Dressed to Kill 2: A Monster Seamstress LitRPG, page 11
I had no idea how that worked, but I guessed I would find out when I got to the Academy.
The train rode over the walls of the city and away into the wilderness. We even stopped in a second-tier city along the route, trading goods and people before heading farther north.
When we reached the third-tier city, the railway didn’t go up and over the wall. Instead, the wall opened to let the train through.
The wall of the city towered above us, looking for all the world like a mountain. Buildings piled on top of each other. The train rode through an open tunnel, a spine of stone archways supporting structures above us. The smell of smoke rolled back into the train, cramped and constrained by the spine that held up the city.
The city was built up, rather than out, in the confines of the castle fortresses. Humanity had taken advantage of the ability they gained to manipulate the nigh-invincible structures created by the dungeon.
The train stopped for what must have been an hour in a gigantic, multilayered switching station. I sat by the window in the dining car. Sandy sat down next to me eventually.
Out the window was a direct and precipitous drop into the city below; there was no wall or guardrail to stop us.
We were almost there.
When the train rolled forward again, it moved faster. It must have disgorged and exchanged its cargo—or mounted more engines to pull the train.
Whatever the case, we didn’t stop at the capital before heading forward.
It didn’t even stop at the entrance to the dungeon; it plowed straight inside.
Outside the window, I saw sprawling farmland that stretched into the distant horizon. Roads split away, dividing the farmland into massive fields of different crops. Most notably, orchards full of trees bearing brightly colored fruit were being picked at by dozens of workers.
The other thing that stood out were the buildings. Not temporary shacks or warehouses for goods; there were entire villages visible in the distance, homes for farmhands who must have lived in the dungeon for expanded stretches of time, aging three times faster than those just a floor above.
Irrigation troughs poured water from massive silos. Steam engines burned next to pipes that pulled the contents of entire rivers, redirecting them for irrigation deeper in the dungeon.
We passed onto the second floor quickly.
Sprawling mountains rose in the distance. Teams of workers mined at exposed veins in great quarried sections of the mountain, standing on erected scaffolding.
Entire factories were at work, cutting apart gigantic blocks of marble and granite in open yards. A train sat lifeless on a track.
The third floor contained a sprawling savannah. Gigantic ranches held herds of animals. There must have been a dozen different species visible in the fields; they couldn’t all have been sourced from here. At this floor, each night at the surface would take nine days. If it took nine months to raise an animal for slaughter, they could do it in one here. The dungeon refreshing would restore the land for grazing.
There was something comforting about the sight. The tiny settlements in the dungeon reminded me of home. Going far out into the Wild had made me more and more uncomfortable, the ever-present itch building up as the train rides took me days from a dungeon and human settlement.
It was almost unnerving how going deeper into the dungeon made me more comfortable instead.
On the fourth floor, a torrential rain fell. There was no industry here; just mud and swamp. Walls surrounded the train, blocking my view of the environment. They seemed worn with age.
We passed onto the fifth floor. I had never been to the fifth floor of a dungeon.
“Try not to fall out,” Sandy said.
I leaned back from the window. I had been nearly pressing my face to it.
The fifth floor was a small island. Gray clouds hovered in the sky. Docks stretched out into the water, fishing boats rocking in the waves. The buildings were fortified. There was another train here, and a crane dropped raw fish into an open top cargo container. Hundreds of workers acted as if they weren’t deep in a dungeon, going about their daily work without fretting.
I wondered how many lived here and how many rode the train in each day.
I felt the change acutely on the sixth floor. I could just tell. There was no edge to this world. It would go on forever.
A gigantic forest was being logged for timber. Teams of people in armor and bearing weapons—presumably Nobles—waited at the ready while lumberjacks felled monstrous trees.
The sixth floor had the itch of the Wild.
“Do you feel that?” I asked, taken aback.
“Yeah,” Sandy said, staring out. “It doesn’t feel like a safe floor.”
There was no industry here. But there was life.
The safe floors were floors where no monsters spawned. Time passed on them at the same speed as the surface; you wouldn’t be trapped for days if you reached this point.
An entire tiny city bustled around the sixth floor in spite of the presence of the Wild. The city seemed industrious; the clothes people wore looked similar to the other dungeon work uniforms: utilitarian outfits with no frivolities or decor. Due to the ever-present decay, almost every building was either enchanted or bore the evidence of frequent repairs. Almost everything was built out of metal and stone.
“Do people live here?” I asked, taken aback.
Gerald wandered into the dining compartment. He silently sat down in our booth and stared out the window.
Beyond the sixth floor, the dungeon became truly dangerous; this was where a team of no less than twenty Nobles would work together to clear each floor in succession, rotating groups to recover in order to clear the floor within a single day.
There was no more industry. No more signs of life. Just walled fortresses. One of the floors even opened into a sprawling underground cavern. Gigantic fans pushed air back out through the gate.
The ninth floor was the next safe floor, again covered in the pervasive itch of the Wild. The city here was much smaller than the one on the sixth floor, but more than enough to establish a barracks and resupply. There still must have been more people living here than in the entirety of Stitch.
On the twelfth floor, we reached the Academy. The train released a high-pitched whistle as it began to slow. The brakes squealed over the metal.
We finally arrived.
Unlike the harsh industrial buildings on the safe floors, the Academy was a fully functioning city, almost the same size as Foundry or Spoke.
It wasn’t just Nobles who lived here. It must have taken thousands of commoners to make the city run.
We unloaded our luggage in the gigantic train station. The walls were stained from coal smoke; the entire building smelled.
There was something altogether more comfortable about this floor. Maybe the presence of the Wild on the previous floor had simply brought it into starker contrast, but I felt that there was something different.
“Lady Gwen?” a thin, wiry man asked as we were still pulling luggage from the train. He was dressed in an official-looking uniform.
“Yes?” I asked.
“Lady Lyssandra sent me. I’m to show you the way.”
The attendant led us across the city and back toward the gate. The entire fortress-compound was kept in remarkable condition; I couldn’t help but notice how every fortification seemed to be built out of a smooth, shining white brick that was marred by no imperfection.
“The entire city is open to you when you’re not in class,” the attendant said. “You’ll get a comprehensive tour later, but for now Lyssandra wanted to pass on some information to you. The city contains multiple crafting workshops: ateliers, abattoirs, and the like. You can trade in currency or accumulated merits at most of the shops. Curfew only applies to time spent outside the fortress wall. That’s when the Academy begins to recall most of the Nobles on patrol outside. You can have your term suspended and even be incarcerated if you’re caught outside the wall after curfew.”
I nodded along.
“Where are we staying?” Sandy asked.
“Your housing will be in the Academy dorms. The most basic options have a very low merit cost. I recommend finding a way to earn money in the city and renting from someone other than the Academy. They offer luxurious rooms for a high merit price. The living quality in the dorms may seem lackluster after spending however many months in Noble estates.
“Lyssandra has also emphasized that you should not reveal details of your classes. Especially Gerald.”
I looked askance at Gerald. He was the only Noble I had heard of who also had a crafting skill, but other than that, there was nothing obviously extraordinary about him. Anxiety built in me as we were led to what would be our new home for the following months.
The dorms weren’t what I expected.
They were built into the wall of the compound, the windows visible as we approached the building over the open cobble street.
The attendant led us to a front desk inside the building.
There was a crowd of young Nobles in matching uniforms behind the desk, scuffling about quietly, whispering as they tracked us with their eyes. They looked like they could be students themselves, or had just recently graduated. A man behind the desk scribbled onto a piece of paper.
Glowing text was embedded in the wall above and behind him. It read, To build an empire that will forever prosper.
The room was almost barren aside from the desk—no other furniture. Scuffmarks on the wooden floor showed that it had been pushed out. The entire place was kept remarkably isolated and sterile.
The Academy’s sheen and dedication to raising Nobles as students felt like paint over the real nature of the place. It was a gilded castle, a bulwark of humanity forced down the throat of the dungeon. The city inside did not hide the militant nature of its existence; there was more fighting power consolidated here than anywhere else I had ever been.
“Names?” he asked.
“Sandy, Gwendolyn, and Gerald,” the attendant said.
“Rooms … B227 … C228 and … B301,” the man behind the desk replied. He pulled out keys from somewhere in the desk, laying them in front of each of us.
Three people walked out of the crowd to show us to our rooms. Gerald was led in one direction, while Sandy and I were led in the other. The farther we moved down the halls, the closer together the doors became.
“Are you two students here?” Sandy asked.
“Graduates,” one of the women said. “You’re both Chosen then? The school has a great post-grad program. You can level here, build merits and experience before looking for other work.”
I looked the attendants over with a more appraising eye. They were Nobles. I wondered how many of the people here were—it felt like a waste of the country’s Nobility. Our town—and many others like it—rotted away, while Nobles stayed within the better living conditions of the Academy.
The amount of care given to the students—giving each an attendant who showed them the way—struck me as odd. But there was obviously more to it; the fact that we ran into no one in the hallways nor at the desk was clearly intentional. The school was separating every last student until the debut tomorrow.
We must have been some of the last students to arrive. There was no way everyone had stayed isolated from each other for however long they waited for the new term to start.
The hall curved as we traveled forward, the dormitory built into the very walls of the fortress. Glowing stones lit the interior. It was inhumanly quiet.
“Do they pay you in merits?” Sandy asked.
The woman frowned, then nodded. “They do. We get wages, too, though. Look into it once you graduate!” she said.
We reached a spiraling staircase that expanded out into multiple directions, hundreds of rooms built into the walls. They had to accommodate more than just students. There was practically an entire town here; every Noble needed dozens of people to produce and craft for them, and this place had hundreds of Nobles.
On the second floor, the doors were pressed together, the rooms tiny. The guide pressed the key into my hand.
“Showers are that way,” she said, waving down the hall. “There’s some on every floor. Orientation will be in room H101. That’s building H—you’ll find it. It’s the ballroom. It will be first thing in the morning. Come prepared. Dress sharp.”
She handed me a map of the campus, clearly made by a cartographer. My location was marked with an image of a pin. Then she walked away. Her shoes clicked against the stone halls. The building was warm; it didn’t seem like it should be. There was no ventilation system; it must have been entirely magical.
The room doors were only a few feet from each other in this part of the building. The room was tiny—I could tell before I opened it. I dreaded learning what it would be like to stay here. I slid the key into the lock and braced myself to open the door.
I turned the key and stepped into room 227.
The closet had barely accommodated my luggage. There was just enough room to stand on one side of the bed, which was pushed against the wall. A desk sat at the end of the room, scarred from time and usage. The room was much longer than it was wide, forcing me to awkwardly turn sideways to navigate it. The air was old, stale and stuffy.
I had slept better on the train when it was running over monsters.
The Academy seemed intent to instill a sense of unending isolation. We were separated upon arrival, unable to see any of the other attending Nobles. Then we were separated further at admission, the school going so far as to avoid letting anyone meet in the halls.
For those who had grown up in Noble society, the Academy functioned as their debut. It was, for many of them, a singular opportunity to build an impression of themselves. For some, those children of Nobles destined to inherit huge holdings and vast quantities of bannermen, it was a chance to bond with the future generations of their closest allies. For others, the Chosen, it was their first introduction to Noble society. And a half dozen opportunities for them to put their feet in their mouths.
For me, it was an inconvenience.
The entire point of becoming a Noble was to uplift my hometown of Stitch. In all honesty, the idea of merely attending a school to earn a certificate that let me protect my town sounded less ludicrous than killing monsters each night. I was willing.
I was instructed to stay in my room until orientation. Breakfast was delivered to my door. A cart blocked my view of the hall. My shower was scheduled so that I wouldn’t run into anyone else in the hallway. They’d given us a uniform for attending classes. The stats on it were fantastic, but it boasted no skills or resistances. Finally, around noon by my estimate, an attendant, acting like a handler, guided me from my room to the ballroom.
The entire walk was filled with an oppressive sort of ambient noise, the kind you only find in old buildings; ancient wood creaked and groaned as heat made the building expand and cold made it shrink.
Instead of doors, windows showed a sky so dark it could be confused for night. Rain pounded against the panes, the sound overwhelming everything else in the hall.
The hallway grew wider as we moved away from the dorm rooms. It grew as wide as a city street, large enough to fit wagons. The ceiling was recessed into darkness above us.
The handler—or guidance counselor, or whatever—stood to the side of the ballroom door and curtsied at me. I almost curtsied back but stopped myself. The door opened.
Sandy stepped into the ballroom. Just a single step. Then she stopped.
A hundred sneering Nobles turned to her all at once, the weight of their gazes burying her.
Her clothing was stiff. The door shutting behind her was like the sound of a coffin lid locking. She didn’t move.
Behind her in the hall, she heard the footsteps trail away. She stared forward. She ignored the people smiling at her, inviting her to approach. Someone took a step toward her.
She turned around and left.
When the door swung inward, I wondered if it was enchanted. A hundred voices boiled out, like heat rolling off the forge. It took me a moment to realize I wasn’t just imagining it; the air rolling out of the room really was hot. And wet.
I knew orientation would be excessive. I’d braced myself further after learning that it was the debut event for many Nobles, their introduction both to Noble society, and to each other.
Still, I wasn’t prepared for this.
I froze at the entrance.
For a moment, I thought we were at the wrong door. The room was huge, almost a stadium, around a central field full of trees. A sprawling glass dome above showed the cloudy morning sky, the noise of tempestuous rain fighting against the sounds of a tiny orchestra in one corner.
A few people shot looks my way, but they just as quickly looked away. They were huddled in groups, sometimes three or four, sometimes eight or nine or ten.
A hundred glances pricked my skin like needles, locking me in place. I was sure of it; they would all judge me and find me wanting. They would all know I wasn’t a Noble.
When I looked up, I didn’t find anyone’s eyes looking my way. I realized, belatedly, most of these people knew each other. Chosen who were selected in a city would probably meet the children of the Blooded Nobles who lived there.
It felt isolating. Like I was the only person who’d come here alone.
I didn’t see Sandy. What I saw was the way the little groups huddled together, cliques already long formed. I moved into the room, stepping to the side of the door and out of the way. It was darker in the corner. No one was looking my way here. Most of them were sending nervous glances toward the center of the room.
The little cliques hung around at tables covered in snacks and food, and the room smelled like coffee. Commoners bustled through the room, replenishing trays and taking them away through side doors.
A balcony rimmed the entire room above us. Silhouette figures leaned down over the railing. Staff—maybe teachers or evaluators of some kind. They were barely visible from here.
In the center of the massive room was an arena.
It was like someone had ripped out a chunk of a rainforest, complete with towering trees and blooming plants. Light seemed to spill outward from it, like the air itself was enchanted to glow. A glowing white circle represented the arena’s edge.
