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 plate armor, their helmets covering their features, their posture rigid and disciplined. They held halberds crossed in front of a small entrance, the gleaming metal catching golden rays of the sun.

  But then…

  Right beside them, an old Twir was sprawled 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 lazily off the edge, and in his hands, he clutched a half-eaten apple.

  So much for seriousness.

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

  The old Twir groaned and rolled over just enough to crack an 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, confused.

  That was apparently the funniest thing he had heard in centuries.

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

  I exchanged a glance with the prince, who just sighed heavily, looking like he wanted to melt into the mountain wall behind us.

  After what felt like an eternity, the old Twir finally regained his composure. Still lying on the ground, he wiped at the corner of his eyes and let 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 laughter. He actually slapped the ground this time, kicking his legs as if he were a toddler having the time of his life. The two fully armored guards 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, scany, do it,” the old Twir, who I was now mentally labeling as completely unhinged, waved lazily at one of the guards.

  Without hesitation, the armored Twir nodded and pulled a trigger on a contraption 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 clenched. Crap.

  It was a high-tier mana scan. The kind that peeled apart layers of enchantments, 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 second of panic, I remembered where I was.

  This was the Heartlands. A place so absurdly independent that even the gods seemed to treat it as a lawless safe zone. No one cared about theft here. Probably. Hell, they’d probably appreciate the effort I put into acquiring my collection.

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

  From the corner of my eye, I noticed the prince stiffen as the old Twir’s gaze locked onto him, his sharp eyes twinkling with a hint of amusement. “Ah, Prince Relando! Your last visit was—”

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

  Oho. Now this was interesting.

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

  I stared. “Uh.”

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

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

  I sighed. “Technically, it still exists. Suzerain under the 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 laughed, waving a dismissive hand. “It’s actually the emperor! What a nonsense!” He picked up one of the odd glass tubes and aimed it at me.

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

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  Gatei’s sharp eyes softened slightly when he caught my reaction. “Relax, 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 can erase my existence, then 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 reconsidering every life decision that had brought him back to this place.

  I didn’t blame him.

  Gatei aimed his strange glass 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 glass device like a toy before pointing it at the massive stone gate. A similar beam shot out, vanishing into the ancient surface. “Alright, here’s the deal. Personal vaults are expensive, and you don’t have enough on you to negotiate for one.”

  He shrugged as if that were common 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,” Relando 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 laughter, a sharp, almost cackling sound, as he slammed the glass tube back onto the table. The table promptly sank into the ground as if it had never existed, only to be replaced by a new stone table, this one covered in more strange gadgets and a layer of fine dust.

  “We’ve got no idea what most things are!” he said, grinning like this was the funniest thing 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 on wealth—it was based on function. And if something had a function they didn’t understand?

  Then to them, it was junk.

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

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

  He grabbed a pair of weird, bulky goggles, the lenses thick and strangely tinted. Then, 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 done with life than usual.

  Okay, time to pull out the big guns.

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

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

  Gatei’s grin vanished instantly, his entire body going rigid. The mischievous glint in his eye evaporated, replaced by something dark and sharp. The casual, joking Twir I’d been speaking to seconds 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 playfulness from before.

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

  The silence stretched, 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 interested in this conversation.

  Then, finally, Gatei moved.

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

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

  “I’d never joke about potential mass destruction,” I said, deadpan. “Okay, maybe I would, but not right 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 own free time.

  According to the founder, one of their members—some random newbie—had once stumbled into a rookie dungeon. We’re talking low level. Like, the kind of place 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 claimed it. No rare loot. No hidden boss. Just a place for fresh adventurers to get their feet wet before moving on to actual content.

  But this particular noob?

  He found something.

  Nothing exciting at first—just a pair of glasses tucked away in some dusty drawer, abandoned like a long-forgotten relic. They looked weird, though. Their lenses had these delicate, spiderweb-like cracks across them, warping 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 laughed at him for it. Nobody thought twice about his dumb, broken glasses.

  Then one day?

  A Twir saw them.

  And promptly offered him a mountain of gold.

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

  Since then, that dumb story had become 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 intention of stashing these away. Cashing in later, when I actually needed them. But hey, I was here now.

  I reached into my inventory and pulled them out.

  Both of them, resting in my open palm.

  Gatei stared.

  His entire body went still, like I had just handed him a ticking 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 fingers twitched, 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 intensity a jeweler might use to inspect a legendary gem. A slow, sharp breath hissed through his teeth.

  Then? He started laughing.

  Not his usual, carefree, haha-this-is-hilarious kind of laugh.

  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 satisfaction. “Oh, you have no idea what you’ve done.”