Walking out of the Adventurer's Guild was like stepping out of a vacuum. The tense, compressed silence of the office and the main hall was replaced by the messy sounds of the street: a merchant yelling about the quality of his cabbages, the clop of a cart horse on the cobblestones, the distant clang of the blacksmith's hammer. It was normal. But my relationship with it had changed.
The weight of the two pouches tied to my belt was substantial. It was a constant, physical reminder of the shift that had just occurred. I was no longer a zero. Before, I had been invisible, just another drifter in cheap clothes. Now, as I walked down the main street, I saw heads turn. A pair of off-duty guards near the gate saw me, and one nudged the other, his mouth forming a word I could now hear being whispered from a nearby market stall.
"Goblinbane."
A group of women washing laundry in a public trough fell silent as I passed, their eyes following me. A kid pointed. Fame is a type of noise I had no use for. It was unwanted attention, a spotlight that made it harder to move in the shadows. I pulled the hood of my shirt up a little further and walked faster.
The gold presented a practical problem. I couldn't sleep in an alley anymore. Not with twelve gold pieces on me. That was enough to get my throat cut for a tenth of the price. The inn was an option, but it was temporary. It was someone else's space, full of other people. I needed a base. A place to stash my gear, to sleep without one eye open, to practice my skills without an audience. I needed a save point.
I found what I was looking for on a side street. A small, sun-faded sign with a poorly painted key on it hung above a narrow doorway: "Shapphat's Properties & Holdings." Inside, a balding man with a quill tucked behind his ear looked up from a ledger. He took in my grimy leather armor, the dirt on my face, and the crude iron mace still tucked in my belt. His professional smile was thin and watery.
"Help you, adventurer?" he asked, his tone suggesting he expected me to ask for directions to the cheapest tavern.
I untied the larger of the two pouches and dropped it on his counter. The heavy clink of gold coins made his eyes widen. The watery smile was instantly replaced by a greedy, focused gleam. He looked at me like I was a winning lottery ticket that had just crawled out of a sewer.
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"I need to buy a house," I said. "Something cheap. On the edge of town. Secluded."
His mind was already doing the math. "Secluded, you say? I have just the thing. A charming, rustic property with... a great deal of privacy."
He led me to the eastern edge of Megiddo, where the cobblestones gave way to dirt and the houses grew farther apart. The "charming, rustic property" was a shack. It was a single-room stone and timber building with a mossy, sagging roof and boarded-up windows, set back from the road at the end of a weed-choked lane. A crumbling stone wall, barely waist-high, enclosed a small, overgrown yard. It was perfect.
No close neighbors meant no prying eyes. The stone walls were solid. The lane was a single chokepoint, easy to watch. The yard was big enough to swing a weapon in without hitting anything.
Shapphat launched into his sales pitch about its "potential" and "character." I cut him off. "How much?"
He named a price that was probably double what the hovel was worth. I didn't haggle. I just counted out the gold. The deal was done in less than five minutes. He handed me a single, heavy, rust-pitted iron key and practically sprinted back toward the center of town before I could change my mind.
My next stop was the market. I spent the last of my silver on practical things. A hammer and a bag of nails. A stiff-bristled broom. A bucket. A flint and steel. From another stall, I bought a straw-stuffed mattress, a rough wool blanket, a loaf of dense, dark bread, a wheel of hard cheese, and a link of salted, greasy sausage. The purchases felt more real than the gold had. This was stuff you needed to live, not just to survive.
I walked back to my new property as the sun began to sink. I unlocked the heavy wooden door. It protested with a long, groaning screech.
The inside smelled of dust and damp stone. Thick cobwebs hung in the corners like funeral shrouds, and a fine layer of grime covered every surface. The only furniture was a rickety, three-legged stool and a stone hearth black with ancient soot. It was empty. It was derelict. It was mine.
I dropped my supplies on the floor, the sound echoing in the small space. I shut the heavy door and slid the thick iron bar across it, the solid thump locking me in and the rest of the world out.
Standing there in the dim, dusty silence, a feeling washed over me that had nothing to do with levels or skills. It wasn't the thrill of victory or the rush of power. It was the satisfaction of owning the ground beneath my feet. It wasn't a home. It was a base of operations. A place to store my gear and save my progress. And that was more than enough.