Without further ado, I stepped in the portal leading to the exit of the dungeon. I appeared in front of the great doors once again and let out a huge sigh of relief. The air inside the dungeon was stale and felt stifled. Now, I could breathe easy, the wide sky stretching above me. Flying into the air, I looked around the forest from the clearing. I would have no trouble finding this dungeon a second time, so I didn’t worry about leaving markers. Accessing my alerts, I waved away the sixth wave description about the changes to the weapon systems, not interested in reading the specifics of it. I had experimented enough that the information seemed superfluous. Through my skimming though, I did notice a comment that damage numbers were currently disabled. The patch notes left no information available about it, but I knew that I was seeing the effect that the deprivation of sprites from the system caused.

According to the location of the sun slightly dipping west from its apex, it was just after mid-day. Laden with the fruits of my combat, I set out through the air. The awkward shape of the spider knight blade and the large armor plates prevented me from reaching full speed, but after some experimenting, I figured out how to keep them from being too much of a problem by wrapping them in sheets of wind, forcing them into a more aerodynamic shape using walls of wind.

It worked somewhat, and my speed increased. It was difficult to tell just how fast I was going, but I’d imagine it was well over 70mph. I accelerated over the forest and entered the city proper extremely quickly. The week-long deadline that Zald gave me for the girl staying at my house had yet to pass, so I decided to not immediately check in on the ranch. I would only go back once the deadline had passed. Cindy had been keeping track of her, so I wasn’t worried about the safety of the house itself. What’s more, the young girl was clearly in some kind of trouble, and yet she refused to tell me or ask for any help. I could only assume that the trouble was time-sensitive and wasn’t my burden to bear.

The forest beneath me gave way to suburbs, which gave way to strip centers and apartments, which finally gave way to the sprawling mess that was the Austin Texas downtown. Beneath me, cars moved about going from place to place, and all around me, I could hear the barest sounds of the city. Finding the apartment was muscle memory by now, and I drifted through the buildings, swerving left and right, until finding familiar ground. Familiar though it was, the space out front had certainly changed.

The whole sidewalk had been cordoned off, and there were dozens of people milling about, going from the store to the guild hall next door. Cars were parked all up and down the street, each ferrying new adventurers back and forth. The amount of traffic surprised me considering that it had only been four days since I was last here. There were enough cars for at least 70 people, and I could only imagine that things were only going to ramp up from here. Outside of the store, there were racks of spears and short swords, complete with price tags. It was clear that Donny was doing fairly well.

Before going in, I needed to do something very important, namely, I needed to get some clothes. I was flying around wearing only my underwear and what scraps remained of my pants, and I wanted to change that. I flew to the fire escape, dropping the spider parts on the ledge, and quickly ran through the house to my room. Once there, I got some clean clothes. That, combined with my recent bath, left me looking fresh and clean.

The next thing on my list was to check on Donny. I needed some weapons made, and I was sure that the ingredients that I had would be useful for him. I didn’t know if he knew how to sew though, so I thought I would hold onto the thread and the silk recipe, for now, keeping them in my room until I needed them. Donny’s shack was the same as usual, though the courtyard around it now boasted a larger fence, presumably for keeping nosy adventurers out. The training yard was occupied by Nick and Trevor, who were currently embroiled in a sparring match. Nick wielded an impressive looking halberd, while Trevor had a sword and tower shield equipped. Both had massively grown in strength since I last saw them, apparently having gone from Rank 0 to Rank 1, a huge step up.

Trevor would occasionally slightly glow with a yellow light before being struck. I assumed that his ability had something to do with sturdiness, considering that he was a bear beastkin. Trevor was a superhuman, and his ability had something to do with temperature control. His skin let off steam as he moved, and even ten feet away from where I stood, I could feel the change in ambient temperature. They were so focused on the fight that neither noticed my presence, so I went ahead and hauled my massive loot pile over to the blacksmith’s hut.

Inside, Donny worked away, hammering away at his anvil. When I entered the doorway, he immediately froze, his hammer still in the air.

He turned to me, and said in a strange measured tone, “Vic. You’re back. You’ve gotten much stronger.”

He seemed to be avoiding my gaze, which was a rather strange action for him. Usually he was a bit more casual. Right now, he seemed almost… timid? Well, not quite timid. I couldn’t place it.

I cleared my throat, trying to break the awkwardness, and asked “Hey Donny. I got a recipe for a sword, and I was wondering if you could take a crack at it?”

I set the ingredients down in a pile on his worktable and handed the recipe for the Arachnid Knight’s Blade to Donny. He held the recipe in his hand for a brief moment, before it burst into blue flames. My guess is he was able to learn it, and because he succeeded, it vanished.

He turned to look at me again, this time meeting my eyes, and spoke curtly, “Are those the ingredients for it? This is a fairly high-end blade, so it’ll take a while. I can probably get it to you tomorrow afternoon, though. Is that fine?”

“Yeah, that’s no problem. Hey, are you okay? You’re acting kind of funny.”

He coughed a bit and looked away again. After a pause, he eventually spoke, “Hey, Vic… can you… leave? I’ll be able to tell you why later, but for now…”

Obviously, something was bothering him, but it didn’t seem to be anything I was specifically doing. Regardless, I was still a bit hurt. I left him alone, quickly bidding my farewells, and started walking towards the guild hall. Maybe Cindy or Kaitlyn knew what was happening with him. Oh, wait! I can’t believe I forgot! I was walking around with someone who knew all of the answers.

Hey Luna, are you watching? Do you know what’s happing with Donny?

Um… yeah, I think I have a pretty good idea. So… how do it put this… hmm…

Oh, come on! Just spit it out.

Well, alright then. Dragons have a very strong instinct to… procreate. When a strong potential mate comes around, they can sense that strength, and they get, well… must I continue?

So, the reason that he was all weird was that he could sense that I was stronger now than before, and his dragon brain wanted him to… do the horizontal tango?

Essentially, yes. As he gets stronger, it will be easier to control his urges, but right now he’s fairly young, so it must be unbearable. What’s more, you’re Rank 2, while he is Rank 1, and you are incredibly powerful even within your rank. It's like a perfect storm.

Well, that was… upsetting. As I walked, I took some time to sort out my emotions. Donny was my friend, and I always enjoyed spending time with him, though I was never really interested. Not that I wasn’t interested in Donny. I had always considered him cute and fun. I just wasn’t interested in a relationship at all. I was either focusing on school, or work, or on finding a job. It just never seemed important in my life. I had always told myself that I would find someone later, but I guess later just never came. Now that my life was constantly on the line, having someone sounded… nice.

I guess I DID like Donny, though the magnitude of those feelings was a matter for debate. Or, at the very least, some soul searching. Regardless, I still considered him my friend, and being denied that friendship because of instincts pissed me off. For now, I would be considerate, but I wanted to find a way to get back to the way things were and to talk on equal ground.

Looking around me, I realized that I had reached the back entrance to the guild hall. I shook myself out of my funk. Thinking far into the future was always difficult for me. Right now, I had work to do. Things that would help people and would make a difference, so I would choose to focus on them. I would be living a long life if all things worked out as planned, and I had ample time to make many of these decisions. There was no need to feel rushed.

As I walked through the doors, I was greeted by a wave of sound. The clock on the wall said that it was around 3:00, and this place was packed full of people, each one eating and drinking. I would have to come back later and grab some food. For now, though, I wanted to go find someone who would take my notes on the dungeon, or who might buy my ridiculous supply of spider-themed materials.

For that, I headed to the front desk. There were currently four people working at the desk, shuffling people about, getting them to go places. On the left and right side of the lobby, two massive cork boards had been put up, and they were covered in notices of bounties for materials of reports of monsters. It appeared that things were starting to pick up speed. Considering the population of the hall, opening a second location was going to happen much sooner than expected.

I lined up before the reception desk behind what I could only assume was some type of hydra. He had green scales and the long scaly body of a snake. Wrapped around him a couple of times near the head was a set of bandoliers, pockets laden with supplies or loot taken from various monsters. The hydra had three draconic heads, and while the middle head spoke to the receptionist, the other two argued back and forth, whispering a conversation I couldn’t quite make out. I couldn’t help but listen in.

“…and here you are, sir. 10 copper per goblin ear and you have 35 ears, which comes down to three large and two small copper. Is that fine?”

With that, the middle head scooped up a pouch offered by the receptionist, placing it into the bandolier.

The middle head nodded, hissing out, “Yessss yesss, that’ll do nicccely. Thankssss.”

As he took the money, the outside heads opened their large fanged mouths and began hissing at one another.

With a growl, the middle head turned to them, and began shouting, Suddenly, “Adam! Jack! Sssstop your incccesssant bickering! No, we won’t attack anyone. Yes, I’m sure that harpy girl tassstes ssssomewhat like chicken! I can’t believe we're even having thisss converssssation!”

The two outside heads drooped at the scolding, and the middle head turned to face me. It took me a second to realize that I was probably the harpy girl they were talking about.

With a bow, the middle head sooke up. “I ssssincerely apologize for my brotherssss behavior. They tend to be quite… exccciteable.”

I nodded at that, saying, “Well, it’s not a problem, I guess. I’m Victoria, by the way.”

“Hmmm, I’m Gary, Gary Kaiser. This one on the left is Adam, and the Right is Jack. A pleasssure to make your aquainntanccce.”

His, or perhaps it would be better to say their business concluded, the hydra slithered out the door. It just went to show how varied the different types of species adventurers were, though in the room I was in, the hydra was by far the most exotic.

I expected the receptionist to be a bit frazzled by the strange encounter, but they seemed perfectly okay. I approached the counter. The receptionist was a calm looking male horse beastkin, his two ears moving left and right, capturing all of the sounds in the room. After a second, he looked up.

“Can I help you ma’am?”

Nodding, I asked, “I am Victoria Gale, and I was wondering if I could find a place to get some of my stuff sold. I also have some information that I need to get out.”

At my name, his eyes widened in recognition, and he gave me a forgiving smile. “Ahh, Ms. Gale. I’m afraid to say that as a guild worker, you report directly to the guild manager, whose office is located on the second floor in room 201. Unfortunately, your wait here was wasted.”

Well damn. With that, he bid me farewell, and I left for the second floor. I wouldn’t call the wait completely a waste, as meeting Gary was certainly an interesting experience. It just went to show how strange and varied the people of the world now were, if you could even call all of the strange races people. Finding new terminology, though, was a job for another day. For now, I needed to talk to the guild manager.

I found room 201 easy enough, as it was the first room on the right at the top of the stairs. Carved on a plaque by the door was Cindy Shepherd, so it was fairly obvious I was in the right place. I knocked on the door and waited.

After a few seconds, I heard a quiet, “Enter.”

I opened the door and was greeted to an absolute nightmare of paperwork. The office was orderly. In the center was a coffee table, surrounded by four nice chairs for guests. At the back was Cindy’s desk, at which she sat, completely focused on her task. The left half of the office contained four large filing cabinets, labeled from A-Z. I expected that these were for keeping track of the adventurers, considering that printers and paper still worked, while the internet wasn’t back up and all digital files would need to be entered manually. We were back to old-school paper-based clerical work, at least for the immediate future. On Cindy’s desk was a stack of manila file folders, each one labeled with a name. I approached the desk and cleared my throat.

Cindy jumped a little bit when I did, and a set of magic circles appeared in the air behind her as she panicked. I jumped back into a defensive stance in surprise, but we both quickly relaxed once she realized it was me, the circles fading out of sight.

Letting out a sigh, Cindy exclaimed, “Victoria! You surprised me. I’m glad you’re back safe. I feared the worst when you didn’t come back after two days like you planned.”

After seeing me, she visibly relaxed. It was clear that my disappearance was weighing on her. I gestured to the nice-looking chairs around the coffee table, and Cindy nodded in response, rising from her desk to join me.

After we sat down, I went ahead and pulled out the money pouch, the monster pouch, and the endless recipe, setting all three down for her to examine.

As I did, she looked at me in confusion, wondering what I was up to.

I explained, “Well, I guess to start, I found a dungeon. It’s rank 2 and located right to the north of Dripping Springs. I accidentally entered it and got stuck going through the first 5 floors. I took lots of notes as well and brought some of the loot that I collected.”

After that, I explained what each item on the table was. I showed her my notebook as well, which contained elaborate descriptions of each floor, as well as basic sketches and descriptions of each of the monsters that would be found there. When I got to my experiences grinding on the third floor, she nodded in understanding.

“I did feel like you got a bit stronger, Victoria. I can feel greater amounts of aether bleeding off of you, so I assumed that you had improved. Congratulations on reaching level 20.”

When I finished with my description of the dungeon, I started talking about Luna, and my interactions with her. Surprisingly, Luna had nothing to say through the whole conversation, choosing to remain quiet.

When I reached up to the present, Cindy paused in thought. After a few seconds, she spoke, “Vic, the fact that you can interact with Luna is huge. This is an opportunity that we can’t afford to miss, and I’m glad you were the one who received it. That being said, you need to be careful. There’s no telling what’s down there on the lower floors, and the fact that its creator cannot see it is deeply concerning. Just promise to be careful. We will need your help here, sooner rather than later.”

That sounded ominous. “What do you mean, you’ll need my help?”

She pursed her lips, and paused again, but finally said, “It has to do with what Stephanie has been working on.”

!!!

That was also ominous. If anyone ever asked, it was possible to gasp while only being a thoughtform, though for some reason I doubted anyone ever would. Just a feeling.