New Magic Brothers: A scholar and a tattoo artist walk into a tavern…

Rum was awoken forcefully by Rulli shaking him. "Time to get up, my bald friend! Get something to eat. Elrith and the rest want to get back to Ermos before nightfall."

Rum had been awake all night long to finalize his latest invention. This included figuring out a way of calibrating his method to Akalios' Calculus, a task which he'd eventually accomplished using the constancy of natural attributes. And all of this, all of his new method – the Rum's Calculus – all of the experiments and improvements he'd made to it, all had now been put into a new spell: Rumalize.

"Like analyze! Just that it's me who's doing the analyzing" he explained excitedly to Rulli and the rest of the party, as he chewed the salty mini-sausages and loudly cracked and crushed the buttered biscuits with his teeth. "Would you like to know your current power level? You might've gone up since this dungeon. And I could tell you. Right now." Rum tempted his audience.

"Well…" Rulli thought for a second, "maybe you can. But I would like to see a bit of how it works first. Maybe you show it to us on yourself?"

"No problem!" Rum smiled and got up, swallowing the last bits of his food within a second. Touching his own chest he spoke. "Rumalize!" The information flooded Rum, and he laid it out to the rest of the party as quickly as it came.

Rum (male human)

"I spent quite a lot of time yesterday to try and deduce the effects that my remaining injuries are having on me. It seems they are preventing me from regaining my full health potential, and limiting my abilities to rest."

Rulli, Gilda, Darmon, and even Elrith were all gaping at Rum. While Rulli was the first to voice their collective thoughts. "You are level 42!? Really?"

"Your power level is higher than any of us" Gilda commented, still gaping.

"You're even higher than Elrith!" Rulli said, and everyone turned to look at The Heartpiecer, who turned a little embarrassed by all the attention. She opened her mouth to say something, but didn't quite manage to find words.

"Well I don't know about that" Rum reflected loudly on their comments, "I would have to check all of your power levels with Rumalize to know for certain. Maybe some of you shot up a lot of power after the dungeon."

"Not that many power levels!" Rulli retorted, his face still showing awe. "Even if we did, nobody goes up three power levels after one dungeon run. Not even with those difficulties we faced. Small chance Elrith is as high as you now. But you can check me out. I'm curious now about what your spell will reveal about me."

Rum nodded gladly, and walked up to Rulli. He touched the top of his head, and opened his mouth. "Rumalize". He laid it out to the party.

Rulli (male dwarf)

"Hey, Gilda!" Rulli said, a jovial smile spreading across his face, "we're now the same level! No longer you need to protect your dear husband."

Gilda smiled in return, a skeptical trace on her expression. "Yeah?" she replied, then turned over to Rum. "Could you check me too?"

Rum nodded firmly with a smile, and went over to her, touching the woman's head while uttering the spell. "Rumalize". He laid it out to the party.

Gilda (female dwarf)

"Oh husband" Gilda stood up and went over to Rulli, who now mildly disappointment. She stroked her husband's hair around his ears. "You still need your Gilda to look after you it seems. But keep up the good work, one day you'll reach my level." She paused for a while, just standing, smiling and stroking her man's hair. Then added another thought. "Of course on that day the goal post may have moved. But don't think about that!"

A little laughter burst out from somewhere unexpected. It came from Darmon. No explanation for his laughter was given, instead he just smoothly turned to Rum. "Me too wizard. Rumalize me."

Rum repeated the affair as he'd done with the others, and laid out the details.

Darmon (male human)

"Watch out Rulli" Darmon said as Rum finished his outline, "I'm coming for your level. Soon I won't be the lowest leveled in this group anymore." He finished speaking with a smug smile. Rulli just gave a friendly shut-your-piehole-waving gesture in reply.

"And then there was just you, Elrith" Rum said while beginning to walk up to her. However Elrith didn't need to say anything. Instead she just gave Rum a disappointed look, prompting him to change course and go back to his spot around the fire. "I guess that's still a no then." he whispered to White Rose, who'd been quietly and motionlessly observing the whole ordeal, as was rapidly becoming zes habits.

Breakfast over, the party soon packed their belongings, and set off before the caravan on towards Ermos City, with Rum and White Rose carrying small mountains of loot on their backs. Under this heavy load, with little sleep, and with his internal damages still holding him back from a normal stamina recovery, Rum overcharged Beast of Burden to endure the long walk. Damn I'm glad for that spell, he thought with gratitude, his magic spiting and concealing a desperate inner voice that wanted so much to relax and for this whole job to be over.

As the party arrived at the outskirts of the city late in the afternoon, with the ocean of small and large buildings ahead, Elrith turned around and looked over at her fellows:

"First we should head over to The Mecha Gnomes' Revenge." she commented, then turned towards Rum, "Rum, we are going to pay our guild taxes first. You should come with us, and maybe finalize your application while there. Okay?" Rum could do little but nod in reply, Beast of Burden the only thing keeping him going at the moment.

As the party moved along the busy highway amongst shops, offices and many houses, it didn't take long for them to start seeing the Mecha Gnomish Quarter, popularly nicknamed The Iron City. Their tallest buildings, which had dozens of floors, and which were collectively called The Iron Towers, could be seen from relatively far away. Though they were called towers, Rum reckoned they were more like miniature cities in their own right. A single iron tower would typically have a reception center at the bottom with mecha gnome-sized cafes and shops (mecha gnomes after all being about 7/10th of a regular human). Going upwards Rum recalled rumours of mechanical contraptions called elevators, which were unique to the towers. Iron cage, that's how people had described them. Iron where people voluntarily entered in order to be lifted, or elevated, up in the air by twisted iron wires and always available steam engines. Once lifted to their designated floors, the cages, the story went, would be opened by attendants to let out the temporary, voluntary captive, who often lived or worked in the higher floors. Sometimes these higher floors were housing, or smaller establishments such as bars and restaurants. But sometimes there were also great and magnificent rooms the size of two whole floors, made for parties with dance floors and many tables for eating, or for performances by famous bards and jokers and arranged like an entire theatre with a scene and with rows upon rows of seats climbing progressively higher. Meanwhile, at the top of the towers, there Rum had heard that the most affluent mecha gnomish clans lived, with lavish housing complexes that spanned entire floors, and artificial bathing ponds decorating the roofs. Pools, Rum remember they were called. Like bathtubs the size of small house.

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"That's our destination!" Elrith pointed as they started to get closer to The Iron City, the sky starting to fill up with trails of smoke, while aggressively abrupt and loud pipes blasted from afar, announcing the arrivals and departures of the myriad iron horses moving the mecha gnomes within their own quarter, or up to the main gate at high speeds.

"And that's our building!" She pointed towards one of the iron towers. "The new official headquarters of The Mecha Gnomes' Revenge. Everyone just calls it the HQ." Elrith hadn't faced any of the party when talking, but Rum understood she must've been speaking to him, since he was the only one who hadn't been there. Although he had some general knowledge of the place.

As they entered a side-street from the highway leading into Ermos, they saw for their first dozens of meters little but simple houses with stone-basements on either side, before quickly arriving at a wide, low-standing, open gate. On the top of the gate a plaque hang, reading "Welcome Strangers, To The City of Iron!" Beneath the text was painted a smiling, handsome caped mecha gnome, ready to deliver a big welcoming embrace.

Walking together with his party in a line, and with the mountain of loot on his back, Rum came into a hard-surfaced, grey hewed landscape, with everywhere across it a small sea of mecha gnomes. Continuing into this sea of gnomes, Rum glanced at many of them. The mecha gnomes typically wore simple plain-colored capes, variably beautifully decorated shirts, rough working pants, uniformly shaped quality boots, while the large majority had either typically plain short hair, or plain half-long at most. Thus it seemed to Rum that these mecha gnomes put all their design-choices into their shirts, whose motifs and colors varied greatly from gnome to gnome, while leaving everything else to what was only plain, efficient, standard wear. As they got past a few initial waves of the little people, Rum saw several mecha gnomes walking out from a nearby iron tower. They held black boxes by handles. For a while Rum wondered if these boxes were made of wood or iron, before he realized it had to be wood, or else the gnomes would hardly be strong enough to carry them. Passing this wave of gnomes as well, Rum saw other gnomes, a different, a rougher sort, who mainly walked to and fro along the myriad of small but perfectly crafted stone streets, wearing sun-shielding caps in some cases, and eye-protecting headgear in others.

Concluding his observations, Rum had to ask about it all. "Why are there so many of them here? Isn't it late? Don't they need to eat and go to bed soon?"

"Mecha gnomes often work into the evening" Elrith responded, "and eating doesn't take so much time here. All mecha gnomes eat at the public cafeterias like that one over there." She pointed at a giant box-shaped wooden building with an externally visible iron frame, and a small entrance at the front. "Many of them are probably going to and from the cafeterias as we speak." Rum noticed a queue, dozens of gnomes long, standing outside the building. "There are also tunnels beneath us which connect some of the larger buildings with the cafeterias, so the gnomes that we see here on the surface are actually just half or so of the gnomes working at this hour."

Rum was fascinated byhearing this. He had never heard of the mecha gnomes building a network of tunnels under the Iron City before, and it kept him observing his surroundings with even more interest.

But the party moved onwards to the HQ, which was one of the towers a little bit further inside the Iron City. And as they walked, it was fun Rum thought, walking along the streets of the Iron City. Even though many if not the large majority of the buildings here were multifloored – sometimes having as many as four floors for a normal house – each floor was still quite noticeably smaller than an equivalent human floor. Rum felt a little like walking inside a city made for children. He could easily see into the second floors of the houses on the other side of the road for instance, whereupon he saw gnome mums and -daddies baking, gnome children drawing with what looked like charcoal, and even a luxuriously caped gnome painting a grandiose iron horse on a white canvas. Twice as they moved down the streets they also had to stop and wait as iron horses, and their wagons, passed them by along by iron trails built into the stone. Activity everywhere! Rum observed. As they started to approach the HQ building, the wizard even saw a nearby space where somewhere between 50 and 100 gnomes were worked on constructing the first two floors of what looked to be a new iron tower. All the builder gnomes wore trauma-protective headgear, with their capes all uniformly designed and unusually short – a feature of the capes probably intended as a measure against accidents. At the base of this construction site was another group of gnomes arguing animatedly over a wooden table with what appeared to be building schematics. Rum figured they might be some combination of architects, engineers, and construction managers. One particular gnome stood out of place, as this was one of those gnomes who was carrying around a rectangular black box with a handle. This gnome also had curled half-long hair, which was an unusual beautification among gnomes, and appeared to be talking exceedingly well-mannered in the face of fists slamming against the table and angry expressions of frustration that reminded Rum of Elrith. A fact he intentionally chose not to mention, and instead preferred to just drift his gaze onto the now rapidly approaching HQ tower.

The HQ was a busy place, and huge. Rum didn't bother to count how many floors there were, but he guessed there must be around two dozen. That in itself wasn't everything that made it huge though, it was also taking up the width and depth of an entire block of buildings, while a beautiful park with numerous wooden seats and tables surrounded it. They had to enter the park, which had all kinds of thick trees, lush bushes, beautiful flowers, and fabulous fountains on either side of a path that was part-stone, part lawn, and leading up to a great entrance doorway. Within the park itself sat many groups of what Rum guessed to be parties. The parties were of all sorts, including fierce-looking and harmless-looking, many and few, ethnically homogenous and complete mixes of kin, with every major kin represented from dwarves, elves, gnomes and humans.

Among the gnomes were both plentiful of mecha gnomes, and a few wild-gnomes. Among the elves were all of dark elves, wood elves, even sky elves, and the more cosmopolitan elves of Olam, which were elves that behaved more like humans and lived a plenty across Ermos' towns and cities, mixing in seamlessly, to the extent that one sometimes simply treated them as humans, albeit with pointy ears. When statistics for humans were counted the Olam elves were sometimes bundled together with humans for this very reason. Because of this Olam elves were also sometimes viewed as half-elves, post-elves, or derogatorily albeit rarely by other elven kin as fake elves. Most Olam elves didn't take offense to this though, but took the counter view that the "true elves" were relics of old times, but some took it to heart and felt a longing for a return to the "true elven" kinds. For this reason there were Olam elves who would sometimes couple with wood elven or dark elven families, and assimilate into their cultures. Sometimes this worked out, and sometimes the Olam elves returned back to the cities, not able to endure the more isolated and simple lives of other elven kinds, finding such lives boring, and socially and materially restrictive. Rum recalled having meet Olam elves who'd heard these stories directly from the witnesses' mouths.

As they came to the entrance Rum saw a new plaque, this one was even larger than the one for the whole of The Iron City. It read "The Mecha Gnomes' Revenge. To Arms Against The Dungeon Lords!". As with the other plaque it had a large painting, or in this case three paintings, beneath the text. This time there were three green-caped gnomes, each one in a battle cry pose. Here the left gnome had a small loaded crossbow raised in the air, the little gnomish mouth painted as if screaming its lungs out. To the center, and a little larger than the other two, was a gnome in scaled armor with a short-sword and its eyes pointed towards the sky as if communicating with the gods. This one had a less extreme scream painted on its face. Lastly, and to the right, was a gnome wearing both a robe and a cape, with a wand similarly pointed towards the sky, and with the least extreme scream of them all. Together they represented the classic trio of the ranger, the warrior and the mage.

Moving inside Rum saw to the left three receptionists working along each of their short but wide reception desks, their status as receptionists clearly marked with signs nailed to the walls above their heads. To the right Rum got to stare at the famous elevators; those iron cages pulling and sliding people up and down the tower, and powered by steam engines presumably situated underground. To the front was a row full of short clerk desks with similar signs above their heads. Some of the desks were empty, but most were manned by mecha gnomes, who were servicing various parties. The servicing included reading out loud from papers, handing over papers to be signed, inspecting loot and presumably value estimating it, and arguing with party members.

As Elrith eyed an available gnome clerk, she turned around to Rum: "You wanted to get your guild application sorted right away, yes? Your share of the loot on the backs of you and White Rose should be more than enough to cover the fee. If you were below level twenty, which you now insist you are not, you would also have been eligible for a two year tax exemption since you're a new guild member. But on that note we will have to see if your new method works though, as they might ask for an inspection of your level by a guild mage."

Rum, enthused by his surroundings, but hiding an extreme exhaustion behind his Beast of Burden spell, just nodded in reply.

"Alright then." Elrith said with finality, and turned around, starting a fast pace towards the free clerk's desk.

"Hey, we are here to submit to a guild tax inspection, and we also have a new member for the guild who'd also like to register as a probationary member of our party."

The male and slightly wide mecha gnome clerk behind the desk didn't say a word, instead he just turned around and started expeditiously rummaging through his desk drawers for papers.

"No no" Elrith said hastily, "we already have the papers filled out. This–" and she turned halfway around to point at Rum, "– is who we're talking about." Then Elrith took her own backpack off and fished out the two documents previously signed by Rum nearly two weeks earlier. "Here you have it." she said, as the documents were put in front of gnome clerk, who nodded with a small professional smile.

"You can put that down now" Elrith commented at Rum's back, as the gnome clerk mumbled to himself while analytically skim-reading the documents. Rum looked over at White Rose, pointed lazily at the loot on zes back, and then pointed down on the wooden floor of the tower building. He carefully put his own mountain of loot down, and as he did so; he felt Beast of Burden evaporate its hold of him. The sudden rush of pains and tiredness overwhelmed Rum for a second and he lost his footing, falling down onto his knees, barely managing to hold his upper body up by his outstretched hands. After some exhausted panting, he leaned back and sat there for a good while, the intensity of his breathing gradually calming as he mumbled his usual array of restorative spells. White Rose, quite naturally as ze was still naïve to the way of things, didn't put down zes loot with the same care, and displayed no hint of being tired. Rum hadn't expected ze to either, and had been considering whether he should let ze carry it all as ze got zes strength from mana consumed by the spells inside of ze. But Rum had also considered that this might negatively affect zes bone structure, and while he had experience with the bone reinforcing magic of Beast of Burden through the trials and errors of his days as a slave, the magic reinforcing the bones of White Rose was not as well known to Rum, and he didn't want to risk ze breaking zeself.

As the clerk finally approved the paperwork he came around the desk, carrying some of the papers in his hand to check up on Rum. "You are this Rum – Rum Warmhud? Mr. Warmhud?"

"Just Rum is fine. Mr. Warmhud doesn't suite me, really."

"Alright. Do you have your guild payment, Mister – I mean Rum?"

"He'll pay with the loot" Elrith shot in. "Right Rum?" she paused for a second glancing at him. "Or do you carry a gold coin in some pocket that I've failed to notice?" Elrith was partially hinting towards the fact that Rum had set off with his new party completely without any gear, and not even clothes made for travel. Because of this fact he might as well had joined their dungeon run naked, at least gear-wise there would've been little difference.

"Yes" Rum replied, "I'll pay with loot."

"Alrighty" the clerk responded, and eyed the loot. The clerk looked up at White Rose, then down at one of the papers he'd been holding in his hands. "It says here that your party consists of five members: Elrith, Rulli, Gilda, Darmon, and Rum. However, I see six party members. Who is this last one?" Before anyone was able to respond he oriented himself to the person in question. "Are you here to join the guild as well?" he stared up into the disguised eyesockets of the skeleton, and the clerk put on a mighty fine salesman's smile. "We have some mighty good benefits you now, and we're about to become the largest and finest guild in all of Ermos." White Rose, as one could expect, bluntly stared back in utter silence, motionless to the point that if anyone had been looking, they would've noticed that ze didn't even expand zes chest to breath. After a few seconds Rum chose to take charge. "White Rose is my… SISTER" the last word came out like a shout. "She's just helping us carry the loot." He nodded, as if agreeing with his own account. The clerk looked at Rum, but decided to try and address White Rose again, as if Rum's words had been a mere suggestion, rather than a statement of fact. "White Rose, is it? You look like you could be a capable person. Certainly carrying that amount of loot must make you very strong, and that mystique about your apparel – are you perhaps hiding some past battle scars? Whatever reason you have for concealing your face, I promise you it is no issue of The Revenge. Our guild would happily look at an application of yours if you'd ever consider." The clerk waited a few seconds to see if White Rose would reply. Ze didn't. Instead, ze looked over at Rum who just plainly returned the stare, and they were both equally silent. The clerk eventually shrugged and went back to looking at the loot. He wrote down a few things down and mumbled some numbers, before he noticed Rum again and a tiny light went up in his eyes. "That reminds me, we need to have your levels checked. Please, while the rest of you other wait here, will you Rum take this note?" He hastily scribbled on a piece of paper he pulled out of his shirt pocket. "And take the elevator to the second floor. Ask the receptionist there for a consultation with our mage Jivolti. She, the mage I mean, will run you through with Akalios' Calculus, so we can confirm your power level. This will be useful for organizational analysis you see, and doing this will also help us know if we should be charging you the ten percent tax on your loot, which would be charged before your one gold application fee. Got it?" The clerk handed Rum the note.

Rum looked at White Rose, then at the others, then back at the clerk. The clerk pointed towards the elevators, but soon lowered his hand and quickly went back to his value estimation of the loot. Rum glanced at the note. It was just a little service requisition signed by the clerk. He looked up again at his skeleton. "White Rose you will have to stay here, okay? Stay with Elrith. Do as she tells you to. Okay?" White Rose tilted her head first left, then right, and at that time Rum felt like he was talking to a dog. Finally though, ze nodded. Assured, Rum turned and walked over to the iron cage, letting himself temporarily be locked inside there by an operator, and held captive in anticipation for his elevation to the second floor. The cage jolted into motion, startling Rum, but after that the ascension went rather smoothly. Staring up and through the iron grates, Rum observed with fascination the incredibly long iron wire pull him and his cage upwards, while another wire along the wall went down on conjunction.

When the cage came to an abrupt halt, Rum was startled again, before an operator opened the door for him, and he stepped out. A receptionist waited there, and when Rum showed his note, quickly sent him off to wait outside a room on a chair. The receptionist knocked on the room's door, and a conversation with what Rum assumed to be Jivolti The Mage occurred over a gap. Soon the receptionist closed the door and left, and a couple of minutes later Jivolti stepped outside, a mecha gnome woman whose facial wrinkles were enough that if she'd been human Rum would've put her around the age of 40. She had long hair, which was unusual for mecha gnomes, where males and females alike both typically wore short or half-long hair. Also, she had a ponytail, another step above the plain regular looks of the gnomes. On her head was an old pointed blue hat, and on her body she wore a mildly decorated blue robe. She wasn't smiling, in fact she looked bothered, and merely waved Rum inside like he'd just interrupted her favorite pastime.

"Sit down in the chair over there and let's get this over with." Rum did as he was told. He sat on a chair just next to what he took to be Jivolti's desk which was facing the wall. Jivolti sat down in her own chair – which was moving. Rum looked down to see that the chair in fact had wheels. Interesting, these gnomes never cease to amaze, do they? Rum studied Jivolti's chair, while Jivolti The Mage wasted no time getting started on studying his internal power state. She got started right off with her analysis of Rum using Akalios' Calculus. As she labored, Rum's eyes wandered from the chair to look at her, studying her as she studied him. It was an interesting experience having somebody else using the method. Haven't seen that since the university. He took this opportunity to try and figure out if there was anything obviously wrong he might've been doing all along, and which could've been his reason for his frustrations with the method. After an intense but silent fifteen minutes Jivolti suddenly opened her eyes. "You are just level two?" She gave him a surprised and confused expression. "And for some reason it took me unusually much effort to pinpoint your attributes." She eyed him up and down, then started laughing at him. "Level two! Here in the guild! What are you? Some kind of noble son who's never lifted a finger in his life and just decided to start doing dungeons?"

"I promise you" Rum began, while trying to shape his face into the dismay and confusion that he was authentically feeling, "there's just something wrong with Akalios' Calculus when it is applied to me. I'm really level 42! I've had to develop my own method to figure that out. Really – I'm not level two. Anyone should be able to tell, if they just see me use some spells, they'd see that I obviously can't be as low as level two."

Jivolti stared at Rum skeptically and crossed her arms. "Yeah? Well Akalios' Calculus doesn't lie – newbie mage – it just doesn't. It has been tried and tested for centuries, and I'm an advanced practitioner of the method. If there were any way you could be as high as level 42 without me knowing, well… you'd have to be some kind of grand genius of magic to be able to conceal your real power level. But I find that unlikely. I can only detect level two, so I'll have to write you down for level two." She turned over to her desk and picked up a guild form, on which she started to write and check boxes.

"No really, believe me, I am actually level 42. I can prove it!" Rum wasn't entirely sure why he wanted so desperately for this mage to believe him. If they believed he was level two he would be able to get out of the ten percent guild tax, which would benefit his usually empty purse, but the embarrassment at being viewed as a lowly level two, something akin to the power level of a little child, was just too much. Especially since he now knew the truth, and felt compelled to spread it.

Jivolti got up from her seat, and sighed. "Alright, if you can prove it. Then prove that you are level 42, the equivalent of an adventurer with years of active training, and not at the same level of power as my nine year old nephew."

"Okay" Rum said, "I really can prove it. At least I can prove that I can do things that absolutely no level two should be able to do."

"Alright, do it then." She dared him, crossing her arms again.

"Okay, I will, just in a few seconds. But will you please promise not to be mad if I do? The last person I proved my power to… well she didn't take it very well."

"Well is something gross? Or violent? Or something illegal?" Jivolti looked at Rum with tired suspicion.

"No no, nothing like that. At least I wouldn't think so."

"Great, then waste less time and just show me your impressive party trick."

Rum took a huge breath of air, raised his finger at Jivolti, and prepared his mana to pour fourth at command of two little words. "Positive Mind!" The golden-yellowish misty stream of magic visibly flew from Rum's hands and straight into Jivolti's head, so quickly and so suddenly that she barely noticed it before it was all already happening. Rum cut the magic quickly, making it a brief spell. Jivolti sat there for a second, dumbfounded. Her eyes blinked, and Rum could see thoughts going on inside her through various shifting facial expressions.

"How do you feel?" Rum said after a while.

Jivolti shifted her posture, from one that had previously been leaning forward, to one that was now upright, all her facial muscles suddenly springing into action, giving her a look of energy, contentment – positivity.

"I feel" she started, then thought for a few seconds, smiling, "I feel fine, great actually!"

"You see now what I mean?" Rum said. "What I just did now to change your mood – no level two would ever be able to do that. So do you believe me?"

Jivolti surprised Rum with a great exaggerated nod, and smiled broadly at him. "Yeah! This couldn't have been done by a level two, I believe you!"

Rum smiled. "Good." Then he changed his expression to one of concern. "But could this thing… can it stay just between us? I mean, you can't in fact prove with Akalios' Calculus that I am level two. So maybe we should just write down level two on the guild form. Yeah?"

"Sure, right you are Rum! It'll probably be okay anyways." Her glance drifted from him, and she swivelled around on her chair, a happy expression on her face. When she'd done one rotation, her feet came down she pulled herself back to her guild form, where she continued writing. Finally, when she was finished, she led him out of the room and into the reception, whereupon the receptionist gave Rum a signed receipt confirming his new official level as two, before he was guided to the iron cage for descension down to floor one again.

At floor one, Rum got more than a little bit of laughter from his own party members when the clerk burst out "You're level TWO!?" But he felt a little consolation in the extra gold at least. At least there are some benefits to this. As the guild fee and taxes were paid with loot, with change returned to them in the form of silver pieces, the party left the HQ to go to a dwarf operating a shop just nearby. This dwarf was the official trader of standard weapons and -armor between The Mecha Gnomes' Revenge and The Little Mountain (a.k.a. The Dwarven Quarter). After selling everything, Rum was left with a whole seven gold and sixteen silver pieces to his ownership, though he felt he owed White Rose some of it, as ze had been doing several days of unpaid labor by now. Not really able to hand it over to ze, because ze didn't really understand the concept of money, he decided to keep three gold and 66 silver pieces reserved for things ze may want to spend money on. Like donating money to bards.

"Okay then" Rum spoke to the empty air finally. After nearly two weeks, he was alone again after saying goodbye to all of the other party members which had homes and families to visit, now that they were all back in the city. Or, at least Rum was as alone as he could be, now that he was, well, a guardian I suppose? for White Rose. Until ze could somehow take care of zeself, that is.

"Alright then" nearly repeating himself, and he looked at his skeleton friend. "Time for you to meet my brother!"