Just as he brought the voicecast ring to his lips about to call Cedez, the sound of applause echoed through the air from overhead, drawing Dave's attention. There, perched on a nearby ledge, was Cedez. The vixen was as naked as everyone in the baths, except for a collar on her neck with a shimmering, pyramidal blue gem. She was grinning at him as she clapped her hands in delight.

Dave sputtered.

"An excellent performance, Sir Dave!" she called out, her eyes sparkling with amusement.

"Thanks," Dave grunted, feeling a mixture of embarrassment and exhaustion.

"Guess what?" she said, leaning closer.

Dave made a noncommittal noise, prompting her to continue.

"I sold another forty-two sets of Bakelite for you," the dark vixen revealed, her grin widening.

"Eh?!" Dave blinked.

"Everyone at the café loved it when that chandelier nearly decapitated your adorable head off!" Cedez declared. "What a show! Aren't you glad that I kept the remaining armor-sale contracts on me? You're welcome!"

As Dave processed this unexpected turn of events, he couldn't help but feel a strange sense of gratitude for the near-death experience that had not only brought him closer to discovering the malevolent spirit but had also inadvertently boosted his Bakelite business.

"Thanks," he finally uttered.

"You're going to be a star," Cedez whispered as she slid even closer, her eyes shining with confidence. "A real hero that Shandria needs!"

"I feel like an apple that's been stepped on multiple times," Dave commented, wincing at the lingering aches all over his body.

"I bet!" Cedez laughed. "I've never seen someone take that many bricks to the head with such dedication!"

Dave mentally tabulated his armor sales and sighed. "That damn chandelier is going to ruin my business though."

"It will not," Cedez shook her head, her expression turning serious. "Everyone at the café was a witness. If that old man tries to make you pay for it, people will riot and burn the estate he’s in charge of to the ground. Many were already in the know that that quest was quite problematic, but now there's no way it's staying on the first level. That's definitely a job for a high-level mage team! You didn't use a spell to bring the chandelier down, it was clearly dropped on you by something unseen and exceptionally dangerous."

"Erm, are they going to take my quest away?" Dave gulped.

"Nah," Cedez shook her dark mane, swishing her black tail. "You didn't die, so the ghost-fighting quest is yours to keep. But lots of people will watch you now, I suspect. I suggest you invest in a seer-blocking runestone if you want to have some privacy. I turned the show off before I came here. Your seer’s orb is safe in the cafe under Murdoc's care.”

"Noted," Dave said, blushing even more.

"I took it upon myself to buy you one with your money," Cedez said. She produced a ring adorned with intricate runes out of thin air. “Here you go.”

The battered adventurer grabbed the ring and clipped it to his obsidian bracelet.

"’Permit observation’ command makes you visible to the seers," Cedez explained as the rune on her own wrist turned green. "’Deny observation’ provides privacy. Got it?"

Dave nodded, grateful for the valuable tool and her support. As he looked at Cedez, he couldn't help but admire her figure and the effortless way she managed to support him behind the scenes. Her resourcefulness and resilience were as impressive as her looks, and Dave found himself feeling a newfound sense of camaraderie and appreciation for the sneaky vixen.

"Deny observation," he said and the rune flashed with a dim red glow, pulling mana from his soul.

"How did you..." Dave began to ask as he glanced up at Cedez once more.

"I bought myself a bath pass with the silver you gave me, duh," she replied, grinning broadly and revealing her sharp chompers as she sank gracefully into the water. "Someone promised me one, but did not deliver."

"Ah, right," Dave nodded.

"You got a minute, Diani?" Cedez suddenly turned her attention to the emerald-eyed mermaid.

Dave watched as Cedez swam over to the mermaid. Her voice was honeyed and persuasive, each syllable an expertly spun thread designed to draw the unsuspecting listener deeper into her narrative without room for escape. In her tale, she promised the world, a realm where dreams became reality and the impossible was within reach - and at the center of it all stood Dave, the fantastic armor-inventing hero who would make it all come true.

As Cedez spoke, the mermaid's eyes grew wide with wonder. Dave saw how the enchanting narrative had taken on a life of its own, somehow making him into something that he was definitely not.

"So, um," Diani ventured, swimming closer to Dave. "I was told that you found a lake in the mountains and you require the aid of a talented mermaid to explore it?"

Dave nodded, amuzed at how quickly Cedez had managed to recruit the mermaid to their cause.

"Count me in," Diani declared, her emerald eyes shining with excitement. "Lets exchange voicecast contacts."

"You're way too good at this," Dave said, looking over at a very smug-looking dark vixen.

The foxgirl flashed her silver-blue eyes at him. "Duh. I'm the best. You may bow to your Sovereign now."

"Yes, my queen," Dave responded, making a small, playful bow in the water, feeling both very silly and grateful.

. . .

Beneath the brooding, ashen sky, Dave approached the aged and imposing gate of the old, semi-abandoned Estate. The once-proud iron bars, now rusted and overgrown, creaked in the wind like the whispers of an old friend welcoming him home.

Home. The mostly decayed memories of the late Archmage Alaster clung to this place like the tendrils of ivy that crept along its ancient walls. The old, mad mage once knew every nook and cranny of the Rimzadria Estate by heart, his love for it rivaled only by the fiery passion with which he despised the world beyond its boundaries.

Rimzadria was the old mage’s bastion against a world that had spurned him, a sanctuary where he could immerse himself in the arcane arts, undisturbed by the judgmental eyes of those who could never understand his passions.

Cedez stood at Dave's side, garbed in an elegant black robe adorned with silver clips, her silver-gray ears twitching and her gaze sharp as she assessed their surroundings.

"You've brought a foxkin friend to help you sniff the ghost this time?" the silver-haired caretaker asked. The man's eyes, the color of the rapidly darkening, stormy sky above, flickered with doubt. "The poltergeist cannot be sniffed out, innate noses of the highest calibre have already attempted to locate it and failed!"

Dave, whose ginger hair seemed to dance like flames against the gloomy backdrop with the wind, smiled faintly. "She's not my nose, she's my secretary," he said, his voice steady and confident, the corners of his mouth curving in a wry grin.

"Oh?" The old man's gray moustache bristled with curiosity. "Why'd you bring a secretary to find a ghost?"

"Did you happen to calculate how much I owe you?" Dave asked, ignoring the man's inquiry.

"Uhhhh, yes," the caretaker said, fumbling for words. "One thousand three hundred and fifty-six silver. The chandelier was an exceptional masterpiece, you see and the floor beneath it was mahogany..."

"Mmmm... No," Dave gently interrupted, shaking his head with a soft smile. "I'm not paying for the chandelier or the floor."

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"The contract you signed clearly states..." The old man began, his voice irate as he asserted his position.

"Call the owner," Dave ordered, his voice now bearing the weight of authority. "I wish to speak with him about a very important matter."

The caretaker squinted at Dave, his stormy eyes narrowing as if trying to discern the true intentions hidden behind the adventurer’s words.

"I'm afraid Lord Nelvash is not readily available for..." The caretaker's voice trailed off, like the last whispers of a dying wind, as he tried to maintain the facade of his lord's unavailability.

"Tell your lord that I found a dungeon core in his estate," Dave interjected, his smile broadening as he let the revelation hang in the air like a sword of Damocles.

"Is this some kind of a trick?" The caretaker took a tentative step forward, disbelief etched upon his features. “Are you attempting to deceive me to avoid paying the damages you’ve caused?”

Dave remained silent, his gaze unwavering and expression inscrutable.

It was Cedez who spoke next, her voice a melodic purr. "My client, Sir Dave, has a particularly rare talent that helps him sniff out dungeon cores," she smiled, her teeth glinting like ivory against her dark fur. "Unless you want this place seized by the Guild, you will summon your master, pronto. Z̸h̷s̴i̵c̷n̶a̴s̸h̷ v̵j̸z̴h̴e̸n̴i̶y̶a̷!"

The last two words, uttered by the foxgirl with an air of finality, seemed to reverberate throughout the ancient grounds, causing the caretaker to pale as if a sudden gale of glacial wind had swept through his very soul.

With trembling hands, he raised a thick, metal ring to his lips. "Voicecast Lord Nelvash," he uttered, the words barely escaping him as they were swallowed by the oppressive atmosphere that now enveloped him.

As the message was sent, the world around them seemed to hold its breath. The leaves of the trees lining the estate fluttered in hushed tones. Dave's thoughts raced, his heart pounding like a drum within his chest. He had never encountered a word that the black, hexagonal-textured bracelet failed to translate.

After a few minutes of frantic whispering from the man, the air next to the caretaker seemed to shudder and shimmer, as if the very fabric of reality was being gently tugged and teased, before unfolding into a perfectly circular, dark portal.

The old man unlocked the metal gate with a tap of his bracelet.

"Follow me," he uttered, his eyes betraying growing unease that tugged at the fringes of his stoic facade.

Dave and Cedez stepped through the portal after the caretaker, the sensation of passing through an unseen veil enveloping them, before emerging into a rather posh library. The air was heavy with the scent of leather. Towering shelves lined the walls, filled the weight of countless tomes, while a sumptuous, intricately woven tapestry depicted the triumphs and losses of a forgotten age.

An approximately forty-year-old man sat behind a fancy wood table, the polished surface reflecting the soft light of a crystal candelabra. His dark blue eyes, sharp and discerning, studied the unlikely duo of adventurer and foxgirl. An antlered female witch with oddly flickering, clear eyes stood at the man's side, presumably his personal portal mage or a bodyguard.

"Lord Nelvash, I presume," Dave inquired, his words measured and deliberate.

The man nodded, his gaze never leaving the pair of his unexpected visitors, as if trying to discern the nature of the enigma that had trespassed upon his world.

"This is the adventurer I mentioned," the caretaker sighed, the weariness in his voice betraying the weight of the sudden responsibility now thrust upon him.

"So," the owner of the manor said, his tone spiced with a smallest pitch of curiosity, "you claim that my uncle's old estate is a dungeon? Do you have any evidence of this?"

"It is a dungeon," Dave nodded, the certainty in his voice as unyielding as magisteel. "The dungeon core lies hidden in a secret room between two floors. It exerts its influence throughout the entire building via the wards. Your uncle's crushed body is its heart and his last mad thoughts are what drives the ward to throw things at people."

The Lord glanced at his wrist, where a truth hex, reminiscent of the one used at the gate of Shandria, flickered like a small green flame.

"Damnation," he sighed deeply with resignation.

He looked back at Dave, searching for a glimmer of something within the adventurer's steady gaze. "Are you able to destroy it?"

"Not easily," Dave shook his head, his ginger hair catching the light like flickering embers. "Lord Rim was a very strong gravity Archmage, and the dungeon core is three decades old now. It will turn me into a smear on the wall before I can get anywhere close to it. I have to approach this problem slowly and meticulously."

The Lord's face twitched, a subtle dance of frustration playing out upon his features.

"The good news is that the ward key is right next to the core," Dave continued, his voice reassuring. "The problem is that getting it is going to be a lot more expensive than a few hundred silver."

"How much is this going to cost me?" Nelvash asked, squinting at Dave as if he were a pesky bug on the lustrous window of his privileged existence. "This bloody inheritance has been nothing but losses for my own Estate for three decades!"

"It will cost you nothing at all," Dave said.

"What?" Lord Nelvash asked.

"I require a place for my armor-manufacturing business," Dave explained. "You will lease the entire Rimzadria Estate to me for the cost of a single silver per month."

"A silver?! Are you out of your Gods' damned mind?!" The Lord barked.

"I ask for nothing unreasonable," Dave said calmly. "I need a warehouse to manufacture and store armor, and you have an estate that lies dormant and in ruin, its potential untapped. It will take me and my associates months to drain the dungeon core's energy, and even longer to break through the magisteel shell and multiple absolute wards surrounding the crystallized corpse of your uncle."

Lord Nelvash gritted his teeth. The shadows cast by the flickering candelabra on the walls of the library seemed to dance in anticipation.

"I have my own people," he said, his voice barely restrained. "Three hundred silver and you tell me where the core is right now!"

"You won't be able to stop the core from turning your people into blood puddles," Dave stated.

"And you think that you're somehow more capable than my best men?" Nelvash scoffed.

"What's the current value of the Rimzadria Estate?" Dave asked idly.

"Zero," Cedez chimed in with her melodious voice. "As it is infested by a dungeon core and under threat of being seized by the Adventurers Guild. Now, if my client and I were permitted to quietly remove the core under the guise of a legitimate armor manufacturing business, then you, my Lord, could sell your late uncle's land for approximately three hundred thousand silver according to the latest market evaluation."

"You expect me to sully the very essence of a high Lord's estate? To turn a bastion of aristocratic splendor into a veritable warehouse armory for the commoners, to traipse through?" Lord Nelvash hissed with indignant rage and disbelief. "Are you two completely mad?!"

His pale hand slid gracefully into the depths of his opulent desk, seeking the solace of an unseen something.

"I would not attempt that if I were you," Cedez commented, her voice a smooth blend of authority and amusement. "Without my client, you'll never locate the core, and I have friends in places higher than you, t̷e̸m̴p̵l̴i̴c̷a̶i̷u̶z̷h̷ ̴l̷i̵s̴h̴n̸o̷x̶h̷s̸h̸k̷a̷! Put your hands where I can see them!"

Lord Nelvash, the weight of his situation pressing down upon him like a mountain's shadow, pulled his hands into the open with a sigh, an air of resignation settling upon him.

Dave squinted at Cedez, his ginger eyebrows furrowing in confusion as he pondered the untranslatable words she wielded with such precision. What did they mean, and where were they from? The mysteries of his enigmatic companion seemed to deepen with every passing moment, and Dave found himself drawn to the allure of the unknown that surrounded the foxgirl.

"Now," Cedez smiled softly. "Let us speak like equals, for I am certain that you desire a simple resolution to removing the core that threatens to devalue your rightful land to nothing."

Lord Nelvash's bushy eyebrows, furrowed into a frown. His steely gaze struck the duo before him.

"By law of her Divine Shadow, a noble is able to do whatever they desire with the land they lease, short of making a dungeon," Cedez added.

"And which of you is a Lord?!" Lord Nelvash hissed.

"Can you not see that Sir Dave is a most noble hero, summoned from distant lands by a God-Emperor?" Cedez declared.

"Indeed," Dave added, his voice containing an undercurrent of whimsy that hinted at the true nature of his rebirth. "My summoning was a truly monumental event that consumed a mind-boggling amount of magic! You should be glad that I am interested in helping you out to refine my skills, for I managed thousands of creatures, estates, and peasants back on my home world!"

Dave thought back of numerous diverse, whimsical creatures and characters he had created with his large language model AI system for an open world game he was working on while Lari was still alive.

"Truly?" Lord Nelvash's skepticism wavered, and he glanced surreptitiously at his bracelet. The hex glowed a verdant green, confirming the honesty that lay within Dave's technically true words.

"Indeed," Dave affirmed, his tone imbued with a quiet confidence that defied any lingering doubt. "I am no peasant!"

"Do you really think," Cedez inquired, her voice a sinuous thread weaving through the thickening atmosphere, "that a skill required to spot a dungeon core, one that has eluded the keenest eyes of your best men and adventurers for nigh on three decades, would be wielded by anyone other than a great hero?" The question hung in the air, laden with the undeniable logic.

Cedez continued, her words smooth, "The lease of your uncle's estate by a noble hero such as Sir Dave would only serve to increase its value, not diminish it in the slightest!"

Her words cast a veil of calm over the tension that had once held the room in its vice-like grip. The atmosphere shifted, as if the very air itself had been coaxed into submission by the daring duo.

"Fine," Lord Nelvash conceded, his earlier bravado deflating. "Three months. If you are not done destroying the core by then, you will tell me where it is so that I can hire others to do it for me."

"Pleasure doing business with you, Lord Nelvash," Dave nodded, his face a serene mask that belied the simmering excitement within. "My secretary will draft a lease contract for us. I’ll stay in the caretaker’s lodge while the main house is fully under the control of the dungeon core."

“What?” The caretaker, who had been quietly standing off to the side like a forgotten statue, suddenly sputtered, his eyes widening in disbelief at the unexpected banishment from his place of residence.

Cedez, ever the picture of efficiency, produced another magic-reinforced contract from her unseen storage space. With a flourish reminiscent of a master magician, she placed the contract onto the fanciful desk, the parchment unfurling like a delicate flower, eagerly awaiting the signatures that would hopefully change Dave’s fortunes for the better.