The airship finally landed, and we were made to exit from the hangar itself, where one of the walls repurposed itself into those weird floaty steps from when I first got on.

But people didn’t forget what had happened, and they were giving us a wide enough berth to be noticeable.

“look at them, already set on us being at fault, like that idiot going after us for no reason was in the right!”

While I appeared unfriendly in my brooding, Sheeno was downright hostile to anyone that even dared look in our direction, literally baring her fangs at them.

“Sheesh, calm down woman! You’re making things worse”, I said to her after a particularly loud growl.

“Assholes and troublemakers, the lot of them. I was expecting open-minded veterans in the [Wild Area], but noooooooooo…. We get the stuck-up pricks that nobody else wanted!” She raged in response.

Her outburst only made me want to appear even smaller than I already was.

“Wait, that almost makes it sound like we are also to be counted amongst them-

Oh, you definitely are.

“Well, fuck you too then!”

While I was bickering with [Buddy] in my mind, the giant woman decided to bring me closer to her, by wrapping one of her arms around my shoulders, as if to protect me.

“Which I’m absolutely not going to complain about!”

Honestly, when around her I was mostly thinking with my ‘second head’, and all ‘actual reason’ be damned. But could you blame me!? She was the apotheosis of what I always dreamt in a woman, even with the extra bits that satisfied my ‘monster-girl kink’, and not only she hadn’t yet referred to me as ‘cute’, which I would actually accept if coming from her, but I had the most stressful week of my life just now, and I didn’t see it getting any easier for a long time yet, so I had no time to ‘find release’ and calm the said ‘second head’.

So, I was understandably as roided-up on hormones as a pubescent teenager normally was.

Stepping off the floating stairs, we found ourselves in an open dirt area repurposed as some kind of docking area, where there were a bunch of other airships both landing and departing, taking and leaving other people to and from.

But Sheeno didn’t have time to gander around, and she marched right past it all, dragging me along.

“And there we go with the dragging, again.”

She walked right past the nearest building, where most of the [Adventurer] seemed to stop by, and went right into the most massive edifice I’d ever seen, which had so many different types of [Inner Mana], and interwoven [Enchantments] in it that it was blinding to directly look at with my [Sight].

“Holy shit, how did I miss that until now!?”

The building was a work of expert masonry, with such an intricate pattern in the brick-laying that it made me wonder if those that had worked on it weren’t simply trying to play Tetris with it. And that seemed only to further influence the shape and color of the bricks themselves the further up you went.

“Ah, right!” Sheeno seemed to notice my stupefaction and decided to illuminate me, pun intended, “that’s the [Rainbow Guild], called such both for its obvious appearance, and the fact that it houses every type of [Guild] that has ever graced the [Nexus]. We walked past the [Adventuring Help Desk] right there,” and with that, she pointed dismissively at where the other [Adventurer] seemed to be stuffing themselves into like sardines, “because I have a contact inside the main [Guild] and he can get us past all the paperwork, while still correctly anointing us as [Adventurers] of this [Area]”.

“That’s… fine, but for future reference: You shouldn’t make such a decision on your own, we’re in a [Party] together now, and we should consult each other on these things”, I reprimanded her, and she looked properly chastised by the way she bit her lower lip.

Which had the unintended effect of showing off her sexy a.f. pointy teeth.

“Soz. I just took for granted that you’d have also liked to skip all the bureaucracy and get finally to adventuring…”

“Me? Wanting to skip compiling module after module, while surrounded by people that already declared their dislike of me? Now you’re just talking crazy!”

She snorted at my comeback, and pressed me harder against her side, but, probably after noticing what she has been doing for a while subconsciously, she released me, and brought the hand that was around me to awkwardly scratch her cheek.

“Again, how can someone so fierce also be so adorable!?”

I had to shut my eyes while walking into the edifice, to avoid going permanently blind, but the inside was no better; if anything, being surrounded by the sources of the ‘light pollution’ was worse.

“How the heck am I supposed to see anything in this magical clusterfuck!?”

“D-Darwin, is everything alright?” asked Sheeno after noticing my distress.

“No, the [ambient Mana] is so polluted in here that it’s hurting my eyes!” I responded, between hisses and squints.

“Atrocious, right? They found a way the stuff as many [Enchantments] as they could in a single place, without first wondering why no one else had before them. Completely barbaric, I tell you!” Someone in front of me said, in a very pleasant, yet androgynous, tone of voice.

“Hey, Merglobth! Just the [Chthulian] I was looking for!” exclaimed Sheeno, way too happy for it being about something called a [Chthulian].

I obviously had read about them, but the most consistent thing about their bodies was that they were an incomprehensible mess of tentacles and eyes.

“Sheeno, my dear, why don’t you pass these goggles to your friend in distress right there? Then we’ll share more pleasantries”, said the ‘cosmic horror’.

“Yes, right. Sorry Darwin, here, take them”, and saying so she pushed into my chest something that felt like welding goggles, of which I confirmed the shape once I had grabbed them.

I really wanted to [Inspect] them, but it wasn’t an option now, since I couldn’t see [Buddy] in all the magical mess, so I just had to trust the stranger and slip them on.

Once that was done, I tried peeking into the stroboscopical effect of light I was still expecting to see, but to my surprise, this thing seemed to be able to dampen my [Demiurgic Sight], dimming the swirls of [Mana] to be barely visible.

I turned to my benefactor to thank him but was stopped in my tracks when I finally saw him: I couldn’t decide on whether he looked more like a flabbier Zoidberg stuffed into a tuxedo, or an amorphous blob of tentacles rearranged into the resemblance of a butler, wispy mustache and all.

I then noticed that he was wearing a bunch of these same goggles around his body, probably to protect his multiple eyes from the same thing that was assaulting my pupils.

“I really have to thank you for these, I don’t know how they expect those sensible to [Magic] to work in such a suffocating environment without them”, I finally got out

“There’s no reason to thank me, my boy; these [Artifacts] are lent to those like us pro-bono by the [Guild], exactly to dampen the harm that their messy place may bring upon us…. But if ask me, they would have been better off by redoing this entire structure from scratch: It’s just a bad day away from magically collapsing onto itself!”, he responded and accentuated the end with a weird flapping of his body, which only vaguely sounded like laughing.

“Too bad they cover your pretty eyes…” added the ice giant, who immediately turned away when I tried to look at her after the comment.

“Was the solution to my problem with the [Humans] just a pair of fucking sunglasses!? How fucking stupid am I!?”

My guess is on “a lot”.

“You’d better shut it, since you never proposed it either!”

But I wasn’t really angry at my [Tutorial], I was just too happy to be able to pass up as a ‘normal’ [Human] again.

“Now, to the pleasantries! Hello, my name is Merglobth, and I was a friend of Sheeno’s father. And as you may have guessed, I will take it upon my tentacles to register you here, and handle the relative business correlated to it. If I heard correctly, you must be Darwin, correct?” The freakish Alfred asked.

“Uh, yeah, Darwin Dulcet, to your service. And I guess I’m just along for the ride for now. Uh, [Princess]?” I asked back to my companion after responding to our host.

“Don’t call me that here, I’m trying to restart with a clean slate! But yes, sorry again, but it seems you’ll have to let us drag you along for a while.”

“No worries, I kind of got used to ‘getting dragged’.”

“Ah!” laughed Sheeno, patting me on the shoulder.

“A pleasure to make your acquaintance. Now, if you would follow me, I will need you a couple of tens of minutes, just to go over how things work here and to properly register you at the local [Adventurer’s Guild]”, Interjected our guide.

“Sure: Lead on Chthulu!” I jokingly said.

“Oh, I would never dare use the name of our progenitor and most revered [Demi-God]!” He said, turning to me with the greatest approximation to appalment that I had ever seen from a bunch of tentacles and goggles.

“Wait, wait, wait, wait!” I had to stop him, “Chthulu is real, and it's here!?”

* * *

My panic aside, the other two perps decided to ignore my statement and keep going toward Merglobth’s study.

Once in the room he quickly explained how [Adventurers] are more closely regulated here, since the high amount of [Dungeons] make the [Wilds] an incredibly dangerous [Area] to explore, so there are some regulations in place to prevent unnecessary death.

First off: No random gallavanting. Every movement has to have been properly documented, while also having the reason behind it validated; but since ‘recognizance’ was enough as one, they weren’t very firm on this. Second: Everyone is required to study the movements of [Monsters] and [Dungeons] before venturing into anything, to avoid tripping into a [Monster Den], or other types of ‘bigger difficulties’. Third: No soloing until [Silver Rank]. Everybody below is required to have at least one colleague in their [Party].

On that note, I don’t think I ever explained how an [Adventurer’s Rank] works: To put it simply, they go from the sturdiest metal to the next, starting with [copper] (where I am right now), all the way to [divinium], which I have no clue what it is, and the only [Information] I was able to dig out about it was that it may be a theoretical metal capable of withstanding divine influence.

And lastly, fourth, where we have a two for one: Don’t be stupid and don’t be afraid to ask for help. This mostly refers to how you have to be as exhaustive as possible with details when relaying of your adventuring, and that you should never take a job that looks too big for you or your group.

This was still basic stuff, but Merglobth made the point of explaining that if it were up to the local [Guild Master], every [Adventurer] would have those four rules printed on both hands and their forehead, just to be sure that they wouldn’t forget them; which apparently was a real problem, and every month you had [Adventurers] disappearing because they underestimated a threat, ultimately being stupid in their duty.

“I know that I wanted to start from scratch, and wanted to maintain as much autonomy as I could, but what kind of place did they send me to!?”

“I hope that everything I said was clear. Per accommodations, you can either stay in the sleeping quarters of the [Guild] for a minimal fee, or you could rent out a private home for your [Party], which price will vary depending on size and amenities that you require”, finished the octopus from outer space.

“I’ll just buy one of the private spaces for the both of us-“, started saying Sheeno.

“No”, I interrupted.

“N-no? What do you mean ‘no’!?” She asked puzzled.

“I know you had good intentions behind what you were doing, but I’m not letting you buy an entire house for me, right off the bat. We’ll split the cost, and since I definitely don’t have that kind of money, our friend here probably already knows what I’m going to ask…” I explained, leaving the open-ended phase as a way for Merglobth to latch onto.

“I quite agree with our [Human]: you shouldn’t flaunt the fact that you have that kind of money as soon as you get here. You need to build yourself a reputation first, so that you don’t attract the wrong kind of attention. You’ll live in the dormitories for now, and move up from rented space to rented space, until you get to the point of being able to afford to split for one that you would find satisfactory”, said the [Chthulian].

Sheeno sent me a stink eye, and after folding all 4 of her arms under her prodigious breast-plate, while giving a mighty pout all the while, she relented. “Fine!” She said, but she definitely didn’t sound fine with it.

“And with that,” our sponsor started saying, “we get to why you really are here: Are you ready for your first [Quest] as a [Party]?”

“No”, replied Sheeno.

“What do you mean ‘no’!? How- Wait, are you just parroting me from before?” I started by being startled by her abruptness, before noticing what she was doing.

“Kinda, in reality, I want a better idea of how you fight, and just talking about it isn’t enough…” she said, while a mischievous smile grew on her face.

“What did you have in mind?” Asked Merglobth, interested in the proposal.

“We spar in the regenerative [Arena]” She exclaimed, bumping two of her fists together.

I looked at her and asked if that was her plan all along.

The only response I got from her was her grin growing wider.