It felt as if half of the town had gathered at the front gates of Rosewind. Theo wasn’t used to such commotion, nor did he want it. Personally, he would have much preferred if they had snuck out completely unnoticed… which would have happened if he hadn’t been so fussy about packing or gone to the shrine. There was no denying that the hero trait was worth it, although after a minute of cheerful shouting he was no longer sure.

“First time?” Liandra asked.

Theo nodded with his avatar.

“First times are rough, especially when it’s a big deal. That’s why we should have left directly.”

“I’ll know for next time,” Theo mumbled. “Do you stop noticing in time?”

“You always notice, but the burden gets easier. My first time was really rough. My father was there, wishing me luck, not to mention a few thousand people wanting to show their support.” The woman sighed. “The only thing worse is children.”

“Children are worse?” Theo blinked. “Why?”

“Looking at children is like looking at their hopes and dreams. You know exactly what they’re hoping for, just as you know that it’s not always possible to achieve it. Bringing bad news to children is like causing the end of the world. Some resent you for it, others not so much, but all of them are heartbroken, and you feel crappy for something that isn’t your fault.”

Theo nodded again, this time somewhat absentmindedly. Everything the woman had said was probably true, but that wasn’t his problem in the least. He wasn’t worried about dashing anyone’s dreams, because he had made no promises. What worried and annoyed him was the noise coming from the people and the prospect that they might start gathering at his building should the quest be successful. Guests—uninvited or not—were one of the things the dungeon disliked with a passion, especially after everything that had occurred in the last week. If he were to capture the thieves and return a hero of the region, things were going to get a hundred times worse. If he were to achieve his dream of a calm, quiet life, there were two options: either be so efficient that the earl didn’t dare waste his time with other quests, or be so incompetent, that the earl wouldn’t want to. Poth had their pros and cons, making it difficult to decide.

“Do you think there will be any fighting?” Theo asked.

“Most probably,” his traveling companion replied.

“A lot of it?”

“Maybe. Thieves usually prefer to run, but when they’re defending their stronghold, they tend to get berserk.”

Just great. Theo sighed internally.

“Don’t worry, though. I doubt they’ll be able to cause much harm.” Liandra tapped on the sheath of the massive two-handed sword her horse carried. Looking at it was enough to make Theo feel uneasy. Apart from the faint glow of magic emanating from the weapon, the size alone was enough to slice through his front door. “Well, except their leaders. They probably got some artifact or minion that helped them transform a band of third-rate thugs into something actually dangerous.”

“Does that happen a lot?”

“Enough to be noticed. There are a lot of failed adventurers out there. Most can’t tell the difference between a good find and a cursed item. Given that we’re dealing with a group of thieves, I’d say that it’s more likely that we’re facing some noble who fled his kingdom, for whatever reason, and now is trying to return to the lifestyle he’s accustomed to.“

“You’re really cynical,” Theo smiled.

Seeing the people of Rosewind, he was afraid that all of them would be good for nothing idealists who liked to drink a lot and brag even more… just like Cmyk. Finding someone who shared his view of the world was a small blessing that gave him hope of being left alone once this quest was done with.

Thinking about Cmyk, the town was ideal for him, probably too much. The dungeon’s avatar had barely been gone for ten minutes, when the sneaky skeletal minion had spun a pouch of gold coins at the attic, then left for the town. Given that Theo was officially supposed to be on his mission with Laindra, there was nothing the dungeon could do, but humble quietly and let his minion get drunk with his friends.

Oh, you better enjoy yourself now, Theo said to himself. Because when I get back from this there will be changes! And we’ll see who has the last laugh then!

The riding continued up to evening. Being a heroine, Liandra needed little food and rest; being a dungeon avatar, Theo’s humanoid representation didn’t need any. Still, in order to pass as human, he was the one who asked for a rest. Ten minutes later, upon reaching a “suitable spot,” Liandra granted his wish.

A camp was set up, at which Theo used a minute amount of energy to light the campfire without creating a smoldering crater in the ground.

“Handy spell,” Liandra said, taking a bite from her ration. “Must be quite useful for combat.”

“Everyone needs to know a few defensive spells,” Theo said, in an attempt to appear bashful.

In truth, this was one of the few spells his avatar knew. In his haste, Theo had only learned one new spell before heading out—fireball. The spell was chosen mostly for sentimental reasons—back in his previous life a day couldn’t go by without someone mentioning the spell at least once. Here, when he had the opportunity to make it real, he couldn’t resist. Unfortunately, that was the only new spell he had learned. That spell, together with Dome of Silence and Flash of Fear, were pretty much the only spells he could effectively cast.

“If those are your defense spells, I’d like to see your attack spells,” Liandra laughed.

“I’m hoping it won’t come to that.”

A few minutes passed in silence. Then a few more. No one was in a particular mood to talk, which was good. The silence and the night sky almost made Theo forget the chaos that was everyone in Rosewind.

“I’ll take the night shift,” Theo offered once Liandra had finished her food. “Will give me a chance to stretch my legs a bit.”

“Are you sure?” the woman asked.

“No worries. I’ve been up with wizarding stuff lots of nights,” he lied. “I’ve plenty of spells to make sure that we’re safe.”

“Theo…” Liandra stared at him with a blank expression. “We’re in the middle of a field next to a trading road. Monsters don’t venture so far and bandits wouldn’t put in the effort. We’re safe as can be.”

“Oh…” That was somewhat disappointing. He had hoped to try out the destructive power of his fireball, but most of all. “Maybe it’s for the better,” he said more to himself than anyone else. “Maybe I’ll just—"

Before he could finish, something swooped from the air, grabbed one of the horses and flew off into the darkness. The action was so fast that by the time Liandra jumped to her feet, weapon drawn, the horse thief was flapping away.

“Something snatched my horse!” Theo said in his main self, back in town.

A few descriptions would be useful, Spok said. Remember, I can’t see what you’re seeing.

“Fast, silent, with large flappy wings and a taste for horses,” Theo said as his avatar tried to get a better look.

There are a few things that can match the description, the spirit guide said. How many of them were there?

“One,” Theo sighed, stirring the furniture on the second floor. “How many do you want there to be?”

A few of the large-flappy-winged species travel in groups, so I was hoping to narrow it down by that.

“Well, there’s just one.”

Curiosity made Theo look up. The moment he did, half a dozen more creatures swooped down. All of them were big and wingy, although the nearby fire made it difficult to see more than their general outline. That, of course, didn’t stop him from casting a fireball straight up.

A pillar of flame emerged from Theo’s hand, heading for the heavens, briefly turning night into day. Several dozen of the winged creatures were instantly reduced to dust. The few remaining were quickly cut down by Liandra, who had used her weapon as a boomerang.

 

CORE CONSUMPTION

Your heroic trait was activated, transforming 37 goblin cores into 370 Avatar Core Points.

In future, all cores obtained by the avatar will automatically be transformed into Avatar Core Points.

 

AVATAR LEVEL INCREASE

Your Avatar has become Level 3

+3 Mind, RANGED ATTACK skill obtained

230 Core Points required for next Avatar Level

 

The test flickered in front of Theo’s eyes. There was something different, though. He could only see it through his avatar’s eyes. Also, the method was quite different. When he had to learn dungeon skills, all Theo had to do was tell Spok what he wanted and then spend the core points. His avatar, on the other hand, seemed to transform the newly acquired Core Points directly into levels, which in turn increased the avatar’s attributes and also granted new skills.

 

RANGED ATTACK - 1

Allows your avatar to aim at (and hit) targets from a distance.

Using the skill will increase its rank, increasing maximum distance and precision.

 

There was no doubt about it, the skill was one that Theo hadn’t seen. However, he still couldn’t tell whether the skill was mocking him or not.

“Snap out of it!” Liandra shouted, slicing a flappy thing right above his head. “There are still more out there.”

“Huh?” Theo looked around with his avatar.

It was slightly embarrassing to be reminded he was in the heat of battle. More than that, it was highly suspicious. As a dungeon, Theo’s real self remained safely in Rosewind, protected by the best walls, runes, and magic traps that Core Points could buy. From the view of Liandra, however, he was a scrawny noble who had frozen while under attack.

“Fireball!” Theo shouted, casting another pillar of fire up to the sky. Unsurprisingly, there were no creatures hit this time. However, that wasn’t Theo’s goal. Lacking adequate night vision, he merely wanted to light up the area so as to see where his real targets were. Surely enough, they were there, filling the sky like a swarm of very large insects.

This was a perfect opportunity for Theo to try out his new skill. Targeting one of the flappers, he cast a moderately small fireball and threw it in the enemy’s direction. A large explosion engulfed the entire creature, along with several more around it.

 

CORE CONSUMPTION

5 goblin cores into 50 Avatar Core Points.

 

That was outright puny. Back in town, Theo had spent more Core Points on furniture. However, this was what “heroic” growth was like, and for the sake of his secret, he had to get used to it. The only solution was to kill more of the creatures, which he immediately set on doing by casting another fireball. Another explosion of orange flames burst in the sky, killing several more, as well as lighting up several others to be targeted.

The rate of fireballs increased. Like fireworks, they kept lighting up the sky, dealing with the threat, while Liandra proceeded to kill the creatures in far more stealthy fashion, using flying knives and her boomerang sword.

 

AVATAR LEVEL INCREASE

Your Avatar has become Level 4

+1 Mind, AETHER SHIELD skill obtained

390 Core Points required for next Avatar Level

 

AETHER SHIELD - 1

Allows your avatar to cast a force shield bubble around him using 10 Mana (Energy).

Using the skill will increase its rank, increasing shield bubble’s size and strength.

 

That’s a pretty useless skill, Theo thought. Being a dungeon, his energy compensated for any wounds of his avatar. There was no actual need to use additional spells. Although, come to think of it, it was a good idea to use it to keep pretenses. At least that way he wouldn’t have to answer uncomfortable questions.

“Why are there so many?” he asked, casting an aether shield around him. A sphere of pale white light emerged. For a standard person, it could have passed as impressive, but Theo found it outright pitiful. He wasn’t even given the option to invest more energy to make it stronger. Hero skills, as it turned out, were very “as is” and required their own mini-leveling up to become adequate.

“There’s a transport portal somewhere,” Liandra shouted. “As long as it’s open they’ll keep flying through.”

If he were alone, Theo would have just used his Flash of Fear and be done with the whole thing. Having a hero nearby made that impossible. That annoyed him somewhat, causing him to focus on his use of fireball. At this stage he no longer waited for one blast to end before casting the next spell. The balls of fire kept bursting above like bubbles. And yet regardless of how many creatures were destroyed, more appeared seemingly out of nowhere.

“Don’t waste mana!” Liandra aimed her left hand at the sky.

A golden beam of light emerged from the ring she was wearing. Instantly, Theo’s aether shield disappeared along with all the fireballs. The darkness in the air thinned, revealing a few of the creatures. In the faint light of the moon, they didn’t seem as scary as before. In fact, they looked like… goblins operating dragon-like marionettes. Within moments, the heroine's sword had whizzed through the air, downing the creatures that were left. Like sacks of potatoes they crashed to the ground, joining the dozens already there.

“What was that?” Theo asked, cautiously looking at her ring.

“Anti-magic field,” Liandra replied casually. “Can only do it once per day, but it is enough to shut down pesky portals and other such stuff.”

“Good thing you had it.” Deep inside, all the furniture in Theo’s main structure was shivering. Anti-magic was one of the ways to sever the connection between him and his avatar, which would result in the disenchantment of said avatar. While the figure looked real in every sense of the world, it was nothing but a clump of energy—or mana—given form. Good thing that the anti-magic item was so weak, or there would have been serious issues.

“Let’s see what we have here,” the woman stepped to the nearest corpse.

There was no doubt about it: the creature was a goblin in a glider-like contraption. The craftsmanship was quite impressive, as were the materials used. Hundreds of strands of steel connected every part of the large wings to boxes of finely tuned bronze gears, allowing something as simple as a goblin to become a master stunt flier.

“Is that a kite?” Theo asked, looking over Liandra’s shoulder.

“I’ve no idea,” the woman said as she cut the straps that held the goblin in place. “This is some pretty intricate gnome-craft,” she added. “Quite expensive to make. I’d say about twenty gold coins.”

“Twenty gold coins isn’t much.”

“Each.” The woman raised a finger.

“Oh.” Even with Theo’s ability to transform gold into straw, a thousand gold wasn’t anything to sneeze at. It was also a huge waste. “Who would spend so much money on goblins?” he asked. “Those things couldn’t even fly properly.”

“I’d say that they were specially trained as operators. Look at their hands and feet? Judging by the calluses, they have been at this for months at least. Also, flying in a swarm takes considerable skill, not to mention swooping down and snatching your horse.”

“Oh.” Damn! Theo had completely forgotten about his horse being stolen. Taking a quick look, he noted that Liandra’s own steed was still there, safely standing among the goblin wreckages. Not only had the creature not been stolen, but somehow had managed to survive completely unharmed. There’s no justice in the world.

“Anyway, we better get some rest. I doubt they’ll have another go at us tonight, and we need to be fresh for tomorrow.”

“Don’t we have to clean up? I mean, the camp is a mess and—”

“You sound just like my father,” the heroine grumbled. “I won’t stop you from cleaning if you want, but I’m not lifting a finger for that. A night in this won’t kill us. We had much bigger problems to worry about.”

“The thieves?”

“Forget the thieves. Whoever sent this flock of goblins didn’t do so to stop a hero and a mage. They had far bigger plans in mind, and until we find out what those plans are, the entire region is in danger.”

That sounded bad, terrible even. Being roped into capturing a band of thieves was troublesome enough. Going after an unknown entity for no apparent reason was out of the question. Theo had to admit he was slightly curious how and why someone would create a fleet of flying goblins, but not so much to actually go searching for answers. On the other hand, he didn’t want to annoy the very real hero, especially since in the entire fight Liandra hadn’t even used her two-handed sword.

“I’ll just clean a bit, then.” Diplomatically, he moved away from the fire, giving the woman enough space to take her travel bed from her horse and unroll it on the ground.

Using his standard dungeon abilities, Theo levitated the wreckages from the ground to a nearby location. Since there was a lot of time until dawn, and he still had a bit of OCD inclinations from his previous life, he then proceeded to sort everything in piles. All goblin corpses were diligently placed in a hole he had created using another of his dungeon abilities, then scorched to cinders. Sadly, this didn’t result in any additional core points. Liandra must have claimed the cores when she had killed the creatures, similar to how Theo had.

The planners were divided into parts, which were then disassembled into basic components. Wood and leather were the most common elements, followed by bronze, copper, and steel. Interestingly enough, there also were a number of aether crystals among the wreckage. Each was no bigger than a peal and contained so little mana that it was almost an insult to call it an aether crystal. However, the output had been precisely measured to allow the glider, and its operator, to remain freely in the air.

After tinkering a while, Theo consumed most of the aether stones, restoring a meager two hundred and seventy-four points of energy. After some consideration, all the gathered energy was used to burn up the remaining wreckage parts, only leaving enough to create one glider in case Liandra wanted to examine it further in the morning.

That done, the avatar sat on the ground, a fair distance from the flickering camp-fire and cast a dozen aether shields around him, in an attempt to stack them onto each other. Sadly, for him, each time a new shield was cast, the previous one cracked out of existence.

“Spok,” Theo said back in his main body. “You can stop searching. The creatures were goblins.”

Oh, the spirit guide replied. Since their previous chat, it had been simply waiting for additional instructions or clarifications. Of course, it had no intention of admitting that. Flying goblins are rather novel…

“They were operating some gliders. Liandra said that gnome-work was involved.”

Gnomework is rather popular in some lands. There have been dungeons that even hired gnomes to construct additional traps, although the fad didn’t last long.

“Why not?”

Apparently, a number of the gnomes proceeded to rob the dungeon while installing the traps.

“Those sneaky… anyway, what I want to know is why didn’t that crystal thingee I took from the thieves work? Wasn’t it supposed to tell me if there were living things around?”

Maybe because you were accompanied by a hero?

“Don’t be stupid! I should have felt the difference when the swarm of goblins appeared.”

That is true. Do you have the item on you? It won’t work if it’s in the dimension ring.

There was a long silence. While leaving Rosewind, Theo had placed the item in his ring, out of fear that someone in the crowd might snatch it from him. As a result, he never had it on while they traveled. No wonder he had stopped noticing the presence of Liandra and anything else, for that matter.

“Those gnomes,” the dungeon quickly changed the topic. “What are they like?”

The best way to describe them is geniuses with the temperament of sugar crazed bunnies on a rampage. While they could be extremely professional, cat herders will have a difficult time controlling them, not to mention that if they decide to do something, they have the abilities to do so. As I said, they did manage to rob a few quite powerful dungeons that had hired them to install new traps.

The description was more than enough to give a perfect picture of what they were supposed to be, to the point that Theo was absolutely sure he didn’t want to have anything to do with them.

On that note, I would appreciate it if you had a word with your minion, sir, Spok said. He has been overfeeding Maximillian, and that’s hardly healthy for him.

“Maximilian?” Theo asked. “Who’s Maximilian?”

That’s the name I have given to our rabbit, sir. The one you’ve been keeping in the attic?

“Oh, that.” Theo didn’t particularly care about the creature. It was amusing to have, and since it spent most of its time static, regardless if it were in a cage or not, the dungeon hadn’t given the matter any thought. Seeing that his spirit guide had some strong feelings on the matter, though, it was clear that he had to make a stand. “I’ll make sure Max gets his exercise.”

Thank you.

“Back to gnomes. Are they actually dangerous? I mean do they have any powers, fangs, super strength?”

Other than their vastly superior intellect, they are harmless. They are small in stature, smaller than goblins, extremely weak, unlike gnomes, and rather visually impaired. They spend most of their time tinkering in caves—which they transform into vast laboratories.

That didn’t sound dangerous one bit. If anything, Theo actually felt for the creatures.

Due to their rather expensive tinkering habit, they often offer their services for money which they spend on tools and materials to focus on even more advanced tinkering. Quite a few of them are broke and forced to work to pay off their debts.

“I think I get the picture. Are they capable of magic?”

Definitely not. If there is a race that is completely and utterly incapable of magic, that would be them.

That made sense. It also suggested that if there were any gnomes working for the person, or people, who had sent out the flying goblins had hired the services of a few gnomes. Or, rather, it was more likely that they acquired a few indented gnomes to—

Why the heck am I thinking about this? Theo mentally grumbled at himself. He wasn’t supposed to be concerned with this. His one and only goal was to get that thieve business done so he could return to his calm and quiet life of doing nothing.

That was it! The first thing Theo was going to do when Liandra woke up was to convince her to focus on the thieves. After that, she was free to do whatever she wanted, but only as long as he wasn’t involved.

Morning came slowly. Theo had spent the entire night casting aether shields to the point that he had maximized the skill. The “bonus” he had received was the ability to cast it on targets other than himself—which was a marginally better use of the skill. By the time Liandra woke up, he had started throwing a rock at a target then levitating it back to increase his ranged attack skill.

“You’re awake,” Theo said eagerly. “I think we should focus on the thieves.”

“Good morning to you too, Theo,” Liandra said as she stretched.

“Err, yes. Good morning. Since these devices were clearly made by gnomes, we’re likely dealing with someone who has set off on a pranking spree, using indented gnomes to construct his contraptions. Like, who in their right mind would send flying goblins to wage a war? Other than stealing a few horses, what can they possibly do?” Theo’s avatar smiled triumphantly. “Even if they had weapons, they couldn’t get out of the contraptions on their own.”

“You’ve really been thinking a lot about this,” the woman nodded, visibly impressed by Theo’s reasoning.

“Well, I do have a knack for—"

“But you’re wrong.” She stood up. “The goblins weren’t sent out to fight. They were sent to snatch as many people as they could. That means that whoever sent the goblins had something very specific in mind.”

“And what might that be?” Theo crossed his arms.

“Forced labor. Someone has enough gnomes to build something terrifying and is now gathering the manpower to help them achieve it.”