Archmund struggled to keep his grip on the Gemstone tablet that had just overturned his view of the world.

  He had stats. The classic RPG stats — Str Dex Con Int Wis Cha Luk. The names he’d chosen for his techniques with his Ruby were recorded in this mysterious, omniscient System. Everything important he’d done heretofore was similarly recorded and visible.

  “Alright,” Mercy — no, the crown princess Angelina Grace Marca Prima Omnio said. “What did you see in that thing?”

  She knew. She knew something about what this was and how it worked.

  “Do you have one like it?”

  “I found one after I won my first Dungeon,” she said. “There’s only ever one per Dungeon, and…”

  She sighed and flopped down in one of the armchairs. “They Attune instantly, which I’m sure you’ve realized. And they…”

  “Be honest with me, your majesty,” Archmund said, taking a seat in the armchair across from her. It was as soft as the ones in his real sitting room. “How much of what you said to me before we went in here — all that stuff about how fierce the competition was for the throne — how much of that was bullshit?”

  She winced. “Just call me Mercy. The men don’t know. And honestly, Archmund? None of it was a lie.”

  “But it says you’re the—”

  “The Crown Princess, right, yeah. I’m certainly the first in the running, but that’s because of my effort and hard work.”

  She glared at him.

  He hadn’t really thought about it, but this world’s monarchy didn’t follow primogeniture. His assumptions had just overtaken him.

  “Sorry,” he muttered.

  “Don’t be,” she said. She reached into one of her pouches and pulled out a Gemstone-encrusted book. “This is my version of that. You’ll start to see how… pointless everything feels, once you see how easy it is to draw the story to a conclusion you’ve already read.”

  She sighed.

  He could emphasize. Yet a part of him was dreadfully excited.

  “How many of these are there?”

  “One per Dungeon. They Attune for life, so the only way to take one from its owner is killing them. The Imperial Family has one, which is passed down from Emperor to Emperor, which makes it a huge waste for this one to be with me. Their existence is a state secret, because, as I’m sure you can tell, there are no secrets hidden in it.”

  “You can’t share them?”

  “Only with someone you’d trust with your life,” Mercy said. “You can see everything in them. The truth of the universe. A window to profound eternity.”

  She said all of this very morosely.

  As much as he would have liked to see, he knew she would likely refuse if he asked to see hers. Did the whole universe operate according to RPG game rules, or was this just his interpretation of a deeper, more profound system? Would someone born into this world with no knowledge of video games or tabletop RPGs see these same stats, or would they view the “game” in terms they could understand?

  “Why does this make you so sad?”

  “Because every time I could be doing something, I think about my ledger, and how I could be increasing it,” she said. “And taking so much of the mystery out of human life. Who you are. Who your friends are and how you stand with them. Your odds of taking the throne. It’s scary.”

  He looked at his own stats again.

  “Allies: Angelina Grace Marca Prima Omnio.”

  No standing, and no statistics.

  She saw more than he did. Was it because she had a special Skill, or was it because she was the crown princess, trained from birth to keep an eye on the line of succession and threats to her position?

  Metaphysically, was there even a difference?

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  There was one final secret in the Upper Tier: the gate to the Middle Tier.

  Disturbingly, it was in what corresponded to Archmund’s room.

  And beyond, there were endless rows of cubicles.

  After a single look, both Archmund and Mercy agreed that this was a problem for later, when they were both stronger.

  He wondered if she had made any sense of what they’d seen.

  If Archmund had to rank the spoils of their journey, the Gemstone Tablet was the biggest find of their investigation. There was simply no contest whatsoever. It was a definitive window into the metaphysical basis of the universe, obviously some sort of state secret, and extremely valuable.

  He stood besides Mercy on the balcony of the grand manor hall, overseeing the final collection of loot. It was frankly jarring, looking down upon the hall, where a hundred soldiers were sorting and piling up the spoils of war in great piles. There was one pile for rapiers, another for hand fans, and a third pile just for raw Gems. That pile looked like sand compared to the others. They also gathered tapestries and paintings and candlesticks and whatever else seemed like it might be of value from this false reflection of Granavale Manor.

  He was entitled to half of it, but he just didn’t care. Not with what he knew now.

  And yet he had to care. Because his goal coming into this was improving the economic trajectory of Granavale County, so he could live a liberated, free life, and this was not enough wealth to fuck off forever to whatever passed for a tropical beach resort in this world.

  And there was the other matter.

  “Mercy, does this make me an assassination target?”

  “People would kill for one of these,” she said. “But nobody needs more than one. I’m not going to be sending anyone after your head, but that doesn’t mean someone else might not.”

  “You said they were a state secret.”

  “And I’m not going to tell anyone about yours. It was a headache when I got mine. If anyone learns about it, it’s on you.”

  It sounded too good to be true. “What do you want in return?”

  “Hmmm,” Mercy said, gazing down at the crowds. “That’s a very interesting question. What could you possibly have to offer me?”

  He braced himself for blackmail.

  “Despite all the odds, you’re walking away with at least half of all that gear down there,” Mercy said. “It’d be a stain on my honor if I didn’t let you have it, after what you managed. You didn’t cost me a single man, so I can’t demand extra armor or weapons as replacement — not that rapiers or hand fans are any good for maintaining a standing army.”

  “I thought you said one piece of Gemstone Gear was enough to start a man down the road of being a hero.”

  “That was a simplification. Look at your Tablet and read what it says about your Gemstone Sword.”

  He looked at the entry — Gemstone Sword (bound) — and tapped on it, which showed it in greater detail.

  “I’m sure you can see something about how as your magic flows into the crystal lattice, it flows back to you strengthened and ordered,” Mercy said.

  That must have been the stat bonuses.

  “And in doing so, it grants you strength and agility beyond your mortal peers. The more you use the weapon—”

  “The more Attuned you get,” Archmund said, “the more you Awaken Skills, and the stronger using it makes you. And easier you can get more Gemstone gear of higher power and higher quality.”

  “You understand this awfully quickly for someone who had no idea how the universe worked 24 hours ago.”

  What was he supposed to say in response to that? He couldn’t just tell her he was reincarnated, and this was a fairly basic gameplay loop. Sure, reincarnation was a popular folk belief, but that was out here in the sticks, and she was an Imperial Princess from the Imperial Capital.

  “You’re changing the subject,” he said. “So, what do you want from me?”

  “Now that the Upper Tier of the Dungeon has been conquered, the Monsters within won’t be able to mount an organized insurgency. They’ll continue to spawn as more of the dead escape from the depths, but they’ll be less organized and harmless. The perfect creatures for adventurers to whet their blades on, or for you to harvest more of those uncut Gems. One day you’ll have to clear the Middle and Bottom Tiers, but those are… much worse. But they’ll be quiet for at least a few years!”

  He didn’t like the sound of that — it was a problem waiting to happen — but he was glad he could wait on them.

  He reached into his satchel and ran his hand over his Gems. “I was under the impression you thought these were mostly useless. Enough grain to feed your Sacred Guard for a week?”

  “I could fund the guard for a thousand years with the Omnio coffers. But for you? Collect one of these a week at the quality you’ve managed to get them — nasty Skill, that Infrared Lance of yours, able to kill them before they can react at all — and you’ll be well on the way to turning Granavale into a boom town.”

  It couldn’t be that easy. There was no way it was that easy.

  “If I flood the market with these, won’t it devalue them?”

  She frowned. “Devalue?”

  She was a ten-year old Imperial Princess with the wealth of the whole empire behind her. Of course she wouldn’t have any idea about supply and demand curves or devaluation of currencies and commodities. In a few years, after her formal education, she would, but—

  “Attunement means that there’s always a need for raw Gems of high quality, no matter how many you might produce. They’re not easily transferable. A used Gem depreciates almost immediately. The Empire will buy your fresh ones.”

  Maybe he’d underestimated her, just a little.

  “You’re telling me that if I put in a bare minimum of work for just a few years,” Archmund said, “I’ll put myself in a position where I’ll be set for life. What’s the catch?”

  “The catch is that you have something more valuable than material wealth, and I need allies. Do you plan on attending the Imperial Academy?”