I gave a twirl for mum, showing off my new outfit. Without a comfort enchantment she'd needed to make it in multiple pieces, mostly leather, but also making use of a heavy, navy fabric to ensure it didn't restrict movement. Despite being form-fitting to the point that I doubted I'd be able to wear it even a month from now, never mind a year, it wasn't at all kinky. I considered that a large bonus, given my current hormone pickled brain. Right now, being stuck in the delvers guild's bar full of people in the traditional Dawnhold black leather would have done horrible things to my sanity.

It was very obviously not as protective as the usual guild equipment, with the only reinforcing plates being some mana infused steel I'd put above the wrists, but it didn't need to be. The blue highlights made it look a little unprofessional, but it wasn't as if I was prancing around wearing neon underwear on the outside doing a superhero impression. I could wear it without embarrassment, and it would hopefully stop a Freya-thrown fireball from killing me outright. It was better than nothing.

I'd briefly considered it a shame that we were only leaving in the afternoon of the day before things started, and would be coming home the day they finished, but after thinking it through I decided I was being silly. I wasn't participating in group matches, and the organisation was similar to when it was being held in Dawnhold, which meant I only had one fight per day. I'd have every afternoon for a fortnight in which to play tourist.

It was the first time in a while that I was travelling to Dawnhold on my own, having spent the past three years bringing Cluma with me to visit Clana. Since that was the case, I decided to go all out, checking clock, then layering my three main buff spells and [Weft Walk], and charging at full speed.

ding

Skill [Clock] advanced to level 12

Skill [Weft Walk] advanced to level 13

What should have been a couple of hours' walk, I made in nine minutes. Admittedly, with one more level I could do it instantly, if I took the right class, but that was besides the point. I wasn't even breathing heavily! Just my usual daily reminder that the System, or possibly the whole world, was ridiculous.

Also of note was that I was wrong about [Clock] not offering anything more.

9/4 Summer, 335 5:82:12.1 31.67

That 31.67 was new, and it offered no information as to what it was. The 9/4 meant the ninth day of the fourth week, the 335 was the year, using the seeding as zero. The longer chunk of numbers was the time, and seeing minutes over 60 still rankled despite having had twelve years to get used to it. There didn't seem to be any elements of the current time left over, and invoking clock multiple times didn't show it changing, so it wasn't something like milliseconds. I'd have to keep checking periodically and see when it changed.

I headed to the delvers guild bar to meet up with Vyre's party, but given the speed with which I'd sprinted over, I was fifteen minutes early. The place wasn't particularly busy, but a number of groups milling around in casual-wear made it clear that my group wasn't the only one travelling today. I counted at least...

Oof!

I suddenly found myself on my back on the floor, staring up at the ceiling, with no visible sign as to what had just happened other than an impact to my stomach. Of course, just because there was no visible sign didn't mean that I didn't know exactly who was responsible. Particularly since I could feel the arms wrapped around me perfectly well.

"Hello to you too, Cluma. Now can you get off, please? You dropped in to visit less than a week ago!"

"Yes, but that was almost a week ago!" came a disembodied voice that, as expected, belonged to Cluma. I hadn't even bothered to check with one of my perception skills. She climbed off despite her protest, popping into visibility in front of me. To my surprise, she was wearing a waitress uniform, which explained why she was in the bar at least.

"You're working here?"

"Yeah, I tried at the institute with mum, but they didn't need more staff, so I came here instead. Apparently my personality is a good match for the rowdy delver crowd."

"What? You mean your habit of turning invisible and attacking people?"

"Surprise hugs are not an attack!" she shouted, pouting angrily and making me laugh out loud.

"Shouldn't you be in school or something, though?" No, wait, it doesn't have normal classes in the summer. "Or not. I forgot it was the summer holidays."

"Meh, I know it all anyway, thanks to you and your ridiculous educationalness."

"Are you sure? If I'd taught you that well, you'd know that educationalness isn't a real word."

"It is now," she said, following up with the irrefutable argument of poking out her tongue.

"Anyway, aren't you supposed to be working," I asked, noting that the barkeeper was watching our performance, along with half the delvers in here.

"Why? Do you want something?"

"No thanks..."

"Yeah, didn't think so. It's the same for everyone. This is normally a quiet time of day, before anyone comes back from the dungeon. Everyone here now is just waiting for the portal. Haven't sold a single mug of beer in the past hour."

Fair enough; it wasn't as if anyone was calling for her. It was an intriguing way around the rule that you had to be an adult to join the guild, even if she hadn't actually joined as a delver. I doubted that the bar did deliveries into the dungeon, but I'd bet there were plenty of opportunities to spar.

Vyre's squad turned up a few minutes later, the group of four dogkin in light clothing. I noted that one of them was still below level forty, which was a point I hadn't considered from the way the lower level competitions were being held locally and the higher level ones centralised. If a party contained people above and below the threshold, then either their lower level members wouldn't be able to fight in the singles, or else the party wouldn't be able to fight as a group. In Vyre's case, they'd decided to enter the group matches, leaving one of their members unable to participate in the singles.

Today was to be a day of firsts. My first time out of the area of Dawnhold and my first time in a big city. Two big cities in fact, and my first time, albeit very briefly, visiting an original settlement. It would also very likely be my first time seeing a number of new sentient races. First of all, though, it was my first time seeing a portal. The travel room of the guild was larger than I expected, with a high ceiling that obviously cut into the top floor, and was located directly above the dismantling area on the ground floor. A large hole in the floor allowed items to be hauled up via a simple pulley system, and manoeuvred into a circular black disk, four metres in diameter, floating in the air half a metre above the ground, completely unconnected to anything, with arcs of mana bleeding from the edges with such intensity that they were visible to the naked eyes as a deep purple glow.

A guild staff member wheeled over a wide stepladder and placed it in front of the portal, before locking it into place via clamps on the floor. He then picked up a something that looked very much like a bridge, a base of thick wood but with rails on both sides. He fed one end into the portal while holding the other end, in complete disregard of the principle of leverage, then lowered the remaining end onto the stepladder, again clamping it into place.

Our group of over twenty delvers walked up one by one, climbed the ladder and stepped through. Most of the others had obviously done this before, but I had no idea what to expect. Vyre assured me that nothing surprising would happen, and to just keep walking, so that's exactly what I did. I could see the bridge stretching slightly into the blackness, so I walked along it. There was no sensation upon stepping into the portal, but my range of vision was odd. I could only see a few centimetres forwards and back, but had no difficulty looking up or down. [Mana Perception] was even worse; I was in a cloud of spatial affinity that was so dense that I could barely see myself, let alone anyone else. I couldn't see the other delvers, aside from glimpses of Vyre in front of me, but I could hear their footsteps, distorted and lower pitch than they should have been.

I kept pushing forward with small steps until there was a sudden burst of light in front of me, which resolved into an absolutely massive warehouse type room. The other end of the bridge was connected to a similar step ladder to the one on the Dawnhold side, leaving me back at ground level, and safely within the Emerald Nest. The portal we'd emerged from was one of a line of a dozen, and large platforms were lined up in front of some of them, mostly covered with containers, but a few carrying massive monster corpses. It was already obvious back on the Dawnhold side, but here it was even clearer that these portals were used for goods transport as well as people, which was interesting; I thought spatial mages did that via teleportation and storage items.

One thing I wasn't sure I wanted to know was what would happen if anyone fell off the bridge while inside the portal. I assumed there was a very good reason why it had rails.

I didn't get to see any of the Emerald Nest, the warehouse we were in not having been built with windows, and instead stuck with the group as we were directed straight to another portal where we went through the same process. The location we ended up in looked more like the Emerald Nest terminal than Dawnhold. There were a few less portals, but it was still a big place, with even more containers stacked around the place, all obviously sized to be compatible with the portals.

We were led straight out of the building onto a wide street outdoors. To our left was a wall very much like the one in Dawnhold, except with a far larger gate. It wasn't noticeably higher or thicker, which suggested that any dungeon break that occurred from the great dungeon was no worse than our small ten-floor version.

Actually, I'd got so used to the Dawnhold wall that Erryn's revelations hadn't caused me to consider the obvious question; why were dungeon breaks a thing that even existed? Now that she'd decided to make dungeons safe, would they no longer happen? What were they for in the first place? I could see them being a useful way to point out the existence of undiscovered dungeons, but if that was the reason, they shouldn't continue once the dungeon was being actively worked. Maybe it's something that's common sense to other delvers; I'll have to ask at some point.

Opposite us was a grand four-story stone building, with the symbol of the delvers guild prominently placed above the wide front doors. It was presumably the guild headquarters. Similar sized, albeit less ostentatious, buildings were built on either side of it. The warehouse we'd emerged from had no additional floors, but was almost as tall as a three story building itself, and was attached to another smaller building that sat between it and the wall.

To the right, the road continued straight as far as I could see, the sides lined with more buildings and branching roads. The street was busier than I'd ever seen in Dawnhold, and while there wasn't a constant stream of traffic through the dungeon gate, I could still see multiple groups on their way in or out. The appearance of the groups was very different from Dawnhold too; it wasn't the same sea of black leather and occasional steel plate, but a variety of outfits. I could see the occasional warrior in full plate, with others in chain-mail and leather of many different colours. The only constant was a complete lack of robes. Mages always wore proper armour here, apparently.

One particular group caught my eye, largely because of the dark brown horns that were growing out of the head of the two-and-a-half metre tall warrior striding at their head. One sprouted from each temple, pointing upwards, but curling forwards and downwards. He was too far away for [Appraisal], but between the horns and his red skin, I felt safe assuming I'd seen my first demon. In his party was a catkin dressed in pure white, a material that I couldn't recognise from this distance, along with a shorter chain-mailed individual who I would have taken for a dwarf, except for the lack of facial hair and girth. There were also a pair of tall women, each holding a magnificent-looking staff. One looked elven, while the other I couldn't identify. The ears were too short for an elf, but the wrong shape for a human. I'd have assumed a human and elf half-breed, if not for being told they weren't possible.

Alas, I didn't have the time to sight-see, and had to follow our group. We didn't go to the large building opposite, but to another one of a similar size that sat between it and the wall. Despite the smaller and less grandiose entrance, it was nevertheless seeing considerably more traffic than the presumed headquarters.

It was obvious that the place was a tavern before we even set foot in the place. The noise alone was a clue, but the view through the windows gave it away. Windows which I noted were glass; it had already spread this far. As for why we were heading there, I couldn't imagine that the full four floors were needed for drinkers, which meant it was probably where we'd be sleeping. I'd been told that arrangements would be made for all entrants, but not what they were.

It turned out that I'd be sharing a room with the four dogkin. The space was a bit cramped, but as with the Dawnhold dorms, we had our own large bathroom. Thanks to [Item Box], I didn't have any luggage to drop off, but I'd followed the party upstairs anyway, pondering what to do with my spare time.