Fayette shuffled off the bed and rushed to wake up Mireille. The [Seamstress] groggily opened her eyes as the [Maid] shook her.

“Alright alright, I’m waking up, what’s the-”

Mireille paused in the middle of her sentence, and Fayette smiled as she knew what Mireille had paused for. “You got them too, right? The notifications?”

Mireille took a few more seconds to parse things, then smiled back at Fayette. “Alright, it looks like our ploy worked out.” She hopped out of bed, then her face furrowed. “Wait a minute, is this much experience normal for some rats? My traps don’t usually give this much.”

Fayette nodded. “I noticed it too—something’s definitely weird about this, but whatever! I got a new skill!”

She rushed to make her bed and put on her uniform, managing it in record time. Soon the pair were out of the door. They chose to skip breakfast for today, as the excitement of their first successful job as hunters carrying them forward. Fayette still took some bread along though—she needed to experiment.

Fayette checked on her new skill as she walked.

[Spicy cooking—A Maid who specializes in cooking of the spicy variety, a most useful skill indeed! Spice up all your food easily, in one simple step. No more need for those bothersome spice merchants!]

Nice, this one will definitely push my cooking to the next level.

“Hey, Mireille, check this out!”

Fayette took a piece of bread from her pockets, then held it out. She focused on her new skill, willing it to act on the bread.

“[Spicy Cooking]!”

A flash went through the bread, but no visible change came to it. Fayette tore a piece off, and bit into it. Ooh, nice, it really did get spicy. How useful!

She tore off another piece and offered it to Mireille. “Here, you can have one too.”

“No, thank you but I’m fine. I ate already.”

“No you didn’t! Besides, don’t you want to see how my new skill works?”

Mireille looked at the piece of bread dubiously. “You know, based on that skill name and your expression while eating that bread, I’m pretty sure I know exactly how it works.”

“Aww, but you can’t be sure, right?”

“Well, fine. If you’ll stop pestering me on it.”

Mireille took a small bite, then threw the rest of the bread away, grimacing. “Exactly as I imagined.”

“Hey! Don’t litter!”

Fayette stopped to pick up the piece of bread and stored it in one of her pockets. She would dispose of it properly later.

“So, how exactly is that going to help your hunting career?” Mireille asked.

“Uhh, now that you say it, I’m not really sure. I’ll figure out something though, don’t you worry!”

Mireille scoffed. “Well, I’ll look forward to it too, then. I didn’t get any new ability yet, sadly. Maybe I need more fighting experience.”

“I’m sure you’ll get something good soon!”

“Well, I hope so too.”

 

---

 

It was only a short walk to their first target: the food warehouse they had started off with. However, a concerning detail arose as they arrived to check their traps.

The poisoned bits of bread were gone, and the snares had been used. There were even traces of blood on the floor. However, there was not one trace of the rats themselves. No corpses were where they were supposed to be. The pair stared at the conspicuously empty warehouse floor for a moment then turned to each other.

There was a long bit of silence, which Mireille eventually broke. “Hey, Fayette. We were going to get paid for every rat corpse we brought in, right?”

“Yes, that is what they said.”

Mireille turned back to look at the triggered snares. “Well, where are they? We got the notifications, right? Where are my rat bodies? Did they take them away? Eat them? Is that something that rats do?”

“Do you think we’ll be able to get paid anyways? We did kill rats, the notifications proved it.” Fayette tried.

Mireille let loose a long sigh. “I really don’t think that’s going to be good enough. They’ll want assurances that the issue is actually being dealt with—the word of some dubious rookie hunters is hardly convincing.”

Fayette let her gaze wander through the warehouse, eventually landing at some cracks by a back wall. The cracks were large, deep and dark fissures, and Fayette knew where they led.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” She asked.

Mireille nodded. “Those rats are not taking my money. I’ll get them for this.”

It was time for a direct assault, it was time to head to the undercity.

 

Fayette and Mireille immediately set off to Elise’s house to discuss things further—they needed more information, and the girl seemed oddly knowledgeable about this stuff. It was still the early morning, so they hoped to catch her before her shift at work.

Elise was a bit surprised to see the two knocking at her door so early in the morning, but she quickly hustled them inside. The woman tried to start brewing tea for the group, but somehow Fayette ended up taking over again.

“So, there are issues with this whole rat situation, I take it?” She asked as she watched Fayette pour tea into three cups.

“Well, yeah. These are definitely not normal rats we are dealing with here.” Mireille said, a frown on her face.

“Oh? How so?”

Mireille took up a cup of tea for herself. “Well, we should have realized something was wrong right this morning, when we got notifications for our kills.”

“You got kill notifications? Isn’t that a good thing?”

Fayette took a long sip from her cup, then sighed. “Yes, it is a good thing. We were both pretty happy at it, because we got a lot of experience. However, it was really too much experience.”

Elise seemed puzzled at that, and silently sipped at her own cup, waiting for an explanation. Mireille continued. “The thing is, normal rats shouldn’t be giving that much experience, even with how many traps we had set. Fayette, you’ve done pest removal before, right?”

The [Maid] nodded. “Yeah, I’ve dealt with some moles and mice before, but the experience gain was nothing like it was today. It pushed me all the way from early level 10 to 11!”

Elise’s eyes widened. “That is a lot of experience. It would take me months of work at the mill to make similar progress.”

Mirelle nodded. “Right, I got a level up too from it. Really the whole thing is—”

“Did you get any cool new skills?” Elise interrupted, eyes shining. “I bet hunters get all sorts of cool abilities, right?”

Mireille was struck silent by the sudden interruption, but Fayette took no notice. “Oh yeah, I did get a skill: [Spicy Cooking]. Don’t know how much use it’ll be, but—”

“Fayette!” Mireille shouted as she slammed her cup on the table. She gave the [Maid] a severe glare. “Don’t just go blabbing about skills to everyone, ok? A hunter can’t be doing things like that!”

The [Maid’s] eyes widened as she realized her mistake. She turned to Elise with an awkward smile. “Uhhh... So, anyways I didn’t get any new skill at all, nope. It was just—”

“It’s fine, sorry.” Elise said, blushing slightly. “I shouldn’t have asked. It’s just that—you know? You guys are actually like fighting stuff. Doing real things. Not just endless dull labour.”

Fayette looked at the earnest woman, then turned to Mirelle. “Hey, it should be fine to talk to her about this, right?”

Mireille looked divided for a moment, but eventually relented. “...Fine. Alright, it should be alright. But!” She turned to Elise and pointed a decisive finger at her face. “Elise, we need information on the undercity. I am not letting those rats get away with my righteous pay!”

The [Labourer] smiled. “Thanks, I appreciate it.” She went silent for a few seconds as she thought. “As a kid, I wanted to be an [Explorer]. A childish dream, but I did end up snooping around a lot, learning a lot. But... I’m not really sure I know how to explain it all.” She turned away for a bit, fidgeting. She seemed to be gathering courage for something, and eventually turned a hesitant look to the two hunters. “Do you think... I could come along as a guide?”

Fayette nodded. “Sure, I suppose there’s no harm in getting a guid—”

“Now wait just a minute.” Mireille interrupted, blocking Fayette off with her hand. She carefully examined Elise, and the [Labourer] began fidgeting under her eye.

“Elise, what level are you?”

Elise stopped fidgeting, and slowly answered. “Well, I just recently got to level 14...”

Mireille slumped down, leaning on her hand. “Oh, great. One of those cases.”