Deep within the guild, in a room that was as much a fortified bunker as it was a meeting space, Olmos watched Kaius and his team with his brow cocked expectantly. The man was a High Gold — a veteran of what could well be centuries. Kaius still held out hope they could surprise him.

Dawntown’s legacy skills. Sharing them with the Guild was a smart move on Yanmi’s part. The town was isolated at the very edge of the known world, but it bordered lands rich in natural resources, and was bound to grow in prominence as their next generation grew into their own power.

Eventually, it would become obvious they were hiding something — and no settlement thrived when they barred merchants and traders entrance to their walls. But, if the Skills they were so desperately protecting were spread wide, the problem vanished overnight. Mostly. Unclassed Honours were still an issue, but they were much easier to hide compared to skill training.

Kaius could only hope that the latest Skills would cause fewer ripples than the last. The infrastructure was there now, and it would be far easier to shroud their origin with a core of the truth — that they’d been handed in of their own volition by good samaritans.

Deep down, he knew it was a thin hope. A significant chunk of the Skills he’d been asked to pass over were for artisans and worksmen. So far, only combat skills had been spread, and those that were willing to risk life and limb for a job were the minority. Skills for the labourer and farmer, though?

That was direct economic output.

“Well?” Olmos asked, drumming his fingers on the table.

“We have more Skills for you,” Kaius replied with a grin, summoning a notebook bound in supple brown leather to his hand.

Olmos froze, staring at the book as Kaius laid it on the table. Slowly, he smiled — though the way his brow furrowed made it look a little paned.

“More Skills,” the Grandmaster muttered, before he pried himself away to meet Kaius’s eyes once more. “Can I ask where from?”

Kaius had hoped he would. Yanmi and her council had asked for nothing, but there was no way that he would let a prize like this go without extracting a few benefits for his friends.

“Dawntown. They were something of a testbed for what the guild has done. Porkchop and I shared some of our Skills with some old friends of mine. They used them as leverage to unify the communities at the edge of the Sea, and pool their own to prepare their next generation for the phase change,” he explained.

Olmos nodded slowly, digesting Kaius’s words. “I see. Rieker mentioned you would be stopping there for a number of weeks before you made your way to Baanswell. I assume that when they heard of the Guild’s Skill release they had an opportunity to disguise their windfall?”

Nodding slowly, Kaius grappled with how quickly the Grandmaster caught on. He shouldn’t have been surprised — the man had to be a member of senior Guild leadership for a good reason.

“I won’t deny that such an offering is more than welcome, but the four of you certainly have a penchant for keeping me busy,” Olmos sighed. “What do you have for me?”

Not wanting to waste time, Kaius quickly explained the contents of the book. Five legacy skills, including ones for tending to fruit trees, cultivating and preparing alchemicals, and woodworking — the most valuable being two four-merges. He also gave the man a quick summary of the skills that Dawntown had recorded that were Rare or higher — a full gamut that ranged from trade skills like Steelsmith’s Breath and Blessed Weaving to combat applicable skills like Gortha’s Stride and Trickster’s Dodge.

When he was done, Olmos sat silently for a moment with his hands folded. Then he sighed, leaning heavily on the table.

“Trade Skills. Of course it would be trade Skills.” Shaking his head, the man met their eyes once more. “I’ll take them, of course — but I might need to wait for things to settle down some, or release them in batches. There’s a potential we could step on some toes with this, not that we haven’t already, but I doubt most of the council will be eager to have half of the continent’s nobility and professional guilds upset at us at the same time.”

Kaius nodded — he’d expected that.

“What do you want for them?” Olmos asked.

“Ward and construction work for Dawntown. They’re a sizable settlement now, but they’ve used a natural rock formation for a wall, and I doubt they have local expertise in city-scale defenses. That, and they’re trying to expand down — I've seen how deep every guildhall goes, so I know you can do it.”

“Done. The Frontier is my domain, and I’ve been wanting to get a guildhall at the edge of the Sea for a long time. I was already intending to make contact with the leadership of Dawntown, and it will be easy to mask additional work if a hall is being built at the same time.”

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

A guildhall in Dawntown? That made Kaius pause. Even Deadacre’s was a massive edifice with a full fleet of staff. The situation in Dawntown was delicate, even with the spread of legacy Skills — and Honours amongst skilled members of the Guild — the existence of unclassed Honours was still a tightly kept secret. If anyone would pick up on what they were training the younger generation for, it would be a guild official, and even if they were nominally loyal to the Guild, or Olmos specifically, that information was valuable. Potentially valuable enough to cause problems.

It was only a matter of time until they got out, but he really didn’t want that heat to fall on his friends.

Olmos must have read something in his expression, because the man gave him a knowing nod.

“I can understand your reservations, but there is precedent to subordinate the branch under Deadacre.”

“What does that mean?” Ianmus asked curiously. 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝘦𝓌𝑒𝑏𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝘭.𝒸𝘰𝑚

“Deadacre’s guildmaster and administrator would be the official head. That means a lesser burden of paperwork, and the ability to largely staff locally. It’s usually done for larger settlements, like Baanswell and its surrounding territories, but Dawntown is close enough to Deadacre that no one will question it. Regardless, I have no interest in strong-arming the town's leadership. I imagine negotiations will take time, they always do — but I have no doubt I can come to some sort of agreement with them. If you think that would be amenable, that is.”

The Grandmaster’s explanation was a balm to his nerves. Local staffing… that could work. He could easily see someone like Jekkar or Holt helping to organise some of the town's more adventurous or mercenary fighters into a cohesive force. Especially as their numbers grew in the coming years. Plus, with a guildhall, increased trade would follow as merchants got wind of another readily available source of artefacts in the Frontier.

“I think they’d be happy to hear from you,” Kaius replied honestly.

“Fantastic! In which case…” Olmos’s eyes settled on the richly inscribed box that sat on the table next to him. “Your reward?”

Each and every one of them sat up a bit straighter — a motion which made the Grandmaster grin. He tapped the lid of the box.

“This contains four Ascension Fruits. You’ve been waiting for them a long time, my apologies. They come from a tree grown from a seed found in the Depths — one that fruits only once a decade, in small numbers at that. Boxes like these maintain the potency of the Natural Treasures for long term storage, and it is always a fight whenever they are being allocated. Securing four took longer than I expected — though it would have been far longer if there hadn’t been an unexpectedly fruitful harvest in recent months.”

Kaius looked at the box with renewed interest. Such an artefact must have been complex to craft — and would be undoubtedly useful in its own right. There were many valuable reagents that could be found out in the wild, but without the right preparation they often quickly lost potency.

“I thought we had to wait for transportation? Ask him why he still has them,” Porkchop asked, a faint glimmer of frustration flowing through their bond.

Of course, his brother’s telepathy wouldn’t work through a simple projection, and Olmos was far beyond Porkchop’s reach. Besides that, he was wondering the same thing.

Olmos chuckled after his question. “I did have to secure transportation — but something like this is far too valuable for mundane shipment methods.That is why I have met you here, in one of the communication rooms, instead of connecting through my personal office.”

Kaius narrowed his eyes. Evidently, Ianmus had similar suspicions to him.

“Teleportation? You mentioned having them portaled in last time we talked.” the mage asked.

“Indeed,” Olmos replied. “It’s ruinously expensive in mana cost and maintenance, and the portal inscriptions only work for small volumes of non-living objects, but every major Guildhall is equipped with such infrastructure. It’s why the room you are in are so heavily defended — it’s only used for secure transportation of the most valuable, volatile, or secretive things a hall might need. Even for me, securing its use took almost as much time as securing the Natural Treasures themselves.”

There was a teleportation formation in this room? He’d thought that the guild had access to a spatial mage, or maybe a rare Depths-wrought artefact. In an eyeblink, he focused Truesight to cut straight through the projection to reveal the stone dais that joined with the table he sat on. Inscriptions glowed with magical potency, and he roved over them for any sign of something he had missed. The work was alien — advanced far beyond his own understanding of runework, and inscribed in a language he did not recognise. He’d hoped there might be some aspects to the formation that were sitting inactive, but everything in sight seemed thoroughly connected to the projection.

Olmos smiled at him. “It is not so easily spottable, you’ll find. Besides, the room you are in is for receiving only. Baanswell is important enough to have its own transportation portal, but it is elsewhere — and even more defended.”

“Figures,” he muttered back. “Still, though, that has to be the work of a Gold — at minimum. Let alone the demands of practical mastery. I’m surprised it's even practically possible at the scale the guild would need.”

“It’s dwarven work.”

“Ah,” Kaius replied. That explained it — few held the mastery of the runic arts as much as the deepholds. They were old, long lived, and powerful. Even if they didn’t match up to the Empire in regards to producing automata and similar works, they had their own specialities.

Olmos nodded, before he tapped the box containing their reward once more. “Regardless, let me explain a bit more as I prepare to send this through.”

The Grandmaster pulled an emblem of shimmering silvery metal from a chain around his neck, and leaned over the table to place it in the centre. The projection flickered, the glow of mana burning through it as his identification connected to unknown runework that lay there. He placed the box next to it, metal clinking against stone.

Kaius heard a hum; similar to the whine of his Mystic Rend, but felt deeper in his chest. The sound built slowly as Olmos moved his hand around the formation, feathering some of his mana into a few key runes. An activation code of some sort, he presumed.

It was a strange experience, watching mana swell visibly but being unable to feel its potency through the projection. Kaius’s heart thumped as the glow brightened. The ascension fruit would finally be in their hands. He couldn’t wait to find out what upgrading his Dynastic trait would bring.