Karl was handing ice cream from the clerk to the kids when the bell rang to mark a new customer, and the man known locally as "The Moron" waved a greeting to him.

"Hey Swag, how's your afternoon going?" Karl asked.

"Good, good. I heard that you might be looking to go on an outing soon. The Dana Mage is almost finished her Immortal Spirit, and I've spent the last of my Clan Credits, so I'm looking for another outing." He explained.

Karl smiled. "I think that we can arrange something. There are always people looking to go out, and I've got a fairly solid base of Immortals for my group."

The Moron nodded in agreement. "Yes, I met one of them earlier. She was with the Blue Elves, having a heated debate about the best arteries to cut if you wanted to make an example of someone."

That sounded pretty average for Rae. But not for most other people.

Maybe she made friends with similar interests?

"If you want to go with my usual group, I can arrange that too. There are about ten of us who like to work together because we have complementary skills, and then we just join with an ascended Immortal and his core group for larger outings.

But there is a spot that would be perfect for twelve lower ranked members if we can find an Elder or Ascended group leader for the duel." Swag suggested.

"Oh? What sort of location? We could have Miss Opal here record everything and then show off our glorious victory as training materials for the youngsters when we return." Karl suggested.

"There is a dungeon opened at Alhos starting soon. It opens one week a month, with limited spots. It's a bit of a trip, but they have a portal array that New Home can link to.

Portal distances are severely limited on this continent, but that's still within our limitations.

Oh, how I miss the days when I could just pop between continents for lunch. Or when continents were only a few thousand kilometres across. This planet is as inflated as the egos of some of the duel champions."

Karl laughed at the man's dismay. Indeed, this Immortal World was massive, easily ten times the size of the one that Karl had come from. How that worked with a very similar gravity level was a mystery, but Karl suspected that it had more to do with magic and Fundamental Rules than physics.

"That would be perfect. My Dana will have her Immortal Spirit finished right away, and then we can all go as a group. How many people does the Dungeon allow in at a time?" Karl asked.

"Twenty to a group. But it sets the difficulty by the level of the strongest, so we can't bring the Ascended Immortal in with us, unless we're feeling huge.

So, a group of twenty-one, including our duel champion, is perfect."

"Asking for them to just stand around and wait for us must be an expensive proposition." Karl noted.

Swag nodded. "Indeed. It usually costs ten Clan Credits to get them to come with us to fight the duel. But they don't always just wait.

If they have friends among the other Clans or teams, they'll group up and do it together once the access issues are settled."

That made much more sense to Karl. Who would want to waste a whole day just standing around? If the issue was that they didn't have a twenty-person team at their power level, they could arrange a group after they were there, and go as soon as their juniors were gone.

If things went sideways later, thanks to a sketchy group member, that was a different issue.

But they would have already fulfilled their obligation to the juniors, and had their chance to get rewards from the dungeon.

It was not nearly as organized as the Zilaz region with its annual tournaments. But it wasn't a terrible system, and it would let him meet more people than just the members of the New Home Merchant Clan.

Possibly friendly members of other Clans as well, or ones with rare and interesting skills for him to investigate.

He needed more of his own distinct skills and fighting styles so that he wasn't just relying on what he learned from the beasts to keep up with everyone else. Sure, he was strong, but he really was the one slacking on new skills.

Ironically, he even had a skill for making skills, and a skill for combining skills, and he was still slacking. But once he learned a combat style skill, he should be able to combine it with a few other skills to make something that was truly his. Dana moved to stand beside them. "I will actually have my Immortal Spirit stabilized by the end of the day. It's very close now, and I just need to feed it a bit more energy to keep it from trying to detach. If you want to leave in a few days, that shouldn't be an issue.

We will just need to let the school know that the little ones will be absent so that they can come along and play in the dungeon.

Don't worry, as long as they enter inside their separate space, Dungeons and other System Trials count the bonded beasts as part of Karl, so they don't mess

up the count."

The silly grin that Swag gave them immediately made Dana understand why everyone just called him "The Moron'. That smile spoke of a man with two brain

cells, both fighting for third place.

But he had the ambition, and he had the rest of a team, as well as the connections, so there was no real harm in going with him.

If they weren't actually capable, they wouldn't have agreed to go with him more than once.

"That's wonderful. I will let you know the moment that the dungeon opens, and we can all go out for an adventure. I'm getting so close to advancement, I can

feel it."

Then he rushed out of the ice cream shop.

The door slammed shut behind him as he skidded to a stop, holding up a smushed cupcake wrapped in wax paper. He had no idea how that got in his

pocket, but it smelled pretty good.

It must be his lucky day. Free food.