Ranger Flo asked, “Not worried about looking weird walking around with an empty care package so soon?”

  “Not worried about being seen at all,” Danielle said. “I have a stealth Skill already, and I intend to use it going and coming today.”

  “Hm. Well with the rooms, the token and the canvas satchels, that’s exactly fifteen tokens worth of goods in trade,” Agent Bea said. “You can browse manuals at base with the mana the Rangers are paying you, and we’ll talk room conversion kits next time we do this.”

  “You really don’t want more than the bare minimum of Now Hear This tokens, then?” Danielle asked. “I can make twenty for you as easily as fifteen. I mean, as long as you’re providing the base 100 mana in tokens to make them all.”

  “You’re actually going to be able to manage 40 mana in one day?” Agent Bea asked. “I know the Rangers figured you must have a Skill, but – well, what Skill?”

  “It’s a Trait,” Danielle said.

  “Fine then, what Tra– oh. You have Mana Improvement – of course you do. Your year has more students with Mana Improvement than any other year in the history of Firmitatem.”

  Danielle nodded. “I’m about to take Skill: Regen Burst just so I can sell it to Healers at a discount, but Mana Improvement and base level 2 are how I won the bet.”

  “Well then. Let me tell you about room conversion kits,” Agent Bea said. “All rooms come with the standard built-in fixtures, a season’s supply of toilet paper, a cold box of the size you’ve seen in your own room, four warded footlockers, and four bed frames. Conversion kits let you use the frames in different ways. By default, you get four mattresses, four sets of bedding, and four footlockers tagged for single renters. However, conversion kits let you 'sell back' the default goods in exchange for other options.

  “For 24 mana per room, you can get a workroom conversion kit, that provides laminated worktops and risers to turn the bed frames into workbenches, and you keep the footlockers. Alternately, you can get a living room conversion kit, that lets you convert the bed frames into couches, again keeping the footlockers. For 40 mana, you get wooden lattices and taller risers, and the footlockers are replaced by more cold boxes – that’s the food storage setup. The lattice is to hang drying herbs and things from. A lot of sent who are dividing into two rooms get that setup, and simply move two mattress and bedding sets to the new room, and two food storage conversion kits to the old room. That’s allowed, as long as you don’t damage anything.”

  “Worth it for the cold boxes alone,” Danielle opined.

  “Yes – it’s so cheap because you’re basically trading in the footlockers, and the difference in enhancement costs isn’t very large. There are a few more expensive options, but most of those are unlikely to be relevant to you – for example, while we don’t allow animal husbandry in the Rooms, there are always a few people who end up taming companion animals or buying them from Allenfall, so there’s an expensive kennel setup for them that offsets some of the damage risks from letting an animal into a room. Buying the kit, and having an open bed to put it under, is a requirement to bring the animal in, and we still don’t allow chicken coops or other animal breeding setups. Anyway. Would you like to spend some mana on conversion kits for your many rooms?”

  “Hm. Can I get, say, one – no, two each of the workroom, living room, and food storage setups, and have you round up to, um, an appropriate round number, in exchange for delivering them as one bed, one couch, one worktable, and one food storage corner in each of the 8 refuge rooms?” Danielle asked.

  “That would be 88 per set of four rooms, so I think a fair round up would make it an even hundred,” Agent Bea said. “I’ll guarantee discreet delivery, but you do have to assemble the kits on your own. What about your corner rooms? Do you want the same setup for them?”

  “Yes, I think so, but there are only three,” Danielle said. “Do the kits have to come in sets of four? Can I get three worktop kits and five couch kits in the last set, and have the org room get the two extra couch kits and one food storage kit?”

  “I can do that, since the ones you want to swap out are the same price,” the agent agreed. “That will leave a bed in the org room, though.”

  “That’s fine,” Danielle said, “It’ll be available for other org members that might need a break from their starting rooms.”

  “All right, then. That’s 300 mana. Do you want any for your other org, or your bedroom?”

  “Um, let’s give the other org room two couches and two worktables. How much are your Class manual and Skill tree manual?” Danielle asked.

  “10 mana unless you want another copy of something on your room’s bookshelf, those are 5 mana right now, from the catalog,” the agent answered. “100 mana even for a full standard room set with shelf, to be placed in one of the new rooms. All books belong to you, unlike furniture, which is considered rented, like the rooms.”

  “How about I pay 60 mana for the split conversion setup for the second org, and we agree that I get to choose four books? Plus a full standard set for the new bedroom, and one for – um, let’s say room 2002,” Danielle said. “That’s another 300 total, right?”

  “Correct, and fair. No conversion kits with the bedroom?” Agent Bea asked.

  “My roommates will need to have a say in that; we can buy it in fall, when it becomes safe to use the room,” Danielle said.

  “It will cost extra if we set up the room now, and then have to remove mattresses later,” the agent warned her.

  “Oh, uh. What if you just don’t set up the room until catalog time in two weeks, and we buy the kit then?” Danielle asked.

  “Ah, we can do that. Do you want one of the volume enhancement practice kits? You might not be able to sell until fall, but you can start making up the bags if you’re careful. Are there any more Skill tokens I might have, that you might be interested in?” Agent Bea prompted.

  “I’ll take one of each kind of volume enhancement kit,” Danielle said promptly. “As for Skill tokens, I’m interested in stealth and shield Skills, and anything that’s good for opening up the crafter Skill tree. Oh, and maybe the scout Skill tree; that seems like it might have stuff that would cross well with stealth and staying out of the reach of predators. Tier two observation Skills that help sense danger would be good too. Oh! And I have Infrasight unlocked, but I don’t know how to approach Ultrasight; I’ll take relevant tokens or manuals for that.”

  “The unlock for that is Infrasight and time, actually,” Ranger Flo said. “The Rangers can sell you an Ultrasight token if you want, though; I’m certain I can find that one at Layer 1 base, here. It’ll be 450 – it’s not as useful as Infrasight, or at least, it’s not useful to as many different people. If the base captain doesn’t like me selling it, I’ll just buy a copy back from you later!”

  Danielle grinned. “All right, the Rangers have dibs on Ultrasight, and also Body Shield.”

  “I’ll let Bea sell you that one if she can lay hands on it faster than me,” Ranger Flo said. “You need it.”

  “I’ll have to see if we have it in stock,” Agent Bea said. In a lower voice, she added, “It wouldn’t be a question if Karen would just prioritize us normally. She has that one.”

  “Karen?” Danielle asked.

  Agent Bea sighed. “That’s the Skill Sharer that gives us the most difficulty. She’s Ms. Impera to you, though. You may also be a Skill Sharer, but you are very much the junior practitioner. Anyway, I have access to a Skill called Step Light which appears on the Stealth Skill Tree but can also open some more exotic options if you use it creatively, potentially even leading into the areas you need for Displacement. I also have access to Scout’s Awareness, which you are correct in surmising is a good survival Skill when you’re dealing with hostile humans; it can help open Danger Sense – which we also sell, but it’s tier 3. Some people find it a bit difficult to adapt to, but it’s a Skill, if you turn out to hate it like some do, you can just stop using it. If you can handle it, though, it can not only unlock better awareness Skills, but also the Scout Class itself, bypassing the social loner thing.”

  “OK – wait, you unlock Basic Scout by being a loner?” Danielle said. “One of the scouts I know is practically never alone! Even when he wants to be.”

  “Does he want to be, often? Because the trigger isn’t time spent alone, it’s effort spent trying to escape unwanted company.”

  “Oh. Yeah, when you put it that way, that sounds like him,” Danielle admitted. “Are those both tier 1? What do they go for?”

  “Let me do some math, here,” Agent Bea said, and pulled out a small data pad not unlike the delivery man’s, at least in terms of visible features. “14 rooms, 100 for satchels, 400 times two for enhancement practice kits, 360 for conversion kits and special delivery options, 240 in books,” she paused momentarily, and Danielle was pretty certain she was hitting “Enter” on a calculator app of some kind. “That leaves 900 for tokens, specifically Alter Tag, Step Light and Scout’s Awareness, none of which are obligatory fivefold Skills, so that works. Well, and 2000 mana in tokens, of course, that you need to actually make the Skill tokens.”

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  “Right – I may have Mana Improvement but I’m still only level 2; enough mana in tokens to make the Skill tokens pretty much goes without saying for me, so far,” Danielle said with a nod. “I’m satisfied with that deal, though.”

  “Time for you to head for the road, then,” Ranger Flo said. “We can do the oath and the rest of the token exchanges in the Fenceline building after you get your relevant Skills added.”

  “Right. I’m going to hit my room, grab the care package tokens and bag, and meet you at the road, one block off from the Rooms road, like I said. It shouldn’t take long, maybe 10 minutes once I actually start running north,” Danielle said.

  “Agreed. See you soon,” Ranger Flo said.

  As Danielle stepped out of the tent, she heard Ranger Flo tell Agent Bea, “I’m a little jealous you got a minimum-mana deal out of her. I doubt I’m going to recover much of my 6k, though I think we might manage to sell her the other 3k in catalog stuff and – ” the conversation cut off as the tent flap fell. Danielle headed for her room, painfully aware that more people were starting to come out of the rooms and line up as more of the green duffels made it to their assigned Sent. Well, as long as nobody had taken too much notice of her being in the tent, it would be fine.

  Her roommates were already gone; Danielle supposed they had decided to get out and get the tomatoes, or hunt for more greens or something. That made it easier to make a quick turnaround. She went into the room, slamming the door a little – not too hard, just enough to make sure that anyone paying any attention would definitely hear it.

  In the room, she got the Shield Apprentice Skill token and the Food Processing Career token back out of her footlocker, and put them in her satchel with the loose mana tokens from the Combat Medic token payment. Then she dumped out the green duffel onto her bed. Under the shield, there turned out to be a small fishing tackle box of the sort that was sold with lures and bobbers and hooks already inside as a kit for campers. Two 500-yard spools of fishing line and a net fell out beside it – hah. That would change the game for some people. More exciting to Danielle was a large box of salt, suitable for preserving the fish. She found the vitamins the delivery man had mentioned and stashed them in her footlocker to keep them from getting lost. That left a pile of leather-bound books like the ones on the Room shelves except that the covers were dyed blue instead of black; something made of cloth, rolled up and tied with string; a green hard hat of all things; a stack of four 8” clay flower pots; and a set of four tins, achingly familiar in size and shape, that really should have held traditional holiday cookies. These lacked the equally traditional blue printed branding, though, and were apparently empty.

  Last of all, a piece of paper fluttered out of the bottom of the bag. Danielle took a glance and laughed; it was an apology note from a Ranger who had apparently been involved in providing acceptable bindings for the books the public had voted to include in the care packages; the gist of it was “don’t spend all your time reading while the weather’s good and the berries are there for picking; concentrate on collecting food and read when the bad weather hits.” Their speculation about possibly getting textbooks was apparently correct, however; some were evidently there in the care package, and more were available (for free to Sent under the age of 18) at the Fall Fair – including “lab packs” for science studies. Evidently, delivering all of them immediately had been vetoed.

  Empty, the duffel bag collapsed into a much smaller format; a semi-rigid floor panel inside even accordion-folded in place, and the heavy canvas readily returned to familiar folds, making a tidy package. She supposed it must have been fresh from a warehouse somewhere when it got packed as a care package. The square end profile didn’t quite fit in Danielle’s unenhanced satchel, and it simply wouldn’t go into the enhanced one at all – of course not, she realized, special enhancements ejected each other. Everyone knew that! She’d just never experienced it firsthand before; even her token purse usually stayed in her pocket. Except – the token purse did go into her footlocker. How did that work?

  “There’s something to research later,” Danielle said, then remembered she’d promised to change her active Career. “Also, they still owe me an explanation of how Mana Researcher is going to get me in trouble,” she grumbled, but she did change it. Just to be contrary, she changed it to her old pre-Sending Career, Academy Student, instead of Survivor.

  There was a lot about the care package to look into later, but for now, she tucked the compressed duffel bag under her arm, and headed for the door. She turned the handle and unlatched it carefully, as quietly as possible this time, and opened it just far enough to disengage the latch. Then she engaged Bubble of Silence and Active Camouflage and quickly stepped outside and closed the door inside the two effects. Between the silence, the camouflage, and the relatively few people in a position to observe anyway, she figured anyone who knew where she was at all would think she was still in the room.

  She climbed the retaining wall and got into the woods as quickly as possible, then took her party’s usual route north towards the ruins. When her stealth Skills ended, she was on the side street parallel to the Rooms road, and started running as fast as the broken ground allowed for. Soon she realized that a box truck was waiting for her at the end of the street; and a few minutes later she came to a stop, slightly breathless, next to the cab where Agent Bea was looking out at her. Ranger Flo was driving.

  “You made good time,” Agent Bea said, stepping out. “Climb on into the back seat, here,” she added, tilting the back of her seat forward so Danielle could climb over it into a compact bench seat in the back of the cab.

  “We’re also bringing back the breakfast setups,” Ranger Flo said, “but the other Rangers that are done for the day went on ahead. They’ll unload while we’re doing business.”

  “I hope it’s OK that I brought some other tokens to apply while I’m at an Access Point,” Danielle said. “And a list of high-priority Skills I want to advance with the mana you paid me.”

  “It’s fine,” Agent Bea said. “You have to be accompanied at all times when you’re inside the fence, but as long as you don’t try to escape past me and run around alone, you can spend as much time in the Access Point as you need.” She climbed back into the seat, and Ranger Flo got the truck moving. It seemed to have the same unusually quiet engine as the powered bicycles, though it wasn’t quite as completely silent when it was managing a whole truck. The suspension also squeaked and groaned as they passed rougher spots in the road.

  “So! I asked you before what the problem was with Mana Researcher, and you said it would get me in trouble with Systemists if I got the wrong Skills before I learned to protect myself from System spying. I have a Systemist friend who also has that Career. What do I need to tell him to avoid? What is the actual problem they’re likely to have with us? What can we do to protect ourselves from spying?” Danielle asked while they drove.

  “Your friend will probably be fine,” Agent Bea said. “A good Systemist will do most of his ‘research’ on using element Skills to create stronger elemental reactions in the mana and thus unlock element shaping Classes, and his Career Skills will reflect that. You, however, with your mysteriously unlocked Light enhancement and Infrasight Skill and System only knows what else it took to get that Career in the first place, you might start unlocking historically documented Skills with names that contradict the Systemist narrative – Skills that they try to write out of history, even though they were instrumental in humanity’s survival in the early years of the Spread. I won’t repeat them to you, for your own safety.”

  “My friend says he’s already discovering things that some Systemists would consider blasphemous. Which I won’t detail, for our own safeties,” Danielle said. “Tell me about protection from See System Info. Please.”

  Agent Bea sighed. “The problem with that path is that some people get very suspicious if they can’t see your System when it matters. Governments, for example; ours included.”

  “Are these not going to be Skills that end, or Traits I can pull back at need?” Danielle asked. “I’m not planning to refuse lawful inspection by the Government of Firmitatem, I’m planning to refuse nosy demands by jumped-up teenage leaders of a religion I never followed in the first place. Is there no way to just protect from deeper scanning levels, even?”

  “Sure, but all of those things take their own Skills, and you need to spend your mana on surviving,” Agent Bea said.

  “This is surviving! You’ve made a very strong case that this is important to my survival!” Danielle exclaimed, waving her hands in exasperation. In the cramped cab, she just hit the backs of the seats in front of her, increasing her frustration. “I’m a Skill Sharer, I like collecting Skills, I have nothing against working for new Skills, just tell me what I should be going for please!”

  “Dehydrate,” Ranger Flo said (how else) dryly. She did not, of course, take her eyes off the road.

  “Unlocked and on the short list for today, thank you,” Danielle said. “I meant about resisting See System, and you know it.”

  “Tan Hide!” Agent Bea said.

  “Working on it. Brain tanning is disgusting, do you know how many attempts it takes before the System offers the Skill?” Danielle asked.

  “A minimum of three,” Ranger Flo said.

  “I need at least one more, then,” Danielle replied. “The party will probably be doing a group tanning thing tomorrow, since today is shot, and I’ll try the Constanza North Access Point again at the end of the week, if no more unexpected meetings intervene. Can I get an answer to the question I’m actually asking?”

  “You already have some form of Skill resistance Trait, if I recall correctly,” Ranger Flo said. “Level that and your stealth Skill, and mention your need to hide Skills from casual inspection to the System a few dozen times, and see what unlocks.”

  “Flo!” Agent Bea protested, as if that had been a terribly inappropriate thing to say.

  “Oh come on, Bea, what are the chances she won’t level both of those anyway?” Ranger Flo asked exasperatedly.

  “It’s mana resistance, not Skill resistance specifically,” Danielle said. “At least it has the feature where I can intentionally pull it back when I need someone to work on me though, so if that carries over, that’ll solve the lawful inspection problem, right?”

  “Your Healer needs a Trait Bypassing token,” Agent Bea muttered sourly.

  “That or a training path,” Danielle agreed. “Got any advice on that?”

  “It’s in the Class Guide for Healers,” Agent Bea said.

  “Which is not in the Room libraries anymore,” Ranger Flo reminded her.

  “Oh – right.” Agent Bea shifted uncomfortably in her seat, old metal springs creaking beneath her. “We switched to the anatomy book. It’s been a pretty successful change, in general; most starting Healers need the anatomy lessons considerably more than the basic-level advice in the guide. You can still buy the actual Class guidebook at the Fall – ah, at HQ this afternoon, when you’re picking out your four books from our deal.”

  Danielle sighed. “I’ll plan on that, then.” She slouched back in the seat and crossed her arms. She probably looked like a sulky child, but she was tired and her head was sore and she was rapidly running out of patience for Agent Bea telling her not to do things because it would take Skills, as if that was the thing that was going to stop her.

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