I want to thank all of my patrons, including:

Kido

Treant Balewood

Orchamus

Electric Heart

Aiden King

CrazySith87

Shadowsmage

Sammax

Angelic Knight

PreytorFenix

Pheonix14

Flanders

And my 100 other patrons!

Thank you guys; without your help I could never write as much as I do!

Cleaning

Rank D - 44%

I grinned at the results, wiped my forehead dry of sweat and stretched until my back pop-popped in a most satisfactory way. The sun was starting to dip already. It was crazy how much fun you could have just exploring.

So far, I had covered two of the houses next to the Inn, both of them much bigger than the homes on the Inn’s other side. They had enough bedrooms and space for big families, and the quality of the furniture was much better. I even managed to find better brooms and a mop that looked almost brand new and that seemed to stay fresh no matter how much I used it.

A magic mop! Or one that was just really well made.

I had three more homes to work on in this corner of the town--the section that I suspected was reserved for the richer inhabitants--then I would move all the way to the other end in the poorer section where I could see the peaked roof of a church.

Nodding to myself, I stepped out of the last house, Bonesy in my wash bucket and my mop and broom slung over my shoulder.

I should have been paying more attention.

A white hand clawed out towards my face and I squeaked as I bent over backwards to avoid the swipe aimed right at me.

I fell on my bum, then rolled to the side as a claw raked through the ground where I had fallen. My hand shot out and I grabbed Bonesy, swinging the head around to slice through the next swipe aiming for my face.

It worked, making the ghostly hand vanish for a moment before it reformed. It was a big enough window of time that I was able to roll again, then climb onto my feet. My skirt and blouse was soggy where they had rolled in the grass and my hair had gone wild, but that was secondary to the ghost that turned and tried to claw at me again.

“Not this time, buster,” I said as I swiped Bonesy through one arm, then the other, then with a yell that was totally not a squeak, I swished the skeletal head through the ghost from top to bottom.

I panted as the ghost faded away to nothing, leaving only a glowing dust behind that soon sparkled away into darkness. “Oh my goshness,” I said as I tried to calm my beating heart. I looked this way and that, taking in the homes all around me and inspecting everything.

That had been close. Way too close. And so easy to avoid too. All I had to do was stick my head out of the door and look around and I would have been fine. This wasn’t home--I had to remind myself--where things weren’t out to kill you all day every day.

My grip around bonesy tightened and I shivered.

Ding! Congratulations, you have made ‘Sentinel Ghost of Threewells by Darkwood’ Level 1 come to a sticky end!

I stared at the prompt. “Was that a stick pun?” I asked.

Clearly the menu systems in this world were all quite evil. It was something to take my mind off my latest near-death experience... and now I was the one making puns. I groaned and looked up to the sky, taking in the huge blue expanse with the occasional distant birds and the strange balloon in the dista--

I blinked and focused on what looked like a tiny--or very, very distant--oblong balloon. It was brown-ish grey, with a large red mark on its side and a faint trail of smoke behind it. Not something organic, not with the way it hung motionless in the sky.

“What is that?” I wondered.

Ding! For repeating a Special Action a sufficient number of times you have unlocked the general skill:?Insight!

“Holy moly!” I looked around. I hadn’t forgotten the whole ghost almost-eating-my-face thing, but this was certainly a nice distraction. “Insight!” I said as I held up Bonesy

A Skeleton (Level ?) head attached to a stick.

I laughed, then pressed a hand over my mouth to keep the sound low. Looking up, I stared at the tiny distant shape and thought ‘insight’ as hard as I could.

An airship.

“A flip fluffering airship?” I gasped.

There were magical airships around! The world had just gotten a million times cooler. But those were things I’d never get to see if I stayed in this ghost-town...

“Oh no, the puns are catching up.”

I shook my head, picked up all of my gear, and moved on to the next house. This one’s front door was locked, but the window was completely smashed in. It was pretty easy to climb in then unlock the door from the inside.

There were some bits of furniture left in this house, more so than in others. I made the rounds, checking the kitchen for anything good, then the pantry and the single bedroom and bathroom on the first floor. Nothing. I did find a strange room on the second floor, with large training dummies that were sad and squashed looking where the straw stuffing that had once filled them was rotten away and a rack with some rusty short swords on it. They were probably cheap even before time took its toll. Still, I replaced my fire poker and counted myself lucky.

In the next room over, this one an office with a broken window that had let the elements slip in, I found a small dent atop a desk where the dust was sitting strangely. A bit of poking revealed a hidden compartment, but it only held a silvery key and a bit of ribbon that had rotted away. I tucked it in my sack and kept searching, but to no avail.

Once I was done with the top floor I began grinding.

“Insight.”

A training dummy.

“Insight!”

A sword.

“Insight?”

A practice pole.

So, Insight wasn’t that useful, at least not at this level. That just meant I now had two skills I could grind! Insight seemed to be increasing by a percentage point with every item I used it on, which was simple enough. But I didn't want to leave my cleaning fall behind.

An hour or so later I carefully, with much snooping around and down and up, moved out of the house and called it done.

Cleaning

Rank D - 68%

Insight

Rank F - 89%

Grinning, I moved onto the next home, then the next. Halfway through the first home a big ‘ding’ resounded in the back of my head and I jumped for joy and spun around with my broom.

Congratulations! Through repeated actions your Insight skill has improved and is now eligible for rank up!

Rank E is a free rank!

“Woo!” I cheered as I bounced on the spot, only stopping when my broom handle banged on the ceiling and sent a wave of dust clattering down onto my head. I coughed and choked and sputtered and basically lost a lot of the good cheer I’d just garnered.

I accepted the rank up and checked out my crazy new skill.

Insight

Rank E - 00%

The Ability to know something. The knowledge you gain is increased.

“Wow!” I said before focusing on Bonesy who was sitting in a corner to watch me clean.

A Skeleton (Level ?) head poorly attached to a stick.

“That was... underwhelming.” None of the other things I used Insight on revealed much more than what they were with a single word descriptor of their quality or age. I sort of already know that my short sword was rusty. But that was just rank E! Maybe I’d become a real Sherlock Holmes when I hit rank SS+!

My cleaning continued, my skills at housecleaning in a dead city improving to the point where I could clean a whole house in just under an hour or so. I guessed. I would need a watch at some point.

If watches existed.

But airships did, so why not?

I took what little stuff I had found that was useful. A nice silver candle holder with a mirrored hand protector that would keep the light out of the holder’s eyes, a pretty painting of a boat on a river with a dragon flying in the background in a nice frame, a few spoons and table knives made of silver, and tossed them all into a rough sack I found that was hole-less. They were the sum total of my riches.

When I found civilization my first stop was going to be an antique’s store where I could sell all of the stuff and make enough to fund any future adventures!

I pulled out my map and checked it out. It seemed that I had cleaned and explored the--I was going to call it Western--part of the town completely. The Evil Hole of Great Evil was just to the East of where I was, which was totally off limits because I was pretty sure the only respawn I would get was as a ghost to haunt the next poor adventurer and that wasn’t neat.

More grinding!

I had to admit, cleaning had never been so much fun. Or grinding for that matter. There were real, tangible benefits to all of this and I loved every moment of it except for the moments where I was nearly dying. Those I could do without.

I arrived at the southern end of the town and realized that I would need to update my map a lot. But before that, more sneaking!

Moving between two homes, I kept myself low to the ground, my haversack and cleaning gear and things left next to a house behind to reduce the noise I made as I moved around.

It seemed that at some point the road leading into the town forked and never reconnected, so that the road I had been exploring for the past day and a bit was disconnected from the one I found now. This road ended at a big gate that was left ajar, just enough for someone to walk through if it wasn’t for the huge pile of branches stuffed by the entrance.

There was another well, which made three! I was right about the name!

My silent cheering at my discovery froze up when I peeked around a corner and found the old church I had seen a while ago. It was a large building with two bell towers and a small graveyard behind it. One filled with ghosts. A quick snoop revealed five glowing forms wandering in circles.

Five too many.

I still snooped around a little. The buildings nearest the church looked like businesses. A blacksmith’s shop, a supply store of some kind, a shop with a stick-like symbol before it. I took note of what I could see, then backed away.

Too much for me to handle at my level.

Maybe it was best that I just... move on. But then that would leave my quest undone, and something niggled at me about it. It didn’t have a timer, exactly, but I could tell that the longer I waited the harder things would get.

No. It was best that I stick around and at least try to see what I could do. There was another tower to visit at the far end of town. Close to the evil ghost but not on it. And there were ghosts that I might be able to chat with.

And of course more stuff to explore.

I entered a house as far from the church as could be and did my usual snoop and clean routine. Then, nearly an hour later, as the sun was setting, I used the last rays to update my map, scrubbing out mistakes with some spit and rubbing, and checked on my skill growth.

Insight

Rank E - 14%

Cleaning

Rank D - 84%

Come morning I would hit Cleaning rank C and probably Insight rank D. Two handy skills to have, but neither combat based. Still, I wasn’t without options. I would try to lure some ghosts closer to me and take them out with Bonesy. Insight had come from repetitive actions. Cleaning from a smaller number of actions, but it was a ‘class’ skill.

Cinnamon Bun was obviously not a combat class, so for a fighting skill I would need a whole lot more repetitions.

I could do it, I knew I could!

“I believe in me!” I said.

“Rrrr,” Bonsey agreed. And with that, I packed up and snuck back to the spot I’d slept in the night prior.

RavensDagge