The woman who intercepted Vivi had green hair, which wasn’t all that unusual in the world of Seven Cataclysms. Brown and black were the most common, but there were brighter colors added to the mix beyond blonde and red. She was tall, skinny, and wore light leather armor suggesting a rogue class.

She smiled in apology for interrupting. “Sorry. Don’t mean to bother, but I caught the tail end of your conversation. You’re new in town? Didn’t mean to eavesdrop, just couldn’t help it—I was sitting right there.” She gestured at a table where a broad-shouldered man with a scar across his eye was sitting; they were only a dozen feet from the receptionist’s desk. On Vivi’s attention turning his way, the man raised a hand in acknowledgment. She nodded in return.

“Yes,” Vivi said slowly. “I just arrived.”

“And you’re not registered with the Guild. That’s not rare, you know. The Guild is where almost all of the edge cases turn up.”

Vivi wasn’t sure how to reply to that, so she said nothing.

The green-haired girl laughed. “Sorry, I’ll get to the point. We’re trying to fill out a party. We’re here for the festival—like you are, maybe?—but of our group, only me and Dom wanted to head this far north. Even though Prismarche’s festival is supposed to be the best in the kingdoms, being the final destination of the Party of Heroes and all that. Rest of our team was too lazy. Can you believe them?”

Vivi had never done well with the social butterflies. “Right,” she said, not intending to sound cold and reserved, but the single word probably came off that way.

The woman cleared her throat. “So, just wondering if you wanted to join us for an expedition,” she said, her smile wiping away, but not in an unfriendly manner. “Just for today. You don’t have an official rank, but what level are you, if you don’t mind sharing? Or roughly where do you stand? We’re both mid silver.”

Vivi mulled over her options, eventually deciding to lie. “The same. A little higher, perhaps, I’m not certain. Still new to this.”

“Of course,” the green-haired girl said smoothly. “Oh. Lailah, by the way. Good to meet you.”

“You as well.”

“So, silver-ish, but what?” She ran her eyes up and down Vivi. “Caster for sure. Mage or healer?”

“Mage. But—no, thank you. I’m not looking for a party.”

She was somewhat interested in interacting with locals, but not right now. She wanted to make some coin and settle her situation down, not to mention experiment with her magic. This was a complication she didn’t need.

Lailah deflated. “You sure? We’re not planning anything crazy. An easy trip, something to pass the time till festivities get going.”

If it was that easy to make Vivi reject her anti-social ways, she wouldn’t have ended up in this situation in the first place. “I’m certain.” She wasn’t trying to be rude, so she added, “I have my own plans. Thank you for the offer.”

“Ah, well. Let me know if you change your mind. See you around?”

Vivi nodded, and that was the end of the quicktime event.

She approached the quest board and scanned the various listings, reading the tasks with interest. Each came with a title, description, rank requirement, and rewards of various types: primarily coin and ‘rank points’.

Was that really how the world’s rank system worked? Would someone like her, a level twenty-one-hundred-plus, be considered a genuine silver-ranker because she didn’t have enough ‘rank points’? Was there no way to jump forward through sheer power?

It did make sense to some degree. Like Danny had said, it didn’t matter if she killed the rampaging monster if the whole town died in the process. It wasn’t fully irrational—she’d seen worse systems in her previous life. And for all she knew, there were exceptions for jumping through rank. The receptionist just might not have mentioned them.

Her musings were cut off by a second person walking up.

“Hey,” came a single, somewhat curt word to her side.

This time, Vivi turned to see a red-haired girl, dressed in adventuring gear, clutching a stack of papers to her chest.

She had cat ears.

Beastkin were a common race in Seven Cataclysms. They had been her runner-up choice when making her character, losing only because at that point in her life, she had leaned more toward edgy, stylistically speaking, than cute. But it had been a close call.

Vivi tried not to stare. A pair of tall red cat ears twitched, as if sensing attention on them. Vivi tore her eyes down to meet the girl’s.

“You were talking with Lailah, right?” she demanded, her tone the exact opposite of the previous woman’s—not hostile, but not making any attempt at friendliness.

“Yes,” Vivi said slowly. “Why do you ask?”

The other girl frowned. She glanced at the green-haired woman, who had taken her seat at the table near the receptionist’s desk. She looked back at Vivi and studied her.

“What did you think of her?”

Vivi hesitated. “She was…friendly.”

The catgirl nodded viciously. “Too much so, right?” It was an enthusiastic response, as if she had assumed Vivi had made the same deduction as her. But she hadn’t. Vivi didn’t even really understand the implication.

“Perhaps?”

She eyed Vivi, the enthusiasm fading. A frown tugged her lips downward. “Hm. You didn’t notice. For some reason, I thought…” She clutched the stack of papers against her chest tighter. “She offered you a place on her team, didn’t she?”

“She did.”

“Don’t accept it. Something’s off about her. That man too. She’s only been giving invitations to people who aren’t established in town. Newcomers for the festival.”

“She didn’t seem suspicious to me.”

The catgirl gave her the most dubious look yet. “Dangerous people wouldn’t be dangerous if it was easy to tell. Predators hide, that’s what they do. Mask themselves in the environment. Notice how she’s at the closest table to the receptionist’s desk so she can swoop in on anyone she marks as a target? And she’s only going for newcomers. How’s she even know who’s who? I haven’t seen her around.”

Vivi couldn’t answer that second part, but the first had an easy explanation. “She might be assuming newcomers are more likely to accept. People established in town are probably already on a team, or otherwise busy.”

The girl grimaced; she knew it was a good point. “Yeah, fair. I shouldn’t make accusations without evidence, I just—she doesn’t seem right. It’s so obvious.” She squinted at Vivi. “How old are you?” she asked, the first person to cast doubt in the opposite direction, as if initially thinking Vivi was older and thus wiser than she appeared, but was now revising her opinion.

Was this girl just paranoid? Vivi had thought Lailah seemed friendly. She hadn’t sensed the slightest bit of deceit. It had seemed like a normal interaction, an adventurer offering to party up out of convenience. But now she was doubting herself.

“Well, never mind,” the girl said. “Did you say yes or no?”

“I declined.”

“Good.” She seemed genuinely relieved. “Uh, anyway,” she said, looking down at the stack of papers she was clutching. She pulled one out and thrust it at her. “Keep an eye out, okay?” It was less of a request and more a demand.

Vivi took the poster and looked at it. A simple illustration of a dignified-looking cat with a black fur eye patch was printed—magically printed?—on the paper, along with some text. This was what she’d been carrying around? She looked at the girl in a new light, of course finding it amusing that the cat beastkin was passing out missing cat posters.

She seemed to sense Vivi’s amusement. Her eyes narrowed and her ears flattened slightly. “Got something to say?” she nearly growled.

Way, way too cute. It took everything Vivi had to keep a straight face. “I’ll tell you if I see him.”

The catgirl nodded. “Good.” She turned away, but paused and looked over her shoulder. “Saffra, by the way. And thank you.”

“Vivi,” she replied, equal parts amused and bewildered by the interaction.

Vivi watched her walk away, mulling over the situation. A seed of doubt had been planted. She truly, genuinely didn’t know whether Saffra’s worry was well-founded. She glanced at Lailah, but she was chatting happily away with her partner. Even appraising her in a new light, she sensed nothing strange.

Hm.

Paranoia was infectious, because despite not having a good reason to do so, Vivi pulled together a spell, muting the visual effects and incantation. She placed a tracking beacon on Lailah and her bulky warrior partner.

Better safe than sorry.

That done, she scanned the quest board a little longer, then turned away.

She’d gotten what she needed out of the Adventurer’s Guild. Now she wanted to experiment, and earn some coin while doing so.

She walked out of the Guild, turned into an alleyway, cast [Invisibility], [Fly], and [Blink], and was suddenly a thousand feet in the air.

The world of Seven Cataclysms might not be one-to-one how she remembered it, but she’d spent tens of thousands of hours grinding. She knew the map better than almost anyone. Orienting herself as she floated high above the city, she faced in the direction of the Hoarfrost Plains. Those should make good hunting grounds.

“[Blink].”

“[Blink].”

“[Blink].”

The short-range teleportation skill was definitely one of her favorites. The experience of materializing thousands of feet in another direction, the world shifting around her, and at a tiny cost of mana relative to her gigantic pool was amazing. The wonder that came with using magic was going to take a while to wear off.

“[Blink].”

“[Blink].”

“[Blink].”

She could probably reach Meridian fairly swiftly with this method, relatively speaking, though it would still take hundreds or thousands of the spell. The map was huge, and based on how many [Blinks] it was taking to get to the Hoarfrost Plains, even larger than the digital version.

She would probably take the train. She was in no rush.

“[Blink].”

“[Blink].”

“[Blink].”

The city of Prismarche disappeared behind her. She passed the jagged teeth of the Granite Spines. The sprawling plains of one of her preferred mid-tier hunting grounds appeared after many dozen [Blinks]: The Hoarfrost Plains. She’d spent more than a hundred hours grinding resources and levels in this zone.

“[Detect Presence].”

The temperature had grown bitingly cold, enough that even she felt vaguely uncomfortable in the icy howling wind. Her stats shielded her against most of the effect, but not all.

“[Aura of the Ember Giant].”

Much better.

Floating down, her bare feet touched the tight-packed snow of the Hoarfrost Plains, toes digging into snow. She pulled her robes in tighter by instinct, even if the hot glow of the spell meant she might as well be standing inside a heated inn. It was bizarre, hair flapping around in the gale of a raging tundra but not feeling the slightest bite of cold.

She was learning to adapt to ‘bizarre’. This was the hundredth case in the past few hours.

She had set down near a pack of gigantic Frostmaw Titans, polar bear beasts twice the size of an elephant. In the early days of Seven Cataclysms, hunting them had been one of the best mid-game money-grinding methods, since the armor set made from their pelts was surprisingly poorly balanced. Basically every rogue and even some tank classes wanted it around the seven hundred level.

Seven hundred was low compared to her two-thousand plus, but she wanted to stay vaguely under the radar, and she doubted the Adventurer’s Guild would be able to compensate her for some of the highest-tier monster parts she could collect. This was a good middle ground. Plus, hunting in the Hoarfrost Plains would be nostalgic.

Crunching her way through the snow, she approached the trundling mountains of fur. She mulled over how to kill them. Smiting a quarter mile of terrain in every direction with that same level 1800 spell [Kaelum’s Thousand-Year Pyre] was obviously a terrible idea, since she wanted to harvest parts to sell, which wouldn’t be possible if she vaporized them.

Something clean and efficient. The idea made her wrinkle her nose. The whole reason for picking a mage class was the fireworks. Explosive, flashy abilities were the only real way to have fun.

But she guessed she wasn’t out here to have fun.

Well, she kind of was.

“[Skills].”

A screen appeared packed with information. Two columns wide, with a small icon in the corner of each subsection to represent the ability. There were options for filtering and searching. The functionality was extremely similar to the original game’s.

She tapped over to the ‘spells’ section, which was considerably longer, and began scrolling through.

Vivi had played a lot of Seven Cataclysms, but she hardly had an encyclopedic memory of every skill and spell. She was most familiar with the late-game ones. But she needed less…conspicuous spells on hand.

Humming, she flicked through several pages, adjusting the search functions as she committed a few names to memory. Tapping into a given spell opened a diagram describing how to shape the mana and invoke the magic circle, which somehow Vivi understood. It was still weirding her out, the whole ‘I know magic now’ thing.

Her lips curled upward as she compiled a list of a few interesting mid-tier spells to play around with. They were around the level 800 to 1000 range. That would be impressive, but not anything shocking, right? The Guild NPCs and even her mansion’s butler had been well over that.

She wondered if any of them were still alive. It had been a hundred years, but most races were long-lived, and even among the humans, several story characters had been implied to be centuries old. So maybe levels extended lifespans?

In any case, she mentally closed out of the skill list and the screen disappeared. Her staff appeared in her right hand with a pop of air.

Time to hunt giant monster polar bears.