- Tessa: Dear Kaiden, I'm Tessa, guild leader of Nova Circuit. A scout of ours saw the might your team displayed today, and I must say, it left quite an impression. I'd like to offer you a proposition. Would you be able to et in person shortly?
Kaiden reread it just to make sure his eyes weren't deceiving him. Were they scouted already? While clearing a beginner dungeon? It made him feel good but also a bit strange. He thought this might be fishy, so he looked up the sender and her guild.
Tessa was a B-tier awakened with an estimated level of 55-70, with the class Arcane Archer. 'Arcane' was a highly favored subtype of an archetype; it referred to their ability to fight with energy-based attacks, explosions, lasers, and the like.
David also had the Arcane subtype, though he was an Archmage and not an Archer, making his class superior—hence his A-tier assessnt.
As for the guild she led, Nova Circuit, it was a low-tier one. Guilds could be categorized into three broad tiers: low, mid, and high.
What separated the tiers was the quality of their mbers and their ability to clear dungeons effectively. Funding, prestige, and leadership also played pivotal roles in determining a guild's tier.
Nova Circuit used to be mid-tier, but they fell back to low-tier. Kaiden didn't know what had happened as the info he found on them didn't go into specifics, but a lot of their strongest mbers decided to leave and join another guild. Perhaps internal conflict or mismanagent had caused the decline.
- Kaiden: Dear Tessa, thank you for reaching out, but we're not interested in joining any guild right now.
He decided to decline her gently, not because her guild was low-tier but because he didn't lie when he said he had no intention of joining any guild. Depending on the contract, a guild could even demand a portion of his earnings from his adult videos, making it harder for him to increase the inco statistic of the system. That was assuming they don't outright forbid him from uploading adult content in the first place.
- Tessa: I'm sad to hear that, but I didn't reach out to you with the intention of recruitnt.
- Kiaden: Then?
- Tessa: I'm sorry, but I would like to hold this conversation face-to-face. Since it's who is being so difficult, I'll travel to your choice of eting place, should you be willing to et.
Kaiden quickly discussed the news with his girls, and together, they decided to entertain this woman. It wasn't every day that a guild leader ca knocking unprompted, after all.
…
"A cappuccino for , please," Kaiden ordered from the cute waitress.
"Hot chocolate."
"I'll take an espresso."
"May I have a caral oat milk latte, topped with a sprinkle of cinnamon sugar?"
"Most certainly!" the waitress cheered, after which she departed to deliver their orders.
Luna and Nyx, who ordered after Kaiden, eyed Aria curiously due to her choice of drink.
"It's the first ti in my life I can afford to get sothing fancy like this. Stop looking at like I'm a soulless Inst*gram influencer!" Aria scoffed; she was very defensive.
"True, it's the fat bimbo who keeps posting pictures nonstop," Luna agreed.
"I'm the social dia manager of Valhalla's Sinners, so it's my job, but I digress. Instead, let voice my surprise; you two managed to sit down at a table as if you were normal people instead of climbing all over Kai. The chaos gremlin didn't place her little butt on his lap while the Disn*y princess didn't start holding his hand as if they were glued together."
As soon as the words left Nyx's tantalizing lips, Aria subconsciously reached her hand toward Kaiden's before she caught herself, and a rosy pink shade erged on her cheeks, realizing just how right the Space Valkyrie's assessnt of her tendencies ended up being. Luna, anwhile, began glaring daggers at the woman, but before she could part her lips to most certainly deliver a very unladylike response, Kaiden successfully intervened, placating the ladies. It didn't take long for the waitress to deliver their requested drinks.
"Not a soulless Instagram influencer, huh." Nyx giggled slyly as she saw Aria imdiately begin taking pictures of her fancy coffee imdiately.
"I'm sending it to Mom!" Aria defended herself. "She must be so bored..."
Julia was still in the hospital, but she was making a quick recovery. The Levander mother no longer needed infusion because her condition had stabilized. She might be allowed to go ho at any mont now. Until then, Julia busied herself by following her daughter's awakened journey and chatting with her younger daughter, Lux, who visited her a lot.
Naturally, what she watched of Aria's awakened journey didn't include the adult parts, such as the one where she was pretending to be a slutty nurse and getting ravaged by Kaiden's throbbing 9 incher.
"Ah, you're here."
A voice sounded from next to them, and when Kaiden turned his head in its direction, he was greeted by a black-haired woman who had big blue eyes. She wore a form-fitting white turtleneck that accentuated her generous, feminine figure.
Kaiden saw pictures of Tessa when he did a quick search on her, but she was always in her combat attire in those pictures. Here, she looked very fashionable—so much so that it took him a few seconds to realize that it was the sa woman as the one in the pictures.
He stood to greet her properly. It was a business eting, after all. The three Valkyries did the sa.
Once the five of them were seated, it was ti to begin.
"Miss Tessa, I'm truly curious about your reason for being so secretive during our chat on the awakened platform."
She wryly smiled in response. "I'm an old-fashioned woman who would rather spend two hours traveling to et in person than to speak over the phone… or the awakened platform in this case. I must seem like a weird woman to you youngsters."
"Aren't you like 28 or sothing?" Luna deadpanned.
"Don't even get started…" Tessa sighed with exhaustion before continuing, "However, that's just my preference. For talks like this, speaking in person is the normal thing to do."
"But for 'talks like this,' it would not be the guild leader who cos personally to speak with four low-level, low-tier awakened," Nyx countered.
"… You're right," Tessa admitted. "Truth be told, I need your help. We need to clear a dungeon that has a very annoying restriction: those who are level 10 or above can't enter."
A giant grin erged on Kaiden's face for a mont before he suppressed it. His plan was already working.
As stated before, there were two ways he could gain access to uncharted dungeons. One, make a guild and pay insane sums, as even the registration itself costs an arm and a leg, or two, join a guild.
However, there was a third option, a crafty, high-risk, high-reward one: remain independent and low-level while broadcasting his competence, where a desperate guild might reach out to them in the exact case Nova Circuit seems to have found itself in.
"You can't clear it with your low-level mbers, so you need help from competent outsiders," Nyx voiced her thoughts.
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