Tara, Bethany, Arinya, Audrey and Lucy were all in the market area of Ghost, the one large city in the middle of the safe zone. The population was very large and cramped, with people moving around on the streets and bumping into each other. There were several shops open but not many going into them, the real traffic was people leaving for the wilds or coming back. More and more, people were realizing that leaving the safe zone was the only way to survive, so much so that the main topic that could be overheard from passing conversations was if the system was going to add move features after this next event, stay the same, or start removing features. It seemed that this was mostly split between optimists and pessimists because no one had any evidence for any of those options being more likely to occur.
The four women were looking around for a place to eat, they had been trying as many food places as they could so that if they all liked one they would try and hire them to cook for Crater Town. They had two other goals while in the city, one was to see how the city was organizing itself and the other was to just be around people and be social. Eli's inability to enter the safezones had caused them to isolate themselves and the longer that went on the more they would stand out since new social norms were being established. In order to be able to blend in, they needed to be more socialized with the local people, not that Bethany cared, she didn't want to blend in.
Bethany was wearing leather boots, loose fitting cotton pants tied low on her waist and a small cotton shirt torn a bit at the top to show more cleavage and tied at the side at the bottom to show off her abs and slim waist. She was walking around with the confidence of a mob boss on a street where everyone paid him protection money. Three times in ten minutes she knocked someone over when they bumped into her and kept walking like she didn't notice. The other women were letting her act how she wanted, they knew that she was in a really good mood finally getting emotional recognition from Eli and permission to act on it from Tara.
They stopped at a place on a corner that looked like a medieval tavern but was busy enough that they thought it would have good food. When they got inside and there were no tables, without even pausing Bethany walked up to a table of four young looking guys that looked like they had eaten and were now just drinking and talking.
"I think you boys are done," She said with a touch of playfulness in her voice, almost begging them to make a big deal about it so she could fight them.
"We aren't done," one of them said as he had his back turned to her. The men on the other side who could see her froze and went white when she smiled a wide predatory smile and a heavy, dark colored spear appeared in her hand so fast and natural it looked like she conjured it.
"I think you are done, and you are going to pay your bill and leave," she said as the tip of her spear was lowered so that the flat of the blade was next to his ear.
"I don't think you know who you are dealing with, I am the leader of the White Ghost Dragon hunter pa… aaaahhhh!" He said right as she cut off his ear with the blade of her spear.
The whole place stood and drew weapons, but Bethany and the three women didn't flinch or even seem to notice. But before Tara could reign her in, someone else in the place, who Tara was sure wasn't there a second ago, spoke up.
"Alright everyone," they said, holding up an arm band with a crest on it. "Back to your seats, I'll handle this." and shocking all four of the women, every did what this person said and pretended that nothing had happened. The suddenness of the change of temperature in the room was shocking to them and Tara was immediately suspicious of this person. Luckily they were walking over so she could get more information out of them.
The four young men were already standing, looking like they were ready for a fight, but they seemed more afraid of the man who had settled everyone than the four women. Bethany was sitting in the seat of the man whose ear she had cut off sipping a cup of tea she pulled from her inventory and after a large eye-roll, Tara joined her followed by Lucy and Arinya. Audrey had been invisible all day, sometimes with them and sometimes staying behind to see what people said after the fact. Now she was investigating the back area of the tavern while there was a commotion out front. She hadn't noticed much, just people being angry about Bethany knocking them over or men staring at them with obvious lust in their eyes.
"Excuse me ladies, I am Maurice, minion to a servant of Ghost, I realize you may be outsiders but we do not allow casual violence in this city."
Tara placed her hand on Bethany's shoulder before she could even get a word out. "Well met, Minion, I am First Servant of Lord Ash, and we are innocent," She said in the haughtiest voice she could manage without smiling.
The man did a little bow, "Lady Ash, it is a genuine pleasure to meet you and your friends, I am honored that you chose my sister's establishment to eat and rest. However, you are not innocent because I witnessed it myself."
"We are innocent due to the simple fact that they were rude to us first, being representatives of our Lord, we cannot let an insult to him stand unopposed." Tara said. Bethany was getting worried, this was Tara when she was angry.
"We will serve you of course," Maurice said as he waved for his sister to come over. "Get them whatever they want and I'll pay, those men over there are leaving," He said while looking at the four men who had been sitting. "I will pay for them as well." Then Maurice left, not even waiting for the men he had said would leave.
"We will have 4 of the best of whatever it is you have here," Bethany said talking to the minions sister. Then she looked straight at the guy who was missing an ear, "You can leave, or you can be missing more than an ear." They left, but she had a sneaking suspicion that she would see him again. The four of them did their best to not notice everyone staring at them and whispering about them, they would get the details of the conversations later from Audrey if it was anything relevant.
**************
There were 8 days until Eli wanted to leave for the dungeon, which meant there were 10 days left until the next monster horde event. After realizing that the ladies in the group weren't coming back any time soon, the boys decided to go train and were currently standing next to the fountain, holding hands in a circle. Eli told them that he thought his blink ability could carry people with him since his node was planet level. Everyone was hesitant at first but then he told them that he could borrow power from Crater Town to help the spell work safely. He had no idea if that was true but it was worth a shot and the most he could think would happen, being familiar with his own spell, would be that the ones holding his hands might lose those hands.
Concentrating hard on the reach of the spell, he extended his will mixed with the magic as the spell was activating. The charge time was close to 15 seconds when it finally went off, the last thing Eli saw before being whisked away was the fountain getting wrecked by the magic of the spell. They instantly appeared where they had rested last time they were down by the large volcano, only it wasn't on the edge anymore, it was about a quarter mile into the ash and sulfur hellscape. It seemed like it had grown again, not quite as much as last time, maybe it expanded based on area instead of distance. He wasn't concerned about it if he was honest with himself, the whole zone could be swallowed up by this for all he cared, but he was looking for better fights and monsters he could use to train his people.
Almost immediately after arriving in the middle of the hot barren wasteland they could see two monsters that had noticed their arrival and were heading towards them. Eli motioned for them to look at one of them, it was a mix between a salamander and a centipede, crawling on all 10 legs and 4 arms like the insect but it had leathery skin and 3 fingers at the end of each leg and arm. Its face was that of a lizard but it had lava drooling out of the sides of its mouth and coming out of its eyes like tears, it left behind an obvious trail. They looked back at Eli to tell him he was crazy if he thought they could fight it, but he was gone, blurring toward the other monster leaving crushed and cracked ground in his wake.
As they watched Eli move toward what looked like a rhino beetle with reptile legs, they turned back toward their monster, Beau being the new guy and not having hard training yet was the first to speak.
"He just wants us to stall it right?" Beau asked.
"I doubt it, Cody up front, watch for lava breath. Beau, I want you to watch Cody, when he gets in a pinch, switch with him and do your best to keep his attention. I'll work on damage from a distance," Stevens said, laying out a plan that he hoped would be enough to get started.
Cody ran straight at it, shield raised, and when his shield hit the face of the monster, both were stopped dead. This would normally have been encouraging, having them at the same strength, but the monster was long, over 20 feet long and all the length had momentum too. The monster's body buckled and started to flip over Cody's head, while this was happening the front of the monster was still pressing Cody and holding him and his shield still, if nothing was done it would fall on him. Beau made his entrance by activating his ability to cover himself in stone while running and just when it completed he jumped and kicked the monster in the side somewhere close to the middle of its body. The weight of the impact caused bones to crack and the monster's body buckled again, whipping its tail into the ground breaking it and making an indentation.
When Cody and Stevens had been here last, they had noticed a few things about this terrain that are now coming into play. One of the things was that in a higher magic area, the terrain and even the air had more magic making the ground much tougher and the air much more nourishing. The other thing relevant to this fight was that higher magic areas had an affinity, relevant magic was stronger and opposing magic was weaker. They had theorized that this was due to the environmental magic assisting or impeding effectiveness. However, now that this monster had been set up for damage, Stevens made his presence known in the fight by blasting air down to press the monster down and when it had finally all fallen in a heap, he added fire to the air and tried to cook it.
At first, all three of them thought it was working, but then a fountain of lava came out of the monster's mouth towards Beau. Dodging to the side, Beau thought it missed him but it just kept coming and following him, not realizing the stream of lava wasn't going to stop. It hit him and knocked him back a few feet but he didn't fall over, though from the sound of his scream, he wasn't unhurt. He was still standing but not moving and his screaming stopped. Cody and Stevens were worried that he had been cooked inside his stone skill, just as Cody charged forward to distract the monster so Stevens could check on him, they heard unhinged laughing coming from the molten stone. And now they were worried for a totally different reason.