Dungeon Raider System

"Stop! Please, listen to me." Uriel tried to calm everyone down, but Medusa stood up in a rush to leave. Her right eye was twitching and she looked pale as a ghost.

"It's ok Uriel... you don't need to explain any of this. I get it." She said mechanically, as if she was reading from a script.

"Come on, Medusa, you too?" At that point Uriel was beyond annoyed. The only people he could trust were nothing but a bunch of kids playing around. And then it hit him, he was smiling.

As much as his rational side was annoyed by his friends silly behavior, he was actually having fun and he couldn't stop himself from laughing along with Nika. Sam, who also realized what was going on, joined them in laughter.

"What's the meaning of this?" Intrigued, Luna tilted her head and asked Medusa, who was the only one who remained serious.

"I- I don't know." She replied, still unsure.

It took them a couple minutes but when the laughter subsided Uriel was finally able to speak again.

"First, I'm sorry Luna but I'm not in love with you. Sending you a love letter was the only thing that came to mind to get you to come here. I apologize if I upset you but Cassandra left me no choice."

"Uhm, uh... that's actually a relief. I didn't know how to turn you down without hurting you. I'm not great with feelings." She replied.

"No kidding, you're like a robot!" Sam commented.

"That's fine, thanks for worrying about my feelings though." He addressed Luna. "Next, Nika is not my girlfriend, she's just a lousy bodyguard who abandoned me when I needed her the most and now karma hit her hard. She can't regain flux if she's not near me, so she's completely worthless for the Mapple corp. and now we are hiding from them, until we sort things out." Uriel continued his explanation.

Medusa's mood was suddenly lifted. It was no secret that she had a huge crush on Uriel and she couldn't help but compare herself against the beautiful and stylish woman in front of her, thinking she had no chance at beating her in looks. But knowing that Nika wasn't Uriel's girlfriend greatly improved her mood.

"So why did you call us here?" Sam asked Uriel, failing to hide the fact that he was ogling Nika at every chance he had. The self confident Nika, of course, didn't feel uncomfortable by this in the slightest. At least that was the case until Uriel explained her that Sam's trait allowed him to see perfectly in any condition, even in the dim light of the room they were in.

Disgusted and creeped out by this, she quickly retreated to put on some decent clothes.

"I'll be frank with you guys, I need your help." Uriel replied. "I want to form a party and buy this place. We all could use this building as a hideout and I think it may be really useful for us in the future." After much consideration Uriel had come to the conclusion that he needed people he could trust to accompany him to hunt cryptids.

This, of course, excluded Nika completely since he didn't trust her anymore. The only people Uriel could count on now were his friends.

"I refuse."

"Yeah, I'm out too."

"Uhm... no, thanks."

Contrary to Uriel's expectations, everyone refused immediately without even giving it a second though.

"Why? Don't you guys want to hunt?" He asked and the first to answer was Medusa.

"It's not that I don't want to... but I'm afraid I'll fall behind on my studies if I do something unnecessary like that." Something like hunting cryptids wasn't necessary for Medusa, as she came from a wealthy family and all of her bills were covered.

"I don't want to fight, in fact, I don't even want to see any more cryptids for the rest of my life." Sam added.

"I wouldn't mind having the chance to study some cryptids, but I can do that on my own." Luna said.

"No, you cant." Everyone said in unison. They all knew that, given the chance, Luna would walk directly into the maw of a cryptid just to see how sharp their teeth are. "You won't last a day by yourself." Sam added and everyone agreed.

Uriel pondered for a few seconds on how to convince them to join his party. While there were many reasons why he would benefit from that, he didn't know exactly what did his friends wanted, so he didn't know what to offer them.

Luna was obsessed with cryptids and wanted to become a cryptozoologist, she was also studying medicine. But Uriel didn't know the first thing about Medusa, only that she was well versed in martial arts and she came from a wealthy family. About Sam, well...

he was obsessed with hot girls but besides that and that he came from the family that owned the old Samsong company, everything about him was a mystery.

"What do you guys know about orichalcum?" Uriel asked.

"Dude! you're not supposed to speak about it openly!" Sam hurriedly exclaimed. Much to Uriel's surprise, they all knew about it.

"So it is as I thought, it is a secret." Uriel sighed.

"Yes, it is. People aren't supposed to know about its existence, if everyone knew about orichalcum it would be much more difficult to get. Everyone would want orichalcum weapons, cars, gadgets, even houses made of it." Medusa explained what she had been told by her family.

"It's so unfair..." Uriel replied, but Medusa continued.

"It's not. If the existence of a mysterious metal with the ability to channel flux was made public it would become scarce in no time. But forcing people to keep it a secret works in everyone's favor as they can't spend it on useless things just to brag about their wealth."

"Why didn't you guys tell me about it?"

"Because it's a secret only the ascended and above can know, and you're just an evolved." Sam butted in. Uriel still remembered the last time Sam had called him 'just and evolved' but things were different now.

"Evolved? I'm not an evolved anymore. After the expedition I got tested again and it turns out, I am an ascended now, so... any more secrets you're keeping from me?"