I collapsed out of the stone turtle, trying to disentangle myself from Connie while simultaneously stretching out my cramping limbs. We were both swearing at the stiffness and muscle soreness and - at least in my case - an uncomfortably full bladder, but after just a few seconds the cursing turned to laughing which faded into giggles and a few pained hisses as we worked the pins and needles out.

"Sorry it took so long," Mila said, "there was a backlog at the teleportation circle because of the attack yesterday. But we're here now, and I think I did a pretty good job closing up the floor behind us so even if they've noticed you're gone they may not have worked out how just yet."

Connie finally stood and reached back down to help me up. "I doubt they've noticed yet. Even if the runes I put on the inside of your statue kept them from finding us right away they probably would have had someone stop any teleports out of the city just in case. Anyway, now that we're here we should have a little time. Good Charl is probably the most... independent... city in the Free States, they're not going to let the Empire just sweep in here."

Good Charl was one of the two cities in the Free States to have a Duminere, but they had a much more permissive attitude towards it. You didn't have to be a citizen to get inside, and the contracts they made people agree to just said you had to come to the defense of the Free States if another nation tried something. Instead, they sold tickets. This had led to the city being a hub for mercenary companies that would pay for entry if you signed on for a certain number of years, which meant that in the end it was actually very similar to the arrangement in other nations - just with a middle-man.

There were still benefits. If you were the type that liked to travel, or if you wanted to experiment with a non-standard set of gifts rather than going with the safe options most countries encouraged it was worth signing up to do odd jobs. It was, of course, what Connie had been planning to do before she ended up stuck in Theramas and if she hadn't known about the lost Duminere it was probably what I would have tried for as well. In a way it was the closest thing to the fantasy trope of an Adventurer's Guild - all these people with magical superpowers, doing odd jobs as caravan guards and bounty hunters and even construction projects, depending on their abilities.

We needed to hire a few people to help us get to the lost Duminere. The only ability that we would for sure need was Planar travel, to get us into Nusos. From what I understood Nusos was a plane made up of all the rooms and buildings in the world - or fake echoes of them - all mashed together. The Duminere was supposedly only able to be accessed from Nusos for some reason, and also needed a key which had been buried with some old dead king in the Necropolis.

The Necropolis was where everyone on the continent was laid to rest. Some places had crypts for short term storage, but sooner or later every possible corpse was shipped to the Necropolis. The bodies of the Halenvar soldiers that had been abandoned after my run-in with them had needed to be left behind for practical reasons, but this explained why they'd all been left clutching coins - it was payment for whoever hauled them away. I suspected that in practice wild animals would just drag the bodies off, but maybe it was one of those things where you could get away with just doing enough to say you'd tried.

In the center of the Necropolis was some sort of pit bodies were thrown into, Connie said she'd been told it was bottomless which seemed impossible but also... it would have to be, right? The population of this world was clearly way lower than Earth but even so it would have surely filled up at some point otherwise. The sides of the pit were lined all the way down to eternity with mausoleums and filled with actual no-shit zombies, and our goal was pretty far down. "It's fine," Connie had said, "I know almost exactly where it is so we can just hurry down there, grab the key, and then duck out into Nusos and head to our destination. It'll be quick. And, of course, we'll make sure some of the people we hire can handle zombies."

So that was what we needed - someone with Planar magic, and some people that could help us fight off undead hoards. There were layers of bureaucracy we needed to deal with, several of which could have been skipped if Connie was both rich and willing to tell everyone about the Duminere. Instead we had to meet with a government agent that worked with the mercenary companies to be vetted, while Errod and Katrin headed off to help deliver the stone turtle which Mila apparently really did have a buyer for - that would presumably help her avoid extra scrutiny if they looked into her after realizing we were gone.

"Do you think they're coming back?" I asked, watching them vanish into the crowd. Katrin had been unusually quiet, and I'd seen Errod huddled up with her talking too quietly for me to hear what they were saying. We'd barely spoken two words to each other since being separated after the battle.

"Eh," Connie said, "Who knows. They're whispering about something. And it could be that getting in an actual fight and then helping with a jailbreak was too much for them. It's fine. We've got each other, either way. I'm not going to ditch you like mom did."

Good Charl was... eclectic. It seemed like every building was a different style, although the city as a whole still felt well-organized. The streets were mostly straight and while some were nearly blocked off by kiosks and tents in the market district they were overall pretty clean. The walls were huge and made entirely with metal, which was apparently a big flex. It's just that there was no cohesive architectural vision, unlike the other places I'd seen. There was a building made from logs that appeared to still have living branches right next to a featureless gray stone cube, a towering building with the tiered rooftops like I'd seen in Handoleren across from a long, low structure that looked like it was carved from a single giant red stone.

The whole place felt like a mall, somehow. Even outside the market district it seemed like everything was a business, with all the residences tiny and tucked away in the far corners of the city. There were advertisements, the first I'd seen in this world, and while I didn't see a single city guard almost every building had its own armed security. Judging from the hawkers healing wasn't free here - probably a consequence of all the Duminere slots getting sold to mercenary companies - but there were lots of people offering it. Connie dragged me into one and haggled for a while before someone sat me down in a chair.

"We're getting rid of those allergies and things for good," she said, "and doing a general wellness tweak. Boosts your immune system, fixes some stuff that probably accumulated from general shitty diet, stuff like that. I know we just were talking about Enhancement stuff and how it wears off unless you have it maintained for a while or renew it a bunch of times, but even some bigger changes can stick if they really mesh with your... I dunno, it's a thing with your mind and soul and stuff. Something about your mental model of what you look like. So for example, if I had done the gender swap thing I mentioned it would flip back over time, but if I really internally pictured myself as male it probably wouldn't. In this case you don't have a firm picture of your immune system, and your body will be able to feel that it's healthier, so it'll accept it right away."

She had to explain it in English, because they'd made me take the bracelet off in case it interfered in some way. The process was fairly quick and felt a lot like when I had been healed - there was a warm feeling that swept through me a few times and then something a little more... forceful... seemed like it was probing at my insides. It was a little creepy, but not that bad. I still put the bracelet back on since I needed the translation ability, but it was good to know that if I lost it I wouldn't be totally fucked.

The initial meeting to be vetted went well enough. The representative from Good Charl went over the protections in place - lots of wards on the walls and a magical contract of secrecy on the rep - and even so Connie didn't tell them everything. In order to get the best type of certificate, one saying there was high confidence that the people we hired would get paid what we were promising, Connie would have needed to allow someone to validate her memories. That wasn't happening. So instead the best they would say is that we were honestly certain about it, which would hopefully be enough.

The first group we asked to meet with were some people that the original expedition had apparently hired. Since they were the exact people we knew had gotten the job done in the original timeline it seemed worth looking into, but right away I wanted to punch the one that was doing the negotiating - his name was Kraiklin, and he just had this super slimy vibe to him.

"Yeah, we do a little of everything. Guarding and escort jobs, bounties, whatever you need," he said, idly tracing the edge of a dagger strapped to his chest. I couldn't tell if he was looking us up and down to size us up or ogle us or what. "We're a four person team, but I can negotiate for more or less if you need. We offer gravity manipulation, spacial distortion, planar travel, and of course force shields for protection and containment. "

He continued on, bragging a little and describing a few of their exploits. Kraiklin also asked a few questions about the job, but Connie kept the details vague. After a bit, she asked me what I thought. When I'd been fucking with Hugh and telling him about Earth in English I'd been sure to take the bracelet off, but since then I'd had plenty of practice talking to Connie and could just make sure I didn't let it translate. "Not sure what it is about this guy but I don't trust him," I said.

"Yeah, seconded. Hang on, let me try something," she said, and then pulled out what I was pretty sure was a flask and slouched in her seat. She took a swig and offered it to Kraiklin. He waved her off, but pulled out a little box full of powder and sniffed a pinch before offering to Connie.

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She took some, although from my point of view I could see the powder fall down the front of her shirt as she pretended to sniff it. "I think we can work together," she said, "We can work out the plan, get supplies, whatever. I'll let you tell me how you want to handle the details, I'm easy. I'm sure you don't want me trying to tell you how to do your job the whole time." Connie cocked an eyebrow at him and smiled. "What's the worst client you've ever had to work for?"

He took the bait and ran with it. I hadn't expected him to be particularly professional, but once he got going it took barely any encouragement from Connie for him to start bragging about being a piece of shit. Juvenile stuff, too - the kind of things I did when I was younger. He proudly told us that he had deliberately taken the hardest route somewhere on a job just to make the client miserable because she was "too good for him" which seemed like an awfully low bar. He had slipped bugs into another client's tent - and not just any bugs, from context it was clear they were something like giant ticks. After Connie joked about having once cut another woman's ponytail off - I cringed as I remembered the look on Josie's face, that thing had been all the way down her back and must have taken years to grow - he confided in us that he had befouled an over-demanding client's food with bodily fluids.

"Only one of my clients has ever actually complained," he said, "Formally, that is. But my cousin is practically a noble, he's got lots of connections and big plans. So he got it taken care of."

"Nice, nice. Well," Connie said as she stood, "I think we've hit it off. We've got to go get the down payment ready, and then we can discuss the details of the plan. How about you meet us at our inn, there's a nice restaurant and we'll buy you all dinner, get to meet the whole crew."

"Sounds perfect," he said, now for sure blatantly ogling us. "What inn are you staying at?"

"It's called the Wild Goose, it's on the East side. I forget the street, but I'm sure you'll find it. Seventh bell okay?"

Once we were clear, jabbed her in the side. "The Wild Goose? Really?"

"Well, I was going to call it the Red Herring, but herring isn't a fish here and throwing a foreign word in didn't seem right. Okay, it's about time for our other meeting. I don't know if you heard me scheduling it with the coordinator from the city, but it'll be mercenaries from multiple agencies all applying at once. I could have canceled it if that guy had been cool. Anyway, we'll swing past the meeting spot and see if the others want to join first."

They didn't. Katrin was still being weirdly quiet, and Errod clearly wanted to stay with her. Mila... was Mila. Presumably she was going to be heading back to Theramas, but for the moment the three of them just told us what hotel we were actually staying at and headed off.

We got set up in what was basically a big conference room, and the most bizarre assortment of characters I had ever seen in one place shuffled in. Maybe they would have been outdone by a comic book convention, but only in terms of spandex. Two of them were clearly not even human, one unnaturally pale with stretched-out proportions and looking like he was dressed up as a vampire for Halloween and the other looking more like a giant Muppet.

That one was shirtless and fully orange, and had climbed the wall to dangle from a rafter. He was oddly wide and blocky, including having a somewhat square head, and his ears were so tiny they were barely there which added to the Muppet vibe. It also didn't help that his teeth were too big and he was covered in orange fuzz, too fine to be fur but too thick to be human body hair. I leaned over to Connie, "It looks like someone gave Gritty a haircut."

She snorted. "Yeah and sent him to the gym. Yikes. What about that one," she said, pointing at a woman who had what appeared to be the ghost of Mr. Potato Head on her shoulder. It was slightly translucent, and had these almost cartoony arms and legs attached to a... well, a lump with eyes. The eyes swiveled to look at me, and its meatball-potato body squished around until there was a tiny version of me in its place - well, kind of. It was a sort of... chibi thing? It could have been cute, almost, but something about it was super creepy instead. Thankfully after a moment it switched to copying someone else, usually going back to being a lump in-between.

"Are there strange spirit things in Nusos I can adopt? I want some fucked up little Pokemon thing. Maybe I'll take Spirit magic, so long as they don't turn into me and watch me while I sleep."

The meeting started with the city representative giving a quick report, basically what we'd already been told they would say. We were promising a large payout - we knew about how much we could promise based on the copy of the contract selling the location of the Duminere to Erathik which Connie had aquired in the other timeline - and were telling the truth about feeling extremely confident. It was worded in a way that made it very clear we could still be wrong or even delusional, and two of them walked out right away.

The others had questions, some badly worded and shouted out at random, but after a moment it became clear one of them had a very detailed list he was working off of and the others mostly let him do it. He was tall and thin, and sitting up extremely straight in his chair while he read out of a notebook. He had glasses, which seemed to be rare in this world, and hair so short and with such tight little curls I thought it was a knit cap at first. He had introduced himself as Cyne Steley.

He asked about what planes we'd been to before, how sure we were that we wouldn't need to go anywhere but the Necropolis and Nusos, how familiar we were with the dangers of those two places, and a number of follow up questions that very carefully probed for more information without asking us to give up details we clearly didn't intend to. The guy just radiated competence. Finally he cleared his throat and looked over his notebook, satisfied. "I have only one more question," he said, "is it possible others are hunting you?"

The question caught me off guard - was that just a random guess? Did he know somehow? But Connie was unphased. "We didn't steal the information we're working off of," she said, "but for unrelated reasons we'd like to travel discreetly. I did some contract work for the alliance in the current war, and may have upset some people."

Cyne nodded, satisfied. "I would recommend choosing only from those of us that have had firsthand experience in Nusos, though that should be most if not all of the people in this room. Furthermore, I have been to the Necropolis and traveled roughly ninety levels down. I am a generalist rather than specializing in a particular plane which will not be relevant if things go to plan but grants flexibility if your needs change, and I have Growth on my Dumine which I can combine with a connection to Heregie to be a competent healer. That being said, I am a pacifist and will not participate in combat."

Connie waved dismissively. "Yeah that should be fine, hopefully we can make it to the Necropolis without needing to deal with anyone."

"I can arrange to get us to the Necropolis with a guarantee of safe travel," he said, "but I want to be clear that my pacifism extends to fighting the undead."

There was some snickering from a few of the remaining mercenaries. A girl by the door caught my eye, not because she was one of the ones laughing but because she had such a calculating look on her face as she watched Cyne. She was a little on the short side, with deep olive skin and unnaturally metallic golden hair that hung in curls to her shoulders. She was wearing a silk dress, a fancier version of the kind Hugh had gotten me when we reached Yallowsben, and despite everyone else having a bit of dust and mud the dress was immaculate. She slipped out the door before I could point her out to Connie.

"They're just corpses stuffed with life mana," someone was saying, "there's nothing to them."

"Nevertheless," Cyne said, "while I feel I would excel at this job I will not raise a hand in violence."

"Hey. Twin chicks!" a voice said. It was the Muppet guy. "Oh, uh, name is Sige Laleah. Listen, I have the solution for you. You guys want to hire one of us, right, and then from what I heard you're looking at probably two more for combat to deal with the zombies or any fucking monsters in Nusos that try something. So you should hire this fucking Cyne guy, I've heard good shit. He knows what he's fucking talking about."

"You don't want us to hire you?" Connie asked.

Sige grinned, with his Muppet teeth. "Yeah see, that's the thing. I'm your backup. I can beat a zombie to pieces, no problem. I've done it a bunch of times, or... Well, actually it was wights in Kertzale but it's the same principle, like. Those fuckers fight the same way and they die the same way, you know?" Several people around the room looked impressed when he mentioned Kertzale.

He dropped down from the beam he'd been dangling from the whole meeting, and pointed at Cyne. "You take this guy, he's your main fucker for transport. You want the best for that, even if he won't swat a fly off your ass because all life is sacred or some shit. Then you take someone really good at killing zombies, that's your big combat spend. And then you get me, right, and I'm maybe not the top of either category but but I'm pretty fucking good and I can do both. So if, y'know, the worst happens? You've got redundancy."

We talked to a few of them, but in the end we agreed that Sige probably had a point. Everyone but Sige and Cyne cleared out, and a few minutes later the room was packed with people applying to be our muscle. Some of them were enormous, others had bizarre weapons I couldn't even really understand how you would use without hitting yourself. One guy had what absolutely appeared to be a rifle, but the base of the barrel was made up of gears.

Connie was about to start talking when the girl in the dress that I had seen leave earlier walked back in. "My name is Aestrid Aldfeld," she announced, "and I'll fight the rest of these losers for this job."

A groan rippled through the room, and almost everyone got up and left. A few lingered, clearly unfamiliar with her and eyeballing the spotless silk dress and perfect curls. Most of those seemed to decide they would trust the crowd and left too - obviously magic meant you couldn't easily judge by stuff like that - but one faked her out and swung at the last second, his hand suddenly covered in a metal gauntlet as it impacted her face at what must have been eighty miles an hour.

The sound of his fingers breaking within the gauntlet as it slammed to a stop against her nose seemed to echo in my head as the rest of the room went silent, only to be filled a moment later by moaning as the man cradled his hand. He stood there watching blood drip from the damaged gauntlet, and then shuffled out of the room.

Aestrid, totally unbothered, turned to look at us. "Well. I think you have your team, then."