Save Scumming Chapter One Hundred and Three - Tired AF

Chapter One Hundred and Three - Tired AF

I was tired AF, so I kind of decided to spend the rest of this loop resting. I wasn't sure if ntal rest carried over perfectly, but a break was good for the soul, and I needed one right now.

So, a long nap, Mister Couchtop on my tummy, and so food delivered to my door.

Yeah, this was luxury. I woke up well past noon, played so guitar just for fun, then watched so slop on the net for a few hours while planning. I had a rough idea of what to do for the rest of the week. Ideally it'd be a pretty calm one.

Around the ti the portal opened, I started to pay more attention to the world beyond my apartnt.

It took five minutes for soone to upload sothing to social dia. A video. Strangely, I even vaguely recognized so of the teens laughing and disguising their panic with a thin veneer of bravery.

They had shaky-cam video of the portal, up to the point where a team of cops rushed in and evacuated the space.

So more ti passed. It was almost an hour before a squad showed up. There were six of them in full-tactical gear. Top-shelf stuff too. Better than what Luna Corp handed out, at least.

I squinted and rewound the video a few tis until I could make out the NG logo. NetherGain? Official source is novel·fire·net

That was a decent corp, situated in the City Centre. They were a big na. The company did resource extraction but also made gear for portal divers and ran security. In terms of which corporation had the best stuff, they were up there.

I screencapped so faces and checked them against the publicly available team listings.

So, that was... Squad Four. Two C-rankers, four D-rankers. Damn, that was a lot of firepower. It looked like NetherGain did most of their squad composition that way. Two and four. Their Squad One had two B-rankers and four C-rankers, which was nuts.

Definitely a bigger, tougher group than Luna Corp. The entry requirents were way higher though. They didn't just casually take on newbies. Maybe if I hit C-rank they'd consider joining them, but as it was, I'd need connections or a few years at Luna Corp for job experience. Not that I was looking to change. Too much scrutiny. The lazier way they did things at Luna Corp suited just fine.

Anyway, I followed along as they cleared the portal, or rather, as gawkers stood around outside the foodcourt, disregarding the F-ENE PDs suggestions that they head back ho. It took a solid hour for them to finish up and pack their shit. A team of E-rankers from the company went in and cleared the portal out of valuables.

The evening news didn't even cover it.

That kind of minor portal opening up happened like, two, three tis a day. Maybe more? If it was a recurring portal, or sothing particularly good was in it, then maybe it'd make the news. Breaches almost always hit the news.

It was a bit conspiracy-coded of , but I suspected it was because a lot of companies received subsidies to shut breaches down and close portals, and people would bitch about their tax money going to that if there wasn't constant pressure from the news reminding them about how horrible a breach was.

Or... maybe that was bullshit and people just reported it because it was dangerous.

Whatever. My goal wasn't to untangle all of that.

I looked up more info on the monster I'd seen. The velociraptor wasn't a velociraptor. So dinosaur nuts had checked, and they didn't match up to real dinos. Instead, they were semi-plant-like, winged, non-flying amphibians that basically shat all over modern taxonomy. So of them had access to Nature magic, but that was uncommon at D-rank.

No clue what the boss would be, and it wasn't like NetherGain were advertising the fact.

I watched the news a little longer into the night, then shut my laptop, rubbed at my eyes, and Reloaded.

Okay... damn, this was gonna be one sucky weekend, but I could do it.

First, I'd need to secure so help. Not so much because I'd need it (not that it would hurt) but because this would be a good opportunity for so bonding. My first thought went to Fran, but there was another option. Becky might very well be down to help. All I'd need to do is bribe her with so gacha pulls and she'd show up, I was sure of it, and a lightning mage with her level of power and versatility would kick ass in any portal.

This novel's true ho is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

Plus, Becky had been kinda fun to work with.

Ah, but no, Fran first. She was just the better option for now.

I leaned back against a wall and pulled out my phone. I still couldn't get used to dialling a number. I an, that's how phone numbers worked, sure, but I think I'd only done it a half-dozen tis in my life before I started looping, and that was usually to call so custor service number to bitch at them about sothing.

What kind of maniac didn't have the numbers they were gonna call saved to their contacts?

The line picked up after four rings. "Hello, this is Fransisca Ojou, how may I help you?"

"Hey Fran," I said. Then I cleared my throat. No, bad . No sexy half-asleep husky voice. I wasn't calling to flirt, I was calling for other things, dammit. "It's Deadline. Do you have a minute?"

"Oh. Yes, certainly. I was... taking a slight sabbatical today."

"On a Sunday?" I asked.

"Corporate Arica doesn't believe in weekends. Not at the top of the chain," she said.

Damn. Though I suppose that made sense. The rankers got weekend off because without there was a real chance they'd die, and that'd cost the company a fortune. So industries were stuck in the good old five-day-workweek era, but a lot of things had evolved so that days off weren't as common.

"Well, I'm glad you're taking ti off to recuperate," I said. "I discovered sothing of an opportunity, and I was checking in to see if you'd be tempted to help."

"An opportunity?" she asked. Oh yeah, she was interested.

I nodded, even if she couldn't see it. "Exactly. I know the location of a mid-D-rank portal. Or rather, where one will be this evening in about... ten hours."

"That's... far ahead of where we are," Fran said.

"I know," I said. "I was going to try to solo it, but that's risky. We'd only have an hour or so to kill the boss and evacuate the portal."

"That's... a very short tifra. Though I've watched the video you sent yesterday, of the orc portal."

Ah, yeah, that was technically just yesterday. Wait, there was no 'technically' about it. "That was a tough one. High D, at the very least."

"I see. You were... impressive. In any case, the video was very interesting. I've made so moves to short Synthcorp, just before the news broke. I hope you don't mind, but I also intend to use the footage to blackmail the corporation."

"Feel free," I said. "Though I'd rather not make enemies of them?"

"I haven't taken any action, yet," she replied. "But I'm certain we can work things out in a civilized manner."

"I'll trust you on that one," I said.

Fran was quiet for a mont. "Very well. I'll do my best. With regards to this portal, what do we know?"

"D-rank, like I said. Velociraptors of so sort. Plant-like dinosaur monsters. Relatively fast and strong, but fragile. Ambush predators."

"I'd be particularly well-suited to fighting those, I suspect," she said.

"Really? Then it would be really nice to have you along," I said. "Mostly I was thinking that it might be a nice way for you to tackle a D-rank portal in relative safety. You wanted to hit C-rank, didn't you?"

She inhaled. "A D-rank with only two people working on it would an a multi-point increase in both of our potentials. That would be huge. A half-month's worth of very expensive supplents and guided E-rank finishes."

That's how she got to C-rank in the original tiline? Damn. How much did it cost to get escorted through a portal like that?

"It'll be a small boost," I said. "We'd need to solo like, a couple of dozen more D-rank portals to get our potential into the lower ranges of C-rank, so it's not sothing that will happen in a week."

"The world record from D to C rank is three and a half months," Fran said. "I don't think we'll be able to beat that. But there's no loss in trying, is there?"

"Hm. Does that an that you're in?" I asked.

"... Yes. What do you need to do?"

"Cool. So, there's a few things. First, I need you to go sowhere for . It's called Full-Auto Stranger-Danger. I'll give you the address. There's soone there you might have to et, but you have to promise that you won't hold her re existence against ."

***