The door of the study room was pushed open. Inside of it, Kim was currently working on something, breaking down the petals of a white and pink flower. He was wearing a long white lab coat. The ones that stepped into the room were Ryan, Silvia, and Modak.

  Kim looked up from his work and groaned, "Dude, I told you it would take a while to get this done, I've never worked with Pixie Lilies before, and-"

  "That's not why I'm here, calm down," Ryan interrupted him, shaking his head as he closed the door, "I just wanted to introduce you to them properly. I told you about them already, these are Silvia Redhorn and Modak Stonebreaker. Officially, they're my 'Aides', but they're really just my best friends."

  Kim rolled his eyes, "Nepotism, huh?"

  Ryan cleared his throat, stepping into the room, "Anyway... Silvia is a Soulspark Artist. Any sort of 'art' she makes can have special effects imbued in them. Modak works at the Magic Tower, and just recently came up with a way to synthesize magic."

  The two of them smiled and waved slightly, trying to greet everyone. They had been a bit unsure about this when Ryan told them that he had recruited these guys, so they didn't quite know how to act right now.

  Kim raised his brow, "Synthesize magic? Seriously? Aren't you guys first years?"

  The elf-orc hybrid stepped away from his work, stretching out his hand toward Modak and Silvia, shaking theirs, "Well, nice to meet you two."

  "Likewise," Modak nodded, as Kim looked down at his broken arm that was still in a sling. He glanced over toward Ryan.

  "What, are you hear for a healing potion or something? The Pixie Lily is only really useful for mana recovery, not physical recovery," the alchemist crossed his arms, raising his brow.

  "Huh? Oh, no, Modak's body rejects mana so healing magic doesn't work on him. He needs to recover normally," Ryan explained.

  "... Didn't you say he works for the Magic Tower?"

  "Yup."

  "But he can't use magic?"

  "Mhm."

  "... I don't follow," the hybrid looked at the full orc standing in front of him.

  Ryan rolled his eye, leaning onto the edge of one of the tables, "That's really not important right now. Where are the others?"

  "They have class, obviously. Why, did you need everyone for something?"

  "... Well, not directly," Ryan hesitated for a moment, "I just wanted to tell you that we found a place we might move into. It's a bit of an unusual property, so we want to check it out a bit more first, but after that I plan on using that place as a new base-of-operations. So once that's the case, give back this study room."

  Not sure what to say, Kim narrowed his eyes slightly, "What, you guys can afford a place that we can all act out of?"

  "The family's paying for it," Silvia pointed out, her hands behind her back, "It's this really cool, big, old farmhouse. It needs to be fixed up first, but it's going to be so cool once we can move in!"

  "... The family is paying for a house? I barely got them to pay for a tiny apartment for me, that's why I have to do most of my work in here."

  "Well, you're gonna be doing your work there instead. We'll turn part of it into a lab that we can equip with things for both you and Modak, so just let us know what kind of equipment you need and we'll get it. We can get basically anything we want in regard to that paid for by either the family or the magic tower. The only thing you need to do in exchange is-"

  "Keep working for you, I get it," Kim slowly looked back at the small pile of flowers on the table, "Just... you didn't tell us exactly what you want us to do yet."

  Ryan smiled lightly, looking at Silvia and Modak. The elf was the first to speak up, "Well, for one, we want to set up a sort of item-production facility where we can make our own tools and materials and stuff," she explained, "Like, getting potions and stuff from you. And Mark is pretty good with metalwork, right? It would be great to have someone like that around for some projects I want to work on, plus, since he's in the robotics club, he should know a thing or two that can help Modak out."

  The orc in question quickly continued on, "If I remember right, Mark's baseline craftsmanship is the best out of anyone in the club. Frankly, it's the part that I've been lacking the most. Having a solid base to work off of is important. Plus, I just need someone to help me out with soldering, wiring, research... Mark's good at all that kind of stuff. And James, too! Ryan mentioned he likes cars and engines, which comes in useful for the next step of my spell-synthesis projects."

  Kim slowly nodded along. He didn't have a problem with any of what he was hearing so far. Ryan spoke up next, "It would also be great to get James' help with my bike sometimes. Just to keep it running, I guess. As for Macy, she's got massive baseline knowledge about the family and a whole bunch of other stuff that at least the three of us haven't had the chance to look into yet, so I want to get her help to build myself a proper perspective of... you know, everything. And we think that Jasmin might be able to offer a new perspective on Modak's auditory synthesis. You said she's in some kind of band?"

  Returning back to his work, Kim started to continue trying to crush up the flower petals into a paste, "Yeah, like, some kind of punk band. She can probably help you out, though, you just gotta ask. But I'm telling you, you might be overestimating us a little bit here. Even though we want to help stick it to the family, it's not like we can do all that much. Like, I'm an Alchemist, but I'm barely level 19. There's not a massive range of recipes I have access to right now, and researching new ones takes a while."

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  Ryan raised a brow, "Right, that's how the alchemist class worked. Hm... just wondering, but how many of your items did you get from the amusement park?"

  "Uh... none, I wasn't able to kill a ton of the monsters. I was just given a basic self-defence course in there, basically. I did see what's offered there, though. Some pretty rare potion recipes."

  "Hm... I'll farm some more coins once I've bought everything for the spirits, and then we'll get you those recipes. And after that, maybe I can convince Gregor to give you some tips on research. He also develops new blueprints for himself over time," Ryan explained, and though Kim seemed pretty interested, the robot immediately perked up inside of his domain. He was about to complain, when Ryan continued, "The only thing you might have to do in return is provide some... chemical warfare abilities to his weaponry. Plus, some booze, if you can."

  "Huh? Booze?"

  "Gregor is a severe alcoholic," Modak clarified, "It sort of makes him run better, I guess?"

  "... Wasn't Gregor the robot guy?"

  "Yup," Ryan replied, feeling some sort of pride as he saw Kim's confused expression.

  "Well... whatever, sure. Let's do this, I guess."

  "I swear, please, take it easy, you two," a wave of nervousness coming over him, Ryan looked at his two best friends. They were standing in front of the gates of the dungeon. Both Silvia and Modak were wearing thick, protective clothing. On top of those, they were wearing cloaks made by Silvia to give them some kind of stealth-like effect, "This isn't a joke, dungeons are dangerous as well, so please-"

  "Says the guy that went into a dungeon at level 1, all on his own," Silvia interrupted him with a slight grin. She was barely looking at him, mostly focusing on her phone while taking some selfies to commemorate the moment.

  "Yes, and I nearly died, so you can trust what I'm telling you right now. This is not something you can take easy. We're not headed to a combat zone today, so I said it was fine for you guys to come along, but I need you to still be careful and stick close by me, okay?"

  "Right, right," Silvia responded, but Ryan still wasn't quite sure. Since her mother worked as a personal trainer, she was at least quite physically fit and could run away if needed, but Modak was both slow on his feet in general and doubly so right now. If he ran too much, his ribs would start to hurt.

  "Whatever, just..." Ryan held out his hand and summoned Gaia, "Can you call out your sub-golems?"

  The spirit nodded her head happily, and the three small golems popped out from her torso. Ryan quickly grabbed two of them and gave one to each Silvia and Modak.

  "What's this for?" the orc asked, and Ryan quickly explained it to them.

  "If anything happens and we're split up for whatever reason, I'm going to link to Gaia, which will let me see through the sub-golems' eyes as well. Basically, it allows me to check up on you, and I can guide us all back together. Phones don't work inside of the dungeon, so this is the best way to stay 'connected'."

  Silvia and Modak each took one of the small stone golems, that stared up at the two and gave them a small, quick wave, "Okay. Let's go."

  Ryan led his friends into the dungeon. It was the first time both of them had entered one, and Silvia felt it very quickly. The dense mana of dungeon air was something hard to get used to. But since her mana stat had increased a good bit compared to what it was before already, it was a lot easier for her to get used to it. Even though, for the first little while, Ryan decided to just let Silvia sit down and take a break by the entrance where it was safe while he checked out the dungeon's map with Modak.

  Due to his mana rejection disorder, the dungeon air literally felt no different to regular air, so he had nothing to worry about. While Ryan was looking at the small pamphlet, planning out a good route to their destination for the day, Modak asked one last time, "And you're sure this is okay? I mean... my arm is still broken, I'm not going to be able to do much. I still wasn't able to get anywhere with my aura either..."

  Ryan looked up from the pamphlet, "Yeah, I mean, I don't see why not. As long as you stay out of trouble, it should be fine. This dungeon follows rules extremely well for some reason. It was basically 'raised' that way. Plus, you said being around a ton of mana might help you figure out something with your aura as well, right?"

  "Right..." Modak slowly nodded, though he wasn't able to find the exact right words for what was concerning him at the moment, "But even if that's the case, you know, you don't need to take us along."

  "I know I don't need to. If I thought that it was too dangerous, I wouldn't. I'm not happy about it, since you two aren't exactly fighters, but it doesn't hurt to get you guys used to this stuff. Plus, if things are how I was told, there won't be any combat today anyway."

  Modak raised a brow, "Where did you say we were going?"

  "Ah, right, sorry. We're not going to any particular area, we're just going around and checking up on some things. I'll get a couple of coins so that we can see what's in the gift shop for Silvia later, but beside that, today is mostly a scouting trip. And I want to get your guys' view of things as well, so we can maybe figure out the requirements for the perfect completion rewards," Ryan suggested, showing Modak the map and the route that he drew on it with a red marker.

  First, they would go past the nearby Mascot Plaza so that Ryan could show them what the monsters there are like. They were easy to kill, so it was the best way to introduce them to monsters. At the same time, Ryan would grab a few coins for the gift shop so that Silvia could get a card.

  "Then, there's this small area here that I passed by a couple of times. It's apparently, like, a food-stand area? There's no monsters around and no games or puzzles or whatever, so it's seen as just a rest-area, but I want to check it out and see if there's anything there anyway," Ryan added, tracing his finger to the next part, "The arcade is a bit more complicated, apparently. I only peered inside until now, but I think every arcade game has some weird gimmick connected to it, but it's not directly dangerous if you don't engage with any of them? You need coins for the games too, anyway. Besides that is the haunted house and the funhouse that I really need to check out. Those seem the most interesting to me right now."

  "Oh? What are those two," Modak wondered curiously.

  "Hm... the haunted house is like a... what was it, it's called a Boss Rush in games? Like, you go from room to room, and in every room there's a fairly strong opponent. And the funhouse is more of a puzzle area, I would like to explore that one a little bit. It's not super dangerous, but we should still be careful about that. I'd mostly just send in Jester for a bit."

  "Huh? Why him?"

  "Well, Jester is really agile and quick, and there's a lot of moving parts about it. Plus, in case of an emergency, he can completely negate any one attack," Ryan added, "He's the best choice for that kind of thing right now."

  Modak slowly nodded, taking the map from Ryan. He wanted to get a proper look at the places they would walk past today, "And you're sure this is accurate?"

  "Yup," Ryan responded, "It's always been accurate for more than a decade, so I don't see why it would change now."

  "Alright, then," Modak nodded, quickly taking a picture of the map on his phone. He grabbed another one for himself and gave the marked one back to Ryan, before the two of them headed back to Silvia to pick her up and get on their way.

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