Chương 29: INSANE LEVEL UP (Clickbait)

"Of course, traveler. To register a rank you—" Maddy stopped listening about four words in, because something more important had arrived in her brain, fully formed, non-negotiable. Panties. She wanted panties. She had died in denim shorts with no underwear, a thing past-Maddy had decided on a Tuesday, and present-Maddy had been living inside that decision for four days and she was done. She was getting clothes. She was getting silk. The appraisal had waited this long. It could wait an hour.

It could wait for fucking forever.

"Actually hold on." She stood up.

"Ben. We're going shopping."

"We literally just sat down."

"I'll spend the whole hobgoblin payout if I have to."

"You... can't. It's our gold."

"It's my gold."

"It's ours. Us."

"It's my dungeon."

"…"

"Yeah. Thought so."

"Fuck you. Fine." They left the guild. Out on the steps the city looked like a city where Maddy did not know which way southeast was.

"Sparkle. Make your ass useful. Silk district." The panel slid in fast. Faster than it slid in for anything that mattered. A pink dotted line unrolled across the cobblestone in front of her, glittering, a route. Google Maps for a girl who wanted underwear.

"Oh NOW you're helpful." [Have a wonderful trip, Maddy!] The city still smelled like lavender. Bread underneath it. John's empire, somehow, all the way up here. They followed the dots.

"This is a filler episode," Ben said. Maddy stopped and stared at him. Ben, a guy with boxer behaviors.

"Then go beat your dick to the elf girl if you want action."

"The hell? OnlyFans porn brain."

"Somewhat accurate. Okay. Keep moving. And you have a fucking hole the size of a bowling ball in your shirt. Why aren't you hype for this. It's like we're leveling up." Ben looked at his shirt. He looked at the hole. He looked at Maddy.

"... right. I forgot about it. Let's go." The silk district was awnings and stacked fabric and richer NPCs doing the too-even walk in nicer clothes, which made the walk look worse instead of better. The dots ended at a boutique. Needle and thread on the sign, gold, embroidered. Maddy didn't read the name. Names were for nerds. The seller was cliché garbage. Fucking dude just looked like a French asshole from the 1900s. Very not medieval behavior.

Thin guy, waxed mustache, a measuring tape over his shoulders he never measured anything with. He pressed his hands together when they walked in like she was the first customer of his life and not the four-hundredth. His whole dialogue tree was compliments. Ahh, traveler, you have the eye. The eye for quality. She let it wash over her. Rain on a windshield. Because the fabric was actually good. That was the problem.

It fell off the bolt and moved like water and it was so far past the brown Frosthorn-sheep tunic John had tried to sell her in Mossgrove that it lived in a different tax bracket. That thing had felt like wearing sand paper. No. Like… worse than sand paper. She bought an outfit. It was flowy, and it felt like something that breathed. The outfit was loose pants, a goldish belt across the hip, a long white top, long sleeves, fabric that kept moving for half a second after she stopped moving.

He even gave her a silk bag to carry her stuff. She looked FUCKING HOT.

"You're gonna dirty that in three seconds," Ben said. She could not hear the lit major very well. It came out muffled. Like his mouth was full of shit.

"Three silver," the seller said. She paused. Three silvers. The Frosthorn shitstain had been two. The actual silk that moved like water was one silver more than the scab. The economy was held together with tape and vibes. She'd stopped expecting it to make sense around the time an egg bought a room with two beds. She paid. Ben bought pants. The pants looked exactly like the pants Ben was already wearing. Dark, plain, thumb-mover pants.

He had walked into the most famous silk district in the kingdom, well, fuck, most famous silk district between two cities and one was a shit village with three people, but still, he located the one rack selling something indistinguishable from what he had on, and bought it, with money, on purpose. He also bought a silk shirt. This one at least didn't have a burn hole in the shoulder. The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

"You came to silk city and bought your own pants."

"They have pockets. You don't have pockets. You make me carry everything."

"… fair." Outside, fabric bagged, the math happened. She didn't decide to do the math. The math just ran. Background process she couldn't kill. Six golds and change, hobgoblin money minus the room in Mossgrove. The whatever inn they'd end up sleeping would probably cost a few silvers a night. The silk was three silvers. Ben's bullshit was two silvers. Food cost.

And the talisman sitting against her sternum gave her +20% loot drop and material urges, in writing, which meant she was going to keep buying shit, that was just real now, that was load-bearing. Six golds was not a lot of golds. And now they had five golds and a few silvers left.

"Ben."

"What?"

"We're fucking broke."

"We have like five gold coins left. It's fine. For a few weeks. Probably."

"We're gonna have like two golds by next week. The room's gonna bleed us every night, and this talisman won't let me stop shopping, and silk is somehow three silvers, but this is irrelevant. What I mean is: we need income."

"Income…"

"Like with quests. The board was full of people who'll pay to get shit killed. Which means we work out of the guild. Which means we need a rank. Which means—""We get appraised."

"Yeah. We get appraised."

"…back to the elf."

"Fucking right." Sylvael was at the counter when they came back. The guild had filled up, a dozen people now, tables busy, a few in armor leaning on the bar at the far end, the low room-buzz the system had assembled out of every fantasy tavern that ever existed. Maddy walked up.

"Okay. Appraisal. For real this time. Bring out the fucking…ball." Sylvael's polite face paused.

"…the ball?"

"The appraisal ball. The orb. You put your hand on it, it glows, it reads your level, the whole room gasps because my number's secretly insane," Ben said. He'd perked all the way up. The AI-slop apologist, awake now, because the glowing appraisal orb was a genre staple and some closeted part of him had been waiting his whole life to put a hand on one. Litmajor that read LitRPG in secret behavior.

"Travelers, there is no ball."

"There's always a ball."

"Appraisal is not done with a ball." Even voice. Hands still clasped.

"To hold a guild rank, you clear a registered quest or dungeon of the matching rank. Clear a registered F-rank, the guild certifies you as F. We verify the clear and stamp the record."

"We cleared a dungeon," Maddy said.

"We cleared the whole, like, Crypt of the fucking edge lord. And we have the amulet. You people lost your minds over the amulet."

"The Crypt of Eldarion's Folly is not registered, traveler."

"So what the fuck makes a quest count?" Ben asked.

"Registration. Issued and verified by the Guild Association. The Association keeps its seat in the capital." A small courteous beat.

"In Ravencrest." Ben went still.

"…Ravencrest."

"Yes, traveler. Seat of the Association. And of the Academy." He didn't ask which academy. He knew which academy, confirmed by the large vein pulsing on his forehead. And she knew because he liked to make sure to remind her whether she knew or not. He'd read about it on a metro that smelled like piss, three lines into a webnovel he'd already started hating. Ravencrest Academy. World of Valoria. Kael fucking DarkVeil, obsidian hair, touching himself in the back of a lecture hall while the air trembled.

The book was a map. The slop he'd left a one-star review on and wished a laptop theft over had a real address, and the real address ran the place that handed out the quests. Ben looked like he wanted to jump the shit out of himself.

"Maddy."

"What?"

"It's the book."

"I know dude."

"The metro one. Kael's school is the capital. The capital's real. This whole place is the book." Maddy looked at him. Looked at Sylvael. Looked back.

"This is like the billionth time you've told me this."

"We live in the fanfic."

"SHUT UP BEN."

"HE'S REAL."

"No fucking shit Ben. Stop tweaking."

"…right. Sorry." They both flipped Sylvael off. Sylvael had done nothing. It was a general flip-off, aimed at the situation, at Ravencrest, at the system, and Sylvael happened to be the nearest face. Sylvael smiled. She'd clocked the flip-off wasn't really hers to take, and somewhere she'd probably never say out loud, she was fine with it.

"If I may, travelers," she said, gentle.

"Eldarion's dungeons are an excellent way to gain rank." Maddy's head came back up.

"How… Aren't they like, the rare special unique bullshit? The amulet's literally Rare. Fucking John lavender mafia lost it. Dumbledore did forty minutes on the Pale Years. How is the legendary cursed-lord dungeon a grind spot."

"Eldarion left a great many items."

"Define a great many."

"A great many." The small smile again.

"Master Valdren performs the rite—the amulet, the velvet pouch, the counsel on great suffering—for nearly every adventurer who walks in holding a relic. There are a great many relics." Ben put his hand over his face.

"So the speech. The pouch. The it must not fall into the wrong hands. He runs this bullshit on everyone."

"Several times a week, traveler."

"And we sat through the whole thing."

"You did ask him to go faster. He went faster."

"…that was him going faster?"

"Yes." Ben asked the air.

"Clanker. System. Nearest dungeon. Rank. Party rec. Go." The panel slid in quick, helpful, because dungeons were apparently the other thing the system would do without a fight. [Nearest Dungeon, Ben!] [The Hollow Webs—D-Rank.] [Half a day's walk from Silvermarch!] [Recommended Party: Level 10, 3 adventurers!] [Sparkle] D-rank. Level 10. Three people. Maddy was 11. Ben was 9. One and a half people, maybe two, well, technically two but fuck that, and one of the halves had moved his thumb for a living. Or… index.

She moved her hand in the air to remember how the fuck you were supposed to write with a pencil. Lots of fingers were involved.

"Shit," she said.

"Yeah."

"We're not three people."

"Great fucking observation."

"Don't start dude." Sylvael, gentle, into the gap: "If you wish to fill out a party, travelers. There's a tavern in the lower district. The Gilded Tankard. It is where most adventurers begin."

"…begin," Maddy said.

"Low rank, traveler. Newer arrivals. Many are seeking parties of their own."

"Cool. Gilded Tankard. Noted."

"And if you have not yet taken lodging," Sylvael added, "the Bronze Lantern, three blocks east. Adventurers favor it. The food is honest, and they only overcharge a little."

"…a little."

"A little, traveler." The small smile.

"I would not send you somewhere that overcharged a lot."

"See, I respect that. Not you, but like…that. Bronze Lantern it is." They walked out, down the steps, into the lower-district direction the system was sparkling for them, because directions and dungeons, those it could do. Halfway down the street Ben stopped.

"Okay wait. Do we even need a third?" Maddy turned around.

"Hear me out. Can't we just, like, duo this. You've got Hyper Beam. Like you fucking one-shotted a four-thousand-HP boss, AND you did twenty thousand damage, your numbers are broken. Could have killed his ass five times. Plus the—" he flapped a hand "—the Pikachu frisbee thing."

"The official name's Volt Toss. Which fucking sucks dicks, actually. So yeah. We can keep this one."

"And my wax arc's honestly been coming along, well, I haven't tried it a single time so I'm lying, but, you know. So between the two of us—""Your…wax arc."

"Yeah."

"BEN." She walked back two steps to do this at proper range.

"THIS ISN'T FUCKING SOLO LEVELING. You're not the secret prodigy. I'm not the secret prodigy. The system looked at us and said three people at level ten, and yeah it's a clanker and a marketing intern and wrong about almost everything—but it has never once been wrong about a number. If it says three, we bring three, or one of us is gonna find out what the Pony thing felt like."

"…the Hyper Beam, though."

"Empties my entire mana bar. Then I chug a Monster and I'm a wet level-one for a full minute. You wanna hold a dungeon by yourself for a minute on your wax arc?" Ben opened his mouth.

"…no," he admitted.

"So we bring three." He didn't try a third time. She was already at the corner.