The Outlands

When Tess and her girlfriends reached the building where the practical exams took place, they were pleased to find that it was mostly empty, and they only had to wait a few minutes for their turn. A bored-looking centaur that was wearing the uniform of the academy looked them over as they walked up to him. “A party exam, then?” He asked.

“Yes.” Tess confirmed.

“Party name?”

“Uhh…” Tess said, “I don’t think we ever actually decided on one. I think Gramps probably just put something as a placeholder in the system until we figured it out.”

“We should probably decide on one soon.” Ellie replied, then turned to the centaur. “Sorry about that, will reading our bands work instead?”

The centaur sighed, then pulled a scanning machine out from a bag. “Stick your hands in here, please.” He said.

Tess went first, putting the arm with her band on it into the machine. The centaur looked over it lazily…then his eyes opened wide, and he scanned the readings again. “M-Ms. Tess Los, correct?” He stammered. “In a party with Ellie Los and Maven Sarlienne?”

“That’s us.” Ellie said. “Do you want our bands too?”

“Y-yes, it’s protocol.” He said. “I have to, sorry.”

“It is no problem at all.” Maven said, walking forward to stick her hand in the machine after Tess withdrew hers.

Once Ellie had done the same, the centaur cleared his throat. “U-um, do you have a specific rank you are shooting for in the practical? It says here you are unranked at the moment, and your level ranges qualify you to attempt up to rank five.”

Tess shared a glance with her girlfriends, then turned back to the centaur. “Rank five, please.”

“A-as you wish. I’ll be your proctor today, follow me and I’ll take you to the Arena where the exam is held. While we walk, do any of you need explanation on what an Arena is?”

“It’s like a VR simulator thing, right?” Ellie asked. “It allows people to set up a simulation, and you can like…practice all sorts of things safely.”

“That is the gist of it, yes.” The proctor replied. “We have three simulations we will be running you through, and I must warn you that the pain simulators will be on at full intensity and no scaling will be applied to the monsters, so as to better emulate real life conditions. Furthermore, though it might seem obvious, we are obligated to inform you that your attempts will be recorded for review by guild staff.”

A few moments later, the proctor ushered them into a large room not dissimilar to the one Alice’s parents had in their estate, just on a far larger scale. The proctor helped Tess’s party get into the Arena, then began to speak over some sort of speaker built-in to the Arena.

“The first scenario is a simple one; you are defending a small village against a monster surge. While the higher-rank freelancers are on the front lines, you are picking off stragglers that enter the village and making sure to keep casualties to a minimum. By this point most villagers have evacuated, but a few still stubbornly refuse to leave their homes.

“You will be given a map and five minutes to prepare, and then you must survive until the wave of monsters is defeated. Any questions?”

“No, sir.” Tess said. “I believe we’re ready.”

“Very well. Your time starts now.”

A window appeared in the corner of Tess’s vision, almost like a mini-map, and she quickly took note of the layout of the village. It was small enough to fit inside the Arena, and consisted only of nine or ten buildings, and some roads leading off to what Tess assumed would be farms and other outlying buildings were this real. Helpfully, the houses which had people in them were marked on the map, so that took one element of guesswork out of this.

“Okay, I have the beginnings of a plan.” Tess said. “Want to hear?”

“Lay it on us.” Ellie said.

“First things first, I’m going to check the houses and make sure the information we have is accurate. If I don’t get back to you guys after checking the houses, assume the people are where we expect. In the actual combat, I can keep about half the village in my sensory radius at any given time, so I’m going to take that back part with all the grouped houses and alleyways.

“Ellie, if you could take the big open area in front of us, and if Maven could keep watch from the air, I’ll have my summons patrol to patch up any weak spots. If any of you see anything, just give a signal. Any objections or other ideas?”

“Sounds good enough to me.” Ellie said.

“I will get started.” Maven added, taking off into the air. Tess set her attendants to patrolling the village, then began to check the houses while Ellie went to the open area.

Tess quickly checked the houses using her tremorsense, making sure to say out loud whether or not the house was empty, and if not, where the inhabitants were within the house, so the reviewers knew she actually was checking, just in a way they couldn’t see from the recording.

A few minutes later, the monsters started to arrive. It wasn’t like when she had run through the Arena with Alice, where the monsters had scaled to her stats and went down with hardly a problem, but these monsters were still well within the party’s capability to handle. Oftentimes a monster would be defeated before the others even got to it, and after a bit they started only calling each other when they figured they couldn’t take the monster out quickly.

The only somewhat tricky part was that Target of Affection didn’t work on the Arena monsters, but, thanks to her training with Ava, Tess wasn’t nearly as reliant on it as she used to be. So, things went on like that for another ten minutes before the village melted into nothingness and the girls found themselves teleported to the middle of the Arena.

“Well done.” The proctor said. “For your second task, we’ll be simulating a floor of a level fifty dungeon. You will each be given a small info packet and five minutes to read through it, and then you will need to clear the floor in whichever way you want. Any questions?” The proctor waited for a moment, then continued. “Very good. Your time begins…now.”

A packet fell into Tess’s hands, and she began to flip through it. The proctor was correct, and it was a rather small packet compared to usual info packets, but it was still enough that Tess was sure she wouldn’t be able to finish it all in five minutes.

“Looks like there are three floor groupings to look at here.” Ellie said. “We’ll only be on a single floor, so I think the best way to go about this is to split up and read a section each. If we have extra time we can go on to the next, but otherwise we’ll just have whoever read the section fill the others in on it.”

“That sounds reasonable.” Tess replied. “It looks like there’s also a boss section in the back, we might want to read it too, there’s a good chance it’ll be the last task.”

“They did not say our packets would be removed after five minutes.” Maven pointed out. “Once we determine what floor we are on, I think we should go through that part of the packet as a team. It is better to be a little slower and have everyone know all the information than it is to get a faster time, I think.”

“Good point.” Ellie replied. “If the packets don’t vanish, then we’ll definitely do that. Now, it looks like the first section is the shortest, so I’ll take the second section, Maven, why don’t you take the third, and Tess, you can take the first and the boss. Sound good?”

There weren’t any other comments, so the three of them got down to reading. After a few minutes, the Arena started to shift around them, taking the shape of a moist stone structure, seemingly underground if Tess’s tremorsense was any judge.

“It would seem our packets have not disappeared, and that we are in the third section.” Maven said. “If you two would quickly read on this section, I will finish and read up on the boss as well.”

“I got through most of the boss too.” Tess added. “I think the two of us can just fill Ellie in on the highlights of that on the way, it’s not too complicated.”

They got back to reading, and a few minutes later were ready to take on the floor. As Tess had suspected, it wasn’t anything complicated, there simply wasn’t enough time given to read the packets for that to be fair, but what it lacked in complexity it made up for in relentlessness. It was a constant barrage of things, with barely a moment’s worth of breathing time. And, in one of those moments, Maven had something to say.

By the time the floor was over, they had more or less managed to get Ellie filled in on the upcoming boss, and cleared the optional objectives. That meant defeating all monsters to meet the conditions for a hypothetical Challenge floor, and picking up the few chests that were scattered about on the floor.

As they reached the end, the Arena once again returned to its blank state, and the proctor spoke. “Good work. As you have surmised, the last task we have for you is to slay the boss. Do you wish to have any extra time to prepare, or shall I send you in now?”

“No, we got this.” Ellie said. “So long as that info packet was accurate, we should be more than capable of beating this as we are now.”

And she was right. The boss was, simply put, a joke. That wasn’t to say it was designed to be one, but it was mostly a big bundle of stats with very simple attack patterns. And, even then, its stats were worse than the boss of the Savage Dungeon, so it was simple to take down.

Once the boss had been felled, the three found themselves teleported outside of the Arena, where the proctor was waiting for them. “Excellent work. You three didn’t fail any individual task, so we’ll be sending the footage over to the guild to review. Seeing as how you’re one of the first groups to finish the entire testing process and decisions are made in the order the tests are submitted, you can expect your answer in a couple of hours.”

“That fast?” Tess asked, surprised.

“I believe you are eleventh in line at the moment. The guild has five or six teams reviewing tests, and it takes thirty minutes to an hour for a group to decide a rank, so I would be surprised if you didn’t have your results before the end of the day. Still, I’m afraid that I will need to usher you out now, as much as I would like to talk more, we do need to keep the process moving.”

The proctor led them back out into the lobby, and Tess was surprised to find The Rumors there waiting for them. “So, how do you feel about it?” Ker asked, walking over and clapping Ellie on the shoulder. “We were watching your practical, by the way, we’d been given permission to as your instructors.”

“Well, we generally feel good about the written exam, and I feel like we did well on the practical, but what do you guys think?” Tess asked. “You’d know better than us how we did for the practical.”

“Let’s talk about it over lunch.” Jin suggested. “We’ll need to wait a bit for your rank determination, anyway.”

“The proctor said we were eleventh in line for the judging, so depending on how long lunch takes, it is possible that we get results during lunch.” Maven said.

“You guys are speedy.” Alice said, already starting to lead the group out of the lobby. “You sure you did fine on the written? And, speaking of, how long did you guys take on the written? Who finished first?”

“Tess finished first, by a lot.” Ellie said. “She was done like thirty minutes before Maven, and I was like fifteen after Maven.”

Alice raised an eyebrow, opening the lobby door and holding it open for the others. “That fast?”

Tess shrugged. “You and Ava taught me a lot. I honestly spent more time writing than I did actually thinking about the answers. Compared to some of the situations Ava ran me through, the test questions were child’s play, and I was pretty surprised to realize just how much I knew.”

“That’s what training from one of the world’s best will do for you.” Ker chuckled. “A lot of the people taking this exam don’t even have formal training, much less from members of The Titans.”

“What are they saying?” Alice asked quietly.

“Hm?” Tess replied, looking up from the window. “Sorry, say that again?”

“You know, what are you reading?”

“Oh, right.” Tess said, looking around to make sure no one was within earshot. “Just a few others are gonna come teach us every so often. Ellie and Maven, mostly, but I’m guessing I’ll get a little of that too.”

“Yeah, suppose that makes sense.” Alice replied. “Anyway, there’s a pretty good restaurant nearby, it should only be a few minutes’ walk.”

They chatted a bit more as they made their way to the restaurant, and The Rumors gave them their opinion on the practical exam they took. For the most part, The Rumors thought that they did fine, and had only minor suggestions, mostly around the defense portion of the exam.

That topic dried up pretty quickly, though, and they just ended up having a pleasant chat while they ate. After a while, the topic shifted to their party, and Tess remembered something the proctor had said. “Oh yeah, we still need to decide a party name.” She said. “Uh…anyone got any ideas?”

“If anyone suggests ‘Girl Power’ or something stupid like that I will be very disappointed.” Ellie said. “But…it’s not like I have any better ideas, so…”

“What do you think of ‘Maelstrom’ for our name?” Maven asked.

“It’s cool, but…why Maelstrom?” Ellie replied.

“My reasoning is twofold.” Maven said. “First, we will be at the forefront of a maelstrom of change. Second…well, it is a pun; you two are from Mael, we will be dealing with Mael quite heavily…it just seemed fitting.”

“You know what, I like the way you think.” Tess said. “And it’s not like we can’t change it if we decide there’s something better.”

“You can’t keep that mindset forever.” Jin warned. “After a certain point, enough people will recognize your party name that changing it simply becomes a foolish choice.”

“Well, I figure by the time we’d have to worry about that we’d have a name we know we want to keep forever.” Ellie said. “So, it’s a minor thing. And I approve of Maelstrom, so…let’s go with that, I guess. Next time we talk with Graham we’ll get the paperwork taken care of.”

With that settled, they returned to their idle chat, up to the point where all three members of the newly-dubbed Maelstrom got a notification on their phones at the same time. “Well, that can only be your ranking result.” Alice said, a hint of nervous excitement in her voice. “Go on, read it.”

Tess nodded, taking out her phone and opening the notification. “After some deliberation, we have decided to award your party, Placeholder, with rank four.” She read. “While your test results are outstanding, you do not have a long enough history of unsupervised work as a party to warrant rank five. In three months’ time, we will review your work history, and if it is deemed acceptable, you will be automatically promoted to rank five. We look forward to seeing your growth in the future!”

“Well, there you have it.” Alice said wistfully, leaning back in her chair. “That was about as good as we could have hoped for, honestly. I…guess that means our tutoring job is done. It feels a little sad, to tell you the truth; I’m gonna miss this. I had never taken myself for the teaching type, but this was fun.”

“I’ll miss it too.” Tess said. “It’s gonna be weird being on our own after so long being in someone’s care, and I’m gonna miss spending time with you guys.”

“Yeah, same here.” Ellie said. “It feels like it just won’t be the same.”

“That is because it will not be the same.” Maven pointed out. “But…I agree with the sentiment.”

Ker gave the young girls an encouraging smile. “You’ll do great, I know it. And, in a few years, when you’re on our level, I’ll be looking forward to working with you guys on an equal footing. And, of course, I’ll miss having you guys around too, but that goes without saying, doesn’t it?”

Jin nodded. “It’s been one of the most enjoyable times of my work as a freelancer.” He said. “I’m sad to see you guys go, but I’m excited to watch where you go from here. And remember, if you ever have any questions or want to talk or anything, our door is always open. Now…why don’t we go celebrate? You only graduate to full-time freelancer status once, and it’d be a shame to let that go without a little fanfare. I know just the place, too…”