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“Hey! Hold on! Calm down! He’s a leveler!”

The Elf gave her a look of disbelief. “Girl that’s a monster, a fucking dangerous looking one. Get behind me, quick.”

This was not going quite how Lyra had planned.

Rain approached and positively loomed at the guard who for his part unconsciously started moving backwards toward the gate, the spear trembling in his hands.

“I… Am not a monster.” said Rain, trying to be unmonster like. He was not very good at it.

The guard just stared up at him, jaw hanging.

“It’s true! He’s not a monster. He’s a, uhm, leveler from up north, you just aren’t familiar with the race, that’s all.”

“He looks like he’s about to eat me!”

“I’m not about to eat you,” said Rain. The Elf looked like he didn't believe him in the slightest.

Opal piped up “Well, not ye-” a large paw slapped across her mouth, which being Rain’s size covered her head entirely. A muffled unintelligible voice continued to speak from behind the paw.

“Er, ignore her, she’s just a misbehaving slave, you know how it is, ahahaha-ha,” said Lyra, attempting a casual laugh which sounded incredibly awkward in the standoff.

“Listen girl, I don't know why you thought it was a good idea to dress a monster in clothes but you aren't fooling anyone. That's a monster clear as day. If this is just a convoluted way to get around the restrictions on large monster slaves being allowed in…”

“Have you ever seen or heard of a species of monster like him before?”

“...Well, no-”

“Then how do you know for sure! He could just be a particularly aggressive looking leveler!”

“That's-”

“And frankly it is incredibly racist of you to assume that he is a monster, didn't your Mother teach you any manners? Is this the kind of welcome that Lynthia’s best put out for an extremely incredibly disgustingly wealthy merchant looking to flood the town with gold and riches?”

“Now wait a moment, I’m no-”

“Is Lynthia full of racists? Because first impressions are important and your impression is of an uncouth guard judging others by appearance. What next? Are you going to call me a slut for being part Elf? Huh?”

“I’m a bloody Elf!”

“Yeah, well, that just makes it twice as bad!”

Lyra stepped forward as she spoke, berating the Elf with her words, practically beating him over the head with her commentary. She finished with staring him down with her hands on her hips.

The guard ran a hand over his sweaty brow.

“Look, I’m not going to let you in, period. This is not a normal situation. If half the guard hadn’t gone off with the Inquisitor leaving us undermanned and understaffed I’d be looking to arrest you for trying this, as it is, just… go away with that giant feral looking thing following you around.”

Lyra set her lips in a line. “Fine. You want to play it the hard way, I see how it is.”

She beckoned at Rain and he removed his paw from Opal. The Goblin smiled as she saw Lyra motioning to her and skipped over. The guard looked at the Goblin suspiciously and gripped his spear.

Lyra snorted contemptuously and dove her hands into the pack. And then she began throwing gold at the guard.

“Wha- what are you doing!?”

“I’m bribing you! What does it look like! Take this! And this! And this!”

Gold and gems showered around the guard, bouncing and pinging off his armour. A few gem-encrusted necklaces landed on his spear and dangled comically from the tip. It was when Lyra stepped up and placed a tiara on his head that the guard started to crack under the onslaught. His fingers trembled with the rings Lyra was placing upon them as the spear fell from his hands to clatter on the ground.

“This is, you can't just do this!”

“Well, I am doing it guard guy, so you better deal with it!”

“This is so much money!”

“I know! And all for the small small price of overlooking my leveler friend over here’s outward appearance!”

“...”

Lyra was standing at his shoulder now, whispering in his ear.

“You know you want to, just look how that gold glitters, just think of all you could buy, yes, just think, imagine all the whores and booze you can get your little guard guy mitts on, you could do anything with this, hell you could buy happiness with this.”

Lyra broke the guard’s will with a whimper.

He began scrabbling on the ground snatching up all the gold and gems into a bag.

The sheep girl gave him a smug smile as he stood back up, his face flustered, the tiara on his head askew.

“Fine. You can bring it in… As a leveler.”

“Great!”

“I will still need to check your level however.”

Lyra rolled her eyes. “Really? We’re still doing that?”

The guard looked slightly offended. “I do have some professional courtesy you know. If the town Ranker commands to check for high levelers coming into town then it is the guard’s job to enforce it.”

“Yeah yeah I know. Rankers are always so paranoid.”

“Well, it keeps things safe for the town, if a Ranker is going to be challenged for his rule its best it's done out in the open to reduce collateral damage. Personally, I think anyone willing to challenge Bane is clinically insane, even those with levels above him are scared to challenge him, but hey, I’d rather not take the risk.”

The guard fiddled around with a velvet pouch on his belt until he produced what appeared to be a black glass sphere about two inches across. Inside the sphere he held in his gloved hands was a white number, the number 1.

“Simply let this level orb touch your skin and it will display your true level.”

The guard made to hand it over to Lyra when Opal snatched it from his hand.

“Do me!” she said holding it up and staring at the number.

The sphere remained inert and unchanging.

“It doesn't work on monsters, obviously. Please take control of your Goblin slave. If you can't control it I will be forced to confiscate it and potentially put it down.”

“Hey screw you, you manual breather!”

“Opal give it here, just let me show him my level and we can go.”

“Boo.”

Lyra took the orb from the Goblin girl. As she did the number in the sphere began to change, ticking up from one to two and so on. It began to warm in her bare hand as the orb worked and she handed it back to the guard. After a second or two of the number ticking up it came to a stop on the number fifteen, fifteen for Lyra’s fifteen levels.

“Hmm. Fine. You didn't look like you were a threat anyway.”

“Hey!”

“Very well, you can pass.”

He stepped aside and gestured at the open gate.

Rain paused as he stepped by the guard. He looked down at the orb in the guard’s hand. He knew what it was, it was a brand in his past life, definitive proof of his humiliating level one.

Not sure what he was thinking he held out a paw, his digits spread.

The guard looked at him warily. “What do you want monster?”

“Leveler.” Growled Rain like distant thunder.

“Y-you want… what a joke. Fine, your master paid enough, we can play pretend. Tch, what a waste of time.”

The guard hesitated and then reached out the orb and momentarily touched it up against one of Rain’s paw pads.

Nothing happened.

“See. Now get lo-”

The number ticked up to two.

The guard stared at it, eyes bugging out of his head at the changed number.

“Wha- why did you bribe me?!”

The number ticked up to three.

“B-because he is a m-monster, what is this?”

Four, then five, faster now.

“He lied? But why?”

Six, seven, eight.

Rain shook his head. “No.”

Nine, ten, eleven, faster and faster and faster, accelerating.

“What’s happening? What is this?” said the guard as the orb started to rapidly heat.

Twelve, fourteen, sixteen, the numbers were starting to blur by this point.

“I don't know! I don't know! I don't know!”

Twenty, twenty four, twenty eight.

Smoke started to wisp off the black orb’s surface and the numbers spun by ever faster.

“It’s broken! Dumb leveler stuff, Rain isn't a leveler, I know, I just know he’s a monster,” said Opal eyeing the orb.

Thirty, thirty six-, the numbers became unreadable just a solid spinning blur as the orb began to glow red with raw heat. A faint whine filled the air, growing louder as the orb began to vibrate and the blur span even faster. The guard stared at the thing in his hand in frozen horror, frozen like a hare caught in the lamplight not knowing what to do.

As they watched the spinning white changed, becoming more like teeth, and then the shape of an open mouth outlined in jagged flickering and flashing.

The high pitched whining changed tone and shifted into a nauseating scream. The orb was now screaming, the mouth inside of it twitching and shaking. Smoke began to pour from the guard’s glove and it suddenly burst into flame. The guard yelped and dropped the orb on the ground, patting out the glove fire on his armour.

The orb continued to scream, the glass vibrating so much it was visible to the naked eye, the ground around the screaming orb began to smoke and redden and melt, blackening and cracking, spots of magma appearing as an ungodly amount of heat poured from the orb. The orb was now lying in a small foot wide pool of half-melted earth, boiling droplets of lava and stone being spat outward in fits and starts.

As they watched in stunned silence the orb began to disappear, melting its way downward, disappearing down a two inch wide hole amongst the magma. The screaming did not stop, only becoming more muffled and quiet as the orb descended deeper and deeper and deeper into the earth until they could hear it no more.

They were left staring at the hole of unknown depth, maybe it went on forever?

“Wha- what in the actual fuck just happened…” whispered Lyra.

“It’s because he’s too much of a monster, it got scared, it has to be,” said Opal, a little uncertainty in her voice.

“I… I don't know what I just witnessed… My gods, that was....” The guard wiped at his brow, sweat running down his face, and not just from the heat the orb had created.

“M-must be a flaw with the magic on the orb, it j-just happened to break when a m-monster touched it. You should talk to whoever you get those f-from. They’re cheaping out on you, y-yeah?” said Lyra, her voice shaky. She eyed Rain nervously, suddenly unsure of what he really was.

“...R-right, that must be it. Gods whoever the hell made that thing they put some strange stuff in it.”

Lyra swallowed. “Okay, I-I’ll leave you to get on that! Can’t have faulty level orbs around! D-dangerous!”

She began backing into the town and then suddenly turned and swiftly strode away, her hooves clacking on the cobble as she went. Rain and Opal followed after. They immediately headed toward the nearest alley and then down a few turns until they'd put some distance between themselves and the gate. A few people noticed them, it was hard not to with the size of Rain, but apart from the colour draining from their faces, and immediately turning on their heels and walking away, they did nothing.

Lyra paused, leaning against a wall, a little panicyness in her legs.

“I don't know what that was,” said Rain. “The monster species that I am hasn't been around for a long time. Maybe that has something to do with it.”

Lyra let out a long breath and closed her eyes. Whatever Rain said that was… unsettling. She had been level checked countless times throughout her life, she was very familiar with it. Never ever had she seen anything like that ever. She shook her head to clear her thoughts. Perhaps he was right and it just wasn't compatible with an ancient monster, as though that made as much sense as anything. That screaming mouth…

“What a curiosity,” said Vaush’s slightly muffled voice. “I have never seen nor heard of such a thing before. There is nothing in a level orb that might cause such a reaction, at least there was not back in my day.”

“So what made that, whatever that was, happen?” said Lyra glaring at Opal’s pack.

“I can only surmise. It does remind me of the backlash that can happen from causing impossibilities with fringe magic. Using fringe magic you can create things that do not fit in our world: A square circle, something that both exists and does not exist at once, solid nothingness. I knew of a number of mages at the top of their field who tried to push the envelope in that way. They all ended up institutionalised, raving about impossibilities, or dead.”

“And this?”

“... measurement of something that cannot be measured, a monster’s level, would be an impossibility.”

“What are you suggesting?” gravelled Rain.

“I am not suggesting anything. A clumsy stumble upon an impossibility that caused a random magical backlash. A curiosity, no more. Best you move on.”

Lyra wasn’t particularly pleased with that answer but the more she considered it the more it made sense. An accidental measurement of a monster with no levels, made possible because of Rain’s ancient species being outside what the creators of the orb had expected. That, that fitted... sort of. She calmed her breathing.

Opal had gotten bored while Vaush spoke and had started poking around the alley. In particular investigating the dumpsters. She made a face at the smell as she opened one.

“I came here often,” said Rain softly. “There were few chances for food. It was this or starve.”

Opal dropped the lid back down with a bang.

“Well now everyone is food. This whole town can be eaten!” said the Goblin happily.

“Uhm, p-please don't eat everyone in Lynthia.”

Rain looked around the alley and then began walking away.

“Hey, that wasn't an answer! You didn't answer meeee!”

Lyra hurried after him, suddenly very concerned.