“Do you have it in black?” Elliott asked.

  “Yes, we do, sir,” Lucille replied.

  Elliott looked at Isabel.

  “I’ll take the light-blue,” she said.

  “Get me a black one and a light-blue one,” Elliott said to Lucille. The smile on her face was almost as bright as the lights around them. She shouted over at another attendant that she needed to go to the back and darted off quickly, like she was making sure Elliott couldn’t change his mind.

  Once she was out of sight, Elliott felt a tug on the hem of his ridiculous doublet. He looked down to see his sister staring back at him, a frown on her face.

  “What?”

  Elsie pointed towards the shop floor. Elliott followed the direction of her tiny finger to Rose, holding a leather satchel in her hands, examining it in the light like she was a professional leatherworker.

  “She’s not coming with us.”

  Elsie’s frown deepened, still pointing at Rose.

  “She doesn’t need inventory.”

  Elsie’s lips turned down. Elliott sighed. Rose had put the satchel back and walked towards them at the counter.

  “There’s some really nice packs here,” Rose said, as she came to stand beside Isabel. She would probably need some inventory at some point, Elliott admitted to himself.

  “Did you find a bag you liked?” Elliott asked.

  “I was just admiring them. Wasn’t looking for anything in particular,” Rose replied.

  Then Elliott felt another tug on his doublet. He glanced down at Elsie, who raised her eyebrows at him, pointing at Rose, then at the pouch behind the glass cabinet that Elliott had already asked for two of.

  “She doesn’t need that much inventory!”

  Elsie pursed her tiny pink lips, folded her arms, and then a small black pin winked into existence by her head.

  “You’re going to fight me over this?”

  The black pin rotated slightly, the pointy end aimed at his head.

  He smiled at her as he hung his head. How could he ever deny her when she was so insistent?

  He turned to Rose, who had a curious look on her face at Elsie. He ignored Isabel’s smile, that she was trying to hide. She was very used to this and she knew as well as he did that Elsie always won.

  “What’s your favourite colour, Rose?” Elliott asked, just as Lucille returned with two small boxes.

  “Excuse me?” Rose replied.

  “Your favourite colour. What is it?”

  “Uh…” Rose frowned at him, then looked down at Lucille opening the two boxes to reveal the black and light-blue pouches, nestled on soft cushions. “That kind of blue, actually.”

  “Lucille. Would you be so kind as to get another of those light-blue pouches please. And give us three annual subscriptions while you’re at it.”

  “Just so I have it right. You want three of these Adventurer’s Ultramax Two-Fifty Pouches and three annual two hundred and fifty slot subscriptions?”

  “Yes,” Elliott replied, then glanced to Korin. “Hold on. Since it seems I’m buying for everyone – Korin, do you need more inventory?”

  Korin beamed beneath his beard, but shook his head as he pulled the straps of his leather pack. “This is good enough for me, Sir.”

  Elliott nodded and turned back to Lucille. “Just the three then. And while you’re at it, get me three money pouches. Try not to make them too expensive.”

  Lucille’s smile was even brighter than the one before.

  Ten minutes later, Elliott left the store, the clamour of the market rushing to his ears. He almost smiled hearing it. Just another similarity to the streets he had grown up in – street vendors shouting their wares, young boys selling papers on street corners, the click-clack of horse hooves dragging carriages behind them. Of course, the variety of races was different. Well, not even races – outright different species, though none surprised him. He'd seen similar species in the old dungeons on earth, if not the streets. His eyes passed over the massive gryphon paddock and their beastkin handlers. He’d be taking one of those when he got the chance. It would be slower than flying himself, but it was a bit like driving. It was just more comfortable when someone else did it.

  He turned back to the others, as Rose was the last one to leave, holding the light-blue inventory pouch box in one hand, a similar-sized brown leather money pouch in the other. The attendant holding the door open let it close gently behind her.

  Elliott had refunded the test bag he had previously purchased. Any bag could be bound and unbound to the System Inventory. He’d bound the Ultramax instead and had done a quick check that it had worked. The three inventory pouches, the three storage subscriptions and the three money pouches had set him back 840 gold. That left him 14 starforged bars, 97 platinum coins and a further 166 gold coins. He had a feeling that was a lot, though it hardly mattered. Making money would be easy for him. And he did have a couple of kings to lean on if he needed to.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  “Godfrey,” Elliott said. The Royal Captain looked at him. “Mind just waiting here for a few minutes. I need to talk with my aides.”

  The captain nodded and waited by the store entrance as Elliott led Isabel, Rose and Korin a few metres away from the store. There were some street kids in rags loitering at the next corner, their eyes scanning the market, falling on Elliott and his group, before returning to scanning others. Street rats. Looking for their next target – someone too busy to notice the removal of their purse or a loose trinket. He glanced down at Elsie, who also had her eyes on them. She could probably still recall when the both of them had been street rats themselves. The orphanage hardly had enough to feed all the mouths. The kids that survived were the ones that could find other means to feed themselves.

  [Walls of Silence]

  “Korin. Confirm something for me. You don’t have a System here, do you?”

  “System?”

  “An interface that is always accessible? Allows you to complete quests for experience and stats and abilities?”

  Korin frowned. “We don’t have anything like that on our world.”

  “So you don’t have a way of knowing your stats?”

  “Stats?”

  “You were an adventurer?”

  Korin nodded.

  “How did you earn your rank?”

  “Oh, I see. A combination of tournaments and exams.” He peered towards Rose. “Rose here will be going to an academy, and once they test her for her current rank with an exam, she has to train and study and practice. Then when they think she’s ready, or if she thinks she’s ready, she will take some exams to test whether she is at the right level, before she has to enter a tournament and depending on how she does in the tournament will determine whether she will be promoted. It’s similar if you don’t go to an academy and go through the Adventurer’s Guild.”

  “Good,” Elliott said. It confirmed what he already thought. “Don’t mention this to anyone.”

  “I won’t, Sir,” Korin bowed his head.

  Elliott turned to Rose. “Did you check your status?”

  She nodded to him but he could see in her face that she was trying to make sense of Korin’s words.

  “It means you’ll have an advantage,” Elliott told her. “If the System starts giving you quests, that is. You’ll be able to increase your stats faster, if I’m right. I suspect you're Platinum or Mithril rank according to this world’s rankings. Even with the System, you’ll still need to master certain things to become stronger. Not using a Focus for your magic for one, which they should teach you at the academy.”

  “I’m fairly weak, then?” Rose asked, a flash of annoyance passing across her face.

  “Weak is relative,” Isabel cut in. Elliott raised an eyebrow at her. She was accepting Rose as one of them now.

  “How did Earth get it so wrong?” Rose said, but it sounded more like a rhetorical question than anything else. Even if it wasn’t, Elliott ignored it. He tipped his money pouch over, dropping the 166 gold coins into his hand. The starforged bars and the platinum coins had been deposited to his inventory. All 97 platinum coins had taken the same slot, as had all 14 starforged bars. He passed half the gold coins to Korin and the other half to Rose.

  “You two go with Godfrey. Continue shopping if you want or whatever you want to do for now. We’ll see you once we’re back from the dungeon.”

  “You’re going now?” Rose asked.

  “Shortly,” Elliott replied. “Now go. Oh, and watch out for the street kids. They’ll likely come up to you, pretending to need a meal, while another one takes your money pouch.”

  Both Rose and Korin looked beyond him at the kids on the corner, then Rose swept her eyes across the market noticing the others.

  “I’ll bear it in mind,” she said before she and Korin walked towards Godfrey.

  Elliott dismissed the [Walls of Silence] and started walking towards the vendors at their market stalls, beelining for a tailor he had noticed earlier. One that had clothes far more to his liking.

  “Let’s get some more appropriate clothes first but make it quick.”

  Isabel nodded as she walked alongside him.

  Elliott stared at himself in the mirror as he cast the spell.

  [Elliott]

  Instantly, the long-sleeved black cotton shirt he had bought appeared with black linen pants that didn’t hug his legs like those ghastly hose he had been wearing. A black jacket wrapped around him, more in the styles he would find back home than the gaudy lord’s doublet he had been given by Cedric. That tailor in the market was ahead of his time. Elliott had made some more clothing orders, tailored specifically to him, but it wouldn’t be ready for a week. Still, this would do. It was much more his style.

  He was a lanky fellow, a bit over six-feet tall, but with an unassuming build. Everything about him was unassuming. The small, black eyes and the narrow face with pointed chin, topped off with messy black hair that hung just below his ears. The pentagram scar on his forehead was hidden behind an illusion.

  Nobody on Earth would ever think this lanky man, with clothes a little too big for him could be the most dangerous man on the planet. Well, none who still lived. It had been almost forty years of being an adventurer when people started calling him murderhobo. They thought they were being derogatory. He embraced the name. He had long ago embraced the personality. Without the wandering part.

  [Murderhobo]

  Instantly, the clothes he wore vanished. Black trousers appeared, tucked into his black combat boots, laced to the knee. Two layers of t-shirts – a thinner short-sleeved one beneath a heavier long-sleeved one – covered his body. His heavy knee-length trenchcoat settled around his shoulders, various mana-filled orbs hidden within it. There was a black belt at his waist with more orbs hanging from it, as well as Elsie – as long as she was within sight, the spell would teleport her to him. In the mirror, the hilts of dozens of swords, daggers, axes and maces stuck out from his back, and the pentagram scar became visible on his forehead, adding to the menace of the overall look.

  There was a knock at the door to his bedchambers.

  “Come in.”

  Isabel and Lyla entered the room, followed by Aldric.

  “I tried to tell him that he wasn’t coming but he insisted on speaking with you,” Isabel said. She was in her battledress too, the black cloche styled skirt and Death’s Whisper strapped to her back. Lyla was in her dark-green and brown leather gear, dagger hilts peeking from her four sheathes. Surprisingly, Aldric was also in leathers, with a curved blade secured to his waist.

  Elliott cocked his head.

  “I need to come with you,” Aldric said.

  “Why?” Elliott replied, creating a portal to the side of him linked to the portal node just inside the Forest of Shadows, near to the temple. Isabel nudged Lyla and the both of them walked through the portal.

  “You’ll need my help inside.”

  “Is there something about the dungeon you know that we need to know?”

  Aldric hesitated meeting Elliott’s eyes. “No, but you’ll need me to speak with the Twins.”

  “I doubt it. If they brought me here, they hardly need a middleman to speak with me. Unless they’re shy?” Elliott winked. “You’ll only slow us down. Don’t worry. Once I’m done there, I’ll do what I told you I would. Put you on the throne. I’m a man of my word. Now, if there’s nothing else?”

  Aldric shook his head.

  Elliott strolled through the portal and looked back at Aldric. “We’ll be back soon,” he said before collapsing the gateway. He turned and caught up to Isabel and Lyla as they emerged from the forest, the temple visible a few miles away.

  “Let’s go clear a dungeon.”