"That was a bit… much, don't you think?" Gabriel asked as the group walked towards the Guild.

"Eh, it wasn't that bad." Teresa replied. "I could have probably waited until I sold all of my monster parts to see how much stuff is really worth, but since we're probably going out again soon it'll be nice to have something for emergencies."

"We're leaving the city already?" Mathew asked.

"No, we are leaving the city." Thomas corrected. "You and Gabriel can stay here, and we aren't going to be going anywhere far right away. I guess it's time for me to train, do I really have to fight monsters though?"

"Yes Thomas, you have to fight monsters." Sarah said, exasperated.

"Why can't I just keep leveling <Familial Duty>?"

"Because that's not good enough, it won't work. You aren't backing out of the deal now… right Thomas?" Sarah asked with a threatening tone in her voice.

"No, no, I simply don't get why we can't keep leveling the skill."

"Sarah's right dad, you got to do both." Gabriel said. "As a matter of fact, I can prove it to you. Teresa, what did you do before the apocalypse? I take it you were in the military or something?"

"Uh, no actually. I worked retail." Teresa answered.

"Really?"

"Yeah."

"Huh, well whatever, the point I was going to make still stands. We have doctors in Arconette, people who have gone through medical school and have years of experience in their practice. By all means, they will definitely have a better understanding of Restoration Magic and the human body than Teresa. Despite that, it can still take several doctors all working together on one person to cure their cancer, and it's a slow process. From what I've heard, Teresa can do that in one go on her own despite the fact her <Healing Touch> is likely lower level than the doctors we have here." Gabriel explained. "That's because she's a higher level and she has the stats to power these skills."

"So what, leveling up skills is pointless then?" Thomas asked.

"No, but only leveling up skills is pretty inefficient. You have to do both, leveling yourself and leveling your skills. I guess you technically could focus on only one of those two, but it wouldn't be great."

"I think I have a general game plan, though it's open to suggestions." Teresa announced. "Until Thomas is able to sense one of our family members, we'll split up into two groups every day. It'll be Thomas and one other person, then everyone else. Whoever is with Thomas will escort him monster hunting and make sure he doesn't die, while the rest of us will work on taking out Radioactive Portals."

"Wait, what?" Thomas asked, confused. "Only one person is going to be guarding me?"

"Yeah, anything more would be excessive. We all need to keep training too, and honestly we can't do that very efficiently with you." Teresa elaborated.

"So long as we're rotating who's doing what every day I'm on board." Jake said.

"Yeah, that works for me. I think all of us are capable of keeping Thomas alive against low level monsters, but we should bring a few potions in case of an emergency." Preston agreed. "You know, maybe getting a bunch of potions was a good idea. Now if we get injured and Teresa isn't around we aren't completely screwed."

"I'm not sure I'd feel comfortable with only one person with me-"

"Fucking hell Thomas, quit your entitled whining!" Sarah scolded, sick of his shit. "Do you realize how much you've already slowed us down with this attitude? We spent the whole trip needing to accommodate for your refusal to fight monsters, which also meant less experience for us. We could have spent the whole week fighting to get stronger, to get faster! If you had been willing to train against actual monsters, we might have even gotten here sooner."

"Hey, I don't think that's fair, and watch what you say around my kids!"

"Sorry dad, but she might have a point from what I've heard." Gabriel admitted. "Listen, I'm glad you're here, I really am, but it doesn't change the fact you tried to take Mathew across monster infested radioactive wilderness during the apocalypse without letting him gain any levels to protect himself. It's a miracle you two aren't dead. I can kind of get it, not feeling comfortable with us risking our lives, but you have to look at our circumstances. You've overcorrected, and instead of keeping Mathew safe you almost got him killed."

"I…" Thomas began, but he stopped. He let out a defeated sigh and shook his head, deciding to say nothing. A tense silence fell upon the group as they continued walking towards the Guild.

Just a little heated family argument, things totally weren't awkward now. Nope, why would it be awkward? They were only on a public road in a city where multiple people had super hearing, Teresa definitely didn't catch a few passerbies glancing over at them, not at all.

The group conversation remained dead until they reached the Guild, which was just another limestone house with a sign that read 'Arconette Monster Hunter Western Guild'. A lot of Arconette's important buildings were just random houses, but it's not like Teresa was in a position to judge. At The Mall they held important meetings in the woods. There were several groups of people by the entrance,

The group entered, and Teresa noted the interior had been heavily altered. The entryway led into what was once a living room, but had been converted into a reception area. A long desk had been placed near the stairs leading to the second floor, a simple chain restricting access from non-staff members. There were two people behind the desk, a man and a woman, although the man was currently talking to a woman in full armor with a shield.

"Welcome in! Please be aware that due to our space restrictions we have a maximum occupancy of fifteen people, but if this is your first time here then we can help you all at once." The woman said cheerfully.

"Hey Jenifer, I'm back again." Gabriel called out with a wave.

"Hey Gabe, welcome back. Are you going out again? I thought your party just finished a job."

"I'm not sure what the plan is right now, but it's been a busy few hours. Actually there are a few people I want you to meet, this is my brother Mathew and my dad."

"You found them?" Jenifer asked incredulously.

"They found me actually, travelled across the entire Contaminated Zone. Got here just in time too, there was some nasty stuff going on over at Marty's."

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"That's amazing! I'm so happy for you, congratulations!"

"What was going on at Marty's?" The other man in the building asked. The second receptionist seemed interested too.

"Got attacked by someone who had a skill to gas people unconscious, I'm not sure how much of it we're actually allowed to talk about but it's pretty bad. I'm sure you'll hear something about it soon enough."

"That's terrible, people these days. Isn't there already enough going on?" The man asked rhetorically.

"Now who might all of you be?" Jenifer questioned, looking at the rest of the party.

"These people escorted my dad and Mathew here, they know their stuff." Gabriel clarified. The party did a quick round of introductions, as did Jenifer and the other two men. The second receptionist was named Layne and the other man was a monster hunter named Adam.

"Well it's great to meet you all, I suppose I'll give you the rundown. Arconette's Monster Hunter Guild has two locations, one here and one on the east side of town but they are both a part of the same program. You aren't required to register if you want to hunt monsters, but there are a lot of benefits to doing so. Depending on the kind of jobs you take we can cover healthcare costs, we can provide you with detailed information on the monsters in the surrounding area, and if you register there will be less of a sales tax on all anything you sell here. All monster materials are to go through the Guild, though we will buy it for 95% System price."

"You'll cover healthcare?" Teresa asked.

"To an extent, it depends on the job. If you and your party take a job near the Contaminated Zone and come back with some side effects, we'll cover it. On the other hand if you take a job killing weak monsters near Lake Aela and come back with severe radiation poisoning we'll have some questions before we'll cover you." Jenifer explained. "At the very least we can always get a healer with <Purify> to do a quick cleanse for free, but cancerous growths are much more difficult. You can also give Totem Square a shot, but that may be a long recovery." Jenifer elaborated. "While we also receive funding from our local government, we prioritize the safety of our employees first."

"I thought Gabriel was joking when he said you guys were like a union." Preston said. "It hasn't even been a month yet, how is all of this already set up?"

"Believe it or not, everything is still a work in progress. It is very likely that many of our policies will change over time as we discover what works and what doesn't, but currently things are running smoothly." Jenifer replied.

"I've got a lot of stuff I'm looking to get rid of, why should I sell it here and not at the City Monolith?" Teresa asked.

"In Arconette it is illegal to make a direct sale to the City Monolith without a license. We have a tool that can determine the System price for a given good, and we purchase it from you for 95% of what the System deems it's worth. If you register it goes up to 97.5%, as we still need the small fee to keep things running. We report all goods on a daily basis, if something can be used for the city we keep it and if nobody wants it we sell it to the monolith."

"What have you got to do to register?" Jake asked.

"Just show us your status screen, let us document your attributes and skills, then you are all set to go." Jenifer answered.

Was that something safe for Teresa to do? There weren't any secrets in her status screen, was there? Maybe the <Ambassador Of The Mall> title might cause some problems, but really it couldn't be that big of a deal right? It would be a little uncomfortable having someone know all of her skills when she wasn't entirely sure how relations between their cities were going. She'd play it safe for now.

"I'll just sell what I've got, it's only a 2.5% difference and it won't be hard to fill my <Inventory> up with stuff again." Teresa said. "Is it alright if the materials are radiation attuned?"

"So long as they aren't actively emitting radiation you should be all good."

"Great, let me take it all out." Teresa reached into her <Inventory> and began retrieving multiple Monster Cores. She had 8 Chimera Monster Cores that were all above level 50, 113 Paralytic Fungi Monster Cores in the mid 40s, 26 Monstrous Salamander Monster Cores, along with 275 Mana Crystals of various attunements, most of them being level 45.

"Holy shit." Adam muttered, the monster hunter suddenly standing up straighter.

"Do we want to keep the lure we got? We've got some stuff we probably don't need." Sarah mentioned.

"Nah, I say we keep stuff like that. We can always get more monster parts, but stuff like magical guitars and water bottles are hard to come by." Teresa replied.

"Depending on the item we might be willing to pay more than the System price." Jenifer offered, but Teresa shook her head.

"Thanks but we'll stick to this for now."

"That's still an impressive haul, we normally only see stuff like that from Completionists." Layne, the other receptionist said.

"Are there a lot of people who beat the Tutorial?" Teresa asked, but the man shrugged.

"There used to be more, but we had some losses lately. I'd say there are around 50 people left in Arconette who fully beat the Tutorial, nothing too crazy. You'll almost never find them in town, they're always out fighting whatever they can find." Layne explained.

50! That was a lot, wasn't it? The Mall had 10,000 people, and only one person beat the Tutorial. Using that same proportion, Teresa would expect maybe 20 people in Arconnette to be a Completionist, but 50 was more than double that.

"Well I guess that number just went up." Thomas said, which drew a few glares from the party. Damn it Thomas, there were reasons Teresa had decided not to share her status screen yet.

"Oh, you're all Completionists? That explains it." Jenifer said, her voice subtly taking a formal tone. The party looked at each other awkwardly, not really sure how to go about this. The cat was already out of the bag, so the bare minimum in details would have to suffice.

"No, just Teresa." Jake said after a few awkward moments of hesitation.

"Oh, where's the rest of your party?" Jenifer asked.

"What do you mean?" Teresa responded. Mordecai had made a similar comment when they had first met.

"The people you beat the Tutorial with."

"My party is right here."

"But they didn't beat the Tutorial?"

"Correct."'

"Just you?"

"I mean, we all got pretty far through the first stage but only Teresa got through all of them." Jake elaborated.

"I haven't heard of that one before." Jenifer claimed, shrugging. "I've never heard of a party smaller than three beating the whole Tutorial, and even then it's normally because of either casualties or people leaving after the second stage. You must have a ridiculously good class."

"Something like that." Teresa responded, still hesitant to give too much information away. This was why she hated being a representative of an entire city, it made her paranoid that a casual sentence could have catastrophic consequences.

"We can tally all of us up for you, but if you're looking for Portals I won't be able to help you without registering." Jenifer said as she began going through all of the monster materials.

"That's fine, we won't have any problems finding one. We'll be heading out here shortly."

"So we are going out?" Thomas asked.

"You've got some levels to grind, of course we're going monster hunting." Teresa told him. Truthfully she was itching to fight something after how abruptly her last battle had ended. Fighting in a city had stressed her out, some good old senseless violence against monsters would probably help with that.

"Mathew and I will come too." Gabriel said. "We'll go with dad so we don't get in your way."

"What?" Thomas asked. "Absolutely not-"

"Dad, I can literally lateral raise you, I'll be better off than you out there. Besides, I can't have Mathew running around at that low of a level, and I also have <Identify> to make things safer." Gabriel interrupted. "You owe these people your life, and in a way I do too now. If all we got to do to help them back is something we were gonna do anyways then we better get to it."

"I'll go with them, Mathew doesn't have a lot of experience using his crossbow around others yet." Sarah offered. "Tomorrow I want to get some levels of my own though."

"Sounds like a plan." Teresa replied, feeling like a weight was lifted off her shoulders now that she could return to something she was more familiar with.

It was time to kill some shit again.

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