Expeditions were an interesting process for Theo, just as he had hoped. After they hired an Engineer, a dwarven woman by the name of Agatia, a new quest tracker popped up called "Expedition Progress". This was accompanied by several highlighted zones of interest on the map, which each had some terse directions added to them. They included obvious goals like "Explore Area" and "Eliminate Monsters" to tasks that only Agatia could perform, like "Engineer: Assess Structural Stability".

  The Expedition also changed dynamically, often because of something Agatia would see or do. If she saw a wall that was about to collapse, she would shout out orders and a new sub-Goal would appear on the map. They were typical game tasks, like "Find 3 Suitable Wood Braces" or "Slay any monsters that appear" if Agatia was trying to prop something up, or taking time to unjam a door.

  The entire Expedition had a time limit before their Team would end their work and need to turn back. The Gate Towers job could be attempted in 15 minute chunks, and since they were a few steps from town, restarting the process wasn't an issue. Theo was worried about more distant Expeditions, I hope their time limits are longer than this. Are we going to have to walk all the way back to town to restart them?

  Their progress was mostly smooth. Anya and Theo could kill any of the weak monsters in the towers with brutal efficiency, and there were usually only a couple of packs per floor. Those slaying tasks pushed the progress forward by a measly 0.4% to 0.8% each, but in bulk they gained 12% in their first foray just from the monster elimination goals. Agatia's tasks were more complicated and time consuming, but they always gave at least 1%, and often much more.

  Anya suggested splitting up after completing a few of the dynamic tasks, since Agatia's demands could be done by one person. Theo was conflicted. Agatia would occasionally draw in a pack of shadows, and she had low health and no combat skill. Her death would, he intuited, end the Expedition immediately, but...

  If Anya weren't around, he could employ his entire toolkit to keep Agatia safe, which included healing her through any incidental damage. There was one monster, a ball of writing shadows with stubby legs, that exploded on death. Agatia had been clipped by the explosion a few times already, and each wave of violent darkness reduced her health by 25%. She did not heal quickly, either. Theo had been hiding a healing node to keep Agatia healthy, but the whole process was becoming increasingly silly and convoluted.

  He reluctantly agreed, "Okay, maybe you can scout out the second tower while Agatia and I work on the Engineering problems in the first?"

  Anya smiled, "Sounds good to me. Just give me a shout if something bad happens, and I'll rush over."

  They spent most of their second Expedition apart. It truly was easy to protect Agatia with barricades and healing nodes. So much so that he often spent his time tagging random packs of monsters and then returning them to a central location to get blasted away by a nest of turrets, unless they were the exploding type, of course. Even the trio of detonators that got through were quickly mitigated. Theo's worries melted away faster than his enemies' health. This is great!

  The second Expedition ended with Agatia restoring the gate mechanism on the northern tower. It was a close thing. Unlike other engineering tasks, fixing the winch and chain only required time. But, it was a long task, needing 5 minutes with only 7 left in the quest log. The hitch was that it drew the ire of every monster left in the tower. Theo was shocked at how many arrived, because he could swear that they hadn't missed any rooms on the way up. Maybe they respawned?

  He didn't have time to investigate. Instead, he scrambled to build an adequate defense. He had already dropped a barricade and healing node when they entered the top room. It was a huge, round area with outwardly sloped walls. Theo peered out of one of the arrow slots carved into the stone and he could see the last few tents in the former encampment far below, like scraps of paper on a snowy sidewalk. The room had three entrances, and all three of them were surging with shadowy fiends only a few seconds into the repairs.

  His first instinct was to call Anya, but he stopped himself. He wasn't going to have the freedom to play with his turrets when they were both in the southern tower. If things go really badly, I'll ask... He immediately constructed two arrow turrets near the center of the room, then positioned himself near one of the unguarded entrances to catch enemies trying to sneak around to Agatia. The room was small enough that he could activate his two attack skills and still be within range of all of his turrets, so he regained mana at a clip that was fast enough to throw down a second barricade close to an awkward side passage.

  By the end of the five minutes, he had gotten all three entrances sealed by barricades, and three arrow turrets rapidly obliterated any monsters that appeared. He had been trying to keep three healing nodes up, one for each barricade, but he found that having two was enough. He could focus on topping off each barricade as needed, and that was much more Mana efficient. More free Mana meant more arrows. He stayed mobile, if just to keep his skills constantly on cooldown, but his towers were doing so much damage that he could have easily stopped to read through his stats or plan for future Expeditions.

  Their progress was astounding. Expedition one had already made 26% progress, and by the time Theo met back up with Anya at the encampment after Expedition two, they were at 68%. He cheered when he saw her, "Just one more, don't you think?"

  She laughed and nodded, "Yeah! Great work! We should have a pretty clean shot at the top once we get going again, I think I cleared most of the enemies out."

  Theo rubbed the back of his head, knowing that the enemies would come to overwhelm them during the last step, and he wouldn't have his barricade setup to cover every entrance, but he formulated a plan, "A ton of enemies rushed us once Agatia started working on the gate repair, so we'll have to defend her for five minutes. It should be possible if I pull the enemies coming from multiple entrances."

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  Anya rubbed her chin, "Really? Sounds intense. How come you didn't call me?"

  Theo laughed nervously, "It wasn't that bad. You mere making a ton of progress too."

  "I was! I like fighting lots of little monsters. It really makes the big squish skill shine," Anya rambled for a moment before looking into Theo's eyes with a mischievous grin, "Say... how did you end up in the preview event, Theo?"

  "Oh, uh. Well, my dad works for Vivensight, and he won a contest to get a VR pod and access to the game," Theo said with a wince.

  "Ahhh, I think I heard about that. How fun! That must have made your day," Anya smiled at him.

  "Yeah, for sure. I might have begged him to enter... every day... for a month straight," Theo chuckled nervously.

  "Haha, so not a surprise gift then. That's too bad, but it's a good thing you asked!"

  "Yeah... I gotta remember to thank him again. This is more than I could have ever imagined."

  "I'm glad you're enjoying it. Well, back into the fray?"

  Theo nodded, and they escorted Agatia to the second door.

  As Theo predicted, Anya's toolkit wasn't really made to keep the attention of multiple independent streams of monsters. Her big taunt had about a 20 second cooldown, but she adapted admirably by playing whack-a-mole as monsters tried to pass her. Her damage was good enough to make up for lacking a repeatable area of effect spell, so the enemies never accumulated to a dangerous degree. 10 minutes later, the winch was repaired and they were 100% done with the Expedition.

  Dulvan was practically dancing with delight when they returned to him. He clapped them both on the shoulders, "Impressive work, I thought that would take all week. I'll send in a crew right away to man those contraptions and get that gate closed."

  The elderly dwarf whistled at a pair of workers relaxing near a stack of crates, and they stood at attention before rushing over to the cleared towers. Within a minute, the massive stone doors at the entrance to the hall thudded into place and the hall became noticeably warmer. Dulvan nodded in satisfaction, "Wonderful, just wonderful. You two should consider doing more Expeditions."

  Anya squeaked as the alerts poured in, "Level 8! Ooh, look at that. Good choices here..."

  Theo opened his own skill choice menus, moving out of Anya's line of sight in case she noticed the abnormal number of hand movements he was sure to make. I hope I get three again...

  Indeed he did. The choices he made had him vibrating in anticipation. He needed to find a quest like the one they had just completed. Something where they would be standing still for a while. He quickly made three easy choices, then immediately returned to the Expeditions table. A moment later, Anya joined him, "Get anything good?"

  "Yeah. I got something awesome. Want to do another expedition to try our new skills out?"

  "Yep! I wouldn't mind going for a longer one. Does anything look good?" She asked as she scrolled through the choices.

  Theo chewed on his lip. Could we handle a level 12 Expedition? Maybe with some hired help?

  Anya seemed similarly pensive, "Dulvan, what do you the numbers on the side mean?"

  Dulvan hobbled up to the table, "That's the crew size. You'll typically need at least one engineer, for structural assessment, but something more complicated means you'll need specialists too. Take the Keghouse for instance. Gonna need someone from the hospitality trades to examine it. Check for yeastblight and vermin, you see."

  "What about for the Royal Hall?" Theo asked, "Why is it locked?"

  Dulvan frowned, "That'll be because we've not got someone from the Crown to inspect it. I expect that'll be a long time off yet. We've not even got the means to host travelers, let alone immigrants, so I don't expect we'll get any royal types until that is sorted out."

  "Would any of these Expeditions help?" Anya asked.

  "Oh yes, to be sure," Dulvan said with a laugh, "A Keghouse'll host visitors, though we won't be expecting anyone until there's trade. As for sleeping arrangements for the folks here, the Barracks'll do until we devise something more accomodating."

  Anya smiled at Theo, "We could do one of those."

  He shook his head, "We'll do them eventually, but I want to try something challenging. I think we should do the Lift."

  Anya tilted her head, "Level 12, isn't it? That's still 4 levels away for me."

  Theo opened the Expedition to examine the rewards.

  Theo whistled. That would be several levels of experience. They'd likely level up a few times just from making progress. He shared the screen with Anya. She read through with a tense smile, but echoed his whistle as she reached the end. She bumped him with a powerful shoulder, "Okay, why not. Aim for the stars and all that, right?"