The store that we were in was clearly a general store of types. It had a large counter in the front, and behind the counter were lines of shelves. The whole setup reminded me of an auto-parts store; it even had a general merchandise area.

While Kasidy wandered the front of the building, I went to the shelves in the back. I figured that if anything in here would be useful, it would be back there. The shelves mostly had roles of fabric and folded pelts. There was even a whole section of large scales.

Behind the shelves was a door that was standing open. I looked through and found a workshop. If I was guessing what the back of the building was, I would say it was a leather shop. Perhaps an armorer just because of everything that I was seeing. There was even a half-made leather jacket on a stand.

The door behind the workshop led into another building. This one wasn’t preserved; I could tell just by seeing the tall layer of dust on the first table. The other giveaway was the three skeletons that were standing in the room. None of them moved when I opened the door, so I slowly closed it and barred it from my side.

I sighed. This shop might be someplace that I come back to later. I wanted to find out how it worked. If it was cored, then I needed to find that core and see what level it was at and what it needed. If it wasn’t, I wanted to discover how the building looked new.

As I headed back to the front, I reached out to Blink. “Sweetie, how are you holding up.”

I got an immediate response back. “Not good, Daddy. I’m hungry and bored. I want out of this cage.”

I sighed, then I thought back to her. “We are on our way. Did the lich come back?”

She shared her vision with me. The boy Lich was back and didn’t look happy. His large creation was missing several limbs. He had the monster standing near the back wall.

As I watched, he had a set of about a dozen orc bodies on the tables. He moved from one to the next, putting powders on them and drawing things on their bodies. When I made zombies, it was just a quick spell, but here he was doing something else. I could only watch for a few minutes before it was time to keep moving.

I sent one last message to Blink. “Okay, little one, we are on our way again. I’ll see you soon.”

She sent back to me. “Chaos keep you, Daddy. Make him pay for locking me up.”

I stepped through the shelf space to the front counter and asked. “Did we find anything useful?”

Kasidy held up her empty hands. “It doesn’t seem like they sold any food; if they did, it was all gone. You?”

I shook my head. “The back door leads to a house with a few undead skeletons. They didn’t react to me. The lich is back in his dungeon, and Blink wants out. That big zombie monster I told you about was back but looked beat up.”

Renfry pointed at the door. “Ready, my lord?”

I nodded. “Irwin are you?”

I heard him call out from off to the side. “Over here. I think I found something that might help.”

We headed over to a side door that led to a back hallway. The wall of the hallway was all exposed bricks. Right in the middle of it, where I would think the back of the building would be, was an opening. The wall had swung into the new passage that showed steps heading down.

I smiled and shook my head. “Okay, so we are in a magical building with a secret door heading down. Not sure if it makes sense to see where this leads or keep moving across the surface.”

Kasidy peered down the steps. “We don’t know where it goes, so I say we stay here.”

Renfry nodded. “Without a reason for going down, we should stay up here where we have movement options.”

I sighed and nodded. “Better to be able to see what is around us than go where we don’t know. Okay, let’s mark this whole place as somewhere we need to come back and look at. Irwin, you did a good job finding this place, so you will be with us when we get the chance.”

The young man gave me a grin and said. “I look forward to it.”

I pointed to the main door. “Renfry, let’s head out.”

We shifted around and moved to the front door. Renfry drew his sword and then slowly opened it. He quickly closed it and shook his head as he relocked the door. I would say that he turned pale as he looked back at me, but with gray skin, that would be hard to know.

He pointed back to the hallway. “It looks like we were found out.”

I held up my hand and then reached out through the door to try to claim the undead. As soon as I started the process, I got the option to try to wrist it from someone else. I stopped my process because I knew I was lower leveled, and it wouldn’t work. I shook my head and pointed back to the hallway.

As we moved to the unknown passage, I glanced around for something to light the path with. Once again, I was reminded that I needed to get a good dark vision type of enchantment. Since I was moving with a party, it would need to be something we could all use. But for now, I just needed a torch or some candles.

I paused right before heading down. “Kasidy, did you find any torches or anything up here?”

She shook her head, no, and I sighed. “Okay, I have a lamp in the workshop. I am going to go grab that so that we have some light down there.”

I rushed to the back room and grabbed the lamp off the table. It wasn’t much, but it reminded me of a red outside hurricane lamp in many ways. I shook it a bit and heard the oil still in it. Of course, I had no way of knowing if the oil was still good, but I was hopeful since everything in the store seemed to still be working. Besides that, I was about to cheat.

I set the lamp on the work table and looked around at the tools. Many of them would work, but what I needed the most important were the punches. I took the minute to activate my socket skill and followed the process of adding a socket to the lamp. Since it was a normal item, I hoped it would work better than it had been.

Once I had the socket in place, I quickly added the runes for light. I wanted to make this better than what I was doing, but I knew that it would take more time than I had. So I quickly imbued the lamp with just a few points of mana. Then I told my necklace to kick out one core.

It was a crap job, and I knew that, but I was still hopeful I would get something useful.

I pulled up the interface for my new cored item just to make sure that it would do what I needed. Unfortunately, it wasn’t what I hoped as I saw the interface’s text was the orange of a magical cored item, not the gold of a world’s first.

Item core created

Lamp

Level 0/7

General

Handled Lamp

Level 0

Type item core

Class Ultra Rare

Durability 200/200

This red lamp contains a core. As you provide for the core, the item will level, and its helpfulness will improve. Like all lamps, this will give you light when you need it. Just light it like a normal lamp.

>Growth

To improve your item core, you must use it for its purpose and provide it with material to level up.

Tin 0%

Fabric 0%

Combustible fluid %

Mana 0%

>Traits

These are the abilities or traits that your lamp has.

Flickerless light: Your lamp will provide a flickerless light in a 10-foot radius. 1 Mana per hour

Mana reservoir- 12 mana linked to traits. Recharges at a rate of 1 mana per hour when not in use can be forced charged.

It wasn’t my best work, but it would do. I ran back through the store. I was nervous, not because I didn’t think we could fight a few undead. Nope, my worry was fighting all of the undead in the whole city. I knew that the necromancer didn’t have all of them under his control, but I also knew that he could send enough after us.

As I got to the secret passage, I heard the front door start to rattle. I held up the lamp, “Irwin, light this up, then we need to get down there. They are trying to get in now.”

My healer and war mage nodded and lit the lamp with a small fire jet. Then we headed down the steps into the unknown. My hope though unfounded, was that the hidden passage would take us in the right direction.

Renfry went first with his sword drawn. Irwin went next with the lamp held high. After the healer, I sent Kasidy down with me close to her heels. When we were through the door, I looked for a way to close it. I couldn’t find a lever or anything, but when I touched the brick wall, it slowly closed. On the back of it, I saw a latch which I threw.

Right as I finished throwing the latch, I heard Renfry shout. Renfry’s shout wasn’t much of one, but it still was enough to make me snap my head around. Renfry and the light had made it down to a landing about ten feet away, leaving me in the dark. On the ground in front of Renfry was a dead oversized rat. I shook my head as I rushed down the steps to catch back up.

It was only a few paces down before I got to the landing the group was on. Renfry paused to let me catch up and then headed down the steps again. Every few steps, we would wait to listen. But, unfortunately, what we heard wasn’t what I wanted. Instead, I heard rats, lots of rats.

If this place were a dungeon, I could see rats being here, but I wasn’t sure how they were still living in the numbers I was hearing. Sure, if we were in a living city, I could also understand. But without food, I wasn’t sure how they were here. Let alone how they were the size of a dog.

We moved down the stairs for another hundred feet or so when we came to a split. It was our first option of where we could go. The first option was to head down the stairs even further. Our second option was to open up the obviously magical door.

Gathered on the small landing, I asked. “Thoughts?”

Kasidy answered first. “I don’t like rats. I never have.”

I smiled and had to hold back a laugh. “No, do we take the door or go down?”

She winked at me and said. “Never seen a rat open a door.”

I gave a short chuckle at that. “Fair point. So through the door?”

She nodded along with Irwin. Renfry shook his head and said. “If we head down, we are more likely to get into the sewers. From there, we might be able to figure out how to get under the castle.”

Irwin nodded to that as well. So I asked. “Irwin, you agreed with both. Which is it?”

He looked back up the stairs and then down again. “Whichever is faster. I’m more worried about the lich than the rats.”

I sighed and nodded. “Well, then, I guess with two options and three people, we get three opinions…. First, let’s try the door; if it’s locked, we’ll head down the steps.”

Renfry turned and placed his hand on the door ring. He gave it a hardy pull, but it didn’t budge. He shook his head and pointed down the stairs.

I shrugged. “Okay, let’s get down there and hope we can move through the sewers to get to Blink. If not, we need to find our next way up so that we can get back to the surface.”

Kasidy sighed. “I hate rats, and sewers stink.”

I gave a slight smile. “This one shouldn’t stink since the city has been dead for hundreds of years. There shouldn’t be anything flowing through it carrying muck.”

The next few minutes were tense as we descended the stairs. We had to have covered several hundred steps from the top of the stairwell to the bottom. There was a landing every few dozen, then it twisted and went down again. The closer to the bottom we got, the louder the rats were.

I heard Irwin mutter. “I don’t like the sound of this.”

Then Renfry hushed him. But it was too late; the sewer dwellers heard him, and the chatter of the rats stopped. Renfry didn’t take his next step, not wanting to even make a slight sound. Then the scampering started.

* * *