92. Celebration

The group teleportation feature that went with Tarisha’s new appointment as the captain of my guard worked great.  Fast Traveling itself took about twenty seconds longer than normal, likely a delay allowing my guardians to accept the prompt that appeared when I chose my destination.  Our arrival was conspicuous, as the destination I had selected was one of the Nexus nodes inside the city near the Wildeheart estates.  That itself wasn’t conspicuous, I’m certain that particular node was used by Travelers quite frequently.

But eleven people arriving at the exact same time, perhaps, didn’t happen every day.  Or every night, I suppose, depending on where you lived on earth.  I think it was something like two in the morning Miami on a Sunday.  But Earth time doesn’t always make sense to me.

“Was the mission successful?” Luke asked immediately.

“It was Awesome!” Corinth said.  “Oh man!  Oh, and check it out!  Unique vanity pets!  And an effing Buster Sword!”

He conjured both of the objects in question from the system.  Sir William Von Barutasburg appeared and began stomping around fiercely, and Corinth tried to spinthe buster sword.  I say he tried, because it was an effort.  An effort which nearly decapitated Leanne, who was standing next to him, and also resulted in the ridiculously impractical weapon landing in the dirt.

“Yeah, that’s going to take some practice,” he admitted.

“Fucking Weeb,” Joe muttered.  “But yes, the mission was successful.  The bosses have been killed, the loot has been looted, and the dungeon core has been destroyed.”

I glanced around, but fortunately it doesn’t seem that anyone was close enough to have heard him.  “Is that really something we should be discussing? Out here in the open?” I asked.

Joe shrugged.  “Nobody’s listening.  Nobody cares.”

I sighed, not used to being the professional one.  I summoned Shadow beneath me and began riding towards my father in law’s estate to inform him of my success.  The others all summoned their own mounts, but although the system transported their horses with them, none of them had the convenience of storing their mounts in their shadow.  They had to use a summoning item to call the animals forth, and the slight delay it took for them to follow allowed me a few moments to myself to think.

I had grown up thinking that enemies beset the Heartlands from all sides.  The undead to the north, the dragonlings to the south.  To the west the Nostantan of the Ironrot empire.  And to the east, nature itself, in the form of the impassible sea of squalls.  After speaking with Mikal, I had come to an uncomfortable conclusion.  Down was a direction.  And we were besieged by enemies from there as well.

I contemplated whether or not to deliver the message Mikal had given me for Gyudue.  And how I would even go about doing so.  Could I simply assign a quest to a traveler and accomplish it that way?  I would have to think the matter over some.  I knew that the drow were a significant faction in the Deepdark, but they were not the only faction down there.  And they did not have a history of being allies with the kingdoms of men.

Should I warn someone about the Mikal considering us their ancestral enemies?  Who would I even warn, with Grandfather dead and the government in chaos?  The ideal solution, to my opinion, would be to send an envoy to the Mikal and try to establish peaceful diplomatic relations.  But the one I spoke with had been summoned by a Dungeon Core.  I had no clue as to their true location, or how to reach them.  Was that even a possibility?  Or would the Mikal slaughter any envoy we sent to them immediately, as the Nostantan do?  The Mikal I had spoken with seemed reasonable, but that might have only been in the context of this single meeting.  I certainly couldn’t base the entirety of my expectations for his people based on one meeting with a single specimen who might very well be an extreme outlier.

I sighed, slowing Shadow’s trot to allow the others to catch up.  I rode the rest of the way to the manor listening to the others bicker as the companions who had joined me in challenging the dungeon detailed our adventure.

“And so that’s how we discovered that there’s a race of tentacle faced grimlocks and an entire zone known as the Deepdark which is possibly everywhere with entrances underneath everything.  Oh hey, Hail, let’s stop and get some Leicha,” Corinth said, waiving towards a barista stand.

“Not now,” I called back over my shoulder.  “If you ask, maybe Valerio will have some squeezed for us when we get to his estate.”

“I’m sorry, would you mind backing the hell up and saying that again?” Peter of Yorkshire said, his voice incredulous.

“It’s true,” Joe said reluctantly.  “So, yeah.  How much do you think that intel is worth?”

Peter began laughing his ass off.  He glanced at the four members of the Asian guild and said the words “En Dee Aye.”

One of the members grumbled something.  
“We are allowed to discuss it with our guild leadership,” their leader pointed out.  “But you do not need to worry.  The leak will not come from us.”

“It had better not,” Luke said.  “We’ll announce it ourselves when we release the video of the encounter.  Edited for content, of course.  Assuming that we have Lord Hail’s permission to do so, of course.”

“As long as Tarisha thinks it’s a good idea,” I called back over my shoulder.

“However, I don’t see any problem with you or your allies prepping for when the search for the Deepdark entrances begin in earnest,” Luke admitted.  “So long as nobody knows what you are doing or why.”

“Of course, Luke Honored Senior,” the leader of the foreign guild said.  And I frowned for just a second, because there was something odd about the way it had sounded.  After thinking it over a minute, I blamed the magic system that translates the Traveler’s word noises into something I could understand.  They probably had a short suffexthat meant something like honored senior, but the translation matrix didn’t have the right way of putting it into words that I knew, and the words that I knew were much longer than the words that she used.

I’d actually had some of the same sort of problems when I’d first began interacting with my English speaking Traveler friends, but I had gotten so used to their language that I didn’t notice any of those idiosyncrasies anymore.  I had known that my Asian guards hadn’t been speaking English, I just hadn’t really been listening to them to learn the flow that their language used.  It made sense to me, thanks to whatever magic the translation system operated under, and that’s all that really mattered.

We reached the Wildeheart residence, and the same Canid butler who answered the door before answered it again.  He nodded in greeting, despite my disguise, and ushered us inside.  We were all offered Liecha and cakes, although I declined.  Valerio arrived after a few moments, and my mother joined him immediately after.

“I take it that you were successful then?” he asked after a perfunctory greeting.

“We were,” I agreed.  “The dungeon should be gone, and you can reclaim the mine on which it stood.  Except, well, you should be aware that during the final challenge of the core instance, there were a large number of traps, and many cave-ins throughout the structure.  You should have some [Geomancers] and [Rogues] inspect the area thoroughly to deal with both of those issues.”

“Excellent.  As we agreed, any cores you recovered are yours to keep, and I will consider this transaction to be a mutually beneficial arrangement, the details of which need not be disclosed outside of this room,” Valerio said.

“How much are they worth?” I asked suddenly.  “A dungeon core, if I were to sell one, how much would they go for?”

Valerio opened his eyes wide in surprise, then grinned.  He poured a drink for himself, and for me, and a cup of steaming Liecha for my mother, as he considered the question.  “Selling a dungeon core is not a simple matter, Hail,” he said.  “Or rather, youselling a core that you farmed in Eolstreeis a very complex matter indeed if you’re selling it to anyone other than the Eolstrian government.  However, the price you could expect to receive for such a sale would be, say, sixty percent of what you could get at an open auction in which all of the allied powers were allowed to bid.”

“I really hate politics,” I muttered.  “What if I said that I got the core in Yuikon?”

“Then you would have to point out which dungeon it came from and allow that to be confirmed,” Valerio said.  “They are called [Dungeon Daughter Cores] for a reason.  The relationship to their source is embedded within them.  It can be confirmed with a very simple spell, even when the dungeon source that spawned them is destroyed.”

“Dammit,” I muttered.  If that was true, then I wouldn’t be able to sell any of the cores from Zhesa castle without revealing where they had come from.

“Indeed,” Valerio agreed.  “Cores are valuable, but also extremely regulated.  The exact laws depend on the lands, so you’d have to ask a Yuikonese scholar for the exact details on how to manage any of the cores you may or may not have gathered in your homeland.”  He took a long sip from his brandy.  “If you were to sell one core to the queen, however, it is possible that she would be willing to consider allowing you to sell more at auction.  To one of our allies, of course.  And I do mean our allies, as in allies of both Yuikon and Eolstree.  That list is fortunately fairly long, but not all inclusive, which means that the bidders will not have quite as much competition as they might have otherwise.  But you should still be able to get half a million gold for the core you give to my cousin, and somewhere between half again and double that amount for any other cores you managed to gather on my lands.”

Which means that, if I got the absolute best price possible, it would take a minimum of thirty-one dungeon cores to solve the debt problems in North Shire.  And that was assuming that they all sold for the maximum amount, but I knew that was unlikely.  While all cores were the same for the purpose of battleground creation, which was the primary reason they were stockpiled by the nations of the Heartlands, cores varied wildly on the sort of dungeons that they spawned, and that would affect their price significantly as well.  I would be lucky to get an average price of seven hundred fifty thousand, which, in addition to the one I would have to sell to the Eolstrian royal family at a discount, means that I would need at least forty cores, if I were to go this route.

Better to sell vanity pets, I thought.  Those were completely useless, after all.  Their uselessness was literally part of the name.  I didn’t understand why Travelers would want them in the first place, but since, unlike cores, they had no inherent value, I would wait until the price of my stockpile of vanity pets collapsed before I relied on selling my stockpile of cores to cover debts that weren’t even mine to begin with.

“Is this something that you would like me to facilitate, Hail Jeoran?” my father in law asked politely.

“I think that I will sell one of the cores I earned today to your government, as an act of thanks, and with the understanding that, if I desire to auction off future cores which I gather from your lands, it shall count towards the requirements for holding that auction,” I said.  “If that is acceptable.”

Valerio inclined his head, and sipped his brandy.  “A very wise decision indeed.  And this will allow me to begin bragging that my son’s older brother is already a Dungeon Buster.  This news will be like fleas in the hides of the traditionalists, strengthen the validity of the union my marriage to your mother has formed between our two nations, and also prove that the course my family is leading Eolstree down is one of strength and pride.”

“Honestly, I didn’t think of any of that,” I admitted.  “I just need gold now.”

Valerio laughed, and he sipped his brandy.  I braced myself to do the same, knowing how the liquid would burn my throat.  But, as always, I first cast [Detect Poison] with as much discretion as possible.

And the glass flashed bright enough to blind make me look away from it.

I blinked in surprise, and from the brightness of the light, before reaching out and slapping the glass of Liecha out of my mother’s hand.  The hot liquid burned my hand, but the twenty health I lost was nothing.  I turned to Valerio, who was inspecting his own glass with horror.  After a moment, he worked up his courage, and he cast [Detect Poison] for himself.  And the liquid shone like the sun.