The first sign that things might actually be taken seriously here appeared right in front of the massive gate.

  Standing like immovable statues were two Twir in full pte armor, their helmets c their features, their posture rigid and disciplihey held halberds crossed in front of a small entrahe gleamial catg golden rays of the sun.

  But then…

  Right beside them, an old Twir rawled out on his side atop a rickety wooden table, looking as if he’d been unceremoniously dropped there for a midday nap. His graying beard pooled onto the surface, one of his legs dangled zily off the edge, and in his hands, he clutched a half-eaten apple.

  So much for seriousness.

  I bli the sight, momentarily thrown off, then cleared my throat. “Hello,” I said, waving at the Twir, who seemed way too fortable in his current position. “I’d like to… deposit some items?”

  The old Twir groaned and rolled over just enough to cra eye open at me. His pupils, sharp despite his age, studied me for a moment before he let out a huff. “That a question?” His voice was rough, like gravel scraping over stone.

  I frowned. “No?” I replied, fused.

  That arently the fuhing he had heard iuries.

  With a wheezing ugh, he rolled too far and promptly tumbled off the table, nding in a heap on the ground. The fall did absolutely nothing to deter his amusement—he kept ughing, clutg his stomach as his whole body shook with wheezy chuckles.

  I exged a gh the prince, who just sighed heavily, looking like he wao melt into the mountain wall behind us.

  After what felt like ay, the old Twir finally regained his posure. Still lying on the ground, he wiped at the er of his eyes a out a satisfied sigh. “That was a good one!”

  I smirked. “Thanks. I made it myself,” I quipped, repeating Lucas’ old favorite line from high school.

  That sent him into another fit of ughter. He actually spped the ground this time, kig his legs as if he were a toddler having the time of his life. The two fully armuards didn’t even flinch, as if they were used to this level of absurdity on a daily basis.

  I crossed my arms and waited patiently, biting back a grin.

  “Call me Gatei. Okay, sy, do it,” the old Twir, who I was now mentally beling as pletely unhinged, waved zily at one of the guards.

  Without hesitation, the armored Twir nodded and pulled a trigger on a traption I hadn’t noticed before. A pulse of blue light erupted from the entrance, washing over us in a wave of shimmering energy.

  The moment it hit me, I felt an unmistakable prickle—like a static charge crawling under my skin.

  My stomach ched. Crap.

  It was a high-tier mana s. The kind that peeled apart yers of entments, disguises, and, more importantly, detected magical artifacts. And what was I, if not a walking treasure hoard stuffed with stolen goods?

  I braced myself, muscles tensing, already preparing my worst excuses.

  Then, after half a sed of panic, I remembered where I was.

  This was the Heartnds. A pce so absurdly indepehat even the gods seemed to treat it as a wless safe zone. No one cared about theft here. Probably. Hell, they’d probably appreciate the effort I put into acquiring my colle.

  I let out a slow, relieved breath. Everything is fine.

  From the er of my eye, I noticed the priiffen as the old Twir’s gaze locked onto him, his sharp eyes twinkling with a hint of amusement. “Ah, Prince Rendo! Your st visit was—”

  Prince’s expression darkened instantly. He held up a hand and cut him off. “Please, that’s private!”

  Oho. Now this was iing.

  The Twir—Gatei, apparently—cackled but relented, kig the wooden table he’d been lounging on. It colpsed instantly, as if some hidden meism had folded it up… and then it sank into the stoh him like it had never existed.

  I stared. “Uh.”

  Gatei either ignored my fusion or reveled in it because, without missing a beat, he yanked aable from the ground—this one made of stone, covered in strange gss tubes and whirring devices.

  “You are Princess Charlie of the Eeleim,” he decred cheerfully, as if announg a festival event. “Didn’t know your kingdom still existed!”

  I sighed. “Teically, it still exists. Suzerain uhe empire.” I rubbed my temples. “But I’m not the most senior living member, am I? That would be my mother, the Queen.”

  “Ah, no,” Gatei ughed, waving a dismissive hand. “It’s actually the emperor! What a nonsense!” He picked up one of the odd gss tubes and aimed it at me.

  I flinched. Because, you know, when someone pointed anything at me, it usually involved fireballs, ons, or divine wrath.

  Gatei’s sharp eyes softened slightly when he caught my rea. “Rex, pinky promise it won’t hurt!” he said with a wide grin, wiggling the tube slightly.

  I eyed it suspiciously. “If you say pinky promise, but the thing you’re holding erase my existehen I feel like the promise is invalid.”

  Gatei just cackled and motioned for me to stay still. I let out a sigh and begrudgingly accepted that this was just how things were here.

  The prince, meanwhile, looked like he was residering every life decision that had brought him back to this pce.

  I didn’t bme him.

  Gatei aimed his strange gss tube at me, and before I could do something reasonable—like dodge or panic—a beam of soft blue light washed over me.

  Nothing happened.

  “Huh?” I blinked.

  “Told you,” Gatei said smugly, twirling the gss device like a toy before pointing it at the massive stoe. A simir beam shot out, vanishing into the a surface. “Alright, here’s the deal. Personal vaults are expensive, and you don’t have enough on you to iate for one.”

  He shrugged as if that were on knowledge.

  I exhaled through my nose. “And… Let me guess, I don’t have access to any other vaults?”

  “Nope.” Gatei’s grin was wide and careless. “Prince does, though.”

  “We’re not going there,” Rendo snapped before I could even turn my head.

  I sighed, massaging my temples. “I was hoping to banter a bit,” I muttered, “but the other thing—not enough value?”

  Gatei let out another bout of ughter, a sharp, almost cag sound, as he smmed the gss tube bato the table. The table promptly sank into the ground as if it had never existed, only to be repced by a oable, this one covered in more strange gadgets and a yer of fine dust.

  “We’ve got no idea what most things are!” he said, grinning like this was the fuhing in the world.

  I facepalmed.

  Of course they didn’t. The Twir never bothered with categorizing things the way the empire did. To them, value wasn’t based oh—it was based on fun. And if something had a fun they didn’t uand?

  Then to them, it was junk.

  I let out a long sigh. “So, what I do here?”

  “Hey, don’t despair,” Gatei said, still grinning as he dug through his mess of a workbench, shoving aside odd tris and glowing shards of who-knows-what. “I do have a testing bench. Maybe we figure out something of actual value for a small ste box.”

  He grabbed a pair of weird, bulky goggles, the lehid straihen, without missing a beat, he hopped onto the table itself, bringing him to eye level with me.

  His hand shot out, palm open. “So, what do you say?”

  I stared at his outstretched hand, then at his manic grin, and finally at the prince—who, for once, looked even more doh life than usual.

  Okay, time to pull out the big guns.

  “For that,” I said, straightening my posture, “I’ve found fog lenses for your Wrath Matrix.”

  The moment the words left my mouth, the air ged.

  Gatei’s grin vanished instantly, his entire body going rigid. The mischievous glint in his eye evaporated, repced by something dark and sharp. The casual, joking Twir I’d been speaking to seds ago? Gone.

  He stared at me for a long, tense moment, his expression unreadable.

  “We don’t joke about that here,” he said, his voice low and rough, stripped of all the pyfulness from before.

  I met his gaze without fling. “I’m not joking,” I said evenly. “I have both lenses in my iory.”

  The sileretched, heavy and taut, like a wire about to snap. The two armored Twir guards standing behind him subtly shifted their stances, and I didn’t need my instincts to tell me they were now very ied in this versation.

  Then, finally, Gatei moved.

  Slowly, deliberately, he pushed his goggles up onto his forehead and took a deep breath. His fiwitched, like he was barely resisting the urge to snatch my entire iht out of my hands.

  “You’d better not be lying,” he muttered.

  “I’d never joke about potential mass destru,” I said, deadpan. “Okay, maybe I would, but nht now.”

  Gatei exhaled sharply. Then, for the first time since I met him, he spoke with absolute seriousness.

  “Show me.”

  There was this legend on the forums. More like a story from the founder of the Society of Old Dusty Dungeons.

  Don’t ask them why they were named like that unless you truly hate your owime.

  Acc to the founder, one of their members—some random newbie—had oumbled into a rookie dungeon. We’re talking low level. Like, the kind of pce where you get mugged by aggressive rats and possibly one skeleton with bad posture. It was just some decrepit old house, barely worth the effort.

  Nobody had ever cimed it. No rare loot. No hidden boss. Just a pce for fresh adveo get their feet wet before moving on to actual tent.

  But this partioob?

  He found something.

  Nothiing at first—just a pair of gsses tucked away in some dusty drawer, abandoned like a long-fotten relic. They looked weird, though. Their lenses had these delicate, spiderweb-like cracks across them, ing everything he saw. The world through those lenses became… funny.

  Not ha-ha funny, more like what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-my-eyes funny.

  Being a noob with no grasp of value, he just thought they were cool. So he wore them. Everywhere. Even as he leveled up, even as he wandered into bigger, badder dungeons, he kept them on. People ughed at him for it. Nobody thought twice about his dumb, broken gsses.

  Then one day?

  A Twir saw them.

  And promptly offered him a mountain of gold.

  Because, of course, they weren’t just any old gsses. They were priceless artifacts—some lost piece of Twir teology that had been sitting in a level-five rat fods know how long.

  Sihen, that dumb story had bee a core part of the Society of Old Dusty Dungeons’ recruiting tactics.

  “See?” they’d say. “You never ignore random loot.”

  At first, I had every iion of stashing these away. Cashing in ter, when I actually hem. But hey, I was here now.

  I reached into my iory and pulled them out.

  [Wrath Matrix Fog Lens x2]Both of them, resting in my open palm.

  Gatei stared.

  His entire body went still, like I had just handed him a tig bomb instead of two small, unassuming objects. The Twir guards behind him stopped breathing. Even the prince—who never shut up—was silent.

  The moment stretched, thick with anticipation.

  Then, Gatei’s fiwitched, and in a movement almost too fast for my eyes to follow, he snatched them from my hand. I resisted the urge to gulp. Carefully, reverently, Gatei brought the lenses up to his face, peering through them with the same iy a jeweler might use to i a legendary gem. A slow, sharp breath hissed through his teeth.

  Thearted ughing.

  Not his usual, carefree, haha-this-is-hirious kind of ugh.

  No.

  This was a deep, almost manic chuckle, the kind that sent a shiver down your spine because someone was just a little too excited about whatever was happening.

  “Oh,” Gatei said, voice full of satisfa. “Oh, you have no idea what you’ve done.”