Today’s Earth date: September 21, 1991

We can’t find Horcus. The party had a dispute about how much more training we should do in Teagaisg, with Horcus advocating for much much more. Wilmond, our cleric, wants us to rest and recover. I agree with Wilmond. Rathain abstained from voting, telling the rest of us to sort it out.

When the rest of us didn’t agree, Horcus left to train on his own. That was two days ago, and he hasn’t returned to his room since, and no guards have seen him at any of the city gates.

-The Journal of Laszlo the Paladin

***

Wayne leveled up partway through his fourth day of grinding.

Hero: Wayne the Guy

Level: 6

HP: 124

STR: 16

AGI: 13

VIT: 7

LCK: 20

He unlocked a skill upgrade from Railroad Tycoon:

Station Improvement, Cold Storage – Cold storage warehouses store food.

A new HUD addition from Lightspeed:

Crosshairs – The crosshairs in the center of the screen show where your Main Gun’s blast will strike if you fire.

And a new spell from Spellcasting 101:

Urg – Lift a massive weight

His Goods Storage skill now gave him the option of opening “Storage” or “Cold Storage.” The new storage space was the same size as the first, and it was refrigerated, like a walk-in cooler at a restaurant. For this world, that was a one-of-a-kind advantage. No one but nobles had access to any form of refrigeration, and their solutions were expensive, relying on a combination of enchantments and ice shipped down from the mountains.

Wayne transferred a case of wine to Cold Storage as a surprise for Fergus.

The Crosshairs upgrade attached to Fire a Broadside to help his accuracy, and they turned from white to red when an enemy was in the line of fire. He could set them to be persistent, always floating off to his right and left, or he could set them to appear if he thought about “arming” Fire a Broadside before activating it. He liked the persistent option, figuring that would reduce how much he had to think about an emergency cannon blast if he needed it.

Urg was better than Nee, but Wayne wasn’t sure how often he’d get to use it in the field. When he cast Urg, his next movement would happen with eight times his strength, a change he could observe in his status menu. He tried several times, but he couldn’t use Urg to swing a sword or punch any stronger than normal. If the thing he wanted to lift wasn't a heavy inanimate object, Urg didn't contribute.

At 120 strength, he could rip a small tree out of the dirt with a bear hug and a quick jerk upward, like it was no more than a weed. That would be handy for an emergency or a large obstacle, however, so even if he couldn't use it in combat he saw a lot of utility in it.

And it wasn’t shrubbery.

Singing a celebration in his head, Wayne added the two other games from the 15th Page of Power to his Christmas List ability.

The original catalog described Super Monaco GP with this blurb:

Burn up the track on long straightaways or downshift into hairpin curves in the hottest racecar ever built, the Formula 1. It’s a grueling test of speed, road savvy and endurance.

Circling that game unlocked a new skill:

Brake – Slows or stops your racecar.

He didn’t know what that meant for him. Another thing to test.

And for ESWAT it said:

The “Enhanced Special Weapons and Tactics” team has hit the streets. Hoods and thugs lean out of every window. ESWAT is one cop who’s got his work cut out for him.

This game didn’t unlock a new skill or spell:

Ice Combat Suit – State-of-the-art armor.

Ice Combat Suit seemed to be like Power Ring from Crystalis. It provided a one-time stat boost. In this case, his vitality doubled from 7 to 14. According to Fergus, the texts said that vitality affected combat endurance and mana generation. A futuristic combat suit would have been cool, but a stat boost wasn’t a bad consolation prize.

Pleased with his progress, and not yet having the bravery to risk removing the page from the matte to access the backside, he took the following day off. If everything went well, he would come home with yet another Page of Power.

***

The Teagaisg Museum of Wonders and Oddities looked like a tourist trap attraction from Earth–a touch cheesy with dubious credibility. The space itself felt like the stacks of the Royal Library, compact and every inch of real estate put to use. The shelves were stuffed, and the walls were coated.

Presently, Wayne and Fergus were the only visitors. They browsed three shelves of monster teeth, from tiny kobold molars to fangs the length of an arm, allegedly from a red dragon. That shelf was bordered by framed monster scales, patches of skin, and patches of fur. There were so many of those frames that the lime green wall behind them was only visible through small gaps and crevices.

Scanning the room, Wayne saw broken swords, a stuffed dire bear, a few abstract paintings, several skulls and skeletons, crystals ranging in size from pinhead to beer keg, and dozens of other objects whose name or use were completely unknown to him.

A woman walked to the front to greet them. She wore a loose white silk dress that went down to just above her knees and a gaudy necklace of what Wayne would later learn were red pearls. They were the size of malted milk balls and swayed gently as she walked.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Her dark brown hair was pulled back into an assortment of braids. The faint bags under her eyes and the narrow profile of her eyes gave her a sort of always sleepy look, but when she smiled and angled her head just so, her face took on a subtle but gravitational allure. Wayne knew the expression because it was the same one Mrs. Patterson used to get him to cut her grass in the summers. She somehow made him feel like he was the one who should be paying her for the privilege, and he loved it.

This wasn’t Mrs. Patterson. This was Miss Kryss.

Miss Kryss owned the museum. Fergus said she made her wealth with imports and exports, taking her family’s humble two person operation–her mother and her father–and growing it to where she had dozens of employees and warehouses scattered across multiple cities. Because of Kryss, the Swiftwood Trading Company was well known worldwide.

The Museum of Wonders and Oddities was her hobby, her true passion.

“Scholars usually contact me to complain about my exhibits,” she said. “I’ve never had one request to be a guest.”

Fergus smiled and dipped his head. “My associate and I are of a higher caliber.”

“You didn’t see any items that you thought to be fakes?”

“I wouldn’t say that. I’m not complaining about them, though.”

“I assure you that everything in my collection is real,” she said, not angry or offended, simply as if it were an obvious fact. “Come, the page is back here.”

She led Wayne and Fergus to a wall of Chosen Hero memorabilia. There were a few torn book pages with signatures from previous Heroes. She had all manner of art depicting various Heroes of various cycles. Some in pencil, some in ink, others in paint. Most of the likenesses were so well done that it felt like looking at a high school yearbook.

They were all so young.

Off to the side, surrounded by single pages of Earth novels whose names Wayne didn't recognize, was the 39th Page of Power. Wayne’s heart sank when he got a look at the product.

The bottom of the page had no whimsical holiday illustrations like the others. Instead, it had “Home Office” written in big red block letters with “Computer Software” below it in a smaller black font.

The page promoted one piece of software and a promotion where buying it earned you free gift boxes. Nothing in them, just boxes with festive blue and silver stripes.

The description read:

New Quicken 4.0 is the fastest, easiest way to manage home and small business finances. It pays bills, balances your checkbook, keeps you on budget, collects tax information, and more!

And below that in larger letters:

Intuit has a great holiday gift all wrapped up.

Quicken. The accounting software. For a Christmas present. What a magical time the 90s were.

“Do you remember what’s on the other side?” Wayne asked.

“It’s pretty damaged, unfortunately,” Kryss said. “Not much of it is legible.”

Figures that the tax software side of the page would be in near pristine condition. Wayne didn’t have any ideas for what Christmas List could pull from Quicken that he’d actually use. He knew this might happen eventually, coming across a page that was less than exciting, but he was still deflated. Another Sega Genesis page would have been better.

Wayne touched his finger to the frame and activated Resource Values.

E.B. 1990 Christmas Catalog Page (Poor), Average Value of 2,832 gold coins.

Whoa, that was quite the jump from the last Page of Power. Previously, his skill said that a oage in better condition was worth 1,007 gold. That suggested the ability generated a true average, and Wayne’s overpaying for the Blackwell page skewed that average significantly.

“It’s not for sale,” Kryss said.

Fergus turned in surprise. “What makes you think we are interested in purchasing this item?”

“Lord Blackwell never misses a chance to brag about his collection. Half the city heard about the two scholars, one of whom is the Zero Hero, who traded away a pristine set of Chosen Rogue armor for a single piece of paper. The word was likely out before you even left the room.”

“Ah.” Fergus looked at Wayne with empathetic disappointment.

Wayne said it was okay. This page was less interesting to him than the others they had found. He wanted to have it to satisfy his completionist tendencies, but the owner didn’t want to sell and he didn’t feel bad about skipping it, so he could let this slide.

“Are we done already?” Kryss asked. “I thought you’d want to trade, like you did with Blackwell.”

“I don’t think we have anything to offer,” Wayne admitted.

“You certainly do,” she replied, narrowing her eyes. Was she just thinking or was she interested in him? Wayne’s self-esteem wasn’t high enough for him to commit to the latter conclusion.

“What do you mean?”

“Fair to assume two scholars have read the accounts of the last Hero cycle?”

Yes, that was a fair assumption.

“Then you know that their journey through the Breaker Mountains didn’t go well.”

Wayne knew the story. When the Chosen Heroes were partway through the tunnel, there was an earthquake, and the four Heroes were trapped by rubble on both sides. The same force that collapsed parts of the tunnel opened a deep crevasse near their feet. They could see brick and mortar below, so they climbed down, explored a dungeon, and ultimately ended up exiting high in the mountains. They had to hike down through snow to reach the city of Caun.

Kryss hired a team to comb the mountains for that exit. When they couldn’t find it, she brought in a dig team to access the dungeon by clearing the tunnel. Five years later, they reached the crevasse from the story. The pinyons and rope the Heroes used to descend into the gap were still there.

“We learned the hard way that the Heroes didn’t clear the dungeon completely.”

They heard the first trio of explorers dying somewhere deep in the dungeon–their pained echoes finding a way up the crevasse–and no one had been willing to go in since.

“As scholars, you must have contacts for retrieval specialists, right? If you get a team in and out, I’ll give you the page.”

“Are you looking for anything specific?” Fergus asked.

“Anything left behind by the Chosen Heroes, and first pick of anything else you find.”

“Second pick,” Wayne countered.

“Oh my, a scholar with spunk are we? Fine, second pick.”

Fergus said they had other terms: If she knew of where they could find more Pages of Power, they would very much like that information as well.

Wayne raised the concern of their finding nothing of note in the dungeon. Kryss agreed to accept a hand drawn map of the structure in that case. That would be enough for them to be square.

And they had a deal.

***

“She wasn’t what I was expecting,” Fergus said before shoveling pottage in his mouth. A bit of the broth dribbled into the beard.

“I never considered the possibility of a fetch quest.”

Fergus nodded and said, “mmhmm” with his mouth full. “How are we going to do that, exactly?” he asked after he swallowed.

“We hire a few extra swords, and I go in with them.”

“But you’re only level 6. The Heroes were almost all at level 10 when they passed through the tunnel.”

“I’ve been thinking about that,” Wayne said. “Without Power Ring, I’d guess that my strength stat would be 14 at level 10, if the trend of gaining one point per level holds that long. I’m at 16 now, just got a vitality buff, and I can shoot cannonballs out of my arms. At level 6.”

“You are on quite the different path from the Heroes. This is true.”

“Part of me is tempted to try it solo, but the rest of me thinks that part is stupid.”

Fergus laughed. “Always more safety in numbers, which is why I’d like to come along.”

“Fergus…”

“I know the risks, so you don’t need to rehash them. I can carry a whole other bag of supplies, and my medicinal knowledge isn’t too shabby.”

“I don’t know…”

“And I’ll hire a personal bodyguard.”

Wayne asked if there was any talking Fergus out of coming into the dungeon.

“Possibly, but I am prepared to be impressively petty before that happens. To the point that you think less of humanity.”