“Here you go, boss,” Mitchel said, handing Myles the final list.

  Myles thanked him and looked over the names listed:

  Verass Pand, [Free Merchant]

  Frog, [Druid of the Flesh], [Mechanist]

  Nine-Ghosts, [Soul Channeler]

  Madigan Silver, [Beast Binder]

  Haru Sella, [Ectomancer]

  All things considered and evaluated, only five of the applicants had been viable candidates for what they needed. Only being a bit of a misnomer since Myles was more than impressed with the five good choices as he reviewed their details.

  Nine-Ghosts was infact a beastkin as Myles discovered when he accidently tripped over a set of invisible tails that only made themselves known by the distortions they made when they caught the light. The pain that hit his knee like an arrow was gone in a moment as the joint went numb then warmed as if nothing happened. The goosebumps on his skin spoke otherwise. She was fast with her work and didn’t even mention it. The Skill did leave Myles slightly jarred as it almost felt like the Skill talked to him. Even with that, Nine-Ghosts rated highly for him. He needed more professionals on his team.

  Verass may not have been a traditional healer, but with an ability that could actually change out their almost pointlessly huge amounts of gold for items on the battlefield made her an excellent option to add to their team, even if it wasn’t as a healer. She quickly found her way to the short list as Mitchel pointed out that, depending on the extent of her ability, they could buy things like Skill gems, soul dew, and maybe even protection in the form of shelter on the lower floors.

  Frog was a good man, and actually pretty bubbly once he got talking. He was knowledgeable about monsters that had any sort of real body due to a variant of Myles’s Monster Lore Skill called Druid’s Lore which gave him different information. He could also move flesh like putty according to him and mend it with his Flesh Kiln Skill. He could also modify his own body temporally to become a literal wall of muscle at the cost of a high recovery time. Being a [Mechanist] also meant he could work on devices for the team and maybe help Kendra regain her lost Class if she so chose to.

  Madigan was another odd-man-out like Verass. At first glance, his class read like a front-liner. He could bind the blood of a monster to his equipment to gain their skills for as long as he wore and maintained it. Currently, he could regenerate wounds he took, lightly cure others, remove poisons, turn off a target’s pain sensation, charge his weapons with no less than three elemental affinities, and… explode his blood infused weapons and armor at will. The man was a bit too excited to share those details though, so down the list he went.

  Last was another man he’d not met, Haru Sella. Haru could channel ectoplasm, a proto material from… somewhere and shape it. It could heal slowly and be used to bind wounds well. It could also be fashioned into weapons he could control with his mind. He also claimed to be able to talk to the dead, but only he could see and hear them. While that could be useful, he didn’t have enough information on the class to know if Haru was pulling his leg, truthful, or just a bit too much like three day old crusted bread.

  “What do you think?” Myles asked Mitchel as he reviewed the names and their related Skills and Traits. “Five isn’t bad.”

  Mitchel pointed to the last two names as he corrected his friend. “Not sure they can be trusted to always be healers.”

  Reading the descriptions again, Myles nodded. “Three it is then.” With Madigan and Haru off the lists, that left the original three to arrive. “So, how should we go about this?”

  “Have Nod break the news to the two?” Mitchel offered.

  Myles shook his head. “They aren’t Don.”

  Mitchel winced. “I still don’t know why you did that.”

  “I wish I could explain it better,” Myles said, double checking the clamp on the connection between himself and Nod.

  Even with his behavior, Don had a team and wrote on his report that he wanted to ‘abandon them for being assholes about everything’ and ‘improper loot distribution’ and ‘because he was bored’. In truth, Myles had a feeling that the man was projecting and over valuing himself without even being a true healer class and getting by with basic field medicine. “That guy was an ass.”

  “Agreed. Here are the prior team reports.”

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  As Myles dismissed the two listed, Mitchel handed him another sheet of paper and was surprised to notice only Frog and Nine-Ghosts had teams before this. The more he thought about that, the sillier he felt. Why would a merchant Class be out in the field before now.

  According to the first page, Frog’s team had broken up after the battle with Shardking. Not all at once, but they’d stopped adventuring and moved back into being gatherers for Sindra and the city. That wasn’t enough for Frog, and he’d been moonlighting as a healer for hire.

  He said he’d been looking for new teams according to the report, but none of them really fit him. If it was to be believed, he’d had a pretty good record, but the gallows humor as he’d called it, seemed to be the factor that kept people from taking him on full time. As Myles saw it, gallows humor was better than the gallows, so he’d deal with it.

  Nine-Ghosts’s team was another story.

  As the sole-survivor of a team of five, Nine-Ghosts had spent over a month in the care of the clerics after the battle with Shardking, missing almost the entire run through Somniums after taking the worst part of an explosion from Shardking’s beam attack. Watching her interactions with Nod, he would never have guessed that. Then again, she could probably separate monsters from the floor boss.

  She had no qualms about joining a team but wrote that she’d had issue with many of her past try-outs due to their inability to ‘not get hit by deadly attacks’ and ‘couldn’t follow basic care instructions to stop bleeding’ before she could reach them.

  Curiously, she’d written that she had no issues with Tail, which was wholly unprompted. He’d know there was something they’d had against their prior clan, but did it extend further than that? Was Nine-Ghosts part of their prior clan?

  Curiouser and Curiouser.

  Still, at least he wouldn’t be cooking for many. That much almost caused a riot.

  As he looked over the reports, he considered again cutting Verass out of the running, but set the thoughts aside. He’d let his team make that final decision once they looked over their traits and saw them in action. There was always the possibility they took on all three since in reality, they were down two. What was another mouth to feed if they could bring home the bacon, literally?

  Through his Ring of the Legion Commander, he sent a quick message to his team to assemble and went back to work.

  As Myles moved into the kitchen to prep for lunch and dinner proper, Kit appeared from the bathroom with Topoff on her head, Medic on one shoulder, and Doughnut on the other. Paragon followed behind her and they all purred happily as the metal girl walked around studying the three as Mitchel relaxed in an armchair.

  Myles thought about calling her back as she leaned in to study a patch of air behind Nine-Ghosts but resisted as something tugged at his instinct. He knew better than to ignore that feeling. Myles learned to trust himself and waited to see what would happen.

  He instantly regretted it as his adopted slime reached out, wrapped her hand around something and tugged.

  “Ow!”

  Tails shimmered into existence for just a moment behind the beastkin, making Nine-Ghosts grunt loudly. To Myles amazement, the tails looked like flowing opals, more a rainbow contained in white bones than a solid white. The tails glimmered with magic before they swept as a single entity and nearly knocked the girl over in their own defense.

  Kit stood her ground, barely moving as she looked at them, confused. Then, as if making a connection, she smiled and pointed out the obvious. “You have tails.”

  Nine-Ghosts turned, looking her over before realizing something herself. Her smile softened and knelt down to address Kit directly. “Yes, I have a few of them, little one.”

  “Tail has one tail,” Kit pointed out. “Why do you have more?”

  “Because they are a foxkin Korgan.”

  She pointed to the tails before they shimmered back out of existence. “That is a fox tail. You’re a fox too.”

  “Spirit fox,” Nine-Ghosts corrected. “Our kin are different.”

  Kit scratched her head. “But you’re not dead.”

  “I’m not.”

  “But you’re a spirit.”

  “A spirit fox.”

  “But you’re not dead. You’re alive.”

  Nine-Ghosts sighed. “We all have a spirit within us, little one. My clan just manifests ours differently.”

  So they weren’t of the same clan. That made things easier at least.

  "You’re a spirit, but you aren’t dead.” Kit seemed to consider that. Her face scrunched a bit, processing things in a way that sparked a memory. As he watched her, a smile crossed Myles’s face as he remembered the day a child thought about how to convince his father to buy a cookie, and it lit up just as much as his did as Kit nodded, coming to some kind of conclusion. “Okay.”

  “Okay?” Nine-Ghost asked.

  “Yes!” Kit said happily before going to Frog and looking at the dwarf. Her eyes were like polished silver coins and onyx as she studied his features then nodded as if coming to yet another conclusion. “You have a beard.”

  Frog looked perplexed, then smiled. “I do.”

  “Can I touch it?”

  Frog shook his head. “Sorry, but a dwarf of my clan deals with his own beard. No one but his wife, husband, and family may touch it.”

  “Why?”

  Frog considered that, seemingly running through a series of answers before settling on, “Well, do you like when people touch you?”

  Kit smiled and nodded. “People are warm.”

  Frog sighed. “What if they were cold? Would you still like it?”

  “No! I like being warm.”

  “Same thing,” Frog said, smiling back. “To me, it’d be like someone touching you with cold hands.”

  She starred at him intently before nodding and moving on.

  Myles watched the scene curiously as Kit examined the last member and shook her head. “I remember you.”

  Verass looked surprised. “You do?”

  Myles shared her surprise. As far as he could remember, he’d never taken Kit to see her. He’d always taken vials, and occasionally extra kinetic steel, to sell with Ashra. The fact that Kit remembered someone else she’d never met was a surprise, but no one was as surprised as Myles at her next words.

  “I don’t like you,” and with that, Kit went into the kitchen area to play with the slimes who gave her the same scornful look as the young slimekin before disappearing behind the counter.

  “What was that about?” Mitchel asked as the others went back to waiting for the rest of his team to arrive.

  Myles looked at the girl playing with the slimes as confused as the rest. “I have no idea.” When they had some time alone, he’d have to ask the slimekin what she meant. In the meantime, “Make sure Doughnut doesn’t eat the ingredients before they’re cooked. He’s a glutton, and I don’t need flavored dough again.”

  “Got it, boss.”