“What the heck!”

Elania’s first thought was that it was blood, but the red liquid smelled like oil and was too thick.

“Oh no! I’m so sorry! We were replacing the condenser and it’s sensitive to pressure fluctuations!”

Wiping whatever guck it was that the condenser needed off her face, Elania tried to keep a straight face as she eyed Yolani. Lucas was there holding some type of machine; he’d been spared most of the splatter but still had lines of the stuff on his armor.

Somehow none of it had hit Yolani.

“Is there a way to get this off?”

“Ahh! Towels, we have some for emergencies!”

Lucas coughed and pointed to an empty rack, “We used those yesterday.”

Elania shook her head, although the gesture was lost on anyone not from Earth.

“It isn’t flammable is it? Smells like some odd mix of gasoline and engine oil.”

“Gas-o-lean?” Yolani stammered over the strange word before saving them all from a fiery death, “It isn’t, unless---maybe a little if it dries.”

“Does the plumbing upstairs still work, or did they manage to take the nailed down things, too?”

“It’s still there.”

“You know, I just took a shower before coming over here.”

“I’m sorry!”

“No worries, I’ll go wash up, then Lucas can have a turn after.”

Elania headed for the steps that lead upstairs to where the living quarters were located, stopping as she took the first step to look back. Yolani was trying to fix whatever the thing was already.

“Put a sign on the door next time you’re going to work on something that explodes if the pressure of an opening door is going to cause it to explode. Actually, lock it!”

“They took the locks, too!”

It was a miracle they hadn’t taken the bell, now that Elania thought about it.

The upstairs wasn’t much of a living space now, either. Everything that had belonged to Ranolf had been taken. There were a few boxes that Elania had helped Yolani move from her destroyed shop that she had lived in with her father. Yolani hadn’t even started to unpack them.

While the pile didn’t amount to much, Elania was surprised that she had been able to salvage that much. The shopfront had ended up collapsing, and the quarters above had the floor give out and spill into the debris below. When Elania had examined the wreckage a few days later, she’d not have believed anyone if they said people had survived.

There was a towel in the bathroom. Yolani must have forgotten she put it there. Not that a towel was going to clean up her clothes very well. A quick test of the plumbing told her something unfortunate, though--- they’d stripped out the hot water faucet and replaced it with an unartifced fixture. All the water was going to be cold.

“Fuck!”

---

“Here.”

Elania tossed the slightly used towel to Lucas, who had already managed to clean most of the condenser fluid off somehow.

“Thanks, uhh. I’ll be right back.”

“There’s no hot water. Goodluck.”

He gave her a strange look, then disappeared upstairs.

“So, what’s this and aren’t we going to go to the dungeon today?”

“A customer stopped by this morning needing this fixed, and it should pay enough to get some things. We can go in a bit.”

Elania rolled her eyes, “Yes, well I figured that, but I really meant what was ‘this’--- we aren’t all Artificers you know?”

“Oh! It’s a condensor manifold. They act as regulators when a energy field becomes stressed and condense the power output of manashards into a denser form so the field can still operate under higher pressures. This is a small one someone probably uses to protect a single room or building!”

Elania eyed the thing. It was about the size of a car engine and looked just as complex to her. It didn’t quite look as heavy as a block of steel though, a lot of it seemed like it was made out of ceramic.

“I almost understood that.”

“So, it should only take about an hour to fix. Although we need to replace the fluids now. Then we can go hunt for shards and see if we can charge you up more.”

“Alright. Hey… have you… seen any of those glitches?”

Yolani looked at her with a bit of worry before tilting her head ‘no.’

“Do you want me to cancel the contract? Maybe that will…”

“No!” It came out a bit more forcefully than Elania had intended, and the other girl’s eyes widened a bit in surprise.

“Sorry… its just… I don’t want to…” Elania’s words came to a stuttering stop as Yolani came over and suddenly hugged her while patting her gently on the back.

“Hey. Hey. It will be alright. I didn’t mean I wanted to get rid of you.”

“I know… I’m sorry, it’s just…”

“Shhh. It’s ok.”

---

“That should do it.”

Elania wiped her forehead and let out a breath of air she hadn’t known she was holding. She had been half afraid it would explode again and cover them all with the condenser fluid a second time, even if it was empty.

Yolani handed her a spanner to tuck away before turning on Lucas.

“Lucas, go ask Artificer Terzan for a single unit of condensor fluid. Tell him I’ll repay him the stock value in manashard charges.”

“Uhh, alright. He’s the one a shop down, right?”

“Right. I saw him take a shipment of a lot of fluid a few days ago, so he should be happy with the trade.”

Well, that was solved, and Elania started collecting back her things that she had taken off while they were working. There really was no place for a weighted-down cloak or a shortsword while working on some kind of machine she still didn’t fully understand, even if her major role had just been holding parts or tools.

“Hey, Yolani?”

“Huh? Elania?”

“When I level up, I get another attribute point. Can you help me pick which one I take?”

“That’s…”

“You don’t have to, I was just… well I was looking at them last night and I’m not sure about what they do.”

“Oh, I’d love to help! It’s just not a thing people usually ask.”

“It might be tonight, I’m only one level away.”

“Well, when we get back, we can look over the choices then.”

Elania smiled; it was a relief to have the promise of help for something so important, especially when she didn’t have much confidence in knowing what each option entailed. Although choosing [Regeneration] seemed to have been a solid choice, so it wasn’t like she had a terrible track record. That decision had been made under pressure, though.

For some reason, the thought of choosing made her feel unconfident. Typically, if she had been rolling a character for a game, she would go through all the options and create a build that she was interested in. That was the problem, she realized.

‘This isn’t a game. A bad build doesn’t mean I lose a character. It means I’m dead.’

The realization made the suggested evening training bouts with Harlock for raising her skills seemed a lot more appealing, even if she wasn’t sure how smashing a metal stick into a wooden target would make her better at hitting things.

---

Elania let Yolani take the lead as they headed out onto the street. The other girl had been even faster than her at getting ready, although she didn’t have the same armor to put on. Her cloak only reached the middle of her back, probably because she didn’t want to worry about anything getting in the way of reaching the brace of Artificer wands hugging her waist.

“Why’d you have to run all the way here if you were just going to stay in the shop for two hours? Do you know what the sergant had me doing? Elania? Hello?”

Yolani in front, Henri behind her, she decided that she liked the middle position in their group, and if The Guard was going to ‘spy’ on her, she had no problem having Henri help as much as possible.

As the street cleared out and they moved at a good pace, Yolani looked back at them and started laying out the plan.

“So we’ll be starting at level 5 this time. The last one was just a dry run so Elania could get used to the system.”

“I still think we could have skipped that. We spent more time walking through the maze than actually doing anything.”

“Most people don’t ever go that far in the first place, though, and it was your first time. We aren’t exactly Delvers either, so we need to be careful.”

“You do realize I’m like 10 or 20% Darkwalker, or something right? I was killing those with a stick. Chasing over-sized rats and having a goblin for a boss wasn’t exactly thrilling.”

“Gosh, it wasn’t supposed to be ‘thrilling’ and we got your power up and charged a few manashards didn’t we?”

Elania sighed; it wasn’t that she thought Yolani was wrong. Elania just wanted to make more progress. She didn’t like the fact that she was still low on power or that they were barely scraping by on how many manashards they had left.

“I know, you’re right, I just… was hoping we’d be further along already.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll get there.”

As they turned the corner, Henri finally spoke up, “Level 5? Goblins? Wait… you… we aren’t headed to the dungeon are we?”

Elania looked back and grinned, “Yep! I told you we were going to fill some manashards today.”

“But… but I thought you were going to pay to have them charged.”

Yolani laughed, “With what money? Your bosses didn’t actually leave anything for us to sell, remember?”

Elania nodded, but then turned back to smile at him, “But it was nice of them to leave you with us so you can help with some labor!”

“Uhh… I’m not sure that’s accurate, and look… I’m not sure I can go with you. I doubt the Syndicate is going to let a guardsman in.”

“Don’t worry, there are plenty of guardsmen who moonlight as delvers you know. Although… you probably should stuff your tabard in a pack if your going to keep following Elania. It isn’t that far to Syndie territory.”

Henri actually stopped and looked around, and then the speed at which he pulled the white guard tabard over his head and stuffed it in his shoulder bag made Elania giggle.

“Great, now you’re undercov---”

A sudden massive crack echoed from across the street. Elania started to throw herself to the ground before she realized what it was. A wagon had slipped loose of its brake while a few laborers were unloading and began to roll down an incline before slamming into a wall.

Yolani didn’t miss her sudden reaction, “Elania, are you alright?”

Embarrassment flooded Elania’s cheeks, no one else had almost dived for cover, and she shook her head.

“I’m fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“Let’s keep going…”

There weren’t any more distractions as they walked across the city. It didn’t feel quite as long a walk to Elania this time around. Maybe that was because last time, she’d been hovering just over empty on her Power gauge with only a few charges from Yolani’s manashards to keep her going. Or maybe it was just that she was more familiar with the city, and everything in the Merc’ Dist was starting to look the same.

Even during the day, the streets weren’t nearly as crowded as she remembered in the Artisan District. She wasn’t sure why that was the case, especially since she had been told that there were more people in the Merc’ Dist than the rest of the city combined. Regardless of the reason, it made traveling in a group a bit easier, at least while they were on the side streets.

As soon as they started nearing the square that held the dungeon entrance, Elania started to pick up the subtle drone of a lot of people. Yolani had warned her that there were usually a lot more people than the first time they had went. It had been much later in the evening. Nothing really prepared her for the huge crowd and several long lines that entered into view.