“Do you have somewhere I can hide?” Taika asked a few minutes after they entered Casterville. “I don’t like the way people look at me.”
“We’ve barely seen anyone,” Dav countered.
He was right. Sophia had seen less than a dozen people, so far. Every single one of them was armed, even though not all were armored and most were alone. It was obvious to Sophia that not only was the west end of the city busier than it had been, the residents were worried they might need to fight.
“I want to keep it that way. I don’t like the way they look at me.” Taika visibly shivered.
Dav shrugged. “You can fit in my backpack, if you like? It’s not as spacious as Sophia’s, but I think you’ll still fit.”
Taika scrambled into the bag.
“Dammit Taika, I didn’t say you should get heavier!” Dav complained teasingly. The smile on his face said that he wasn’t truly even annoyed. “Here, I’ll leave an opening at the top so you can peek out. If you want to stay hidden, you’ll have to duck down.”
“I can do that,” Taika agreed shakily.
Sophia noticed that Taika did look around when the streets were empty, but even before Sophia noticed someone walking towards them, Taika’s head disappeared inside. This time, Sophia paid attention to how the woman with a spear regarded them. She seemed wary, as if concerned they would attack at any time. Did she really not know that they were safe inside the bounds of the Nexus?
Maybe she didn’t know exactly where those bounds were? They weren’t all that far from the line yet, just a few minutes’ walk.
“I think I see what you mean,” Sophia told Taika. “It doesn’t make me feel like hiding.” If anything it made her angry, even though she knew she had no reason to be angry. These people should not be afraid of her and even if they were, they shouldn’t be able to lash out in fear. They shouldn’t even be afraid.
The trip back to the Registry didn’t take long by the clock, but it certainly felt a lot longer than the trip to the country mansion had.
It was midmorning by the time they arrived. Sophia wasn’t certain who decided to head for the tavern for breakfast instead of their rooms. It could have been the smell of well-cooked food that made the decision, rather than any one person.
“Ah, you’re back.” Mentor Rensyn snagged the fourth chair for the table and sat down. “And with a pet too. Amy, did you pick up a monster-taming Ability while you were out there?”
Amy chuckled. “Taika’s not mine. He’s with Dav, mostly. We rescued him from a corpsevine-infested monster and he decided he wanted to travel with us. He seems friendly and has an Ability to help Shield recover over time, so we didn’t see any reason to object.”
Sophia was pretty sure Amy had just implicitly lied while telling the truth. Everything she said was true, but she didn’t mention either the fact that Taika could talk or the fact that he’d warned them of creatures tracking Sophia because they wanted to eat her. Admittedly, Sophia wasn’t sure Amy remembered that last bit, but Sophia definitely wasn’t going to forget it.
There had to be a reason Amy didn’t want to give Rensyn the full details about Taika. Sophia guessed that it was best to wait. He’d find out in time when Samuel talked to him, but it wasn’t like Amy lied. Sophia was definitely going to ask once they were alone.
Rensyn nodded and moved on to the reason he’d dropped by. “Fair enough; a companion shouldn’t unduly affect the Challenge. Might even make it easier; Leveled Challenges can be strange. I take it the Quinns stayed with Samuel?”
“He wanted them to stay to protect Essia,” Sophia answered in between bites. “They weren’t that interested in the Challenge, either.” Sophia regretted that a bit; she thought Rae’s uncanny ability to see things that were very well hidden might be useful in figuring out the point of the Challenge. Other than that, she couldn’t say much about the twins. They kept to themselves.
On second thought, maybe it wasn’t the Quinns who kept to themselves. Sophia hadn’t exactly made an effort to include them, had she? She’d been spending a lot of time with Dav and hadn’t made any time for the others. Amy was pushy enough that she turned up whether she was invited or not, and neither Sophia nor Dav pushed her away after that. The Quinns might simply be less confident they were welcome.
Sophia needed to do better than that. She knew how important it was for a group that fought together to spend time together. She promised herself that if they ended up back with the Quinns, she’d make an effort to invite them to do things together.
Rensyn shorted, then nodded. “Then they have a place. I bet I can get them added to Essia’s future group, if Samuel already approves them. That is, if you three don’t mind?”
Sophia noticed that although he asked if the three of them minded, his attention was on her.
“We don’t mind,” Amy interjected. “Five people really isn’t enough for two pure support specialists. They were great with the larger group, but the three of us aren’t really enough to take full advantage of them. I’d happily take them into a Minor Challenge, but they’d only be good in a Leveled Challenge if there were a dozen people with them.”
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Rensyn waited a moment, as if he hoped Sophia would disagree with Amy. When she didn’t say anything, he shook his head. “That’s half the problem they’ve had. If either of them had a straight combat Sphere or they were willing to be split …”
Rensyn shook his head. He started off talking clearly, but by the end his words were mumbled, more spoken to himself than to the people around him. “I hoped they’d fit with you three, since you’re relatively combat-heavy with low flexibility. It sounds like I should aim for a support team instead. It’ll make it harder for them to level, but I have to find something for Essia anyway. Well, Samuel has to, and if that’s the Quinns then it solves my problem for now. If only I could find a heavy guard for them that can also manage light scouting, I might be able to set them into some of the more dangerous parts of the forest instead of letting Essia wander around with her father’s guardsmen…”
“That’s half of your job, isn’t it?” Rensyn’s muttering reminded Sophia of someone from back home. Becca’s formal job was different, but Sophia knew she was always trying to build groups that could work well together as well. Sophia sometimes thought Becca was half the reason the dungeons in New York City were as well managed as they were, and Becca always said that party matching and management was half of the job.
Rensyn shook his head and refocused on Sophia.
“Most of my job is teaching,” Rensyn corrected Sophia. “People find their own groups. Mostly. I just worry about those two. And, well, Essia’s going to get mentored. Good healers do, even if she weren’t the Mage-Chancellor’s daughter.”
It was nice to hear that, at least. Healers seemed oddly scarce here, compared to back home. Sophia knew that they were less common off Earth as well, so it was probably just her background. It was probably because video games always had healers. People assumed they were needed for dungeon runs, after all, so healers were always in demand, even beyond the health care needs of non-delvers.
Not that Sophia paid much attention to that. Her mother and uncle did, that was enough for one family.
“If only her father valued her the way she should be valued,” Rensyn muttered. “He treats her like a less capable mage. It’s common here and probably why most of the healers here aren’t very good, but the man should know better.”
Sophia raised an eyebrow at that. “Why would you look down on healers? That makes no sense.”
Rensyn shrugged. “The Mage-Chancellor’s position is that alchemicals and sleep are enough. He’s not wrong, if you can take things slowly. He’s not thinking about what actually happens during a fight, especially not something like the corpsevines. We can’t take that slowly, not now. If we’d kept watch over the area, maybe, but …”
Rensyn closed his eyes and shook his head slowly. He didn’t continue until his eyes were open again, and when he did his voice had changed from the aggrieved tone he had earlier to one that almost sounded sad. “I’m not sure we’ll be able to talk him into evacuation, either, but that’s not your concern. You need to worry about the Leveled Challenge and doing away with the need for the evacuation. If you can do that … well, it will definitely be a Feat. I don’t know what the Feat will grant, but it’s likely to be good, in addition to a significant amount of Wisps.”
Rensyn glanced around the trio. His voice steadied as he spoke. “You can never predict how many Wisps the Guide will grant, but completing the Leveled Challenge’s combat has been enough for an Ability for those below the first upgrade. It’s half that between the first and second, and very little after that. If it weren’t Leveled, we’d call it a first-upgrade Challenge.”
Rensyn paused as if he had to make sure everyone was following. Sophia was, and she saw Dav nod as well. Amy looked bored.
Rensyn waited an extra moment, then continued even without a nod from Amy. “Challenge runs have been faster than we expected, with most groups finishing in four to six hours. We have enough groups willing to go through the Challenge that we’re scheduling everyone every five days; that way, there’s enough time for people to complete other tasks as well and we can work in newcomers fairly quickly. It’s well known that the most likely time to fully complete a Challenge like this is the first run, and we want it complete.”
Sophia frowned at that. It didn’t make sense that things became harder after the first run when you knew what you were looking at. Did it really become harder or did that just mean that people didn’t try new things on later tries because they thought they knew what was going on?
“Since this is your first time through the Challenge, I can let you pick what time of day you want to start and we’ll shuffle the other teams around you. So far, what I’ve heard is that the corpsevines act like corpsevines on the outside, so they’re the most active starting a few hours after sunrise.”
“You haven’t been inside?” Amy pounced on Rensyn’s words before Sophia could.
Rensyn shook his head. “Registry staff won’t enter the Challenge until right before the evacuation begins several months from now. Professionals don’t gain much from a Challenge, so we don’t enter them even if we’re capable unless we have to. If we do have to go in, we want it to be after everyone’s had a chance; later runs are far less impactful even for Called.”
Sophia raised an eyebrow at that.
Well, she tried. Knowing her luck, both eyebrows probably went up.
Sophia shorted softly. She couldn’t even seem cool to herself, could she? “Should we be worried about people being upset if we do finish the Challenge?”
Rensyn shook his head. “I don’t care if people are upset, and neither should you. There’s enough danger out there hunting corpsevines; we don’t need a Challenge that will force us to evacuate all Professionals from Casterville. Now, when do you want to head in?”
Sophia noticed that he didn’t say no. A wry grin crossed her face. Maybe that was the real reason many groups didn’t solve Challenges: even if they were less impactful, which probably meant fewer Wisps, repeating the same thing was easier than doing something new. It was exactly the reason some people would repeatedly farm the same dungeon back home: they knew they could do it and it was safe money.
“I want to be able to see what I’m doing,” Sophia answered. “I also need to sleep. Dav, Amy?”
“Hm?” Dav seemed to shake himself. He blinked tiredly. Had he just passed out at the table? “Yeah, sleep’s good.”
Well, he could see in the dark. He probably didn’t care that much.
“Very early morning tomorrow,” Amy contributed. “We’ll be a bit tired, but if we spend a lot of today resting we can be ready for it. I know there are also some alchemicals that will help, and it puts the corpsevines at their lowest activity.”
“Sounds good to me,” Sophia agreed.
“Morning it is, then,” Rensyn agreed after a glance at Dav. “I’ll let Aimiva know to give a wake-up call shortly before sunrise.”
Sophia looked at Dav and shook her head. She sure hoped he’d wake up enough to make it up the stairs mostly on his own; carrying him would not be fun.