The Outlands

Tess stretched as she got up, finally finished with her work. It had taken longer than she had hoped, nearing forty-five minutes of work, but she had gotten it all done. As she had suspected, she wasn't able to fill all of her slots with useful Attributes, but she was at least able to fill all of her new User Fundamental slots with useful things.

To start, her Saber Claws, Saber Fangs, and Extendable Claws Attribute had all merged into one, and had, of course, maintained a spot on the User Fundamental list.

Really, the only noticeable difference was that she had the capability to make her claws a little longer; her fangs received little use, so increasing their damage multiplier was little more than an edge-case buff. The more impactful change was the freeing up of two additional slots, but when her slots weren't even full without the additional slots the merge provided, that didn't have an immediate benefit either.

Next were Monstrous Strength and Tremorsense (Perfect), both of which had, of course, retained their spots in the list. They were some of Tess's top picks for User Fundamental slots before, and that hadn't changed. Following that was another new-ish contender; a combination of her enhanced sight, smell, and hearing Attributes.

She had taken quite some time deciding whether or not she wanted to make this combination or leave the Attributes separate; while saving slots was nice, it did come with one distinct downside; with normal Attributes, she was able to toggle them off at-will, but combining these senses would mean that shutting off one would shut off them all.

Then, something had clicked in her mind, and, for the first time, she felt like she could feel herself doing it when she reached into the bits of Monster Breeder that dealt with the system and changed things. She didn't understand what she was doing, or why the changes she made did anything, but she could tell that she was doing something.

And, when the sensation had passed, she got the feeling that specific parts of combined Attributes could now be toggled on and off separately. She had tested it with Primal Weaponry to confirm that it actually worked, then happily combined the sense Attributes and put the result in a User Fundamental slot.

The effects of putting it in a User Fundamental slot had come as something of a surprise to Tess; during the expedition, she had tested the individual pieces in User Fundamental slots, and this new Attribute had slight buffs over the originals.

For sight, the original had just added the "magical or nonmagical" parts of the Attribute instead of just being nonmagical, but Bestial Senses also enhanced her vision, allowing her to easily make out small details from far away. For hearing, the original had just increased the extent to which her hearing was augmented, while this added preventing damage caused by loud noises, instead of just not making her more sensitive to them. And, most importantly, smell; like hearing, the original had just increased the extent of the augmentation, but this actually allowed her to tone down bad smells or even just stop smelling them altogether.

After that, she had opted to go for yet another sense, this time a new sense entirely. Or, not a new sense, but a new capability, one she hadn't considered before due to it being redundant outside of a User Fundamental slot.

This was an interesting Attribute for two reasons. For one, it only had any use for her while it was inside a User Fundamental slot; while in a User Fundamental slot it could activate from any sound, while otherwise it acted as normal echolocation and the sound had to originate from her. And, while that did have applications, in most situations Tremorsense was just better, so she had left it in one of the cores she used to store Attributes.

The other interesting part was that it, too, was able to combine with other Attributes, but she only had one of the other parts of the combination, Tremorsense. She still needed Electroreception and External Thermoreception, Attributes that would allow her to sense electric fields and how hot her surroundings were without touching them.

So, those had become a priority to obtain, and she had made a note to ask Dungeons what the easiest way to get those would be. But that, of course, had to wait until she was finished with her work. The fifth, sixth, and seventh additions had been Auric Hub, Countless Chemicals, and the combination of all the elemental affinity Attributes, aptly named Elemental Affinity.

All of those were straight numeric increases; Auric Hub doubled the buffs it normally gave her, Countless Chemicals increased the damage done by the acids and bases from one hundred percent of the attack that applied them to two hundred percent, and Elemental Affinity went from a fifty percent buff to elemental spells to a one hundred percent buff to elemental spells.

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Eighth was her combined camouflage Attribute, another simple buff that extended the camouflage's effect to her equipment.

And, finally, she had put in Metal Shell. Before it had offered a fifty percent increase to Defense and Magic Defense in exchange for coating her in metal and halving her agility, but putting it in a User Fundamental slot gave her the fifty percent buff at all times and allowed her to activate a metal coating that would halve her Agility but add another fifty percent buff to the Defense and Magic Defense buff.

As for regular Attributes, she had opted to leave slots empty unless something directly contributed to her build or had some sort of other impact. The notable exception was that she included the Attributes that would make her an arachne, centaur, or merfolk, but she could remove those when she actually filled the rest of her slots.

Even with those extras and the Attributes she currently had in there, she had only managed to fill up twenty-seven of her slots. By and large nothing exciting really was added, but there were a couple of interesting things. She had chosen to give herself the Exceptional Flier Attribute because it allowed her to hover in place, and she was familiar enough with flight now that it wasn't a crutch that would prevent her from learning.

She had also taken the time to absorb some cores for the express purpose of grabbing Attributes to combine to upgrade the "grade" of some of her current Attributes all the way up to perfect. She had refrained from doing this before because of how annoying ejecting cores was, but she had more core slots now and core ejection was now a trivial process, so it was a pretty easy thing to do.

Some of them would need some Attributes from cores she didn't have, but she could get those pretty easily from the beginner dungeons in the City, meaning it was a process that would only take a few hours of dedicated dungeon diving, which she'd get to in a day or two when she had free time.

And, finally, she had added a couple of Attributes that augmented her throwing capabilities. One that increased the range and damage of things she threw, and one that made nonmagical items she threw count as natural attacks. Really, it was just a way for her to cause status effects at range, but now that she was no longer worried about slots, it was something she felt was worth adding to her kit.

With that all done, she stood up and stretched, then turned to Ellie and Maven. "I'm all done." She said. "Turns out I can't even fill half of my slots with useful stuff right now, so I don't think I'll be running out of space any time soon. I guess that's what happens when half of the stuff that's supposed to take slots just doesn't."

"Oh, nice." Ellie said. "Maven and I finished researching our next options with the help of Dungeons, so we'll have to discuss that later, but we're taking a short break for now."

"I'll take a shower and we can talk about after, then." Tess said. "I'll be ten or twenty minutes, probably."

"We'll just be here, take your time." Maven replied.

Tess walked over and gave each of her wives a kiss, then headed off to the shower. The shower itself was much larger than the ones she was used to, but was no less enjoyable; usually Tess disliked larger showers, since it often felt like half of her was all cold and she could never get fully comfortable, but this shower was different. It had multiple showerheads so she could have both sides of her getting hit at once, though if she wasn't feeling like going with that, there was also some sort of magical device that seemed to specifically warm those parts that weren't being hit by the water.

It took cores to use, so that particular device hadn't been standard in the Reshi Suites, but it had cropped up in some of the more recently revamped locations, particularly closer to towns where it was easier to get materials. Still, just taking cores to run meant it might as well have been free for Tess, so she didn't feel the least bit bad about letting the device run for however long she wanted.

So, she let herself relax for as long as she wanted, then got out and headed back to meet up with her wives. As she was getting dressed, however, a chime sounded, indicating that someone was outside the gate. So, she hurried up, and by the time she was at the front door, Maven and Ellie were already there, speaking with someone.

"I can't believe you remember us!" A human-looking woman was saying lightheartedly. "It's been years!"

"I was taught not to forget faces." Maven said humbly. "We were, after all, the ones that invited you, it would be rude to forget our guests."

"Ah, but you were a child." The woman replied. "We could hardly blame you for having a foggy memory. Now…is this that other wife I've heard about? Tess, I believe her name was?"

Maven and Ellie turned to Tess, and Ellie gave her a smile. "You didn't have to stop showering, you know." She said. "We could have handled this."

"I was just getting out." Tess replied. "May I ask your name, Ma'am?"

"Oh, where are my manners?" The woman said warmly, giving Tess a smile. "I'm Mary Swiftfoot, my husband and I own a chain of restaurants, and our house here in the City is next door. And I'm sure you can imagine our surprise when we got back from a trip to find that we had new neighbors! I figured I'd pop by and say hello, introduce myself, that sort of thing! How are you all settling in?"

"We're settling in fine." Ellie replied. "I'll admit it's my first time living in such a luxurious place, but it has its perks."

"Oh?" Mary asked, raising an eyebrow. "Aren't you the Guildmaster's granddaughter? Surely you have some sort of experience with this lifestyle."

"We grew up on Mael, and were just normal kids there." Tess answered. "We had no idea about the wider world until about a year ago."

"Well, I'll be." Mary said. "You'll have to tell me all about life on Mael sometime later. For now, though, I just wanted to say hi and introduce myself, so I won't take up too much of your time."

"It's a pleasure to meet you." Tess said.

"Likewise." Ellie added.

"And it was good to reconnect." Maven concluded.

"You three are just the cutest things." Mary tittered. "It's a pleasure meeting you too. 'Till next time!"

She strutted off, and Ellie closed the door. "You've met her before?" Ellie asked Maven.

"It was years ago at a function my parents were holding." Maven explained. "To be honest, I don't remember that much about it, but I remember the face."

"She said she owns a chain of restaurants?" Tess asked. "Does that pay enough for a place in this neighborhood?"

"A chain of restaurants is an understatement." Maven said dryly. "It's more like she owns a series of high-end restaurants, the kind you need reservations months in advance to get a spot at. She was likely trying to be humble so as not to leave a haughty impression on us."

"Well…I guess, since I'm out, do we want to get to planning, or do we want to relax the rest of the night?"

"We probably should do our planning…well, really, I guess it boils down to your call here; we have a potential good dungeon that's relatively close, only a day or two away, or we can go out on a trip and hit a cluster of dungeons farther away."

"Might as well hit the nearby one, I think." Tess replied. "We'll have to get them all eventually, and, what with everything going on at the moment, it'd be nice to be near the City on the off-chance we're needed here."

"Let's do that, then." Maven replied. "So…now what?"

"Well, Death was telling me about this puzzle game she thought we'd like." Ellie said. "We can play that together."

"Sounds like a good time." Tess said. "Shall we go get it downloading?"