Pierto was being a pain again. She knew that he had her best interests at heart, and that it wasn't really his fault that completing her mission was so difficult. He also wasn't really asking for that much, but Afilada felt better blaming him, so she did.

Tier three, so far, had been almost as easy as tier two. She had brought her party with her, plus Gaso. He was unfortunately the best of the rest, so she had been forced to include him. In her more altruistic moments she had to admit that he had been pulling his weight, not nearly as well as Ayuna, but he was solid. Fortunately she didn't have many of those moments of weakness and could continue resenting him with a clear conscience.

They had found the group of insectoids first and the fight between them had been comically easy. Afilada could have probably taken them out herself, but working as a team, the fight had lasted less than a minute. The loot hadn't been bad either. The mostly furless humans had been next.

That group had also been much weaker than they were, but one of them had survived their initial attack. He was some kind of fighter and healer combo, and was alive because he managed to heal the first blow he had taken. The rest of his group had been less hardy. Sabi had convinced her to spare his life until they could talk to him. When the second strongest person in your group makes a suggestion, you at least have to give it consideration.

After interrogating the prisoner, Pierto had concurred with Sabi, which was why the scrawny thing was still around. He was currently living in the village, helping coordinate with the mayor. That was part of the reason for her current dissatisfaction. The mayor of the village, a thick golemoid woman who looked a lot like the Bodarians, was unwilling to turn over control to Afilada.

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She wanted to simply kill the woman and take her place, but her second-in-command insisted that was not the optimal outcome. Pierto had convinced her that having a Network citizen with all of their knowledge to help run the settlement was preferable to angering the residents by killing the woman who had helped protect them until now.

The mayor, Nawog Sundersil, had been putting off aligning herself with Afilada's group while there was another party of recruits out there. Forto thought it was because the other option was the Bodarians, who were considered a type of golemoid in the Network. Pierto and Sabi agreed that it was most likely influencing her, but they still thought that continuing the discussions was the right call.

In an effort to simplify the negotiations, they had gone out and tracked down the Bodarian party. They at least had proven to be a decent fight. There had never been any doubt about the outcome, but Afilada's party was forced to use most of their abilities to make sure no one was seriously injured. Well, no one on their team anyway. The loot on the thick corpses had been even better than the Nivex gave.

Now that she had taken out the competition she had come back to force the mayor to turn over control to her. Nawog had still tried to defer, and Afilada was of the opinion that it was time to go with option Murder Everyone. Pierto was still trying to play nice, which was why she was currently mad at him.

After a short discussion, with Afilida trying to kill the mayor with her gaze, he managed to convince the reluctant mayor that if they could clear out several of the bounties on the quest board that it would prove they were worth aligning with. Afilada promised herself that if Ms. Sundersil even looked like she was going to put them off again, that she would put her sword through her blocky head.

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