Cleaning up
"Are all the arrangements made?" An orange haired man in an expensive suit said into a tablet.
"I'm sorry but it appears that the hospital has already been purchased. Tell your master that we're sorry but it looks like a guild has laid claim. There's nothing that we can do." A busy sounding woman's voice came through from the tablet.
The orange haired man stood over his desk his hands clenching into fists and tightening around the edge of his desk.
He spoke into the tablet lying on the desk and tried to calm himself down.
"What about my personal matter that you said you would look into?"
The voice was silent for a second on the tablet before it finally spoke again.
"Your sister has been released." The man breathed a sigh of relief and his grip loosened on the desk.
"… However she has been taken by another guild."
The man folded his desk in half with hands sending bits of wood flying everywhere and completely destroying it.
He attempted to calm himself down by taking deep breaths whilst he dug through the large pieces of destroyed desk and fished out the tablet.
"Do we know anything about this other guild?" The orange haired man said styling his hair back out of his face.
"… Yes apparently they are the same guild that bought the hospital. The Orion Guild."
"I thought they were supposed to be a joke." The man said straightening his tie and smoothing all of the sawdust and woodchips out of his suit.
"They held a debate recently and apparently they are the ones responsible for the recent dungeon destructions. Your master will want to talk to them I'm sure."
The man pulled up pictures on the tablet from the debate and in a separate window below that a picture of Zane stumbling out of the hospital when it was destroyed.
"I'm sending you over the camera footage in the lobby from the Templar Guild when your sister was taken."
The man pulled up one last window next to the other two and paused it on a specific frame of Zane's face looking up at the camera.
"No. I don't believe my master will have to speak to the Orion Guild…" The man said gazing deeply at one of the debate articles until he found the names of the guild members.
"What do you mean? What will he need?"
"He needs to speak to Zane Mack. Send over any of his information to my tablet and I will pass it onto my master ASAP!"
For the past week we had been turning the hospital into more of a guild headquarters. To do this I had to sink every last credit I had into paying for office furniture and other decoration.
I had been put in charge of cleaning the morgue section of the hospital which meant scrubbing up blood and guts, I lost at rock-paper-scissors to get this assignment and no one wanted to swap with me.
Karson had a grand vision in his head of what this place might turn into and when I asked him what we would even do with the morgue he just mumbled 'treasury' before getting back to work gathering the bones from the roof.
The hospital definitely wasn't as big as other ones I had seen but that didn't mean it was tiny they were still multiple floors to work on as well as stairways and an elevator.
At least the fact that it was a hospital meant we could sell back a bunch of the medical equipment to other hospitals to pay for more work to be done.
Sadly any value from monsters or dungeoneers equipment was lost as the association had already laid claim to all of that and taken it away.
I was elbow deep in another pile of various blood and guts when Karson came and got me. He told me I needed to clean up because someone important wanted to talk to me.
"So who could be so important that they would show up here and only ask for me instead of the guild leader?" I asked Karson as we made our up to the ground floor.
"The Vice-chairman of the Association!" Karson exclaimed in a hushed tone. Clearly he was incredibly on edge about this 'visit'.
We walked outside and sure enough in our quite large parking area there was a singular car, a long black limo.
A man dressed in black and wearing sunglasses came out of the passenger seat as we approached and opened up the door at the back of the limousine.
A muscular man with a black beard and buzzcut stepped out, he wore just a pinstripe shirt with suspenders and a tie. He was far less extravagant as the man that stepped out after him, an orange haired man in a full suit that had the looks to be a professional model.
The muscular man waved his hand and Karson seemed to understand the gesture and left me alone with these gentlemen.
They waited for a few seconds, I'm assuming because they expected me to say something first. But after spending the last week scraping pieces of dead person off of the walls and floors of a dimly lit hospital morgue, they were going to receive no effort from me.
The muscular man simply cleared his throat and the model stepped forward and shook my hand.
"Hello we are here representing the association and all we want is to check on the guild's development."
I used my truth skill on him:
{David wants to find his sister Vicki and believes you took her against her will}
I confirmed the name of the model in front of me was David and then just signalled for him not to say anything else.
"I'm sure you'll want to see Vicki. I'll go get her and bring her here." I said walking off.
I found her slacking off in one of the rooms and got her to follow me back to the limousine.
"Vicki I believe your brother David here wants to pick you up. You go with him and have a good time."
David, his boss and their security detail all looked shocked at the fact that I had just brought her here and told her to go to David.
"OK is that it? Or do you have some other bullshit you want to tell me? Because if you don't I have horrible work that I need to get back to."
"Umm no I believe that this will suffice! Thank you, Mr. Mack, you have just helped our family immensely!"
{David is telling the truth}
Vicki turned to me and hugged me, I started to lightly pat her back and I ruffled her hair. Not the ears though because I still couldn't get used to those.
"Hey calm down will you? The next time you come by the place will be looking great!" I said squeezing her.
"Yeah of course but I'll miss the guild." She said in a low voice into the medical scrubs I had been wearing for clothes.
"But you aren't a guild member. You never signed a contract or anything."
She just poked me a ton and then said "Meanie!" She was about to just run and jump into the limousine but she turned around and said, "I'm going to have a better time without you! I don't even want to stay with all of you!"
Ah hell, I'll use the truth skill one more time:
{Vicki dislikes being with her family and wants to stay with the guild}
"Hey David! You can take her out for the day but if you could bring her back for dinner that would be great!" I called out to him.
He turned and walked towards me before getting so close that he oozed with intimidation, "No I believe I'll be taking her from now on."
"I think maybe you should let her decide that herself?"
"Oh yes a good idea! The choice between her flesh and blood or five wastes. I mean you're a drunk loser, you're guild leaders a joke who can't even save himself and you're strongest member is a porter who was a legend before I graduated."
He leaned into my ear with a smirk, "Just let it go."
I turned away from his face and called out to Vicki, "Hey Vicki what time do you think you'll be back at the guild tonight? I think Skinny was gonna grab some fried chicken!"
Vicki's face which had been fairly somber lit up with happiness when I confirmed that she was coming back to us. Over the past week we had all grown really fond of Vicki and had decided that as soon as our headquarters were up and running that she would be the first guild member to join us.
As much as I could tell that David could murder me instantly no matter how many loops I tried, I couldn't just let Vicki go when she didn't want to.
I turned my face back to him and his smirk was gone and instead I could see that he was physically holding back his anger.
"… So what time do you think Vicki will be back?"
They eventually drove off with Vicki but I knew she would come back so I went back to my cleaning and swore to myself that once this place was completely fixed up that I would spend no time at all in the morgue.
Karson and the rest dropped by at different times throughout the day to find out why someone so important wanted to see me and where Vicki had gone but I assured them that she would be back. At least them visiting gave me a break from cleaning.
Finally after a week I'd managed to get the place looking kind of alright and I got to work screwing in the cabinet doors, Karson said they would look nice in the treasury and I trusted him. It was actually kind of therapeutic.
I managed to get a moment to myself so I finally looked at the OTO quests:
{Find Steven's hidden potential}
{Rewards: +10 seconds of time}
{Accept Vicki as a guild member}
{Rewards: +10 seconds of time}
{Buy the rights to any dungeon}
{Rewards: +20 seconds of time}
Currently I was at 1 minute and 30 seconds but if I managed to top off these last few quests I would be at 2 minutes and 10 seconds. Which when in a life or death situation could easily make a difference.
"Hey Tock can you tell me anything yet?" I asked expecting some nice fanfare from him for doing so well so far.
He flew out of my chest with his strange clock body and said, "No." Before flying back into my chest.
I'd like to give him the benefit of the doubt and say he was probably sleeping but I've had my nose to the grindstone for weeks ever since he told me I needed to do more of these dumb quests.
I nearly alienated myself from the guild trying to do these quests and he just flies back into my chest like that!
I was already on edge because of smug pretty boy David and then I just found out the work I'd been hustling to do has been amounting to a one word answer.
I wasn't sure if anything could make me feel better until I read the first quest again. You know, it's been quite a while, I think it's time Steven gets some weapons training. I could already see my grin breaking out through the reflection on the shiny floors I had polished.
We left Skinny and Clarisse at the hospital to make sure we didn't suffer another loss because of the Templar Guild. Whilst they stayed there and did Steven and Karson's cleaning for them, I took the two to our new training base at the ware house to get Steven educated.
I told Skinny to grab some fried chicken for Vicki and tell her that I might not be back for a while.
Steven stepped inside I had given him the very small amount of armour that I had been wearing over my suit during the debate and Karson was just wearing some work out clothes. I duct taped the kitchen knife from my inventory to Steven's hand.
"Now Steven before we get right into the training, would you like a warm up?"
"Y-yes!" he said looking at me and Karson's terrifying grins.
"Did you hear him stammer there Karson? I guess princess here really does need a warm up. You alright to help him with that?"
"Oh yes!" Karson said positively bouncing with excitement.
"Don't forget not to cut the duct tape. OK I'll leave it to you!" I said walking out of the dungeon whilst I once again heard Steven's cries for help again.
I walked to the nearest shop, bought a drink and a snack and headed back to the dungeon.
I walked inside semi-expecting Steven to still be crying on the floor. But he was instead doing perfect knife slashes and some pretty impressive dodges and he was doing all without the tape around his hand.
"Stop!" Both Karson and Steven were drenched in sweat and panting but they both stopped in an instant to look at me.
"Not you Steven! Time for solo practice!" Karson rushed over to me whilst Steven groaned and got back into a combat stance.
"Hey Head Trainer, Steven's been doing pretty well! Of course that's probably just because training speed is increased inside a dungeon!" Karson spat out whilst I let him sip a bit of my drink.
"What happened to the tape? Did you cut it off him?" I asked.
"No it just fell off him like it was never there in the first place. I think it might have been that weird inherent skill of his."
"Did it show itself in combat again?"
"Absolutely he gains a decent advantage every time it makes me miss him and it's only been a minute or two."
"Good! Well you know how the training regiment goes so I can leave it to you. I'll just sit back here and rest my eyes a little. Come and get me if anything happens."
Karson was going to say something in order to make me stay but I think some part of him liked having this kind of malicious training all to himself.
I sat in a corner of the warehouse and took a nap, blowing out the sounds of constant fighting…