I planned to get the Archer class because it should synergize well with my revolver and I could, hopefully, evolve the class into something unique when I hit level 20. Even if the skills didn’t end up being useful, the attribute enhancements from the Archer class would likely benefit my coordination, which would apparently enhance my agility, hand-eye coordination, and speed—all things that would be extremely beneficial for using my revolver and staying alive out in the city.
I ducked and shimmied through another narrow alley as I followed Constans to my next location. I had asked her to show me to an enchanter, but apparently there were a number of them working in the city so I had to be more specific. According to her, I could go to a weapon enchanter, an armor enchanter, a trinket enchanter, or even a cloth enchanter. I decided on the cloth enchanter.
“I can’t believe you don’t have any magic!” Constans shouted back at me as I followed her.
“Please don’t advertise that!” I yelled back, looking up and down the alley we were climbing through to make sure nobody was nearby.
“Oh, right,” she said, turning back around. “Sorry! Sorry!”
We made our way through the narrow alleys, ducking under and around the ramshackle buildings until we arrived at the cloth enchanter. This shop wasn’t open to the street and was set deep inside the interior of the bridge city, so no sunlight illuminated the area. If Constans hadn’t led me here, there was no chance I would have ever found the place.
The shop itself wasn’t huge. When we entered, I saw it was spacious enough to fit three women working at three different worktables spaced around the room. Shelves and barrels held cloth and other crafting materials. Constans introduced me to the three women, whom she identified as sisters. Two of them were busy crafting clothing from piles of dirty and damaged clothes that looked like they had been recently salvaged from the city. As I watched, one of the sisters concentrated and instantly cleaned and mended a dirty tunic on her worktable. She rapidly folded the tunic, placing it in a barrel next to her table. I blinked at the casual use of magic, still surprised by the reality that magic existed here. The third sister was painstakingly sewing metallic-looking thread into a shirt.
“What can we help you with?” the oldest of the sisters asked, the one that had just finished cleaning the tunic.
I met her eyes and tried to project friendliness. “I’m looking to buy something enchanted, although I’m not sure what kind of items are available around here.”
“Here is what we have for sale, currently,” another of the sisters said, not looking up from her table as she gestured behind her to the shelves filled with folded clothing.
The older sister stood and approached the shelves. “Enchanting clothing is more difficult than your regular enchantments,” she explained. “Cloth is flexible, so enchantments have to either be made on a patch of cloth that has been made unmovable so the enchantment isn’t distorted or broken, or the enchantment has to be made from a rare ore that is salvaged from the city. The benefit,” she added, holding up a shirt with a label indicating the shirt remained permanently fresh and clean, “is that you don’t have to wear a ton of heavy armor to get the benefit of our enchantments. You can wear our clothes under any armor you do want to wear, providing a secondary protection that can sometimes be as strong, or stronger, than traditional armor.”
The sister continued to show me more clothes, finally getting to enchantments that were more useful for combat. They had shirts, pants, cloaks, and scarves enchanted to resist damage, resist spells, resist the elements, help conceal a person, or make a person more trustworthy. There were even enchantments to enhance attributes.
My cloak, now that my nanobots had finished expanding into it, would already be resistant to piercing damage thanks to the modification they were making to the cloth. The cloak was also able to be cleaned and mended without any trouble thanks to the nanobots again. I was more interested in finding an enchantment that could enhance my survivability in another way.
I looked over the clothing that resisted spells and elements but decided to avoid those for now since I hadn’t encountered any monsters that used spells and my body was already pretty resistant to heat and cold. An enchantment to help conceal me, or one that gave me a basic enhancement to an attribute, seemed the most useful.
As I held a scarf that had a Concealment enchantment on it, I let my nanobots scan the enchantment. It wasn’t enough time to reproduce it—I would likely need an hour or more of detailed analysis to do that—but it was enough to let me know that the enchantment itself was only part of the equation. The cloth used to form the rune seemed to be some form of metallic thread, likely the metal that allowed for better enchantments.
“How much for a Concealment enchantment?” I asked, continuing to scan the runes.
“A scarf,” the sister said, “would run you five stavrata or two blue orbs, if you have those in trade. Shirt, pants, or a cloak would be more.”
I finished my examination of the scarf, unable to figure out the metal used to form the rune. It was a type of metal my nanobots had never encountered before. I wouldn’t be able to just copy the runes themselves if they required the special metallic thread. I would actually need to buy something or hope to get lucky and find some in the city.
“How much to add an enchantment to the cloak I’m currently wearing?”
The sister stepped closer and looked over the cloak I had on. “Standard scavenger cloak,” she said, eyeing it, “but modified a bit for easier draw with the right hand. And concealing something under the left arm. Hmm . . .”
I winced at her accurate summary. I noticed Constans perk up at the mention that I was concealing something under the cloak, but I ignored her.
“We could do it for five orbs or twelve stavrata,” she said. “Assuming you want it right away. If you could wait a week, we could do it for four orbs.”
“How long would it take?” I asked.
“Couple of hours if we made it our top priority,” she said.
I didn’t want to wander around the city without my cloak concealing my revolver, but it seemed a reasonable price.
“How much does a Concealment enchantment actually help?” I asked.
“It isn’t invisibility,” the older sister said, shrugging. “But it should let you get the drop on most monsters and some people, as long as you aren’t standing on top of them or making a mess of noise.”
It would help me get around the city faster if I felt safer moving quickly, which would increase the rate at which I could gather more orbs and defeat more monsters.
I unclasped the cloak and unwound it from over my shoulders, handing it to the sister. As I did, I ordered my nanobots to go dormant and not resist whatever happened to the cloak until I re-engaged them. Then I pulled five blue orbs out of my pouch and handed them to her.
“Great.” The sister put the cloak on her workbench and the orbs in a lockbox under her chair. “We will get started on this right away. Come back in two hours.”
I thanked her and turned to follow Constans out of the shop, trying to ignore her as she craned her neck to stare at the firearm strapped under my left arm. Once we were outside, she turned and stared openly at the revolver, making it impossible for me to ignore her.
“So what is that, mister?” she asked, excited. “Is that what lets you survive out there without a class? Can I see it?”
“No,” I told her, trying to appear stern. “It isn’t worth thinking about.”
“Aww,” she said, frowning exaggeratedly. “C’mon!”
I couldn’t tell how much daylight I had left, but I figured I would probably not be leaving the city tonight if I wanted to collect my cloak before I left.
“Is there a place I can stay the night around here?” I asked Constans. “An inn or something of that nature?”
Still frowning and staring at my revolver, Constans nodded. “Yeahhhhh,” she said, dragging out her answer. It was endearing how she was still very much a child in some ways and yet also confident enough to lead strangers through the quagmire that was this city. Her life had clearly aged her rapidly, but she had managed to retain some of her childlike excitement. I was slightly tempted to explain how the gun worked to her, but I suppressed the thought. I could only imagine the rumors she would start if she knew the details.
“Is there one where I might run into some people who are experienced scavengers or who have ever cleared a dungeon? I’m hoping to get some questions answered.”
“Hmmm,” she said, thinking. “There is a bar that some of the old people frequent. It isn’t the safest place for . . . strangers to visit, though.”
“That’s fine,” I said. “Let’s go there first and then the inn.”
“Alright,” she replied, shrugging. “Your call.”
I followed her back to the main road that ran down the center of the bridge, and she led me upward until we crested over the top of the bridge and began to walk back down the other side. I could see the end of the bridge ahead through the narrow street. She led us straight to the edge and then indicated we should take a left. The edge of the bridge was sheared straight through, as if a massive blade had sliced through the large stone bridge with ease.
I stopped and looked out, ignoring the people jostling me as I stood still in the flow of traffic. I could see Sycae much more clearly than from back in the abandoned part of the city. Sycae was indeed a thriving area, although there were still areas that appeared abandoned and run-down. The streets were large and busy, overall. The docks weren’t as busy, presumably since contact with other cities had fallen off over the last few years. It was still impressive to look at, like I was looking back in time on old Earth to see history come to life. A true medieval city, even if it was one that had magic and was under constant siege by monsters every night. It made me sad that I couldn’t see this world before whatever apocalypse had befallen it. I was sure it would have been an impressive sight.
“C’mon!” Constans yelled at me, urging me to stop staring out over the broken edge of the bridge. I turned and followed her along another narrow street that ran on the edge of the bridge. It was barely wide enough for two people and there was no barrier between the people and the edge of the bridge, but nobody else seemed concerned by the rather sudden drop. Plenty of people passed each other as they walked in different directions, ignoring the sight of Sycae and the long drop to the water below. The wind from the open sky whipped at us in passing, but nobody slowed in the slightest whenever a gust struck us. I was learning that the residents of this place had no fear of heights, like worker ants too busy to care about the dangers all around them.
Constans stopped in front of a large building that faced out over the water on the very edge of the bridge. It was made of mismatched timber and was the size of two or three of the buildings around it, making it the largest building I had seen so far. The door was solid wood and there were several large windows, although the glass was broken in places and covered in soot, so it was hard to see inside the building. There was no sign hanging above the door to announce what the building was, but Constans announced it as the Bridge’s Edge bar, a hangout for retired adventurers.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
She pushed open the door with no hesitation and I followed her inside.
My head almost reached the low ceiling of the bar, so I had to crouch slightly. A rough wooden table ran around the left and back wall, with a space behind the tables so they could be used as a makeshift bar. A number of wooden tables made from whatever flat surfaces could be salvaged filled the room. I saw several small tables made from shields, while others seemed to be parts of ships or houses or pieces of furniture that had been turned into tables by unskilled hands. Rickety benches were used for seating around the tables.
The bartender standing behind the tables at the back of the room was a young kid, barely older than Constans from what I could see. He had darker skin than most of the olive-skinned locals I had met so far, and his hair was curly and dark. I had been expecting a grizzled bartender of some kind and was surprised to see a young boy working in such a location.
“C’mon!” Constans whispered at me, reaching back and pulling me by the arm toward the bar.
The young boy behind the counter looked up at us and frowned when he caught sight of me.
“Mehmet!” Constans called to him as she plopped down on one of the benches that lined the tables that were being used as a bar. Mehmet gave her a small smile, clearly recognizing her, and approached.
“Who’s your friend?” he asked her as I gingerly sat next to her, worried my weight would break the precariously put-together bench.
“He’s new around here,” she said, looking over at me. “He says he isn’t a Varangian, but he could be lying. I am showing him around for the day.”
“Hello, sir,” Mehmet said. “What brings you to this part of town?”
Before I could answer, Constans interrupted me. “Is Nikephoros around?”
Mehmet looked at me with a raised eyebrow, then back at Constans. “Not yet,” he answered. “But he should be around soon. You can wait here if you want.”
“Sure,” Constans said. “Thanks, Mehmet!”
“Do you want anything to drink or eat while you wait?” he asked me.
“You owe me lunch, remember?” Constans said, turning to me. I raised an eyebrow at her, wondering if she chose this place for the food or if I really could get good answers to my questions about dungeons here.
“Sure,” I said after a brief pause. “Mehmet, can you bring us two lunches and whatever is safe for her to drink?”
“Two copper apiece for the meal and drink,” he told me. I handed over five copper, unsure if tipping was a norm here but deciding to err on the side of being generous. He took the copper and poured us some watered wine from a barrel behind him. Once he’d set the drink down in front of me, I took a sip, frowning at how sharp and unpleasant the taste was, even with the generous amount of water added to the wine. Once he served Constans as well, he ducked out from behind the bar, saying he would be back with our food soon.
I sipped the wine and turned on the bench to survey the room. The couple of people in the bar at this hour were all older and looked tired. They ignored Constans and me, staring idly into their drinks or making small, quiet conversation with each other. They all had old injuries that had healed poorly, and many had visible scars as well as missing fingers or limbs. It was a sad sight; even in a world of magic, some people had been left crippled. If they were all older explorers, it spoke eloquently to how dangerous such a life was for the average person.
Constans sipped her heavily watered-down wine with me as we waited. Mehmet eventually returned, carrying two large clay pots full of some kind of stew. I ate mechanically, not particularly enjoying the bland taste, but I took the food to help fuel my body and nanobots for the future. I tried my hardest not to analyze the various ingredients of the stew, preferring not to know.
After we ate, Constans and I waited at the bar for another hour, watching several people come and go. When an older man with a shock of white hair entered, she grabbed my arm and pointed directly at him.
“That’s him!” she whispered to me as she clutched my arm. I watched as he scanned the room, lingering on me and Constans, who were obviously interested in him. He glared at the two of us and retreated to a table set in the far corner as far from us as he could get.
“That’s Nikephoros?” I asked Constans. She nodded enthusiastically. “And he can tell me about dungeons and things like that?”
“Oh yeah,” she said. “He used to be in the military. He knows about all that stuff.”
Nodding, I asked Mehmet to bring me whatever Nikephoros normally drank. Mehmet ducked behind the bar and returned with a large mug of something that smelled better than the terrible wine he had served us. I grabbed it and my own mostly empty mug, and then Constans and I approached his table.
“Mind if we join you?” I asked, trying to be as polite as possible. “Constans says you might be able to answer a few of my questions about dungeons. Drinks are on me while we talk, if you’d like.”
Nikephoros glared up at me and then grunted when he saw the full mug in my hand, kicking one of the benches across him out from under the table. I took that as an invitation and sat. Constans joined me on the bench.
I put the drink down for Nikephoros and he grabbed it with a grimace, clearly annoyed but not willing to pass up a free drink.
I looked the man over as he took a greedy drink from the mug I had given him. He looked to be about fifty or sixty years old, his white hair making him look even older. He was scarred, as many of the other patrons of the bar were, but he didn’t appear to have any lost limbs or other debilitating injuries. He was wrinkled and sported a spotty beard, something that seemed to be more of an oversight than an intentional look. He wore leather clothing, a type of leather I wasn’t familiar with, but it appeared durable and finely made compared to the rest of the things I had seen in the city so far. It was darker than traditional leather, as if made from a creature I didn’t recognize.
Seeing that he didn’t speak up, I went ahead and asked my first question. “I’m hoping to learn more about dungeons. Constans told me you might know some things about them.”
He didn’t bother to look at me, staring to the side and drinking as if I hadn’t spoken. I waited patiently, and eventually, he sighed, answering my question. “Aye. I’d say that’s true.”
“What can you tell me?”
He finally turned to look at me, glaring directly into my eyes, a touch of anger passing over his face. “Dungeons are deadly, boy.” He took another drink. “Pretty Varangian like yourself, you need to go in a group, and even then, half of you will probably die. Ain’t no joke, dungeons are. Reason people stopped being able to clear them and the city has been overrun so badly.”
“Is that why there are so many monsters at night? The dungeons haven’t been cleared?”
“Aye,” he said. “Something like that.”
He waved at Mehmet, who came over with a pitcher and refilled his mug for him. I was obviously paying for the refill, but I didn’t complain. I was down to one silver and three coppers at this point and still needed to pay Constans, but I wanted to get as much information as possible from the man, so it was worth the cost.
“So what exactly are dungeons? What are they like inside?”
With another grunt, Nikephoros explained. I had to drag the information out of him in bits and pieces, but what I learned was fascinating. According to him, dungeons formed when a monster made its nest. Originally, a dungeon was just a basement or hole in the ground where the monster would flee to avoid the daylight when it was at its most vulnerable, but as a monster spent more and more time in the same spot, the magic of the world warped and twisted the area around the nest. The area began to spawn more monsters and empower the ones that had been there the longest, almost like the monsters were breeding. Eventually, a “dungeon” formed, which was, apparently, a different dimension entirely, or a splinter dimension of some kind. A mature dungeon would spawn a dungeon core, which was something that empowered the dungeon and made it self-sustaining. A symbiosis would begin to form between the core and the monsters in the dungeon, warping the splinter dimension so much that a dungeon could take on an aspect of the monster’s personality, habits, or natural environment.
What that meant, in practice, was that dungeons would start as a basement but could swiftly end up as a portal to another dimension that was completely unlike anything in this world. Nikephoros said that you could be entering a darkened basement or closet that turned out to be a dungeon and find yourself standing in a world full of grass and being stalked by monsters who were perfectly adapted to hunting on the savanna.
If a party managed to clear the dungeon by capturing the core, the dungeon would dissipate and turn into a reward for the party. The reward could be orbs, a skill, a perk, or even a magical item. A perk was a permanent modification a person could gain, different from a skill. Nikephoros said it could be anything, such as the ability to see at night or the ability to sense people’s thoughts. People used to clear dungeons in the hope of gaining a powerful skill or perk, until the dungeons became too dangerous and more and more people began to die. Now only the strongest of teams from the military were able to clear dungeons, and even they lost people fairly often.
“What about gold orbs?” I asked him after a pause in the conversation. “Are dungeons the only way to get those?”
“Not the only way, no,” he said. By this point, he was four drinks in and I had to break my only silver to keep paying for more. I didn’t complain, because the more Nikephoros drank, the more talkative he became. “You can find gold bosses above ground. Often they are weaker from having to live in the sun. But that doesn’t mean easy. They can still kill a strong party, especially since nobody has been hunting them for years.”
“Where could I find some above ground?”
“The gold bosses,” he replied, swirling his drink in his hand, “they like space. Like to have minions. Like to go to places that call to them, as if they still lived in a dungeon that was tailored to their tastes. Look for the older parts of the city or places of renown that have been abandoned.”
“Could you give specifics?” I pushed.
“Hmmph.” He frowned at me. “You’re gonna get yourself killed either way. Guess it ain’t no harm. One of our old farming grounds was the ancient harbors along the southern part of the city. One big one and two small ones down there, long since abandoned. Ghost-type monsters inhabit the area and often have a few real bosses. Make sure you bring holy weapons for those, though, or you can’t hurt ’em. They are nasty but not the worst of the worst if you have the right weapons.
“Other than that,” he continued, “we tried the Hippodrome a few times near the Patriarch’s enclave, but I hear that is dangerous ground these days. Those priests have gone bad, I’ve heard. Maybe some of the old forums. People used to say they found some gold bosses there on occasion. The open plazas give them space to gloat and lord it over their minions, the bastards.”
I had him draw me a rough map with his finger on the table so I was able to get a sense of where everything was. I had been close to several of the old forums, which were originally just large plazas for people to gather and sell goods in. I had been lucky not to stumble into them before I crafted my revolver, or I might not have survived.
Now that Nikephoros was feeling a bit more talkative, we spoke about his experiences in general and what it was like adventuring in the city. He had once been a legionnaire, as Constans had told me earlier. He had served his twenty years and been rewarded for his service, but reading between the lines of what he told me, I figured he had wasted the money and fell on hard times so he turned to adventuring.
“What caused all this?” I asked him, finally, after we had talked for over several hours. He was drunk enough that I felt safe asking such a broad question. “Why is this world overrun with monsters? Why do people get classes and skills and all this other stuff? Do you know?”
The sharp look he gave me wasn’t nearly as drunk as I had expected, his eyes piercing into my own.
“Do I know? Does anyone know?” he said after a moment, muttering into his drink. “Who knows? The old gods cursed us, most say. They broke something and released the monsters into the world. When it became clear that we wouldn’t survive and they couldn’t undo whatever monumental fuck-up they had caused, the priests say the gods sacrificed themselves to give us the classes and the cores and skills to try to help us fight back. I don’t know if any of it’s true, but whatever they did, it wasn’t enough, because we are all going to die eventually and this world will turn into nothing but monsters. Nothing we do will stop them rising every night until they are the only things left on the face of our world, feasting forever on the corpse of our civilization.”
Constans shivered as he spoke, his anger, bitterness, and nihilism washing over us both.
I bought him one more round and then signaled to Constans that it was time to go. We said our goodbyes, but Nikephoros just grunted in reply. Outside, night was beginning to fall and I watched as Sycae’s streets began to light up, the city clearly not turning in for the night. I wondered what I would have done if I had entered this world on that side of the water. Would I have been evicted for having no money? Or could I have found a class and begun a more traditional exploration of the world? Despite the dangers I lived with daily, this world had pushed me to learn how to use my new body better and helped me create my revolver, something I felt confident would be important in the future.
I turned away from the sight at the end of the bridge and followed Constans, who led me back to pick up my cloak. After that, she took me back to the main street and down toward the gate. The streets had begun to clear out as night fell, but the gate was the opposite. Instead of just a few guards standing watch like before, men and women lined the wall, preparing themselves for a night of attacks from the city.
“It gets loud here,” Constans said, leading me up a few ladders and then along an upper pathway that turned away from the wall. “But that is true everywhere, really. At least here, I’ve heard, you can get a clean bed.”
She led me to an inn perched at the very top of the city. It felt precarious but had open windows that let in the night air, dispelling some of the stench of the city below. I paid three copper for the night and got my own room, declining the meal the innkeeper offered me. I paid Constans four copper, giving her a bit extra for the outstanding assistance. That left me with only nineteen copper, but I still had nine blue orbs to trade with and two reserved for crafting, so I could always change those into silver and copper if I needed to.
Constans gushed at the tip, but I told her she had earned it and I appreciated her help.
“You want to show me to one last place tomorrow and then back to the gate?” I asked her. “I’ll pay you three nummi more for an hour or two of your time.”
“Sure!” she said, hiding the copper I had given her. “I’ll be here first thing.”
