that seemed to live in the soot. I saw spiders the size of hands, and for a moment caught a glimpse of a wild homunculi peeking out from a rooftop nest. Best of luck to the poor idiot, wherever he was.

I saw the city below. A crew of homunculus were carrying candles to light the tall streetlamps, and guard patrols were riding, not on horses but on bipedal beaked lizards with bright collars of red feathers around their long necks.

We darted through a hundred glimpses of common lives, running along balconies and peeking through windows, darting over drunken conversations in the street below. It was a strangely satisfying feeling to see everything and be unseen yourself.

And then we came to the jeweler’s shop.

Things were just closing, the last customers departing for the night, the guard being paid his due. The ratty crew was ready. One by one agile silver-furred bodies made the leap to the jewelry’s rooftop, carrying a line of twine that the rest would scuttle across carrying the tools of the mission. It was shockingly well-coordinated.

They carried across the fake golden pendant, the fake key, and something I hadn’t had to make for them. It was a glass bottle full of, well, terrible things. Chymical scrapings from the floor alchemy workshops and choice tidbits from the sewers, manure, adding together into an unspeakable rancidness that singed Argent’s nose even through the cork shoved into place. They had spent all day gathering ingredients for this devilish mixture.

Beneath, the jeweler had finished sealing his safe. He and the guard stepped outside, chatting idly together about the dwarves’ stingy ways, and as the old man fished out his second key we pushed the bottle over. It landed with a crack atop the jeweler’s head, sending him to the cobbles. The guard reached to help him-

And stopped short, pulling back, clutching his face as the reek hit him with a physical force.

They stumbled and lurched like drunken sailors, trying not to be sick. The jeweler was clutching his skinny old hands to his face as a tide of the unmentionable dripped down his head, mingled with blood.

In that moment Argent was scurrying down the ivy-laden walls with the fake key in her hand. The real one lay abandoned on the cobbles. With the both of them distracted, she leapt, disappearing midair and reappearing beside the prize. One key was dropped from her jaws, the other was scooped up, and with a flash she was gone again.

It was so smooth they only saw the blaze of silver light, and that could have been anything. Their eyes playing tricks in the nausea of the moment maybe.

The old man grabbed the key, in any case, furiously trying to wipe the thin slime clinging to his face away with his apron. He waved it at the door. Nothing happened. The jewelry’s spelled defenses simply failed to activate, seeing as he was only holding a normal iron key.

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He tried again.

And again.

We watched with glee from the drain as things unfolded exactly to plan. They argued, briefly, the guard continuously trying to step back and stay upwind from the stinking old bastard. The guard’s shift was up, of course, but someone had to go fetch a mage, and the jeweler would be thrown out for smelling like a sewer. The old man would stay and watch the shop until the defenses could be fixed.

In the end the old man shelled out a handful of dark iron coins, and the guard went off running towards the rich end of the city.

And once he was alone...

Once there was no vicious guard with a too-fast sword to bar our way...

Two rats scuttled down the side of the store, hoisting the fake pendant between them. They scuttled right through his line of sight, and his shocked expression, his mouth hanging open for a second, was a sight to see. He darted after them, whipping at them with his apron, and they abandoned their prize to flee into the shadows.

What could he assume, but that he must have left a piece out when he closed up shop? Forgotten in the confusion? He returned to his safe, muttering all the way about filthy vermin, drawing the key and whispering the words that would unlock the smooth, lockless door.

We came out of the store drain. Our crew came out of the shadows, down from the rooftops, everywhere. We poured in a ratty flood in through the door and he turned, just as the door of the safe vanished, and again- that hilarious slack-jawed expression.

We rushed past him. Argent took the lead, leaping up onto his head and biting him on the nose, clawing his face. Her brothers and sisters poured past his feet, leaping up the rows of drawers within the safe and pulling them free. While he howled and tried to pull Argent away gold and gems cascaded to the floor.

With a final, vengeful nip for her brother that took a chunk of his ear clean off, Argent leapt from his shoulders, seized a diamond ring in her jaws, and vanished in a flash of light for the door. Her crew was already pouring out, weighed down with prizes one and all. Silver rats carried golden earings, pearled brooches, emerald-encrusted bangles. Three combined their efforts to carry off the real article of the diamond pendant I had duplicated out of cheap glass and fool’s gold.

We were, frankly, filthy rich. They may have been the richest rats in history.

[https://i.imgur.com/okCjs7y.png]

While I waited for Argent’s crew to return, I disengaged from her senses. I wanted to make my Descent soon, and that meant finish a lot of work in short order. I finally made my choice. A new Schema was deeply tempting, and the Wheel offered a thrill, but what I needed more than anything was Mana. I was confined to working with small creatures as long as my income remained a slow trickle.

And I was not disappointed. Instantly, my Mana rate spiked by a whole ten an hour. More than twenty times what I had previously been forced to work with. I didn’t even need to resort to my secret weapon and draw Mana from the flower the Divine Messenger had left.

That, I would save for working on the gift for the gods.

With my newfound riches, I planted more mangrove trees, wasting no time in pouring Mana into them to make them rise in moments. It was fascinating to watch their growth sped up. The seeds I planted sprouted open into hairy clusters of thin, corkscrewing roots that worked their way through the loose mud at the lake bottom, while a single green shoot stretched up and broke the surface. Everything began to grow, the roots thickening until they lifted the stout trunk of the tree up on a hill of wooden flesh, while the sprout turned from green to pale grey as it split into dozens of thin branches holding up a canopy of leaves.

Dozens of trees went up like this at once, and the people on the shore definitely noticed. From Adamant’s eyes I watched them retreat from their little village of tents and campfires, waiting to see what would happen next.

But I had already expended my reserve. Silent hours passed, and they began to steel their nerves. A few of them - sharp but not exactly wise - realized that the spiders had yet to spread their webs across this new expansion of the forest. Now was their best chance to poach the golden fruit.

Four of them came across the lake in another cheap vessel, this time a raft fashioned of mangrove limbs. Two men, a woman with a sword on her hip, and a young boy skinny from malnourishment. I didn’t have to guess to know who was going to be sent in first.

The boy leapt from the raft onto the island of roots, balancing unsteadily as they creaked underneath his small weight. Spiders were already prowling through the new woods, looking to expand their territory.

He would have to be quick.

I did nothing to especially tilt the game against him as he scrambled up a tree and plucked the first fruit, tossing it down to his companions.

Rigging things too heavily would discourage more from coming, after all, and every one of those people waiting on the shore, too afraid to come forward and seek their fortunes, every one of them was a meal I was missing out on.

They needed a taste of gold to get their courage up.

Anyway, I didn’t need to do anything to seal the boy’s fate. As he dropped from the trees, the branches picked bare, he found himself faced with a sword. I didn’t need to hear what the men were shouting at him. Go back, get more, you coward, you rat.

I doubted they would ever let him back on. One more to share the haul with? Why would they want that.

He darted along the edges of the forest, leaping between the hills of slender roots beneath each tree. Trying to get away from the spiders slowly closing in.

This time, as he clambered up, he didn’t throw the prizes down to them, but used his shirt as a sling and filled it up, clearly planning on bargaining his way aboard. I watched as his hand reached for a fruit, unaware till the last moment of the jewel-shelled spider clinging to its golden rind.

He spotted it just in time, snatching his hand back. A little too hastily. The boy overbalanced, falling backwards out of the tree, gold spilling into the water as he crashed against the roots below. The three still aboard the ship screamed in frustration as he grabbed as many of the fruit out of the lake as possible. Reelfish were starting to float up from their muddy beds, drawn by the commotion on the surface.

The boy leapt aboard just before they could pull him down.

Again, a sword was aimed at his throat. This time, the boy held the golden fruit out of the water, threatening to drop them.

I watched, hoping without a shred of guilt to see a reelfish tendril snake out of the water and pull him overboard. Instead, the woman lowered her sword, and the boy huddled himself onto the corner of the raft as they slowly paddled back to shore.

I didn't watch any further. Whether the boy survived or not, my role in their drama was done.