I am about to head out to the Adventurer Society for our first mission with Lockness, that is such a long name. Anyway earlier I had read the report from Koda, it is at the same time strange and disturbing at the same time. I’ll need to think about it for a while.

So I’ve decided to leave them alone for now, given them the free reign to travel through the city. If they are curious about the city then why not let them go out. I did ask if they wanted a clone to come with but they decided to chill alone for a bit. Might as well let them do some casual recon.

I’m wearing some kind of leather boots that come up past the ankle, a long set of pants and a padded, blue dyed light gambeson over a clean shirt. Around my waist are a set of long, thick needles placed in slots along a belt. Equipment borrowed from the Society for free for newbs.

I say a quick goodbye to Dr Rath and make my way toward the Adventurer Society, in my testing of the Map Mode some I can set it to not only see other Clones but Kage as well. I was fairly certain the Map Mode didn’t have this before but Number 2 thinks that it might be the Interface being psycho-reactive.

As I walk away I see both Koda and Wojtek head toward the markets where Number 1, Dr Rath and Koda went through when we first arrived. No Institute blips on the map yet but hopefully I won't see any. I hope Koda and Wojtek stay out of trouble!

I arrive at the Adventurer Society and enter in, I nod toward Bertinald at the reception. I think he saw me but he is busy, I start having a look at the job notices on the many boards. Yea a lot of these are in multiple languages and I cannot read them all, many though look far too difficult for a novice like me.

“Michael, there you are.” Oop that’s my name, turning around I see Lockness. He’s in similar gear, just that it has a long red cape behind him. He’s got a sword of some kind in a very strange sheath, it’s more of a cylinder than a normal sword sheath.

“Lockness, or should I say Superman with that cape?” I reply with a smile as I walk around and feel it. “Superman?”, “Yea, famous hero from back home.”

I turn away from Lockness’ cape and toward the job boards, “Any ideas on what we should take?”

“Several, but not in this section.”, “Oh? Whys that?”. He looks at me like I don’t know how to read, and yea fair. “This is the Neonnot rank section, that’s for people way above us.”

“Neonnot rank would be… A3 rank. Yea far too high up. Where to?”, “This way.” he turns and walks toward another section with many, many more pages on the board. We have a look around, many are just simple things like “Lost Animal”, “Need weeds pulled”, “Help me move house”.

“Personally I don’t want to help someone move house, done that before and almost broke my back.”, “Yea, I agree. How about this one?” He asks as he pulls down a job listing with a seal at its top.

“Clear infestation from local sewer system, job requested by Local Council of Oghqoa.”

“What kind of Infestation?” I ask, “Coblousceene”.

“Nani the what is that?” Lock slowly turns to me and looks to me like I’ve grown a second head. “Bro you gotta get used to this I’m gonna say weird stuff all the time.”

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“A Coblousceene, is just a small, furry creature. Long tail, teeth, claws, they eat a lot of rubbish so some nests thrive in the sewer. If they don’t get cleared out occasionally the nests grow too big and they start leaving it.”

“You’d think there would be a Powered solution for things like this right?”

“There was, it just wasn’t feasible. They kept chewing through other sections that weren't covered.”

“Chewing?” Lockness ignores me and walks over to an upright metal plate next to the job board, placing the job on the plate, its details are copied onto the plate and a metal card pops out of a slot.

Placing the job back on the board I follow Lockness out of the Adventurer Society, “So, where are we heading to?”.

“There is a service entrance we will need to use, the card lets us in.” “Got it, by the way you ok with nicknames?”

As I and Lock make our way through the city we talk about plans via Voice Chat, don’t want anyone to hear us talking mission plans out loud. “How do you want to run this?” asks Locky. “I’ll let you take the lead on this one, next mission we’ll swap around and then compare.”

“Alright, how many of those clones can you create?”

“Resurgence Team is normally 5 and still have some mana left over for simple stuff. Should be able to get back up to near full after about two hours. I’ll create them when we get down there.”

“What’s their and Koda’s and Wotjek’s combat potential?

“Same as mine but they are limited in mana. We each would have a 5th each of my total mana pool. My mana total has gone up a bit so we should be able to do most things. Just nothing big and flashy. As for Koda and Wotjek, they are not here, gave them the day off.”

“The day off huh, ok. In any case, big and flashy is something we need to avoid. There are the occasional gas leaks and parts of the system can be under pressure, we need to be careful of explosions when using our Lightning and Fire Powers and Abilities.”

Trying and failing to get the opening beats to Under Pressure out of my head. (Queen not Login and God forbid the Happy Feat version) “Uhh, cool, cool. So quick question, why give this job to guys our level?”

“Ah it's fine, explosions almost never happen.” dead serious.

“Hhuugh?! Are you kidding me, Locky?”

“Yes, yes I am.” he says, turning towards me slowly and suddenly laughing. “I’m joking, unless there is a massive accident there should be nothing we need to worry about. Aside from the Coblousceene.”

We soon arrive at a small door and inserting the card into a slip the door unlocks and apparently logs our arrival. Cool.

The room is similar to the room where Bertinald took us after our first meeting with Master Carson; the building is filled with repair tools, pipes and other items. One thing that caught my eye was several copies of the sewer system.

Taking one I place it into my Inventory for almost no mana as it’s just paper and I create the five clones of the Resurgence Team. Each of them have a quick look at their inventory and each confirms that the map is there.

“I think we should split into three teams, there is a lot of ground to cover. Michael, you and I will be a team, while clones 1 and 2 another team with 3 through 5 being the 3rd team.”

“We’ll try and stay in Voice Chat contact but it’s just over 30 metres so we will be out of contact, if need poof? and go back to Michael. We’ll come to you in an emergency.”

He’s not too used with my terminology and so sounded questioning with that poof. We double check our weapons and gear and soon enough are ready. Opening a door we move down through the Hoist/Elevator and into the sewers. At first I cannot see anything moving about aside from us.

The place we exited out of has several passages. “Alright, let’s split up here. This will be our rally point. We will be back here by the end of the day. Good hunting” commands Lockness, he’s in full serious mode right now. Lets see how he does.