"So we're all in agreement!"

  """Yeah!!!"""

  "Fergus must be protected at all costs!"

  """Yeah!!!"""

  "Fergus will stay by my side forever, and you'll all get to benefit from it!"

  """Yeah!!!"""

  Fergus was sitting at the table, trying his best to make himself smaller. Alex was making a big fuss over his new skill while swinging a beer in the air. He didn't know what to do. Hopefully, Frey was right about the impact of the skill's secondary effects.

  "Ok then! Who else is 4th-tier now?! I sure as hell am!" Alex roared while flexing her muscles.

  """I am!!!""" Everyone confirmed.

  "Woo!!! Cheers!!!"

  """"Cheers!!!"""

  Damian leaned close to Frey and tried to put his arm around her... again with the wrong arm.

  "This is starting to get old... Did anyone gain a skill that could fix my arm?" Damian asked while waving his new stump around.

  "Bahahaha!" Alex was laughing at Damian's plight.

  "Ah... I have the solution." Donna raised her hand.

  Everyone looked at her wide-eyed.

  "No shit! Our little lady is going to be rich! Quick! Hide her from the Healers Association! They won't take her to complete their monopoly!" Alex announced to the entirety of the Adventurers Guild... at least the few who may have been listening in.

  "Wawawaa, stop shaaking meee!" Donna pleaded.

  Setting her down with a thud, Donna took a minute to get her bearings.

  "Um, I received a skill called Restore Body. It might be able to restore a lost limb. It could also take a while since it's a new skill."

  "Donna! You EARNED that skill, not received!" Alex said while shaking the petite lady.

  "Wawawawaa, Ok." The shaking stopped sooner than expected.

  "Let's test it out!"

  Alex picked Donna up again and set her next to Damian.

  "Wrong arm again!"

  "Psh, hahaha!" Frey was caving in on herself, laughing at Damian's expense.

  Twisting around in his seat, Damian held out his stump.

  "Ok then, let's see." Donna placed her hand on Damian's arm, and a film of water started to appear over his skin. A golden hue began to spread within, swirling around his arm.

  "It tickles a bit."

  "Oh, how exciting~ I think I can see his forearm growing a bit."

  Not long after, the glowing faded, and his stump of an arm was... still a stump.

  "I think it helped a little bit..."

  "Bahahaha. Oh man, I thought that we were going to see a miracle." Alex was wiping a tear from her eye.

  *gurgle* Damian's stomach rumbled.

  "Hey Fergus, could you cook me up another plate?"

  "Just ask Donna to take out some of the rations!"

  "No need to be so stingy. Please~?"

  'sigh'

  The meal was delicious, and Damian was fortunate that Fergus was such a pushover when it came to the meals he cooked. No one shall go hungry!

  "Should we try healing my arm again?"

  "I'm not cooking for you again!"

  It became clear that Donna's new skill drew on the body's energy to heal severe wounds. If it could convert fat into a new arm, she might have a very successful business on her hands. But as it was, unless Damian ate nonstop and Donna had many times more mana, he wasn't likely to gain his arm back for months.

  Be thankful for what you have. Damian told himself.

  "Does anyone else want to share their advancement here? Or would you rather keep it a secret from the rest of the guild? At least for a little while?" Damian asked.

  "I still need to test mine out!" Alex offered.

  Stepping away from Donna, Damian could see a brown cord linking her to Alex.

  What the?

  "Waa!"

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  Not a second later, the little lady was dragged away from his side and into Alex's grasp.

  "What was that?"

  "My new skill is called Earthen Tether. It says that I can create anchors and tethers to anything I touch. I can either pull the tethered point to me, or pull myself to it. Let's see~."

  A cord lying on the floor was suddenly pulled taut, and Alex was sent flying to Fergus's side. In a crash, Alex slid along the ground while protecting Donna.

  Surprisingly, Fergus didn't seem to get pulled by the tether at all. It appears that it can only be pulled in one direction at a time.

  Not too soon after thinking this, Damian felt a tug on his own body. He was getting pulled over the table in Alex's direction, and Alex was getting pulled his way at the same time. Right before they would have crashed, Damian activated his new skill and phased around Alex.

  Alex crashed into the table while Damian was speeding up his footsteps to prevent his fall.

  Dammit, I actually wanted to keep that as an ace! Looking around the hall, only a few people cared to watch the spectacle.

  Are they too concerned with the news, or is that just how it is in one of the bigger guild halls?

  "Hey! You ruined my skill!"

  "We were going to crash into one another, how'd I ruin it?"

  "If you waited, I was going to pull another tether at the last second."

  Alex could set up to 4 tethers at once. Whenever she pulled a tether, she had the choice of pulling the target to her, herself to the target, without affecting the anchor point, or having both points pulled together at the same speed.

  Some downsides to the skill were that she had to be at one end of any anchor point, the tether could be easily destroyed with a swipe of a sharp blade, and she had to make some form of contact with the anchor point.

  When breaking into another tier, some of these downsides might disappear. But as it was, this was an outstanding skill. They'd need to learn to plan around it.

  If she practiced, when pulling herself to a target, she could have an anchor point pulled behind her to slow her momentum... Wow, she's just bouncing all over the place... She used my idea without thinking about it. Is this what you call talent? Instinct? Is she actually really smart? No, no, there's no way... right?

  Alex was spinning circles around the table. She was placing tethers as soon as she reached one she had placed before. The strangest thing was that the tethers were ethereal in nature until she pulled on them. Looking under the table, Damian could see one tether phasing right through its legs.

  "Are you trying to catch a peek up someone's skirt?" Frey teased in Damian's ear.

  "Bah! You're just as fascinated by her new skill. It has so many possible use cases!"

  "Yes, yes, it's very neat~ But don't you want to know mine~?"

  Damian gulped

  "Psh, hahaha. You must have such a dirty mind!"

  "And whose fault is that!"

  "Ahh, that's too rich. My new skill is just an enhanced form of my fire skill, by the way. Nothing too impressive or down the line, you were thinking. I might need some time to charge it up, though."

  "Ah, yeah. So we would need to go and test it out in the dungeon... Oh yeah..."

  A little too caught up in the energy Alex created, Damian was reminded of the reason why they were there and the many things he still had to do.

  So, were any of them actually drunk? Not at all! After only a couple of beers, with their constitutions, no one would actually be intoxicated, maybe just a little bit buzzed. But their constitutions weren't the only reason they were actually sober.

  As it turns out, Fergus's blessing helps prevent one from getting drunk! What a miracle solution! Not only that, but the buffs Frey and Damian got from their nighttime activities also help prevent such effects. Say goodbye to hangovers!

  It was nice to let loose sometimes and get caught up in Alex's energy. Forget about all the problems and questions that would wear a person down.

  Shaking the silly thoughts from Damian's mind, he started to consider the situation they were in again. Things were more dangerous than he was comfortable with.

  An organization managed to kidnap tier 3 and 4 adventurers for an entire month and unleash them upon the tower. Reason? Unknown, but it couldn't have been good.

  There was also the mystery of how Hans's party died. There'd have to be a whole slew of tier 3s & 4s even to consider killing a tier 5 party with undead. So, more likely, people killed them or higher-tier undead.

  What could they do? Nothing really. They were fresh tier 4 adventurers who had just lost their friend, who protected them.

  Damian couldn't fill in for Isaac's shoes. He applied pressure to the enemy. If they focused on him, they had a hard time landing a hit. If they ignored him to target the rest of the party, he would be able to tear through their ranks with deadly power. Not to mention, he was missing an arm.

  Their party was fresh in town, holding no connections. Their reputation outside of town wasn't that notable. They didn't even have a party nickname outside of the one they had to jot down when registering...

  Daffid was their party name. Just the first letters of each of their names, organized to make something that almost sounded like a real word. It was a vote between either Daffid or Fiddaf at the time. Damian came up with Daffid, and Isaac came up with Fiddaf.

  If your party had a name that wasn't catchy, once you did something notable, the public would start giving you nicknames, and eventually one would stick. That was playing a dangerous game with Alex and her antics.

  In hindsight, they should have spent more time coming up with a name. It would have been much easier for people to connect their group to their accomplishments when they had a catchy name.

  Maybe we should change the name to Fergus's Protectors. Damian thought cheekily.

  With another shake of his head, Damian refocused.

  Who could they have reached out to for information? How could they investigate the ongoings of internal politics if they didn't even know who the players were? They could seek out the information guild, but that would be expensive to get any real information.

  As it was, the danger was only within the tower, and the guards were on high alert. What could a citizen do?

  The options Damian came to were either to skip town right away or hunker down and see if 'this too would pass'. There was a series of kidnappings, so leaving the city posed a danger, especially since it would be getting dark in a couple of hours.

  Yep, doing nothing and waiting to see what would happen was the right of every citizen. No, their duty as citizens!

  See your leaders committing a crime in broad daylight? Wait and see, maybe a guard would do something about it.

  They just looked the other way? Just wait and see if an inspector comes and puts a stop to things.

  The inspector took the money and walked away. Wait and see if an independent tries to put a stop to it.

  The guard arrested him? Wait and see how things go at his trial. That could have been you if you had acted!

  Yeah, probably not the best choice we could make, but the only reasonable one at the moment.

  'sigh'

  Looking up, Damian noticed that his party had packed their things.

  "What's going on?"

  "While you were daydreaming, we all decided to go see Isaac one last time." Frey declared.

  "?"

  "But we weren't allowed into the rites chamber. What? Are you going to break in?"

  Alex flashed a wide grin.

  Oh, no.

  "We're not guaranteed to get another chance. Even his gravestone will probably be on noble property. Worst-case scenario, we'll have to pay a fine." Frey stated as the spokesperson of the group.

  "No, worst case scenario, you get reported for suspicious activity during a crisis and get stabbed!"

  "Come on, let's just take a look. We can decide whether to proceed once we're there. If the security is too high, we'll go to an inn."

  Damian looked over to Donna, who had pleading eyes like a puppy.

  "... Ok."

  "Onward to honor the great and noble adventurer, Isaac Montblanc!" Alex cheered while leading the group.