Edge Cases

They stepped through the doorway into the Guild, and the Guildmaster paused as she was speaking; she glanced expectantly to the desk where Max usually sat as the receptionist, and frowned slightly when she saw the desk was still empty. "I hope Max is alright," she muttered.

"Is there any reason she wouldn't be?" Sev asked, a note of worry entering his voice. The Guildmaster shrugged, gesturing into the air as she seemed to check through her messages; seeing nothing, she shook her head and dismissed it.

"[Right Place, Right Time] is a gamble," the Guildmaster answered. "She never knows for sure that it'll take her where she wants to be; it'll only take her where she needs to be. The nature of the skill should mean that she's never put into a situation she can't get herself out of, but it doesn't guarantee safety."

"Do you at least have a way to keep an eye on her?" Sev asked.

"It's called trust," the Guildmaster said dryly. "I'm pretty sure you know it already."

"I mean, you keep an eye on us," Sev muttered. "And if you know she has a skill that might land her anywhere..."

"We have some measures of last resort if we need to track her down, but we only use those after a certain amount of time has passed without a message from her, and that hasn't happened yet," the Guildmaster admitted as she climbed up the stairs. "She'll be fine, Sev. We have more important things to worry about right now."

Sev agreed, conceding the point. Still — as they strode up the stairs and back towards their room — he couldn't help but glance to the empty receptionist's desk with a bit of worry.

Hopefully Max was okay. If she wasn't... well, there wasn't that much they could do for her right now. He'd have to trust the Guildmaster and her people knew what they were doing.

"I've already sent out orders to ask anyone with building skills to help build an extension to this town," the Guildmaster said with a sigh, once they were settled back in Sev's room. Sev barely realized how much of a meeting room his room had become; he was starting to wonder if he should ask for a big table of some sort to be put in.

As it was, they just sat in their assortment of chairs in a circle around the room, privacy wards activated. "Luckily this isn't really a full village; more just a number of people decided to live around this Guild branch because of the relative safety it offers... so we should be able to build an extension without any complaints. Most of them will probably even be glad for it. But I take it there's more to your story than you've explained."

"Quite a lot," Sev said with a sigh. He glanced at Misa. "Uh... Misa, you want to take this one?"

"Might as well," Misa said with a slight grimace. "I already explained half the story. Not really one for telling stories, but..."

She explained everything they'd been through, starting from the moment she'd reality-fucked her way into the dungeon. That was the exact term she used, even, which — to her amusement — made Vex cover his face in embarrassment and Sev grumble at her.

"I don't think I was supposed to be able to just teleport into the dungeon like that," Misa said with a slight frown. "It's the only time I felt the skill resist me. But something helped me through."

Derivan nodded. "Shift activated," he said. "I did not realize it until later. But if Shift allows the weakening of boundaries in space, then I believe I subconsciously assisted your... teleportation."

That made sense. Misa continued on to explain what had happened when she tried to block the attack from an unknown assailant, all the way down to the consequences and the way the perpetrator had vanished afterwards; the Guildmaster frowned at that, and took a moment to send out several messages. Most of them, she explained, were along the lines of 'please don't attack any skeletons you see escorting a village', and two of them were warnings to both Elyra and Anderstahl about a potential intelligent monster appearing in their dungeons.

The rest of the explanation faced less interruptions, though the revelations were nevertheless severe, and the Guildmaster's expression was grim. Vex watched carefully the whole time, looking for the fluctuation in magic he'd learned to associate with the infolock activating — but there was nothing. They were able to talk about everything down to the reality anchor and the way it had seemingly altered reality, to the way they'd found Aurum trapped within yet another Overseer, to the way they'd managed to rescue him.

The last part, Misa admitted, was more a stroke of pure luck than anything else — and she wasn't completely sure that what they'd done there was a good thing. She was glad that they'd saved Aurum, whatever that meant with the god of gold now in the process of being anchored to Sev — but she was also worried about what breaking the new dungeon's reality anchor might have done.

Last, but not least, they explained what had happened... after. No one had any idea what to call that, or how to explain what existing there had been like. There were similarities to the space they'd first found the reality anchor in, but it was so much less.

The conversation died there, the five of them lapsing into silence once they'd explained what they'd heard from the two presumed gods they'd spoken with. It was hard to tell exactly what was going on with them — were they hurt? They didn't seem to be. Were they putting on some sort of front? That seemed more likely. Or it was something else entirely, and their guesses were way off the mark.

"It's interesting that the infolock didn't seem to engage at all," the Guildmaster said with a frown. "I'm actually a little worried. I was expecting you to be able to tell me almost nothing, and now I'm concerned that something else happened, and we just don't understand it yet."

"Not much we can do about that, though," Sev said, and the Guildmaster acknowledged that with a tilt of her head.

"As far as the matter at hand goes, I'm almost tempted to say that this is an issue you should bring to the priests at the temple instead." Her brows furrowed slightly as she spoke, as if she was genuinely considering the idea. "They're better equipped to deal with matters of the gods. Except... if all the gods are desperate, they may not be the best source of help."

"They also tend to see the gods as perfect and flawless," Sev pointed out. "If we brought this to them it might cause a bit of a panic. I'm not saying we shouldn't tell them at all — that seems like a good way to accidentally create a rift between the Guild and the temple — but I think we should be careful about who we tell. It shouldn't be a public announcement."

"Gods forbid we make public an announcement like 'the gods are being targeted and stolen away,'" the Guildmaster said, grimacing at the very thought. "Yeah. On that, I think, we agree. And as much as this feels like it's over our heads, I don't think we can afford to ignore this."

She sighed. "I'll leverage what Guild resources I can to look at this problem, but... you four are pretty much one of our stronger assets at this point, and you seem to be at the center of this one way or another." She grimaced slightly. "There's no way those fights didn't get you guys some levels, right?"

Misa frowned, hesitating. "It actually didn't," she said. "We checked. It's not that we didn't level at all, but the levels we got out of it are pretty much just enough for a couple of stat points."

"Except for me!" Vex piped up, eliciting an amused smile from Misa. Once upon a time she might've been jealous, but that was a time that felt far away, now. "It pushed me over the edge into Silver. I got a new skill for it, too. [Splash of Mana]. I haven't experimented with it much, but it's some kind of skill that allows me to manipulate the texture and behaviour of mana." The lizardkin's eyes gleamed with excitement, and Derivan couldn't help chuckling lightly.

"He is looking forward to experimenting with it," the armor said fondly.

"And no one can stop me!" Vex proclaimed.

"We wouldn't dare try," Misa said with a faint grin. The Guildmaster only watched, though a slight smile slipped into her expression; it vanished just as quickly when she focused her attention back on the subject at hand.

"I want you to train on the way to Elyra," the Guildmaster said. "Like I said, one way or another, you four are at the center of this — and the matter appears to be somewhat urgent, but not so much that you can't afford some time to train."

"We're running on some timers," MIsa said with a slight frown. She explained the degrading anchor quickly, though she added that she wasn't quite sure if anything had changed with the way the anchor had merged with her skill.

When she was done, the Guildmaster looked... sympathetic, but her face was still hard.

"Be that as it may," she said, and then she sighed. "I've seen this with adventurers before. They get caught up in something big happening, and it always seems like there's something urgent right around the corner, and they just don't have the time to stop and relax, or to train and prepare. You cannot function if you don't do both of those things.

"If you don't take some time for yourselves, you're liable to make a mistake and get yourselves killed, and whatever benefit your gods are trying to pull to get out of this situation will end there. If you don't take the time to train, you may not be strong enough to face whatever challenges come next — worse, you may not understand your skills and resources well enough to leverage them in the coming fights. This has been your greatest strength as a team so far. I underestimated you when I said you're the kind of team that can fight a tier above your rank. Level almost doesn't matter for you four.

"But that's only if you polish the advantage you have. It's important to focus on your goals, don't get me wrong, but it's just as important to strike a balance between all these things, and not allow yourselves to be consumed one way or another." The Guildmaster's eyes were serious. She spoke almost like she was looking through them, like this was something she'd seen again and again —

...it probably was something she'd seen before, wasn't it.

Slowly, Misa nodded, though her hand instinctively went to the pocket where she kept the reality anchor. She couldn't help but worry, for all that her family had said they'd also work on the problem, for all that her skill claimed there was now some permanent connection between her and her home.

Her pocket was empty.

Misa froze for a moment in panic. "The anchor," she said out loud, and all four of the others looked at her sharply.

"Did you lose it?" the Guildmaster asked, her voice urgent.

"I— it shouldn't have been stolen," Misa said. She tried her best to keep the defensiveness out of her voice. "I haven't been close enough to anyone for it to be pickpocketed."

"Let's think through this," Sev said. "I doubt something like that would get stolen so easily. When was the last time you checked it?"

"Right before I accepted the bonus room rewards," Misa said with a frown, and paused. The box had said there was a synergy between her skill and the item. She hadn't heard of item-skill synergies before, but...

Sure enough, Vex spoke up, a slight frown on his snout. "Item-skill synergies don't usually consume the item," he said. "It's been reported maybe once or twice that I've seen, and in those cases it's usually possible to check the item box by concentrating on the skill box."

Misa frowned. "You could've told me that before," she grumbled.

"I forgot," Vex said, embarrassed. "I don't remember everything all the time, you know."

"I know, I know," Misa said. "I didn't mean it. Just stressed. Okay, let me see..."