Nyssa was already in the parking lot.
It was six in the morning and the redhead was already awake.
“Took you long enough.” It fascinated me how her braids didn’t move as she shook her head. “Gall left almost an hour ago.”
“Why didn’t you..?” I shook my head. “Which one is yours?” There were a lot of vehicles on the lot, but none of them looked like they had ever been driven off road.
“None of these.” She nodded for me to follow her.
After we had walked down a couple streets, I was starting to get more concerned that my curiosity could hold back. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were going to rob me.”
The golden woman glanced at me over her shoulder, then shook her head. “Nah, probably don’t have enough on you to make it worth the effort.”
I almost told her how much All I was carrying, but considering her father was Tier Five, that wasn’t an amount that would impress her. “So what are we doing out here?”
She cut through a parking lot and arrived at a well used vehicle. It had wider tires, so it could be used on sand. There wasn’t a roof though and the solid bar braced over the backseat, could support a large ranged weapon. More often than not, the Chasers had harpoons mounted there, so that they could snag transports or stop Nobles that were traveling between cities.
Most of the population lived behind the closed walls of a city. Having a God on hand to deal with any major threats kept most people safe. Those who dared to live in the wilds, usually took their lives into their own hands. All it took was a single Dungeon break to start dropping monsters outside the city or the once every fifty or so years Dungeon that would pop up in the middle of nowhere. There wasn’t any warning, and monsters would pour out of it until Adventurers noticed and were able to seal it. Thankfully, it took a while before anything big escaped from a new Dungeon, but your average Mundane would be slaughtered by a level one monster. It hadn’t taken too many villages getting wiped out for people to start staying inside the walls. Now there were vast expanses of open space in between the cities where there was nothing but nature, roads, and bandits.
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“Why did you park all the way over here?” I got in the passenger’s seat.
“So that people would think that we were staying here.” Nyssa shook her head. “When your father is trying to hide that he’s a bandit leader, it helps to misdirect.”
I caught on to what she was saying. “There’s a bounty on his head.”
She nodded. “A decent sized one too. Not that I think that there are many who would try to collect it that could beat him. The wanted information has him listed and priced as a Tier Four.”
That would give him a little bit of security. Before I could ask a followup question I saw the mall. I leaned over her to point at it. “Please stop here!” I saw the confused look on her face. “I need to pick up my gear real quick.”
She sighed and made the turn, driving me up to the front door.
“Make it fast.” The golden woman was obviously not happy about having to make a pitstop. “We’re burning daylight.”
“I’ll be right back.” I waved at her as I hopped out of the vehicle and ran inside.
It didn’t take me long to find the gear pickup crystal. All I had to do was request a trade from it and the crystal registered my CB and looked up the weapons and armor that were being held for me. It took a few minutes, but everything was placed in a one-sided trade, which I quickly accepted. With my gear acquired, I ran back out of the Mall. Nyssa was still parked in the same place she’d been when I left.
I jumped inside the vehicle. “Did you stay here?”
She waved her left hand around. “Nobody came, so why should I drive around, when the whole thing is one big parking lot?”
I wasn’t going to complain. Her not moving had probably saved us a few seconds and hadn’t gotten in anyone else’s way.
“Any other errands you want to run?” Nyssa pulled out onto the main road.
“Nope.” I leaned back in my seat. “Anything else about this mission I should know?”