The Outlands

Maven had to keep herself from fidgeting nervously as she stared at the guild building. They had finally finished their month away, and it was time to meet back up with The Rumors and break the news to them. Intellectually she knew that they would be perfectly accepting, but she couldn’t help but worry anyway.

She took a deep breath as Tess and Ellie caught up to her, and the group made their way into the building. The Rumors were waiting near the entrance, Alice ambushing Tess with a big hug. “Well, how was it?” She asked excitedly. “Did you guys run into any problems?”

“Not really.” Tess said, hugging Alice back. “It was mostly just, you know, doing jobs, nothing we couldn’t handle.”

“I’d say so.” Ker said, giving them a smile. “Let’s go back to the private room and we can talk about your performance in detail.”

The Rumors led the party into the back of the guild and then into the private room they had been assigned. Once they were all inside, Maven spoke. “Before we begin, there is something of an announcement the three of us would like to make.”

Jin raised an eyebrow. “Do tell.”

“Well, whilst we were away, I had cause to do much soul-searching.” Maven said, noticing how a knowing look spread across Alice’s face. “And, with some help from the gods, I was able to realize that I was, in fact, in love with Tess and Ellie. I simply…was not sexually attracted to women, even though I was romantically attracted. The gods helped me fix that, and when I informed Tess and Ellie, we decided to tentatively try dating. One thing led to another…and I will now be the third bride at their wedding.”

There was a long pause as The Rumors digested that, and then Alice walked over to Maven and gave her a hug. “I’m proud of you.” She said. “That can’t have been an easy thing for you to do.”

Maven hesitated for only a moment before returning the hug. “It was.” She said. “Thank you for not…gloating about it.”

“Of course.” Alice said. “This isn’t something to gloat about, I’m just happy that you figured it out.”

After a moment longer, Maven let go of the hug and moved to sit down. “This is not public information yet, so please do not spread it around. Until I can speak with Grandmother and find a satisfactory way to let it be known that we are wed that will not set expectations for the future of Paumen, it will be confidential.”

“We understand.” Ker said. “It’s a shame that you can’t be public about it, though.”

“It’s not that big a deal.” Ellie said. “Really, it just means no PDA, and that’s barely even a restriction. And we might have to make the wedding a bit more private, but that’s fine with us; all the attendees we really want attending will know anyway.”

“We’re really not bothered by it.” Tess added. “If anything, it’s nice that we won’t have to deal with all sorts of weird political rumors.”

“Regardless, we have taken up too much time with this already.” Maven said, attempting to change the topic. “I do believe we had an evaluation to get to?”

Jin took a seat, and everyone else followed suit. “Yes. We’ve been keeping an eye on your progress, and we’ve got a few things to say and a couple of questions about your work. First and foremost, well done on taking your own initiative to go somewhere new and broaden your horizons, but why did you choose that place in particular?”

Tess shrugged. “Well, honestly it just looked like a good place to go. It was right around our level range, it had a dungeon, and it wasn’t hugely popular with freelancers so we’d probably have work.”

Jin nodded. “Right. And was there any particular reason you chose to balance your time in the dungeon and your time doing requests the way you did?”

“Yeah.” Ellie said. “We knew we were planning to stay in town for the whole month, so we figured we could take the dungeon slow and just have it finished by the time we were done in town. And even if we didn’t properly finish by then, we always had the option of using Maven’s Blessing to finish whatever we had left. Ideally it wouldn’t come to that, and it didn’t, so we felt the pace was fine.”

“It’s nice you have that option.” Alice said, shaking her head in disbelief. “Blessings really are something else.”

“Back on topic, what was your reasoning behind taking the types of requests you did? We saw that you generally favored monster extermination quests and didn’t do many guard requests, and I’d like to know why.”

“It was simply the most prudent course of action.” Maven said. “At that particular town, most non-combat requests were guard requests, and of those guard requests most were for guarding a caravan to another town or night shifts. We wished to keep our sleep schedule stable for our time there, so we only did the ones we did to show that we were capable. We took non-combat requests when they were available and fit our schedule but otherwise, we stuck to combat.”

Jin gave another nod. “That’s all the questions I had. Personally, I think you all did a commendable job, and your logic behind going about things the way you did puts to rest any concerns I may have had. Ker?”

“I feel basically the same.” Ker said. “I would advise you against making a habit of mostly taking combat requests, though. It looks really good on your resume to have a balanced history of combat and non-combat requests. It’ll help you rank up faster, at least initially. Once you get to around rank eight or nine that starts to break down, but it’s important early on.”

“Why does it stop being important?” Tess asked curiously.

“Because at that point it’s mostly a waste of your abilities.” Ker replied. “People that are lower ranked than you can handle most of those kinds of requests, but they can’t handle monster slaying requests that you can. And, since those requests involve high level or otherwise troublesome monsters, they’re often of greater importance than lower-leveled monster slaying requests.

“When you do end up taking on non-combat requests, they’ll probably end up being more long-term things, like our tutoring of you, or they’ll be requests in places where no one else is around to take the requests. But you won’t really have to worry about that for a while yet, so just keep your requests balanced when possible and you’ll be fine. That’s it from me, though. Alice?”

“Remember what I told you about contacting me before you stay in one of my hotels.” Alice said sternly. “I’m not kidding about this. Not only does it make me feel bad, it’s just not good sense as a freelancer. If something is offered to you with no strings attached, you take it. The more money you can save, the better gear you can get, and the easier it is to stay alive. Yes, right now it may seem like you’ll have more money than you know what to do with, but gear gets expensive at high levels, and Tess will be needing rare and expensive cores to grow her strength. Save up.”

“Um, for what it’s worth, we get pretty hefty discounts on gear courtesy of Artifice’s Appointed.” Ellie said. “So, we’re probably not going to spend as much as you think on gear.”

Alice stopped, staring at Ellie for a second before sighing and shaking her head. “You know what, I should have expected that; Appointed need good gear, and who better to make it than them? Still, the part about cores stands, and if I recall correctly, you guys were in the market for a house? Point is, there are all sorts of expenses you don’t think about, and saving on one of those is only good.

“As for your conduct…I appreciate that you didn’t use your social status in any way. Status is a weapon to be wielded carefully, and that was not the right time to use it. You definitely would have been worse off for it in the long run, if only for your mental health. Oh, and you can definitely get away with spending a lot longer in the dungeon than you did.

“It’s generally accepted that freelancers focus on themselves first in most cases, and that means going to nearby dungeons. The later dungeons get really long, so if you’re only spending a couple of hours each day in them you’d be stuck in one place for months or years. Though, if you want to look good, you’ll alter your time in the dungeon based on where it’s located.

“In major cities you only really need to keep an eye on the requests and make sure they’re not building up. In fact, as far as the guild is concerned, it’s preferable if you ignore requests if there aren’t many; you get to keep progressing in the dungeon and bringing back loot, and the people who want to do requests get to actually have requests to do.

“In places the size of the city you were in, half the day spent in the dungeon is a good rule of thumb, again, provided that the requests aren’t getting backed up. In even smaller towns…well, there won’t be as many requests, so just keep an eye on things. If something is trivial, like…I dunno, painting a house or something, you don’t need to worry about prioritizing that over the dungeon. If it’s something important, like monsters attacking people, you wanna do that ASAP.

“The guild likes people who are keeping an eye on the state of the requests, it looks good for rank evaluations. Now, if there’s a dungeon without a guild office nearby…well, that’s pretty rare, most of my hotels have at least one guild member on staff to handle standing dungeon requests and the like, but say you’re going to a dungeon like the ones we went to on the expedition without much civilization nearby, it’s expected you’re going to stay there for an extended period; it’s way too inefficient otherwise, so don’t worry about that.”

“Quick question.” Tess said. “I just realized that I don’t think I’ve seen a dungeon hotel that wasn’t yours. Surely other companies have tried, right?”

“A couple, I guess, but they’re mostly local.” Alice replied. “Making a dungeon hotel is way harder than it sounds, and much less profitable. You have to follow a strict set of guidelines that aren’t officially laid out or the dungeon just won’t let you try and make it a hotel. You have to set the prices so you’re only profiting slightly, you have to make sure the place is kept immaculate, you have to have trustworthy people on staff…the list is long.

“At first there were a couple of competitors, but once we struck a deal with the guild they basically vanished. For most companies, the profit you get just isn’t worth the effort you put in, but for mine? Well, I’m not too bothered by the profit, and as an active freelancer the project helps me out. That combined with the feeling of satisfaction that comes with providing a high-quality, very in-demand service for the population makes it all worth it.

“The Reshi Suites are actually entirely owned by me, I funded it out of my own pocket instead of using company money, so I have full control over the direction it takes. When I finish freelancing, however many centuries from now that’ll be, watching over it is going to be my retirement of sorts. I want to make sure it stays in business, and I don’t really trust anyone else to keep it…well, not profit focused. Obviously, I’ll need to make some profit so I can survive, but…you know, no greed for the sake of it. Take it from me, money by itself doesn’t make you happy, once you have enough you don’t need more.”

“Apologies for interrupting, but Dungeons has just given me a message.” Maven said. “She would like to tell you that she will soon give you the full list of her requirements, and that provided you keep your current mindset she will officially endorse the Reshi Suites once I make my debut.”

Alice stopped in her tracks, eyes widening. “R-really?” She asked.

Maven nodded. “She greatly values how the Reshi Suites helps people journey to remote dungeons, and is quite thankful to you for providing that service, so she would like to help you in this way.”

“It’s an honor.” Alice replied. “Please tell her that I’m really grateful.”

“She’s for sure listening in on the conversation right now, you can just tell her yourself.” Tess said. “It might feel a little weird talking to thin air, but she’ll definitely hear you.”

“Oh. Um, thank you, Your Worship.” Alice said, standing up and dropping into a curtsey. “I really appreciate it.”

“She says she heard you, and that she would like it if the three of you would just call her Dungeons. Fortune, Life, and Death also request that you use their names instead of titles.” Maven relayed. “But…we have interrupted you for long enough. I believe you were talking about our performance?”

Alice blinked, sitting down. “R-right.” She said. “Um, yeah that’s basically it. As far as the three of us are concerned you guys passed our little test, so…once you take the tests and are officially bumped up in rank, that’ll be it for your apprenticeship.”

She gave them a bittersweet smile. “This may be a little presumptuous of us, but we were hoping that in a few years, when you’re about as strong as we are, that you’d be open to working with us for a while, as equals this time. Not forever, I’m sure you’ll get stronger than us pretty quickly, but just…for a bit.”

“We’d love to.” Ellie replied. “And our door is always open if you have problems or anything, or just want to visit or whatever. You’re our friends and mentors, and that’s not going to change if we get stronger than you.”

“When, not if.” Jin corrected. “You’ve got a lot of advantages over us when it comes to leveling, getting Skills and Classes, and even some when it comes money. It took us decades to get to where we are now, and we think that if you work hard, it’ll only take you guys a few years. That growth isn’t going to slow significantly until you’re past level one hundred, and at that point it’s almost a given that you’ll have better gear and more abilities than us.”

“But that’s not for some time.” Ker said cheerfully, clearly trying to brighten the mood. “Right now, we’re still your instructors and you have a test coming up soon. So, we’ve prepared some study guides on the topics we only visited briefly, and for the next couple of days that’ll be our focus.”

He reached into his bag and pulled out three booklets, which he tossed to Tess, Ellie, and Maven. “Why don’t you guys start reading through them? If you have any questions, we’ll be here to answer.”

Fighterman481

The only thing I really have to say is that we're almost done with this arc. Next chapter we'll get into the test and probably the results (depending on how long the test ends up taking, which I don't suspect will be a full chapter's length) (note from the present: I was wrong, it was a full chapter's length and a bit more), so...look forward to it, I guess.

And, as always, thanks for reading!