The light blinded Leo for only a couple seconds, but he stumbled as he tried to catch his suddenly shifted footing. They all stood on a hill, overlooking the expansive cityscape of Dumatha, which stretched into and beyond the horizon. While the city itself drew his attention, he found himself drawn to the walls, with still ongoing repairs after the attack a month ago.

  Layne moved quickly, starting down the hill to get to the city’s gates. They could see a line of travelers and merchant caravans hoping to get into the city, with some cursory inspections from the city’s guards holding things up. “This shouldn’t take too long.” Layne said as he led the group toward the back of the line. “Probably just keeping security high after the attack.”

  “Well now, look who it is!” A woman said, from the direction of the line. A brunette with gold eyes and a jacket with several patches, surrounded by several more armored men and women. “We’ve been wondering where you went off to, rookie.”

  Leo glanced at his group, and noticed Layne looking as if he wanted to be anywhere else than where he was. “I’ve just been looking into something on my own, Ms. Heide. I trust the guild’s been well?” Layne asked.

  “Well enough. We had a nice solid week or so of downtime before we caught wind of another horde gathering east of the city. It’s not nearly enough to mount another attack on Dumatha, but it’s apparently concerning enough that we’re getting quests to clear them out.” As she spoke, the line in front of the gate began to move, and everyone started walking to continue the conversation.

  “East? What’s out east?” Layne asked, and was met with a shrug.

  “No clue, but enough about us, when did you get a party? I could have sworn that it was you practically begging us to let you join us for the raid.” Ms. Heide’s eyes swept over the party, and after a moment she honed in on Leo. It looked, and felt like she was staring straight into his soul, and perhaps that wasn’t too far off from the truth. “Nevermind that, how does a Mixer get the Equalizer title?”

  Did she use Appraise on him? “A long story,” Leo answered. “but I was in the attack on Normouth that was happening the same time as Dumatha.”

  “Oh, that makes sense. I bet we wouldn’t have gotten the status shift if either of the cities actually fell. Good on you.” Ms. Heide said, then grinned. “I can’t help but wonder, after whatever you’ve got going on with Layne’s over with, do you plan to join a guild? We could use a Mixer.”

  “Er-” Leo didn’t know how to respond. He wasn’t sure what his plans would be after the dungeon.

  Before he could come up with an answer, however, he felt an arm slip over his shoulder and pull him back. Then he heard Hayumi’s voice right behind him. “I’m afraid he’s spoken for, though I may be willing to loan his services to you, depending on the price.”

  Ms. Heide put her hands up in mock surrender. “I get it, can’t blame a woman for trying.” At this point, her guild had reached the gate, and after a cursory look-over from the guards, they were waved in without incident. Before moving to join her guild, Ms. Heide looked back to the party with a wave. “Who knows, if we have another large-scale raid any time soon, I might have to take you up on the offer if you’re still around.”

  With that, she made her way into the city with the rest of her guild. Leo and the rest of the party quickly followed, after a brief look from the guards and a warning. “Keep any weapons sheathed, and don’t use any magic on the streets.”

  Once they were inside, Layne started heading straight for who he wanted to recruit. Leo didn’t want to let the topic of the guild drop, though. “They seemed nice.” He said, after moving to walk beside Layne. “What’s the story there?”

  “Not much of one.” Layne replied. “It was just easier to join a guild to get into the thick of things during the raid. They wanted to keep independent laborers on the outskirts so they wouldn’t interfere with the coordinated parties and guilds.”

  “So…you joined a party to be in the thick of things? Why?”

  “More Karma.” Layne said simply, then continued at Leo’s confused look. “At least, that was my goal. I figured the quest I’d get to defend the city would be of a higher tier if I had had a higher chance of going up against the eldritch titan directly. The gods will reward daring and heroics, within reason. The more risky option tends to be the more rewarding.”

  “Okay, I see your point. So you think the people at the walls in Normouth during its attack would have gotten a higher quest? Mine was heroic.” Leo asked. The girls echoes that their quests were similarly heroic.

  “I’m not sure.” Layne said. “I wasn’t there at the start obviously, but from what I understand, the entire operation had an equal risk. Even if Laborers went to the walls, the darklings scaled them and flooded into the city pretty quickly anyway.”

  “Indeed. Going off of what I saw, barely any creatures made it past this city’s wall at all.” Hayumi commented. As they progressed, what they saw confirmed her words. They’d passed the outskirts of the city, where most of the reconstruction in the wake of the attack took place. The further in they travelled, they stopped seeing signs of recent construction, which meant that most of the fighting took place outside the walls.

  “Did the Eldritch Titan even reach the wall?” Leo asked.

  “No.” Layne replied immediately. “We made sure of that, otherwise they’d probably still be repairing the wall. In any case, we’re almost there.” Nearly an hour of walking from the gate brought them to a small building, labeled as an apothecary, and Layne wasted no time heading straight inside, and everyone else followed suit.

  Entering the building, Leo immediately inhaled the smell from many pungent herbs hanging from the ceiling or generally out in the open air, and he heard someone say. “Woah, that’s a bit of a crowd.” On the opposite side of the building from the entrance, behind a desk sat a man in his mid-twenties, with long black hair currently tied into a ponytail. He had a tired look, with bags under his eyes, but he perked up as the party crowded into the space. “Hey Layne, been a minute. Can I assume this whole group’s with you?”

  “Yes, they’re with me. Have you been well, Cario?” Layne asked.

  “Well enough.” Cario replied. A bump from a backroom drew everyone’s attention away for a moment, before he continued. “So what brings you to my little corner of Dumatha? You seem like one to get fully mixed potions instead of herbs.”

  “You’re right, I’ve actually got a proposition for you. This group I’ve brought with me is actually a party I’m bringing to a dungeon. I wanted to make sure we had a healer, are you interested?”

  Leo watched as Cario’s eyes briefly swept past Layne and over the entire party. “I suppose I am. This is the only offer for anything I’ve gotten other than Bladedust wanting to take me out east for some monster hunting. I have a bit of a complication though.”

  As if on cue, the door to the back section of the building opened up, and someone stepped through. Leo couldn’t see who immediately, as they were holding a stack of boxes that obscured their upper half. It wasn’t until she turned to face Cario that Leo could actually see her from the side. A thin woman with platinum blonde hair that seemed to have some white and grey feathers mixed in. “I finished organizing everything in the back, but I couldn’t figure out where you wanted these to go- oh!” Out of the corner of her eye, she finally seemed to spot Layne and the rest of the party. “You have guests, sorry.”

  “It’s fine. Thought I heard something fall earlier though.” Cario replied.

  “You must have been hearing things.” The woman said, though Leo spotted a blush forming on her cheeks.

  “Anyway,” Cario brought his attention back to Layne. “Millie here has been out of work for a while. If it’s not too much to ask, can we bring her along too?”

  “Bring me? Along for what?” Millie asked, looking around confused, and then hurried to set the heavy boxes she was carrying down in another part of the store.

  “Rank and class?” Layne asked.

  “Windseeker, and we both hit C+ after the raid.” Cario answered.

  Layne turned back to the rest of the group. “It’s up to you. Windseeker would be a good class going into where we’re headed, but that would bring us up to eight people total.”

  Leo glanced around at the rest of the group’s reactions. He’d heard that getting too many people together in a party might reduce the reward, but he didn’t know what the standard for something like this was, only having his tutorial dungeon under his belt.

  “It should be acceptable.” Hayumi answered first. “If this dungeon is as large as you say, we may be encouraged to split up into separate groups to cover more ground.”

  “The more the better, but any more than this and we might get less Karma.” Axilya said. “If whatever’s in the dungeon is worth it though, then Karma might not matter as much.”

  “Um…” Millie came back, eyeing the group with a curious look. “I’m sorry, I just got here, what are you guys talking about? What’s this about a dungeon?”

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  According to the general consensus, no one had any problems with Millie joining the party along with Cario. Layne took another moment to explain things in more detail to the two of them, leaving everyone else back toward the entrance of the store.

  “Is this how party recruiting goes for dungeons all the time?” Leo asked.

  “This is somewhat unique, from what I understand.” Rize answered. “I haven’t gone on a delve like this myself, but dungeons are usually conquered by guilds or established parties. It’s usually hard to get a group of unaffiliated Laborers together on such short notice.”

  “I can only assume since Layne has gathered us together instead of going to a guild, then he is either confident in his ability to clear it with an untested party, or the reward inside is well worth the secrecy.” Hayumi commented. “As we’ve seen, it isn’t like he has no other option.”

  She was right, Leo thought. Leo never even mentioned the fact that Layne literally told Leo that he was ‘only interested in what they’d find at the end’. Getting to the end didn’t even seem to be in question.

  After getting things settled, Cario and Millie took their own time to prepare. Closing up the apothecary, quickly heading off to Dumatha’s markets to buy their own supplies, which had Leo coming along to put what they didn’t need to carry in his Storage space. While walking along with them, he took the time to Appraise the two of them.

  Leo didn’t hear too much about their capabilities, but they both seemed supportive. Thankfully, unlike the last market trip, these two went through relatively quickly to get what they needed, despite Dumatha’s markets having considerably more ground to cover. Once they completed their shopping, they met back up with everyone at Cario’s shop, where everyone changed into their dungeon delving attire since they’d be teleporting directly to the dungeon.

  “Everyone ready?” Layne asked. Leo tried to think of anything they might be missing- since they likely wouldn’t be back until they finished clearing the dungeon, but he couldn’t think of anything that wasn’t already in his Storage. After getting the okay from everyone, he brought up his map to teleport everyone to the dungeon. Leo’s eyes flicked to the notification he expected to pop up, and his hand moved to accept.