<~> Chapter 118

The week went by quickly. I spent a lot of time working with Luna and Iris on their magic while sparring with Maxwell and some of the other people who visited the training hall. The six of us had dinner with Celeste a few times, and I sat down with Celeste and Luna for lunch and tea on most days.

I had gotten to know Celeste a bit better during the week we spent in the castle together, and she had slowly begun to warm up to me. I liked to think that she got to see how much Luna and I liked each other, but I think the reality was actually that she had become more interested in me since learning a little about my origin. I still didn't tell her anything about the world I came from, but things slipped a few times, and I talked a bit about my education. I was being selective about what I told her because I really didn't know how much I could trust her. She was Luna's mother and I got the sense that she really did care about her, but I didn't know if her fondness for her daughter would keep me safe if I revealed too much about the world I came from. Perhaps I was being paranoid, but I found it hard to trust her.

When I was in private, I practiced partial shifting more so that I could maintain my beastkin disguise better. Maintaining my ears and tail began to feel more natural, but maintaining additional shifts on top, such as my feet or my claws, was more difficult. I also had to learn to partially unshift if I wanted to make sure to retain my ears and tail when transforming back. This had some weird results when I didn't do it cleanly, like my body gaining odd proportions in my human form. I was slowly picking it up, and Luna had been helping me the entire time.

The next bit of training the two of us did together was gaining more control over the regulation of my internal mana. Pretty much since I came here, my body would light up like a spotlight to any mages that were paying attention to my mana when I was shifted. Part of that mana was from the transformation itself, as well as fueling wherever my clothes went when I was shifted, but I was also wasting a ton of mana. If nothing else, controlling my mana better would make it easier to maintain the form without needing to eat as much. In this last week, I had shifted back and forth so much while practicing these things that I quickly ran through all of my leftover floral king deer meat. I hoped that I would have access to some good monsters to eat in the upcoming dungeon delve.

Luna's lightning magic was progressing nicely, enough that a very impressed Celeste had come to watch her personally a few times. Celeste had expressed interest in finding a lightning grimoire for her, but they were so rare that she didn't have any leads on one yet. I half suspected that by the time she found one, Luna would have already outpaced anything else anyone's done after incorporating my explanations of how electricity worked to the best of my knowledge. You start to really notice the lack of a working phone or the internet when you're trying to remember how specific things work off the top of your head.

I had a few tips for Iris from my understanding of weather stuff, but wind magic was a much more well-known field here. Because of the magic, they actually have a surprisingly robust understanding of things like aerodynamics and weather patterns. Because of the nature of magic though, a lot of this information isn't well known by non-mages. A trained wind mage would have been able to predict the thunderstorm we had survived, while it was basically just a freak accident to everyone else. It's not as if people didn't know things in this world. It was just that education was extremely uneven among commoners. From what Celeste has told me, nobles put a lot more emphasis on history and philosophy, but the overall education in all subjects is usually better among nobles.

I believed that Ironcastle would improve a lot if there was some level of standardized education, but Celeste said that an undertaking like that would require an immense amount of money that Ironcastle frankly didn't have, and the people were already heavily taxed. Because of the political situation, a lot of money was put toward defense and the acquisition of food and trade goods. Celeste insisted that the city's budget was already stretched very thin. At the end of the day, Ironcastle is just a single city and the nobility of the city was more interested in the protection of its people over the unknown benefits of educating what they perceived to be dim-witted commoners. I argued that educating people had a proven track record of improving the lives of everyone in my world. Even if a majority of the commoners were actually dim-witted, the few truly intelligent people would lift everyone up with them. She agreed that the idea had merit and she promised to talk with her siblings about it. Right now, she obviously didn't have much sway with them, though.

Eventually, Celeste and Callisto called the six of us to a large meeting room near the atrium that had tall windows that let in the sun. I looked over at Maxwell's new armor that dully reflected the light. It looked a bit similar to mine in color, but not design. Mine looked a lot more flashy than Maxwell's practical armor, but his was enchanted with powerful defense-focused magic. I was forced to attend the meeting in a casual outfit since my armor hadn't been returned from the enchanter yet.

I would be getting my enchanted armor back today. I had wanted to discuss with the enchanter what things were available in person, but I, unfortunately, had to make do with a game of telephone to get my requests across. In the end, we went with a spatial fitting enchantment, and a versatile stealth enchantment using the shadow affinity it had. I would be able to activate it to make me camouflage in shadows and mute the sounds it made when I moved. I was going to be a stealth berserker with my new armor. I was pretty excited to try it out.

One of the soldiers opened the door ahead of us and broke me from my thoughts. We were led into the meeting room where Milana, Talia, Valkin, and Norrik were waiting. They had looked nervous when we walked in, but seeing our familiar faces looked to have calmed them down a bit. I smiled and waved at them to help put them at ease.

"Luna! Helena! You two are safe! When you didn't return, we asked around and heard you were taken to the castle," Milana said.

I nodded. "It's nice to hear that you cared enough to ask around when we disappeared."

Norrik looked around at the meeting room and the soldiers. "Does this mean that there's nothing to worry about? They didn't tell us why they were taking us to the castle."

The six of us took our seats near them at the large table and Maxwell rapped on it with his knuckles. "They're offering all of us a job. A secret one from the dragon royalty."

Valkin glanced at me. "Did you get us a good job? After the... issues we've had?" he asked.

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I shrugged, "Someone I talked to recently said they would rather trust someone who didn't like me but kept secrets, over someone who only kept secrets as long as they continued to like me... or something like that. It sounded like good advice."

Norrik snorted. "So the royalty knows about that trick you do?" he asked. His wording was strange. He said it in a way that implied it was something I could do not something I was. I don't know if it was intentional, but he was still covering for me. I think I liked Norrik, he seemed like a good guy... even if I didn't completely like his choice of best friend.

I nodded. "Our employer knows, she'll be here shortly. Don't discuss it, but I'll be able to use it on this mission."

That got a few nods.

"Luna! I have been able to do the trick you showed me outside the inn! It's not quite as powerful as yours, but considering I've never used magic before, it's amazing!" Talia said excitedly.

("Tell her that's great! I'm excited to see it!") Luna said.

Talia smiled when I relayed the message.

"I'll have to use it on the next monster we see!" Talia said enthusiastically.

The door behind us opened and two separate groups of people came in next. I didn't recognize any of them. The first group looked like hunters like us based on the enchanted armor and weapons they carried with them. The group of five was made up of three draco and two drakken of all different scale colors. I was a bit happy they all looked so different from one another, it shouldn't be difficult to tell them apart, and hopefully learn their names. I suppose that was assuming I would be able to see their scales through my blindfold without the sunlight in the room. Presumably, I would be able to shift in front of them if they were coming along, so I might not even need to rely on the blindfold's odd ability to see faded colors in the sunlight.

A tall red-scaled draco in the front grinned and gave a short bow. "It's nice to meet you. I am Jol'ket, leader of this group."

Maxwell nodded. "I am Maxwell, leader of ours."

Valkin returned the short bow. "I am Valkin, leader of this group," he said, waving along his side of the table.

Jol'ket grinned wide. "Assignments from royalty pay well, so I hope all of us will work well together. I assure you that none of my group have trouble working with beastkin and humans. I hope that the same can be said about your ability to work with draco and drakken?" his statement trailed off and sounded like a question at the end.

The draco man was pleased to see that everyone nodded or vocally agreed, and some of the others behind him looked relieved. They must have a history of friction between some of the races. Their group took a seat at the table, the last group had already begun to sit while our groups were hashing that out. The last group of people didn't look like one cohesive group, more like a mix of craftsmen and tradesmen. They must be the support staff that had been mentioned.

The quiet chatter turned to silence the moment Celeste and Callisto entered the room. Callisto looked over the group and smiled. "Excellent, everyone is here already! That means we can get right into the mission that we intend to offer you. The first thing to clarify is that while this mission will pay well, even hearing about it will require you to keep it a total secret. If any of you are caught leaking this information to anyone else, that person will be executed for treason. Clear? You will be allowed to refuse the mission after you hear it, but if anyone would like to leave without even hearing the mission, please proceed to do so now."

There were a few restless people in the group, but no one left. Callisto smiled. "Great! From here on out, leaking any of this information will get you executed. We will tell you when it's safe to discuss this information again if any of you choose not to take the opportunity once you hear what it is."

Celeste stepped forward. "I have confirmed a new unexplored dungeon in Ironcastle's territory. We're gathering an expedition group to be some of the first people to delve into the dungeon and claim it for the city-state."

There were immediate gasps and mumbling from the gathered hunters. Only our group wasn't shocked since we had already heard about this and even talked about it at length amongst ourselves.

Callisto grinned. "All of you have been hand-picked to be the first ones to go into the dungeon and find anything that could be valuable to the kingdom. You will be paid a flat rate by the day and given large bonuses for any valuable resources you find. Support staff will be given a share of everything the delvers collect. Any questions?"

There were some arguments over the rules of the contract they would sign, and the split of things like chests and materials, but everyone that sat at that table decided to go with us into the dungeon.

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