I did my best not to shrink back under Lianna’s intense gaze. This was not the time to show weakness, I needed to convince her I was worth joining. I steeled myself with a fortifying sip of coffee. It actually wasn’t that bad.

  “Well, among the many ways that Void is used within the game, teleportation is one of the most important. I got special insight into this when I beat that dungeon and got another title.”

  “Another what? You mean like Duke or Count or something?” She was going to get premature wrinkles if she kept scowling like that.

  “Not that kind of title. Affinity dungeons have a certain way they’re meant to be solved, although it’s possible to find other ways to do it. That’s how I got all three of our dungeons.”

  The hold-your-horses finger went up again. “Still just your dungeons,” she said. “So what are titles and how do they fit in?”

  “There seems to be a hidden quest inside each of these dungeons that if you manage to complete, and you happen to have the right affinity, earns you a title. Like the Great Sage title I got from the Void Dungeon for solving it outside the box.”

  “So you must have affinity with Void.”

  “I do, yes.”

  “But you said another title, so you must have earned one before somehow.”

  “Actually I have two more. I got Great Architect from the Light Dungeon and Defender Of The Green from the Nature Dungeon.”

  “How’s that possible if you need the right affinity and yours is Void?” I would've said something about the wrinkles but her frown was kinda cute, and anyway she'd probably tear me a new one if I did. Even without using her power to cause fear, Lianna was also kinda scary.

  “That should be obvious to you. You have more than one affinity, after all.”

  “Yeah, but you’d need to have three. Three dungeons, three affinities, right?”

  I scratched the back of my neck sheepishly. “Actually, I’ve got more than three.”

  Her eyes narrowed into slits. “How many?”

  “All of them?” I peeped.

  “Seriously, who the hell are you?”

  “I got lucky with my abilities is all.”

  “Must be nice.”

  I sighed. After this I'd need to find Jane and Sigrid and apologize. I finally understood why they got so frustrated when I would put myself down all the time.

  ”You know," I said, "being a fast learner is an incredible gift and having an eidetic memory is probably the best skill. Those are both foundational abilities that will help you grow much stronger much faster."

  The face she made told me she had her doubts about that. I didn't even mention her other gift, It's Fine, because I didn't know exactly what it did, but the description of "Things work out" made me suspect it might be the best ability of all and was one of the big reasons I chose her. I was looking forward to showing her that what she thought was a trash Status was actually pretty awesome. I had first-hand experience with that myself.

  “You still haven't told me what titles do and how they relate to monetizing the Void Dungeon,” she said.

  And she was smart, asking all the right questions and keeping me focused on the important things. I had to have her. On the team, I mean.

  “Titles come with certain benefits. They give greater influence over the dungeons and everything in them, as well granting certain new abilities. One of the rewards I got from completing the Void Dungeon was a control key for the teleportation circles that lets anyone on my team travel freely between any of them.”

  “Can’t anyone already do that?” she said. My reaction must have betrayed my incredulity at how she could possibly not already know how the circles worked because she crossed her arms defensively. “I don’t know, I’ve only heard about them. Never had the chance to actually use one.”

  “You’re in for a lot of fun firsts, I think. Normally you can only travel to nodes — those are what the circles are properly called — that you’ve personally seen before. Every affinity dungeon has one, but you have to find where the dungeon is first. A few of them haven't been discovered yet.”

  Lianna nodded, following my drift. “So with that key thing you can even go to ones you haven’t seen yet. Which means you can know where all the dungeons are without having to search for them.”

  “You’re quick.”

  She allowed herself a tiny smile at the compliment. “You must have been to all of them, then.”

  “Only a brief visit to most, just to see where they all are.”

  She opened her own map. “Show me.”

  I pointed out the locations of all the other dungeons. Death Dungeon a bit North of the Void Dungeon and Earth Dungeon in the Giant’s Mound to the West of the city. Shadow Dungeon in the swamp East of the elves, Darkness Dungeon in the town of Caldeon to the South of the city, and Fire Dungeon further South in the desert. And the ones I knew nobody else had been to yet, Ice Dungeon in the far North past the mountains, Water Dungeon in the sea to the West, and Air Dungeon on the floating island above the Forbidden Lake.

  She leaned back. “You didn’t even blink before telling me that. Sure that was a smart thing to do? I could probably make a lot of gold selling that information to another team.”

  “Probably, but you wouldn’t do that.”

  “How do you know?”

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  I took a swig of coffee. “I trust you.”

  She snorted. “Why would you do that? You don’t know me.”

  “The first time I ever saw you, you could’ve ripped off a customer by underpaying him for his cards. Instead, you told him what their real value was and made a fair offer.”

  “That was at the conference. Wait, you remember me from the conference? I don't remember seeing you, and I have a fantastic memory.”

  Oh crap. Now I totally looked like a stalker.

  I tapped my head. “Fantastic memory too.”

  “Hmmmm.” She gave me another one of her assessing stares. “If your memory is so great, how come you missed one affinity? Or, since it happens to be the one that matches mine, perhaps you left it to last on purpose. For the drama.”

  “You don’t miss anything. Remember the Beastfolk and their healing potions?”

  When she was relaxed and not scowling she had a very expressive face. I took it as a good sign, and I found it a bit mesmerizing too, watching her expressions change as she took what I told her and extrapolated upon it in her sharp mind. I tried not to stare too much so I wouldn’t freak her out, but she was enjoyable to look at.

  “Healing is associated with Life,” she said, nodding. “Of course."

  "Which, by the way, is one of the rarest and best affinities to have. Do you know how valuable being able to heal is?"

  "I've heard. People are always complaining about how hard healing is to come by. What a shame I didn’t get healing powers to go with my rare and wonderful affinity, then. My life here would’ve been a whole lot different. Every team would want me.”

  “Would you believe me if I told you I had ways of helping you become a healer?”

  She leaned back in her chair and exhaled, running her fingers through her hair. “It would just be one more unbelievable thing you’ve said. You’re not pulling some sort of prank on me, are you? Is Ashton Kutchner gonna jump out at any moment?”

  “God I hope not.”

  She allowed herself another smile. “You’re kinda funny, you know?”

  “So are you.”

  We looked at each other for a couple of long moments, then she broke the silence. “So you intend to make money from the Void Dungeon by going to heretofore unknown dungeons and beating them?”

  “Well, yes, I suppose that’s a possibility, and I do plan to, but that’s not what I meant. There was another total cheat power on the key.”

  “Oh? What does it do?”

  “Control anyone’s access to the circles.”

  “Anyone? So if someone pisses you off you can prevent them from using them to go anywhere.”

  “Yes, and if I want to be capricious I can even let them use it but send them somewhere else completely. But keep going, think bigger.”

  I could see her mulling it around in her head until the proverbial lightbulb went off over it.

  “Holy shit. You control travel. Forget Players Guild, you’re the Spacing Guild.”

  “Now you see it.” And she even made a Dune reference. She was perfect. For the team.

  Lianna was getting openly excited now, words pouring out at the speed of thought. “Never mind blocking people who piss us off, we can block anyone who doesn’t pay us to use them. Better still, we can use it as enticement to join the Players Guild by making access to teleportation travel one of the benefits of membership.”

  The scowl was completely gone, replaced by a look of excitement. I had her hooked, or so I thought.

  “No,” she continued, “a discount on access fees would be better, otherwise people would only join for the access. Besides, there will be some stubborn people who won’t want to join the guild no matter what, and it would be too unfair to totally block their access. So we keep a graduated fee structure and non-Guild members would just need to pay more for the privilege of using our circles.”

  I handed her a glass of water.

  “Thanks,” she said, then took a gulp and dove back in. “We should also charge a recurring membership or even a one-time-only admission fee to join the Guild, just a nominal one because we don’t want to dissuade anyone from doing it because of the expense, but having some cost does chase away the ones who aren’t serious. Also, psychologically it would make members more inclined to be active if it's something they think they’ve paid for and we'll generate more revenue from active members using our services. We can also take a little cut from the rewards they earn performing guild jobs to cover administrative costs, we don’t want to run the core business at a loss, after all. Of course, there’s the ancillary income from the tavern and inn so I wouldn’t worry about cash flow once things are up and running.”

  “This is why I want you on the team, Lianna. You'll be the perfect Guildmaster.”

  “Guildmaster now? I thought you'd be that."

  "I'm betting that you'll be better. Speaking of betting, I forgot to mention something. I also have an arrangement to be the official bookie for the arena.”

  “Seriously? How'd you land that gig?”

  “I kind of accidentally set a precedent for settling Player disputes in arena fights and one thing led to another so now that’s a thing.”

  “I’ve seen the notifications. You started that?”

  “Accidentally.”

  “As bookie, does that mean you get to set the odds on match ups?”

  “Yup.”

  “And you can see people’s Statuses so you know exactly what they can do, which means setting accurate odds wouldn’t be a problem at all. You can make Las Vegas level coin doing that.”

  “It also helps that I get to keep a 10% cut on any payouts.”

  She whistled. “Okay, then. Money really isn’t a problem.”

  “That’s what I’m saying.”

  “You said you have an exclusive line on healing potions too, right?” she said. “If we sold those through the Guild with reduced rates for members, that alone is reason to join.”

  Lianna still hadn’t agreed to join the team, but neither had she stopped thinking of business opportunities. She had still been thinking about other ways to make money while we were talking about something else. This woman was very smart and she didn’t seem to lack ambition. Resigning herself to a life outside the game because she thought her abilities were trash must have been a daily punch in the gut.

  She’d gone back to studying the blueprints for the Cathedral guildhouse. “This here,” she said, jabbing her finger onto them. “Basic use of the training facilities should come with membership but we could charge extra for specialized training.”

  “That’s a great idea. And on that note, there’s a good chance we can get the go ahead to use the arena as another training facility. It has some special properties nobody knows about yet, for which we can easily charge a hefty premium.”

  “Nice. That’s a perk of being the arena’s bookie, I suppose. We could also buy and sell equipment and materials, which could end up being quite lucrative as well.”

  “We could, but we need to be careful we don’t step on the toes of the city’s crafting guilds. We can't monopolize everything, the NPCs need to make a decent living too.”

  She leaned back and an intense look came over her face. I could tell I was being evaluated again, or perhaps reevaluated was more accurate.

  “So what’s the catch?” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re offering the opportunity to get a lot of power and wealth by joining you, not to mention go on the adventure of a lifetime. You have exactly one spot to fill on the team and every Player around would probably do anything to get it. But you’re offering it to me. So, what’s the catch?”

  “There isn’t one. I'm not interested in finding a subordinate, I'm looking for a partner. I do hope you’ll follow my lead, though, at least in the beginning.”

  “That’s really it?”

  “Well, you’ll have to learn a few martial arts.”