Chapter 42: Chapter 41: The Arena

Tess waited outside of the dressing room for Alice to finish getting her armor on. Tess had finished putting on her gi first, as slipping into it took much less time than it took Alice to put on her full set of armor.

Didn’t knights back on Mael usually have squires to help with that sort of thing? Plate mail wasn’t easy to get into by any stretch, but did Alice’s armor even work like that? Tess hadn’t taken a close look at it and even if she did, she wouldn’t know what to look for, so it probably wasn’t worth thinking about for the time being.

Alice was out a few minutes later, and the two made their way over to the settings console. Alice’s parents had already taken a seat and were conversing amongst themselves. Tess had turned off Enhanced Hearing (Perfect) earlier so as to better respect their privacy, so she couldn’t quite make out what they were saying, but they seemed to be enjoying themselves.

“So, I was thinking we should try out the urban environment.” Alice said, entering that into the console. “We haven’t had any good opportunities to get you versed in urban combat. You haven’t experienced any real monster surges yet, and even if you had the guild’s defenses protect the City super well, so it wouldn’t have spilled into the streets anyway, but you need to know how to deal with this sorta thing. You’ll get called out to deal with it in more remote areas from time to time as you get to a higher rank.”

Tess nodded. “Sounds reasonable. Can we turn off the pain and wound simulation, though? I kinda want it to be a bit more…leisurely than regular training, you know?”

Alice shrugged. “I mean, you’re not going to take much damage anyway, but sure.” She started thumbing through the other options, muttering to herself as she did. “Enemy scaling on, enemy AI normal, end condition kill all enemies, starting pack…we’ll say two of each kind of restoration potion…I think that’s about everything interesting. Any changes you want made?”

Tess looked over the options menu for a moment. “Any way we can force an end time if it ends up going super long?”

“Just take off the necklace.” Alice said. “You’ll be teleported back up here immediately. If it gets too late, we’ll just stop prematurely.”

“Then I think that’s all.” Tess replied.

“Awesome.” Alice hit the “create environment” button, and a loading bar reading “constructing environment…” appeared on the console.

When Tess looked down through the glass and into the chamber below, she was able to see a city-like area being constructed in front of her eyes, buildings slowly rising out from the floor.

“It’s not actually real.” Alice informed Tess. “Or, it is, but it’s not something that we could use for actual cities. The materials don’t last too long outside the environment of the chamber below, which apparently insulates Mana really well or something, I don’t know how it works exactly. Still, it’s a little crazy to watch, isn’t it?”

Tess nodded, mesmerized by the city below her. It only took a couple of minutes for it to finish constructing itself entirely, and soon there was a full-fledged city block below them, the walls growing hazy before an illusion of a city beyond settled into place.

“We can’t get too far away from each other, but if we both move in the same direction it’ll generate more city for us to traverse while keeping us in the same relative position. You won’t even notice a thing; it’ll just feel like you’re moving normally. We’re going to have to do that if we want to find all our enemies, since not all of them are going to be loaded at the start. You just let me take the aggro, and you dish out damage, alright?”

“Yeah, sounds…wait, what about Isabella and Silky? Will they be able to help?”

Alice started. “Oh, right. They won’t be able to interact with the monsters, but they should come down with us as long as Isabella’s inside of you and Silky’s in one of your pockets or something. They should be able to help scout, but they should remain pretty close to us at all times. I’m not sure if the Arena will notice them and stop scrolling things, but best not to risk it.”

“Alright, then I’m set.”

“Then I’m starting us.” Alice hit start, and a glowing 5 appeared on the floor, counted down to 0, and then Tess and Alice were teleported into a building in the cityscape below. Silky immediately hopped out of Tess’s gi, giving a salute. Ready to roll, mistress! Just point me in the direction you want scouted!

Tess looked to Alice. “So, what’s the plan here?”

“We’re doing a search and destroy type thing here, so we need to find the monsters. Silky, you should be able to look at the streets without being noticed, so go ahead and look around, just remember not to get too far away.

Silky gave another salute. On it!

“…And me?” Isabella asked.

“The same.” Tess said. “But you be in charge of looking through the buildings, since you can get past the walls easier.”

“…Got it.” Isabella said, drifting out of Tess and up through the ceiling.

“While we wait for them to give their preliminary reports, the important thing to remember is collateral damage. Unless absolutely necessary, try to avoid using big area of effect abilities or things that could damage structures. The goal is to not destroy the town you’re trying to protect, you know?

“If it’s life or death, though, go wild. There’s no guarantee people will be able to resurrect you if you’re in the stomach of a monster. Buildings aren’t more important than your life.”

Two dog things in the street, mistress! Silky informed.

“Silky says there are a couple of monsters in the street.” Tess said, prompting a quizzical look from Alice.

“How long have you been able to talk to Silky like that?” She asked.

“Got it recently.” Tess replied. “So, we going or…?”

Alice nodded. “Yeah. Let me take point, and we should be able to deal with these no sweat.”

And they did. Between the two of them, the “dog things” were taken out pretty quickly. And so they began to move their way through the city, methodically taking care of the monsters as they did.

It was almost disappointing, how easy it was. Things Tess hit just sort of….melted, evaporating the moment she so much as grazed them.

“Are you sure the difficulty scaling is set right?” Tess eventually asked. “Normal monsters aren’t anywhere near this weak.”

“It seems alright to me.” Alice said, frowning. “And it takes a hit or two for me to kill things, so I’m not sure…” She trailed off, then seemed to have an epiphany of sorts. “Oh, the default scaling is based off of your stats, not your level. Yeah, it’s no wonder you’re having such an easy time of it, monsters haven’t been this close to you in stats since like…Slime Tower. Next time we run through this I’ll make sure to make it scale off of level, so you’ll be challenged.”

“I thought we were only going to do the one run today?”

Alice froze. “Yeah, we are, I was just…I dunno, I was sort of figuring we could come back again, you know? If we’ve got another free day, I think it would be nice to unwind here, there’s a lot we can do here, and I don’t think my parents mind at all.”

Tess shrugged. “Sure, as long as they’re OK with it then I suppose I don’t have an issue with it.”

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Alice gave her a relieved smile. “Thanks.”

Nothing else of interest happened during their trip. Alice kept teaching her things about clearing monsters in a city, and after another hour or so they had cleared the Arena and were teleported back up above.

When they did, Avery took Alice to the side, talking to her in a hushed tone. And, as Tess had forgotten to turn off Enhanced Hearing (Perfect) again after the Arena was done, she was able to catch the beginnings of it.

“Have you not told her yet?” Avery asked.

Tess shut off the Attribute there. Even if Alice wasn’t telling her something, she would rather hear it directly from Alice, not find it out through eavesdropping. She trusted that it wasn’t anything terribly important or dangerous, so whatever it was could wait a bit.

Emphasis on ‘a bit’. She was going to make a point of asking Alice about it when they were on their way home. Alice had been acting…weird that day, and she was guessing that whatever Alice wasn’t telling her had something to do with it.

Alice glanced over at Tess, so Tess reached up and folded her ears down to indicate that she had turned off the Attribute. Alice gave her a nod in response, then turned back to her mother and resumed talking.

Jared, on the other hand, walked over to Tess. “While they’re talking, let’s go get you keyed into the security system.” Jared said, smiling. “It shouldn’t take more than a few minutes, I took the liberty of getting the stuff ready while you two were in the Arena.” He motioned to the side of the room near where he had been sitting before, an area which now held a table upon which a few instruments were resting.

“Uh, yeah, sure.” Tess replied, walking over to the table with Jared following close behind. “Are you…sure about this, though? I mean, we only met today, it seems a little…fast, you know?”

Jared laughed. “Don’t worry so much about it. If we regret it, we can remove you whenever we want, but we’re confident in our assessment of your character. We’ve done our homework, and everyone generally has pretty good things to say about you. More importantly, though, Alice and her teammates think really highly of you.”

Tess wrinkled her brow. She wouldn’t exactly call that grounds for essentially being given a key to the house, but it wasn’t her house, so she didn’t really feel like it was her place to make that call.

Once they were at the table, Jared picked up a small plate connected via cord to some sort of tablet, then handed the plate to Tess. “Go ahead and circulate some of your Mana through here like you’re activating a magic item, we need to get a read on what your magic signature is like.”

Tess placed a hand on the plate, willing some of her Mana through it. There was a beep from the tablet, and she could see words of some sort scrolling through it.

After a moment, Jared nodded. “Perfect. We’ll need to take a couple more readings to make sure there weren’t any issues, but there shouldn’t be.”

And, after another minute or two of taking readings, they were confident that they had everything accurate. “I’ll get these hooked up into the gate key now, and when you leave, I’ll update it.” Jared said, unhooking the tablet from the plate and hooking it into another device. “When you want to come in to the compound, just place your hand on the plate on the gate and put magic through it. It’ll open right on up for you.”

“And don’t feel shy about visiting!” Avery said, walking up to the table. “You’re free to bring your friends or your girlfriend here whenever, so long as you can be sure they won’t mess anything up and come say hi whenever you visit.”

Alice, blushing furiously, nodded. “Um, yeah. Uh…we should probably get going, though. We need to get you home before it gets too late.”

Avery pouted a little. “Are you sure you don’t want to stay for dinner? We don’t mind, really!”

Alice shook her head. “Sorry. The Guildmaster won’t be happy if I keep her out much later than this on such short notice. It’ll have to wait for some other time.”

“I suppose I can allow that. Love you, sweetie.” Avery said, giving Alice a hug and then, to Tess’s surprise, gave her one as well. “I hope to see you two soon, OK?”

Jared nodded and pulled Alice into a hug, ruffling her hair, and giving her a kiss on the forehead. “Love you, Alice. Just let us know if you need anything, alright?” He let the hug go, giving Tess a wink. “That goes for you too. And thanks for treating Alice nicely, she has precious few people she can call her friends.”

“That’s enough you guys, you’re embarrassing me!” Alice said, grabbing Tess’s hand and gently beginning to lead her to the changing rooms. “Though, uh, I…love you too.”

Her parents just smiled, waving as Alice and Tess went to go change. They were gone by the time Alice and Tess had finished, and there was a long silence as they walked out of the compound and Alice set up the hoverer. Finally, once they were inside and on their way back to the Outlands, Alice spoke up. “So…how much of that conversation with my mom did you hear?” She asked, still blushing slightly.

“Just that she was surprised you hadn’t told me something.”

“I…see.” She said, a difficult expression on her face.

“Um…are you OK?” Tess asked. “You’ve been acting kind of weird all day.”

Alice sighed, blush growing slightly. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just…embarrassed. I suppose I might as well tell you, though. I didn’t expect they were going to be so…open about things.” She spoke somewhat haltingly, stopping and starting as if she was struggling to get the words out. “I just…I don’t know, this is going to sound kind of weird and clingy, but…you mean a lot to me.

“Like, I know we’ve only known each other for a couple of months and all, but it feels like it’s been a lot longer than that. Aside from my parents, you’re up there with Ker and Jin when talking about the people I’m closest to. It’s…almost like you’re the little sister I never had. I don’t know if it’s Target of Affection or if it’s something else, but…I dunno, you just mean a lot to me.”

She looked down, blushing even harder than she had been while talking to her parents. “I don’t want to lose contact with you when we stop training you. The thought scares me, and I know it’s weird because, again, we’ve only known each other for a couple of months, but…” She trailed off, and Tess waited for a few moments to see if she had anything else to say.

When she didn’t continue, Tess spoke up. “Um, I…get it, I think. I feel the same way about you and Auntie. Like…I guess that for a long time I haven’t really had any family figures in my life except for Gramps and kinda Ellie, and after our month out I guess I just sorta…latched onto you two?” Tess was blushing now as well. “I do really hope we can keep working together after I’m done training.”

Alice looked up, cracking an unsteady smile. “Hey, maybe when you and Ellie are higher level you can join our party.”

“I…wouldn’t be opposed to that, but I think Ellie might be. I get the feeling she would prefer it to be just people our age for now. Though…I don’t think we’ll be strong enough to be considered for your party for quite a while, so she might change her opinion by then. Either way, I want to keep hanging out with you.”

Alice, still blushing hugely, glanced to the side. “I get where she’s coming from. At that age I didn’t want to party with people older than me either.”

Their conversation died out, and it took a while before they were able to start having normal conversation again. The rest of the way back to the Outlands was slightly awkward, but still a pleasant trip, and they soon found themselves back in one of the guild’s private rooms.

“So…um, this is sorta a forward request,” Alice said, “but…can I hug you before you go?”

Tess walked over to Alice, giving her a hug. “Of course. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

They held the hug for a moment before Alice broke it, giving Tess a smile. “See you then.”