Soul Merger

Getting to the surface had been easy. However the true terror met them when they got out of the labyrinth. Every single kid had to be accounted for in the paperwork, and all the disappearances and the rescue effort had to be written down in triplicate. Fili had counted it out and they'd literally spent twelve hours dealing with interviews and forms over the course of two days after their escape.

Yes it was all important. The city needed to know how people had slipped in and out of the labyrinths without anyone noticing. And they needed some confirmations to prove this wasn't an especially subtle invasion by demons or doppelgangers. But it was all a huge pain in the ass.

The only reason Alissa wasn't holding a serious grudge was because the guild had given them all a very sizable bounty for the information, the rescues, and monster kills. So they'd actually made more money than she'd expected. Which meant even with throwing a good chunk of that to help the kids find their feet she could safely take a break.

Right now she was enjoying some time in a private garden booth. Fili was at her side, trying not to blush and failing because Alissa had sidled up close to her girlfriend. Juli and Sera were opposite, arguing over which drinks were best here. The sun was bright, the flowers were in bloom, and nothing was trying to kill her. It was an excellent day.

"Hey Miss Hero!" Alissa blinked to see Juli waving at her. "Pay attention! We've gotta give you a toast to your glorious success! Especially since the city council was too cheap to throw you a parade or anything."

Alissa grimaced and she felt Fili shiver beside her. "No thanks. I'll happily just take some money over that."

"I bet if we tried to wheedle much more out of them they'd have threatened us with all that nonsense," Fili muttered.

They raised their glasses. "To getting back alive," Alissa said.

"Eh good enough. Cheers." Sera joined them in tapping glasses and gave the required sip. "Still not sure why you're so dead set on recognition though. I thought having people know you was good."

Fili shook her head. "People knowing about us is fine. A parade though? Imagine sitting around for hours only to walk slowly through the city in the middle of the day while being forced to wave and smile. That'd be miserable."

"Point taken," the elf girl admitted with a shudder.

"And I'd have to have my cloak on the whole time," Alissa muttered.

Juli smirked. "You wouldn't have to. In fact I bet no one would be worried about you smiling if they saw you in that outfit."

"While most men can keep it in their pants I'm not interested in going through the whole city to find those that can't," Alissa replied dryly. "Anyway this is supposed to be my break, so enough about my work. What's happened up here while we were running around being miserable?"

Sera thought about it for a moment. "I dunno really. I've spent most of my time learning about all the plants in the shop. Managed to hunt down a botanist's guide, but I still gotta memorize a lot of it, because people get huffy if you admit you learned from a book."

"That's stupid," Fili said. "The entire point of books is to learn from them! I wonder if that kinda nonsense is hurting monsterpedia sales...."

"Maybe a little?" Sera said. "Figure it's more a sales thing. You aren't planning on marketing to the monsters so it might be fine. At least I can get away with labeling the plants. 'Oh it's not for me, it's for the customers!'" She rolled her eyes.

Juli's ears waggled. "My job's been picking up steam. Lots of rich people who have to get shit off their chest and stare at mine. Now that the city's finished getting rid of all the scumbags who were part of that monster brothel thing they've started poking their heads out of their mansions."

"You always make the job sound so appealing," Alissa said with a shake of her head. She had no idea how Juli could stand it.

"Hey they aren't all bad! I meet lots of nice people too." She winked. "And there's my coworkers too! It's vital to have good interwork relationships. Something I'm glad to see you two finally figured out."

Alissa felt her cheeks grow hot, and given Fili was giving off a strong strawberry scent her girlfriend was probably turning crimson. "I'd say you shouldn't flirt with your coworkers but I suppose I don't have a leg to stand on." She turned and gave Fili a kiss on the cheek. "I'm glad we can spend some more time together away from work though."

"Y-yeah." Fili nodded. "Maybe we can find uh, something other than work to do."

"Yeah..." Alissa had to admit both of them were terrible at 'getting out' or 'doing things' outside their interests. Still it was fun figuring stuff out.

Juli was grinning. "You two really are cute." Alissa felt herself blushing again. "Still as much as I know you're trying to dodge work, you're gonna have to get back in eventually. Going to go into raiding full time? Or can I get you two to join my club~?"

"No to both," Alissa said promptly. "I couldn't stand being a hostess and I like living so raiding is out."

"We were really lucky," Fili said. "That raid was so close to being a complete failure."

Sera and Juli both sobered up a little. "That bad? I thought the big problem was the dragon." Sera said.

"That we only had a problem with the dragon was the lucky part," Fili replied. "Usually there's at least two nonstandard monsters in a raid, and dealing with those is what separates success and failure. We targeted a dungeon perfectly suited for us, had unbelievable luck, and still nearly died."

"The big raiding groups have a lot of support they don't talk about," Alissa continued. "We lucked out borrowing an experienced guild to fill part of that. But to make it a constant thing we'd need at least fifty support delvers, and an entire top tier backup team to recover from bad matchups. We don't even really count as a top tier team ourselves."

Juli blinked. "You seem stronger than most. You killed a dragon without losing a member."

"We lost Raiel," Alissa corrected sharply. "And we had two allies and a lot of luck. Maybe with a lot more gear and a year of training we'd be top tier, but right now we're the backup squad at best."

Sera shook her head. "It's weird hearing that. You're so far beyond us, and there you're still not close to being the best?"

"Close yes, but close isn't good enough when failure means you die," Fili said.

The mood darkened a bit until Juli shook it off. "Well in that case, may you make a lot of money on easy jobs then! And keep taking us out to fine dining. Sera's missing out now that she's taken a boring job."

"Shut it," Sera said, elbowing her bunnygirl friend in the ribs.

"We'll do our best. But I can't promise anything," Alissa replied. She put an arm around Fili. "Especially since I'm going to be learning how to take a proper break from my girlfriend here."

Juli grinned again. "You could invite us to that too. I've got some neat tri-"

Sera elbowed the woman again while Alissa shook her head and Fili blinked. "We need to get her and Rosalina to keep each other in check."

"Just so long as they don't combine forces," Fili replied.

Alissa shuddered. Maybe that was a bad plan....