Party Play

After a delicious lunch, everyone headed to the Adventurers' Guild together.

"Today I'm thinking we take on some guild quests."

"Okay～!"

"We gotta get Nika-chan registered too～"

"Yes, please."

"Gin-chan's already registered, so I'll just wait a bit～"

"I registered ahead of time."

We needed to get the second characters registered as adventurers before taking on quests. Got them signed up in no time.

Well, we'd already heard the explanation once, so we'll skip that part.

When we asked the elf Ms. Receptionist to suggest some quests for us, she came up with party-oriented ones.

Yeah yeah, this is exactly what I'm talking about.

Now that I think about it, with six of us, we're a proper party!

"Three frontline, one ranged, two support. Pretty well-balanced, don't you think?"

"Miitei-chan can handle a bit of close combat too."

"I can do magic attacks too, you know～?"

Yeah yeah, looks like we can actually pull off real party play.

"That said, the quests me and Tria were clearing before were mostly party-level ones too, weren't they?"

"Huh, were they?"

"Technically, yeah. Well, they were just extermination quests, so we handled them no problem."

I see. So Ms. Receptionist's recommendations were spot-on all along. As expected.

"Oh～ if we get even more people, it might be faster to just have the Adventurers' Guild set up a branch office～"

"In that case, I'd love to scout this elf-san as our dedicated receptionist. If we could, anyway."

"Headhunting, huh～"

The elf-san quietly raised her hand. Seemed like she had something to say.

"… Ah, um. I'm already essentially your dedicated receptionist, so please spare me the scouting."

"Oh, is that so? Can't be helped then."

"A dedicated receptionist, huh～ nice～ I'd love to get to know you personally too!"

"Think she'd eat my cookies if I baked some～?"

Mm, well, let's table the scouting for now. Time to go do the quest.

 

＊　＊　＊

 

We chatted while exterminating the giant Ant monsters swarming the mine.

Take that! Exploding Kick!! The Ant's head blew clean off. Gin-chan went for the joints, slicing through them cleanly, while Penpen lobbed potions at them.

"With the ranch and all, we can't really go on long trips right now～"

"Even with Fast Travel?"

"Time still passes even with Fast Travel～"

Oh right, that was a thing. It hadn't really mattered for us yet, so I'd totally forgotten.

Miitei-chan latched onto an Ant and started dissolving it. Turns out she was surprisingly well-suited for this; she'd slip into the gaps between joints and have limbs dropping off in seconds.

"If monsters attack while we're away, there's nothing we can do about it, so we'd just take one-sided losses～"

"Can't the ranch be stored like a Home?"

"Not right now～. There might be something like that further along the Home Feature Tree, though."

"Feature Tree. So there's stuff like that too, huh."

"They unlock as you clear Home missions, so there'll be all sorts of new stuff eventually～"

We already have plenty on our plate, and there are ability unlocks on top of that too…

Alto blasted the Ants with gunfire, mowing them down from a distance with explosive shots… Just be careful not to collapse the tunnels, okay?

She was already being careful, though. Zero stray shots, every round on target.

"… This really makes you want your own Home, huh?"

"Yeah, we really need a way to earn SP."

Hmm. Even if we had our second characters transfer SP over… the total pool wouldn't change in the end. They're both just our own characters, after all.

"A third character isn't available yet either…"

"At this point I'd honestly even pay for SP～"

Since it's a buy-to-play game, there haven't been any charges beyond the initial purchase.

If anything, with VR features like these, I'd be willing to pay more…

Well, the fact that a mobile device can even do VR is baffling enough as it is…

"Oh. These Ants can probably be used as crafting materials～. You'll get crafting XP from them, so you should grab some too, Tria-shi."

"I'm not planning to grind crafting, but maybe I should do a little."

"You get points for Home upgrades from it, so it's worth doing at least the beginner tier～"

"There's so much to do."

"That's what makes it fun～"

"True. It is a game, after all."

"… I really want a Home too! So just let me pay already!!"

The quest wrapped up without any issues, and the second characters all ranked up from newcomer.