Max stole some of Bisrat’s food while his own was being prepared. It was rice and bread with lamb sauces. Or a monster that tasted lamb-like. The spices were strong but good. Max was glad he ordered the same thing.

  “You mentioned I was the last one awake. Where is everyone else?” Max asked.

  “James, Lily, and Yang left to sign up for the Silver Eagle guild. Gus ate and went back to bed. He said he needed to rest up for the bar crawl with his new friends. He does want to talk to you about staying in the party though.”

  Max took a bite. It hurt slightly that James had left without talking to him, but separating was his idea so he couldn’t complain. “Thanks for the info. You mentioned you have plans?”

  “No, I have options you can choose from. I’m not going to lead you down a slick path. This road has branches and you must be the one to walk them.”

  That was an interesting way to put it, but he knew what she meant. He needed to decide what he wanted to do next. If he just went with her suggestion, he wouldn’t be motivated to follow through. “Alright, lay it on me.”

  “After you take a few days off, I think selling your bespelled tools would be the easiest start. We’ll have to see what the local armories think, but I bet I could sell them for decent income. Even if they only want your drill arrows, we could sell enough to live on.

  “The next option would be to use your tools for their intended purpose. I’ve heard rumors of a construction boom and you could build the housing they will need. I don’t have construction experience myself, but I know a few people that do.

  “Or if you want a more laid back job, the towns are always hiring guards. It doesn’t pay well, but it is rarely exciting on the first layer. Just know that we would part ways if you chose that option.

  “The most lucrative option is dungeon climbing with me as your trap and artifact expert. The first layer’s economy is mostly built around selling dungeon artifacts to the other layers. There are two problems with that idea though. You need more fighters, and better armor.”

  “Armor at all, really. I can’t believe I didn’t die already.”

  “Indeed. I said you were lucky. But let’s not rely on that luck and get you better armor, preferably Igra made. New Pants has some fantastic weavers. The town has a solution for finding party members as well. There is a bar in town, part of a chain actually, called LFG.”

  “Seriously? Looking for Group?”

  “Oh, you’ve heard of them? Good. We can spend a night or two auditioning party members and do a nearby run to see if we fight well together.”

  “I hadn’t heard of them, actually. It’s just that LFG is an Earth internet thing from online games.

  “I understood most of that. Anyway, what’s your choice?”

  Max shook his head, “There is one choice you haven’t mentioned. I could travel around looking for my brother. If I find him, that’ll change my calculations.”

  “If your brother is anything like yourself, I would be happy to have him join the party. But that doesn’t change your choices much. Finding your brother will cost money. Whether you want to travel yourself or hire someone else to search for you, you will need to earn a stable base of income before you get going.”

  Max nodded along. “That makes sense. I’ve been thinking that he’s probably on the second layer anyway. How long until we can move up the the second layer?”

  “It depends on your body. The second layer has more ambient mana than here and it’s only safe for you once your body has adjusted to it. The higher level you are and the more mana rich foods you eat, the faster that adjustment will come. I would guess somewhere between two weeks and a month before it’s safe to move up to the second layer.”

  “Alright, since we’ll be here for the next month anyway, I need to make up my mind about what to do next.” Max said as his lunch arrived. He moved some food over to Bisrat’s plate to make up for what he stole.

  His first instinct was to head straight to LFG and recruit a team to go dungeon climbing. That would be reckless without proper preparation though. He found himself tempted anyway. He had spent ages preparing to hop through that portal, now he had the chance to do what he had been dreaming of for years.

  Being a guard or a construction worker held no appeal whatsoever. He wouldn’t mind spending a few weeks selling tools while he perfected his use of Citadel cards. He hadn’t messed with the design of the circular saw much and he felt like there were some fun possibilities there.

  Max said, “I want to jump right into dungeon climbing, but that’s a bad idea. Let’s sell my tools for a few weeks. I want to be able to properly outfit our new party. You can sell my orbs and extra cards while you are at it. You mentioned I need to find the perfect card to complete my first merge, so let’s keep a look out for that.

  “I also think it would be a good idea to visit LFG now. That way I get an idea of who is available and we can take our time over the weeks to find quality candidates.”

  Bisrat perked up. “I love this plan. LFG is only busy around dinner time and into the night. Why don’t you relax for now and we’ll meet up here in about four hours. In the meantime, do you have any samples of your tools that I can use? I want to judge the interest of the local armories. If I don’t like the prices they offer, we can move to Mercy. It’s a bigger city so they might pay more.”

  Max found himself hoping that they ended up staying here. It was close to the second layer, where he thought his brother was, and there were plenty of dungeons around. It also couldn’t hurt to check in on James, Lily, and Yang. He wanted to make sure they were doing ok.

  After lunch, he went back to his room and grabbed a hammer, saw, and drill for Bisrat to use as display models. He thought about going out to explore the town, but decided to stay in and read instead.

  A down day sounded like heaven right now. He had only brought one paper book along, but it was his favorite. He read Hatchet until it was time to meet up with Bisrat that evening.

  When he came downstairs, Gus was eating an early dinner. Max sat down next to him.

  “How’s it going, man?” Max said with an upward head nod.

  “Happy as a pig in mud. I’m going drinking tonight, and probably tomorrow night too. Depends on if someone convinces me to stop in the middle.”

  Max chuckled even though it wasn’t that funny. “What’s your plan after that? I will get into dungeon climbing in a few weeks. I would love to have you in my party. You are a solid fighter, in and out of your troll form. The only thing is that loot splits will always be fair. Even though you are awesome, I won’t give you better loot than everyone else.”

  Gus stroked his beard and pretended to think. “I figure I can stick with you for a little while. At least until a better offer comes around.”

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  “Thanks, man. Get yourself some good armor in the meantime.”

  “Sure thing. You know, I give you shit sometimes, but you’re alright.”

  “You too. I’ll see you around.”

  Max got up and met Bisrat at the door. The thought crossed his mind that Gus should be a part of picking the new team members. That was a stupid thought. Gus should be introduced last, otherwise he would drive away good fighters.

  Bisrat gave him a tour of the town as they walked. It turned out the different cloth patterns covering the buildings had a purpose. Flat colors were homes, checkered patterns were businesses, and stripes were government buildings.

  “Oh, speaking of government, do they have records of who lives here? I’m wondering if there is a way to find my brother by asking all the town clerks.”

  “Yes and no. Governors appoint Lieutenants and give them some government cards. One of them is a census card. They use it to keep track of the population and make sure no one gets killed. I know that they can search for individuals somehow, because rebellion leaders always get found and killed. Always. I imagine if you paid the Lieutenant enough, they could check the town for your brother.”

  “Sounds expensive. Bribing the leadership of every little town on Spinworld could cost a fortune.”

  “It's either that or hire someone to find him. There are hunting cards that people could use to track down your blood relation. Sorry the only ideas I have are expensive.”

  “It’s fine. I’ll just have to save up. Your plans for money making will come in handy.”

  Bisrat smiled brightly and led them into the LFG bar. Max had imagined a rough and tumble tavern, but this was more like an adventurer’s guild. In addition to the bar, there were organized party requests broken up by role, a training area with rental weapons, a clerk that bought dungeon artifacts, even a quest board. He wasn’t sure if the last one was a joke or not. The quests posted up were killing rats, picking flowers, and stopping a chicken thief.

  Max and Bisrat picked up a pint each and made the rounds to talk to everyone interested in joining a group. They didn’t talk shop, just tried to get to know people. A few of them already knew Bisrat from when she made the rounds a few weeks ago. Now that she had the weaponsmith Max on her team, there were a few more people willing to join the party.

  They didn’t make any commitments that evening, but they got a better idea of what they were looking for in a new party member.

  The next morning Max got to work right away. He tackled his belt curse for the first time in days. It was much easier than last time. Within minutes, he had used a wine glass, a hair brush, a red ribbon, a bangle bracelet, and a chicken drumstick for their intended purposes.

  He left the town and harvested grasses for a few hours, enough to completely fill his belt. His circular saw made it possible, but he planned on making a purpose built harvesting saw at some point.

  The first thing he made was something he had been putting off. Gloves. He only needed to make two more sets to finish off his Gloves card quest. The inn he was staying at had a kind old man running things. Max made him a pair of thin gloves to help him reach things on the top shelf.

  His second set went to the guard at the front gate with a sense of humor. Max didn’t tell him about the magic spell in the gloves though. He was hoping the guy would find out in some hilariously random way.

  As he was walking away from the walls, the message he had been waiting for appeared.

  Citadel Evolution Quest Complete

  Use the hand spell in six materially different ways.   [?]

  Craft a pair of gloves with a different function.     [?]

  Create gloves to match the style of six different people. [?]

  You have completed all parts of your Gloves evolution quest and may now select one of the following evolutions.

  Handy Gloves- trade a longer recharge time for a stronger hand spell when activated

  Work Gloves - unlock six different glove designs for different professions

  Stylish Gloves - Gain an intuitive sense of what kind of gloves would fit a person

  Max read through the options and quickly chose the first one. The other two were ridiculously bad in comparison to having a better mage hand. He pulled up the card to double check how it changed.

  The mana cost went up a bit and the refresh more than quintupled. He was still sure it was the right choice. He immediately created a new pair of gauntlets. He wasn’t sure if it would matter, but he made sure the metal plates were made of tungsten to improve the spell strength.

  He was back in his room by then, and decided to test it out right away. He focused on his dirty shirt on the floor. A blue hand shot out of his gauntlet and grabbed the shirt. He levitated it over to his bed and dropped it, all without moving from the spot. The hand was still active, so he grabbed a Cup with his real hand and tossed it to the mage hand. He fumbled the catch since his mage hand didn’t have feeling. It cut out a moment later.

  A wide grin spread across his face. That spell had lasted about fifteen seconds, way longer than the three seconds it was before. He couldn’t wait to test it again, hopefully it could lift heavier objects now too. Sadly, he would have to wait almost four hours to try again.

  While he waited, he got to work transmuting tools. He made them out of silver this time, planning on testing the relative strength of their spells with different metals.

  He ran out of mana almost right away and realized there was a serious downside to staying on the first layer. The mana density was much lower, so his mana pool was very slow to refill.

  He decided to get lunch while he was waiting on it to refill. As he walked the city streets, an illusion flickered to life on a nearby raised platform. It was the news guy.

  “Gooooood Afternoon Spinworld. This is Ernie Pyle with another edition of Spinworld News. Coming to you live from an undisclosed location, delivering to every major city from the first layer down to the fourth.

  In financial news, the Igra company Colossus has suffered another setback. The company's cash reserves were hit by a daylight robbery. Titan cores worth in excess of 6,500 white cores were stolen from their third layer vault. Experts say the market is ripe for a challenger in the mana crystal market.

  Weather news has a rare good day today. There are no reported active dungeon quests. Live it up people before the next mandatory quest pops up.

  On the fourth layer, Hunter Thib has resigned from his position in the Hunter Coalition. He cites wanting to spend more time with his family, but sources inside the coalition point to his failure to see the monster management collapse coming. His replacement has not been named, but Marcus the White seems like a likely pick.

  Finally, I have some Builder news. Yes, those Builders. Many have been speculating the Builders have left Spinworld. Monster population isn’t being balanced anymore, dungeons have stopped changing and entrance towers have been decommissioned.

  However, the Builders issued a new optional quest last month, not an automated one like the mandatory dungeon quests. That’s proof that they are still here, their hands are still on the wheel. Unfortunately, they are steering us towards disaster.

  The optional quest is a kill quest. If you kill a titan and a governor, you are invited to meet the builders on the sixth layer. That's right, they want you to commit murder. Those issued the quest are usually governors, but not always. It seems like the builders are manually choosing people they think have the ability to complete the quest.

  This quest has been in place for more than a month, which explains the uptick in wars and assassinations. It is likely that the recent unrest across Spinworld is mostly due to this quest.

  It also seems to be assigned to more and more people as time goes on, so we can only expect that to get worse. Tomorrow I will present an in depth study of this quest and how it will affect you, the regular viewer. Until then, stay safe everyone.

  Dana, please come home. I’ll give you whatever you want, I just want you to be safe.

  Shouts of surprise, fear, and anger filled the streets.