Danica pulled her hand from the crystal. The display dimmed.
She looked at the sleeping hedgehog behind the counter, then at Rhea. "Do you want to go wake up the hedgehog, or should I?"
Rhea was already carefully getting to her feet, with the deliberate motions of someone working around damage that hadn't finished hurting yet. "Tried talking to him earlier," she said. "Don't think he speaks English."
Danica considered this. Then she remembered Translation. Hopefully it would work the same way it had in the Dungeon.
She glanced at the merchant, then back at Rhea. "I might be able to help with that."
Walking over Danica knocked on the counter. Two knocks, not aggressive, hopefully the universal language of someone who needed assistance and was trying to be polite about it.
The Urchinfolk woke with a sharp inhale. His quills fluffed outward in a full aggressive halo, his spectacles sliding sideways, and he muttered darkly before his eyes had fully opened.
"Ach, wunderbar. Another clueless human who did not take a translation skill. Now they will yell, talk slow like I am the idiot, and then make bad hand gestures like a drunk tourist at a train station."
Danica's translation skill processed his diatribe without fanfare.
She kept her expression neutral. "Good morning."
The merchant's quills went very still.
His beady black eyes moved to her face with the focused suspicion of someone recalculating an entire situation. "You — understood that."
"Every word."
"Hm." He straightened his spectacles with one claw. Smoothed his quills down with the dignity of someone pretending they hadn't just been caught complaining. "Well. Then." He cleared his throat and recited in the tone of someone reading from a card he deeply resented: "Willkommen to the Regional Tutorial Dungeon 1357 Welcome Center. Please state the nature of your emergency, grievance, question, or — ach, let us be honest — your inevitable regret."
Danica glanced back at Rhea. "He says welcome and asks what we need. There was some editorial content I've left out."
"What kind of editorial content?"
"The kind that suggests he's had a long day and we're not helping."
The merchant pointed at Danica. "I like this human. She is accurate."
"He likes me," Danica told Rhea.
"I can tell," Rhea said. "What's his name?"
Danica relayed the question. He drew himself up to his full height, which was not impressive in absolute terms but was clearly meant to be. "I am Bertholdt Quillsworth the Third. Senior Merchant Associate, Grade Seven, Regional Welcome Center Division." A pause. "You may call me Bert."
Danica passed it along.
Rhea blinked. "Of course his name is Bert."
Bert addressed Rhea directly in a tone that suggested he was doing her a significant favor. She couldn't understand a word of it.
"He says," Danica translated, "that he can understand everything you say, he simply declines to respond in languages he considers inefficient." She paused. "I'm paraphrasing slightly."
Rhea's expression was flat. "Slightly."
"He used the phrase 'barbarically limited phoneme structures.'"
A brief silence.
"Right," Rhea said.
Bert folded his small clawed hands on the counter and launched into what was clearly a prepared explanation, the cadence of someone who had given the same speech many times and had stopped pretending to enjoy it. Danica translated in pieces.
"This place is a centralized store repository. Neutral ground. The gems in the counter connect to different merchant inventories across the System — weapons, armor, consumables, gear. You can buy from any of them here and sell to most of them." She glanced at Bert for confirmation. He waved a paw impatiently. "He's basically a directory."
"We can sell here too?" Rhea asked.
Danica relayed it. Bert answered with the air of someone explaining that water was wet.
"Ja, ja. Monster components, salvaged gear, raw materials — if the System considers it loot, the interfaces will buy it." He peered over the counter at them both. "You did bring loot, ja? Please tell me you at least looted the bodies."
Danica translated.
A beat.
"I didn't loot anything," Rhea said.
Bert made a sound that could only be described as a tiny, horrified groan.
"He's distressed," Danica reported.
"I can tell."
Bert pressed both paws flat on the counter and looked at Rhea with the expression of someone trying to locate their last reserves of professional patience. "Where," he said, through Danica, "did she think she was going to get credits?"
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
Rhea's jaw shifted slightly. "It's not like I could have put a carcass in this thing." She reached back without looking and tapped the strap of the standard-issue starter pack against the wall behind her — the System's idea of basic equipment, a canvas bag slightly smaller than a school backpack. "Plus, I was a little busy trying not to die to stop and fill my pockets."
Bert absorbed this. Then he said something short and resigned.
"He says that's the most common reason and he's heard it four hundred and twelve times," Danica translated. "He also says it doesn't make it less painful to witness."
"He's keeping count?"
Danica asked. Bert answered with great solemnity.
"He keeps a ledger. Several ledgers, actually. He has been staffing Welcome Centers for—" She paused, listening carefully. "Sixty-three integration cycles."
The number sat in the air for a moment. Danica didn't know how long a cycle was, but the math suggested whatever Bert had seen in this room made their four days look like a vacation. He met her eyes briefly, then looked back at his ledger with the practiced efficiency of someone who had learned not to let that number land too heavily on people.
"What about refunds?" Rhea asked.
Bert grinned, showing small sharp teeth, and delivered his answer with what could only be described as relish.
"All purchases are final," Danica translated. "No refunds. No returns. No exceptions." She paused. "He enjoys that part."
"He would," Rhea said.
Bert said something else. Danica snorted.
"What?"
"He says the System doesn't coddle bad decisions. He also says — direct quote — that he has seen people spend their entire credit reserves on decorative cloaks and then weep about having no armor, and he feels no sympathy, because the cloak did at least look very nice."
Rhea stared at Bert. "Has that actually happened?"
Bert answered without waiting for translation.
"Multiple times," Danica said. "He keeps a separate ledger for that one."
The almost-smile appeared again at the corner of Rhea's mouth. "Of course he does."
"Nobody," Bert added, unprompted, in the tone of a man who had carried this grievance for some time, "ever reads the full terms."
Danica translated. Then, because she couldn't help it: "I would have read them."
Bert fixed her with a deeply skeptical look.
"I would."
"Name one other person who would."
Danica opened her mouth. She thought of Mark, who had once clicked through an eleven-page software agreement in four seconds flat, then immediately complained about the install taking too long. She closed her mouth again.
"I'll get back to you," she said.
Bert nodded as if this confirmed everything he'd ever suspected about humans and returned to his ledger. A small, satisfied nod. The nod of a man whose ledger was never wrong.
Mark. The name stayed lit somewhere behind her sternum, steady and green. Level Two Mage. Active. She set it down carefully, not away, just down, and turned to Rhea.
"What are you shopping for?"
Rhea was quiet for a moment. The kind of quiet with a calculation running behind it. "That's the problem," she said. "I bought the chestplate in the dungeon shop. Spent most of what I had." She paused. "I have ten credits."
Danica absorbed this without changing her expression. She didn't know exactly what ten credits bought out here, but she had a feeling the answer was not much. Possibly nothing.
"Okay," she said.
Rhea's jaw tightened slightly. Not embarrassment, Rhea Laurent did not appear to do embarrassment, but something adjacent to it. The look of someone who had made a tactically sound decision in the moment and was now dealing with its downstream consequences. The chestplate had taken two dents that would have gone through her otherwise. It had been the right call. It had also left her with nothing.
"The loot would have helped," she said. Not a complaint. Just an honest accounting.
"I have monster components," Danica said. "From my dungeon. I can't use most of them — I don't have the crafting skills, and I wasn't going to haul raw bat parts through a regional dungeon." She paused. "You could sell them. Get yourself a working budget."
Rhea looked at her.
The silence lasted long enough that Danica resisted the urge to fill it.
"I don't need charity," Rhea said. Her voice was even. Not hostile, just a line being drawn in a place she'd clearly drawn it before, probably more times than she'd counted.
"It's not charity. I was going to sell them anyway." Danica kept her tone even, trying to sell the lie. "You'd be doing me the favor of not making me deal with the interface."
Rhea looked at her for another beat. They both knew she was lying. Something moved behind the soldier's eyes, pride running the numbers against need, need making a reasonable argument, pride not quite ready to concede the point.
"I'll think about it," she said finally.
Which was not yes. But it wasn't no, and Danica had enough experience with people who'd learned early not to accept help gracefully to know that I'll think about it was often the first step toward eventually, quietly, accepting it.
She didn't push. She turned back to Bert and bought four small healing potions without deliberating, 200 credits each, a flat 30 HP. Not elegant. But they were backup, and backup was the whole point.
"What's your credit total?" Rhea asked from beside her, looking at the interface with the focused attention of someone very carefully not thinking about the ten credits in her own account.
"About thirty-nine thousand after the dungeon."
A silence.
"After the dungeon," Rhea repeated.
"I found a vendor early. And I picked up everything that wasn't nailed down." She paused. "And some things that were."
Rhea looked at her for a moment with an expression that was difficult to read, then looked back at the interface. "The monster components," she said. "How much are we talking."
It wasn't quite acceptance. But it wasn't I'll think about it anymore, either.
Danica kept her expression neutral and turned to Bert. "Can you give us a rough valuation on a standard haul from a three-day personal dungeon? Tunnel Rats, Gloombats, Cave Creepers, mixed components."
Bert consulted something behind the counter, quills twitching with the arithmetic. "Depending on how well you harvested them — between two hundred and nine hundred GC."
Danica translated.
Rhea was quiet for a moment. Then: "That would cover armor."
"And then some."
Another silence. Pride made one more pass. Need waited it out.
"Fine," Rhea said. The word came out flat and final, the way she said most things. "But I'm paying you back."
"Sure," Danica said.
She meant it in the way that left room for Rhea to decide later whether she actually wanted to, and she suspected Rhea understood that perfectly and had chosen to accept the ambiguity because it was better than the alternative.
Bert was already pulling up the sales interface with the brisk efficiency of someone who had been waiting for them to get there.
Danica was about to hand over the component inventory when the thought she'd set down earlier stood back up — a name on a list, glowing steady and green and very much alive.
Level Two Mage. Personal Dungeon. Active.
She straightened slowly. Not wanting to get her hopes up Danica paused before speaking.
"Bert," she said. "Hypothetical question."
He narrowed his eyes. "I have found that humans who begin with 'hypothetical question' are never asking something hypothetical."
"I asked the other terminal about deliveries, and it told me I had to find a merchant. Can you deliver items I buy to people in their personal dungeons?"
Bert was quiet for a moment. His quills shifted. Then he said, carefully, "Ja. This is possible." A pause. "For a fee."
Danica turned to Rhea.
Rhea read her face. Whatever she saw there made something shift behind her eyes..
"Your friend," Rhea said.
"And yours."
A silence. Rhea looked at the interface. She looked at Bert. She looked back at Danica with the expression of someone who had stopped arguing a point they'd already lost.
"How much of your loot are you willing to sell?"
"All of it," Danica said.
Rhea was quiet for exactly one more second. Then she reached for the interface.