“We have a few hours. Want to slaughter some Moon Wurms together? You can split the spikes if I can just take the bodies.” Ros wheedled.

“Take a moon Wurm body?” Franklin laughed. “This I have to see. People have been showing off their Moon Wurm spikes all day. I wanted to wait until I could talk you into going with me. Something tells me you are the master Wurm slayer.”

She smiled fondly. If this world were an experience for kills game she’d have the highest experience based level in the world, just off her solo Wurm hunt.

“Let’s go. We don’t need heavy armor. This is my Wurm killer.” She produced her trusty pipe section and a leaf knife. “The blade fits perfectly in the-“

“A pipe? A common pipe from the hallways?” Martin protested.

“And a two coin knife.” She grinned. “Let’s go. We may need to stand in line.”

There was no line because the body of a Wurm was blocking the grate. Ros jumped down, stored the body, jumped back up and started banging away, knives ready. The men stood back while she killed the first one, stored the corpse whole and handed the spike to Franklin.

Franklin killed the next one himself, he borrowed a few of Ros’ knives and plunged them in wearing her rubber gloves and not using the spear.

“That’s it?” Franklin shook his head. “All that grief and there’s a cheat kill.”

Ros jumped down, giggling, to grab the spike and store the body. Brandon and Martin both took two turns.

“I’m done, boys. With six bodies my spatial necklace is full. I’ll see you at dinner.” She kissed Brandon. She walked out of sight before she Blinked away.

She Blinked two more times and pressed the button on the Hall Monitor’s pager device.

“There you are. Do you have any Wurm bodies for me?”

“A few. One is actually someone else’s kill, I didn’t bother to see if they did any butchering. Tail spikes removed for other people’s quests, I’m not on that quest yet.”

“But I can see you have been busy. If the Mine Steward won’t give you anything for the legendary raait bring it back to me. I’ll give you a fair price, around a million coins, plus anything I’d usually give you like a spatial object. Let me see what you have.”

“Oh. I meant to ask.” Ros said as she placed the Wurms in the trade. “If I mine something outside may I bring it to you for refinement? Same terms as before?”

“I have had numerous people bringing me refining tasks. I’m making 25% off each of them and that’s your influence. I propose a trade. I get the organic parts, I return all the loot, refined, foregoing my 11%, which is actually less important to me now that I have all that other trade.”

“Im happy with that.”

“Good. I’m cheating you terribly. The bodies are more valuable to me than the metals and gems. Let’s trade.” The window opened again and Ros saw the mountain of refined raw materials. She smiled sheepishly.

There were also three items for sale

Seer’s Robes: 7,525,000

Mysterious potion: 100

Portable Forge Pocket Room: 156,000,000

“A forge in a pocket room? Am I a smith?”

“Weren’t you one?”

“Not a very good one.”

“Ah. There’s a RuneWright table in there.”

“Good point. I’m neglecting my rune practice. I need to settle in and write myself a real schedule. Living without a schedule I get a lot less done.”

“I shudder at the magnitude of your potential.”

Ros laughed like it might have been a joke. “Oh. I had a question. Are you the same Hall Monitor Quest Giver in all ten thousand station buildings?”

“Oh no, there are countless versions of us, but I’m your Hall Monitor. No matter which station, or even in the city, if you call using my button it will be me. Best thing to ever happen to me. I’m even getting prestige from my compatriots for negotiating the refining deal, and notoriety from the mine stewards of course. Since we’re essentially circumventing their intended purposes.”

“Hmm. Yes. The potion is very cheap.” She gestured at the 100 coin mystery potion.

“My supervisor got ticked that you got a physique upgrade from the last one and while she cannot eliminate them, she can limit them, for a time. They will increase in value by a power of ten each time you buy them until a maximum of one million, when they will reset to 100, unless your patron catches on. He could countermand the orders of a low level bureaucrat.”

“Hmm. Fascinating. I’m planning to keep some stuff. What would you keep if you had a choice? Up to the value of the three items?” She moved them. “What has the most value to you?”

The droid whirred and beeped softly. Then he moved exactly the same value from her side to his. Mostly crystals. All the low quality crystals, one of the very best, three in the middle grades. He also claimed a sword and a pair of grieves from the loot list. Ros read the descriptions of the items before she accepted the trade. The spatial objects appeared in a brown cloth bag in her hands. She put the loot into her belt and pulled out the potion.

Mysterious potion- unknown effects. 20% chance negative effects for potion failure. 25% chance nothing happens. 20% chance small effect, 25% chance medium effect, 9% chance large effect, 1% chance legendary effect. Luck stat plays major factor in success.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

“What are the likely negative effects?”

“Permanent loss of one stat point in a random main stat.”

“Permanent or I can earn it back in a normal way?”

“You can earn it back, of course.”

She smirked and took the potion.

Mysterious potion ingested: Legendary effect activated- Weather Sense Ability (F) Understand your meteorological environment and/or life support quality. Fusible to Heads Up Display or Weather Control(D)

Ros smiled and fused the ability to her HUD that would be very useful in later realms. It could also help her if her equipment failed.

“So, what’s the chance, with my luck stat, that I would actually get a negative effect?”

“There is about a one percent chance, with your current luck, for you to get any grade other than legendary.”

“I see.”

“Be sure to read over your new equippable traits and abilities, each spatial object has something.”

“Of course. I should probably equip more low level abilities anyway.”

“Or something.” The droid did not have a low level ability in mind.

“Do you mind if I open my pocket room while you’re here? I forgot something.”

“Of course.”

She put the bag of new spatial objects in the barracks room and grabbed the miner’s bag. She closed the room and put it away.

“I went mining earlier. I need two shares of this; anything indivisible or unique in a separate share to be split by us. Standard refining fee?”

“I’m not charging you for this. It’s a simple question of organizing the chaos and I have an instant algorithm for that.”

She put the bag in the trade screen he offered and almost immediately he returned it with three brown bags inside, one with a red string, two with brown strings.

“As always, a pleasure to serve you, Seer.”

“I’m rather fond of you myself, Hall Monitor.”

“T3-HM99.”

“Thank you. I’ll see you soon, T3-HM99.”

The instance faded. Ros rolled up the mining bag into a pocket sized package and put it in her pants pocket.

She walked through the yellow deck to a set of stairs and down to red. She kept to the halls where there were no monsters regularly patrolling and made her way through the sections on the inside to the mining center end of the chasm. She equipped her environment suit from her necklace with the helmet open, just like she had left it. She moved her necklace to the port and crossed the short distance to the office.

“Welcome back, lieutenant, how was your mine tour?”

“Not bad. I’m going to have to check out some vehicles in the not too distant future. Maybe as early as tomorrow. How does the motor pool here look?”

“Everything is in good repair, we have 50 surface rovers, ten armored personnel carriers and eight flitters.”

“Eight? A flight is twelve.”

“Unfortunately we had a few losses about two years ago. The wreckage could still be out there somewhere. Or the intact flitters where the pilots ran into too much trouble mining.”

“Understood. I have some bounties to turn in.”

“Excellent.” The mining steward opened a trade.

“Can I get anything for this?” She put the legendary in the trade. “I didn’t see any bounty listed.”

“Oh my. How far did you go for that?”

“Not more than twenty minutes casual stroll.”

“So close. I was afraid of this. I cannot reimburse you for it directly, that would mean the company would have to admit such a creature existed.” The machine sounded bitter. “However, I could trade it under the table. The meat is a rare delicacy in some circles.”

Ros nodded. Humans could not ingest raait family monsters, the meat was toxic.

“Unfortunately, all I can offer is off the books equipment, discontinued mostly, Or company scrip like we issue for portions of what we collect from the miners.”

“What sort of equipment?”

“Oh, we don’t issue guard suits anymore or explosive ordinance this is what I had in mind for the value of the carcass.”

Guard suit, reconditioned: 250,000 scrip

SE-23 shotgun: 95,000 scrip

10,000 rounds buckshot: 10,000 scrip

2,000 rounds buck and ball: 4,000 scrip

Mobile ration system: 1,200,000 scrip

Pocket everlasting spring canteen: 50,000 scrip

“Or 1,000,000 in plain scrip, which I would have to account for, which explains the value difference.”

“I’ll go with the trade.”

“Excellent. Anything else? A legendary doesn’t swarm alone.”

“Yes.” She turned in all the squids for the potion, even though she was over in number. Eight diaphanous raaits for the first repeatable quest and one greater raait for the third potion.

She kept the rest for the next round.

“You seem like a capable warrior. I’ve lost contact with the administration office, would you mind going upstairs and seeing if they need any help? The lift is over there in the posh lobby.”

“Of course. I’ll see what I can do to take care of it. I’ll probably start tomorrow. I’ve had a long day already.”

“Yes. And I don’t recommend entering the administration section alone, either. Where is that nice Sergeant you had earlier.”

“He had a meeting to attend. He’ll go upstairs with me, or I’ll find someone else.” Ros left the office.

She stored her suit and since there had been a lot more people out killing monsters than monsters to kill in the atrium, she strolled along, casually headed home. Home to H, not to her house. She nodded to the groups she passed, apparently unarmed. Definitely unarmored. She occasionally followed a brief flurry of butterflies, visible only to her, to avoid skirmishes.

“I know you.”

She looked at the person who spoke. Mac from the Ibsen Group.

“Pretty girl, first day, disappeared before dinner. Yeah, you had that sketchbook. What happened? Why did you run?”

“That depends. Are you still following Harry Ibsen?”

“Eh. I wasn’t so much following as not leaving quick enough. He got real mad when people started reading the message boards and running off to do the quests without even thanking him for the welcome. I think he had some kind of delusions of dictatorship, I know he’s mad that none of the girls think he’s hot.”

“Basically, if someone starts waving guns in my face and bossing me around I look for the nearest exit or break through a wall if I have to go get away. I didn’t like the atmosphere in B. Do you have a hunting team?”

“Stick to myself mostly. Starting to think about some of the quests, now that they’re spelled out so clearly. I was enjoying just working out all day and killing a few knock dogs to afford dinner.”

“I’m headed to dinner with some friends. There was a problem with some third wavers in G who jacked some Newbies for no good reason and now in H they’re talking about organizing to get all the newbies up to speed to the point they’re not an obvious danger to themselves, self sufficient and all. Want to come hear the pitch?”

He nodded slowly. “Although that’s nearly exactly what Harry was proposing before the fourth wave hit. If it seems like a reasonable group with reasonable leadership I’m in.”

“I don’t think they’re planning to run it like a group. I think it’s more like a thing to do in the morning before you go off with your usual buddies and hunt seriously. Martin says that the more people on the same quest stage the more monsters spawn, so taking the newbies is a farming opportunity for the experienced people.”

“Oh. Good point. Yeah. I’ll come with.”

He followed her into the doorway under the H. “So why here with the pirates?”

She smiled. “Privateers. I went looking around for a group that wasn’t treating the fourth wave like children. Let me show you why I stayed.” She hit the top button on the main lobby lift, which was just inside the building’s front doors, set back a bit in the palatial lobby.

They stopped a few times for people getting on and off the lift. They got off at the top and Ros pointed at the signs still plastered to the dome.

“Don’t be a dick?” Mac laughed. “Do you know what the welcome speech was like? Are they charging people a debt for food, shelter and protection?”

“I’m pretty sure that’s the only welcome speech, but you’re welcome to ask around. The third wave seems to have moved down to 19 and left the green zone to the newbies. The local first citizen, Franklin, lives on 29 in the casino owner’s suite.”

“Harry says the fridge in the owner’s suite was stocked when he arrived. Huh. Where are they giving the pitch?”

“Nineteenth floor, dinner time.” She looked at the clock. “If we go down now you can look around, judge the mood…”

“Yeah. Sure. And get some food.” They went back down.

“I’m going to let you talk to people on your own. I’m still just a newbie, who happens to have wandered down here and made some friends.”

They parted at the lift.