After skipping lunch and spending hours digging through all the various chests, crates, boxes, packs, sacks, and other piles of accumulated stuff discarded by the multitude of students since the founding of the school three hundred years ago, Alex became absolutely certain about several different things.
First, there was absolutely no way in hell that all the crap they were digging through was from a single semester. In fact, ten years accumulation wouldn't have been enough to fill the storage area they were in! What had, at first, looked like a small, cramped room filled to the brim with hundreds of boxes, was instead dozens of times larger than they'd initially expected!
Every so often, various rows of boxes would have narrow gaps between them, allowing one to navigate an almost maze-like path into a deeper row of storage. And, every so often, those deeper rows might randomly branch off into multiple gaps, leading ever deeper into the depths of the storage area.
"I'm going to call this damn place 'The Blue Haven Labyrinth of the Lost'," Alex told the others, after squirming and working his small frame past the fourth or fifth layer of endless crates.
"Hummppth!" Annoyed because he couldn't follow with his large frame — he couldn't squeeze through several of the narrow gaps that Alex and Roselyn wiggled past no matter how much he might try or wish otherwise — Thorn just snorted unhappily and kept his search to the outermost layer of the student's abandoned property.
"It really is a Labyrinth of the Lost," Roselyn agreed, laughing happily as she rummaged freely in a layer somewhere about half-way between Alex and Thorn. "One thing is definitely for certain," she giggled, pausing slightly as she smirked heavily while holding up a white negligee that was almost as thin as a sheet of paper. "There's every type os clothing imaginable down here, if you like white or blue!"
"That's cause they're the school colors," Alex reminded her, laughing lightly himself. "I've found other clothes down here as well," he assured her, "but nowhere near as many — but that makes sense. After all," he asked, while burying his head down deep into an old sack of stuff, "when you graduate, how many of your old uniforms are you going to be taking back home with you?"
"None of them, I'm certain," Roselyn assured him, before adding with a laugh, "but I might end up burning them all knowing what I know now! The way things exist now, who knows what type of pervert might show up and sniff them!"
"Snnnuuurrrrrkkkkk!" Shoving his nose indelicately into the crotch of a pair of pink lace panties, Thorn shamelessly snorkeled like a pig sniffing for truffles, in response to her comment. "Smellz like ah Rose," he told them, when he finally pulled his nose back away from temptation.
"That's *your* brother," Roselyn told Alex, rolling her eyes disapprovingly in his direction.
"Yep. That's my brother," Alex admitted, shrugging his shoulders nonchalantly.
"Men!" A single word is all it took for Roselyn to perfectly convey her level of complete disgust.
"Hey now," Alex replied defensively, "you shouldn't look down on us men so badly. Thorn was, in fact, being nice and trying to give you a secret about this place."
"Ah wuz?" Scratching his head with the panties he was still holding, Thorn tried to ponder on what secret it was.
"Oh really?" Looking up from her search, Roselyn quirked an eyebrow up as she glanced over in Alex's direction. "What secret," she asked?
"Thorn was trying to hint to us that we're probably standing atop one large magic array," Alex answered, proudly holding a thumbs up out towards Thorn.
"Ah wuz," Thorn asked, puzzled?
"See," Alex chuckled lightly. "Right there, he just admitted that's what he was doing! By pointing out that the clothes here still maintained even their odors, Thorn deduced that there's probably a rune of preservation or an array of some sort which is keeping everything from aging."
"Ah did?" Thorn blinked several times, obviously wondering when he did such a thing.
"Yeah, I guess you must've," Roselyn giggled lightly. "After all, you just said you did!" Smirking mirthfully, she winked over conspiratorially at Alex.
"Ah guess ah did," Thorn admitted, puffing his chest out proudly, causing both Alex and Roselyn to laugh lightly.
"Well there's one sad thing I'm noticing, which I've got to share and point out before Thorn does," Alex sighed, smirking back at Roselyn lightly. "There's no small treasures in here. I haven't found a single ring, earring, necklace, or copper coin one in any of the boxes I've dug through."
"Makes sense," Roselyn chuckled lightly. "Something tiny like wouldn't be left behind very often, and even if it was, it'd be much too easy for the cleaners to pick up and sneak off with. I haven't found anything of value much smaller than a dagger so far."
"Even if there isn't any small valuables in here," Alex shrugged, "there's still plenty of treasures to dig out. I'm expecting to have a whole new wardrobe worth of clothes for me and Thorn by the time we leave here, and we'll probably bring out enough common weapons to equip an army! I never would've imagined the students would leave so many behind!"
"I would," Roselyn snorted disdainfully. "There's a lot of students who buy various weapons like candy. They start with a plain sword, for example. Then they start to grow somewhat skilled, so they replace it. They couldn't ever bare to sell their *old partner*, ohhh nooo!" Rolling her eyes, Roselyn was obviously mocking the warrior students.
"Then they get a higher rank, so they need yet another weapon…" From the tone of her voice, it was obvious that she held all the warrior students in contempt — which was completely surprising to Alex, since she came from a diehard warrior family. "Then a trainer might mention, 'Hey, you should pick up a second weapon for different battle situations,' and the whole process repeats again!"
"There's an idiot girl in the room across from me," Roselyn snorted disgusted, "who probably has fifty weapons and ten suits of armor which she'd NEVER get rid of, as they're her 'precious babies'." Sticking a finger down her throat, Roselyn imitated gagging several times in mockery. "I imagine when she leaves, 48 weapons and nine suits of armor will end up down here."
"And then they'll just rot away, completely forgotten, for several hundred years until some poor smucks like us finally come collect them," Alex chuckled lightly.
"But what are you even going to do with all the stuff we salvage out of here?" Frowning heavily, Roselyn glanced back over to the ever-growing pile of stuff near Thorn. "We've already collected more than we could ever use," she reminded Alex blankly.
"If I had a trustworthy contact with a merchant's license and a traveling wagon," Alex chuckled, greedily imagining the possibility, "then I'd pass everything in here to them one crate at a time, and I'd let them ship it all across the land and sell it for pure profit."
"But," sighing heavily, all Alex could do is shrug his shoulders helplessly and admit, "I don't know ANY traveling merchants — much less any trustworthy ones. The best we can manage is to currently gather all the weapons we can today, and then go on a selling spree tomorrow. Each of us hit every shop, smithy, auction house, guardhouse, and any other place we can imagine to hit, and sell hundreds of weapons all in a single day."
"We'll completely flood the market, and the price of weapons in the city will probably bottom out for several months," Alex shrugged nonchalantly. "Chances are, we'll end up making more than a few enemies from the small-class merchants and little shops, but as soon as we finish selling tomorrow, we're going to be leaving town for a few weeks. That'll give those guys time to calm down and forget about us."
"Most importantly, however," Alex's eyes light up and he smiled brightly in anticipation, "is that when we do come back to town, the larger merchants and traders should remember us. They'll be interested in our supply chain, and at that point, we'll be poised to help us find a worthy backer where we can both profit outrageously with together."
"Sounds like you have something large planned overall," Roselyn commented, hoping to prod Alex into revealing more details.
"Oh, I do," Alex assured her. Whistling happily, he never bothered to elaborate anymore however.