“That’s a weird sermon,” Jonas said when coming out of the church.

Gatepost was a small town in size, for all of its importance in the Labyrinth, but it still sported no less than three parishes. Without familiarity with the various options, the team had ended up picking the closest one to their inn.

He had not spotted O’Hogan, but he would not have been surprised if the Irishmen held a separate communion, given the… contentious relationship between the officially united churches of England and Ireland.

“First time at North Quarter?” a Professional asked.

“Yes,” Jonas admitted in reply. “The talk about the blessings and the service isn’t what you would have heard in Lambeth,” he added, referring to his former home borough.

“It’s standard for Father Vabsley. All of his sermons are about how to resolve the difference between Professionals and mundanes. Which is a term that shouldn’t exist, but does, unfortunately. You’re new?”

“Sort of,” Jonas replied, offering his wrist.

“Oh. It’s you. Wow. Well, welcome to North Quarter. Father Vabsley would have been honoured to know you were attending, I think. He might even have changed his sermon for the occasion.”

“We’ll probably be back regularly. Unless we’re in the field, that is.”

“Yes, same for everyone. I know Laufrey’s main operations in Straudnarry has a local church, and there’s a couple of chapels in some tier threes, but mostly, you do your prayers on your own. Or you take a break and come for the office. Unless you’re in a weird tier zone, that is.”

“Weird tier? Why?” Laura asked, curious.

“Well, the Recall is bound to the day, you need at least one day before using it again, and the Fast Travel is bound to the moon, and it’s at least one quarter to get a new one. So it’s fine, you can get a Fast Travel option back every week if need be, but some zones have weird days or months.”

“I remember being mentioned about a zone without sun or moon. Is that it?”

“Yes, and the moon is what matters, since you need at least one Fast Travel, and some zones have the moon takes an entire month to change phases. If you want to come just for the office, you get screwed in those since you run out fast. But maybe you run lairs in a zone nearby and just walk?”

“No, we’re out of the way. Which reminds me, we should be going,” Jonas ended the conversation.

They were making their way toward the Gate clearing when Guss finally talked.

“He’s right you know.”

“About what?”

“That word. Mundane.”

“The people who are not Professionals.”

“We should be mundanes. That’s what cousin Luther said when he tested me over a year ago, before the Gate. That kind of slightly sad ‘too bad, you’re a mundane’ mention.”

“And now, we’re not.”

“And we paid for this. And will continue to pay, apparently.”

The team fell silent on that reminder.

Jonas wondered what kind of sermon Father Vabsley would make on the subject of Adaptation.

Next Gate will be to Othary. One Travel charge used.

“Okay, so what’s the plan, Jonas?” Ira asked.

“Lairs should all have regenerated, so we hit them all, collect gear for an update or that trade fair. Then, based on experience… we should head for Markandon this time.”

“No plaza ruins?”

“Same answer as last time. A bit more gear and levels and we should be good. The guidebook says the last guardian is much higher in levels than the rest. It’s basically like the first lair we ran – each level is slightly harder than the previous until you reach the bottom. This one has four levels rather than three and ramps up in difficulty.”

“So you want me to be tougher for it. Got it.”

“I’d rather all of us have one milestone each, at least. Or we get lucky and get a lot of exceptional gear for everyone.”

“We can still run the early levels,” Laura suggested again. “More gear for that trading fair.”

“Okay. We’ll see. But first, we have four lairs to run. And a bear dance.”

Ira winced.

The crossing of the Gate to tier three Markandon was still the same shock as when they did it the first time, more than a month ago. One moment, they were on a cold mountainside, and the next, the middle of a clearing in a warm and dense forest.

Ira turned and checked the Gate, thoughtful.

Transit: Markandon - Othary

Integrity: 100%

Active

Stability: 100%

“You know, maybe we should switch the gates we have for Fast Travel. Pick this one into Othary rather than the one from Ovildian. This would put us closer to Markandon.”

“Yes, but it’s a bit out of the way. Our current Gate setup puts us close to the first lair. This one would get us way out. Besides, we’re not running Markandon for some time. The lowest lair here is around 120; we will all be tier three and have the additional Gate destination by then,” Jonas countered.

“Okay. It was just an idea.”

“I mean, you have the right idea, but what we should do is to pick another tier two Gate. For when we exhaust Othary’s opportunities and before we start doing tier three regularly.”

“Oh? Got an idea?” Alton asked.

Jonas tapped lightly the guide booklet.

“According to this, the zone nearby has two second tier zones connected. And as we all got at least three lairs completed in Vuneras, then we can use both as we want.”

“And no one else is using them?”

“Doesn’t look like – it’s not more detailed than Othary, which means that it was just scouted, but nothing more. Probably for the same reason; no direct connections, and by the time you can come here, you no longer have a use for the zone.”

Jonas checked more carefully the drawn zone maps. They were all kind of weird lines, crisscrossing…

“There might be a path going using only tier one and two… but it goes outside of that specific book, so I can’t tell for sure. But the same reasoning applies even then, I think. By the time you would manage to get enabled for this zone, you would be good for tier three lairs, probably.”

“So it’s all ours. Our private section of the Labyrinth,” Alton concluded.

“I wouldn’t go that far, but essentially… yes. All the lairs we want for now.”

“So? Which direction,” Ira asked.

“The centre should be… slightly south from here.”

“Which means?”

Alton laughed. “That way. Check the sun, you dummy!”

Green Small Ape

Level 122

Health: 1021

Mind: 340

Endurance: 961

Aether: 0

“The name sounds weird,” Jonathan remarked as they spotted their first encounter, barely a few hundred paces from the clearing’s edge.

“I have no idea how descriptors decide on the names,” Jonas admitted.

“For that instance, how do the descriptors work for the French?” Guss asked.

“I presume they’re in French for them?”

“How does the Labyrinth figure that out?”

“How does it figures anything out? I have no idea.”

“Less talk, more fighting,” Ira said.

“Hey, that’s my line!” Jonas grumbled.

Green Small Ape: 1068XP/6 contributors = 178XP.

“Whoa, I don’t remember that much experience from that one,” Jonas exclaimed.

“Yea. And it died fast.”

“It’s a high level but a normal creature. But… I did not appreciate how much Cowen reduced the team experience. We got… one-third of the XP? Do I remember right?” Alton said.

“No, you’re right. Our average level was higher due to her, and she took a big share with lots of Professions. That’s going to make it faster to get experience. Hopefully, that means we should be able to get your level long before we get to the Plaza,” Jonas said addressing Ira.

Emerald Spiderling × 4

Level 151 minion

Health: 709

Mind: 221

Endurance: 381

Aether: 83

Ira raised his hand, halting the team’s progression. He pointed out the pack of four that was holding a position at man’s height seemingly glued on a tree. Despite the spiderling name, the creatures were much larger than a person’s head, all hairy mass with prickly green covering.

Jonas already dreaded the sight of the non-minion version.

“The last ape was level 130, and now we have a pack of much higher levels. Does that mean we’ve stumbled on a lair?” Ira asked.

“No idea. It looks like,” Jonas answered, fishing out the guide booklet from his bag, leafing it to the Markandon chapter. He tried to read quickly, in case the spiderlings noticed them and decided to attack.

“There’s a Green Spider Nest lair mentioned, around level 160, but the description talks about a large sinkhole. Maybe we’re at the outskirts.”

“Can we do…”

“No way. You’ve seen how tight it was on the second floor of the plaza ruin we tried for Laura. Three elite 71 molemen, and Guss ran out of aether just as we were finishing. If we have to fight elite 160 spiders, we’ll get our ass handed to us, and I definitively don’t want to risk needing multiple Sacrifice. We got orders to avoid getting killed, remember,” Jonas ended joking.

“Okay, so what do we do? Try to kill those still and skim the actual lair?”

“Four spiderlings should be okay, but we run at any add.”

Emerald Trapper

Level 148 veteran

Health: 2573

Mind: 806

Endurance: 1381

Aether: 305

“Okay, we back away. No sense going further if we're hitting veterans now,” Jonas ordered.

“It’s even bigger than the elder bear.”

“Remember guys. Unlike our first zones, this one is almost normal. The book mentions that outdoor creature ranges from 110 to 190. And almost the same for the lairs – and there’s nearly twenty of them.”

“This is not a walk in the park then.”

“No. It’s definitively doable as a group if you’re careful. But… normal professionals would be recently tier two at 67, with something like a single Milestone, maybe two in their tier two. That’s the point where they start doing their first tier two lairs, not when they traipse in a tier three zone like us,” Jonas said.

They slowly backed until they couldn’t spot any spider. Then Jonas angled, trying to get around the spiders’ potential lair.

They spent nearly an entire day crisscrossing the forest until they found the central clearing. The forest reduced itself to shrubs, and then sparse green moss and small herb-like growths. Without the small brook that literally sprung next to the plaza, they might have had a hard time finding the central point of the zone.

They were on the Plaza arch side, and Jonas noted distractedly the bare depressed ground that marked the location of a Recall Stone, recovered and transferred somewhere else.

Tier 3: Markandon

Abiding Assistant

45 WIS, 20 CON

Careful Barrier

45 CON, 20 FOC

Cautious Gouger

45 DEX, 20 WIS

Explorer

36 DEX, 36 INT

Massive Aethershaper

45 INT, 20 CON

Page

36 CON, 36 WIS

Resilient Shieldwielder

45 STA, 20 FOR

Solid Gouger

45 DEX, 20 STR

“Time to do it,” Ira said, looking forlornly at the Plaza options.

Jonas put his hand on his friends’ shoulder and squeezed in reassurance. Jonathan came and did the same, then all of them, laying their hands in solidarity.

“Last time, I did not expect it. You know, when you did, you knew but…”

“Ira. It will be fine. We live through it, and it’s gone after.”

The soon-to-be-former Layman sighed and closed his eyes, mentally selecting the available Profession from his internal descriptor. As he did so, he fell bonelessly on the ground, unmoving.

For a few seconds, Jonas thought that something had gone wrong with the Profession choice. But then, the shakes began, turning quickly into convulsions. Ira bucked under his hands. He had more Strength than anyone else in the team, save for Laura’s enormous 77, but Jonas managed to keep hold.

The process of Profession change combined with Adaptation was, in its way, fascinating. Jonas would never be able to see it on his own descriptor, but keeping contact with Ira let him watch the event from an outside perspective. He could see Adaptation happening first. The Milestone increasing, the potentials jumping, and the experience requirement falling, all simultaneously. Then, a fraction of a second later, the new Profession inserting itself into the descriptor, with vitals spiking – again, but from the new level one rather than potentials growth – and the experience resetting itself to zero. All at the same time.

In a distant part of his mind, Jonas wondered what conclusion the researchers in London would make of the order in which the two parts of Profession choice happened in their case.

“You’re feeling okay now?” Jonas asked.

“Probably need a drink. Or two,” Ira replied.

“It’s only Thursday and we’re not expected back in Gatepost until Saturday, but we can…”

“I’ll be fine. It’s hell, and then it’s not.”

Ira stayed silent for a few seconds. Then he rose on his feet slowly and carefully, as if afraid to break something.

“We might as well get some XP in here. You all need five levels to your Milestone, and those levels won’t raise on their own. And I need to cut some Apes. Or anything in this forest,” Ira announced.

Then, as an afterthought, he ran his hand in his pack and pulled out the old black glove, removing his ringmail. When he raised his hand, wiggling the fingers, Jonas could see the strings holding the cloth glove together straining, showing flesh between the black.

“Won’t be able to use it ever again,” Ira said, throwing the glove on the Plaza’s marble. Then, in reverence for the place, he picked it up and shoved it back in his bag, before heading out toward the forest.

Ira Irwin Heard

Health: 1402/1402 (1205)

Mind: 630/630

Endurance: 563/563 (487)

Aether: 420/420

Effective level: 67

Level 1 Careful Barrier

Level 42 Layman

Level 24 Defender

Experience: 0/2400

Strength: 42 (32)

Dexterity: 38

Agility: 44 (38)

Constitution: 64 (50)

Stamina: 31 (29)

Wisdom: 32

Focus: 35

Presence: 31

Fortitude: 30

Intellect: 31

Defence Rating: 243

25% faster levelling

5% health/CON

15% armour

Milestones: Adjustment V, Defender I, Layman III

Skills: Dodge (2+2), Flat Blade (1), Brace (1), Deflection (0+1), Repel (0), Hold (0), Anticipate (0)

Equipment: Blue Iron Band (3CON/+1 dodge), Light Ringmail Tunic (1STA), Steady Steel Handgrips (8CON/6STR/92hp/76end/+1 deflection), Boar-Head Iron Belt (4AGI/58hp), Blue Iron Legwraps (3CON/2GI), Supple Ringmail Sollerets (1STA/+1 dodge), Black Zweihander (4STR/49hp)