I settle in for the night at a guest room in Westminster. And as tired as I am after a long day of adventuring and dealing with people, I still summon a ghost before I go to sleep. I have a lot of work to do and that's just physical exhaustion. My [Ghostly Watcher] can just sit in my room and work on making notes of my skill progression with my [Text Editor].

My body has been asleep for an hour when I spot an aura outside the window, working on getting it open in absolute silence. I start trying to wake up my body as soon as I see it.

Name: Spider Sutton Gleam Tiganna Race: Human | Gender: Male | Rank: Elite | Tier: Journeyman | Class: Silent Assassin Disposition: Hostile | Mood: Murderous

Ah, crap. I knew the murderous Hearths couldn't have been completely out of the picture yet. I check his quest log to confirm that he's here to kill me, but really didn't need to given the amount of rage that's radiating from his soul.

My body might be groggy and my reflexes too slow to keep up with an assassin. So I summon another ghost, this one with a different intent in mind. I call upon Liu Xing, the warrior, to protect me from harm.

Skill acquired: Necromancy (Ghostly Guardian) Description: Summon a spirit to protect you. This spirit has corporeal hands that are capable of interacting with the physical plane, but may still turn ethereal to pass through objects if desired.

The ghost that takes shape bears glowing red eyes and disembodied blood red hands. It swoops through the air and locks eyes with the assassin.

Spider Sutton screams, slips and falls from the third story window and lands badly on the pavement below. He doesn't get up. He probably should have practiced [Sticky Grip] and [Soft Landing] more.

I go back to sleep, leaving both ghosts active. I'm tired and don't care. Let someone else deal with cleanup.

[We technically didn't kill him,] Liu Xing points out. [But if you choose a class like 'Assassin', you are basically volunteering for a violent death. I will shed no tears over the fool.]

It's not half an hour after my body is asleep again that another aura appears outside.

Name: (?) Barnet Gleam Tiganna Race: Human | Gender: Female | Rank: Elite | Tier: Apprentice | Class: Apprentice Assassin Disposition: Hostile | Mood: Eager to prove herself

[She looks like she's fifteen,] I point out. [Does that apply to kids, too?]

[Still a fool, but maybe a fool that can still be turned to a better path than trying to murder children. We need an Enchanter to tear that quest off of her.]

This time, when the body wakes up, I dismiss the ghosts and summon a [Ghostly Enchanter]. I'm not close enough from the bed to target [Defiance], so I send the ghost in to rip through her quest log and delete the "Kill Drake Corwen" quest with all due prejudice.

The Barnet girl stops what she's doing in puzzlement, though less of it than most adults who over-rely on quests.

Through the ghost, I grab her connection to her aether core and tell it, [Knock that off, Barnet. If you're so desperate to become a vassal, you can just ask. If you force me to send someone to subjugate you, I will be very annoyed at you and might do something silly with you. Can we just skip the tiresome war and murder thing and come up with something better that will benefit us all?]

[She chose to be an assassin,] Barnet says. [If she wanted to kill people, I naturally gave her quests to kill people.]

[And who gave her the choice to be an assassin?] I ask.

[It is a standard class. Her highest skills were Striking and Subterfuge.]

[Ugh. Whatever. Look, you're doing it all wrong. Cores aren't supposed to be the ones to send assassins. You're supposed to have people hire assassins to kill other people who annoyed them. Did anyone pay you to kill me?]

[No,] Barnet replies. [It was an automatically randomly generated quest assigned to her because she chose the Apprentice Assassin class. You were a valid target after tampering with the Temple of Light.]

[So you just spent your own essence to give her this quest to kill me, to gain what?] I ask.

[She would become stronger after completing her quest,] Barnet replies.

[Did any single actual sapient being hate me enough to give you money to kill me? You shouldn't be doing this for free. If you want to do assassination quests, you ought to get them from actual sapient beings who pay you for it. You would generate considerably more essence if you got additional people and motivations involved instead of just randomly assigning quests.]

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[Your suggestion holds merit. Initial internal simulation models suggest that by involving an additional person and a motivation, essence production would increase threefold at minimum, in addition to the monetary compensation. Very well. As per your suggestion, I will restructure this Hearth as an assassins' guild and cease automatic random generation of assassination quests.]

[Fine, you know what, fine. You do that. Set up a guild. A brotherhood. Maybe even get yourself a creed or whatever. Just make sure not to undercharge people. Lives shouldn't be cheap, but there are always people willing to take them for any reason.]

[Understood,] Barnet replies. [Conceptual correction accepted. You have given me some fascinating ideas.]

Gleam's Chaos rating has increased by 10%.

With her quest canceled, the girl has decided that whatever is going on here, she wants absolutely nothing to do with it, and leaves.

I'm not sure if I've improved the situation here, but this is seriously not my problem right now. I already told Peace that Barnet and Sutton were sending out assassins and I will inform her of the situation in the morning. If any core wants to send quests or anyone wants to take matters into their own hands, that's up to them. I already subjugated one core on this trip.

They didn't ask for control of the Temple of Light back and I didn't offer it. With the immediate threat out of the way, I send my [Ghostly Enchanter] over to the Temple of Light to get some work done and check out what the monsters respawned as.

I rearrange things a bit based on descriptions of the way it was set up before along with my own ideas of how to improve it. I've made sure the core room is somewhere easy to reach by ghost but nigh-impossible to find with normal senses.

The monsters are keeping to the tower now, with the moths moved up a floor to leave the ground floor monster-free. Rather than Hush creatures, the monsters now all bear the adjective 'Gleaming' and have light powers rather than silence powers, and are golden rather than white.

Yellow laser bats are kind of weird, but sure, whatever. They're monsters, and it fits the theme, I suppose.

[How did the halfling spawn the griffin, Whitechapel?] I ask.

[I already had the monster available,] the aether core replies, its mental voice sounding deep and fatherly, unlike Hebron's child-like tone.

[Well, I'm glad it's there. You are going to need to start training people again. Right now, you're not even up to Dolwen Prep's standards, never mind Crux Academy. Let me look over your essence allocations… hoo boy, yeah, that griffin was expensive. That's fine, though. You'll be rolling in essence again soon enough. You need to spend money to make money, as Milo would say.]

[I do not have much essence left to spend. I fear my previous owner drained me dry before she left.]

I nod mentally. [That's fine. I figured as much. At least she's gone. Making her way through the caves, last I checked. She won't be back.]

[I see. May I recycle her belongings as trash, then?]

[Let me double check what she left behind first,] I tell it, and scan through the junk the halfling abandoned in her hasty retreat. [Alright, absorb everything except the books. The books should be taken to the headmaster's office.]

[I do not have a headmaster's office. Do you wish to add one?]

[Ugh, yes, let's look at room costs. Do you not have a human headmaster, either?]

[I do not. Should I?]

[Yes. I will arrange one before I leave Gleam. Peace, maybe, if she's up to it. Someone that can handle the day-to-day. Let's just get all the dungeon management squared away first. The humans can handle furniture and supplies, so we can skip the essence cost on those and just set up some empty rooms for them.]

As far as I can tell, this core had just been running on automatic for centuries. When I asked the Westminsters at the party, it seemed no one knew anything about dungeon management and they were happy to leave it to me.

I don't think I'm going to be able to solve all the problems in Gleam in the next two weeks, but that's fine. I don't have to. I have accidentally acquired a school and I'm going to take every advantage I can of it. It has been almost a year since they were able to hold classes and no one will question any state I leave the place in.

I didn't ask permission to put monsters in the tower. That griffin will discourage anyone from tampering with the bell and clock in the future.

No further assassins bother me in the night and I get the school set up to where the humans can take it from here. I pick up the teacup to check on the Hush Warlock's position. [Trace Connection] points down and to the south, still making her way through the caverns and not having made much progress since last night. She probably slept in one of the dungeon rest areas.

I head downstairs for breakfast and find Peace Camden and Mint Westminster already talking at a table in the common area. Just the people I wanted to talk to.

"Morning," I say. "Someone tried to murder me last night."

The two of them start babbling with questions and apologies. I give them the status information about Spider Sutton and explain what happened.

"Anyway, more importantly, we need to talk about the school," I say.

"That's more important than my neighbors being assassins?" Mint says.

"I trust you can deal with that, but I'm about to leave Gleam and need to make arrangements for the school's headmaster."

"Headmaster?" Mint wonders. "What's that?"

"A person that's in charge of managing the school," I say.

"We always just left that to the cores."

"And look at where that got you," I say. "A foreign invader corrupting your school and using it to swarm your domain with monsters."

"I take your point," Mint says with a sigh.

"I would be willing to take such a position," Peace says. "I have chosen the path of support over violence, but I am still a Legendary and can defend the school from those who would seek to cause harm. As Chief Warden of Camden, I dealt with handling personnel and training."

"Great," I say. "Let me gather my party and we can head over there. There are still monsters in the tower and I'm pretty sure that I made them not attack unless aggroed or you mess with the bell but I need to make sure of it and some of my crew didn't get to do as much dungeon delving."

"You should get some food inside you first," Peace says. "Breakfast is—"

"—the most important meal of the day, right," I finish with a chuckle.

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