This daily routine of spending about nine hours a day at my property continued for the better part of a week before I was contacted by Ms. Gwyn. She was trying to bring her 'A-team' to an upper E portal she was specifically asked to do. I found this to be pretty suspicious considering my affiliations, so I told her that I could only ask my guardian for now.
Then I called the giant SOB who I was affiliated with to see if there was anything up with this dungeon. The director's response was that even though he was looking at cases right now he had none that were suitable for an amateur at the moment and hung up. Lucinda, of course, would not say anything until she had the portal's case file and roster at the least.
Out of sheer curiosity I also asked who and why she was asked to do this portal. Apparently I had freaked out and called the director for nothing because she had a friend who also led a party but their tankers were down for some medical reason or another and Ms. Gwyn offered to step in if nobody else was found.
Why would they find a new team instead of new tankers?!
Even though I thought it was foolish it seemed the others thought having another team who would offer us their next good portal to compensate was worth it. Those were probably going to be portals I could not go to with my monthly limit. On the bright side, though, this dungeon run might be useful.
This was an outdoor dungeon that was in a lushly forested terrain but it was at high risk of becoming a small territory because there were no obvious entities. Underground dungeons tell us the basic information that 'emptying the dungeon clears it' while above ground dungeons usually have something obvious like a goblin camp or an open plain and a traveling herd of monsters.
Here, there were none of those things. The creatures here were plentiful and of various grades in a relatively balanced and healthy ecology for more than ten miles in every direction. No invasive species, no underground networks, not even an ancient ruin in the distance like in games or shows and stories.
This rule of thumb for this portal was basically to kill everything we can within the remaining amount of time. There were four days left on the portal after today, which meant we would be camping for at least two nights in the dungeon. Lucinda was already ninety-nine percent likely to say no.
She said yes. Lucinda, the absolutely insane mamma bear who would probably punch the president if she thought it would solve my problems, said yes.
Her reasoning?
She would not tell me. She only said that she was fifty-percent certain what was the issue with this dungeon was but that if she was right it was one of the things I needed to experience in order to understand how dangerous my job could be. This actually made me pretty worried.
But the fact that she was willing to let me go meant it was not impossibly dangerous, right? Just something along the lines of life changing dangerous. Right?
Due to the portal being so close to the due date already, we would be entering on the very next day if the team came together. Due to me trying to start a side hustle, I had to rush to find someone who would be able to help take care of my goblins. The warehouse had just outfitted with twelve-by-twelve-foot rooms all along the sides of the warehouse except for the front end where rows of treadmills were kept.
With the outside still being set up with an expansive agility course, the only thing the goblins could do is run and practice their videos alone. All they needed was someone to come by and feed them in the mornings and evenings. My being gone might set their training back by a few days, but it would help them learn to improve themselves… themselves.
Luckily, Director Carlyle seemed to like my calling to apologize for overreacting to a sketchy situation and agreed to have Kershaw feed the critters for me. For the sake of my- money- goblins, I was willing to grovel! But only a little.
The next day, I was picked up early in the morning by Kershaw in order to show him the few steps involved in feeding my handful of critters and locking the place down. The hobs were actually allowed to wander and had keys to the front door, but the patio fence gate and property fence gate remain locked at almost all times. Then, a fully outfitted and packed Poniard and I were taken to the portal.
This portal had appeared in the intersection of some back alleys in a neighboring city so the surrounding city areas were closed and cleared out days ago. Because of the high likelihood for re-stabilizing associated with these vague portals, everybody had quickly and agreeably left with the government impact money. The rest of the city, though, was left in a tense and almost gloomy atmosphere.
The properties surrounding the portal all had their rear parking or fencing removed to make room for a large box of tall concrete walls. At every corner of the 'temporary' fortification was a mounted .50 waiting for the day the portal might re-stabilize for not being properly cleared. These would only buy time for clearing the surrounding city and putting up permanent measures.
Inside this walled off area was where the rest of the team and Bureau agents overseeing the area were waiting. The others were all happy to see Poniard again and amazed by how different he was. Ms. Gwyn even went so far as to say he even looked like a respectable little person, now.
Although I did not really care how Poniard looked, I was grateful for the compliment and enjoyed getting to brag about how my business is starting out well. The others were mostly only politely interested in this after their failed experiences with raising goblins, but Eliza and Karen were both interested in having the security of familiars.
When they saw the prices for a three-week-trained and kitted goblin and the list of people they currently had to wait behind, though, they started reconsidering training themselves.
It was at about that time that I remembered I would eventually need legitimate help with the business, especially when it came to crafting. So, I talked to Eliza and Karen about working for me for trained goblins and continuing to work for me afterward for the new 'products' I come out with as well as light shares. Karen did most of the talking but Eliza openly admitted being interested before Karen took over negotiations.
That was basically one of the few things she even said.
The other thing she said besides a greeting was something that had me worried as we entered the portal. She had asked a perfectly innocent question. "What do these lines on their skin mean?"
I had no idea they were even there but a few light purple lines had at some point appeared on the sides of his neck and throat under their chin, up the middle of the back of their neck, and along the sides of their head toward the corners of their eyes from behind their ears. I could only admit I had never even noticed them until she pointed them out and admit that I had no clue.
I immediately took a picture of these lines and sent them to Johnathan asking if he knew anything about them and that I would be in a portal for a while. Then the team made its move to enter the portal. On the other side, I found myself in a lush hardwood forest full of various long and short shrubbery with vines connecting nearly every tree to one another.
The sky overhead was only vaguely visible from our current low-ground position but I could tell the time in this zone was roughly the same as the one we left behind. However, the immediate hundred feet or so were overgrown with undergrowth from a lack of trees and was as good as any place to set our stuff down. "Lizzy, Malcolm," Ms. Gwyn calls softly from nearby before pointing off to the side, "up that tree and scout the area, find us some higher ground."
What she was pointing at turned out to be a large oak-like tree with different colored mosses on its yellow-tan coarse bark. The tree was about one of the biggest in our area and its low-hanging branches started at about thirty feet above the ground. Looking at Eliza, I shrug and take up a squatting position beneath one branch with my hands cupped together and waiting.
"I see," Eliza says quietly from within her helmet, fearlessly stepping into my hand and raising her body with that leg so that I can stand upright and toss her up into the air. Between an E grade's jumping power and my physical strength from such a full-body position, I would have been able to get her pretty close to the branch. Now, though, I had to be careful.
As it was, she sailed straight up like a bullet for more than her own height up beside the branch. Then she simply reached out and caught herself as she started to fall. After checking with hand signs that she was all god up there, I took out two large throwing knives from my coat and shook my shoulders loose before running at the trunk of the tree.
Jumping nearly half of the way up the tree, I stab my knives deep into the trunk to catch myself. Drawing my legs up from the sides like how a frog would swim to brace them against the trunk, I slowly push up on my knives to angle upward from in the tree. One they were loosened a little, I simply jumped up and pulled them out.
Raising the knives up over my my head once they were free of the tree, I stab them into the tree once again just a few feet shy of the branch that Eliza was calmly standing on. From this close, I did not mind spending more energy pulling the knives out one at a time to pull myself up with. "Not as slow as I thought," Eliza comments before squatting and jumping.
Watching her sail almost twenty feet up into the air to the next branch, I can only wonder if that was supposed to be a compliment before putting my knives away. I honestly did not know if I would be able to make this jump with my new weight and tried extra hard to make the distance. I crashed shoulder first into the branch and almost did not grab on.
Eliza stood there for a moment as if she wanted to say something else but then simply jumped over me onto the trunk of the tree and then kicked off and up to the next branch that was higher up than before. With that kind of leg strength, did I even need to throw her? Darn me for being a gentleman.
Climbing up the tree was actually pretty easy until halfway up when the branches became closer together and smaller. It was only a little slower considering how strong the both of us were, but manually climbing with our equipment on was actually pretty tiring. At least, for me it was because I had on all of my weapons and armor.
My weapons alone totaled out to roughly one hundred and thirty pounds and these contribution combat suits alone were almost twice the weight of standard proto-suits.
Once we were finally high enough in the tree that we could start seeing over our neighbors I felt like whatever gods existed in this world had granted me a small blessing while I took my helmet off to enjoy the wind. "There's still today and tomorrow," Eliza says while looking in the opposite direction, like she was warning me by talking to herself.
Ignoring the remark while surveying the other way, I say, "I've got a naked hilltop about a thousand yards due… south? Have you got anything yet?"
"Your hill," she states simply before starting her way down the tree.
Just like that our destination for camp was decided and just a few minutes later we were packing up the few tables and things set out.
*