The Outlands

“Sure, I’d love to go with you.” Gramps said, standing up from his seat at his desk, “Monthly inspection’s soon so this works out anyway.” He walked around the desk to meet up with the group, giving Ker a faux-apologetic smile. “Sorry for making you accompany the three of us old timers on our day trip. I’m sure we’ll only get in your way.”

Ker rolled his eyes. “I’m not buying it, Guildmaster. I’ve seen Eyfura fight, and I’ve seen your spellcasting. Assuming Ava’s kept up as well as you two have, I’m pretty sure any one of you ‘old timers’ could take out my entire party without even breaking a sweat.”

“Got that right.” Atum said, closing the door behind him. “I’ve scrapped with plenty of parties like yours. Sorry to say it, but you three have a ways to go before you’re ready to break into the real top-tier of freelancing.”

He turned to Tess, laughing as he saw her surprise. “What, you think I’m missing this? Not a chance. War let me know you all were going to go out together and there’s no way I’m going to be the only one left out.”

Gramps smiled. “Sounds great. Ava, Atum, do the two of you have any other plans for the day?”

Atum shook his head. “Not really. Ava was planning to spend most of the day helping smooth things out between Tess and Ilmir, and things are relatively peaceful right now, so I don’t have much work.”

“Perfect. In that case, we’ll just stay out until Ellie gets done with school, after which we’ll come back and then disperse, I have some business with my grandkids. Ker, why don’t you get the rest of your party, and we’ll all go out together. I’m sure Alice, at the least, would never let me hear the end of it if I didn’t let her come with.”

Ker blinked, momentarily taken aback at the sudden turn of events. “Uh, yeah. Give me a sec, they should still be hanging about here.” He left the room, leaving Tess with just the other Appointed.

“So…what’s the plan?” Tess asked.

“I figured we’d go get the stuff from the Rewards Crystal and then we could do some training with The Rumors.” Gramps said. “We haven’t had the opportunity to spar as a party lately, so I thought we could do some mock battles, you and The Rumors against us. We’d be going easy, of course, wouldn’t really be fair otherwise. More to teach you about fighting people and help give The Rumors a little training too for their help in training you and Ellie.”

Atum grinned, punching his palm with a fist. “Sounds good to me. I haven’t had the opportunity to spar with anyone halfway decent in a while. It’ll be nice to see what rank nine looks like these days.”

“They’re middle of the line as far as rank goes.” Eyfura said. “Competition’s a bit stiffer these days, though. Back in our heyday they could have probably passed for low rank ten.”

Atum grunted. “It’ll at least be a bit of a challenge, then. Mind letting me at them one-on-one? I don’t want to have it end too fast.”

“Only so long as I get to go first.” Eyfura said. “I have some things of my own I want to drill into them.”

“That’s all fine.” Gramps said. “We’ve got plenty of time.”

“Um…I think I might want to just watch.” Tess said. “I don’t think I’m anywhere near capable of doing anything in any sort of serious fight between you all and The Rumors.”

Ava grabbed Tess’s hand, smiling warmly. “That may be so, but there’s still plenty you can learn from fighting an expert. You don’t have to participate in fighting our whole party if you don’t want to, but I hope you’ll at least consider sparring with one of us while Atum or Eyfura is taking The Rumors on by themself.”

There was a polite knock at the door, prompting Gramps to call for whoever it was to come in.

“So, what’s going on, Guildmast…” Alice trailed off as she saw the rest of the group. “Woah.”

“Ah, perfect timing.” Gramps said. “I’ll explain once the door’s properly shut.”

Alice seemingly snapped out of a stupor, moving out of the doorway and letting Jin and Ker into the room.

Jin closed the door behind him, nodding smoothly at Gramps. “Quite the gathering we have here. To what do we owe the pleasure?”

“Well, the Challenge Crystal in Slime Tower is being replaced.” Gramps explained. “It’s served its purpose, so the gods are getting a new one installed, one that’ll actually benefit people. We all needed to go pick it up, so I thought we’d take you all for a sort of day trip, at least until Ellie gets off  school. Then I have business with her and Tess, so I’ll have to duck out. What happens then will be up to the rest of you.”

Alice raised an eyebrow. “I’m not complaining or anything, but surely beating the Challenge and getting the reward won’t take more than half an hour. We’ve got like…five before Ellie gets here, what’s the plan then?”

“We’re gonna fight.” Atum said. “Some friendly sparring, us against you. We’ll give you a little teaching as thanks for all the help you’ve given Evan.”

Alice’s eyes widened. “Um, uh…thanks. At least for one round, though, will you go all out against us? I’ve always wondered what it would feel like to fight against you guys.”

Atum chuckled. “Sorry, but all out is a no-go. Descending just for sparring is too dangerous. But I think we can manage using everything but that for a round or two.”

“Ah. So, is it safe to assume that you and Ava are Appointed as well?” Jin asked. “I was wondering about it after Eyfura and the Guildmaster revealed themselves.”

“Yeah, we’re all Appointed.” Ava confirmed.

“I see.” Jin replied. “That certainly does explain a thing or two. Shall we be going, then?”

“I think we should.” Gramps said. “We’ve only got so much time, after all.” And, with that, the group made their way out of the guild and towards Slime Tower. They garnered quite a few looks as they walked down the street, to the point where a few people even stopped entirely, staring at Gramps and the rest of his party.

“Do you guys not go out together much?” Tess asked. “This is even worse than it normally is.”

Ava laughed. “Yeah, usually we prefer to meet up in private or in disguise to avoid all this attention, but every once in a while, we like to make a public appearance. Helps remind people that we’re still around here, that they have to deal with us if they get ideas about taking over the Outlands.”

The rest of their short trip was filled with idle chatter between Gramps and the rest of The Titans, as well as the occasional question directed at Tess. The Rumors were mostly silent, though Alice would occasionally chip in with something, usually talking to Eyfura when she did.

And, eventually, they were at the line to Slime Tower. It was still by far the longest line Tess had seen, though, now that she had seen the freelancers in other dungeons, she could tell that the ones waiting for Slime Tower were…subpar. It was always something. Perhaps their gear was ill-maintained, perhaps their attitude showed that they were treating this as just a day job, something they did to survive, no real risk, no real satisfaction.

Or maybe they were just new. Which wasn’t really anything against them, but it was just evident that, in general, the people that were here were either very inexperienced or completely over-prepared for the dungeon.

“Elias, how’re you holding up over there?!” Gramps said, walking up to the guard for the resident line.

Elias peered up at the assembled people, then back at Gramps. “Uh…fine?” He said nervously. “What’s going on?”

“Inspection!” Gramps replied, beaming. “Everyone here was going to go on a day trip with me, and we figured we’d stop by real quick since this was on the way.”

“Oh, um, right. Let me grab the paperwork…” He bent down below the little stall he was sitting behind and rummaged around for a moment before bringing up some papers. “Sorry, I would have had these in a more easily accessible place had I known you were going to come today.”

Gramps grabbed the papers, waving his free hand dismissively. “Don’t even worry about it, there’s really no way you could have known.”

Elias smiled weakly. “In you go, then. Um…have a good time, I guess?”

Soon the eight of them were at the Party Crystal, putting themselves in one big party together, and then they were off to the first floor.

“You go in first, Tess.” Gramps said, “That should guarantee we get a floor with a Challenge on it.”

Tess nodded, opening the door and stepping into the dungeon proper. It was…exactly the same as it was when she had last been here, down to the slime sitting on the floor of the raised area directly in front of her.

Gramps nudged her forward. “Take care of it while I look for the Challenge room, alright?”

“Yeah, sure.” Tess walked forward, unsheathing her claws as the slime sat there, patiently waiting for someone it could actually target to enter its radius. She paused for a moment, then positioned a claw over the slime, bringing it down with no more force than she would use when popping a balloon.

And, much like a balloon, the slime burst, flying apart into rainbow mist. “A bit of a far cry from the first slime you killed, don’t you think? You barely even instakilled that first one, and you dispatched this with no effort.” Gramps said, smirking somewhat. He turned his attention back to the wall, pulling out a small stone from his bag, looking around, and then nailing the loose brick.

As it had before, the wall fell forward, leaving a path to the Challenge in front of them. “Now that I’m thinking about it…I don’t think I ever absorbed the cores of the monsters in here. Those would…probably be pretty helpful.”

“Quite.” Atum said. “I’m surprised you didn’t before.”

“I forgot about the cores in everything that was going on and they ended up getting sold pretty soon after I got Monster Breeder. And then I just…forgot to get more.” Tess said sheepishly.

“Us too.” Alice said. “But, in our defense, no one ever really thinks about this Challenge. There’s never really been a reason to.”

“I suppose it’s not really important right now.” Eyfura said. “She can absorb those now, no big deal.”

As they entered the Challenge room, Gramps fired a spell, instantly killing the four slimes. Tess walked over, picked up the cores, and absorbed them all at once.

Tess nodded in satisfaction. She didn’t really want to trade out any of her current Attributes for a slight increase in efficacy to any of these ailments when it was…mostly just increasing the time they were afflicted for and she could just reapply the effects to keep things going.

Well, actually, Poisoned Blows had a decent benefit to having the original Skill and she really wasn’t using Call of the Shallows. She’d make sure to replace that with Poisoned Blows later when she had some more time, but right now she needed to head into the Rewards Crystal room with everyone else.

“You go first, Tess.” Ava prompted. “You’ll probably have the most to digest with whatever you get. We’ll all get ours while you read over your stuff.”

Tess placed her hand on the crystal, then read the window she got.

The moment Tess waved the window away, another one popped up in its place.

Tess waved the window away, making a mental note to absorb the slime core later. Everyone else seemed to be done and were clearly waiting for Tess to finish reading her stuff. “New Class.” Tess said in response to their unasked question. “As in, like…they just made it and started putting it into Rewards Crystals new, apparently. Basically, it just makes my status effects more deadly, I’ll write down the details for Gramps later.”

“That’d be appreciated, thank you.” Gramps replied. “Shall we get on with the inspection?”

“I’m ready.” Tess said. “But…what exactly are we inspecting?”

“We can get into more detail later if you want, but I’m basically just checking the dungeon for signs that it needs to be cleared to stop it from growing and check for other anomalies. It’s almost never an issue for the beginner dungeons, but complacency can lead to disaster, so I make sure we don’t skip their inspections. We’ll just have to go through the dungeon once, and then I’ll do some paperwork based on what I see. It shouldn’t take long, so don’t worry about it too much.”

“Oh, that makes sense.”

Jin waited to be sure there was no more conversation forthcoming, then spoke. “The three of us are ready.”

“As are the rest of us.” Ava replied.

“Alright, let’s be off, then!” Gramps said jovially, making a speedy exit from the room. The rest followed him, ready to get through the dungeon and to the real main event of the day.