Double-Blind: A Modern LITRPG

Description: This small piece of unknown metal unlocks a window to another realm. Many treasures and mysteries wait within that are yours for the taking. But beware, the locals will not appreciate pillaging of their precious treasures. And with all dungeons, the lower you go, the greater the danger, and more tantalizing the rewards.

Item Class: Epic

Item Value: ???

As she explained it, the system gave Kinsley several artifact-style items every time she leveled. A perk of being a merchant class. Two of them—she was understandably dodgy on the details — had a value in Selve. The dungeon key did not.

When I pressed her for more details, asking her to extrapolate from her highest value item, she begrudgingly revealed that it was likely in the millions. That didn’t really matter, as we had no idea what a single Selve was actually worth, but the number alone made me carefully place the key back on the table.

Internally, I was reconsidering how clever Kinsley actually was, or if, considering the beating she took, I wasn’t the only one with a possible concussion. We were acquainted enough that no one was waving a gun around, but that was it. Maybe it was a harsh line to draw, but if she was stupid enough to be handing out high-end artifacts to random strangers, I wasn’t sure I wanted to do business with her at all. That kind of carelessness could come back to bite me.

Then, Kinsley gave me a smug smile and pulled a binding document out of the air. I read through it line by line, mouthing the words, making sure I picked up every detail. Damn. Assuming the system didn’t go out of it’s way to screw her over, it was both logical and iron-clad. I couldn’t have simply walked away with her system merchandise. Not that I would have.

After I skimmed it fully, I went back over the details. The item in question—The dungeon key—would remain in my possession for a weekly rental of 100 Selve, collected automatically from my balance. There were several other key concessions as well, such as rights regarding any items procured from said dungeon. If, for whatever reason, I could not not make the payments or tried to renege on any of the agreements, the key would automatically be reverted to her and I would be hit with system fees and penalties.

While I read, I noticed some unfilled sections.

“You can use these for sales as well?” I asked.

“Yes. But it makes more sense to just use the trade screen for that. Yours doesn’t seem to be working, so I thought we could use one of my merchant contracts as an alternative. This also allows me to set up agreements and retain ownership, as I’m sure you have read by now.”

“Can you email them?” I asked.

“The magical legal contract? No idea,” Kinsley shrugged. “Wait, why?”

“Just seeing if it’s possible to get a copy for record keeping. But now that I think about it, I’m not sure what I would do with it if I had it.”

This was, of course, a lie. If Kinsley could somehow get her business online, that would solve the majority of problems that came with trading in person. Namely, getting beat black and blue, or worse. It really was only a matter of time before she met the wrong User. There was still a huge elephant in the room on the topic of if what I was considering would actually work. And magic system legalese aside, I wasn’t even sure how feasible it was to create a restricted access market website, firewalled from unauthorized access. You’d need a host site, servers, admin software, and programming help.

By the look of her desktop rig, she might even have some of the skills I needed. The charitable thing to do would be to tell her my plan immediately, make her a partner. But the charitable thing was seldom the smart thing, at least in my experience. If I told her too much now, she might screw something up. With my goal of making enough to get my family out of the city riding on the line, it was just too big a risk to take.

And if you told her now, maybe she wouldn’t need you. You’d be the idea guy who gets left behind. She’s only offering you this deal because you’re both desperate. She has a lot of other options, like lending out that dungeon key for significantly more than she charged you and you know it. But there are other merchants who aren’t children. You’re not the first one to think of this. Don’t keep it to yourself for too long. Figure out a way to do it with her help, but still reap the benefits.

Future plans aside, the current proposal between us was fairly simple. Kinsley would lend me the dungeon key if I signed the contract. She would hold the exclusive option to buy everything I found at a discount. I couldn’t even go to another system vendor without her consent. Since the danger of entering the dungeon was on me, I leveraged that for concessions in my favor. After some haggling, I was able to get her to agree to give me the first pick of any item I found that suited me, since the danger of our little arrangement was almost entirely on me.

“You drive a hard bargain.” Kinsley scowled, then immediately winced, hand going up to one of the many bruises on her face.

“So do you,” I said.

“We have a deal?”

I steepled my fingers. “One last thing. You being a merchant, the way your doors work. The dungeon key. I’m assuming you want to keep all that on the down-low?”

“Really? After all that, you’re trying to blackmail me now?” Her voice nearly broke.

I felt bad. But this was important. “Not blackmail, no. Just a mutual understanding of how things work. There’s a cyber cafe that moonlights as a testing center over on Jefferson, you know it?”

“Yes. Why does that–”

“Of course you do. That’s where your father scheduled you to take the PSAT 10 back in october.”

“I’ve never taken the ten, only the eight-nine–”

I interrupted again. “–and as such, you were freaking out. You’re smart but you didn’t ace the eight-nine, you were too young even for that. And the ten,” I blew air through my lips. “Whew. That affects your chances at admission. Supposedly it doesn’t matter until you’re a junior in high-school. But you know they look.”

Kinsley was silent.

“Maybe you talked to a friend, who talked to a friend, who eventually gave you my number. I let you know I couldn’t really pass as a pre-teen girl and take the test for you, but told you all the right things to say to dad to get him to push it back. He agreed, but only for a year. So you kept texting me questions, I kept giving you pointers, and now we’re sort of friends.”

I saw the moment the gears in her head started to turn. “Because you have nothing to do with any of this,” Kinsley said.

“You kept me in the dark. I just brought you toothpaste.”

“God I could use some toothpaste.”

“Really? There’s none in the store tab?” I asked.

“No. It sucks.”

I rolled my eyes. “There’s literally a Walgreen’s every other block and you can basically teleport.”

“They beat the hell out of me.” Kinsley stared at me, incredulous.

I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Fine. I’ll bring you toothpaste.”

“Thank you.” Said very much like fuck you.

“Uh-huh. Point being, I’m not a User. I know something’s up with you but that’s it, and you called me because you didn’t want to use anyone connected to your personal life.”

“Fine. Are you always this paranoid?” She asked.

“Only when my life’s on the line.”

Kinsley gave me a weird look, but nodded agreement.

A system prompt appeared, startling me

Quest: The Kinsley Accords

Primary Objective — Gain loot and levels as you fulfill your contractual obligations.

Primary Objective Extended — Explore the dungeon, venturing at least to the fifth floor.

Personal Objective — Remain unidentified by other Users (excluding Kinsley, Merchant).

Threat Level: (S–L)

EXP GAIN (M)

Time Limit: One Week.

Reward: Improved access to items at a discount from Kinsley, Merchant.

Reward: Progression towards Vocation ???

Accept Quest?: Y | N

There was a lot about the quest that gave me pause. I assumed S-L meant the quest had a sliding level of difficulty. The item description told me the Dungeon would likely get more difficult the deeper I delved, which the item description confirmed. Just how difficult was the question.

“Matt?” Kinsley looked a little concerned, then repeated the question. “We have a deal?”

Getting my family out was the first priority. It came before everything else. But depending on how long the blockade was in place, that might be impossible. And if it was impossible and things got worse, I needed to be in a position where I could take care of them. Just like I always had. There was one good thing about the currency situation. No pay to win. Of course there were exceptions. People with power and resources, established organizations, would likely band together more easily. Daphne was an example of that. But on a micro-level, for the first time ever, I felt like the scales had reset with every User starting at zero.

And I had no intention of staying there.

/////

After another round of haggling, I agreed to sell her the Core. She was right, it wasn’t doing me any favors just carrying it around and I needed to buy better gear for the dungeon. Plus, leveling her up meant more resources for me to tap into.

This time, I did accept her trade window, which got me another weird look. Whatever, she could ponder the mystery of my User status all she wanted, so long as she kept it between us per our system agreement.

The good news was I now had a hefty S13,500 to play with. It wasn’t real cash, but I’d never had this much to spend in my entire life. Always, there was the obligation of looking out for the family, pinching loose change and dollar bills to make sure we had the minimum to get by. Now, I felt like a kid in a candy store.

With our first transaction completed, the first thing Kinsley did was start interacting with her system interface with growing excitement. Apparently, she had leveled and unlocked a new type of merchandise.

“Yes! Finally!” Kinsley yelled as a clear bottle filled with red liquid appeared out of thin air. She yanked the cork out and downed it one gulp. Immediately, her bruises began to fade to almost nothing.

It occurred to me that this was likely why she was so desperate to close the deal. She obviously had access to Selve to buy things with, but she couldn’t gain experience from her own sales. She needed customers for that, and the last ones had beat her badly. Further confirmation that we would both benefit from this.

“I’ll take two of those.”Magical healing? Yes please.

Next, I pondered one of my biggest weaknesses at this point. I was a glass cannon, not durable like Daphne. I needed better personal protection.

“Show me the armor. I’m looking for something light but durable, with no special requirements.”

She immediately shared a system store tab that showed a variety of armor types and categories. There was some crazy shit, things like and that were all between tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands in Selve. This was important, but I didn’t want to blow my entire budget on one item.

After getting comfortable with the system interface and selecting some filters I settled on a full set of It was perfect for now, as it had no requirements, restrictions, or penalties to movement and stealth. It still offered good protection based on the ratings, and would even protect against firearms with a mix of kevlar and some other protective padding. I paid the 8,000 Selve and was able to equip the entire thing easily via my inventory screen.

Next up was weapons. She had several weapons to choose from in her store tab. Everything was very medieval with a slight fantasy flare. None of them seemed like a good fit. Swords were both flashy and heavy. Maces and Warhammers were just plain heavy. I still held my first instinct that increasing strength would be a mistake. Plus, I had no idea how to use these things.

No. A knife was simple enough to use, and I already had . I needed to stay low threat and at a distance if at all possible. After narrowing the search filters, I found exactly what I was looking for. . It was like the system could read my mind, which was more than a little unsettling. It sent me back a few thousand Selve after I included a belt holster with two dozen bolts.

I took a moment to review the description.

It was only a Common rarity item, but well made with some kind of dark wood and blackened metal. Unfortunately, it had really crude sights. It was just the metal spring bar that held a loaded bolt in place with nothing for a front post. The limbs were the strangest part, with a circular puck of a ratchet gear connecting them together where they were mounted on the foregrip. As for the bolts, they were short and thick, made of heavy wood with a solid metal tip and only two fletchings.

With Kinsley’s permission, I tested the weapon on a pile of packing foam in the corner. My first shot went far higher than expected and I was surprised as the crossbow made a whirring noise and the center gear spun up. The limbs almost immediately cocked back on their own, ready for me to load the next bolt. Self-cocking, nice. A few shots later and I acclimated, hitting close to what I was aiming at. I gathered the bolts and returned to shopping.

Now that the important stuff out was of the way, I moved on to something more mundane but no less exciting. Food. Kinsley’s general store tab was the stuff dreams were made of, some fantasy-land combination of Target, Central Market, and Costco. The cost was vastly inflated if I looked at how much my weapons and armor were, but it didn’t matter.

My mouth watered. Steak, chicken, pork, duck, the list went on and on, filled with endless varieties of meat. Woefully scarce in our freezer over the last few months. There was every variety of leafy green, fruit, and vegetable you could imagine. Even in a world with magic, this was almost too good to be true.

My suspicion must have shown through, because Kinsley pointed me to the dusty fridge in the corner, confirming that she’d bought from her own selection, and had been living on it for the last few days.

I kept it relatively reasonable and purchased some normal food items, even though the high-grade steaks were calling my name. My siblings would be seriously alarmed if I came home with prime rib and wagyu beef for dinner. If I wasn’t careful, I was going to get a lot of questions I couldn’t answer.

“I’m done. I need to get back.”

“That door will take you a few blocks from where I found you. Those assholes chasing you don’t know our current location, so it should be fine.”

I nodded and started walking towards the door.

This worked out pretty well.

“Wait!” Kinsey said, running up to me. She looked a lot more like that kid that sold me cookies on the bench now that she wasn’t beat to hell. A lot younger and out of her element.

“Take this, it’s my number. Call me if you want to trade again, or when you get back from the dungeon.”

I opened the door and crouched down to walk through. There weren’t any black SUVs waiting for me. My walk back to the apartment was a long one though, sticking mainly to side streets and alleys to avoid any other Users or cops now that the curfew was in full effect. The hefty bags of groceries in either hand didn’t fatigue like they once would have.

When I got back to the apartment, the sun was almost up. My whole body felt sore, exhausted. And the icing on the cake was that I’d be due for my shift at Dunkin’s in less than two hours.

But I couldn’t shake the feeling that everything was different. Everything had changed. After work, after I got some rest, I was going to do some research. Maybe visit the closest blockade in person. Then, I was going into a dungeon.

Exhausted, I pulled up the System feed and scrolled up to a notification I’d been ignoring for far too long.