This planet was a bit similar to one they had been on before, at least in a simulation at the Trial of Celestial Awakening. It was more developed than the planet they had been asked to pioneer themselves, but not as developed as many of the places they had been recently. It was more similar to the planet where they had spent time in the swamp and the forest hunting, the one in the stage where they had been told the mountains were so dangerous even Enlightened had been cautious about venturing too deep.

  They found a very similar situation here, as there were massive areas, most of the planet really, that were very high danger zones, much of it from not having enough data. There just weren't enough people, especially strong people, to explore the place and keep the databases updated on what was out there and what was changing. It meant there was a need for a note of caution, as the world was more dangerous than the one where they had just recently done the competition to win the secret book pointing to Liveria's missing wife.

  Beth led the little trio up to the lobby of the CRA Hall after they arrived, ready to book a room. The place was not nearly as busy as she was used to, with only a small number of people hanging about in random chairs. She supposed it made a certain kind of sense, as she doubted there would be too many people wanting to train or spar with a whole world to explore and train in. She also doubted there would be many members or hangers-on just hovering around the building on such a new, low-population world. It reminded her a bit of her home Hall, including the two people behind the main counter looking rather bored with the lack of business.

  "'Scuse me," Beth said to the dwarf on the right.

  "Yea, lassie?" the dwarf asked her with a raised brow.

  "We're gonna be here for a while. Can I rent a room?" Beth asked him, showing her Silver Emblem.

  "Gotta be careful here as a Silver, lassie," he said. "Lot of strong beasts, and people, that might do ya in out there, aye."

  "Appreciate the warning," Beth said with a small smile. "What do you have to rent?"

  "We got just about everything, lassie," he said. "You know the rooms and rates?"

  "Yeah. We normally take a cheapie in the basement, but maybe we can get something nicer?" Beth said, glancing at the other two.

  "Yes," said Sera at the same time Blood growled, "Yes, please!"

  "The cheaper main building rooms are fifty silver a day, right?" Beth asked.

  "Aye, lassie," he replied.

  "We'll take one of those, unless the peanut gallery has objections?" she said, looking at the other two again.

  "That's fine," Sera spoke for them both.

  "Good," Beth said, putting five gold coins on the counter. "Ten days to start, though I think we'll be here a lot longer."

  "Here for the gold rush?" the dwarf asked casually as he prepped them three room keys, not having to ask as he clearly picked up on the group dynamic.

  "Yeah, something like that," Beth said with a laugh. "We got a task from somebody to come do a Trial here."

  "Ah, don't know abo' all that," the dwarf said, handing her the keys and stroking his massive red beard. "Haven't heard we have a mission like that."

  "Nah, not a CRA mission. We're actually doing work for somebody else right now," Beth explained. "Though, speaking of CRA work, we need to start working on our Gold Emblems."

  "Ya know ya need nine gold-level-plus missions for Gold qualification? And that's each?" he asked, nodding when the other two flashed their Silver Emblems to show they were all at that level.

  "Yeah, we know," Beth nodded. "Do you guys have many gold missions here?"

  "We have a handful and the other city has a handful," he replied. "Not enough for twenty-seven, even though none of us have been taking missions. Save those for the younger members like you all rolling through."

  "So, just how many does this hall have right now?" Beth asked.

  "One sec," the dwarf muttered, pulling up a screen and looking through it. "We have ten silver, four gold, and one platinum mission here. The other Hall over in Brecht has twelve silver, three gold, and one platinum mission."

  "How hard are those platinum missions? If you could estimate them roughly?" Beth asked.

  "Eh, it ain't always about difficulty so much, though that’s often a big part," he replied. "Platinum and above missions deal with extremely powerful beasts, strong monsters, or very high-value dignitaries. As Silvers, you lassies could handle most gold-level missions with ease, but plat-level missions would just be too much. You need to be at least Empowered to start thinking about that kind of stuff, and a lot of members don't get to Platinum until they hit Enlightened. That's when most are comfortable taking on the platinum missions and completing them without dyin'."

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  "Then can we start loading up on the gold-level missions?" Beth asked.

  "Can only have two gold-levels assigned to one team at once. 'Ave 'ad problems in the past with teams takin' on too much stuff at once," he explained.

  "Then let me and one of the others grab one of those each," Beth said.

  "We got two extermination missions at gold. Both are dealin' with beasties at least at level two hundred forty. Should be a challenge fer yer little group, but doable," he said, taking Beth and Sera's Emblems and assigning the missions to them.

  "Sorry, I didn't catch your name?" Beth asked.

  "Right, lassies, I'm Morne Brighthammer," he said. "Guess ya could say I'm second on the pecking order around here."

  "Oh, I thought you might be Hall Master," Beth said. Her checking had shown he was level five-ten, meaning he was at the very least an Enlightened, and he gave off the impression of quite a bit of strength just standing there looking at them.

  "Nah, lassie, that's Trish," he said with a shake of his head. "Tall-ass elf lady that could melt the sun itself. She's either doin' paperwork, keepin' the governor happy, or huntin' one of the real dangerous ones left on the planet down. You'll probably see her at some point."

  "Cool, good to know," Beth said, accepting her Emblem back and checking it.

  "That's a mission to kill a thousand sand slitherers," he explained as he handed Sera's Emblem back. "The little bastards live in the desert ta the south of here and ambush anyone and anything that gets near 'em. They're all at least level two-forty, but we've had reports of ones close to three hundred, so ya should still be careful.

  "The one I gave the big lassie is for killing harpies in the mountains to the west. Same deal, but the mountains are way more dangerous than the desert, at least if you venture deep into 'em. And don't go down inta tha caves, lassies. I'd hate to have to do another body retrieval already."

  "Bad shit happening already?" Beth asked.

  "Got a group of rich yuppies that came here with some guards to try to make a quick buck, though I suspect it was more to party and have a good time without their parents watching. They ignored the Pledge of the Path guards, who were the only worthwhile bodies in the lot, and went down into the caves. All their non-Pledge guards and six of the eight hoity-toity types died down there and the other two contracted us to retrieve their bodies and gear. It was a bloody fuckin' mess, through and through. So, stay out of the caves!" he shouted the last part, though more out of frustration and at the room in general, waving the three of them off.

  "We'll report back when we're done, thanks," Beth said over her shoulder as the three walked down the hallway.

  It was a bit of an unusual thing now, Beth being used to renting a cheap suite in the basement for years, to now walk partway through the front building and ride an elevator up to their room. There were a couple more expensive suites than the ones for fifty silvers a day, but she definitely thought they were getting more than their money's worth even at that level as she entered the room in front of the other two. The room wasn't as nice as the suite they had used at the Royal Rose, and it lacked a balcony, but it was rather close. It had a large central room with several components including a small sitting area, a much larger area with a huge couch in front of a wallscreen, an area with a bar, and large windows which were tinted to provide a view out but not in. The suite had a full kitchen, a massive bathroom, and a huge bedroom with a massive bed.

  "Place is pretty nice," Sera said as she paced around.

  "A bit nicer than the basement suites," Blood agreed.

  "Has more mana, too," Beth said as she took off her gear after the door was shut and slumped on the couch.

  "I remember some discussion about that from some time ago," Blood said. "I remember Baelvyr talking about his room being super dense in mana."

  "Better for relaxing, better for recharging mana, better for studying skills," Sera said, ticking off on her very long fingers.

  "Maybe the one area it even out-competes the Royal Rose," Beth said.

  "Possibly," Sera said, having shed her gear and sat in Beth's lap.

  "Your butt's so big," Beth mumbled, grabbing Sera's hips and adjusting her position slightly before just holding her.

  "I know you like it," the dragon replied coyly.

  "Absolutely," Beth murmured, looking off into space.

  "Looking something up?" Sera asked as she leaned against her.

  "Yeah, let me send it to you two," Beth said, giving Blood a nod as she joined them on the U-shaped couch.

  "Area reports?" Blood muttered, looking through them.

  "Data on the different areas, including flora and fauna, as well as weird terrain and a bunch of more detailed data. We should look through it for all the nearby areas, not just the mountains and the desert," Beth explained.

  "Good thinking. What are we hitting first?" Sera asked.

  "Let's do the desert, so maybe finish with that report last," Beth said, all three of them nestled together getting lost in their communicators.

  "What do you think?" Beth asked after a while.

  "I think this all sucks," Blood grumbled.

  "I have to agree," Sera said. "The mountains suck; tons of flying beasts up there, tons of unknowns just on the slopes, very little exploration of underground and the things under mountains don't always stay there. Then there's the ocean to the east, which is just a nightmare of massive beasts with teeth and tentacles and bladed fins, and who actually likes water combat? Then there's the desert; full of shit with crazy poisons and way too many teeth, most of it under the sand, which is also really heavy and coarse because it comes from a more solid, tougher rock, and then it's hot as hell and dry as bone."

  "The grassland to the north isn't that bad," Beth said.

  "But we don't need to go there," Sera replied.

  "Still somewhere we could train and explore," Beth pointed out.

  "I guess that's true. But what's our overall plan?" Sera asked.

  "Uh, how 'bout this? We try to do either one or two of these gold-level missions first. After we have either one or two of them done, we should try to do our next rebirths," Beth said. "Then, we farm some levels after the rebirth and either try the Trial or do a couple more missions. It all depends on where we're at."

  "It's not that easy to just get a rebirth," Sera said.

  "You haven't been with us long enough," Blood said drolly.

  "I'm telling you, we have plenty of levels to get through, and then we have the items for a True Rebirth, if we're going to do that," Sera argued.

  "How long?" Beth asked calmly.

  "How long…what?" Sera replied, scrunching her brows in confusion.

  "How long do you think it will take to get through our remaining levels and then get all the items? Just say roughly," Beth replied.

  "Well, I mean, uh, it's gotta be at least another three years of work, right?" Sera said, scrunching her face up as both Beth and Blood stared at her with blank looks. "What? What're those looks for?"

  "And how long do we have?" Beth asked.

  "Beth, Laselle said six months. Weren't you there? What's happening right now?" Sera asked, frustrated.

  "I guess we should just demonstrate," Beth said, standing up with Sera in her arms and walking over to the center of the room. Sera looked back and forth between them curiously but waited for whatever it was Beth was going to do. She didn't disappoint, making the gate appear from the floor of the room after a moment. If Beth had been expecting some big reaction, with Sera leaping out of her arms and jumping in shock, she was bound to be disappointed, as the dragon just looked at the gate curiously for a minute before looking back at Beth.

  Beth stepped into the gate with Sera in her arms, stepping into the living room of their secret house. Sera looked around with much more interest, showing that this was something more out of her expectation than the gate itself. Beth moved over to a couch and sat down with Sera still in her arms, quite a lot of dragon girl occupying her lap.

  "Impressive. But you told me about this already?" Sera said in a questioning tone, looking at Beth.

  "Let me tell you the best part," Beth replied. "You're experiencing time at a ten times faster rate sitting on this sofa compared to the sofa in the suite."

  "No way! You have a personal ten times acceleration?!" Sera exclaimed, standing from Beth's arms and pacing around.

  "Watch your communicator," Beth said, hopping up after a minute and picking up the massive girl and walking out of the portal.

  "Incredible," Sera breathed as soon as they were out of the gate. "You really do have ten times."

  "That's not all. Put your armor on," Beth said.

  "What?! No way!" Sera exclaimed, her armor and spear appearing. She watched eagerly as the gate disappeared back into the floor before reemerging, looking slightly different.

  "After you," Beth said with a little half-bow, gesturing to the gate.

  "No way," Sera said again before striding into the gate.

  Beth followed in behind her, seeing the big expanse of grassland under a noonday sun with a handful of goblins in the distance. Sera was looking around, spear held loosely in one hand with the tip pointed down a bit and the end of the haft held behind and above her. She narrowed her eyes as she stared at the nearest goblin, examining it from quite a distance. She held her hand out and felt the air, making her gauntlet disappear for a minute before re-equipping it. She finished by sniffing at the air, slowly turning in a circle to examine everything in as much detail as she could from next to the gate.