The Outlands

The next morning, Tess was woken by banging from outside of the hotel room. She yawned, stretching and looking back to see that Eyfura and Alice were still asleep. A glance at the clock told her it was three in the morning, but it didn’t seem like whoever it was was going to go away. So, she shuffled over to the door and looked through the peephole. On the other side she found a rather indignant-looking demon staring at the door, preparing to knock again.

She was fairly tall, with long black hair, a glossy set of horns, bat wings, and a spade shaped tail. Her skin was perfectly tanned and her clothes, though they were sleepwear and clearly made for comfort, were ornate and obviously expensive. Tess opened the door a crack, not taking off the chain so that the demon couldn’t try to force the door open any more. “Hello?” She asked sleepily, “Do you need something? We’re trying to sleep.”

The demon’s face reddened. “Yes, I need something.” She hissed. “I put word out among high society that I would be visiting this dungeon sometime this week, and when I got here, I found that some knucklehead had booked the penthouse for some indeterminate amount of time. Do you have any idea how incensed that makes me?”

Tess blinked. “Did you make a reservation?”

“I shouldn’t have to. There’s no use spending that extra cash on booking some really expensive room after I made it clear I would be here this week. Just who do you think you are?!”

“Um, I’m Tess. Who are you?”

The demon hissed. “What do you mean “who are you”!? How can you not know who I am?!”

Tess shrugged, too tired to care about any of this. “I’m still new to the business, haven’t met many people. It’s not my fault your memo didn’t make it to us.”

The girl growled. “What’s your last name?”

“Los. Why?”

The demon smirked triumphantly. “I’ll be pulling some strings and you’ll soon find it hard to find anyone willing to work with you. You should really learn to watch your tongue around important people.”

“That’s cool and all, but I think you should do your research first.” Eyfura said calmly, unhooking the chain and opening the door all the way. “The irony of this situation is astounding.”

The girl opened her mouth to retort, but froze as she took Eyfura in. Trembling, she turned to a short elf man who Tess had been unable to see until the door had been opened all the way. “Are there…”

The man shook his head. “No illusions, my lady. She’s the real deal.”

Eyfura was smirking. “You see, the funny thing about this little lady right here is that she’s important enough to not really find people like you important at all. So, let me ask you: how can you not know who she is?” Eyfura patted Tess’s head, tussling her hair a little.

“I-I’ve never seen her at any important functions, L-Lady Almes.” The demon stuttered. “S-so I assumed…”

Eyfura yawned theatrically. “That’s because she hasn’t been to any. However, if you had been paying any modicum of attention to the rumor mill as of late, you would know that Evan’s grandkids have recently begun training as freelancers.”

“Evan…” She thought on that name for a beat, then understanding dawned on her face and she paled considerably. “You mean Lord Los?”

“He prefers Guildmaster Los, but yes.” Eyfura replied lazily, giving Tess another pat. “And, between my presence, the things I’ve told you, this cutie’s name, and the look on your face, you seem to have realized what I’m getting at.”

The demon nodded furiously. “I-I’m sorry, Lady Los. I didn’t realize, please forgive me.”

“Sure? I guess?” Tess replied, bewildered. “That was super rude, but I can understand how coming to a hotel and finding the room you expected to stay in was full would be frustrating.”

“Hey, what are you all making such a racket about this early in the morning?” Alice asked grumpily, stalking into the hall. She stopped once she saw the people in the hallway, narrowing her eyes.

“These people were quite angry that the suite was filled and were giving Tess an earful.” Eyfura said innocently, turning to Alice.

“Did she have a reservation?” Alice asked, raising an eyebrow.

“She said no, but that she had spread word among important people that she’d be coming here sometime this week.” Tess said.

Alice raised the eyebrow even further. “First I’m hearing of this.”

The girl, who had finished having another hurried conversation with the elf, turned back to the others. “I-I’m sorry, Lady Reshi. I didn’t think to include you because I knew you were too high level to visit such a place normally. I didn’t know you were training a protégé.”

Alice shrugged. “The guildmaster wanted us to keep it on the down-low. Tess, has she introduced herself?”

The demon shook her head, then dropped into a curtsey. “M-my deepest apologies. I am Maven Sarlienne, crown princess of the Paumen Kingdom.”

Tess scratched her neck. “I’m Tess Los, uh…granddaughter of the guildmaster, I guess? Is there a title for that?”

Eyfura laughed, patting Tess’s head once again. “No, but there doesn’t really need to be, everyone knows not to mess with his family.”

“If you would forgive my rudeness, may I ask why you don’t bear any of Los bloodline’s distinguishing features?” Maven asked.

“What do you mean?”

“She means their eye color and their hair color.” Eyfura explained. “They’ve all got those purple eyes and that bright red hair, it’s become something of a way to recognize the family.”

“Oh. In that case, I’m adopted.” Tess replied. “My parents died in the same plane crash as Ellie’s, so Gramps took us both in.”

The elf snorted in amusement, then quickly schooled his features back to professional blandness. “My apologies.” He said, “I had never heard Guildmaster Los referred to in such a way, so it caught me off guard.”

“Tess, you go back to sleep, we’ll take care of this, okay?” Eyfura said, giving Tess one last pat.

“Yes, Auntie.” Tess turned to go back to bed, but not before watching Eyfura make eye contact with the elf and give him a wink while the elf struggled to maintain a straight face.

“Wait!” Maven cried out, then blushed as Tess turned around. “Um…” She floundered, apparently looking for something to say. “I…really do apologize. I have been told that, when tired or frustrated, I tend to slip into bad habits. I have been trying to fix that as of late, but…I’ve been up for almost twenty hours at this point, so I was in a very foul mood. I hope we can work together in the future, and that this unfortunate incident didn’t sully our relationship too much.”

“Um…yeah, sure, I guess. We all have our issues. I’ll…see you around?” Tess replied, somewhat puzzled by the whole interaction.

“Yes, I hope we will see each other in the future.” Maven said, giving another curtesy.

Tess awkwardly withdrew, Eyfura turning around and giving her a wink on her way back to her room. She was able to hear a bit more of the conversation on her way back, but it wasn’t particularly interesting, so she tuned it out, choosing instead to fall back asleep.

---

“I’m what?” Tess asked, taken aback.

“You’re going to be doing a couple of runs with Maven.” Eyfura sighed. “It’s not going to be as fast as we wanted when we were just going through to get extra shots at the Rewards Crystal, but we decided it’s worth it to start networking you, seeing as how the opportunity’s fallen in our lap. That and it’ll give you some experience in situations where you don’t have as reliable party members.”

“Right.” Alice said, grimacing. “Unfortunately, you’re going to have to do most of the heavy lifting, she’s just boosting.”

“Boosting?”

“It’s when someone who doesn’t intend to be a freelancer pays other people to take them through dungeons and level them up.” Eyfura explained. “Typically, it’s to get the benefits being a high level has on aging, so they have little practical combat experience. Lots of wealthy people do it, so high society is filled with level fifty-something people who don’t know their way around a weapon as well as their level suggests.”

Tess frowned. “Alright. So, I’m going through the dungeon with her a couple of times for…networking? She’s…sorry, it’s a little blurry, but she’s someone important, right?”

“Crown princess of the Paumen Kingdom.” Alice said. “It’s a decently large kingdom in one of the older planes, named Ores. You two aren’t exactly in the same social circles, but if you hang around the guildmaster long enough you’re going to meet people like her, so it’ll be good to know someone who will eventually be in power.

“It won’t be anything like this morning, though, so don’t worry. Now that she knows who you are, she’ll be far, far more polite. Yeah, it’s disingenuous, but unfortunately that’s just how things are sometimes. Don’t worry about that too much and just focus on clearing the dungeon and…being pleasant, I guess.”

Tess sighed. “Alright, I suppose I can handle that. I’m going to go get breakfast, I’ll be back in like…twenty minutes.”

“Alright, take care.” Eyfura responded, giving a small wave.

Still in her pajamas, she left, making her way to the pad and then back to the first floor of the dungeon. She used her card to enter the walled off area of the floor, which housed a dining area much like the hotels she was used to.

“Ah, Lady Los, good morning. How was your sleep?” Maven asked, looking up from her food. “I must apologize again for our misunderstanding. Go get some food and come sit near me, I have much I wish to talk about with you.”

Tess groaned internally. She had been hoping just to be able to have a little time on her own, maybe browse her phone or something, but…well, she didn’t have a reason to say ‘no’ to Maven, so she nodded, dished herself up and sat down next to the girl.

“Did Lady Reshi and Lady Almes inform you about our upcoming cooperation?” Maven asked, “I’m looking forward to seeing your capabilities.”

Tess nodded. “Yeah, they told me. Mind if I ask what your preferred style of fighting is? It’ll be good to know so we can figure out how we’re going to go about things.”

“I’m a sorceress, though I know my way around a bow as well.” Maven replied, “Are you capable of maintaining the enemy’s attention?”

Tess shook her head. “I have a few Skills that keep me from being noticed by monsters, and I can’t turn them off.”

“No matter, I have an item that will summon a guardian golem for us.” Maven replied, then leaned forward excitedly. “That aside, I am rather curious about your daily life. You live in Mael, correct? What is it like? I have heard that only humans live there, so how does a wolfkin such as yourself go unnoticed?”

“Nothing exciting, really. I go to high school, and I was going to look at going into accounting in college, but…I’m looking more into freelancer stuff now. As for the wolfkin thing, I was transformed after taking a Class, and Gramps pulled some strings and had people do some magic, so no one notices.”

Maven frowned. “But magic doesn’t work right on Mael, yes?”

“I wouldn’t know. Some of it works, for example magic bags work fine and magic armor resizes correctly, but I can’t seem to pull up my status or anything. I didn’t really ask Gramps about it, but I’ve seen the results of the magic, so I can confirm it’s working.”

“I see. On that note, how do you live without magic? It seems like such…such an unnecessarily hard way to live. I don’t get why the gods allowed such a thing to happen.”

Tess shrugged. “You don’t know what you’re missing until you have it. Honestly, though, it kind of just seems like magic makes stuff we already have on Mael nicer, so it’s really not as bad as you might be thinking.”

“Fascinating.” Maven continued to make small talk with Tess for the remainder of Tess’s meal, and when Tess finished, they agreed to meet back at the first floor in half an hour to begin their run of the dungeon.

Tess went back to her room and got ready, and soon she was standing in the first floor with Alice and Eyfura, waiting for Maven to show up. “Don’t extend your claws all the way.” Eyfura instructed. “Just keep them relatively small, around the length of mine. And don’t be too blatant with your abilities either. She knows not to ask any questions, but she’ll be trying to figure things out anyway. Other than that, go wild.”

Tess nodded, and a few minutes later Maven was there. “Lady Los, are you ready?” She asked.

“Please just call me Tess.” Tess said, “I’m not used to being ‘important’, so the whole “Lady” bit feels weird.”

“Understood. In that case, just call me Maven.” Maven replied.

“Cool. Anyway, yeah, I’m ready.” With Tess’s acknowledgement, the two made a party, and began to go through the dungeon. It was definitely…different than Tess’s other experiences. Maven wasn’t amazing, but she was better than nothing; when using magic, she missed more than Ellie had, but she did hit enough to pull at least some amount of weight.

The biggest difference, though, was the golem. It was a giant, blocky humanoid made out of brick-like stones, and it would just sort of…sit there and take hits in a fight. It seemed that any of Maven’s aggro was redirected to it, making things rather easy on Tess, as she didn’t have to babysit Maven too much. Furthermore, when moving forward, Maven would have the golem go first and spring any traps, which let progress be much faster than Tess was expecting.

Not as fast as when Eyfura and Alice were doing most of the work, of course, but still fast. The boss was actually not a big deal – the golem was more than capable of taking whatever the boss dished out, so it was just a matter of making sure attention always stayed on it instead of Tess. That wasn’t hard either, Maven just had to hit every once in a while, and she was capable of that, at the least.

So, they let Maven get her reward, and were soon back in the lobby. “Well, what’d you think?” Maven asked proudly, puffing out her chest a little.

“Mmm, you’re not the worst booster I’ve ever seen. You were clearly trying, and that’s more than I can say for a lot of people.” Eyfura said. “If you want to do this as any more than a way to level up, though, get a proper teacher. Right now, you’re just brute forcing things and that’s not going to work long-term.”

Maven looked taken aback, opened her mouth to speak, took a look at Eyfura, then closed her mouth again. She struggled to turn her expression from one of indignation to one of polite civility, and eventually gave a response. “U-understood, Lady Almes.” She said shakily.

“Don’t take it too hard, kid.” Eyfura said, unfazed. “It’s your first time being told you weren’t amazing, right?” Maven nodded, so Eyfura continued. “A word of advice: find some people who are willing to tell you when your work isn’t so great. It’ll hurt until you get used to it, but trust me, the quality of whatever you’re doing will increase for it.”

“I’ll…take that into advisement.”

Eyfura locked eyes with the elf. “Tell her parents what I said. I don’t know if they’ve had any input on how people teach their daughter, but this is unacceptable. If they have a problem with it, give me a call and I’ll talk with them myself.”

The elf gave her a relieved look. “Understood.”

“And Tess, you’re doing pretty well. You could stand to be more accurate, though. I know I told you to be fast, but it’s time to start tightening up your strikes.”

Tess nodded. “Got it.”

“Alright, you two go one more time and then we’re going to need to take Tess back and finish this off.” Alice said, “We’re on a bit of a schedule, so we can’t spend too long here. Tess, come meet us back in the room when you’re done.”

“That will be more than enough time.” Maven said, having regained her composure, “I appreciate you giving me any to begin with, Lady Reshi.”

They were able to finish up their run in forty-five minutes and met back near Tess’s room. “It was a pleasure working with you, Tess.” Maven told her, giving a curtsey, “I do hope you’ll give me a call some time in the future, I would be happy to get to know you more.”

“Uh, yeah.” Tess replied awkwardly. “It was nice, and…same, I guess? I dunno, I’m not too good with all this stuff.”

Maven laughed. “It will come in time. I’ll be picking up the rest of my group now, you know where to find me if you need me.” She gave a wave and made her way back to the pad, teleporting out. Tess went back into the penthouse suite, where Alice and Eyfura were relaxing.

“Alright, we’re finally done.” She said, “How many more runs do we have to finish up here?”

“Seven by my count.” Eyfura replied, leaping to her feet. “Let’s go.”