Chapter One Hundred and Three - Tired AF I was tired AF, so I kind of decided to spend the rest of this loop resting. I wasn't sure if mental rest carried over perfectly, but a break was good for the soul, and I needed one right now. So, a long nap, Mister Couchtop on my tummy, and some food delivered to my door. Yeah, this was luxury. I woke up well past noon, played some guitar just for fun, then watched some slop on the net for a few hours while planning. I had a rough idea of what to do for the rest of the week. Ideally it'd be a pretty calm one. Around the time the portal opened, I started to pay more attention to the world beyond my apartment. It took five minutes for someone to upload something to social media. A video. Strangely, I even vaguely recognized some of the teens laughing and disguising their panic with a thin veneer of bravery. They had shaky-cam video of the portal, up to the point where a team of cops rushed in and evacuated the space. Some more time passed. It was almost an hour before a squad showed up. There were six of them in full-tactical gear. Top-shelf stuff too. Better than what Luna Corp handed out, at least. I squinted and rewound the video a few times until I could make out the NG logo. NetherGain? That was a decent corp, situated in the City Centre. They were a big name. The company did resource extraction but also made gear for portal divers and ran security. In terms of which corporation had the best stuff, they were up there. I screencapped some faces and checked them against the publicly available team listings. So, that was... Squad Four. Two C-rankers, four D-rankers. Damn, that was a lot of firepower. It looked like NetherGain did most of their squad composition that way. Two and four. Their Squad One had two B-rankers and four C-rankers, which was nuts. Definitely a bigger, tougher group than Luna Corp. The entry requirements were way higher though. They didn't just casually take on newbies. Maybe if I hit C-rank they'd consider me joining them, but as it was, I'd need connections or a few years at Luna Corp for job experience. Not that I was looking to change. Too much scrutiny. The lazier way they did things at Luna Corp suited me just fine. Anyway, I followed along as they cleared the portal, or rather, as gawkers stood around outside the foodcourt, disregarding the F-ENE PDs suggestions that they head back home. It took a solid hour for them to finish up and pack their shit. A team of E-rankers from the company went in and cleared the portal out of valuables. The evening news didn't even cover it. That kind of minor portal opening up happened like, two, three times a day. Maybe more? If it was a recurring portal, or something particularly good was in it, then maybe it'd make the news. Breaches almost always hit the news. It was a bit conspiracy-coded of me, but I suspected it was because a lot of companies received subsidies to shut breaches down and close portals, and people would bitch about their tax money going to that if there wasn't constant pressure from the news reminding them about how horrible a breach was. Or... maybe that was bullshit and people just reported it because it was dangerous. Whatever. My goal wasn't to untangle all of that. I looked up more info on the monster I'd seen. The velociraptor wasn't a velociraptor. Some dinosaur nuts had checked, and they didn't match up to real dinos. Instead, they were semi-plant-like, winged, non-flying amphibians that basically shat all over modern taxonomy. Some of them had access to Nature magic, but that was uncommon at D-rank. No clue what the boss would be, and it wasn't like NetherGain were advertising the fact. I watched the news a little longer into the night, then shut my laptop, rubbed at my eyes, and Reloaded. Okay... damn, this was gonna be one sucky weekend, but I could do it. First, I'd need to secure some help. Not so much because I'd need it (not that it would hurt) but because this would be a good opportunity for some bonding. My first thought went to Fran, but there was another option. Becky might very well be down to help. All I'd need to do is bribe her with some gacha pulls and she'd show up, I was sure of it, and a lightning mage with her level of power and versatility would kick ass in any portal. This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there. Plus, Becky had been kinda fun to work with. Ah, but no, Fran first. She was just the better option for now. Follow current novᴇls on nοvelfire.net I leaned back against a wall and pulled out my phone. I still couldn't get used to dialling a number. I mean, that's how phone numbers worked, sure, but I think I'd only done it a half-dozen times in my life before I started looping, and that was usually to call some customer service number to bitch at them about something. What kind of maniac didn't have the numbers they were gonna call saved to their contacts? The line picked up after four rings. "Hello, this is Fransisca Ojou, how may I help you?" "Hey Fran," I said. Then I cleared my throat. No, bad me. No sexy half-asleep husky voice. I wasn't calling to flirt, I was calling for other things, dammit. "It's Deadline. Do you have a minute?" "Oh. Yes, certainly. I was... taking a slight sabbatical today." "On a Sunday?" I asked. "Corporate America doesn't believe in weekends. Not at the top of the chain," she said. Damn. Though I suppose that made sense. The rankers got weekend off because without there was a real chance they'd die, and that'd cost the company a fortune. Some industries were stuck in the good old five-day-workweek era, but a lot of things had evolved so that days off weren't as common. "Well, I'm glad you're taking time off to recuperate," I said. "I discovered something of an opportunity, and I was checking in to see if you'd be tempted to help." "An opportunity?" she asked. Oh yeah, she was interested. I nodded, even if she couldn't see it. "Exactly. I know the location of a mid-D-rank portal. Or rather, where one will be this evening in about... ten hours." "That's... far ahead of where we are," Fran said. "I know," I said. "I was going to try to solo it, but that's risky. We'd only have an hour or so to kill the boss and evacuate the portal." "That's... a very short timeframe. Though I've watched the video you sent me yesterday, of the orc portal." Ah, yeah, that was technically just yesterday. Wait, there was no 'technically' about it. "That was a tough one. High D, at the very least." "I see. You were... impressive. In any case, the video was very interesting. I've made some moves to short Synthcorp, just before the news broke. I hope you don't mind, but I also intend to use the footage to blackmail the corporation." "Feel free," I said. "Though I'd rather not make enemies of them?" "I haven't taken any action, yet," she replied. "But I'm certain we can work things out in a civilized manner." "I'll trust you on that one," I said. Fran was quiet for a moment. "Very well. I'll do my best. With regards to this portal, what do we know?" "D-rank, like I said. Velociraptors of some sort. Plant-like dinosaur monsters. Relatively fast and strong, but fragile. Ambush predators." "I'd be particularly well-suited to fighting those, I suspect," she said. "Really? Then it would be really nice to have you along," I said. "Mostly I was thinking that it might be a nice way for you to tackle a D-rank portal in relative safety. You wanted to hit C-rank, didn't you?" She inhaled. "A D-rank with only two people working on it would mean a multi-point increase in both of our potentials. That would be huge. A half-month's worth of very expensive supplements and guided E-rank finishes." That's how she got to C-rank in the original timeline? Damn. How much did it cost to get escorted through a portal like that? "It'll be a small boost," I said. "We'd need to solo like, a couple of dozen more D-rank portals to get our potential into the lower ranges of C-rank, so it's not something that will happen in a week." "The world record from D to C rank is three and a half months," Fran said. "I don't think we'll be able to beat that. But there's no loss in trying, is there?" "Hm. Does that mean that you're in?" I asked. "... Yes. What do you need me to do?" "Cool. So, there's a few things. First, I need you to go somewhere for me. It's called Full-Auto Stranger-Danger. I'll give you the address. There's someone there you might have to meet, but you have to promise me that you won't hold her mere existence against me."