Returning Home

For the City Representative of Rivira, Bors Elder, today had been a lot tougher than usual, as the Loki Familia's expedition party had finally returned to the 18th floor. They brought along a huge number of stragglers, as far more monsters had spawned on the floors below thanks to their huge group's passage. Usually, it was up to the party in question to deal with these should they need to, but on this safety point, there was a different tradition.

As it was always a bother for such strong parties to deal with the small fries around these floors and because they wouldn't be able to carry the resulting magic stones and Drop Items with them anyway, they allowed the residents of the 18th floor, the adventurers of Rivira, to get rid of them, earning them a quite sizable income.

But this wasn't as generous as it appeared. Far from it, in fact. Most entrances to the 19th floor were right in Rivira, so whenever monsters appeared from there, what choice did the residents have but to protect their homes? They could fight these monsters anytime they wanted to if they just ventured a floor deeper, so this assault by such a huge number of them was not only pointless but it also posed quite a challenge. In any case, they didn't have much of a choice. At least they had the home ground advantage.

Just like how people who chose to live next to the sea would have a not insignificant chance of having to deal with a tsunami every now and then, living in a dungeon's safety point, right next to the entrances to the next floor, was just asking for a disaster. If one made their home at the foot of a volcano, one didn't have any rights to complain when it inevitably erupted. The people here were just playing with fire.

At least the Loki Familia had been polite enough to split off a small elite group from their main party and to send them ahead, to warn the people of Rivira of the incoming trouble. That had given them time to prepare and as this was far from the first or even the twentieth time that they had had to deal with such a situation, everything went smoothly.

A certain other familia didn't give the people here any face at all, though, so during their expeditions, everyone here would be on edge. It was clear to them that the other party didn't care about them at all, so they could only stay in an alert state for weeks at a time. Comparatively, the trickster goddess' familia was far more reliable. Which seemed a little inconceivable if one thought about it, but it really was the truth.

During today's battles, Bors had managed to snatch quite a lot of loot, so he honestly couldn't complain. He wasn't even annoyed at having this siege forced upon his town anymore, as he had long since come to terms with his situation. If one wanted to live down here, that was just what one had to deal with. There was no use in complaining. In any case, he would be able to make quite a lot of valis once he exchanged what he had gotten today - and that was always welcome.

Slightly exhausted but with a smug grin on his face, he unlocked the door to his store and walked inside, then he deposited today's gains somewhere behind the counter. He did his best to keep his valuables safe and his store hard to steal from, but he knew that if someone far stronger than him tried to take his things, he would be hard-pressed to resist them - to put it nicely.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, a somewhat familiar, calm voice broke the silence.

"Hey there, Bors."

Taken aback, the man in question tensed up and grabbed the hilt of a sword that he kept underneath the counter. He looked up and stared directly in front of him. There, he noticed a young man with messy brown hair and clad in especially high quality gear leaning against the wall. A moment passed before Bors' furrowed eyebrows relaxed again, a relieved smile appearing on his face.

He knew this man. They may have only met once, but he was definitely on his list of promising talents to keep an eye on - after all, the Amazoness twins of the Loki Familia had introduced him a while ago. He was the Loki Familia's newest member, Isaac Blackshaw. And more importantly, he was someone with a lot of money! In any case, for whatever reason, he hadn't noticed him before, which led to his previous tense state.

"Oh, it's you. Don't startle me like that!"

A small smirk played across Isaac's lips, then he simply shrugged.

"It's not like I intended to scare you, you know?"

While he had indeed blurred his existence before Bors had returned, so as to not be noticed while the owner wasn't here, he had stopped doing so shortly after he had seen the scoundrel in question arrive. Still, even though he had slipped into the store right after him, Bors hadn't been aware of his presence at all.

The buff man snorted at his remark, then he shook his head and motioned for Isaac to come closer.

"Alright, nevermind. What are you here for? Anything I can help you with?"

While walking up to the counter, Isaac unhurriedly explained the reason for his visit.

"There are indeed a few things that I need. First of all, I have a few subordinates and students. They will definitely arrive here in the coming weeks, so I would like to ask whether I could rent a house for them here in town, so that they can use it as a base."

Although this wasn't the kind of request that he had expected, Bors wasn't too surprised and only raised an eyebrow, before turning around and rummaging through one of his shelves that was filled with hundreds of maps. While trying to find the one he was looking for, he casually continued the conversation.

"Let me get you a map of the available properties, you can choose from amongst them then. It's not gonna be cheap, though. Anything else?"

Although Bors couldn't see him anyway, as he had his back turned to him, Isaac still nodded, purely out of habit.

"Yeah, I would like to procure a bottle of 'Status Thief'. Money isn't a problem."

Upon hearing these words, Bors froze up for a couple of seconds, before resuming his search. Still, he hadn't ignored Isaac. He had simply deliberated whether or not he should admit that he had these black market connections. But on second thought, he had realized that there were so many people in the know already, so there really wasn't much of a point in hiding it. Unless someone went out of their way and reported him to the Guild, nothing would happen. And even then, the Guild wouldn't bother with actually entering the dungeon, so there wasn't any danger. This young man didn't seem like he would rat him out anyway.

"I can have it ready in a week. It's gonna cost you 1,000,000 valis, though."

Isaac replied without even blinking.

"Deal."

Shocked at how affluent this newbie was, Bors turned his head in astonishment, before coughing and looking at this major customer of his with a shifty look in his eyes. Because Isaac had agreed so easily, it meant that this wasn't anywhere close to the maximum price that he could have chosen to state.

"Ahem, I misspoke, my apologies. It's actually going to be 1,500,000 valis."

Contrary to the frown of reluctant acceptance that Bors had expected to see, Isaac simply smiled very calmly - but at the same time, formless killing intent appeared in his gaze, while he gathered some strength in his muscles, all to make a simple point: Bors couldn't afford to offend him.

A grim expression appeared on the dubious businessman's face and he clenched his fists tightly. He had a plethora of combat experience and could easily tell that Isaac was probably around as strong as him, possibly even stronger. He didn't know how that could be the case as not much time had passed since they last met, but he wasn't foolish enough to ignore his instincts. He wouldn't have survived this long and gotten to this point if he had allowed himself to be restrained by common knowledge.

To defuse the situation, he coughed again and mumbled a "Nevermind, 1,000,000 valis it is…", which caused the intangible pressure to fade away instantly. The room returned to a relaxed calm, but Bors still had a few beads of cold sweat on his back.

Very soon, he finally found the map that he had been looking for and spread it open on the counter. It showed the entirety of Rivira and had a few tens of houses circled, with a number, a name and price scribbled next to them. Both the circles and scribbles could easily be erased, so it was possible to update and reuse this map depending on the changing circumstances.

"Any place that you fancy?"

After glancing at the map for a while, Isaac nodded and pointed at the circled property closest to Bors' store, which was only a couple of houses away. It had originally been a pub but the owner had disappeared one day, so the town's leadership seized it. There was easily enough space there to house tens of people and the rent wasn't cheap: It cost 20,000 valis per day, something which a regular Level 2 adventurer would find a little painful to afford.

Bors' expression darkened a little before he sighed in surrender. He knew exactly why Isaac had chosen this building instead of the ones that were cheaper and closer to the 19th floor's entrances - it was the proximity to his store. Should Isaac's people get in trouble, he would be close enough to get dragged into it, giving them a relatively decent, free protector. Seeing how he was the one who was responsible for renting them the place, he couldn't easily ignore whatever was going on.

For anyone in this town, there was always a certain probability that they would be targeted by criminal organizations of some kind, or a few small-time crooks. This chance increased when one was only at Level 2 or even weaker than that. Choosing the place Isaac did basically made use of Bors' influence to get others to avoid harming his rented property for fear of repercussions. While not everyone would stay their hand, at least most of the rabble would choose to stay put.

"Gotcha. When do you plan to start renting it? If someone else ends up renting it before you do, you will lose your opportunity."

Hearing this reminder, Isaac contemplated for a bit, before nodding his head.

"Even though I won't be using it for a while, I'll just start renting it from today onwards. It's pretty cheap, after all."

'20,000 valis a day is cheap for you!?'

A pained smile flashed across Bors' face before he relaxed again. He really couldn't compare to members of a top ranked familia like the Loki Familia. Even their newest member was so filthy rich! While he could also afford this rent, and would even be able to if it was a few times more expensive, it would still put a sizable burden on him. Meanwhile, Isaac didn't seem to be the slightest bit influenced by the huge amount of valis he had just chosen to spend. Heck, it was more than a million valis!

"For now, I'll rent it for two weeks. When I come back for what I ordered, I'll extend that time period. Here you go."

Not caring too much about what exactly Bors thought of him, Isaac placed 280,000 valis on the counter. Then, after a bit of small talk, he left the store and quickly disappeared into the crowd. He smoothly blurred his existence again, as he had promised to not create any trouble.

Once the Loki Familia had settled into their campsite again earlier, Isaac had told Riveria that he needed to make a short trip to Rivira. As she was well aware that he would be able to leave whenever he wanted to, she didn't attempt to stop him and only asked him to not cause a scene, which was easy enough to do, so he agreed without hesitation. When she looked away for a moment and planned to assign someone to accompany him, he had already disappeared, leaving behind an annoyed mother hen with a vein throbbing on her forehead.

His decision to try to rent a place for his subordinates and students hadn't been a sudden one. While he would always have the option to reduce their travel time by spending AP and teleporting them along himself, he wouldn't do this unless necessary. He didn't want to turn into their trusty teleportation ferryman, after all. In any case, he had another plan up his sleeves and part of it was to procure a base of some kind at all safety points of the dungeon.

One might think that it would have been smarter for him to just build a base of his own outside of Rivira, but as it happens, that wasn't the case. Far too many people were able to make it to the 18th floor and it was actually relatively small. So no matter where he decided to build his base, unless he chose the restricted region around the Astraea Familia's grave, he wouldn't be able to keep it from being discovered. And that wasn't an option either, as he didn't want to disrespect the dead like that if he could help it.

While having it be located in Rivira would make it known to the public, giving his enemies a way to monitor it easily, it also kept it relatively safe, as making trouble in the town wasn't something that most organizations were keen on doing, especially because news of whatever happened almost always made it back to the Guild somehow. Additionally, Rivira was an important place to many forces that didn't like to operate out in the open, as it allowed them to stealthily conduct their businesses. When there was an option to get rid of someone outside of the town rather than inside of it, most would take it as they didn't want to mess up such a convenient place.

Sure, not everyone would think this way, but most would. As for the rest that still wanted to make trouble for his subordinates, his students and him, they would just have to deal with them. But he would mainly leave it to the others, as that could also work as a form of training for them. He would, of course, support them should there be too dangerous of a situation, but otherwise, he wouldn't interfere.

There was no need to worry about creating a base on the 29th floor yet, as his people would still need to grow for a while before they would be able to reach it anyway. Considering the floor's massive size, he would surely be able to find a place to nearly perfectly hide it.

As for procuring some Status Thief? He had heard about the item and its effect of unlocking another person's Falna for all to see, so he had grown interested in it. Using his own Falna to research it was his current plan, as that would enable him to see how exactly it worked and if it caused any damage to the blessing, he could easily repair it. Every god used slightly different methods to lock their children's Falna - so what kind of magical skeleton key was capable of opening all of them?

When Isaac had finally made his way back to the campsite, the handful of main force members who had been sent towards the surface previously had also returned. To avoid troubles, the Guild required expedition parties to notify them when they were about to make their way back to Babel. So even though it wouldn't be difficult or even take long to reach the surface from here, the party had to stay put until tomorrow morning. This would give the Guild time to prepare and notify the adventurers to stay out of the way during the time it took for the expedition party to leave. The Guild didn't want the others to be caught up in the flood of monsters and be overwhelmed. They just wanted to reduce the number of casualties, and they couldn't be blamed for that. It was just one more night, after all. It was truly no big deal.

-----

During yesterday's nightly AP grinding time, Isaac's Level 1 monster slaying quest had finally reached the point where he didn't get rewarded with any more AP for his troubles, no matter how many that he slew. Right after he had reached 50,000 kills, the achievement disappeared and the system didn't even keep track anymore.

When this happened, Isaac had been slightly alarmed, but also relieved. Now he knew that he wouldn't get an entirely unlimited supply of AP just from doing such simple tasks. With that in mind, he had continued amassing AP on the 24th floor, as there were two extremely rare monster species on this floor that appeared slightly more frequently there - and he had yet to research or encounter any of them. Well, one of the two could be found on all floors from the 19th to the 24th, but seeing as there was a chance to run into both of them here, he had chosen the 24th floor.

Sadly, none of the monsters here were able to provide him with any excelia at all, not even the Green Dragons were an exception to that. Well, he didn't run into any of them, but even if he did, the only thing useful about them would be the treasure trees that they were protecting. Anyway, increasing his strength during the time he worked on his monster slaying quests had never been the goal, so it didn't really matter.

By the time he left, his Level 2 monster slaying quest had already arrived at 10,459/11,000 and his AP stockpile had broken past the 100,000 mark and grown to 101,181.

-----

It was late in the afternoon. Loki had gathered everyone who had stayed back at the Twilight Manor about an hour ago and made them stand by in the main courtyard. Yesterday, the Guild had informed her that her children were about to return, so how could she miss the chance to welcome them back?

After waiting and chattering with each other to pass the boredom, the group could finally hear loud cheers from the distance, coming from a huge number of Orario's citizens who were celebrating the expedition party's safe and triumphant return.

If the group had immediately come here after they arrived at the surface, it wouldn't have taken so long, but as usual, they let the Guild process all of their magic stones and a fair number of their Drop Items to exchange them for valis back at Babel, lightening their load. They still kept most of the very useful Drop Items, though, as those could be given to blacksmiths and other craftsmen who could use them to repair or upgrade their equipment. Anyway, because of these proceedings, it had taken a while until they had been able to leave. Still, it was just a regular procedure, so nobody complained about it.

A few minutes after the distant cheers had abated thanks to the expedition party leaving the northern main street and making its way through the complicated network of alleys leading to its home, the gate to the main courtyard was finally opened. Immediately, Loki's eyes began to beam with elation and she looked at the party of Executives at the very front. Her usual behaviour would have been to charge at Ais for a hug, but she had already accepted that, well… they weren't meant to be. Because of Isaac. So now, the target of her affection had shifted. To all the other girls. Which meant that it hadn't shifted at all, as she had already constantly behaved in such a creepy manner towards all of them before. The only change was that Ais was exempt from this now.

"WELCOME BACK! I MISSED YOU ALL SOOOO MUUUUCH!!"

Crying out in her usual style, the overjoyed goddess ran towards the expedition party and first tried to hone in on one of the girls in the front. Sadly, everyone quickly got out of the way, even Lefiya, who had previously always been far too flustered to react. That led to a scene akin to parting the sea, as the entire first main force split in half, letting Loki charge right on through.

Finally feeling a little bit of pity for her goddess, one of the members of the second main force, a young female Cat Person named Anakitty Autumn, called 'Aki' for short, finally heaved a reluctant sigh and accepted Loki's passionate embrace. Thankfully, she was experienced enough to restrain those wayward hands of hers and therefore, she didn't need to suffer much, if at all.

As the troublemaker had successfully been dealt with for now, the rest of the familia welcomed back their friends who had been in the dungeon for close to three weeks, 19 days to be exact. After Finn gave the order to store the carts, the loot plus the supplies and for everyone to freshen up, Loki came to her senses again and demanded everyone's attention.

"Congratulations on your glorious return! For tonight, take a well-deserved rest. As for tomorrow, as always, feel free to party to your heart's content!!"

The day after an expedition party's return, the familia would usually welcome a festive atmosphere, with many smaller groups of friends visiting a plethora of bars, inns and other entertainment establishments around the city. This was also the time when Loki took her Executives and a few other members of the main forces to the Hostess of Fertility, as that was by far her favourite place to celebrate at. Except for the various parties organized by other deities, that is.

Under a chorus of cheers, Loki entered the main manor, followed by Finn, Riveria and Gareth. They were to report the exact details of what had happened during the expedition.

-----

Because his subordinates and students had been informed about his imminent return, Isaac was quite certain that they would be waiting for him at the base. As it would be quite cold of him to ignore them, he made his way over there right after his supporter duties were now finally over for good.

As Lefiya was one of his students, she obviously came along. Of course, the new addition to the subordinate roster, Aselina, wasn't left out either, as Isaac planned to introduce her to the others today. Naturally, Ais accompanied the small group as well, which provoked Tiona into following along too. And because her beloved Captain was currently busy anyway, Tione decided to keep an eye on her sister. Lastly, there was Elfy who had been a part of the main force members staying back to keep the manor safe all this time. Now that her roommate was back, she wanted to spend some time with her, so she tagged along.

Yeah, the group had grown a little bigger than Isaac initially intended, but he didn't mind it too much. After all, they wouldn't interfere with his plans and this place was as much their home as it was his. They were free to go anywhere they wanted to, except for some areas restricted to only Top Executives, or even only Loki herself, which probably existed somewhere. Well, he hadn't come across any himself yet, but he would be surprised if they weren't actually a thing.

When he arrived in the courtyard in front of the base, its entrance burst open immediately, revealing Mina, whose tail was wagging in excitement at an unprecedented speed, even whirling up some of the dirt on the ground. Her eyes were somewhat teary and sparkling in anticipation. Without a care in the world, just like a dog that was welcoming back her owner after they had left for a day of work, she charged straight at Isaac.

"MIIILOOOORD!!!!"

[ Mina Teagle's loyalty has increased by 3. ]

As she now had the confirmation that her lord would undoubtedly return, even if he left for a while, a lot of the lovely Chienthrope girl's subconscious worries and fears had evaporated into thin air.