The young captain Kyra met at the recruitment center must have left quite an impression on her because the next morning she made her way to an outlying suburb to stand in front of the guild hall.

  The embossed sign above the entrance proudly displayed the name Joan's Gossip like it was an ancient martial-arts dojo and not a months-old licensed hunters guild operating out of the refurbished husk of a 24-hour fitness center.

  The door was wide open, and the sound of sparring and chatter and clinking weights came from inside. The training room was front-and-center when you first entered, and there were close to two dozen members warming up for the afternoon's work. She didn't see Noemi around.

  Not far from the front counter were two hunters engaged in casual conversation. The man was the only D-ranker in sight, and he casually twirled a two-handed war hammer on his boots while speaking. The woman was listening politely like one does to their boss. They both looked at Kyra when she entered, and the man turned over his shoulder and shouted.

  "Joan! We've got a visitor!"

  A woman's voice called back from the office wing behind the counter. "Is it Kyra?"

  The man glanced at her again briefly before replying, "Yeah, it's her!"

  "Tell her I'll be out in a minute!"

  The man did his best to put on a friendly smile and said, "She'll be out in a minute."

  "Uh, thanks." Kyra hadn't made an appointment, or had any other contact with the guild actually, so it came as a surprise that they were expecting her.

  The polite woman stepped away from the man and stood next to Kyra. Her smile was a lot more natural and she seemed genuinely excited to meet her.

  "Noemi said you would show," the woman said. "I thought she was being overconfident, but I suppose she would know these things. She used to work in a shop, you know. I guess that helps you learn to tell which customers are really interested."

  A shopkeeper? Kyra thought back to Noemi's clumsy attempts yesterday to recruit her. And yet here she was, standing in this guild hall.

  She suppressed a smile. Maybe this was a good choice after all.

  "How rude of me," the woman continued. "My name's Evie. This here is Drake. He's a team captain, and I'm his vice-captain."

  Drake stepped over to join them. "You know, Noemi's got a good eye for people. If she wants this lady on her team, maybe we should poach her for ours."

  "We've already got enough people, Drake."

  "What's one more can hurt?"

  "Will we be paying her out of your share, then?"

  "You know what? Maybe we've already got enough people."

  "Where is Noemi anyway?" Kyra interjected.

  "Still asleep, I imagine," Drake replied. "She doesn't get in until noon."

  "A late riser?"

  Drake hesitated before replying. "She tends to stay late and train. It's worse on days she does a dungeon run. But it makes no sense, you know? There are only so many hours in a day. If you stay up late today, you're just borrowing from tomorrow. Then tomorrow comes and you have to pay back with interest, so you borrow from the next day. You're better off keeping a sensible schedule."

  He sighed. "But she never listens to me." Then he perked up. "Hey, maybe you can talk some sense into her."

  "Kyra's a healer, Drake, not a doctor," Evie admonished. "And it isn't our place to regulate how Noemi manages her time."

  "But you've noticed it too, haven't you?" Drake asked his vice-captain.

  While Evie was deciding whether to answer, Joan at last emerged from her office and introduced herself. The guildmaster was a little older than Kyra, maybe pushing into her forties, and had the kind voice of a kindergarten teacher. Being at C-rank put her in the same league as top hunters like Gabriella the Thunder Witch. But unlike with the Thunder Witch, Benny hadn't seen fit to include Joan in his dossiers.

  Drake and Evie excused themselves while Joan took Kyra on a tour of the guild. It had all the staff amenities one could expect, from locker rooms to showers and a small kitchen.

  "We can't afford a cafeteria with full-time cooks like the two majors," Joan said, "but we do our best to make sure you're well looked-after."

  There was a secure armory where the equipment was stored. Weapons, armor, potions, as well as loot to be sold.

  "We'll provide you with any standard equipment you might need," Joan said. "Though you're always welcome to supply your own. The front-line fighters like to get their armor custom-made."

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  "They don't want to train their damage resistance?"

  "Not everyone has higher aspirations. With good armor and a good healer, a hunter can make it quite far."

  Last of all, Joan showed her to the vehicle bays where a fleet of vans waited to take the teams to the job sites. They were professionally painted with the guild's logo on the sides.

  "I suppose Noemi has told you about our situation," Joan said. "We currently field six teams. None of them currently has a dedicated healer, but three have enough healing capability spread across the team that they can manage. The other three used to share a healer, but she's moved on."

  "They shared a healer? So two of them just had to sit the day out?"

  "In practice it isn't as bad as it sounds. Back when we effectively had four functional teams, we'd get allocated two dungeons a day if we were lucky."

  This news gave her some pause. She knew that there were more hunter teams than dungeons, but that was a healthy situation to be in when you counted how some teams only worked part-time, sometimes hunters got sick, and other times they went on vacation.

  But for a full-time guild to get less than half the dungeons they asked for? She hadn't realized that the situation was this lopsided.

  This was a concern for her because there was a careful balance they had to strike when it came to hunters and dungeons. Too many dungeons and not enough hunters risked another breakout like in Teelameer. Too many hunters and not enough dungeons meant stunting the hunters' growth. High-ranking dungeons were going to pop up at a faster rate, and Concordia needed a healthy roster to meet them.

  Seeing her concern, Joan added, "We're one of the lucky ones. I have a friend who's been trying to get his own guild off the ground. They've got four members, yet they've gone almost two weeks without work."

  Kyra ran the numbers in her mind. "Shouldn't he be getting an allocation every other day?"

  "You'd think so. He's been asking for F-rank dungeons, and there are way more of those to go around."

  She thought about this for a moment. "Most hunters are E- and F-rank, so it wouldn't be surprising if there are also more requests for F-rank dungeons than any other type."

  "That's what the association says too," Joan said doubtfully. "But the two majors certainly aren't hurting for work."

  "Do you think they're getting more than their fair share?" she asked.

  "That isn't for me to say," Joan replied, though it was clear she had some strong views on the matter.

  From what Kyra understood, dungeon allocations were based on membership numbers. Naturally the larger guilds should receive more, but they also had more members to divide them up against, so it should all even out.

  She was going to ask Tristis to look into the numbers just in case. At an organization as large and powerful as the Ucha, one always had to be on the look-out for corruption. Considering the profitability of dungeon raids, there was a lot of potential for shady dealing.

  "Noemi should be here soon," Joan said, switching to a more cheerful gear and guiding her back to the training room. "She usually brings lunch for her team, so why don't you stick around? Her name is currently at the top of the roster, so she's guaranteed an allocation if she can find someone to fill in the healer role, so watch out for her sweet-talking you."

  "The truth is, I'm not looking to join any guild as a permanent member," Kyra said.

  Rather than being disappointed, Joan looked like she was expecting this answer.

  "Of course, at the end of the day, this is just a job, and you should find a way that makes it work for you," the guildmaster said. "Noemi may object to my saying this, but you should visit the two majors before making up your mind on who you want to work with."

  She'd noticed during the tour that Joan hadn't done much to talk up the guild that bore her name, and the curiosity had become a burning question on her tongue.

  "Aren't you worried about finding a healer?" she asked.

  "As much as we need to fill the gaps in our team, we want it to be a good fit," Joan replied. "We can't compete with the majors in terms of pay and perks, so we have to set ourselves apart the only way we can. And we can do that because we don't have investors to answer to. So the answer to your question, Kyra, is that I'm not worried at all. Hunters will come back to us if this is where they belong."

  Looking around the training room at all the hunters gathered in groups, laughing and sparring, Kyra got a sense of what the guildmaster meant. It was the atmosphere of a fire station rather than a business. They were all friends here, and they weren't doing this to chase a cord.

  Noemi arrived shortly after noon bearing pizza, and Kyra was invited to join her team in the break room. There she got to meet the other three members and allowed herself to get sweet-talked into joining today's dungeon raid.

  After the meal, Noemi went to get the allocation from Joan while the rest of them prepped their gear. Very few hunters at this stage had access to dimensional storage, so they helped each other slip into their armor and check their weapons before they all piled into the van. The vice-captain did the driving. He was a stout shieldbearer named Gabin and surprisingly was D-rank like his captain.

  The dungeon was located in a small suburban commercial district. Shoppers cast worried glances their way as the team unloaded from the van. A fully kitted hunter was a fearsome sight to behold, but more importantly the images of Teelameer were still fresh in everyone's minds.

  Kyra followed the team into a computer repair shop that smelled of hot copper and solder. Within plain view behind the counter were workers tinkering with disassembled computers and circuit boards.

  A young man with thick-rimmed glasses set down a monitor and came out to greet them. "You must be the hunters. I'll show you the way."

  They followed him between the workbenches toward the back, where he opened a door leading down into some sort of basement.

  "We're real glad you were able to come so soon," the worker said. "This dungeon has everyone real nervous. Half our staff actually called in sick. It hurts our metrics, but I can't say I blame them. No one wants to be around for another Teelameer. But the association assured us that won't happen. Right?"

  He seemed to be looking to them for confirmation.

  "We'll get it cleared up long before it puts anyone in danger," Noemi assured him.

  "I'm glad, I'm glad," he said happily.

  It looked like the basement was where the shop stowed its spare parts and other inventory. Everything was stacked in neat rows, and toward the end of one of these rows was the telltale shimmer of a portal anchor.

  Noemi approached first and opened it up.

  The worker's eyes lit up as the orange light of the portal reflected off his glasses. "Wow . . . I can't believe I'm seeing real magic."

  "This could take a while," Noemi said. "You don't have to wait up for us."

  An orange portal meant an E-rank dungeon. A team with two D-rankers should be able to handle it easily, and it was a sensible way to sound out a new team member.

  Easy dungeons seemed to be standard practice. The way the hunter community operated couldn't be compared to the training of her disciples. Back then they'd been in a race to get as strong as possible before the big breakout.

  But for a registered hunter? Raiding dungeons was a job. Their priority was to survive the day and return home to their families.

  The team followed their captain into the portal.