Nobody reacted much as I returned to the Pantheon this time. No doubt Bruzigan, who was there along with Mewi and the woman Geneve who had delivered my combat suit, who had become my assistant/handler of sorts, had let them know I was coming and thus that I did not bring with me any recruitment opportunities.

Before I left the exit chamber, though, Bruzigan had told me about one last thing before I had left for the Second Floor. I bowed in respect to each of the statues inside, who he said represented past challengers who had cleared that floor at that difficulty, and received a message:

[+1 all Basic Attributes.]

Looking at my screen again, I noted that Psych alone had not gone up. As it was only visible due to the special property of the Psionic Pyromancer class, it made sense that it was not a Basic Attribute. That was fine. It had gone up a few points from training it by now anyway.

On top of all the other upgrades I’d distributed so far, this is what my character page now looked like:

New Summoned

Floor Cleared: 2nd

Health: 325/325 (0.3/min)

Stamina: 480/480 (3.5/min)

Mana: 2100/2100 (1/min)

Strength: 15

Speed: 18

Stamina: 22

Sturdiness: 17

Mana Pool: 35

Intuition: 29

Magic Power: 31 (+10)

Regeneration: 21 (+10)

Psych: 10

AP: 23

Without further ado, I walked down and joined Mewi and Bruzigan. Mewi hugged me, and Bruzigan gave me a clap on the back, that I lurched forward from and struggled to avoid doing so more than slightly.

“You’ll be on lighter training duties the next week,” he said, once we’d reached the Grosstin vehicle that would return me to their base, “those who were away on other duties will return here by then, and we’ll finally start training together as a full team. Depending on how he does over the next month, that includes Mewi starting as soon as he clears the Second Floor.”

“Wait really? Before he takes on any floor on Extreme?”

Bruzigan nodded. “I don’t plan to have either of you clear the Third Floor on a rapid pace,” he said, “your contracts gave you two years to clear the Fourth, after all. But if he’s able to clear Very High difficulty, he’ll have the strength, attributes, and skills for you two to at least work together, to survive on-duty with you. You’ve earned that much with how hard you’ve worked so far,” he said to Mewi, turning to him, “but only if you keep it up this month, got it?”

“Thank you si—err, boss!” said Mewi, “It’ll be great to finally fight together after all this time. It’s been pretty rough...finally getting together then having to spend all this time apart.”

“I know what you mean, Mewi,” I said, “so, what’s next?”

“You’ll keep leveling up your spells, but we’ll go to a 3 hour per day regimen for now for that. We’ll bump that back up to 6 hours once the others arrive. Other than that, and combat drills to keep you in practice, we’ll focus mostly on profession training to start with. For this week only, you’ll have a certain amount of free time.”

I laughed. “You know, as beautiful as those last two words are, they sound really strange coming out of your particular mouth.”

Bruzigan grinned. “I’m not a total hard ass, Lheticus. In fact, I’ve been called a loose cannon a few times. It’s one reason that I got this assignment from the Federation. I also requested this post anyway, but let’s just say there are a few of the brass involved with the Special Incident Resolutions Bureau that were very nice and polite about not letting the door hit my bum on the way out of Central HQ.”

“Is that so,” I said, thoughtful.

Geneve cleared her throat. “Before any of that is the Floor debriefing. As I understand it, we have rather a lot to discuss.”

I almost kept my expression neutral as I said, deadpan, “Hoo boy, do we.”

It didn’t take long to go over my rewards. They set the fee to keep the Memory Gem at a whopping 50 Brocks, half of a “Gamma-4” coin that went beyond Federation coins and into official Tower currency, but between what I was turning in, including a rather uncommon spell book that would do well in resale, and especially my willingness to sell information on the method to get the Second Floor’s hidden piece, I came out substantially ahead. In addition to the extra money, Geneve informed me that Edwin had personally agreed to let me, and thus the Alliance team, in on a location of one of the hidden pieces on either the 5th, or 8th floors—the floors with hidden pieces that the Alliance already knew about—when the time to clear them came. He also highly commended me, and told me to keep up the good work.

After that was a light meal followed by the three-hour spell grinding regimen, then it was back to the pod. After my combat drills, Bruzigan told me to leave the virtual space for a short time. This was so a Grosstin rep (not Geneve this time) could give me a sort of magic aptitude test. “One thing the team is currently lacking is a chef. You’ve already seen one example of the sorts of things chefs can do when one prepared your Elurian Avocado, and the special properties of the food at Dille’s is another example. But what you’ve seen so far is barely scratching the surface of what chefs can do. Depending on the ingredients and the preparation, chef recipes can result in a near-endless variety of status buffs. They’re one of the most vital professions for a team.

Now, one of the pair who will be joining us in a week has agreed to be the team’s chef if no one else wants it. Is this something you’d like to do instead, or should we just start looking through everything?”

I gave it some thought. I never cooked much at home, but when I did it wasn’t as though I was useless at it. There were aspects of it I enjoyed, I just used the microwave most of the time when I could help it because I always got impatient to actually eat what I was cooking if I actually made effort to do so.

But I’d played some video games with cooking systems sort of like Bruzigan described, and honestly it sounded like a skill that would be extremely useful have even after my contract with Grosstin expired. On top of that, there were a couple class traits lower down on my starting list that I’d questioned the use of that I now realized would come very handy in cooking...

“I think I would, yes. Go ahead and test me for chef aptitude.”

The Talent Evaluator, a small sorcerous cube, glowed green when the rep held it before me. “The second highest rating, no less,” said Bruzigan approvingly, “the one who volunteered for the job before got yellow—the next lower from that. Cooking doesn’t require much talent, you just need to put in the work, but this should reassure them.”

Putting in the work was something that used to intimidate me, but not anymore. I had come a long way from the lazy bum who sat in front of a screen all day, I had to admit. The Tower was good for that, at least. “Grosstin will send for a chef instructor to join you in the virtual realm,” said the rep, “they will join you in a half hour. Until then, you’re at liberty.”

I practically dashed back to the pod, wanting to maximize my time of nearly ten hours of leisure—the most I’d had since I’d cleared the First Floor. This time, Geneve joined me in the virtual space, to help me set up a personal area for me. “Most start with a dwelling of some kind,” she said, “if you like, for example, the virtual world can read your memories and recreate the home you had on your former world--”

“No,” I said, “no, no no no, no no no no no, no no, no no no...no. Do not ever suggest to tease me with what I’ve lost ever again, ever.”

“I apologize, sir. What would you suggest?”

“Let me think...it should be small, for a start. I prefer cozy, enclosed spaces to palatially big ones. Lots of cool colors, especially purple. And a TV. Does Area 1 have TV?”

“Of course it does, sir. Anything more to go on?”

“...Does it have video games, too?”