Lumi broke the silence that followed Aurion’s message with a round of colorful cursing. Aldin meanwhile looked rather pale, and Kera just looked confused by the others’ reactions.

Ravs on the other hand, looked quite pleased, and Jason raised a questioning eyebrow in her direction.

“Stop making a fool of yourself, Aldin,” she said to the beast-touched, flicking one of his dog-ears with a finger. “This is a good thing.”

“How on earth is the dungeon taking over the surface a good thing?” Lumi demanded.

Jason grinned. “I think I get it. You two should pay more attention to our lessons.”

He turned to Ravs. “It’s because the dungeon just spent a huge amount of its stored mana, right? Probably partially fueled by the mana of all the slain monsters, which now won’t be respawning anytime soon?”

Ravs gave him a nod and a slight smile. “Got it in one. Probably the meeting is at noon because Aurion wants to confirm with scouts first, and then we’ll be getting our marching orders.”

Aldin’s ears perked up and he brightened. “Wait, so the dungeon will be weaker?”

Ravs rolled her eyes at him. “You do realize that this is why Aurion picks on you in class, right? Yes. The dungeon can process absorbed mana only so fast. It no doubt has reabsorbed massive quantities of mana from the slain murklings by now, but it has to process a good portion of that before it can use it.”

She continued. “Land claiming is expensive. It probably just used its whole current stockpile, and a hefty chunk of the already processed mana that still existed inside its minions. That means any new respawns will have to wait for the processing to finish, and at this stage that will take a fair bit of time. The dungeon will also probably be busy spending what mana it does process on building up the surface for at least a few days. It’s the perfect time to strike: low minion count, and no stored mana when we attack the core itself. It even already spent a trump card too early in the form of the merrow.”

Lumi breathed out a sigh of relief, and then clutched her side with a grimace.

“And we’re waiting an extra day because all of us front-liners got fucked up,” she grumbled. “I see.”

“Speaking of which,” Jason said with a glance at Lumi, “we need to get this place cleaned up, and I want you resting up and not helping.”

Lumi tried to protest, but she was overridden by the others, who all agreed she needed to be healing. Kera assisted her into bed while Jason, Aldin, and Ravs began the process of cleaning up the aftermath of the earthquake.

Afterwards, neither Ravs nor Aldin felt up to walking back to the Lodge, so instead Jason delved into his haversack, withdrew some of the camping supplies he’d purchased from Jerrik, and set up some bedrolls right in the dining room.

The following morning everyone woke fairly late. Jason normally liked to have breakfast cooking by the time the girls started to get up, but as everyone had been up well into the early morning hours and they had guests, he instead remained in his room, reading his enchanting tomes until everyone began to stir.

Eventually, once everyone had roused, Jason put together a simple pancake breakfast with sausage and eggs while Ravs and Aldin repacked the bedrolls. Then, while everyone ate, they each discussed a little about what each of them had gained from the battle.

Lumi, perhaps unsurprisingly due to her recent acquisition of multiple new classes, had reaped the greatest benefits. She’d rocketed upwards in total levels, thanks to gaining multiple levels each in [Duskreaver], [Lightbearer], and [Gloom Guard], which now ranged between levels 6 and 7.

“I’m a little annoyed I only got one level of Spellblade, and nothing for both Sunwarden and Pyre Knight,” she complained, “and now I’ve got a rather hefty 10% XP penalty from passing the 50 levels mark, but on the other hand, I now have 14 more skill points, 8 more stat points on top of what I had before, and a collection of new skills and spells I’ll need to go through.”

“Anything good in there?” Jason asked.

“Definitely,” Lumi confirmed. “A light-based status-removal spell, for one. Also something called ‘Inner Fire’ which I’m hoping is a buff, and a few things that sound like crowd control. Hopefully you can get some useful runes out of some of them.”

“What are you planning on spending your points on?” Aldin asked Lumi.

She gave it some thought for a moment while she devoured another pancake.

“Well, I was planning on continuing to split things relatively evenly, but last night was a good reason to maybe focus on defense for awhile, yeah? I’d been wanting to keep increasing my Might to hit harder, but that merrow was… way faster than something that large has any right to be, and while I’ve got the ability to use heavier armor, I much prefer my currently mobility. Besides, armor gets unpleasant to wear all day.”

Jason nodded. “Yeah, you’re more of an evasion tank than a mitigation one yeah?”

Rav’s eyebrows drew together in confusion, so he explained.

“Its a term from home for different styles of front-line fighting,” Jason said. “Evasion tanks focus on avoiding and deflecting blows so that they don’t ever take the full brunt of an attack, while mitigation tanks tend to focus on skills that make them ultra-durable, able to simply shrug off blows or be outright immune to them.”

“Ah.” Ravs nodded in understanding.

“Right,” Lumi confirmed. “What with all the different buffs and barriers and such I have access to, it seems better to go with higher evasion. My resistances are already in the twenty-pluses anyway, so I’m thinking evasion might be better for me. So agility, might, and points into my knightly skills this time, I guess.”

Kera spoke up after hastily swallowing a bite of bacon. “I think endurance will be more my thing, what with the monster forms and all. If we need a big meatshield, my Gorthek form should suffice.”

Lumi put down her utensils and opened her status screen and began poking at it.

“Ok… let’s see. Topping off Mobility, Armor, Shields, and Swordsmanship…now all at rank 10.”

Aldin gave a whistle. “Nice. That’s some high ranks there for all you’ve no classes past level 15 yet.”

Lumi then navigated to her stats, and dumped several points into Might, and several into agility, and then closed her screen with a nod.

Jason hadn’t actually been looking for it last time Lumi had put a lot of points into Might, recalling that Lumi’s appearance had shifted slightly, as appeal wasn’t tied to just Charisma, but Might as well. This time he couldn’t fail to miss it as Lumi’s arms abruptly became more toned, and her face became slightly leaner and more refined. Even her hair changed in some nebulous way he couldn’t quite put a finger on.

Then Lumi twitched slightly. Her face grew a bit red. She squirmed, cleared her throat, and then looked away from everyone. She surreptitiously tried to adjust her shirt and bra for a moment in a completely failed attempt at being nonchalant.

Ravs snickered. “Oho! Looks like someone reached a twenty. Hit a sudden growth spurt did we?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Lumi muttered, clearly embarrassed. She adjusted her shirt again.

“Better go let ‘em out til you can get a new band fitted,” Ravs commented with an amused grin. She waggled her eyebrows suggestively. “Which you should probably do before our meeting with all our coworkers.”

Kera covered her mouth with a hand, trying not to laugh at how Lumi’s face suddenly turned an even brighter shade of red.

Jason and Aldin, meanwhile, wisely chose to remain silent while Lumi squirmed with embarrassment. She hastily excused herself and returned to her room for a few moments while everyone focused on their meals.

When Lumi returned, she crossed both arms over her chest and glared at Jason, as if daring him to say something.

Why’s she glaring at me? I wasn’t the one who called attention to it, Jason thought to himself.

Instead of voicing the thought, Jason changed the subject. “A-anyway….” he began out loud. “I guess that’s all of Lumi’s cha— er, I mean updates.”

“What about you two?” he asked, with a look at Aldin and Ravs.

“Nothing for me,” Ravs said with a shrug. “Technically I wasn’t involved in the fight.”

“Wait, you didn’t get anything at all?” Jason asked. “As in, no XP credit for helping?”

Ravs shook her head, and then pushed a lock of white hair out of her face. “Sadly no. Just teleporting the raid wasn’t enough to count as being involved.”

“That’s totally unfair!” exclaimed Kera. “You were present and still listed in the party status, you should at least get a share. Healers and support classes still get XP for doing thier thing, why didn’t you?.”

Ravs shrugged again. “That’s how the Voice works. I wasn’t directly involved, so no combat experience.”

“That’s dumb,” Kera insisted.

“I dunno,” Jason said. “I mean, it would be a little silly if say, an enchanter got credit for random kills by hiding in a building and handing out temporary buffs to passing adventurers.”

“But I get XP for casting buffs.” Lumi said.

“Yes, for casting them, and in a combat situation only,” Jason emphasized. “Plus you get a tiny amount for the actual casting, in addition to what you get for killing the monster. Those are two separate things. The buff was already rewarded. I suspect that Ravs got some XP, for the actual casting, just no credit for the battle, right?”

He looked over at the elf girl, who confirmed his question with a slight incline of her head.

“Bah.” Kera said. “I still say its unfair, because she still helped us get into position, but whatever.”

Ravs just shrugged, unbothered.

Jason looked at Aldin expectantly.

“I gained one level,” Aldin replied, “but it was a dud level. Just a skill point, which I dropped into my restoration skill as usual. You?”

“I didn’t get nearly as much as Lumi did,” Jason replied, “but I still got like 6 levels. Mostly from Golemist, but one each in my mains. Oh, and I’m only about 100 XP away from hitting a new level of Machinist, which I expect to earn later today.”

“I got quite a few stat points too,” Jason continued, “because a lot of those levels were even ones. I was actually thinking of dumping them all into spirit, because quite simply I’m constantly running out of mana.”

“As for skills…well, see for yourself.”

He shared his notifications.

Expert Craftsman: As a Golemist, you work with many an obscure material, both magical and mundane. Choose a material type and a crafting skill. When using either your chosen skill or your chosen material, your skill ranks are boosted by 5. This bonus does not stack with itself. Repair Construct: With little more than a touch, you can restore your golems to an undamaged state. Mana expenditure based on the complexity and size of damage to be repaired. Synergy Detected: Artificer, Machinist. [Repair Construct] has been upgraded to include use on all object personally crafted by you. Skill Upgrade: Basic Artifice has been upgraded to Expert Artifice, allowing for a wider range of materials, properties, and complexity. Discovery Available.

He opened up his discoveries and sorted it for new entries. Immediately something caught his eye: Mana Catalysis. While the description was as opaque as usual, Jason could guess what the term meant. He quickly selected it.

Mana Catalysis: By injecting additional mana or arcane powder into alchemical and magical processes, you can greatly reduce the required time for the creation of new substances. In some cases, fewer or different materials may be utilized in creation processes. Synergy Detected: Chemistry, Prepare Legendary Fare. Mana Catalysis may also be applied to Cooking and Chemistry.

Kera nearly spat out the water she was taking a sip of just as Jason’s final notification popped up.

“Cooking?!” she giggled.

Jason grinned. “Well, I was really just expecting it to help with speeding up Synthesis, but I’ll take it. Food prep is mostly chemistry in action anyway, right?”

Aldin shook his head with a chagrined smile. “What the heck, man? You get the weirdest, and yet somehow incredibly useful, skills.”

“I wonder how fast I can make baking powder now?” Jason wondered aloud.

“You mean flour?” Ravs asked, confused.

“Uhh… no. Baking powder is…”

Jason trailed off, unsure how to explain. How did you make stuff like cakes without baking powder? He knew what it was for, but so far he’d seen very little in terms of baked goods so far in Arnvale. He wasn’t sure that referencing foods from Earth would make sense.

“I’m not sure if I could explain it without getting off-topic. Short explanation: It helps bread rise, among other things. It lets you do a lot of fun things with cooking.”

Ravs looked thoughtful. “Well, if it’s anything like those.. jellies.. you made, I’ll look forward to tasting what you come up with.”

Jason pulled his thoughts back to the the subject at hand. “Uh, anyway, that’s my stuff. Kera? Anything worth mentioning?”

“Yeah. I didn’t gain many levels, but I got a fair number of new nature-themed spells, and four new skills, all of which are pretty nice.”

Kera began ticking off her fingers one at a time. “First, I got that Dire Beast skill Aldin was talking about last week. Apex Predator. It gives me a bunch of stat points I can move around, essentially assigning different profiles to different forms. Like I can beef up my gorthek’s strength—”

Ravs snickered at her unintentional joke.

“—and,” Kera continued with a half-hearted glare, “I can boost my agility as a crocodile for faster swimming, and so on.”

“Then there’s Feral Bond, which I got from Beast-Bonded, obviously. That grants all my summons a percentage of my own stats as a buff.”

“Pretty sweet given you just got access to bonus stats,” Lumi commented.

“I know, right?” Kera grinned back at her. “It’s even better than that, too. I actually got five stat points just for hitting level five. Plus the normal three points for other levels.”

“Wow, how many total just from Dire Beast?” Jason asked.

“Um….”

She thought for a moment.

“Fourteen, I think. Some of them are pre-chosen, though.”

Aldin held out a fist to Kera. “See? I told you it would totally be worth it. Dire Beast is a great monster class.”

Kera returned his fist bump with a grin. Then she continued.

“Then I got two skills from Scion that are both support-types. Primal Huntress, which is… I guess I’d call it a kind of ultimate tracking skill. Costs mana to use, but sharpens my vision, lets me see in the dark, smell and hear way better than a normal human, and so on. And I’m counted as having the Expert Tracking skill while I do it. I think my effective ranks are related to my level, though. It’s an unranked skill so I can’t put points into it.

“Very useful for us adventurers,” commented Lumi.

“Last of all is Wildstrider,” Kera finished. “It basically means that I’m really good at navigating natural hazards and it’s very hard to track me in return.”

“Seems like a pretty good set of skills to me, if perhaps a little redundant since you have that shared senses thing for scouting,” Jason said.

A comfortable silence fell as Kera had nothing more to add. Jason glanced around the room, seeing that everyone appeared to have finished with their meals.

“Well, it looks like we’re all done here,” he said. “The next question is… who’s for showering first?”

In the end, Lumi ended up going first, because as Ravs pointed out, she had some ‘rather pressing business’ to attend to. Kera went second, after having somehow managed to drop Jason’s mostly-empty bowl of remaining pancake batter on the floor, thus splashing it all over her feet.

By the time breakfast had been cleared and everyone had cleaned themselves up, Lumi had left to see Nissette, the kitchen had been cleaned, and both Aldin and Ravs had headed back to their own separate quarters at the Lodge. Though they had both stuck around long enough to each try out Jason’s enchanted shower, which they were both quite impressed by.

Personally, Jason thought it was awfully slap-dash looking, even if it had turned out to work quite well. Nonetheless, he couldn’t wait til when he had some time to do a proper job of things.

That seems to be a common trend lately, he reflected as he sat in the dining room, idly flipping through the advanced enchanting tome he’d gotten from Jerrik. With his all the ranks he’d dumped into Engraving, he had finally been able to begin deciphering parts of the textbook. A breakthrough felt imminent, and Jason hoped that he’d find a good way to increase the number or complexity of his enchantments when it happened.

Kera’s voice pulled his attention away from the book. “Ok, how about this?”

Jason looked up from the book, and his thoughts froze for a moment as he looked into the eyes of an intensely attractive, dark-eyed beast-kin woman. It took him a moment to register that it was Kera, asking him for his opinion on her new look.

She’d taken a mostly-human form, a little over five and half feet tall, with smooth, pale skin. A pair of silver-tipped fox-ears poked up out from her now shoulder-length black hair. A long, fluffy tail, black with streaks of silver, swished back and forth behind her dress, which was now alarmingly low-cut and showing a fair bit of well-developed cleavage. Jason could see quite a bit of leg, as well, since she was in her split skirt again.

He could feel his face heating up. Kera spun in place once to give him a good look at her, and his eyes were drawn to her swishing tail as she spun around. He felt his heart began to race as she completed her spin, looking at him expectantly with a face that was undeniably hers, but now almost supernaturally perfect.

He stammered a little, not at all sure what he should be saying in this situation. Fortunately for him, Kera wasn’t really the insecure type, not since her decision to stay on Verdania, so she didn’t take his sudden inability to form a coherent sentence the wrong way.

Instead, she blushed a little herself, looking away and pushing a stray bit of hair away from her face.

“I-I’ll take that as a positive result. I guess I overdid it. Sorry. Um. I was feeling a little, um, competitive, I guess, after Lumi…”

She trailed off for a moment, then looked back at Jason. “I-I don’t mean I was jealous!” she said hastily. “I just… wanted to see if I could use my flexible points with Sculpt Self, which it turns out I can, and then I wondered what would happen if I put it all into Charisma, and then I remembered I wanted to spend some of my points in Might for real because I want more stamina so I did that, and it turns out that certain species morphs can get a passive boost to some stats, and… and…”

She ran out of breath, heaving a large intake of air afterwards, which didn’t help his state of mind at all.Then she bit her lip, shyly, clearly worried about what he was thinking, and Jason’s brain almost shut down again.

Jason cleared his throat and forced himself to look away from Kera before his eyes started to wander too much. How was it possible that she could both look cute and gorgeous at the same time? He wanted to both lose himself staring into her eyes and to investigate…other things… at the same time.

“Yes, uh, well, you certainly look… um…fantastic,” he finally managed say. “Do I even want to ask what Appeal you ended up with….?”

“Thirty-one,” she said quietly.

Jason opened his mouth to reply, without looking back towards her, but she continued on.

“…. and a 21 Charisma, too.”

He choked mid-breath.

No wonder I can barely look at her without…

“I don’t mind if you look.” Kera suddenly declared. Her voice was oddly hesitant. “...Please look? I-I don’t mean anything by it, and I know it’s a bit selfish and maybe kind of shallow, but back home I was never very pretty, a-and here I can…I just wanted to see what it'd be like to...”

Kera trailed off again as Jason took a deep breath to steady himself and calm his racing heart. He turned back to her. “No, I get it. Us guys also sometimes want to feel attractive and be uh… appreciated.”

He caught his gaze wandering southward almost immediately, and jerked his eyes back up to Kera’s face. That didn’t help either, because looking into her eyes made his heart start to race again. He coughed politely into his hand, then took a deep breath of his own.

Then, after making an effort to try and calm himself, he decided to take Kera at her word. After all, he knew she’d had some serious… well, body issues wasn’t the right term. Reinvention issues? Life issues...? He didn’t know what he’d call it, but he had a vague idea that she wasn’t trying to seduce him or deliberately make him uncomfortable, she just… craved validation a bit now that she had an opportunity to literally be who she wanted, and had gone a little overboard. Not unlike how often times people from ultra-controlling family situations tended to go a little haywire when presented with the true freedom of college life.

So he got out of his chair and circled around her, taking a good look at her. She waggled her hips a little, swaying her tail back and forth, and Jason’s face flushed again.

“Um, yeah. Just… wow.” His voiced hitched again and he broke out in a slight sweat as he circled around back to her front. She had chosen a form that was... very well developed.

He pulled his eyes back to hers with an effort. “Words fail to describe," he said. "I’m tempted to ask what, exactly, you meant by certain species having a racial bonus.”

She bit her lip again, and suddenly Jason found he didn’t want look anywhere else. She was very cute when she did that. How had he not noticed before?

Kera looked down shyly a bit under Jason’s intense gaze.

“Um. Um. This form is technically a beast-touched kitsune,” she said. “Redundant, I know. A-Anyway, kitsune can, uh, trade some of their magical aptitude away for other things. Only one tail, you know? And uh… I picked a trait that boosted both Charisma and Appeal.”

“Well it’s damn effective,” Jason said firmly.

Her tail started wagging happily, and Jason saw a slight blush begin.

Ok, maybe not quite so innocent in intention as she claims, he mused. Does she…? Nah, can’t be. ...Right?

He cleared his throat yet again. This was too much for him to handle just at the moment. They had a meeting in a half an hour. He forced himself to look away again.

“Um. Ok, I’m not sure if this is like… my own lack of… recent prospects, or some kind of weird borderline victim blaming, or even an honest to god supernatural effect at work due to your trait, but uh…maybe tone it down a little next time? You are… uh… very, very distracting, to say the least. Like, ‘causes car accidents’ distracting. I’m going to need a cold shower, now, I think.”

Kera’s blush deepened to a very bright red. Almost comically so, due to her pale skin. Her tail was still swishing back and forth and a happy wag, though.

“S-sorry, I didn’t mean to blue-ball you…”

Jason shook his head. “No need to apologize. You look great.” He eyed Kera from the side, giving in again for moment and simply admiring her new look. After a moment, he turned and gave her a smile. “We’ll look back on this and laugh later, I’m sure.”

“I’d uh, better go take that shower though before we leave,” he continued. “Don’t change though. Keep it for today at least."

He gave her a grin.

"I totally want to see Lumi’s reaction.”

It was worth the struggle to keep his eyes, and thoughts, to himself, Jason reflected, as he and Kera met up with Lumi a short while later. The other girl simply stopped in her tracks as she came out of Fanciful Finery and stared, a slight blush slowly creeping over her, growing in intensity until her face was flaming red and she was gaping like a fish.

She made some kind of happy, strangled sound, which made Jason laugh.

“Yep, that was about my reaction too,” he said.

Lumi managed to recover her voice shortly.

“What did you do?!” she exclaimed. “You are just… just… smoking hot.”

Jason watched Lumi's interest war with her usual sense of propriety and embarrasment. Propriety lost, and she stepped up to Kera, looking her up and down, fanning her own face with one hand as she did so. She even boldly peeked down Kera’s shirt a little, given that Kera had apparently deliberately morphed her dress to show off.

Kera, for her part, simply blushed some more and repeated the spin she’d given Jason, hastily explaining how she’d felt a sudden desire to see how far she could push things.

“S-sorry, by the way," she said. "I wasn’t trying to like… show you up or something. Well… not like, in a mean way. I-I mean…I just was feeling drab with that twelve of mine, and…and…”

Lumi gave Kera a hug around the shoulder with one arm, followed by a wink. “It’s totally cool, I forgive you. I get it, believe me. I won’t be mad if you don’t mind me looking.”

“I-I don’t. I mean, it’s ok if you do. I want people to look.”

Jason’s thoughts froze up again a little bit as his imagination went into overdrive. He shook himself. Am I that hard up I’m now fantasizing about my friends? he considered. That's rather unlike me. Maybe Kera's trait is having an effect.

Lumi saw his strained look, and a mischievous grin stole over her face. She leaned over and whispered in Kera’s ear. The other girl flushed slightly, and nodded with a grin of her own.

Uh oh. That is not a good look.

Then Lumi took Kera by the shoulders, and rotated herself and Kera so they were facing Jason. Grinning at Jason, she casually and deliberately put an arm around Kera’s shoulders, while Kera gave him a brilliant smile. Lumi leaned over very slowly and deliberately to give Kera a playful kiss on the cheek, while watching Jason the whole time. Kera leaned into her with a giggle.

Both of them looked expectantly at him. Lumi grinned.

“Really?” he asked. “And I just took that cold shower, too.”

Dropping her arm from Kera’s shoulder, Lumi just laughed at him as she turned towards the Lodge.