“Heya sleepyhead~,” I said to Tear and ruffled the barely awake catgirl's bed-tousled hair. “You gonna lie in my bed all day, or are you still ok to go do the adventurer escort thing?”

She sat up drowsily and rubbed her eyes before yawning and stretching like a cat. “Appropriate for a catgirl,” I thought.

“Hmm?” she asked drowsily.

I sighed and repeated myself.

“Oh yeah, that, yeah let's go,” she said sleepily.

“Oh! Do you like my room?” she frowned around at it.

“You've redecorated, I don't like it,” she complained.

“You never do,” I complained back and cleared off to make breakfast.

After breakfast, we descended together down to the first floor, the entrance hall.

One modification I had made yesterday was to this floor: it now had Living Fire floating in niches several meters up the wall all around the room, adding to the light generated by the Topaz Gemspark, and glinting off the glass floor, providing an even greater and more stunning contrast with the deep black-purple obsidian. The effect was rather spoiled by large, cheerful 'Welcome!' mat in front of the door. Tear eyed it.

“Really?” she asked despairingly.

“What? Oh, the mat. I like it, it makes the place less supervillain lair,” I justified, partially to myself, and she sighed but declined to comment further.

I opened the door, and was mildly surprised when a fly buzzed in. The mild surprise turned into great surprise when a tiny bolt of mana lightning shot out of the wall, vaporising it midair.

“Huh, it couldn't do that yesterday,” I commented to myself.

“Do what?” Tear asked.

“Oh, nothing,” I replied, remembering her fear of the storm last night.

“Well that aroused absolutely no suspicion,” she quipped sarcastically as we walked through the ethereal obsidian door.

The world outside looked rather different. Several trees had been fully exploded by the lightning strikes that deflected off the tower, and branches and bits of charred trunk were littering the cratered ground.

I inspected the depth of one of the craters and whistled. “Those mana infused lightning bolts pack quite a punch,” I thought to myself. “I'm glad there won't be any more of them now that the tower has started absorbing the lightning that hits it.”

I did some quick tidy up, filling in the craters, throwing the larger bits of tree into my inventory, and replanting saplings in the clear spaces, before lifting Tear into my arms and heading for The Outpost.

We arrived without incident, and walked into town. Steven wasn't on the gate, so I curiously asked the guard who was where Steven was-it turned out he was doing his duty as guard captain, and was dealing with some damages from the storm. So I gave up on having a chat, not that there was much time for that as we were slightly late, and headed straight for town hall.

“Ah! Lyte and Tear, you're finally here!” Lupia exclaimed as we opened the door. I immediately felt guilty about the ‘finally’.

A rather motley crew was sitting and standing around her desk; I assumed they were the adventurers who would be taking the test. Lupia herself was ready to go, wearing leather armour over her usual uniform, a quarterstaff leaning by the side of her desk, and a long sheathless dagger at her belt on her left hip.

“Good afternoon, my name's Lyte,” I said politely, internally celebrating at finally remembering to introduce myself, “and this is Tear,” I indicated her by my side. One of the adventurers snorted and cast a disdainful look at us, one waved cheerfully, and the rest studied us carefully.

“And why did we have to wait for them to begin the test?” demanded the one who had snorted.

“Dranner, just introduce yeself, and we'll find out later,” a brown haired and lightly armoured dwarf said brusquely.

“Fine,” he said, then turned to look haughtily at us. “You may call me Lord Dranner, and I fight at the frontline, so stay out of my way.”

“Of course Mr Lord,” I replied with carefully simulated ignorance. The dwarf laughed heartily while Dranner stared at me with barely concealed rage.

“Aye,” the dwarf said, seemingly answering some thought of his own, “I'm Thora, a Priest, so you can rely on me for healing, though I'm also fair handy with me mace here.”

“Sorry about Dranner, he's not had much sleep recently. I'm Liz by the way, and I'm an archer-ranger,” said the woman who had waved at us, her tough looking exterior belying her bubbly personality.

“Of course I haven't!” Dranner snapped. “I don't even know how you could sleep on those rocks you call beds.”

Everyone else in the group gave him a calculating or pitying look, apart from Liz, who sighed and called “Vyra, it's your turn.”

The male dark elf dressed in a dark cloak who had been scrutinising us the most intensely spoke this time. “I'm Vyra, an assassin, though I'll probably be working as a scout, though that depends on the test content.”

“Hmm~,” I thought, “so assassins are institutionalised here. Thats interesting.”

“Janet, Mage,” the hooded woman next to Vyra said. From this I understood she was a woman of few words.

“It sssseemsss thhhat I'm lassst,” the towering dark green lizardman said, “I'm Sssstone, a frontline shield usssser. You can rely on me to ssstop enemiesss.”

“Hmm, so a fairly standard party, though no summoner type,” I commented.

“Aye, and usually adventurer parties don't have an assassin with them, usually we find another frontline man instead, no offence Vyra.” said Thora, nodding to the assassin.

“None taken,” he nodded back.

“As for summoners,” the dwarven priest continued, Janet nodding along, “summoning rituals or items are too expensive for your average adventurer to use to have any kind of dedicated summoner role; the only thing close would be nobles or very high ranking adventurers having a guardian or assistant summon.”

“Now that you've all introduced yourselves and caught Lyte up on summoners, I will now explain the exam,” Lupia called loudly, pulling the room's attention back to her. “The exam will be to form a party and escort us three 'combat incapable' people through the beast woods to Lyte's tower, stay the night in the wood, then escort us back again. By 'combat incapable' I mean that if any of us get attacked and have to defend ourselves, it will count as a fail for the party unless extenuating circumstances are in play.”

“Extenuating, what?” Janet asked.

Lupia paused as if to work out her meaning, then replied. “If there is a natural event beyond our control, or if a monster or pack with a Class beyond what you could handle with difficulty attacks, these would be such circumstances. As I'm the examiner for this exam, I get to decide on them, so I will do so for each situation. Everyone understand?”

A variety of 'Yes's, nods, and an 'Aye' came from around the room.

“Good,” Lupia said, then smiled. “You have one hour to prepare, then meet us by the gates.”

The room emptied in a flash, leaving only Tear, Lupia, and myself. I took a seat, and lounged in it with as much casualness as I could. “So, how are our recruits?” I asked, and Lupia sighed.

“They're all good established adventurers who've worked their way up to the point where they could take the test, so they should be capable enough to get us out there. Well, all except Dranner, despite having a decent track record of quests and being set to be able to take a promotion test next year at the latest, he was a recommendation to be promoted earlier by another noble.”

“Ah, politics,” I sighed, “so glad I'm pretty much independent.”

“... this is the first time I've thought your decision to live so far away was a good idea,” Lupia said.

“Don't praise him,” Tear interjected from the side, “it'll go to his head.”

“What!” I cried, winking at Lupia and jumping up from my chair with exaggerated melodrama, “is this how you repay me for all I've done for you?! With insults?!”

The cheeky catgirl had already made it halfway across the room by this point. I gave chase, calling “Get back here you brat! I'm gonna tie you up and carry you to the tower!”

Tear fled out the door, me in 'hot' pursuit.

“Oh hi Steven,” I said as I emerged from the town hall and immediately skidding to a halt, my feet digging shallow furrows in the ground.

“Oh, if it ain't Lyte. How ya bin? It seems like we be always missin each other,” he chuckled, and I agreed. “So, I heard yer takin a bunch a newbies fa ae walk?”

“Yup, to my tower and back. You should visit sometime.”

“Will be sure ta. Now ye should probli head on; she's got quite a bit of distance on ya,” Steven said, nodding in the direction Tear had disappeared in.

“Ha! That's what she thinks,” I said, and took off with my quadruple my previous speed, leaving a cloud of dust in my wake.