LTSV - Harbingers of Change - 30 (Patreon)

Allen chose right about that moment to wander through on his phone. "…nah, man. Tell dad he's still blocked. I'm good… I said no. No one is going to do that shit for him so quit pretending like its just a little favor. I saw the news. The dungeon shit is only for sale to the public through the System shop. I'm not smuggling anything out for you….no, not even for a big favor. Why? Because you never repay them, that's why."

He hit the 'end call' button and started to turn towards Mira and Syrith, only for his phone to ring again. He answered with a flat expression. "Yeah? Did I hang up on you? I don't know, did it sound like this?"

He hung up again and wiped the flat, angry look from his face before turning to greet Mira and Syrith. "Ladies!"

"I see your family is still—like that," Mira observed.

She'd seen a lot of her party's families in the past few days; mostly the ones who'd moved in.

Allen's family had tried, but he'd refused before Mira ever even heard that they wanted to. According to him, they'd had a weird compound out in the foothills with its own private security force since long before there was any practical use for one. His grandfather was apparently a paranoid tech billionaire who thought society was going to collapse at any second, but not in a 'inter-dimensional monsters are going to break through into our reality' kind of way. He'd been more worried about a modern-day peasant revolt.

His entire extended family had withdrawn into the compound and now that the world had started to turn once more, they'd started getting after Allen to get them samples of monster tissue. Apparently some of them were already into bio-tech and didn't want to have to negotiate with either of the local guilds if they didn't have to.

"They always will be," he sighed and started walking a circle around the wardrobes. "They look better when they're not flat-packed, I guess."

"It'll do for now," Mira told him.

She went to a garment rack she'd had standing by for just this purpose. There were several pre-assembled outfits hanging in garment bags on wire hangers. None of this was from Samira's leftover wardrobe. Mira had put on huge glasses and hidden her hair under a ballcap like a celebrity before she and Morwen went out to clean out an OEI of all their outdoor and performance athletic clothing for every season. They had to go to a couple places before they found stuff for all the boys who were uniformly on the tall side.

Eventually, they'd be able to get better stuff from the System Shop, but it's offerings were limited to the current season unless you were in a snowy dungeon.

She hung the garment bags in the wardrobe, closed it, and latched it before she took the whole thing into her inventory. Sure enough, it popped into a single inventory slot and registered as a single item labeled 'Wardrobe.' She pulled it back out and added all the shoes, socks, and underwear she'd purchased into one of the drawers underneath the two door cabinet upper part. The inventory accepted it again as one item. The wardrobes came with a sliding padded shelf for jewelry and watches, so she was able to get some of the junk accessories that Syrith had bought from the System Shop for experimentation in there too.

It wasn't until Mira tried to store her wand in there that the System rejected the wardrobe.

"Alright, so we'll each need the equivalent of a small armory to go with these and our camping kits," she decided out loud. "That's three slots occupied for each of us."

"Four, if you count the specialty equipment that Bryn and Cecelia need for their crafting," Allen mused. "Randall's survival stuff can probably get snuck into his armory or camping gear. Five, if you figure we'll all also end a big cooler of emergency meal kits and drinks. Thank god the inventory doesn't count weight against us. I wonder if Andre's crew has figured this part out?"

"They probably will" Mira said, although she privately hoped they wouldn't.

The Ruined Borough would be closed for a while yet, but there was another gate just off the bay that had opened again shortly thereafter. The Hunters there had evenly split between signing with Adra and signing with Blake Heron. They'd had a clash of personalities early on and, even though the joined forces to defeat the boss, they still didn't want much to do with one another.

One group had been comprised of four teenagers; Amanda, Todd, Louis, and Beatrice. The other had been a pair of traffic cops who'd been snatched right out of their patrol car; Amos and Daryl.

Now, Amos and Daryl weren't bad guys, but they were guys who were used to being obeyed, no matter what.

The kids, meanwhile, had really good combat instincts. It turned out they were all part of the same LARP community and, despite none of them being in amazing shape; they held their own in the dungeon until they ran into Amos and Daryl, who expected them to withdraw from all combat and hand over all their weapons and scavenged supplies. The kids didn't want to do that and ended up leaving to go their own way.

The boss for the coastal dungeon was a bit like the Lamplighter. It was meant to teach the hunters how to fight bosses. In this case, it seemed like had been designed to teach them about interrupts. It had a big AOE attack that had a long power up sequence, which an enterprising hunter could disrupt by hitting the Boss in the side of the head with a ranged attack.

Unlike Mira's experience, the kids didn't steal the boss kill from the adults, but they did enter battle once they'd A. figured out the Boss's weakness and B. had determined that the adults were going to die.

They all escaped into the welcoming arms of a group of elven rangers and druids, who'd set up a perimeter around that particular gate and who were with the group responsible for stabilizing any gates in the Estrella foothills and San Estrella mountain range. They were the ones who prevented Amos and Daryl from trying to arrest Amanda, Todd, Louis, and Beatrice and kept everyone calm until Adra had arrived with vehicles to evacuate everyone.

Like before, Blake Heron showed up shortly thereafter and managed to sweet talk Amos and Daryl into staying at his hotel to hear his pitch. Adra successfully prevented him from talking to the teens without their parents present. Amos and Daryl turned out to be a surprise ally in that endeavor, even if they did end up signing with him in the end.

The kids' parents, once Adra managed to get them reunited with their kids, seemed to have more confidence in the guy who prioritized reunited them with their children and signed provisional contracts with LivingShadow on behalf of their children. Their contracts were a little different than Mira's or those of her party. The kids were 'apprentice' hunters who would be in training for the foreseeable future. They wouldn't be able to enter a dungeon again until they had a college degree or the equivalent. In the meantime, they had a small stipend from the guild and could take advantage of the living and training facilities. Any leveling they did would be through the shared experience benefit—or if there was a dungeon break nearby, where they could be deputized to help fight.

The Ruined Borough was scheduled to stay 'closed' and only leaking a small stream of goblins for about a month. The Pearl Forest, meanwhile, was going to reopen in four days.

According to Syrith, 'opening' was a good thing. The dungeon wouldn't be leaking any more creatures until it was closed again. Best practice was to try and defeat the Boss as close to the 'breaking' point as possible to maximize downtime for the external defenders.

The Triumvirate Volunteer Force was only authorized to enter the dungeons under a few limited scenarios, which was why no demons had come in to get us or anyone else from the dungeons. They weren't recognized as 'Hunters' by the System, so it wouldn't let them in unless they were escorting an authorized senior Hunter. In this case, the System only recognized hunters above level fifty as 'senior.'

Since LivingShadow was the nearest guild with the most adult hunters, they'd been entrusted by the city to close the Pearl Forest. The plan was for everyone to be ready, supplied, and on site as soon as the Pearl Forest opened.

That was why they were making do with cheap, mass-produced furniture for their gear. The Pearl Forest wasn't meant to be more or less difficult than the Ruined Borough, but they'd be in there longer. Once the Pearl Forest opened, the timer would run for a week. They'd have a week inside to explore, level, and gather resources.

The goblins coming out from the Ruined Borough weren't dropping anything near as good as some of the stuff they'd managed to find during their short time there. The price for Screamwood fluctuated a lot and, on Morwen's advice, Adra had held off on depositing their supply into the system until the price peaked a few days after the Ruined Borough was closed. The inflated price, plus Allen's merchant bonuses, meant that LivingShadow had managed to turn an early profit and they would not have to touch their investor funds any further for a few weeks yet.

Mira planned to continue that trend. Later, they were going to experiment with shipping containers and see just how big of 'box' they could use before the inventory balked at it. According to Syrith, the allowed mass could get pretty high.

She was chatting with Allen and Syrith, debating that happy topic and others like it, when her phone dinged with a familiar custom notification and all her pleasant energy fled when she saw the name on her screen.

'Virgil Bellamy.'