After returning to the office and seeing that Alforde was nowhere to be found, Vee went to the window and looked down at the street below for any sign of his friend. Thankfully, not enough time for him to panic passed before a ball of swirling light appeared in the center of the sidewalk and Alforde popped back into sight.

With it came the chime in the back of his mind that indicated his friend had accepted another class, and Vee could sense Alforde’s excitement through their bond. Leaping away from the window, he hurried down the stairs to go and see what it was for himself.

Vee scurried out of the tower and saw Alforde standing in the center of the road. The armorsoul’s body was covered in a thin sheet of glittering sapphire ice, and icicles of varying sizes jutted out of his helmet, pauldrons, and gauntlets. A miniature blizzard given the form of a cape – full of swirling snowflakes, fog, and bits of ice – hung down his back, almost reaching the ground. His eyes were twin blue stars, though they were every bit as friendly as they’d ever been. As far as Vee was concerned, his friend looked – there really was no better word for it – cool.

Unfortunately, this went beyond mere appearance though. When Vee stopped a few feet away from his [Dungeon Champion], he shivered at the chill that hung in the air.

Rubbing his arms, Vee said, “I don’t suppose there’s any way to like, turn that off, is there? If not, we’re going to have to talk to Sculla about getting you your own room.”

Alforde looked down at his body, as if noticing the icicles for the first time. “Uh, I’m not sure. Let me check.”

Closing his eyes, the armorsoul rocked back and forth where he stood. Slowly, the layer of frost covering his armor receded, growing smaller and dimmer until it was completely gone. Sadly, the cape disappeared as well, and Alforde shook his helmet once he reopened his eyes.

“Darn! I liked the way that looked! Is the temperature better now, though?”

The air was still cool, but Vee didn’t feel as if he’d been plunged into an ice bath anymore, which was probably all that he could hope for. He nodded.

“Hopefully that doesn’t get harder to do as you level up,” Vee said.

“Indeed,” Alforde replied. “That would be…unfortunate.”

“Do you feel any different?”

Alforde shrugged. “Not really. Should I?”

Vee thought for a moment. Classes that were so closely tied to an element tended to shape their holders toward that element over time, even if only a little bit. He wondered what might happen to his friend as he developed his new class, and grew slightly worried at the thought of changes that could be associated with glaciers.

We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. For now, I’m just going to be excited for him.

Smiling, Vee and Alforde headed back up to the office to retrieve Reginald before heading back to Sculla’s for the night.

It’d been quite the day.

The next morning, Vee decided to go to the dungeon a little early and resume work on the sponge. He wanted to test his own growth and see if the work was any easier.

Hovering above Vee’s sigils, the ghost was rather still, but the [Ghost Maestro] didn’t see any signs of cracks or leakage in his ectoplasmic bindings. That was good. Though he’d been careful and checked his work before leaving yesterday, he’d expected to find tiny issues today. That was simply the nature of important projects; it was almost impossible to catch everything before declaring it done.

Indeed, that was the case with the sponge too. While examining the bindings between the first pair of arms and the rest of the ghost, Vee noticed two gaps that he’d failed to catch before. Further inspection revealed that the problem stemmed from the balance of the arms themselves, and he hurried to rectify the situation.

“[Shape Ectoplasm]!”

His fingers grew warm, and he found that it was easier to collect the power than he was used to. Interesting. Pulling the arms into a better shape took a few minutes, but his hands knew what needed to be done and the work was pleasant. Eventually, the gaps vanished, and the arms sat flush against the rest of the ghost’s body.

After fixing that, Vee attached the second pair of arms to the ghost and gave all four limbs a test to make sure that they could move properly. Ideally, the sponge would fight like a [Knight], defending itself with one set of hands and attacking with the other. He’d have to wrangle up some more elaborate sigilmancy for that to work, but for now he was content for his creation to simply have the proper range of motion.

When he was satisfied, he resumed work on the ghost’s appearance. Unfortunately, his improvement in the technical aspects of ghost design didn’t carry over to the artistic side, and a little later Vee was frustrated by his inability to successfully translate the image in his head to the minion in front of him. No matter how he tried to sculpt or shape the ectoplasm, the ghost’s body remained hopelessly blocky, and he was discouraged when it came time to head up to the office to start the day’s runs.

Reginald turned toward him as he huffed his way to his station.

“You look like you just swallowed a lemon, boss. What’s wrong?”

Taking his seat, Vee explained his design woes, and Reginald chuckled. “I see. It sounds like you’re on the wrong side of a make-buy decision to me. By all means though, keep on tinkering with it, but I suspect that in the short term it makes more sense to just purchase other types of ghosts from the union.”

Vee frowned, but his [Majordomo] had a good point. Even if he somehow managed to put together a solid sponge design, the design and building process was taking too long to really consider adding them to the dungeon in greater quantities anytime soon. Especially since, like most forms of manufacturing, it’d require more consistency than he felt capable of producing.

However, he didn’t want to abandon his progress, either. Working on the sponge had helped him refine his powers, and he suspected that further experiments would yield similar, if lesser, results. Maybe there was a way he could tweak the design a little bit too in order to find a way to really lean into the blockiness of the ghost’s body instead of trying to fight it.

Tucking the thought away for later, Vee turned his attention to the first adventurer of the day and tried to decide if it was worth using one of his charges of [Boost Drops]. He didn’t think so; the adventurer was hunched and scrawny, and for some reason was carrying only a small stick that looked like it’d been picked up at random near some trees.

“What’s her class?” Vee asked, and Reginald passed over the day’s applications. The [Dungeon Master] looked down at it and grunted.

“A [Staff Afficionado], huh? That’s not terribly exciting. I’ll let this one go.”

His instincts proved right. Despite a valiant effort, the adventurer succumbed to the continuous volleys of the skeleton mages in the third room, and Reginald called down words of encouragement once Vee deactivated the minions so she could leave safely.

“Good try! Improve your skills a little bit and come back again!”

With a smile and a wave to the ceiling, the adventurer left the dungeon and Vee pressed the button to reset everything for the next challenger.

A fat man carrying a flowerpot opened Crestheart’s door. According to his paperwork, he was a [Dandy Lion Tamer]. While he looked as if he might collapse from just the effort of walking down the hallway, something told Vee that he definitely wanted to use a charge of [Boost Drops] here. He trusted his instincts and activated the skill, checking the position of his Marked minions. Two skeletons and a slime, all on the second floor.

“Darn, that sucks,” Vee said as he scowled at the adventurer, who was already out of breath. “It looks like I wasted a charge.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Reginald replied. “Sure, he’s a tub of lard, but I don’t think he’s going to struggle getting down to the second floor. Just you wait and see.”

To Vee’s surprise, the hat didn’t offer a wager on it, but he wasn’t in the mood for gambling just then, so he didn’t miss it.

Sure enough, when the first pack of monsters attacked the adventurer, the corpulent man planted his feet on the ground and slapped the bottom of his flowerpot a few times. Three green and yellow streaks erupted into the air and transformed into stubbly lions with big manes and tiny top hats. The man pointed at the monsters heading for him and his trio of guardians promptly – and suavely – tore the skeletons and ghosts to shreds.

“See what I mean?” Reginald asked.

Vee grinned and reached over to his console. “Yeah, talk about a fast one. The minions didn’t even get close! How’d you know he’d do so well?”

The hat swiveled toward him and flashed a felty smile. “I have my ways,” he said in an overly dramatic attempt at sounding mysterious. Vee’s ability to follow up on that was interrupted by Reginald’s need to perform his [Announcer] duties.

Watching the man continue forward, Vee worked his knobs and dials to the best of his ability. His goal was different than it normally was. Instead of trying to stop the adventurer from making further progress, he wanted to accommodate the adventurer’s poor physique and make sure that he got down to the second floor. To accomplish this, Vee turned all of the moving platforms down to their lowest speed and made sure to throw as many minions at the man as possible. Like a particularly murderous [Drummer Boy], the adventurer pa rum pum pum pum’d his flowerpot through the first floor and made his way down to the second with ease.

Here, Vee had a tougher time carrying him, as Crestheart’s second floor required a greater degree of athleticism than the first. Still, he persevered, managing to successfully put all of his Marked minion’s in the man’s path.

When the adventurer pushed open the door to Alforde’s arena, Vee leaned back and laced his fingers behind his head.

“I think I’ve earned a bit of a break,” he said.

“Nice bit of work there, boss,” Reginald answered.

Despite their combat prowess, the dandy lions met their match against Alforde. His frosty cape billowing behind him, the armorsoul smashed his way through the first quartet the adventurer summoned, and then pointed his hammer at the adventurer. Vee couldn’t hear what his friend said, but the man nodded and surrendered shortly after without summoning anymore of his protectors.

As he left the dungeon, the adventurer turned in six shards of chaos, and Vee made sure that Reginald invited him to come and challenge the dungeon again. Even with [Boost Drops], that was a heck of a high roll, and the [Dungeon Master] couldn’t be sure that it was all luck.

The rest of the day’s runs progressed smoothly, and when Vee used [Boost Drops] for the third time, he didn’t feel the sensation of emptiness that he normally did. On the next run, he decided to try and use the skill again.

Pressure and pain racked Vee’s skull, but a silvery Mark appeared on one of the ghosts on the first floor. The [Dungeon Master] slumped forward, dry heaving, but he grinned like a fool all the same. He was getting used to the pain of pushing his skills too far, and after a long moment, he felt more like himself again, though he was quite hungry.

Note to self. Start bringing snacks.

Alas, the Marked ghost didn’t drop anything special when it was destroyed by the next adventurer, but Vee resolved to continue testing this fourth charge in the days to come. Hopefully it’d get easier as he did so; a proper fourth usage of [Boost Drops] would accelerate Crestheart’s trip to another floor by a lot.

The day’s runs drew to an end, and Vee was distracted from counting up the earnings by Hanako, who walked into the office with a pair of giant red crystals in her hands.

“I was experimenting with sequenced engravings last night and got a little carried away,” she said as she saw Vee’s raised eyebrow and handed them over.

Taking the crystals, Vee grunted at their weight. “What are they supposed to do?”

“Well, I started with a simple [Fireball] engraving, but then I added some of the [Cyclone] glyphs so now they’re kind of…poor versions of [Twisting Flame], I guess. Maybe you could stick them in a hallway somewhere? Anyways, what would you like me to work on today?”

Vee put the new crystals down on the table and rubbed his chin. To be honest, he wasn’t really sure what sort of work he could set Hanako to. It was tough coming up with projects for his intern.

“Let me check with Do,” he said as he closed his eyes and requested the [Dungeon Maintainer] to come up to the office.

The fiend arrived a few minutes later.

“How can I be of assistance, Master?”

Vee pointed to Hanako. “She’s looking for things to do. Will you and your crew check the trap crystals and see if any of them need to be repaired or replaced?”

Do bowed and left to do as requested. Vee looked outside and frowned.

It was starting to snow again.

Main Character Sheets (UNCHANGED FROM LAST CHAPTER)

Vee Vales

Primary Class: Ghost Maestro (Locksmagister University), Level 28

Secondary Class: Dungeon Master (Oar’s Crest), Level 17

Tertiary Class: Guy-Who-Takes-Things-WAY-Too-Far (Self), Level 5

Might: 11

Wit: 29

Faith: 20

Adventurousness: 6

Ambition: 12

Plotting: 15

Charisma: 10

Devious Mind: 18

Leadership: 15

Guts: 11

Intimidating Presence: 8

Citizenship: 16

Public Relations: 4

Alforde Armorsoul:

Primary Class: Hammer Afficionado (Self), Level 20

Secondary Class: Right-hand man (Vee Vales), Level 12

Tertiary Class: Dungeon Champion (Oar’s Crest), Level 13

Additional Class: Glaciernaut (Sacha Silverblade), Level 1

Might: 35 (+2)

Wit: 11

Faith: 24

Adventurousness (Bound – Vee Vales): 8

Endurance: 16

Intimidating Presence: 11

Heart of a Champion: 6

Citizenship (Bound – Vee Vales): 6

Vigilance: 5

Reginald:

Primary Class: Core Spirit (Unknown), Level ???

--~%@(%[email protected] &% (*$ #&#e !i$$ (#$%#$%#[email protected]!)~--, #[email protected]& ????

Secondary Class: Loudmouth (Self), Level 39

Tertiary Class: Majordomo (Vee Vales), Level 11

Additional Class: Announcer (Vee Vales), Level 6

Might: 1

Wit: 30

Faith: 10

Ambition: 25

Greed: 21

Deceptiveness: 28

Manipulativeness: 35

F^#$#$%@#

Loyalty: 43

Patience: 12

[#@$%%^*!#@__--#%]

Citizenship (Bound – Vee Vales): 4