This Used To Be About Dungeons полностью

“Right,” said Grig. “But just for myself, my parents weren’t poor, exactly, but between the Junior League and my tutoring and my sisters, they struggled a bit. They were never on the dole or anything, but… Alfric’s family had this gift, this amazing gift that allows them to fit into all kinds of useful roles, all of which have a pretty high pay, plus the Interrium gives them some kind of pay just for existing and benefits if they have kids. And that’s on top of being able to live each day a few times, which gives them more time to gain skills and knowledge, and their ability to try things and fail horribly without consequence.”

“It’s easy to preach self-reliance when you’ve got an easy life,” said Mardin. “I mean, he was always aware of how much easier things were for him, it wasn’t like he was actually preaching. Most of the time, anyway. But we were still getting the raw end of the deal, it felt like. We weren’t going into it for the glory, we were going because we could make a lot of money if we did enough dungeons, or even relatively few of them. It was money that we could use to pay for a better house for our parents or take vacations.”

“We’ve been at it for pretty much a year,” said Grig. “We’ve got fifty-four dungeons under our belts. Not to sound like I’m bragging, but we’ve already got enough to retire.”

“Not enough to retire,” said Mardin, rolling his eyes. “But we do have enough in the way of bound entads that if we keep the party together, we can set up shop in Dondrian and start a business that will let us coast forward.”

“And you got there because of what Lola could provide,” nodded Hannah.

“We might have gotten there with Alfric,” Grig said. “It would have taken longer, but the end point would be the same. And,” he looked at Mardin, “Alfric wasn’t like Lola, he wouldn’t have come here on a whim. A whim that, clearly, wasn’t a whim, because it was all in service of getting to Alfric.”

“Maybe,” said Mardin. “Not the kind of thing we should be saying without at least talking to her first.”

“She actually came and spoke with me,” said Mizuki. “I met her. She seemed like she was definitely here for him.”

“Not that you know for certain,” said Hannah with a sigh. “Grig, Mardin, it was nice to meet you, but we worry your noodles are gonna get cold.”

Mizuki turned to her. “I don’t think that I know enough,” she said. “About who Alfric really is, and whether we’re under threat from Lola. She was intense. Maybe I didn’t get that across as much as I should have.”

“She’s harmless,” said Mardin.

“Yeah, that’s a point of disagreement,” said Grig. “But if it’s the version of the day she’s going to keep, then yeah, she hasn’t ever done anything that would rise to the level of an actual crime.”

“See, that’s the kind of phrasing that really doesn’t help me,” said Mizuki. “Alfric was the same.” She pulled a chair from one of the other tables and sat down to join them without asking. “I need to know specifically what she did.”

When they didn’t seem to mind, or at least didn’t push her away, Hannah reluctantly grabbed a different chair and joined. Mizuki seemed intent on pushing things, and her friendliness was being turned into a bit of a weapon. Hannah wondered whether she even knew she was doing it.

“Well,” said Grig. He seemed, at last, to be thinking about how much to share.

“No one knows,” said Mardin. “It’s all rumors.”

The woman who was serving came over with their noodle bowls, and Hannah asked whether she could have a second. There was a brief pause as there was some rearrangement, with another table being brought over and seats being swapped. Hannah and Mizuki ended up sitting crosswise from each other, which felt a bit unusual once they were there but didn’t warrant correcting.

“Okay,” said Grig. “I’ll hold off on my noodles until Hannah gets hers, and then I can tell you about the rumors.”

“Appreciated,” nodded Hannah. “I’d rather get them more in-depth from Alfric, but if Mizuki is going to insist,” she said with a shrug.

“There were rumors about both of them,” said Grig as Mardin slurped his noodles. “But early on, it was mostly about her, saying… well, saying that she’d been off doing some social exploration in those undone days. The chronos have a reputation for being a bit fast, since they can live each day twice or more, and some of the rumors around Lola were about as bad as they came. Some of it was violence, some of it was relationships, and she got treated like—well, like an adult, by a lot of people, starting early on. That made it a bit hard for people to hang out with her.”

“Happened before our teens,” said Mardin between bites of noodles.

“Well, right,” said Grig. “Maybe when she was eleven or twelve. We didn’t know her then, and didn’t really know her until she was in the Junior League, and then only by reputation. I think she went to a nice school early on, then switched over to mostly having tutors.”

“And the rumors,” said Mizuki. “They were… that she’d killed people?”