Report from Three Years ago

Riva had booked a simple room in Marinon. She sat on the only piece of furniture in the room, a wooden bed, and stared at the envelope in her hands.

Her thoughts were on the occurrences of the day. More specifically her troubles with Rao. To her, he was someone who could only be described as eccentric. She found it hard to believe his stories.

If the system hadn't shown her that he was a monster, she would never have guessed so. Mind flayers were something to be feared. They were evil, a scourge that would annihilate and torture entire towns. They were known to be egocentric and cruel.

His interest in her was worrying. She might have been able to get a handle on her instincts. But it was a close call. A feat made possible by the system and evolution. And even though she had 'mutated' into something strange that was part dungeon she still felt the creeping hunger now that she had been drained of energy.

Rao might have said he found a substitute for the usual diet of mind flayers, intelligent creatures' brains, but it couldn't be that simple. Well, he wasn't simple in any aspect.

He actually pulled off an adoption. There was just so much wrong with that!

And his magic, manipulating the mind and memory of others from a significant distance! This wasn't only creepy and overpowered, it was also a display of his immaculate control. Riva would have found it more believable if he had killed someone he marked from a distance. But manipulating was completely next-level shit!

Riva was incredibly glad she had gotten rid of him for the time being.

When they parted ways, he didn't pass on the opportunity to tell her that they would meet again for certain. He also wouldn't take back the spell scroll he had handed her back in the cave. An analysis showed that it was a magic-type flare. Using it would set a beacon at the use location and tell Rao that it had been activated.

'Call me when you need help! No, scratch that, call me whenever you feel like it. I'll rush to your side!' He had proclaimed overenthusiastically.

As if I'd ever feel like calling you! She kept her instinctive reply to herself.

Riva sighed. Being in Rao's company was exhausting. She could never be sure to what extent it was goodwill, how much scheming and how much he was toying with her. She suspected that it was mostly the latter.

Riva pulled out Rao's spell scroll and burned it above her oil lamp. No way he was keeping the creep's scroll. What if he could use it as a GPS to locate her. He had already proven what absurd feats he could do with just that. It was better to be safe than sorry. She wouldn't call on him even if she was in danger anyways.

She glanced at the badge she had received with the 'adoption'. She would have liked to get rid of it as well. But couldn't bring herself to go through with it. A free pass of this kind was simply priceless.

After mulling the issue over for she threw the badge into her system inventory. It was a subspace and would hinder magical tracking.

Now that she had dealt with Rao's items Riva prepared herself mentally and opened the bulging envelope which they had received from the adventurer guild branch head. She gingerly pulled out the stack of papers from within.

Next, Riva immersed herself in the documents. She was still as a statue and only moved when turning a page.

These pages told a story about her past self and those that accompanied her. Not only that. Rao had probably anticipated possible complications and ensured that the documents held the entire information about everyone who registered on that very same day.

It was long past midnight when Riva finally turned the last page.

The information she gathered from these documents was indeed invaluable to her cause.

Back then she was registered as 'Riva Walker' - she couldn't be sure if this was her true last name since she didn't remember. Her records showed that her first registration had been in Falcontide. It was there that she also received her 1-star novice badge.

Then, a little more than three years ago, she registered here in Marinon together with a group of 11 others.

There wasn't much to gain about her background. It said she had registered for the purpose of training and earning money and that her family was unknown and likely deceased. Her party members had known her before the registration and the leader vouched for her. It appeared that she had been working with the same people during her entire adventurer career.

The record showed that they were a team of 6 that allied with another team, thus resulting in this large group.

The end of Riva's file said that she died in an unfortunate accident while in a dungeon during the first mission she took on in Marinon. This incident was said to have wiped out most of the party.

According to the report, the fight with the dungeon's boss was where the team met with misfortune and was almost annihilated.

Riva barely remembered any details from the life before she died. The general knowledge was there but the memories that were about her as a person were mostly missing. She didn't remember how many party members there were, nor if they died before her. There wouldn't have been any traces after the dungeon reset.

But according to this record, the party had challenged a completely different dungeon than the golem one. It said that they had attempted the dungeon in hopes of training the weaker members but triggered a new type of trap, that killed most of the party while they were engaging the boss.

There were just five people that survived the incident. And from among those only four remained alive. The fifth one had died during the course of the last three years. It was likely not a coincidence, that the five that survived were the original party members of Riva's team, that she had been adventuring with before.