The Outlands - Chapter 78

Maven couldn’t help but be a little starstruck as she looked at the people seated around the table. It was like someone had made a list of the most influential or mysterious people in the world and put all their top picks in one room.

There were, of course, the four people that made up The Titans: the Gui…Gramps, Eyfura, Ava, and Atum. They needed no introduction, being the most famous freelancers of all time and widely considered to be the strongest people the world had to offer if you discounted the Appointed. Of course, they were Appointed, so in Maven’s mind, that made it all the more likely that they were the strongest people alive.

Valin was undoubtedly the most enigmatic of the group, but, from just their short interaction earlier, Maven was starting to get a read on him. There was no question that he was in the same league as The Titans when it came to strength, and he didn’t seem like a bad person. Just…not used to socializing.

There was Alberich, head of the city’s university of magic. Maven had met him a few times before, and he had seemed every bit the earnest academic. Having him here was…odd, in a sense; why did he research things, if he had direct access to the gods who could give him the answer? Surely there was something, but she couldn’t think of what, so she’d just have to ask him later.

The two aquatic elves seemed to occupy a similar space to Valin, enigmatic people that she was vaguely aware of due to Paumen’s files on them, but who she didn’t really have details on. Even in the case of Paumen’s files, there was less than they had on Valin, just that they were sighted during a couple of very important events relating to the oceans.

Kane Io was the world’s lead magic tool maker, a person who held as much power as any head of state. His business was big, and made the best devices around. Maven had once received a magic bag made by him personally, an upgrade to the older one she had been using. It was almost shocking how big a difference it made; reaching into her old one had at times felt weird and uncomfortable, but with his…it was like reaching into a normal bag, and it had yet to show even a hint of degradation.

Finally, there was Rachel, one of the world’s best seamstresses. She was highly in demand among the rich and famous, and getting a custom order from her meant not only paying an absurd amount of money, but waiting for months or even years for it to be processed.

And now that she was thinking about it…Tess and Ellie’s casual clothes all seemed to be made by her. Did they have some sort of a deal with her? She’d have to ask them about it; if there was any chance she could get a set of clothes made by Rachel just for use in private, she’d love to have some.

Amara, to Maven’s shock, put her feet up on the table as she began to speak. “So, I’m guessing you all have realized why I’ve gathered you here today.”

“Your granddaughter’s been made an Appointed, yes?” Rachel ventured. “Have a cookie, by the way.” She continued, nodding at Maven. “I made them myself.”

Maven hesitantly grabbed a cookie and bit into it. To her surprise, it was one of the best she’d ever had, even including all the various renowned chefs that had cooked for parties Maven had attended.

Rachel smirked as she saw Maven’s face. “I’m not just a seamstress.” She said. “I dabble in other crafts as well.”

Amara shifted the position of her feet. “To answer your question, yes, Maven here has been made an Appointed. Maven, would you like to introduce yourself?”

Maven stood up and gave a curtsy. “I’m Maven Sarlienne, former crown princess of Paumen and new Appointed of Dungeons.”

There was a sort of prompting feeling that Maven was already beginning to associate with Dungeons wishing to Descend, one which Maven allowed.

“And, of course, you already know me, but I’m Dungeons.” Dungeons said. “With the introduction of Savage Dungeons around the corner, I figured it was high time for me to get an Appointed of my own. Please take care of her in the future.” And then Dungeons was gone, leaving Maven back in sole control of her body.

“I’m still in training, but I plan to be working closely with Tess and Ellie when my training is done.” Maven continued. “It’s a pleasure to meet you all.”

“Good job, Maven.” Amara said, reaching up and patting her on the head. “Why don’t the rest of you all introduce yourselves?”

Maven sat, and the people around the table began to introduce themselves. By and large, they fit the roles that Maven would have expected from them. That…made sense, she supposed; many of these people were important because of their great skill in an area, so them being Appointed of gods related to those areas wasn’t much of a surprise.

Once everyone had introduced themselves, Amara spoke up again. “I suppose. while we’re here. we might as well discuss business, too. How’s the expedition going, Evan?”

“It’s going well.” Gramps said. “We should be entering uncharted territory within the week, and we should be hitting our destination by the end of next week. Given the turnout, I’m expecting to discover all of the dungeons in the area within a month after that. We’ll give it another two weeks after the last dungeon is discovered, and then we’ll head back.”

Maven blinked, surprised to hear that the expedition had a schedule like that. As far as the public knew, the expedition just ended when supplies were running low, and no new discoveries were being made. She supposed it…made sense that the Appointed would know what the expedition was looking to uncover, but she hadn’t thought about it until that moment.

“Ah, forgive me, Maven.” Gramps said, looking at her. “I understand you’re probably a little confused. As you may be guessing, the guild’s expeditions have all been organized with the specific intent of revealing certain things to the public. In the future, we’ll be using them to unveil savage dungeons, like the one you’ve been visiting, but currently, we are just looking to decrease the number of dungeons us Appointed have to maintain.”

“These expeditions will be your best friend in the future, trust me.” Valin said. “The number of dungeons we have to deal with can be overwhelming sometimes.”

“How many are you currently handling?” Maven asked.

“Myself? Thirty or forty. If you include all other Appointed, it’s probably in the realm of fifty or sixty.” Valin said. “And, when you’re done training, you’ll be the one in charge of them.”

“Sixty? By myself?” Maven said in a small voice. “I don’t think I’ll be able to do that.”

“It’s not as bad as he’s making it out to be.” Amara said comfortingly. “Especially with your new Blessing. That should make upkeep a snap, you’ll just have to travel there.”

“Which is also a non-issue.” Gramps said. “We’ll almost certainly arrange for you to get some sort of teleportation ability, so you’ll only have to make the trek out there once.”

“Unless you’re crazy like Valin and want to walk everywhere.” Rachel teased.

“Where’s the fun in teleporting?” Valin grumbled. “You don’t get to see the sights.”

“It also saves you months of time.” Gramps said. “For someone like Maven who likely wants to maintain a presence in society, not spending all her time traveling would be important.” Gramps paused, looking at Maven. “Unless you want to be a recluse, there’s nothing wrong with it.”

Maven shook her head. “As much as I love exploring, I think I would go crazy if that’s all I did. I would like to keep a façade of a standard freelancer’s life.”

Gramps nodded. “Then we’ll figure something out. But for now, don’t worry about it, that’s still at least a few years out. Anyway, there’s nothing else to report on the expedition, does anyone else have any business?”

One of the aquatic elves, Carel, spoke up. “We mentioned a meeting or two ago the possibility of a monster surge on Achey.” He said. “And as of recent days, we’ve become all but certain that there will be one within the year.”

Maven winced. Monster surges were never good news, and Achey was a relatively new plane, and thus was relatively less used to them. A lot of people were going to die, and there really wasn’t much she could do to prevent that. The issue with monster surges was that they were prolonged events, where tens of thousands of monsters would throw themselves at towns over weeks and months.

It would be fine if it were just for one or two days, but…even the highest level people still needed to sleep, and the monsters weren’t going to wait for them to recover. And since the assault was near-constant, there was very little time with which to safely conduct repairs on walls or buildings.

“Have you noticed any particularly large build-ups of monsters?” Gramps asked. “Or any especially strong monsters?”

Carel paused, thinking on that. “Things are still in the early phases.” He said. “So, it’s hard to say. We’ll keep an eye on things, and if it gets too dangerous, we’ll call for help. For the three of you newbies, we like to do careful pruning of potential monster surges and make sure they’re not going to absolutely destroy people. We try to keep them dangerous, but not to the point where people trying their absolute best can’t manage it.”

“How?” Maven asked. “We’ve been trying to figure out monster surges for ages, do…do the gods just tell us where to go?”

Alberich shrugged. “Sometimes?” He said. “The thing with monster surges is that a lot of the signs aren’t visible unless you’re either explicitly looking for them or actually know why they happen. You see, the current theory among the academic world is that they’re related to dungeons going out of control, and that’s not true at all. While they share many symptoms, the root cause –”

“Look for areas with odd concentrations of ambient Mana.” Valin interrupted. “That’s all there really is to it.”

“Well, it’s a bit more complicated than that, but that’s the shape of the thing.” Alberich said, seemingly unfazed by the interruption. “It has to do with levels of ambient Mana stabilizing themselves between planes. With planes with lower ambient Mana, they draw more from other planes, and when it hits a critical point, it gets converted into monsters, which then seek out people. This results in –”

“When enough monsters have been created it’s like someone punched a hole in a bucket and the rest come out all at once.” Valin said. “Don’t worry about the technicalities of it, we’ll be here all day if you do.”

Maven frowned. “But wait…if it’s Mana coming in from other planes, what about those other planes? They still have monster surges.”

“That happens when the ambient Mana gets too low.” Alberich explained. “They have a sort of…resting ambient Mana they try to stick to, and they draw energy from somewhere, we don’t know where, which causes a phenomenon similar to what happens with low ambient Mana planes. In either case, once the monsters have been killed, the Mana used in their creation is dispersed into the surroundings, and the plane’s ambient Mana becomes ever so slightly higher.

“It’s generally hard to tell when they’re coming and where the worst parts will be because most modern tools aren’t sophisticated enough to detect the minute differences we’re looking for until quite a ways into the process. We, on the other hand, have access to more sophisticated abilities by virtue of being able to use Worship, so we can sniff things out relatively easily.”

“Oh.” Maven said. “I…guess that makes sense.”

“Feel free to ask me about it more after our meeting is finished.” Alberich said. “I love to talk about this sort of thing, but, unfortunately, Valin is right; if we just let me talk, we’ll be here all day, and not all of us have time for that.”

“That’s all for us, then.” Carel said. “Anyone else?”

There was silence for a moment, and then Amara spoke up. “Looks like that’s all.” She said. “Let’s call the meeting here, then.”

There was a chorus of assent, and people began to stand up and mingle amongst themselves. “So, what’d you think?” Amara asked.

“That’s…all?” Maven said. “These people are…like, really important, and the meeting took all of ten minutes, if that.”

“Well, we’re all on the same page.” Amara giggled. “We don’t have to have major arguments about anything, so that makes things a lot simpler. Honestly, these things are almost more of a social event than anything.”

“It also helps that we’ve had three meetings in rather quick succession while nothing’s going on.” Rachel said, skittering over to the two. “We’re a little out of things to talk about.”

“How often are these usually held?” Maven asked. “I know there are semiannual scheduled meetings, but what about these ‘unscheduled’ meetings?”

“Very rarely.” Rachel replied. “Once or twice a decade on average. This past year has been something of an outlier.”

“Hey guys.” Ellie said, walking over to them with Tess in tow. “How’re things?”

“Pretty good.” Rachel said. “How are things with you two? Are you settling in okay, Tess? I kept meaning to ask, but never got around to it, you know?”

“Yeah, I’ve more or less completely adjusted.” Tess said, blushing slightly. “Not something I would have expected those first couple of days, but I’m…really happy right now.”

“Well, you certainly look better than you did when you were brought into my shop that first day. I’m happy to hear it.”

“Oh, I was meaning to ask,” Maven began, “but do you three have some sort of deal? I noticed that all of Tess and Ellie’s casual clothes are made by you and was sort of wondering.”

Tess blinked. “Is that a big deal?” She asked.

“A little.” Rachel giggled. “I do have a bit of a waiting list.”

“How long?” Tess asked.

“Usually at least half a year.” Rachel admitted. “As for deals…well, I give priority to clothes for Appointed, as long as you don’t abuse the system. I give discounts, too!”

“Really?” Maven asked hopefully. “How much?”

“I’ll generally run you about three or four gold a set.” Rachel said.

Maven’s eyes widened. “Only three or four gold?!” She said. “Um…do you mind if I order three sets, then?”

“Sure thing!” Rachel said. She reached into a shirt pocket and pulled out a phone. “Here, let’s trade contact info. I’ll take your measurements real quick and you can just text me what you want.”

“Bring her back when you’re done.” Amara said. “We still need to teach her how to hide her Worship and how to make the circle that brings her here.”

“Will do!” Rachel said cheerfully. “Follow me, dear!”

Fighterman481

Next time we’ll be getting back to the expedition for real, though, so…look forward to it!

And, as always, thanks for reading!