“Yes, it’s about the notice you posted,” Nadine said, escorting me into the Guildmaster’s office. “We had some questions.”

I swallowed. It hadn’t been an hour since I’d posted an ongoing job request for anyone delving into the Forbidden Laboratory asking them to note the exact date and time of their delve and any changes they’d noticed. Now I was getting called into the Master’s office, and from the look on his face, he wasn’t happy. The desk he was sitting behind wasn’t small — I was jealous — but he made it look like it.

“Questions?” I asked, doing my best impression of someone innocent.

“Yes!” Koenig growled loudly. “Mainly — why do you think there’ll be changes!” Despite the wording, it was more of an accusation than a question.

“Oh… well, we may have… seen a small animal touch the Core of that Dungeon, and we were curious about what effects it might have, and over what time period they occurred.”

Technically true, but I didn’t think it would fool them. It was more like a fighting retreat while I worked out how concerned they were.

“You’re not supposed to touch the Cores! It’s dangerous!” Koenig yelled. One of my social skills was telling me his anger was at least partly feigned, but I thought it wise to show some fear anyway. Not that it was hard — the man was pretty scary when he tried to be.

“We didn’t — like I said, a rabbit did,” I backed away a step, but he gestured for me to sit in the chair in front of his desk. I obeyed.

“Did it disappear?” he asked, more calmly.

“Yes.” I looked at him appraisingly. Apparently, some people here knew how Dungeons worked. “Do you know what happened to it?”

He scowled at me. “Information on such matters is restricted to higher-level guild members. You still haven’t said if you’re interested in signing up.”

“Not any time soon,” I said carefully. “I’ve found myself with a few too many responsibilities to give myself over to the Guild.”

“So I’ve noticed, Councillor. Just remember that your office doesn’t get to direct the Adventurers Guild.”

“I never said it did,” I assured him. “And I thought our negotiations about managing access to the Tribal Dungeons went very well with all parties satisfied with the results. Was I wrong?”

“That was all fine,” he said, waving a hand dismissively. “What I mean is, don’t think your new rank allows you access to Guild Secrets.”

“Are they really secret if they can be learned by some simple observation?” I asked lightly.

“The King’s Law states that you are not supposed to touch the Cores!”

“And I didn’t.” His phrasing was a little different from what I’d heard though. I might have to look it up. The law as I’d originally heard it stated was that you couldn’t take Cores. That sounded far more sensible, as forbidding people to touch Cores was unenforceable.

I kept my thoughts to myself as Koenig blustered for a while longer about the dangers.

“And now everything is going to change!” he cried, exasperated. My skills perked up. This was the actual reason for his anger.

“You know what keeps delving safe!” he continued. “It’s knowing the Dungeon, knowing the threats. Things are going to get more dangerous for your fellow delvers from here on.”

“I think most of the groups here are wary enough,” I countered. “It’s not like that Dungeon never changes — there was that change my first day here.”

He frowned. “That doesn’t sound like a coincidence now. Did you have something to do with that?”

I shrugged, “Not as far as I know.”

“You’re trouble, Councillor Hammond. I should ban you from the Dungeon.”

“That seems a little unfair when I haven’t broken any Guild rules.”

“None of the written ones,” he muttered darkly.

I raised an eyebrow. “I imagine if it came out that there are secret rules that everyone is supposed to follow, you might get — at the least — a lot of queries about what they are.”

“Bah! Just… stay away from the Cores. No more experiments!”

“Of course,” I lied. “I’ll do as you say.”

It was only after I left that I realised that there hadn’t been a Social Contest notification. Why was that?

One reason, I supposed, was that I hadn’t really wanted anything from the confrontation. But Koenig had, or so it seemed…

Checking my [Log] I saw that he had attempted both an [Intimidate] and [Persuasion], but both had been unsuccessful. Social skills, I gathered, were not the Guildmaster’s forte. But if he’d tried to get me to stop… he should have gotten a notification for losing, and I should have gotten one from winning? Unless he hadn’t really wanted to stop me.

It had seemed, for quite a lot of that conversation, that Koenig was spouting something that he was legally required to, but didn’t actually care about. The bit about endangering adventurers was real, if overblown — in my opinion anyway.

If he had tried and not gotten a notification, he must have known that he hadn’t convinced me, but he let me leave all the same. Could he stop me? The business about banning me from the Dungeon wasn’t a serious threat. Without a fortification and guards at the entrance, there was no way he could stop me from entering, and he knew that.

And he let me keep the notice up. Arguably, any damage I’d caused had been done. Recording the changes didn’t hurt, and might help — although I was sure that the Guild would be collating their own list of changes to add to the guide.

All in all, it seemed like he didn’t actually care, but he was required to at least discourage me.

I sighed as one last thought struck me. If he hadn’t actually cared about convincing me, had he actually used his full [Skills] on me? I supposed that I shouldn’t write off his Social [Skills] so quickly after all.

A free feast was a lot less appealing when you were the one paying for it. Not that I was, but it was my budget that it was coming out of. Among the many innovations that needed to be added to this world was a tax write-off for entertainment expenses. I added it to the list.

The expense was necessary though, as we were celebrating the opening of the North Market. It wasn’t much more than a few tents so far, but there were goods and there was trade.

Many of the participants from the town were slightly on edge. They weren’t used to being outside of the walls, but the unconcerned presence of the tribals set most of them at ease. The alcohol probably helped too.

I was seated at a table close to the centre of it all, with the luminaries of the town, and the leaders of the delegation. We had an actual feast, with courses and dishes and such, while the hoi polloi of the common townsfolk made do with free meat, bread and ale. Oddly, at least to my mind, it was the meat that was the cheapest of those three. Monster meat was still oversupplied thanks to the breaks, while wheat and ale had to be imported.

We’d lured the townsfolk out here with free beer, but we didn’t really have any purpose for them, aside from getting them used to the area. They had responded well, mixing with the newcomers and generally appearing to have a good time. In the same vein, this was the first time I was interacting with most of the people at this table without some kind of deal to be hashed out, so I was at a bit of a loss.

[Charm] took up the slack, making small talk and making it seem like I was having a good time, but my mind couldn’t leave off thinking about the many things that I had to be concerned about.

Two of them were at the feast. Priestess Tonet wasn’t seated at the main table, but she was in my line of sight, laughing and having fun just like everyone else. Kaito had assured me that she would no longer be plotting against us, but I was not entirely convinced. The fact that she was in attendance reassured me more - she was unlikely to stage an attack on herself.

My other problem was actually sitting two seats down from me. Captain Rodakis was also unlikely to stage an attack on himself - his guards were responsible for the security of the town after all. From what I could learn about him, he was still feeling out the situation he found himself in. Maybe for tonight, at least, I could relax and not worry about disaster.

Yeah right. I smiled and nodded, and chatted amiably with my fellow townsfolk. Maybe everything would go right, for once. There were guards on the wall, and around the perimeter of the celebration. For that matter, no one in their right mind would attack a crowd with so many adventurers. Some were wearing less armour than normal, but they were all still armed and dangerous.

As people finished their meals, they got up and started to mingle. The amateur musicians that had been playing accompaniment music moved on to something more danceable. I kept a grimace off my face. Not only did we not have any [Bards] out here, but Latorran music was somewhat backward for my taste. I had really wanted to supply my own tunes, but exposing my companions to my musical taste had convinced me that Latorra was barely ready for classical music, and wasn’t at all ready for rock.

Actually, there were some professional, or at least specialised, musicians that would be playing tonight. The delegation had brought a small troop, but it had been agreed that since they didn’t know any Latorran tunes, they’d put on a show after the dancing was done. I’d smiled and agreed with the rest, but I was expecting folk music.

For now, there was time to kill, and networking to be done. I manoeuvred myself out of my chair — the dress made it a more complex operation than it had to be, and lightly stepped over to where Rodakis was sitting.

“Would you like to dance, Captain?” I asked, with a smile as sharp as a knife. I turned [Charm] on full boil, and let him have the full impact. He never stood a chance.

You have defeated Hector Rodakis in a Tier 3 Social Contest! You have earned 45 XP

Do you wish to waive the Penalty? [Y] / [N]

“I’d be honoured my lady,” he managed to get out. He stood and offered me his arm.

“Interesting,” I said in a low voice. “Did you really object to dancing that much?”

“I… I thought it would be best as the leader to remain aloof from activities my men are participating in.” It wasn’t a lie — I don’t think he could tell a lie under the circumstances. But it wasn’t the entire truth either, or so my [Skills] were telling me. I quite liked this feeling of power, of having control over the much larger and stronger man. Was this what it was like when a guy beat someone up? Something about that thought soured it for me.

Penalty has been waived.

I saw the moment Rodakis felt the penalty lifted. He perked up and looked at me questioningly.

“We’re going to be working together to protect this town, Captain. It wouldn’t do for me to be holding a threat like that over your head.”

Except, of course, the threat had already been made. Saying I wouldn’t do something was just a polite way of saying I could do something. But if I made a point of dominating him every time we had a meeting, he’d just avoid me at all costs, and do his negotiation with arrows.

That didn’t mean I turned [Charm] off though. For one thing, I needed it to get through the moves of the dance we now gracefully joined. And for another… well, the primary use of [Charm] was to get people to like you. Throwing [Seduction] into the mix should turn up the heat a little. With just the bonus, not the actual skill, I doubted it would add more than a certain flavour to my [Charm] offensive. Given his Level, I wasn’t going to cause him to embarrass himself on the Dance floor. But it should get him thinking along the right lines at least.

After all, as the old saying went, Keep your friends close, and your enemies even closer.