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  “Are you sure that’s how you want to introduce yourself to the world?” Maeve asked. “People already know you’re back, but we haven’t shared anything on social media yet.”

  “Oh…” Lauren thought for a moment. “Yeah, it’s fine. Let’s wait until we’re about to enter the Dungeon though, because I don’t want to deal with potential reactions first thing in the morning if I can help it.”

  “Alright, I’ll inform Sean, just in case.”

  After creating an email address and contacting Professor Richards with it, Lauren started looking up people she used to know, but quickly had to stop. She set her phone down, closed her eyes, and focused on her breathing.

  “What’s wrong?” Emma asked. “Did something happen?”

  Lauren let out a heavy sigh. “Looked up old friends who weren’t listed on that monument in front of the Association. Seems like everyone’s struggling these days.”

  Emma nodded. “Yeah. You’ll be able to help out soon, though.”

  Lauren smiled. “Can’t wait.”

  After finishing breakfast, they got their gear ready. Everyone but Lauren wore matching dark-colored sets of armor, made mostly of metal. Each set of armor also had its own accent color; gray, white, black, and brown for Maeve, Lucia, Emma, and Savannah.

  Everyone also had different weapons. Maeve wore a sword at her hip, Lucia kept several daggers tucked away, Savannah wore a quiver on her back and held a bow in her hand, and Emma rested a hammer on her shoulder. They also all had claws and magic, of course.

  With everyone ready, they left for the Explorers Association, meeting up with another Explorer team that lived in their little community.

  Emma and an orca-kin from that team hugged and gave each other quick kisses. She turned so she could face both of them. “Lauren, this is my partner, Mist. Mist, this is Lauren, my other little sister.”

  Mist had to tilt their head back to meet Lauren’s gaze. “’Little’, you say… Nice to meet you. This is my team, Wine Witches.”

  They went through the introductions. The other enby on the team was a flying squirrel-kin named Dion. The two women were a hummingbird-kin and a squirrel-kin named Harley and Jacinta, and the only man on the team was a mouse-kin named Jonathan.

  After chatting on the train ride to the EA, the two teams separated. The building was even more packed than it had been the last time, with Explorers everywhere chattering excitedly about how rich they’ll become off the newly-discovered final Floor once it opens up to everyone. Many of them were from other countries as well, from what she could tell from some of the languages being spoken.

  Lucia selected a job through the EA’s app, uploaded Lauren’s video to the Wolf Pack social media account, then they grabbed one of the large metal devices Lauren had seen in Adam’s drone footage—a signal booster. Lauren secured it to her back, and they stepped onto a telepad.

  Lucia entered ‘1-8-3-7’ onto the nearby screen, and selected the nearest telepad to their destination. After a moment, the space around them briefly distorted. The gloomy interior of the EA was gone, replaced by a marsh. The group arrived on a telepad situated on a small patch of land surrounded by water. Tall grass surrounded them, the sounds of insects and frogs rang out, and a sulfur-like scent filled the humid air.

  Lauren inhaled deeply through her nose and smiled.

  Maeve gave her a baffled look. “You like this smell…?”

  Lauren chuckled and shook her head. “No, but I suddenly feel so much better. This teleport felt different from the last one, too. It took a bit of my mana.”

  “Last time, you were teleported using someone else’s Emergency Escape,” Lucia said. “The System Bands store a lot of mana for emergency teleports of multiple people, but the telepads don’t.”

  “Alright.” Lauren nodded. “So where do we take this thing?” She tapped the device with her knuckle.

  Her aunt pulled up a map of the Floor on her phone. “We’ve got a specific location marked out for us already. Phone signals can get spottier on the lower Floors because there’s fewer people who can safely set these up, but now the EA is incentivized to get a signal throughout as much of the dungeon as they can.

  Lauren chuckled.

  She knew what I was going to ask.

  “We usually record all our Dungeon activities,” Savannah said, showing the two drones she had in her bag. “Is that okay with you?”

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  “Yeah, it’s fine. Why not bodycams, though?”

  “They haven’t managed to integrate crystals with cameras yet,” Emma said. “Mana from your spells, or even just your body, can interfere with them.”

  Savannah got the drones going with an app, and tucked away her phone once the machines whirred to life and started following the group. Everyone started hopping across the little patches of ground, occasionally sinking into the mud when they landed, though that wasn’t an issue for people of their strength. The drones had no issues keeping up with their pace.

  Lauren glanced back at the telepad, already in the distance. “How do the teleporters work by the way? Can you go anywhere in the world?”

  “They only work within Dungeons,” Emma said. “Dungeons are like… space itself is distorted, and the telepads tap into those distortions. The portable telepads like you saw in Adam’s video work the same, but they’re apparently really expensive, so they’re rarely handed out.

  “Emergency Escapes also use those distortions, but they function by using a lot of stored mana instead. The telepads have a sort of priority system that pushes through EE users first, so it’s bad practice to use it if you don’t need to. Otherwise you could end up with dozens or even hundreds of people trying to teleport to the same pads all at once, and the people who actually need to escape from something might die because of a delayed teleport.

  “And speaking of EEs, I know you don’t like the Bands, but you should fill it with mana, just in case.”

  Lauren grimaced. “…Okay.”

  She shuddered from the sensation, but pushed through it.

  A horsefly the size of a basketball flew at Emma, who quickly aimed her palm at it and chanted, “Large wind blast!” The bug was sent careening into the distance, where it then dazedly caught itself midair and flew somewhere else.

  Emma turned to look at Lauren. “What do you think?”

  “Fast reaction and good accuracy.” Lauren said. “That was a lot more interesting than just watching you cast spells at the lab.”

  Emma made a satisfied noise. “I can’t wait to see what you can do, too.”

  “I guess I’ll demonstrate if something big shows up?”

  “Be careful while you have the booster on your back,” Lucia reminded.

  After an hour and a half of only minor encounters with insects and other small creatures, something large and pink shot toward one of the drones, and Lauren reflexively created a wall of water between herself and the object. Her family instantly readied themselves for combat. The pink thing rebounded off the wall with a slight splash, then lurched back into the reeds. It snapped forward again, and bounced off again.

  The source of the pink thing hopped out of the reeds, landing with a large splash. It was a desk-sized frog. It tried to eat the drone a third time, and let out a high-pitched squeal when it failed yet again. It hopped at the group, but Lauren formed a ball of water around it mid-leap, and simply moved it far away and out of sight before letting it go. Her family relaxed.

  “You seem used to dealing with frogs,” Savannah commented.

  “Yep,” Lauren said. “There are lots of them in the jungle.”

  Savannah groaned enviously. “Chantless is so much more versatile! I really hope I can learn it soon.”

  Several hours and encounters later, they reached the location marked on the map by the Explorer’s Association—an empty patch of solid ground. Like Lauren, her family also avoided harming animals whenever possible. They didn’t have to use their weapons at all today.

  Lauren unstrapped the device from herself and set it upright. Lucia started playing an instructional video provided by the EA on her phone about how to set it up. The process was surprisingly easy, as it mostly just involved extending some parts for stability, and then driving some spikes into the ground.

  With the signal booster installed, they decided to take a break for lunch before returning home. They only brought travel food with them—fruit and nut bars—so it was going to be a simple meal.

  Lauren pulled out her phone to check the responses to the video. “Ah… The account is suspended.”

  Professor Richards emailed me. …No useful data from that manganese guy? That sucks.

  Maeve checked as well. “It was the video that did it, it says. They also deleted the post. Looks like plenty of people downloaded it though. Small media outlets have already written articles about you being back, and people in the comments seem agitated.”

  “What are they saying? Should I be worried?”

  “Not particularly.” Maeve smirked. “Unless a lot of people calling you ‘mommy’ worries you?”

  Lauren choked on a bite of fruit. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  “Besides that, Adam made his own post about the video being fake and malicious.”

  Lauren rolled her eyes.

  “So,” Lucia began, “Want to officially introduce yourself to the public?” She pointed at one of the drones.

  “Sure, I guess? What would I have to do?” Lauren finished her food.

  “Just look at the camera and say a few things about yourself.”

  Savannah controlled one of the drones so that it hovered in front of Lauren.

  “Alright,” Lauren said, giving a stiff wave to the machine. “Um, hi? I’m Lauren. Uh… What else do I do?” She looked to her sisters for help.

  Emma stepped next to her. “She’s my sister, and you’ll likely be seeing a lot more of her in our videos.”

  They did a few more takes, but Lauren was just as awkward and wooden in all of them.

  “Well, it’s probably okay…” Lauren conceded.

  “Mhmm, it will be fine,” Maeve said. “We’ll use the best take. You’re also a lot more natural when you aren’t thinking about the camera.”

  Lauren nodded. “You’d think recording everything would be mandatory in a place like a Dungeon. I’m kind of glad it isn’t though. I’m not sure how I’d manage.”

  “You get used to the cameras being there surprisingly quickly,” Lucia said. “Other countries do have mandatory recording, though. I know Japan is particularly strict about it. I think the megaquake during the Advent made them prioritize safety even more.”

  “Dungeons cause natural disasters like that?” she asked.

  Lucia shrugged.

  “It depends on where the Dungeons formed,” Savannah said. “As spatially compressed as they are, they still displaced a lot of mass all at once. In a place like Japan, that was bound to cause some problems.”

  With their meal eaten, they made the hours-long trek back to the EA. The clerk confirmed that the job was done, and Lauren left it up to her family for where her money should go. She got some strange glances from a few people, but no one was talking about the video. She deflated a little.

  “What did you think about your first Explorer job?” Maeve asked once they were home.

  “Hmm…” Lauren thought, “I can see why it would be dangerous for most people, but otherwise, it’s kind of like I went on a mini vacation to somewhere completely different.”

  They all laughed at that.

  “You’re kind of cheating, Lauren,” Emma retorted, “but I think I agree, mostly.”

  “Hey, we should spar with each other!” Savannah eagerly suggested. “I want to see what you going all out looks like.”

  Lauren grinned. “I want to see what all of you can do, too.”