Dungeon Tour Guide ch. 23 (Patreon)

“Not an adventurer?” Rose’s mother said. “Would you care to explain?”

“The name’s Lucas,” I introduced myself, bowing ever so slightly. “I’m bound to this dungeon, and I also act as its tour guide.”

“Iris Alder,” she said, offering a handshake. “Head of Alder Corps. Pleasure to meet you.”

I accepted her hand. Iris’ grip was firm without being overbearing, asserting her position of power without going too hard. A merchant’s handshake.

“What brings you around these parts?” I asked, plastering a fake smile on my face.

“You claim to be dungeonbound,” she said, all business.

“I am,” I said. “You’d like me to prove it?”

“Yes. I apologize for any unwarranted doubt, but sometimes our due diligence must be done.”

“Sure thing,” I said amiably. So far, she didn’t seem particularly threatening or aggressive, but I wasn’t about to drop my guard.

First things first. If dungeonbound oversaw the land that their dungeon was built around, there must’ve been a scam at some point in time where people had pretended to be one and then tried to claim jurisdiction over a project. I couldn’t fault her for wanting me to prove it, so I would try.

I walked past her, turning my back to the businesswoman—my dungeon senses tracked her as a [Tactician], which meant that even at her level of 12, she wasn’t likely to do any damage to me even if I looked away—and kept going.

“This is the outside of the dungeon,” Iris said. “You shouldn’t be able to—“

“It’s not,” I said, and I encountered the end of the safe room.

[Warning: you may not leave the dungeon limits.]

The interface message corresponded with an invisible wall right at the limits of the dungeon, the resistance so great that I couldn’t even try to push through it.

Interestingly enough, the message was different from the first time I’d gotten it. When I’d been new to this place, it had given the explanation of the barrier as being due to the effects of “core-human integration.” Had the goddess just decided that the interface would simplify the messages once I’d gotten the understanding of what was happening? Was she actively helping me out by not creating an interface message that would out my identity as the dungeon?

With a flick of my wrist and a quick thought in my mind, I made my interface publicly visible, demonstrating it to her for a moment before dismissing it.

“See?” I said. “Dungeonbound. I can’t leave.”

“So you are,” the [Tactician] said, clasping her hands behind her back. “I assume you’re aware of the regulations, then.”

“Yes,” I lied. “I have a general idea, at least.”

I knew that dungeonbound had pretty decent rights, at least, but the property thing had been from Rose, so I had to trust that she was right.

Iris sighed. “You need to lie better, dear friend.”

“I know my rights,” I reasserted, more confidently this time. “As dungeonbound, I’m overseer of this area.”

The [Tactician] sighed again, longer this time. “My fool daughter got to you, didn’t she?”

“Your daughter?” I asked, feigning ignorance.

“That was better,” Iris said, lowering herself down onto a seat. “Come. Sit with me.”

I did, finding another outcropping to sit on.

“As I was saying, you must have spoken with my daughter. Her name is Rose, if you doubt our relationship.”

I remained silent.

“She’s right,” Iris said. “But the legal term is ‘superintendent’. I used the word ‘overseer’ to explain the legalities to her when she was young. Nobody else would say that.”

As she spoke, tension ratcheted up in my body, every part of me coming to attention as I processed what she’d said and remembered who I was dealing with.

Iris Alder was a smart woman. A businesswoman. A [Tactician]. That made her dangerous.

She would never beat anyone in a straight fight, but there were other kinds of danger. Danger that saw you signing a shitty deal off of the word of someone you were supposed to trust. Danger that saw your allies turning against you, plied by promises and money.

If I’d been on guard before, it was tripled now.

“Look,” Iris said, weary, “I should not be discussing this here, but I assume Rose has already been through this dungeon. No true mother would be able to ignore the telltale signs of magic and a levelup on her own child.”

“She may or may not have,” I said.

Fuck me, I hated dealing with people who actually knew how to maneuver socially. Now that I’d planted the idea in my own head, I wasn’t going to be sure of anything throughout the rest of this conversation. Was what she said a manipulation, lies intended to get something out of me? Or was she just a mother having a genuine conversation with a stranger?

As a dungeon, I had so much power. As a healer, I could bring people back from the brink of death and even further beyond. And yet here I was, floundering in a simple conversation.

Goddess, what I wouldn’t have given for a nice social skills spell or two right about now.

“This is the only dungeon in the area,” Iris said, resting her hands on her knees. “The only place she could’ve been to around Ketz is this one, and I know for a fact that she did not get further than a few miles from the city.”

“Okay,” I said. “And if she did? What about it?”

“I don’t want my daughter to be an adventurer,” she said. “But I can understand the appeal, especially with how much progress she’s made as a [Bard]. I know well enough that I cannot stop her. I had simply hoped to prepare her more for the rest of her life before she… left the nest, I suppose.”

“Does she know you know?” I asked. The way Rose had put it, it sounded like it had been a complete secret.

“She thinks I don’t know,” Iris said. “I know enough about my Rose to say that boxing her in will lead to naught but pain for the both of us, and I fear that bringing the topic up will push me to try to limit her. As much as I dislike her choice in life, I must allow her to make it.”

“That’s… surprisingly reasonable,” I said.

“I try,” she replied. “It’s certainly a unique situation even putting that aside. Rose has certain quirks to her that set her far aside from others, and learning how to parent someone as talented as her… it’s been an experience.”

I was still on guard, but her words rang surprisingly genuine. I couldn’t claim that I understood everything about her, nor could I exactly read when people were lying, but the facts lined up and Rose had admitted that her mother wasn’t a bad person, just one that she found a little overbearing sometimes.

On the one hand, I still had to keep myself vigilant, check for potential gotchas that she might try to stick me with, but on the other I was gradually realizing that social player or no, Iris Alder was still a human being.

Working with other people was what I had gotten into the tour guide schtick to do in the first place. What kind of person would I be if I wasn’t even willing to extend a hand to someone just because I thought they might be suspicious?

“Would you happen to have designs on this area?” I asked.

“You already know them,” Iris said. “Rose is sneaky, but I am able to [Appraise] an object well enough to tell if it’s a replica. Nobody else had access to my office, and I she would never sell me out to a competitor, so it must have logically gone to you. I had been wondering what she’d done with that, so thank you, this takes a weight off my shoulders.”

Well, no point in continuing to lie, I supposed. Iris was a lot better informed than either Rose or I had given her credit for. “Immediate developments in the next three to six months. Longer term projects ranging anywhere from a year to five years. You’re trying to build a town out of the dungeon.”

“It’s a possibility,” she said. “Untapped dungeons are rife with possibility. If this area’s rewards are good, then it is very possible that it attracts hundreds or even thousands of adventurers, and those people need to eat and sleep and play. A dungeon is the basis for community, and I’ve proved this time and time again with Alder Corps’ projects.”

“I’m not debating that,” I said. “Actually, it sounds rather nice.”

Fuck, I shouldn’t have admitted that. Admitting that her plan was attractive to me was probably not conducive to negotiations.

I soldiered on anyway. “Still, some of these terms are kind of ridiculous. First, I want to say that the booster service is a no. I function as a tour guide for this dungeon, and I’m not going to have someone else charging for the services I provide for free.”

“Very well,” she readily agreed. “Your kind is rare, so I had not taken the presence of a dungeonbound into account. If you do it for free, it would easily outstrip any booster service I could offer in terms of demand anyway. I would, of course, advise that you charge for it, but…”

“I’m dungeonbound,” I said. “Where am I going to spend my money?”

Also, I can just make more money. [Replicate] was a stupidly broken skill, and from what I’d seen of it so far it didn’t even leave a mana trace.

“You can have trade within the dungeon itself. This room here is a prime area for a market.”

“I suppose that’s true. Still, I’ll do it for free. I’m not in this for the money.”

“A respectable position,” she said, surprising me. “The world could use more of your like.”

“Seriously?” I asked. “I thought you’d, like, yell at me for being dumb or something.”

“I’m a businesswoman, Lucas, not a money-grubbing corporation,” Iris said, flashing me a smile that seemed practiced. “I like money, but I’m not so dumb as to believe it’s the only thing that matters in this world.”

“Then why the tolls?” I asked. “Payments just to enter a dungeon?”

She shrugged. “Marginal ones. Now that I have confirmation of a dungeonbound here, I assume the tolls are going to go. That’s fine. It’s protocol.”

“Really?”

“Rose thinks poorly of my practices because I do try to earn money with most of these communities. I promise you that I never seek to exploit adventurers nor charge unfair prices, and under the supervision of a dungeonbound I will never charge them anything for entry unless you specifically ask me to.”

I still wasn’t completely comfortable with the idea of gating a dungeon behind a toll booth, but I could deal. I would have to do more research into her company later, but to my ears it didn’t sound as horrible as I’d thought it would be at first.

“You know, you turned out to be a lot more reasonable than I expected,” I said.

“A pleasure to meet you as well,” Iris replied. “I hope I have not intruded on your time.”

“Not at all,” I said.

“The offer is open. I’ll change the plan as you wish, and we can workshop it until we get something that works for the both of us. I get some profits and you get a town. What do you think?”

“I may back out,” I warned.

“An expected risk.”

“Then I think we have a deal.”

“Oh, one more thing,” Rose said, raising a finger.

“Yeah?”

“Treat my daughter well, will you?”

“Huh? I mean—yeah, but—what?”

She extended her hand, and I shook it.

I was more than a little confused, but we had our agreement.

Only time would tell if it turned out to be fruitful.