The servitor bowed again and kept to her description. "The second floor contains entirely F-Grade facilities, including five for alchemy, seven for ingredient preparation and refinement, three smithies, one body tempering chamber, one variable attunement cultivation alcove, a surgical bay, and five bedrooms. Access to the second floor and its hallways will only be granted upon your unlocking one or more of its rooms, but the servitor staff will continue its maintenance and upkeep of all rooms."

  "About the staff," Axl interrupted. "I've only seen you and two outside. Are there more?"

  "There are twenty-seven gardener puppets, of which twelve are active, twenty manse servitors, of which eight are active, twelve guardian servitors, of which three are active, six courtesan entertainers, all inactive, and a head servitor, currently inactive. Additional staff are tied to specific facilities, but those are not considered manse staff themselves."

  "Wait, aren't you the head servitor?"

  "No, I am a guardian servitor, but have taken up many of the roles of the head servitor due to malfunctions in the manse that have not been properly addressed. A key one being the regular disruption in our protective arrays, allowing various undesirables to occasionally access the mansion grounds."

  Axl chuckled, undesirably. "What about the third floor?"

  "All E-Grade facilities, as well as most basement facilities and two of the spires. I am prevented by the Deep System from detailing the E-Grade facilities until you earn access. The F-Grade basement facilities are three caverns for the growth of various mushrooms and other alchemical reagents that require dark or submerged conditions, a deep cold storage bay, and the family mausoleum. There are also mixed-grade facilities, with certain parts of their functions only available at certain grades, which include the library, the glyphic repository, the astrolabe spire, which noble lady Aria has access to, and the skillset infuser."

  Axl had to keep himself from automatically unlocking that last option. "Does skillset infuser mean what I think it means?"

  "I do not presume to be privy to your thoughts, young master, but the facility provides a selection of Skills for your own acquisition, pending certain system-imposed conditions."

  Axl looked at Moxlin, who was shaking in excitement, chittering incoherently. But before deciding on anything, he turned to Aria, who looked a bit distracted, looking up at the clear skies beyond the skylight.

  "What do you suggest, Aria?"

  She looked back down, as if needing to remember what she was doing. "Oh, it doesn't matter too much, I think, it's all too complicated right now, but I do get the vague sense it might be better to unlock your choices now and spend a few days before claiming your fief territory."

  Axl nodded. "That would probably trigger a quest of some sort, right?"

  Moxlin rolled her eyes. "Even I could've guessed that."

  Aria stretched towards the little spider, lying down on the long couch, poking her on the side. "Want to be an oracular pair? Weave a tapestry of fate together, it would be so much fun."

  Moxlin scuttled up Axl's shoulder. "No thanks, I'm having a hard enough time keeping up with what I already get from this guy, no way I want to overdraft my Karma like that."

  "Pity," Aria said, looking genuinely disappointed, putting her head down, eyes closing as if to sleep.

  "Hold up," Axl said. "Before you pass out again, I need to ask you about your latest prophecy. Why did you talk so much about the previous master when the house key was somewhere else entirely?"

  Aria sighed, begrudgingly sitting back up. "I am truly sorry. I mistook the vision, thinking the dead elf had the pendant on his neck. So much of scrying is difficult interpretation, but in this case, I simply made a wrong assumption from what I was able to extract. It was the kind of blunder I saw often back home and thought I was above committing… I meant to tell you, to lay out my mistakes as is proper, but I was too embarrassed."

  Axl nodded, in a way relieved. He was starting to worry that he'd turn into a mindless follower of this elf, doing all she precisely set aside to get things done just right, but if she was also only stumbling around with her skill just like he was, it felt better, somehow.

  "Fine," he said. "Not a problem to mess up, we all do it. Thanks for your help."

  Aria stared at him, her large purple eyes and slightly tilted head giving her a confused, almost lost look. "I… Need to tell you about my clan, at some point. They may come looking for me, even if it's unlikely they will find me, since the token I got for this place was a reward from the Deep System, boosted to allow me to leave my own firmament, even. Yet they also contain powerful oracles, and hiding from high-grade scrying is difficult."

  "Oh!" Moxlin rose four of her legs in surprise. "A different firmament entirely! How exciting! You're not just a weirdly small elf, but a real cultivation princess!"

  Aria looked down, embarrassed. "I was, in my previous reincarnation… It's part of the reason I'm so valuable. The memories I have of that time alone got me adopted from a peripheral branch into the main family."

  "You expecting them to come anytime soon?" Axl asked.

  "No, the reward I obtained at the decennial pilgrimage assured a clouding of my location while I am still in the F-Grade, so that is of no concern, at least for a few years."

  "Just a few years and you can get to the E-Grade?" Moxlin's surprise was genuine, beyond her usual messing around. "How's that possible?"

  Aria shrugged. "Where I come from, that ascension is not rare, but my advantages will make it available sooner than most, even lacking the resources from the shaded mountain."

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Axl grunted, not looking forward to another complication to have to worry about, but he realized somebody as useful as Aria would have her own issues, a reason she'd have ended up a prisoner in this sanctuary. Something about how she talked about her clan also rubbed him the wrong way. She was scared of them, far more than of the metal dryad, even.

  "Well, you're with us now, if you want to stay. I'm on a timed quest that I need to complete, but I'll try to get you some resources you need to progress, like I'm trying to do with Moxlin."

  Aria looked relieved, her eyes watering slightly and breath catching. "Thank you," she eventually muttered, then took a minute to compose herself.

  The servitor brought out a tray of tea, pointedly with only two cups, serving Aria and Moxlin. Axl simply nodded. "Thank you, servitor. It was my oversight not to ask for drinks."

  After a moment of awkward silence, Aria looked at Axl with her usual even, piercing stare. "This quest of yours, is it linked to your strange dreams?"

  Axl's eyes widened, and he raised a hand, looking around, his eyes falling on the servitor.

  Moxlin snickered as she balanced over her teacup. "Yeah, Roken's got some big secret, but he does a really bad job hiding it. Back at the orc longhouse, there's a bet on what it is. I have two medium burins on him being a secret firstborn from one of the thirteen sects, but the biggest money is on him being the arboreal pagoda's anointed chosen."

  Axl froze, not sure how to react. He'd long figured that it probably wouldn't matter if his real goals were revealed, even his being secretly a human probably wouldn't mean much to cultivators used to dealing with reptile-faced kobolds and literal talking animals. But it wasn't Moxlin or Aria knowing the truth that he really worried about, it was the meddling of beings like the vale administrator or Nox. But maybe this place might actually be safe from that kind of attention?

  "Servitor," Axl said, seriously. "Can the administrator or other agents of the Shrouded Crescent Valley monitor this manor? I obtained it thanks to a quest from the vale, but Aria said this place was given by the Deep System originally."

  The servitor bowed slightly. "Indeed, you may invite the attention of the vale's subsystem into the grounds, but it is under the purview of the Deep System, not the vale itself. This may be temporarily altered if certain quests are triggered, but you should sense the integrity of our protection from the keystone you hold."

  Axl reached into himself, feeling for the small pendant hidden in a spatial pocket attached to his soul, floating next to his two manuals and the concepts of his various dimensional stores. Indeed he got the strong sense from the pendant that the manor was shielded from the vale's interference, and even felt how the protection array held, down to the slight irregularity in its function, to the point he was able to track it and know the next one would happen in three days and six hours. It would only be a gap for a fraction of a second, like the one that let him in, but it was good to note he had a way of tracking it.

  Axl paused, still unsure of what to do. A part of him wanted to tell Moxlin and Aria about his true origins back in Luna. They'd likely even have some good ideas on how to further his goal of establishing a beachhead for Terrania and helping the war effort back in Sol, but he still hesitated.

  "Hey, sorry to bring it up." Moxlin was on his shoulder, a soft forepaw on his cheek. "We don't have to talk about it. I didn't expect you to be affected this much. I honestly thought you just didn't care that much."

  "Indeed," said Aria. "We all have our narrow paths to tread."

  Axl just nodded, taking a breath to re-center himself, relieved he didn't have to deal with this right now.

  "I still take it that I'll be having a hard time getting the void natural treasure from below the dryad's tree, right?" he shifted the topic, looking at Aria.

  "Yes, she is uniquely linked to that tree, and you'd have to basically destroy it to get to the treasure."

  "And killing the tree wouldn't kill her?"

  Aria shook her head. "No, either of them can revive the other, with some time and effort, and I'm sure she has a way of returning to it in a hurry, but I've only vaguely felt it being used once, so I'm not certain of how it operates, exactly."

  Axl groaned aloud. He still had held onto the faintest smidgeon of hope that he'd find a way to get the damn void treasure well before Terrania's deadline, but it looked like he'd have to, at the very least, form his Cultivator's Core and ascend to the F-Grade before considering facing the dryad again.

  "Well," he said, resigned. "I guess I'm going to have to further my cultivation stuff for a while longer before trying again in the F-Grade."

  "Right," said Moxlin, eyes narrowing. "To actually fight something in your own grade for once, how terrible."

  Aria raised a hand to stifle a yawn, clearly distracted from the conversation. As she lowered her hand, the rest of her followed in a slow descent. Soon her body curled up, looking tiny on the oversized couch, fast asleep.

  "And there she goes," said Moxlin. "Maybe I should take her up on her offer, being able to reach the E-Grade while sleeping all day seems like a sweet deal."

  "I'm not sure about that," said Axl, remembering how powerful she was in his dreams. "I think she's cultivating when sleeping, which would mean she's the hardest working of the three of us by a good margin."

  "Should we take her back to her room?" Moxlin asked.

  "The noble mistress requested that she not be moved when sleeping," said the servitor. "But I will do so if young master commands."

  Axl shook his head. "Let's not disrupt her, then. Only if she's in physical danger should she be moved, but ask her more about those kinds of contingencies when she wakes up."

  "As you command, young master."

  "You want any rooms, Moxlin?"

  She shook her head. "Nah, there's nothing specialized for talismans or arrays, really. There are plenty of empty rooms that I set up for my own stuff that your wood lady showed me. I'll just use one of those and browse the library and glyphic repository. And I don’t think I need to tell you which of the two F-Grade facilities I'm most excited about."

  Indeed, she did not. "Yeah, I'm pretty certain to unlock the attuned cultivation alcove and the F-Grade section of the skillset infuser, as well as the body tempering chamber. But first I want to check out all that I have access to before making a decision, in case something else turns out to be more useful than I'd have expected."

  Moxlin gave an enthusiastic thumbs up, and they left, the servitor giving them a detailed tour of all he had unlocked. Axl excitedly surveyed the ludicrously extensive G-Grade facilities, the gardens and their produce, every room's specialization, even the social rooms that he didn't think he'd ever use, being far too big—how could anybody even manage to set up an event with so many people together at a place like the vale? But then again, even large towns sprang up in the vale, despite what he'd have predicted, so he had to admit his complete ignorance on that front.

  It took them over six hours to get an overview of it all, by the end of which Axl was starting to get overwhelmed. The library alone had hundreds of books, even only at the G-Grade, on such a dizzying array of subjects that he felt lost looking at it all, and Moxlin had a similar reaction to the glyphic repository.

  They turned in for the night without doing more than surveying their options, reconvening in the morning at the small tasting table in the kitchen, even the accessory dining room being far too big for the three of them. One of the servitors was a dedicated cook, and made them a lavish meal, Aria having placed the indulgent order and surprisingly eating by far the most of all three of them, making Axl wonder where it all went. Did she take food into her dreams through her gullet?

  Despite the tour showing more extensive facilities than Axl expected, he didn’t change his mind on what to unlock, since most of the various alchemical facilities were focused on conducting alchemy or supporting the practice in some way. They were impressive and extensive, but frankly, he didn't need any of it, his [Gastric Cauldron] not only portable, but he strongly suspected that it was far more powerful than any external equipment he'd find in the mansion. He still planned on doing some old-fashioned alchemy, if only for inspiration on how to do his own version of it better, but it wasn't worth it to burn one of his three F-Grade unlocks to do so.