Dungeon Raider System

Uriel came back to the Dungeon Raiders HQ after a long week in college. He still had some issues adjusting to his new schedule, but what bothered him the most was how difficult it was for him to reach the basic training goal which caused him to miss all of his daily trites.

He got inside the old building dragging his backpack up the stairs to the second floor where the living quarters were located, then he dropped on the couch with a long sigh. Each trite was worth 1k credits, which meant he lost a total of 5k just because he couldn't participate on the physical training class.

As if that wasn't bad enough, he was still struggling to wrap his head around the missing students and the creature he saw that night with Amy. They both bowed not to speak about it with anyone, which troubled him because he didn't know much about werewolves, though after seeing the creature, he was more inclined to believe it was a human with a shapeshifting trait.

"Uriel, do you have something to tell me?" Medusa tapped her feet on the floor.

"Uh? No?" Uriel wasn't sure how to answer, but when she glared at him he made sure to lower his gaze. Even if he knew she wouldn't activate her petrifying glare on him, he was still traumatized after last time and would never look her in the eye, especially when she was upset.

"You look so guilty right now!"

"I don't even know what you're talking about."

"Someone told me they saw you with a 'stunning beauty' the other night, is that the truth?"

"Oh! That! I guess it's true." Uriel shrugged his shoulders.

"Were you studying? Working? Tell me!"

"Calm down, it's not like she's my girlfriend or anything."

"G-g-girl girlfriend..." Medusa tripped on her own tongue and began mumbling the same word over and over.

"What's up boss," Nika showed up wearing her business attire. "What's her deal?" she continued, waving her hand in front of Medusa to see if she reacted, but she was unresponsive.

"I went on a date with this girl and..."

"You're cheating on us!?" Nika said in mocked anger.

"What's the company's situation?"

"I secured the funds to buy the equipment, but I'm still having trouble recruiting people."

"Leave that to Sam, he's quite popular in the Cryptid hunting agency."

"That's what I did, he's been working hard as our public relations director."

"Sounds way too cool for a company like ours. We have five bosses and a single employee." Uriel sighed.

"Speaking of that, you have a lot of pending work. Give me a few minutes and we'll discuss how to proceed." Nika handed Uriel a folder filled with documents and then rushed over to her room. After a short while she reappeared wearing her comfy long shirt and slippers leaving no trace of the serious businesswoman Uriel just spoke to.

"So, what do you think?" She said while crouching down to raid the pantry and grab as many snacks as she could fit in her arms.

"This is a lot of money, how did you manage to get so much money?"

"I sent an invoice to the Mapple corporation asking for your compensation for the expedition, the rest of that money came from a loan shark, but we'll be able to repay them as soon as we start extracting the orichalcum."

"That's a bit too optimistic." Uriel scowled.

"Not really," Medusa chipped in. "We have a lot of the things we need right here. Our first floor used to be a smeltery after all."

"I thought orichalcum couldn't be smelted."

"There's a few methods of extracting and processing raw orichalcum. The most difficult part is, of course, the extraction. Raw orichalcum is always clumped together and it's tough to break, but luckily we can use orichalcum tools or people with traits to break the vein.

The Mapple corporation always used people with traits, but the army usually prefers technology which is weird because it's a technology corporation. I'm thinking we can use a mix of both in order to save costs." Medusa explained.

"There's only one person with a fire element trait I know, but I would trust him as far as I can throw him." Uriel replied thinking about Mark.

"Who said anything about fire? We need someone who can identify the weak spots in the vein and people strong enough to break it into chunks small enough to be safely hauled outside." Medusa continued.

"Nika," Uriel turned to look her straight in the eye. Usually she would make a flirtatious joke, but she was taken by surprise. "I trust you'll do what's best for the company. You can keep me informed, but you can't expect me to look over all of this documents. There's something I need to take care on campus and I simply don't have the time."

"You can't." Luna appeared from her room wearing her baggy pajama even though it was almost five O' clock. She had bags under her eyes and she had lost a lot of weight making her look sickly.

"I can't what?"

"You can't escape your responsibilities. We chose you as our leader for a reason, you can't do math, you don't know how to talk to people and you're completely unaware of how a business works..."

Everyone waited for Luna to finish speaking, especially Uriel who expected to hear something nice about himself, but she fell silent.

"What she's trying to say is, while we can do things you can't, there's something only you can do and that is to keep us together. Without you, Sam and I would have never become friends, Luna wouldn't even reply my texts and... I wouldn't be here."

"Besides, you're the CEO on paper, which means you have to sign the documents yourself." Nika, who had been a part of the conversation just a couple minutes ago, spoke from the couch with a mouthful of chips.