Proposition

"You and Leilei are to be sold into slavery—at the opposite ends of the continent," he declared, cutting right to the chase. Apparently he'd gotten tired of my giggle fits, and didn't seemed fooled by my fake sneezes.

Well, I was certainly done with giggling after hearing that. "What?! Please..." I found myself begging before I knew what I was doing, "there must be some kind of mistake!"

I know, I was starting to panic, but the mere thought of never seeing Leilei again, not to mention knowing we'd be forced to lead the pitiful lives of slaves, was simply too much to bear.

Ramsy put a hand up to signal for the guards to stand down, who were hurrying over to me after I leapt from my seat and began erratically shouting with wild eyes. He looked at me, then to my seat. 

I took the hint and sat back down, even though I found it exceedingly difficult to sit still.

"Now, if you would allow me to introduce myself properly, then perhaps we can come toward some sort of arrangement," he paused and waited for me to nod. "I'll skip repeating my name, as I'm sure you can remember..."

I had to grip the edges of the table so hard I got white knuckles at mere remembrance of his name in my head, yet I was proud that I maintained enough self control to stop myself from laughing in his face again. Hopefully once I leveled up and increased my intellect stat, I wouldn't have such a childish sense of humor.

But I wouldn't hold my breath.

"What I still haven't had a chance to tell you, is my title." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a silver insignia. It looked like an evil rat doing the shushing motion with one hand, and covering one eye with the other. "I'm a field lieutenant of the Order of the Rats in the Walls," he said.

I raised an eyebrow, making it clear I'd never heard of it.

"It's an organization of clandestine intelligence," he clarified.

"You mean like a secret society?"

"You can say that."

"Then why are you revealing yourself if it's so secret?"

He gave me a cool, yet slightly amused look. "And who exactly would I be worried about you telling, considering your current circumstances?"

Fair point. But why was he telling me this? Something he said before had only just registered with me: "what did you mean by 'perhaps we could work out some sort of arrangement'?"

He smiled. "I'm happy you seem to be catching on. As I mentioned before, the prospects of you and your friend are... rather grim. Attacking a diplomat and honored guest of the city council; disrupting public order; and assaulting city guards in front of hundreds of witnesses... it doesn't look good at all..."

I had to clench my jaw to stop myself from screaming. "They were holding a slave auction!" I growled through my grit teeth. "In broad daylight! Why aren't the organizers of that little spectacle the ones sitting here, across from you, to discuss the terms of their guilty plea?"

Ramsy frowned. "Things are more complicated than th—"

"Ugh, spare me!" I couldn't stop myself from scoffing at that. Perhaps the biggest reason I never wanted to become an adult was so that my brain would never wither away (from the monotony of analyzing corporate spreadsheets and the like) to the point where I'd dismiss and excuse all the multitude of horrors and atrocities of our world (war, mass murder, slavery etc.) with the weak-minded phrase: "it's complicated".

"Just tell me what I have to do to get you to let us go," I demanded. I might have only had the intellect of a level 5, but even an idiot could see where this was going. 

He wanted me to do some kind of job in exchange for our freedom.

"Please don't view the situation as debased as that, Minori... we at the organization have merely been... impressed with your conduct, and many of us are now eager to work with you. Naturally, we regret that it should be under such circumstances, but you're responsible for getting yourself into this mess. Nevertheless, we're willing to use our influence to intervene on your behalf. We just ask that you do a little favor for us in the meantime."

"Sure, what is it?" I answered, struggling not to roll my eyes. We both knew what this was, but being as socially inept as I always was, I never had any patience for these social waltzes.

He looked slightly taken aback that I was so direct, but he shrugged it off and continued: "Are you familiar with the dungeon: Countryside Manor?"

"The level 20 dungeon on Human territory, just North of the faction border?" Indeed, I knew it, it was one of the dungeons I had in mind for us to progress towards, as it was rife with rare materials and schemata for various Krafts. Though obviously we had to wait quite a while until we were high enough level to be able to clear it.

Dungeons were filled with elite monsters, which were much stronger than normal. Each one was about as strong as a player of equal level. Therefore, it was advisable to only enter a dungeon if you were in a party of at least four other players (unless you had a much higher level friend to run you through it), because you'd often be fighting mobs and swarms of monsters, not to mention the bosses, who could kill you with one shot if they managed to hit you.

Similar to the healer situation, Witch Kraft didn't have any true tank classes, so you had to rely on the krafted minions and skills of your party members to CC, kite and create decoys to survive such ventures.

"Indeed, the very same," answered Ramsy. "We've received reports that the Humans who operate this dungeon have been plotting and developing something nefarious in the basement of the Manor. We need someone to go in and clear the dungeon while gathering intel."

I stared at him, blinking in silence for a moment.

It was a lot to take in.

Humans operating the dungeon were involved in some sort of nefarious plot? With some kind of secret experimentation in the Manor cellar?

I'd cleared the Countryside Manor dungeon before, multiple times, and the cellar was a creepy place and home to the penultimate boss—spoiler alert: it was a werewolf uncle that the family kept hidden down there.

However, there were never any signs of any kind of research and plotting—just an extremely wealthy family of the Human Nobility, hiding a dark family secret locked away in the cellar. But by the way Ramsy described it, it sounded as if that had changed—that the dungeon bosses had developed minds of their own...

It almost sounded as if it were operated by actual players, which was impossible.

Or should have been, at least.

And that wasn't even the most puzzling part about his proposition. "Why do you want me for this job, exactly? I'm level 5. What could I possibly do in a level 20 dungeon, other than get in everyone's way?"

He regarded me with his rectangular goat eyes (which seriously gave me the willies, even though they were nowhere near as unsettling as the slaver clown's) for a long moment before finally speaking. "As I said, we've been rather impressed and eager to work with you. We have full confidence that you'll find the power within yourself to rise to the occasion."

"Surely, if it's such an important mission, you can pull your resources to find someone much more suitable, of a much higher level to handle this..." I said suspiciously.

Again he gave me a long, silent look, as if weighing how much he should reveal in his next response. "Perhaps you've noticed that the world is changing."

A chill ran up my spine. Oh yeah, I'd certainly noticed quite a lot of changes...

He continued: "These changes are happening much more drastically than many of us would like, and they're becoming evermore... unmanageable. In a world in such a chaotic flux—despite it may not appearing so on the surface—it has proven itself to be a rather... challenging task, finding help that we can... rely on...." he paused for a moment, watching me. "However, we're confident that you, Minori, won't disappoint us."

He gave me a tight, joyless smile as he finished speaking—making the unspoken implications echo far louder than his audibly spoken words. We trust you won't fail or abandon your mission because Leilei's freedom and well-being—her life itself—hangs in the balance...