That night I wasn’t sure if I was happy I had fallen asleep and that meant that Kasidy was done talking or sad that I was back in Sam’s office.

Sam had me in the corner again. This time I was hearing the voices of people who had turned on me. I had a boss who had been great until she messed up. Then she hung me out to dry. Her voice was cutting in and telling me how great I was doing and how happy she was to have me as an employee.

Then there was the kid I walked home from school with for years. His voice was telling the other kids to kick me. He had turned on me one day and beat me up. I never found out why he went from a friend to someone who hated me.

Next was my best friend at my first job. He was the odd one. I had moved away, but we kept in touch. I was messaging him back and forth on social media. While I was at work, he got upset at what one of my other friends had said. I didn’t know what was going on for three days. Over the next year or so, I tried to be more engaged and talk with my best friend. Then one day, he just unfriended me. It took a couple of days before he responded to the email I sent telling me that friends on social media weren’t his only friends. Then a year after the last time I emailed him, he responded to me. He wished me a happy birthday and asked if I was back in the state. It stung so much since I had already thought him gone. He was the only one that betrayed me that I told to take a hike.

One after voices of those I trusted pounded down around me. Girlfriends who left me. Friends who cut me out and put me down. Some were voices from my life, and others were voices from Ash. Yet most were just voices I had never heard or could place. Each one, though, carried with it the loss of trust. The loss of faith I had in that person. Yet I still longed for each person and each relationship to be restored.

Then Sam spoke. “Arn, in a party each person sees the health, mana, and stamina of the rest of the party. It shows up just like theirs does but is proportional to theirs. So if Kasidy had 400 mana then your full bar would be a tenth hers. Also your primary and secondary class will show up along with your name and title.”

Then I woke up in my fur. I got the well-rested bonus because of the fur, which was important to me. But it was time to get going on the day. I needed to get more equipment before Kasidy got up.

My heart was heavy thinking about all the people I had trusted who betrayed me. It was my fault, though. I always trusted when I first met people. Unless you gave me a reason not to trust you, I started off thinking that you were an okay person. I treated you with respect and kindness up to the point you did me dirty. Then if I ever saw you again, I knew better.

It was hard because all of the emotions from what seemed like more than a life were forced to resurface. It would have been harder if I knew all of the voices, but I was guessing that they should be the future people that I was worried would betray me. With the way that Sam liked to mess with me, it was the only thing I could think of.

I sighed deeply. I had things I needed to do, and this was the time to do them. Emotional problems could wait. So I dropped a dungeon seed into the central support post of the tree house part of the thicket and then waited as the seed turned into a dungeon. As it expanded, it captured the thicket, and then it started to work on expanding downward. It was moving much slower since there wasn’t anything around for it to open into.

With the thicket only being level one itself, the dungeon didn’t get much expansion above ground as the first one did. As soon as it stabilized at level two, I claimed it. Then I moved the first-floor safe room up top and stepped in.

I yelled out. “Dave!”

I heard some crashing from the bar below and Dave. “Give a guy a chance to open shop before you start yelling at him!”

I laughed and made my way down. When I did, I saw him smiling at me with his dumb shot glass. Sitting on the bar was a plate of eggs and bacon and two biscuits with gravy. I smiled and sat down to tuck in.

Around my fork, I said. “I have missed your cooking. Mine isn’t bad; I just don’t have the stuff needed. Kasidy’s though is horrid!”

Dave laughed. “So how has the trip been moving as fast as you would like?”

I shook my head. “No we have had a couple of hiccups. Kasidy fell in the river and almost froze to death on the second day. Which turned it into a half day. Then we came across a huge cave full of goblins.”

I smiled with a wicked smile and took a bite of food. “I level up a dungeon to level three and left it at the front of the cave. I don’t think they will be leaving that way for a while.”

Dave gave me a sidelong glance. “While dungeons are hostile to the dark ones, we are training tools, not weapons. They could overcome and break a low-level dungeon. If you can, you might want to try to get back to it and move it or level it to at least 10. At 10, we get much harder to kill.”

I thought about that for a moment. He was right, and the dungeons, while not people, still seemed to act like it. Though they almost all acted like the same one. At least the ones that I had been in so far.

I raised my fork. “That brings up a good question do you know how long transport between dungeons takes?”

Dave nodded and set down his never-clean glass. “Yup. It is like walking through a door. On one side is the dungeon you are in, and on the other, the one you are going to. It is a one-way door.”

I smiled. “Well that will make traveling much faster and easier. Can I leave from in the safe room or do I need to be some place else?”

Dave walked around the counter and sat down. “You can be anywhere inside the dungeons that you control. But remember that you can only travel from one once an hour. So you can’t just bounce back and forth between two.”

I nodded and finished up my food. “Okay then I am heading back to my first dungeon. I’ll be back as soon as I can. I plan to stop in at the goblin dungeon to see if there is anything I can do to help it.”

With that, I pulled up my dungeon master access and opened up a transportation request. A doorway grew out from the floor of the safe room. Through it, I could see into the dungeon master’s quarters in the first dungeon. My extra food was still in there, working to age. I grinned and stepped through.

As I passed through, the portal closed behind me, and I looked around. I dropped my bag and tossed the extra rations that I needed into my bag and then stepped through to the safe room. I chose this one because I needed the food but also because I figured that it would be the highest level. So if I needed anything, I should be able to get it from here.

I yelled out as I came into the safe room. “Dave! I got some things I need to buy and others to make!”

He was waiting for me with the bar open and his item display ready to pull out. “What can I help you with today young dungeon Master?”

I laughed. “I need to get four more of the dungeon master engraved clubs that I like calling thicket stakes. I also need a simple ring and another mess kit like the last one I got for Kasidy. Oh I also need a thick ladies belt make it black and leather.”

Dave started to spin his item rack. “When you say thick for the belt do you mean like how tall it is or deep?”

“How tall and you knew that from surface thoughts.”

Dave laughed and started to pull out the things I requested. Soon I had my bag packed up, and I was over at a table with a small bronze ring and the belt. I had my engraving equipment out and was working on the belt first.

I wanted to make it like my standard in that it was an item and not armor. I carved many of the same runes into it, but I understood things better. I wasn’t making a wide dome like the standard but a small one. It wasn’t meant to be a rallying point. It was meant to help hold a person together.

I added spots for some of the amethyst that I had turned into power stones. Then I worked on the clasp second. It was its own function. As I worked through the belt, I had three distinct parts. First was the clasp, then the leather, and last was the belt tip. Each one I could treat as a separate thing.

After fighting the wrath, I wanted something that would help hold the mind and spirit in place, so I worked the thought of strengthening and mind as I etched those runes on the tip. Then I thought about how the clasp held everything together. So for that, I put on the stone air runes. Lastly, on the strap, I put in runes for bringing together and holding and changing. My idea was that the belt would adapt to who was wearing it and that express the value of the person. I had three places that I was going to put in cores.

Then I stopped. I couldn’t give this to Kasidy. If everything I did worked out right, it would be a world’s first belt. I couldn’t run the risk of her turning on me. She might not have an identity spell to see that it was a world’s first. But that didn’t matter. If I was doing this, either Blink would get the first, or Lannah would.

I was about to start again when I got the sudden urge to get myself a belt. I got a two-inch thick sword belt and started to work on my own belt. I would have the world’s first belt, and then I could give a lower-level one over to Kasidy. It would help her just the same.

I typically would have my standard with me, and this belt was clearly for something other than armor. After all, it held the weapon so that I could draw my sword. It wasn’t there to protect me but was there to hold the sword. With that idea in mind, I added most of the same runes I did for Kasidy’s belt.

Yet I adjusted things to include more on the mental defense. I also added the idea of the belt keeping me ready to draw the sword. As such, I was able to use the runes for cure to remove debuffs that could keep me from drawing my sword.

After several hours of working on the belt, I had it finished and dropped five cores into it. The writing of the pop-up was all gold with a glowing orange glow.

Item core created

World first!

Swordsman’s belt (Cluster)

As your Swordsman’s belt core core is the first it is uncapped in level

Normal Swordsman’s belt core cores will be capped at level 8.

As your Swordsman’s belt core levels its helpfulness increases.

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