“This thing is creeping me out,” said a woman made entirely out of shining, golden-orange glass. Her body moved like something of flesh and blood, and normally, she would pigment her body to appear to have skin, and paint her face so that it was more obvious what her facial expressions were, but out here in the Overcavern Forest. . . well, those pigments were expensive, and there was no way they would last even a round of combat. Who the hell put on make-up before a fight?

She might be a Sunlet, a member of the three signatory races, but she wasn't rich anymore; that's why she took up adventuring, for the money.

“There is no need for alarm,” said a being. It was a floating machine about the size of a watermelon, made of metal. He was ridged and angular, his body had been created for function over form. Some parts of him were reflective and silver, while others were as dull as cast iron. A single red lens was nestled near the top of his body, which served as the machine being's eye. Long metallic tubes hung limp from the AI being, like vines on a jungle tree.

“Well, it's not making me feel safe,” the speaker was a . . .

Well, this is just a confusing thing to have to describe with words.

It was a Higher Music Elemental, and to describe its body would require both author and reader to imbibe a dose of LSD to make any sense at all.

Still, in simple terms, it was a being made up of three rings; a small one the size of a wrist that floated about a foot off the ground, a large one the size of a hoola hoop that came to about navel height on an average human, and another wrist sized one at about where the collarbones would be on that same average human.

The rings were perfectly spaced, and contained a clearly defined field of distorted, white space. The space churned like someone had thrown a bunch of rainbows and sunrises into a pot and set them to boil.

The field of acid trip visuals terminated in sharp points at both ends; he resembled two pointy, empty ice cream cones that had been put together opening to opening.

Standing with them, holding a blank, white, unadorned box, was a System Custodian wearing a party hat.

The system custodian was an absolutely enormous sphere of dark blue crystal, about two and a half feet wide with a total height around six-foot-four. Its arms and head consisted of angular, solid blocks of gold, held in place by some kind of invisible energy field. It had the appearance of a humanoid with incredible upper body strength, broad shoulders, wide chest, and a narrow waist. It had no legs and floated without apparent effort.

System Custodians were considered a “Special Challenge”, rewarded to individuals who had exploited the rules to the extent that it threatened the balance of The World. The gold they were made of was the kind of gold the money of The World was made of, which made the System Custodian just. . . insanely valuable. Like, oh my God, won the lottery valuable.

The System was always delighted when someone tried to take one down. Sometimes they succeeded, and he used the information to make the next generation of System Custodians that much better. Mostly, almost always actually, they failed and died.

Sort of like a game of thrones style lotto ticket; Either you win, or you die, with about the same odds of victory as a regular lotto ticket.

The three adventurers were not Solas's finest. They weren't even the ones Solas had requested for the task, which was to deliver the present to Vivi and then execute the dangerous criminal when the System Custodian was gone. The team who had gotten the assignment hadn't felt like tromping through the Overcavern Forest, so they'd hired an iron ranked group instead; mind you, they were the best iron ranked adventuring team in Solas, but, they were also the best iron ranked adventuring team. The lowest rank of adventurer.

The payout however, which was half of what a gold ranked adventuring team would make for a high priority quest, was something they just couldn't say no to. Especially because their families had cut them off after they’d decided to become adventurers, to discourage what they considered dangerous folly.

They also suspected a bit of foul play was afoot, as one of their bitter rivals had connections to-

Politics, who cares right now. We'll get into that in just a little bit.

The group was competent, dangerous, had a System Custodian giving them directions, and oh my god, were they so going to die.

There were hostile beings from The Beyond stalking them at this very second. They had almost no equipment. There were dangerous, gigantic snails in the canopy that were preparing to grab the adventurers with their enormous foot, and envelop them in a flesh sac, leaving them to die a slow death as they were paralyzed and slowly digested.

The snails were called Sac Lurkers, just a fun fact, and they ate magic as much as they ate physical matter.

There was even an opening to the second cavern layer at their destination, which was still raising the ambient mana in the area to dangerously high levels. This was the staging ground for an army of night fiends, which were humanoid bat creatures which were like, Ninety-Six percent bat and four percent humanoid.

The only thing keeping them safe was the System Custodian, who would not intercede on their behalf in a fight, but was a great deterrent to those who didn’t know it’s purpose.

It would take a miracle to get these unprepared, cocky, teenage adventurers to their target alive.

–

Frankie felt a surge of wild manic energy as he flitted about the interior of the Pocket of Sanctuary, with his two minions following his instructions exactly.

The Utility Pocket elemental would have started laughing like a supervillain in a lab-coat, a mad genius, had he been able to laugh, or had he thought of doing it.

Because Ben's request was looking more and more doable with each passing second.

–

The System, at least the small portion that had been assigned to manage Frankie, watched the little Utility Pocket Elemental work and started to sweat.

He pressed a button on his desk, a red button which simply said 'Help' on it. Immediately, he felt more resources allocated to his instance, which he put to work at once.

“This is just insane,” he said, watching the creature as it modified the skill entirely within the rules, and not unbalancing a thing.

The System drummed his claws against his desk, then realized something; he'd never actually bothered to learn exactly how the wand of Create Minor Elemental worked, because he hadn't been the one to invent it. That honor belonged to. . .

“The Dwarves,” The System said, his words coming out as a sigh. “They can’t ever just make something work, they always have to. . .” he grumbled, “they just always go overboard over the simplest. . .” He picked up a desk phone and called their leader, who had also been the one to design and submit the plans in exchange for. . . basically nothing. That should have been a red flag, in hindsight.

“Ah told you,” the thick accent of the Dwarven leader, Urth'Ragnar came through clearly on the phone, “an you didn listen. Ah told you it was a good spell. Ye got to be sweating up there, aye? You gave out those wands like cheap party favors at every opportunity, an now ye got tens of millions of them sittin around in crates in the backs of every general store in The World.”

The Dwarf cackled on the other end of the line, his laughter mocking.

“Aye, ah told you, an you didn listen. Eat worms ye big red--”

The System hung up the phone and decided he'd try and figure out how the wand worked on his own.