Garek practically dragged away from the manager’s desk, marching us straight out of the mine and down the dirt path toward the massive, reinforced wooden building sitting on the eastern edge of the basin.
Before we reached the reinforced front gate of the quarters, Garek stopped and turned around.
"Don’t forget, kid," Garek rumbled, pointing a finger at my chest. "You keep your mouth shut about the dragon. You keep your mouth shut about your freakish mana recovery. And you absolutely keep your mouth shut about the fact that you put in a clinic bed."
"Deal," I nodded easily, genuinely happy with the terms.
Flying under the radar and playing the clueless rookie sounded more fun anyway.
Garek pushed the wooden door open, stepping into the main hall of the living quarters and I followed him inside, imdiately scanning the room.
The massive hall was entirely empty except for three people sitting around a wooden table in the center.
[Probably F-Ranks like ...] I mused as I snapped into character.
Throwing my shoulders up, I plastered a wide-eyed, painfully enthusiastic smile across my face and stepped out from behind Garek.
"Hi guys!" I belted out with the absolute worst, overly eager rookie voice I could muster. "Wow, it’s so great to et the team! I’m Nico!"
Garek almost dropped dead.
He stared at for two solid seconds before letting out a deep, soul-crushing groan. Without saying a single word of introduction to the others, the massive dude just rubbed his temples, turned around, and walked right back out the door while I visually assessed my fellow at shields.
Sitting in the corner was a quiet archer, ticulously restringing a standard recurve bow without even looking up.
Next to him sat a young woman with a staff resting against her chair. She had bright, incredibly observant eyes and a bubbly energy that practically vibrated off her as she leaned forward to inspect .
But sitting dead center at the table was the a guy who thought he was the star of the show.
He wore a highly practical, fitted martial arts outfit with tight wrist wraps and ankle bindings, with a polished sword resting across his lap.
[Dude looks like a classic cultivator...]
He radiated an incredibly smug, unearned aura of absolute confidence, looking exactly like a guy who genuinely believed he was the main character of a web novel.
"The replacent, huh?" the sword cultivator scoffed, standing up to offer a flashy, completely unnecessary sword flourish before sliding the blade back into its sheath. "Don’t worry, junior. Just stick close to in the basent tomorrow night, and my peerless sword will keep you completely safe."
I just stared at him. My painfully enthusiastic rookie smile completely flatlined as my brain processed the sheer, unintentional innuendo of that statent.
[Did he really just say that with a straight face?] I blinked, genuinely baffled.
"Dude," I deadpanned, dropping the act for a fraction of a second. "You do realize how wrong that ca out, right?"
-Cough!
The quiet archer in the corner let out a sudden, sharp snort, imdiately coughing into his fist to cover up his laughter.
Next to him, the bubbly mage clamped both hands over her mouth, her shoulders visibly shaking as a bright red flush crept up her neck.
The cultivator froze. The absolute smugness instantly evaporated off his face, replaced by a furious, bright cherry blush that reached all the way to the tips of his ears.
"T-that is not what I ant!" he stamred, frantically waving his hands as his cool main character persona completely shattered into a million pieces. "I was speaking of my martial prowess! My actual, literal blade!"
"Sure thing, man..." I nodded slowly, taking a very deliberate step back while covering my chest. "Just... maybe keep your peerless sword to yourself while we’re in the dark."
"I am Jian!" he practically squeaked, aggressively pointing a finger at my chest to desperately reclaim his dignity. "And you would do well to rember the na of the man protecting you!"
[This guy is either going to die in the first five minutes, or he is going to beco my best friend,] I chuckled before laughing out loud. [There is absolutely no in-between.]
"Oh, ignore him!" the mage chid in, practically jumping out of her chair as she bounded over to . "Are you a mage too? What’s your affinity? How many circuits?! I’ve been studying elental theory for three years, and it’s so incredibly rare to see another caster taking security jobs!"
"Did the boss even give you the lockdown briefing before ditching you?"
The quiet archer in the corner spoke before I could even open my mouth, pausing his bow maintenance to level a deadpan stare right at my face.
"Toris," he added with a curt nod.
I gave him a perfectly innocent, wide-eyed blink. "Nico. And no, not a single word."
A collective, deeply exhausted sigh echoed around the wooden table.
"Typical..." the Jian scoffed as he crossed his hands behind his back, holding his sword like he was so great sword saint, while looking at like I was a lost toddler, "... You’ve probably heard of my peerless sword arts, but we can discuss my accolades later. For now, listen closely, Junior. Tomorrow is the Full Moon. Once the sun drops, this entire basin becos a death zone."
"But Priestess Mizuki makes it safe!" the bubbly mage chid in, practically bouncing on the toes of her boots. "I’m Elara, by the way! And it’s honestly fascinating! She starts her ritual at sundown and projects a massive Sanctuary across the entire mining camp.... It covers the docks, her shrine, the mine entrance, and this exact building! It stops the Outsiders from physically entering the basin, and it completely blocks their ntal hallucinations from reaching us!"
"Exactly," Jian interrupted, clearing his throat to aggressively reclaim his spotlight. "The barrier is a flawless defense. But we don’t deal in ’flawless.’ We deal in paranoid redundancies.... On the off chance her prayer falters for even a second, an Outsider could slip an illusion through the crack and trick soone into opening the front gate."
"So they lock us up," Toris clarified, his voice entirely stripped of any enthusiasm as he went back to stringing his bow. "Every single dwarf gets shoved into the large group holds in the reinforced basent right below our feet."
"And us adventurers?" Elara added, her bright smile faltering just a bit. "We get put into solitary confinent cells down there. One person per cage, locked from the outside... otherwise we could seriously hurt soone!"
"Two layers of safety," Jian boasted, brushing an invisible speck of dust from his pristine sleeve. "... If the barrier flickers and one of us gets compromised, we can’t get out of our Adamantite cells. And even if we did sohow break out, Garek will be here."
"He’s a Tier 4," Elara explained with unhidden awe in her voice. "He’s completely immune to Tier 3 ntal attacks. So he just sits by the front gate all night as the final failsafe, making sure absolutely nobody touches the handle."
I let out a slow, perfectly acted breath of relief.
The security protocol actually made perfect sense.
Layer one: the barrier. Layer two: solitary confinent. Layer three: a massive Cultivator acting as a physical wall.
Except when it ca to .
Locking an unknown variable with my level of firepower inside a solitary cell was a catastrophic risk. If the barrier flickered and I actually got compromised by an Outsider, I wouldn’t just stay in my cage.
A single 65 MP Fragntation Pebble, and I would blast right through that reinforced door, along with probably half of this building, and walk right upstairs to open the gate anyway.
I had to stay upstairs, directly within arm’s reach of Garek.
Just in case Mizuki’s mana-severing curse activated and he needed to knock my teeth out before I could cast a single spell.
Of course, Toris, Elara, and Jian currently assud I was heading straight down into solitary confinent with them tomorrow night.
I didn’t bother correcting them.
[That’s Garek’s problem to solve...] I smiled, pulling out a chair to listen to Jian brag about his supposedly peerless sword techniques.
Before my rear even hit the wood, the sharp click of heeled boots echoed from the hallway.
"Alright," a crisp, incredibly commanding voice cut through the air. "If you lot are done with your little induction... get to work."
I turned my head.
My heart instantly jumped straight into my throat.
Standing in the doorway was a woman in sleek, form-fitting leather armor with a silver-hilted rapier resting effortlessly on her hip.
She had piercing green slit eyes, smooth pale skin, and absolute pitch-black hair.
And twitching right near the top of her head were two perfectly real, velvet-black feline ears, matching the long, sleek tail casually swaying behind her boots.
[Cat girl!] My brain completely short-circuited, instantly forgetting... just about everything.
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