The group of 40 adventurers were all gathered at the dungeon entrance, their attention drawn to a man in a suit standing above them all on a rock platform. He had previously introduced himself as Trevor, the guild staff leading this investigation “From what we know thanks to the scouting party…” he motioned to the side of the platform, at a group of 3 small cat beastkin and one human “the group of false Gaia worshipers have set up 1km into this field dungeon.”
“We know it’s false Gaia?” one of the adventurers spoke up.
“Yes.” He motioned to Honey and Dem, the two dumping their inventory of slave collars and a few staffs “Those are recovered from defeated ‘high priests’, slave collars outlawed by the official faith.” He spat.
‘Fake Gaia?’ Mia recalled someone telling her that… the port? So it must be true now. She glanced down at the staffs, noting one had the cylinder inserted into it “A-a-ah.” She started carefully teetering towards it, that thing is dangerous.
“From what we know they have set up a small camp, it is somewhat established, and we are thinking they started setting it up since last night.”
“They have a teleport circle set up!” one of the cat beastkin spoke up.
“Right, we have few magicians inside blocking that.” He then pointed towards the entrance “Our main goal is…to…excuse me? What are you doing?” the man snapped his fingers, a pillar of stone popping Mia into the air and into the waiting arms of a stone hand, lifting her up to to the man’s eye level. “Those are not something to be touched, young lady.”
“Hey!” shouted Ria.
“No I-“ Mia was shocked from the sudden jolt, but shook it off, it was then that she noticed she was in front of a large crowd and her eyes started spinning “I- the- uh…” she shrank, lowering her head and pointing to the staffs in the pile “D-dangerous.”
The man paused, rolling his eyes “Yes, very dangerous. Which is why you shouldn’t touch.”
“No! she’s saying they explode!” Ria yelled, running up to the base of the arm that was holding Mia “Like, really big explosion, super bad.”
Eyebrow raised Trevor turned to Dem and Honey “…Who are these two fox beastmen?”
Honey suddenly stood up straight “Mia and Ria sir!”
“G-rank, we actually got most of this stuff from them.” Dem said, pausing then slowly raising up a single finger “Wait… if these explode why were you throwing them into the dungeon holes?”
Ria shrugged “Couldn’t fit them in the inventory.” She nodded to Mia.
Mia sheepishly nodded “H-h-high p…p-priests have t-them…. sometimes…”
Trevor rubbed his eyes “And… how do you know this? G-rankers?”
“Well…I…” Mia wanted to speak up, but with a lot of eyes on her she couldn’t keep herself calm. This was not something she was used to.
“Because asshole, they attacked our village before and we spent all day fighting them.” Ria spat “My sister knows more about them than me, but she said the explosion spreads something called t-HMPH?!” Ria reached up to her mouth, it had suddenly filled with sand.
Trevor clapped “Alright everyone! Set up a small safe zone for us to keep the captured children safe in the dungeon, anyone not evolved or less then level 150 will stay behind and guard it.” He then snapped his fingers twice, pointing to another group of adventurers “You, Rising stars, Blue Blazing, and Dragon’s Maw on me!”
He flipped around, him and Mia sinking to ground level while a stone hut rose up and encased all of them, trapping them from the outside world.
“Pleh! Plah! Pituiey!” Ria started spitting up sand, finally able to “whats the bi-“
Trevor gripped Ria’s skull “If you were about to say what I THINK you were about to say you should know NOT to just casually say that WORD.”
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“Hey Trev, calm down. She’s just a kid.” One person from the adventurer groups spoke up,
Two more got behind him “Ease up on her ok? If she knows that then- is it getting cold in here?”
All of them stopped what they were doing, noticing the fine layer of mist pooling at the floor “Don’t touch my sister.” Mia glared, stalagmites of ice forming around her.
“…Fine!” Trevor let go of Ria, now that she was released spun around, throwing a punch at him that was swiftly blocked by a stone pillar “…you done?”
“…” Ria leaped back, landing next to Mia “Asshole.” She then knelt next to Mia, trying to calm her down.
“Haah…don’t want to be hurting kids when we are supposed to be saving them.” A reptilian beastmen with white scales spoke.
“Yeah, know your stressed Trevor but now is not the time.” Another reptilian beastmen spoke, this one female with red scales.
Trevor walked over to the item pile, picking up one of the staffs “Sorry “ he brushed it off, careful not to touch anything that looked like a switch or button “bit of a, touchy, subject.” His eyes scanned the group, falling onto Mia “Toxic is not an easy status to come by, surviving it never happens. How do you know of it?”
“…” Mia glared at him, but then she felt Ria’s palm upon her head and sighed “Church attacked village… one of the kids got it. Mini explosion and infected.” She pointed to the staff with the cylinder in it “Cylinder, might be power source.”
Honey notably looked away, sweeting bullets. Dem slowly turned to her, looking a bit cross. “It just fit so perfectly…” she mumbled.
Trevor carefully picked it up “It didn’t explode… all high priests have these?”
“That’s gonna be a pain.”
Mia shook her head “Some. Will use it as last resort.”
“Alright, should be able to kill them before, how useful they mark themselves for us.” He then pointed at the adventurer group Rising Stars “You guys are in charge of finishing off any gold trimmed bastards you see.”
The group of three humans and one tiger beastmen nodded “Right!” the four shouted
“Blue Blazing” He pointed to the other group “Get the kids out of there, I will assign to you some B-rankers, assume all the kidnapped kids have slave collars on and take precautions. No low-level grunt shouting and order for them to kill themselves.”
Five aquatic mammal beastmen of various races rose their voices in agreement “Got it.”
“And finally, Dragon’s Maw.” He slowly turned to the 3 lizard beastkin “take care of any high level out liar, we have sent several high-ranking parties to their ship, and if their leader isn’t there he is sure to be here. Keep an eye out for anyone that stands out and kill them.”
“No captures?” One of the three asked.
“No, no need for this to get muddied than it already is.” He shook his head “I doubt these dissenters want to get the actual church involved.” He shrugged “We are raiding their ship, we will get proof enough from there.”
“What about us?” Ria spoke up, waving her hand.
“You two…G-rankers…Despite being able to kill low leveled evolved individuals you are still G-rank.” Trevor stared at the two, a discomfort washing over both of them “But out of respect for your accomplishments today, I won’t send you home on the raft if you wish to stay and fight.” He smirked “Guarding the camp or chasing down run aways, your pick.”
“…you appraised us.” Mia glared; she had forgotten to set up a fake status page. He just saw they both were heroes.
“Runaways!” Ria decided for them.
“Good, then when we get back, depending on how productive you are and the prey you catch, the celebratory dinner shall be on me… to make up for my earlier outburst.” He smirked at Mia.
“…” Mia looked at her level, 89, due to his appraisal just now Trevor knew how close she was to evolution “…might pass…”
Trevor shrugged “I’ll at least put in a recommendation for a rank increase.” He then looked between all of them “Anything else? We have their teleportation blocked but we still better hurry.”
“Oh.” Mia perked up “They might have a barrier that weakens magic, makes them almost invisible, a-?!”
Trevor gripped her head “What.” He said, grinding his teeth in a smile “Explain. Everything.” He raised her into the air, despite the many protests from everyone else in the hut screaming for him to let her go.
* * *
“Dem! Honey! Go alert the port!! NOW!” Trevor yelled “and someone get me the scouts!”
“”YES!!”” The two ran out of the hut, leaving everyone alone.
Mia had told them everything she knew about the church, from the barrier to the necklaces and tried to better explain the mini-nukes and toxic.
“This might be bad.” One of the members of Rising Stars said as the scouting party came running in.
“Yes? What do you need of us?” their cat leader asked.
Trevor reached out to grab one of them, but stopped himself, grabbing ahold of his own twitching arm “Did you happen to see a human sized metallic tower with a bunch of strange cylinders at their camp?”
The group looked at each other, each doing their best to recall every detail about the camp that they could “Uh, no. don’t think so.” One of them pipped up “Just cages, tents, lot of people, and the teleportation circle.”
A lot of the people inside the hut breathed a sigh of relief.
“Wait, can they keep it in a tent?” One asked, all eyes falling on Mia.
With all eyes on her, she shrunk into herself, shakingly giving a shrug.
“We strike fast and hard then.” Trevor headed to the entrance of the hut as it started to dissolve into sand “Everyone! You have your orders! We strike now! For Lexon!”
“For Lexon!” everyone roared, storming inside the dungeon.
Mia raised her hand, getting excited herself, but she couldn’t help but shake this bad feeling. It bugged her she didn’t know the outcome of this in the original timeline, if it even happened at all. All she could do was save and hope for the best.