John logged back in after lunch and immediately set out for the dungeon. He knew he wouldn’t be getting in today, not unless he went in with Sally and Ex who had implied that they’d somehow obtained an evening slot as well. Still, that didn’t mean he couldn’t convince other people to collect silk for him. Or even, perhaps, convince a couple to escort him while he collected it.

Reaching the site of the dungeon he found a small crowd around the southern end of the pavilion, just as there had been originally. And, also as last time, Addy was there fending off people with her clipboard.

“No, you cannot go in, because the dungeon is full. It can only have forty-two instances open at a time, there are forty-two different groups inside, the dungeon is full. You literally cannot enter,” she was explaining in that too patient ‘I’ve said this a dozen times to you already’ way.

“But the pavilion is right there! Why won’t you just let me go in?!” a goatkin asked, clearly for the umpteenth time.

Addy grit her teeth, and the people around her groaned. Apparently, they were all quite tired of this as well.

“You know what? Fine. Go in,” Addy said, her annoyed face smoothing out into an almost gleeful smile. “I hereby give you permission to enter the dungeon. But run fast because I’m prone to change my mind.”

“See! I knew she was keeping us out for no reason!” the goatkin said triumphantly, then ran directly for the pavilion. Upon reaching it he tried to leap up the stairs only to come to an abrupt, bone-crunching halt in mid air as he impacted some form of impenetrable field. The man screamed a shrill note as he fell to the ground just at the bottom of the stairs. He rolled around for several moments, clutching at his clearly broken nose.

John winced at the ongoing screeching, it was excessively aggravating, especially since he knew the pain in game was far less than that of real life. The man would have to have no pain tolerance at all to actually be feeling much of anything.

“I swear to the gods Jack, if you don’t shut up I will send you back to town!” a foxkin yelled at the goat man.

Jack shut up and then glared at everyone, most of whom had chuckled or laughed at his mid-air face plant. “I’m gonna remember this!” he howled and pointed. “You’re all going to pay!” he then ran off down the road.

“Good lord, was that guy twelve?!” someone exclaimed, then said mockingly “You’re all going to pay!” Several other people guffawed.

John took the moment to approach Addy.

“Excuse me, it’s Addy right?” John asked.

Addy looked at him, and brought her hand up to her face, as if to adjust spectacles that weren’t there. She made a frustrated noise at encountering no resistance. “You’re John, right? If you’d like to schedule a dungeon delve it’s going to be a couple days before I can fit you into the rotation,” she said in a no-nonsense tone.

“Uh, no, I actually wanted to ask about paying delvers to bring me back items, that’s not a problem, is it?” he asked, and several heads in the gathered crowd swiveled to look at him.

“Not so long as you don’t hold anyone up. People show up and come out late as it is, and that’s hell on the schedule!” she tapped her clipboard as if for emphasis. “Other than that, I really don’t care.”

“That’s fine then! I’ll be sure to keep from distracting the ones going in,” he assured her.

“Then we should get along fine,” she affirmed.

John then turned to find several people looking at him. “What are you looking for, and how much are you paying?” asked a devilkin woman, clearly the elected spokesperson.

“Spider silk,” John started, only to be cut off.

“Oh! I thought I saw a posting for that, but it got taken down,” the woman remarked.

John nodded. “I thought I had enough, but it turns out I need more, a lot more. And just gathering it from the walls isn’t going to be enough. It’s got to be from the spiders between one and two feet in size, and it needs to be extracted while they’re alive,” he explained.

“Ew, how do you extract webbing?” she sounded equal parts horrified and fascinated.

“You have someone hold down the spider while you grab the silk hanging from the spinnerets, then you pull on it to spool it out. I make little dowels I wrap it around and then you can just spin the dowel to pull out the silk.” John made a stone dowel as an example.

“That’s just gross!” a man in the crowd said.

“But also fascinating,” another, a woman this time, noted.

“How much are you payin?” the devilkin asked.

“Ten copper per yard. Sally and Ex helped me get three hundred yards this morning, so they got thirty silvers. I need three thousand and nine hundred more yards,” John explained.

“How long did it take you to get three hundred yards?” the devil woman probed.

“About two hours,” John admitted.

“Thirty silvers? I’m in,” said an ursakin man, followed by the agreement of several other people, the devilkin woman among them.

“Can you make us some of those dowels?” she asked.

“Sure! You shouldn’t need more than four per two people I don’t think. The most we got out of a spider was 80 yards, the least was about 30,” John said as he started magicking up dowels for any who would take them.

“Pops is out of the dungeon, as are Princess Do-nut and Corl. The teams We Bear Bears and Team Prada are up! You have one minute before I give your slots up!” Addy yelled.

“That’s us!” rumbled the ursakin, and three more ursine men appeared behind him as if by magic. “We’ll be back with your silk in no time, have your money ready!” the man said, swiping a sixth dowel.

“Us too,” said the devilkin, and John found himself surrounded by a small gaggle of devil women. “Make with the dowels money man!” she said fervently, even as he passed them to all takers.

“John! You had better not be holding up people! I distinctly recall you telling me you wouldn’t hold anyone up!” Addy yelled, sounding unhappy.

“He’s not! We just needed a last piece of equipment!” the first devilkin said innocently, even as her group hurried toward the stairs. Addy gave a grunt that said she didn’t believe her, but wasn’t going to press it.

The next two hours blurred by as John passed out dowels and gave his same terms to just about anyone else who would listen. Finally, the first group returned, it was We Bear Bears, and they came with a full ten dowls of spider silk, all of which they proudly displayed to John.

“We had a couple false starts,” one of them said as John Inspected the dowels. “But we got the hang of it pretty quick!”

“These are great!” John exclaimed, “Looks like five hundred and ninety yards!”

“Wait, how’d you know that?” One of them asked, looking taken aback.

“Inspect can also show measurements if you have the Measure skill,” John informed them. “I just found out today myself.”

“Ugh, we spent all that time measuring, and even got the skill for it,” One of them groused, even as John handed over 59 silvers.

“Pleasure doing business with you guys,” John said cheerily. “I’m John by the way.”

“Yeah, I’m Sir Bearington the Second, these are The Third, The Fourth, and The Fifth,” Sir Bearington the Second informed John with a grin.

John couldn’t help but snort.

“I know, it’s unbearable right? I mean, I could bearly believe they went along with it. But I suppose one must bear up under the burden of leadership,” the Second soldiered on.

“Please stop!” John groaned.

“Oh lord, is he making you listen to bear puns?!” the leader of the Prada party asked with her own groan, even as she pushed her way through the large ursakin to present John with twelve dowels of spider silk.

John took them one by one, tallying up their final amount. “One thousand one hundred and twenty-six,” John remarked.

“Ugh! I can’t believe they beat us! This is unbearlivable!” The Fourth shouted to a chorus of good-natured groaning, even from his own people.

John just grinned and handed over 1 gold, 12 silver, and 60 copper. “Thanks guys!” he said with a wave to them as the groups dispersed.

Over the next few hours John managed to get six more groups to take in dowels and harvest silk for him. By the fourth hour he’d actually managed to exceed his goal by almost 100 yards, and he stopped handing out blank dowels. By the sixth hour he’d finally greeted the last of the players who’d gone in for him, and paid out the last of the coin. Leaving him a total of five and a half gold poorer, but with more than 7,000 yards of silk. He’d also procured dinner for the Chookers, there was no sense making someone walk all the way out to the farm if he was already here.

Standing from the boulder he’d crafted into a chair, John headed back to town in the fading light. It wasn’t long at all before he was in front of Samantha’s house. He knocked on the door politely and waited, and waited… and waited. Just when he thought he’d need to knock again the door flew open, banged on the end of its chain, and immediately slammed shut again even as muffled curses came from the house.

The chain on the door rattled and this time it flew open in a proper fit.

“Boy! Do you know what time it is?!” Sam screeched at him.

“About six thirty?” John hazarded, not having actually looked at the time.

“Six thirty-eight in the evening!” she cried in an accusing fashion. “Don’t you know some people need sleep?! How would you like it if I came around nocking on your door when you’re taking your well-deserved evening nap?!”

“Uh… I wouldn’t?” John hazarded, trying to figure out exactly which words would get him out of this.

“Of course you wouldn’t!” she huffed at him, but she was clearly running out of steam.

“Sorry, for disturbing you, I just thought you’d like to have the rest of the silk tonight instead of tomorrow,” John explained, doing his best to sound contrite.

“Course I want the silk tonight instead of tomorrow! Got a whole night’s worth of moonlight to weave by! Doesn’t mean you should interrupt an old woman’s nap!” she groused. “Fine, give me the silk,” she said, making a ‘come on’ motion with her hands.

John handed over the spools of silk until they were all gone. Sam sniffed. “A little more than seven thousand yards, that’s good, might be a market for this yet. How much were you paying per yard?”

“Ten copper a yard,” John admitted.

“Hm, bit steep for non-magical threads, you might consider half that, maybe a third if you can get away with it. That said, it might be worth exporting, especially since I’m certain no-one else will be for the moment. Now what did you want? A cloth thirty inches by ten? Any specific color? Do you want a pattern of any kind?

“Uh, black would be great. If you could do a pattern of leaves, that’d be even better!” John exclaimed.

Sam nodded. “One gold, no haggling, it’ll be done tomorrow morning at dawn, you either pick it up then or wait until the afternoon.”

John ran his fingers through his beard, one gold was expensive! But apparently there were no other weavers in town, and he certainly didn’t know how himself. Also, she had all the thread already. He let out a breath and nodded. “Alright, one gold.”

“Good,” the old woman said, then slammed the door in his face.

John stared at the door for a moment more before he started his walk out of town. It wasn’t until he was well on his way to the farm that he finally looked up at the sky to see a dark expanse littered with stars and the moon rising. Apparently the cloud cover had lifted, and it would indeed be a nice, moonlit night.