The Outlands

Tess watched in satisfaction as the boss fell, knowing that she wouldn’t have to go through this dungeon again for a long time.

“Nice work, ladies.” Ellie said. “What say you we get our reward and never come back again?”

“I think that is an excellent idea.” Maven said, panting slightly. “This was…incredibly unpleasant to go through, and not just because I wasn’t boosting this time around.”

“Yeah, no one really likes this one.” Alice said lazily. “But you gotta get it out of the way, you know? Though, I must say, thanks to Tess, you three really didn’t get the full experience. Wading through that snow and having to be constantly on alert for nasty camouflaged enemies was not a fun time.”

“Yes, thank you for that.” Maven said, giving Tess a nod. “I…was having a hard enough time as is. I shudder to think what it would be like if it was worse.”

“Ah, don’t mention it.” Tess said, looking to the side in embarrassment. “Just doing my job.”

“Have some pride, girl!” Ellie said, slinging an arm around Tess’s neck. “You deserve it!”

“T-thanks.” Tess replied, blushing. “Um…why don’t we go get our rewards instead of hanging out here? Maybe we can like…go out to dinner as a celebration or something.”

“It’ll be my treat, if we do.” Alice said. “Call it a reward for persevering without complaining too much.”

“I’m afraid I’ll have to bow out if we do get dinner.” Ava said. “I promised my grandkids I would be home tonight, and I’m not going to hear the end of it if I’m even a little late.”

“Let’s not get too ahead of ourselves, that’s contingent on if Maven and Ellie want to go.” Ker said. “What are your thoughts?”

“I think it sounds like a great idea.” Ellie said.

“I am always open to eating out.” Maven added. “I will admit my cooking is not…as good as I would like it to be.”

“Eh, no one’s great when they first start out.” Jin said. “You’ll get the hang of it with time. So, let’s take care of your last Rewards Crystal here, then we can talk about where we want to eat, okay?”

“Way ahead of you.” Ellie replied, stepping through the doorway that appeared and into the room with the Rewards Crystal. Tess followed a moment later, wasting no time in placing her hand on the crystal and receiving her reward.

As she did, she took a moment to think back to the other things she had got from this dungeon. There were four of them, and they…weren’t anything as fancy as what she had originally received, but they were useful, nonetheless.

And that just left the new Skill she got.

“Nothing great.” Ellie said. “How about you? Just another Skill for extra damage to a certain type of monster?”

“No, actually.” Tess replied. “It increases my damage the more health I have remaining.”

“Oh, Strength in Health.” Jin said. “I have that one myself. Quite a handy Skill if you’re not usually in the line of fire.”

“How about you, Maven?” Tess asked, turning to her teammate.

“I got the Huntress Class.” She said. “I’m not sure how useful it’ll end up being, since it doesn’t really work well with any of my abilities, but I suppose it might have some Skills that help with a bow.”

“Don’t underestimate Classes that don’t fit well with what you have.” Ker advised. “I don’t know if your tutors were like this, but many who boost others advise they stick with one Class or a small group of them. While this is somewhat sensible under the premise of boosting, as it lessens the mental load a booster has in combat, that does not hold true for an actual freelancer.

“It is incredibly rare that having a Skill works to your disadvantage, and it is much, much more common that having that Skill helps you out in some way. Even if it doesn’t mesh with what you want to be doing, or what the rest of your kit is working towards, it is better to have that option than not.

“Now, I’m not saying you drop everything and start leveling that Class immediately. What I’m saying is you should keep it in the back of your mind. When you hit a roadblock level like twenty-five or fifty in your ‘main’ Classes, it’s often worth it to take a break from them and level up any other random ones you may have. By the time you return to your main Classes, especially in these early middle levels, you’re usually fighting higher level enemies and that roadblock is less significant.”

Maven pondered that for a moment. “I have a few Classes like that. I haven’t touched them at all since my tutors told me not to, would it be wise to switch now?”

“When was the last time your main Class leveled up?” Alice asked.

“About two weeks ago.” Maven said.

Alice winced. “Yeah, you’re gonna wanna switch ASAP. You’re going to be getting a lot more benefit out of putting that experience in Classes that are gonna see rapid growth.”

“I…see. I will take care of that after dinner, then.”

“Just pop by the Party Crystal on our way out.” Alice instructed. “Huntress is a pretty okay Class for you to switch to right now, unless you have something you think would be better for your archery or magic.”

Maven shook her head. “I do not.”

“There you go, then. Shouldn’t take more than a minute. So…where we thinking about eating?”

Ava gave the group a smile. “I believe this is where I make my exit. I’ll see you all tomorrow, okay?” With that, she exited the room, leaving the rest of the group to talk about food. They eventually decided on a small eatery tucked into an out of the way part of town; they didn’t want anything too formal or crowded, and Jin vouched for the place’s quality, so they decided it was as good a place as any.

About half an hour later, they were seated and were waiting for food. “So…the expedition is in a couple of weeks.” Maven said. “We’re going, right?”

“That’s the plan.” Jin confirmed.

“So…what are we doing until then?”

“Mmm…well, we’ve exhausted all of the dungeons you can do near town.” Alice said. “I think we’re going to take a break from leveling and work on polishing your technique and getting you to use your new Skills properly.”

“Can you ask your folks if we can use their Arena?” Ker asked. “That’s probably the most efficient way if we want to focus purely on technique.”

“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking.” Alice said. “I’ll ask them if we can stay there, too, so we don’t have to go back and forth every day.”

“The two of us are going to need to make a couple of trips back to Mael in that time.” Ellie said. “We have to introduce ourselves to the Archpriest on…uh…soon?”

“Sunday.” Ellie said. “We’re doing it on Sunday, so…two days, I guess.”

“Hey, this is kinda random, but can we…um…borrow your hoverer?” Tess asked. “The gods are saying they could probably get a door to our house installed in there. I realize that’s kind of…sudden and–”

She was cut off by Alice taking the hoverer out of her bag in compacted form and sliding it over the table to Tess. “Knock yourself out.” She said. “Worst case scenario I just get another. Heck…honestly we might as well just give you guys that one and I get another anyway.”

“That’s…would we even be able to power that consistently?” Tess asked.

Ker raised an eyebrow. “It runs off of cores. You of all people should have no trouble running it.”

“I know it runs off of cores, I just don’t know how many it needs. It could end up costing more than I’m able to make.”

“It’s not as bad as you’re thinking.” Alice said. “With the exception of most bosses, you can generally assume a core’s fuel efficiency is based off of the level of the monster it came from, and level thirty-ish cores tend to last around an hour. Fuel efficiency doesn’t increase linearly, so level fifty monsters go for like…three hours, level seventy five go for almost sixteen, and if you’re crazy enough to use a level one hundred core that can probably last you for days. It’s not an issue for you.”

“But…these things are expensive, right?” Tess said hesitantly. “I’m not sure we can accept something like that so suddenly.”

Alice waved a hand dismissively. “Tess, you’re talking to someone with enough money to buy several small countries. This may be a nice model, but it’s so insignificant to me it’s not even funny.”

Ellie turned to Maven. “Maven, do you know how much a hoverer like theirs costs?”

Maven inspected the cube that was the hoverer. “This seems to be one of Io’s, from a couple years back…I’m not an expert, but I’m guessing that this would go for like…fifty to seventy five platinum. The one my family uses, when we bought it new, was one hundred platinum, so I’m just guessing based off of that.”

Tess paused, doing some mental math. “That’s…at least half a million dollars.” She said. “I’m pretty sure that’s like twice as much as the house I live in.”

Alice rolled her eyes. “And your armor would probably cost a hundred times as much as that hoverer, but you seem to have no problem with that.”

“That’s different. This was…” She glanced around, making sure no one was listening. “Well, my bosses had Gramps pull out a few favors. I can’t very well say no when it’s kind of directly related to my job performance.”

“So is this.” Alice said, smirking. “Are you still going to say no?”

“But…”

“Tell you what.” Jin said. “Let’s do it this way. If you impress us on the expedition, we’ll give it to you guys. If not, we’ll wait until Ker and I decide you’ve earned it, sound good?”

“I…guess that’s better than just getting it for free.” Tess admitted.

“Well, for the record, I have no problem with just taking it now.” Ellie said.

“I admit it would be nice to have a hoverer for the future.” Maven said. “I have been dreading going without.”

“There you have it.” Alice said. “Before the expedition, I’ll grab another one for my party, and you three can use that one for sleeping in. You can ride in the new one I’m getting so there are more people to talk to if you like, or you can ride on your own, your call.”

Tess hesitantly took the hoverer and stored it away. “I…well, we’ll talk about it amongst the three of us, I guess.”

“I’m fine with riding with The Rumors.” Ellie volunteered.

“As am I.” Maven said. “It cannot hurt to have more company on long trips.”

“Well…I guess that settles it, we’ll be riding with you, then.” Tess said. “That’s more fuel-efficient anyway.”

“Going back a bit, how is your progress with your armor?” Ker asked. “What was next again?”

“I just unlocked double magic damage recently, so…I think it was mentioned that the next was sort of like a better temperature regulator? It like…provides oxygen and deals with pressure and stuff.”

“Do you have a way of telling how long until your next unlock?”

Tess focused on the armor for a moment, and a window popped up next to her, informing her that her next unlock was in roughly thirty thousand experience. “Just about thirty thousand XP, so…gonna be a little bit.”

“Honestly, it might be worth getting that before we head out on the expedition.” Alice mused. “There’s no telling what we’re going to encounter out there. Shouldn’t be that difficult, I can take you on a day trip to a high level dungeon and just kill a bunch of things for you.”

“I thought that sort of thing didn’t work.” Maven said, frowning. “You generally get less experience if you don’t do much, right?”

“Tess is an exception, remember? She just has to have any chance at getting the experience to get all of it.” Ker said.

“I…forgot it applied to experience.” Maven admitted. “I should have made that connection.”

“Well, it’s not like we generally talk about it.” Tess said. “Can’t really blame you.”

Further conversation was interrupted by their food arriving. As they ate, the conversation meandered from topic to topic, until eventually they had all finished and were getting ready to leave.

“I suppose this is where we go our separate ways.” Maven said. “I will see you all tomorrow.”

“Yeah. Let’s meet up in the usual place, and then we can take the hoverer to my parents’ estates.” Alice said. She paused, then looked at Tess. “Those modifications won’t take more than the rest of tonight, right?”

“No, they’ll be done before then.” Ellie said.

“Good. These things aren’t exactly easy to get on short notice, so I was worried I might have to borrow my parents’ hoverer.” Alice said. “But this will be a lot easier.”

Tess nodded. “Yeah. Um…well, we gotta go deliver this, so…see you all tomorrow!”

The rest all said their farewells, and Tess and Ellie headed back to the guild. When they arrived, they gave the hoverer to Gramps, then went through the door and back to their house on Mael.

“So…what do you want to do for the rest of the evening?” Ellie asked, resting her head on Tess’s shoulder.

“How about some TV, and then maybe we can see where things go from there?”

“Sounds like a plan, then.” So, the two made their way to the living room couch, sat down, and spent the rest of the night enjoying the other’s company.