Chapter 26: When in Rome...

Chapter 26: When in Rome...

I wasn’t.

Well, at least I thought I wasn’t.

In my highschool days I’d spent a year on the football team and had gotten used to communal showers. That carried into freshman year of college where every guy on the floor of my dorm had the same five shower stalls to use, and no one was very shy about ‘grooming’ themselves in full view of others. I’d also had a series of medical mishaps in my late twenties that had me see a variety of medical professionals while I was in various levels of undress and which required them to insert a number of digits into different...orifices of my body. On top of that, my family wasn’t prudish growing up, and I couldn’t count the number of times my parents would hit up the kitchen in the buff. It still grossed me out as a kid, but being naked was never weird to me the way it had been to some of my friends.

All that being said, I was definitely not prepared to take off all my clothes in front of a group of strangers in the middle of an upscale restaurant. The fact that they also had to take their own clothes off only made the matter a little more comfortable. Still, none of them seemed bothered by the act in the least, and I’ve always been good at adapting to new cultural norms. If anything, showing hesitance or discomfort when everyone else was treating this like a normal, everyday occurrence would make me stand out more than just stripping down and getting on with business. After all, if you’re naked on a nude beach, it’s only weird if you make it weird.

In any event I did my best not to take any inadvertent glances at Xim or Xorna, each of whom was as beautiful as the other, but they did not make the same effort. It’s not that they leered at me or anything, they just looked from person to person as though we weren’t naked, and I had to assume this was very common for them. Maybe they didn’t wear clothes at all while they were in the Third Layer. If that were true, by joining their tribe I was about to get a crash course in being a nudist.

Still, I’ve been in far stranger–and more awkward–situations where my dick was out, so all things considered it didn’t catch me off guard by much.

Nothing about Drel changed, though. Which meant that either he didn’t have to disrobe for the ritual, or he’d been naked this whole time. The fact that his entire form was made up of the misty, night-time-sky substance seemed to support the latter conclusion. If he was wearing clothes, I couldn’t tell, but he didn’t have any manly bits hanging out.

The servants had brought out a large cloth that had a number of unfamiliar symbols drawn onto it. The ink looked fresh so I assumed this was something that they had only just prepared. I sat on my knees in the center of the cloth, with Xim, Xorna, and a few of the servants kneeling in a semi-circle around me. Drel drifted over and hovered in front of me, holding a small, dark bowl. He ran a fingernail across his wrist, then held it over the bowl as his blood, pure white in color, ran out into it. It reminded me of the milky substance Synths from the Alien series had within them.

Drel spent twenty minutes using the blood to draw runes and symbols over my body, from my forehead to the sole of my foot. It wasn’t lost on me how often I’d had someone else’s bodily fluids all up on me in the last twenty-four hours. Regardless, the process was unexpectedly relaxing. One of the servants had brought out a stringed instrument which they plucked in a shadowy corner, filling the room with dreamy tones. Xim, Xorna, and the servants hummed in different harmonies with the sound. Four censers smoldered, emitting a scent like honey and autumn leaves burning, and as Drel placed the last rune a sense of warmth and calm spread through me.

“We will invite you to our tribe,” said Drel. “Your body may change. You may grow stronger. You may grow stranger. You may grow in ways you do not like. You may grow in ways that please you. Do you accept this?”

I hadn’t been prepared for anything this elaborate, or for the idea that gaining citizenship might change me physically. I wondered how much his words were symbolic, and how much they reflected the potential for actual changes to my flesh. Still, I was digging the vibe of what was happening, so I decided to go with it.

“Yes.”

“I will ask questions. You will answer them. You may decide to stay silent. You may walk away. If you do, you will not become part of the tribe. If you do, you will never again be invited. Do you accept this?”

“Yes.”

“Are you Esquire Arlo of Earth?”

“I am.”

“Do you wish to join the Third Layer?”

“I do.”

“Do you wish to join the Xor’Drel tribe?”

“I do.”

“Have you any family?”

“Not in this world.”

“Are there any others you wish to bring to the tribe?”

“No.”

[Ahem.]

“Well, I’m bringing Grotto,” I said. “If that needs to be expressly stated.”

Drel nodded, then continued.

“Are there any to sponsor you, Arlo?”

I hesitated, unsure how to reply.

“I will sponsor Arlo,” said Xim.

“On what grounds do you sponsor him?”

“He is brave and powerful,” said Xim. “If not for him, I would be dead.”

That praise made me more uncomfortable than the general nakedness did.

“You are well sponsored,” said Drel.

“He’s kind of funny too,” said Xim. “In his own way. Also, Grotto will fit in really well in the Third Layer.”

You have chosen to acquire the Mystical Magic intrinsic skill! You are granted the active skill Dispel.

Dispel: Temporarily disrupt the flow of mana within a spell, object, or person. This can cause spells to weaken, or be negated entirely. This can be used to halt the flow of magic within a magical item for a period of time, or to eliminate the magic completely. This can be used to momentarily disrupt a magical effect imbued within an individual.

Mana Cost: Variable (Proportional to the mana being disrupted. Initial cost: 50% of mana disrupted. Higher levels of Mystical Magic increase efficiency).

Cooldown: None

Requirements: Mystical Magic intrinsic skill

After dinner and the afterparty, Xorna and Drel were kind enough to pay for my room at the inn where they were staying. It was a nice gesture, especially since calling the place an inn was a fierce understatement. It was more like a large mansion that rented out rooms the size of luxury apartments. It even came with a personal attendant that I could summon at any hour of the day or night to bring me whatever it was my heart desired. As it turns out, I could now easily afford to stay in the place via the power of my new net worth, but I wasn’t going to turn down free stuff.

The amount of wealth I’d left the Delve with was substantial. Before leaving the facility around the Creation Delve, which I discovered was called the Temple of Creation, I was required to submit my Delver fee at a teller desk near the exit. The rate was a flat ten percent based on the number of chips I’d acquired. Loot and other materials weren’t taxed.

“Why not tax the loot as well?” I asked the young woman at the desk. I say young, but she could have been well into her forties for all I knew. She was level twenty-three with mostly silver Delves under her belt, based on her aura. That gave her forty-six stats to play with after the eighteen granted on creation. I knew that now, since Xim and Varrin had given me some insight as to how the Delve rewards worked after we finished deciding on how to approach the issue of my citizenship. Copper delves rewarded one stat point per Delve, with silver giving two, gold giving four, and platinum giving an outstanding eight.

Unfortunately, while I was able to figure out how many stats someone had based on their level and the types of Delves they’d completed, neither my HUD nor my Soul-Sight was able to provide me with a breakdown of someone’s stat distribution. So, I was left guessing as to how many the teller had invested into Fortitude. I expected that with experience I’d become better equipped at using context clues to figure out someone’s build.

“You get taxed when you sell it,” she said. “All Delver transactions are taxed at a rate of ten percent when paid in chips, or twelve percent if paid in notes. Place your hand on the tablet and I can view the chips you earned inside.”

I placed my hand on one of the cool, black slates of stone, and text etched itself into existence, displaying the chips I’d been allocated. Sixteen ruby chips and six emerald chips. The two ruby chips I’d consumed inside the Delve weren’t counted. I wondered what other kinds of information these tablets could display. I started to ask the woman, but decided to look into it later.

“Wow,” she said. “That’s a good haul for a Creation Delve. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen one give out this many rewards.” She looked up from the tablet. “I don’t even make this much in a high level silver, just so you know.”

“I guess platinum Delves are lucrative,” I said. Especially ones that had been taken over by an overleveled Delver and a giant octopus monster.

“Risk and reward,” she said, then did a quick bit of math. “Your fee will come out to seven-point-six ruby chips. You can pay the fraction with notes, or I can take eight rubies and provide change.”

“How many notes is the fraction worth?”

“One ruby chip exchanges for fifty golden notes, so point six would be thirty.”

I only had sixteen golden notes on me, so I opted for change, handing over half of my ruby chips and receiving twenty golden notes in return.

“I can also exchange more chips for you if you like,” she said.

“I’m afraid that I’m not very familiar with the Hiward economy. How much is one of these golden notes worth?”

“One golden note is roughly equivalent to ten imperial gold coins at the moment,” she said, which was less than helpful. On Earth, a gold coin weighing one ounce was worth something like eighteen-hundred bucks. But gold hadn’t held that much value for a significant portion of earth history, and the weight of historical coins varied. Even if I assumed this world valued gold in a similar manner to earth, the buying power of an imperial gold coin could mean anything.

“How about this,” I said. “How many days could I feed myself with one golden note?”

“Hmm,” she said, running the numbers in her head. “One silver note can feed a peasant family of five for a day, so it varies based on the quality of food you’re talking about.”

“Peasant quality works as a baseline,” I said.

“Alright. One golden note is worth one hundred silver notes, so you could feed a peasant family for one hundred days.”

I had thirty-six golden notes, which meant that I could reasonably expect to stay fed with that for the next ten years, assuming I spent as much as a five person peasant family on myself. She’d also said that one ruby chip was worth fifty golden notes, which meant the least valuable chip could feed a small-to-medium family for something like fourteen years.

“Based on the tax, I’m assuming that an emerald chip is worth ten ruby chips?”

“You got it,” she said, smiling.

After tax, I had eight ruby chips and six emerald chips. So, the equivalent of sixty-eight ruby chips, or thirty-four-hundred golden notes which were the same as thirty-four-thousand golden coins. I didn’t know how many coins fit in a typical treasure chest, but I was betting I could fill at least one with that much booty. At that point, measuring wealth by the value of food lost its meaning. I needed a better measuring stick, but I didn’t think grilling this teller over Hiwardian economics would be the most efficient method of research.

“Thanks,” I said. “Can the chips be used as currency themselves?”

“They can,” she said. “Especially here in the Formation district. Most of the Delver economy functions on chips.”

That meant Delver transactions dealt with fairly large sums of money on average.

“I think I’ll trade one more ruby in for notes, then I’m good.”

She made the exchange, and I was now walking around with eighty-six golden notes in my inventory, along with several hundred silver and copper notes that I’d gotten from killing Hognay.

I briefly considered how massive of a honeypot the Temple of Creation was after collecting a load of taxes like this. Since the tellers alone were experienced silver Delvers, calling the place well-defended seemed justified. After all, how tough would the guards be?