Chapter 2003: Cherry Picked Teams

Suddenly, Min was grabbed from behind and lifted up, revealing The Moron and his group.

"Min! You’re off work. Want to come on a dungeon run with us? I’m the only ascended one in the group, the rest are all Void Immortals, so you’ll fit in the balance well," he offered.

Min looked back and forth between the dungeon and Skadi, who was trying not to laugh at her panicked indecision.

"I live in the Tiny World, I’m easy to find later. Go try out the dungeon while it’s free. Starting tomorrow, there will be a charge to enter. And we both know that’s why most of the Clan is here right now," Skadi informed her.

"You’re very wise for your age."

Skadi giggled. "Someone has to be. If I wasn’t responsible, who would give the good advice? Sister Cara? Or perhaps Opal?"

Min could see her point. But the brothers were reliable sorts.

They just didn’t talk much.

"Alright, let’s go. Just don’t turn in the rewards tonight, or the other shift will yell at me for skipping work and making their lives harder."

The other members of her usual team, including Geoff and Brother Chin, who were still rather small dragons, despite their recovering power, all laughed at her insistence. That was actually their usual practice because Min often ditched work to come with them.

That was all the motivation that they needed, and the group rushed into the dungeon before any of the assembled Elders told them to wait for more results, or for the Elders of other Sects to have a turn.

Usually, there was a priority queue, but everyone was still arguing over what sort of group they should go with, now that they had basic information about the interior of the dungeon and the difficulty levels.

They all wanted to maximize their potential and get the best rewards out of this run, but none of them could agree on the group that they should be going with.

The strongest of the Elders were in the highest demand, and the excess healing Elders of the New Home Merchant Clan were going fast.

Even the Lycan of the Darklight Host were beginning to run short on excess healers, and they had a disproportionate number of druids in the Pack. Some had gone with their own teams, but the others were being snapped up quickly.

Even the ones who had not reached Elder status yet were being considered as healers by the more confident groups.

The town was turning into a circus.

"Do you think that we are going to get another wave?" Rae asked casually as she made notes on the fashion of the guests.

"We should. The news is spreading fast. With a single free day, there will be plenty of Elders looking to get here to do a run. I think that the delay is them trying to build a team before they arrive so that they don’t have to find the missing members among strangers."

Rae nodded slowly. She was intensely interested in the fashion of the further regions of this continent. Both for her own shop, and because Opal had started making Dreamcloth fashion in the Elven styles, so she needed to diversify before the Fae could start stealing her business.

Opal thought that competition was good. They had very different fashions, and hers were made of completely different materials. But they could coordinate when they wanted to make a fancy set of armour or something new.

The Darklight Silk Emporium was currently the only clothing shop in town, and Opal’s Dreamcloth clothing was on the upper floor, as much of it was formal or nightwear.

The main floor was more casual everyday wear, the highest volume sales items.

But the upper floor had been transitioned to the most expensive custom fitted items and the intimate wear that people didn’t want passing pedestrians to see them shopping for.

Like a small adjustment to the web to catch prey more efficiently, Rae was willing to tweak the layout of her shop as needed, and adding new items often required a small change in layout.

The leather armour was now at the back of the first floor, behind the most popular casual wear.

That way, you had to pass the stuff you wanted, but weren’t thinking about when you came in to get a new armour piece. So many of the Immortals needed new clothes, even just higher quality versions of the uniforms that they were wearing would be fine.

They were terribly dressed, treating clothing as disposable.

"Lady Rae, would you like to come with us for a dungeon run? We’re short a Rogue," one of the Elders from Forvemiras asked.

Rae smiled as she inspected the group that the Elder was with. They were a trade consortium, not all members of the same Clan. But they sent people by every few weeks to purchase goods, and always bought a bunch of bulk clothing from her.

"Sure, I will be your Rogue for the run. I hope that we get a fun one."

The Elder laughed. "Me too. We’ve got a Peak Immortal White Dragon, so we should be good to go all out, as long as we’ve got enough damage output."

Rae nodded. "I think that your group should do alright. You’ve got some decent damage, and now you’ve got me. It’s just a shame that I can’t use some of Karl’s summoning spells. But we’ll be alright even without them."

Rae was still very salty about the fact that she couldn’t summon her own army of spiders to go with them through the dungeon.

If she could do that, what would they need this whole group for?

"Are you going to be testing it yourself, Branch Leader?" The Elder asked Karl.

"Not today. I will let everyone else go, while the core group from the Darklight Host supervises. We wouldn’t want to be unavailable if there was trouble in town on the first day, and we’re still collecting all the data from the teams that come out."

Though, it wasn’t all that hard to collect the data. Most of the Elders were happy to tell everyone what the dungeon was like, and they were only reticent about the rewards they had gotten, giving the most basic of details.