POV: Casper.

  I had evidently made more than one mistake in my assumptions. To start with, I had assumed that I would be stuck here waiting for a few hours at most. Maybe three.

  After all, Raymond did know what was at stake and he was the one who stood to gain the most out of this situation. Which meat that, out of all of us, he was supposed to be the one who wished to see the end of this situation more than anyone else.

  But I found out later that he had taken his sweet time calling his so-called professionals in.

  The second mistake I made was thinking that these professionals were actually… well. Professionals. In my mind’s eye, the guys coming over would have been part of a PMC or something close to it. People who might not be necessarily the most moral of folks, but who could at least be trusted to know which end of a gun the bullets came out of and to have some trigger discipline.

  The men that came to greet me looked nothing like that.

  Oh they were big. And mean. And the average person would have found them intimidating.

  But they had more in common to the man Raymond had kept in his hideout than with any kind of military personnel.

  Indeed, a great many of them would have looked right at home in front of a fancy nightclub. Where a nice suit would have lent them some air of authority.

  To their credit, most of them did seem to be armed and they did seem very comfortable with the weapons they did have. Unfortunately, those weapons were the recently popular war-hammers and a few larger pistols as sidearms. And their armor was similarly fashioned. Thick, homemade plate in the style of late renaissance armor, with thick clothing beneath the protective shell.

  Honestly, I wasn’t even sure where to start with the disappointment.

  On the one hand, this had been the very thing I had recommended to Raymond and Ryuji and all our other co-conspirators for beginners. It was tough, relatively easy to put together with modern tools and surprisingly light and flexible. Despite how popular media portrayed knights as heavy, clumsy fools who could barely move without a horse. So me being let down wasn’t exactly fair.

  On the other hand… well. I had made it plain that this would be the bare minimum. For beginners. The children back in town had access to synthetic fibers that could take a spray of bullets like it was nothing and those were skin-tight. Which meant you could have even more armor over them.

  Granted, those were all made with Magic and with the auspices of Carlyle Robertson’s great big dragon’s hoard of wealth funding ever step, but the point still stood. Given Raymond’s resources I’d expected some kind of futuristic alloy on display or something.

  I mean, Ryuji had managed it in less than a year, so there was no reason Raymond couldn’t be held to that same standard.

  ‘Though I suspect the younger man had something like that cooking for a long, long time before the threat of monsters became evident.’

  The disappointment in me grew more and more pronounced as the men shooed away the other Delvers who were either coming back up with the bodies of the fish-men or going in with improvised weapons and padded armor. Not only were they not armored properly, but their manners left a lot to be desired.

  Granted, I hadn’t expected much. But this was a disappointment all on its own. At the very least, I had expected the men Raymond picked out to know better than to antagonize the people who may very well be in a position to save their sorry lives later on. Also, I had hoped they’d be smart enough to know the whole point of the operation was to get Cecil out discretely. Something that became harder and harder the more attention these bumbling idiots drew to themselves.

  Case in point, I had had a helmet on this whole time. With the visor down so that my face and features were completely hidden. Even then, I was wearing colored contacts and several layers of my old light armor beneath my own cheap-looking winter coat. All to make my frame seem thicker than it actually was.

  The ensemble looked ridiculous. But that was the whole point. People would not expect someone who looked so oddly off-balance to be level 5. And they would certainly not expect someone like that to be able to pick up tanks and throw them around like children’s toys.

  More importantly, whomever Carlyle had hunting me through whatever cameras they could access in the city would have a much harder time picking me out from the crowd. Even when you accounted for the piglet and the calf his granddaughter had gifted Cecil.

  Stupid as the prospect seemed, I had not been the only one to show up with animals in tow. Though most other people brought along chickens or turkeys or in the worst cases, hamsters, instead of pigs or cattle.

  It would have been a mild risk under normal circumstances. As I figured no one would look twice at an entourage like mine if they spent an hour or two meandering about the waiting area. Making small talk with the other delvers and purchasing food from the stalls at ludicrously inflated prices.

  That was another thing that had surprised me. The damnable prices.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  Oh, the produce handed out by the city was free of course. Merely food aid to help people get through the worst of the crisis. Whether Carlyle or Cecil was behind the ploy, it did not matter. The people were fed and that was that. But the human spirit is hardly content with being on par with their peers under normal circumstances. And so it had come to pass that the flesh of the fish monsters had turned into a sort of delicacy for the people here. Something of a treat to enjoy, where everyone else was having pumpkin or lettuce.

  Which naturally made the price skyrocket.

  Which I found pretty freaking funny, as eating monster was the first sign someone was completely crass and classless back in town.

  ‘I guess circumstances shape the culture.’ I mused internally. Marshalling my will and returning the men’s greetings.

  “Thank you for coming so quickly.” I said. Somehow managing to erase all traces of sarcasm from my voice with herculean effort.

  “Not at all Mr. Door.” One of the men answered sheepishly. “Honestly, it was our bad. We kinda got lost on the way and it took us a lot longer to get here than we would have liked.”

  I arched an eyebrow.

  The man coughed into his own mailed fist and looked abashed.

  “We ran into, some old acquaintances, you could say.”

  ‘Oh perfect.’ I thought with another pang of dread. ‘Not only did our dear posse arrive late to the party, but they also spent some time catching up before coming here. Maybe even drinking with the boys in town before they deigned to show up.’

  Okay, so maybe that was a bit unfair. I couldn’t smell any alcohol on their breaths so it couldn’t have been that bad.

  Regardless, the wait had left me in a foul mood, so I just nodded along as the man spurted out a whole host of excuses and prepared myself to enter the Dungeon proper.

  Thankfully, the darkened sky above our heads meant that very few people were lining up to keep delving, so we managed to enter the forsaken hole with little to no trouble.

  After that, we walked.

  Or rather, they walked in front of me. Putting those hammers to good use on the sunflower monsters we kept coming across. The metal heads cracking the tissues of the plant monsters as if they were snapping twigs in half as we moved.

  “Where did you get those hammers?” I asked curiously.

  “Hmn?” The man who seemed to be the leader turned to face me after their third battle. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that they’re very well made.” I told them truthfully enough. “The balance looks to be just right and the heads aren’t as large or imposing as some of the other homemade hammers I’ve seen around the streets.”

  Which made sense. Movies and video games had given a lot of otherwise clever people some very weird ideas about what constituted a good hammer. What with heavy heads often being the size of watermelons or filled with spikes like the kind of hammers butchers used to process and grind down meat.

  In truth, you were better off with a steel head that was light and compact, so the small surface area would carry the force of the whole blow in a concentrated zone. It still needed to be strong enough to stand there and not fly off or bend at an awkward angle, but that point was moot if the whole weapon was made of good steel or other, better materials.

  More importantly, they were a better choice than swords. As most of the city had no doubt realized by now. A sword was often a secondary weapon and, while lethal, would lose sharpness quickly through repeated engagements. Not to mention how useless they were in tight, confined spaces where you couldn’t swing.

  That was why the children were often given spears back in town. And why these hammers were topped off with spears as well. Spikes sitting prettily at a right angle to the heads.

  If the corridors got too cramped, then it was stabbing time and no one needed to contemplate wrestling one or two monsters to the ground.

  “Oh we got these at a machine shop.” The leader said casually.

  “What’s the name of the machine shop?” I insisted.

  Mostly because Raymond had mentioned starting his own chain of weapon stores later on and he was exactly the kind of mouth breathing moron who would put one of his drooling cousins in charge, instead of expanding on the good process he already had and promoting whomever was in charge.

  I didn’t have too much influence over him at the moment, but hopefully he’d at least see reason when it came to this.

  The leader went silent, only for a moment, but still…

  He seemed to be processing the question too much. As if it was some kind of big secret.

  I started to get a feeling then. The kind I always got before Carlyle burst into my house and asked me to kill someone for him.

  A feeling that something wasn’t right.

  “Smithee’s.” The man answered finally.

  “Smithee’s.” I echoed him.

  “Yes. We got these from Smithee’s machine shop. He’s very famous you know.”

  I went quiet. Now looking at their armor more closely and starting to see an odd resemblance I couldn’t quite place.

  It was a small feeling at the back of my mind, but I couldn’t help it. The closer I looked, the more familiar the designs felt. But where had I seen them before?

  ‘Back in town? No. It’s still too crude for something people would wear back in town.’ I decided. ‘So where?’

  The piglet and the calf started squirming then and they turned and tried to run. Their little legs pushing feebly against the ropes binding their necks.

  I turned and pulled on their leashes. Bringing them closer to me while another of the men coughed into his hand.

  “Sir? Maybe I should take care of the animals from now on?”

  “No.” I answered. “They’re important for the person we’re here for. They need to stay safe.”

  “I know sir, but we need to stay safe as well.” The man urged me. “And you looked so out of sorts just a moment ago. I’m starting to get worried the animals are distracting you.”

  I scoffed.

  “I assure you, I’ve been in way more fights than you young man. I will not be distracted by a pig and a small baby cow. Now, you will turn around and keep fighting. Trust me. You need all the help you can get.”

  “Well, yeah sir. But maybe you should take point just in case.” Another man stepped forward.

  “I mean, what if we get overwhelmed in a fight and something happens to the animals?”

  That statement….

  I stopped and tried to reason it out. Trying to find what about it made me so uncomfortable.

  It was weird. Like having a needle poking at the back of my mind. Like there was something obvious that I wasn’t seeing.

  But no matter how hard I tried to focus, the statement kept making some kind of sense. These men had supposedly been told I was some prodigy of Magic by Raymond. It would only make sense for them to see me in action. Whether because they were curious or because Raymond had ordered them to report on what I could do with my own Magic.

  I made some kind of sense. It really did.

  So, why was I so unsettled?

  “Anyone can take care of a few animals.” The man insisted. “You’re the only one who can fight off a horde of monsters if they come in all at once.”

  That feeling lessened somewhat.

  “Yes.” I said at last. Forcing the gut feeling down. “Yes, I guess you’re right.”

  I offered him the leashes and the man took them with a nod. Moving back to pet the piglet and the calf again. Seeming to relish the opportunity to caress them and to soothe them.

  ‘I guess he just likes animals.’ I thought to myself. That ill feeling lessening somewhat. ‘I guess I can understand that. Lots of people like animals.’

  “All right.” The leader said once more. “We’ve wasted enough time. Let’s move out.”