The final boss of the quest was underwhelming.

  Appearing from the depths of the sea, it was like no living creature that she knew of. It had dripping skin that was black as oil. Each droplet swirled along the tumultuous surface of the sea. When enough droplets merged together, they formed a miniature version of the monster. Whipping behind the creature were massive tentacles that were tipped with claws, stingers, or mouths ringed with teeth. Its numerous red eyes glared up at them from the sea.

  Upon seeing the creature, both Inferno and Tsunami begged for the opportunity to fight it. Keylynn stood back and watched them leap from the ship, landing on the creature. Eugene informed her that the creature was designed, summoned, and controlled by a high-level wizard that dwelled in the sea.

  In the end the fight didn’t take the two long to defeat. When they returned to the ship, they were covered in slick black oil and brown sludge. Keylynn was disappointed that the final step between an adventurer's ascension was such an easy fight for her team. They didn’t even need her fungi to digest anything.

  “You call that a boss fight?” Tsunami said between gasps of breath.

  “Brother, you didn’t get eaten,” Inferno retorted as he attempted to remove the sludge from himself.

  “Then next time don’t lose your footing,” Tsunami teased.

  “I’m going to go wash up before we hit land,” Tsunami said and walked away. Each one of his steps squelched loudly. Inferno took off his shoes and followed him.

  “We should all prepare for our imminent arrival,” Keylynn said to the remainder of her team. She returned to her room, mindful to avoid the puddles of black oil and brown sludge that littered the floor.

  Before she finished packing up her belongings, she sat at the desk and checked her matrix. She knew that Dauven would have already seen her new ability and could ask her about it.

  Fungal Form: Developed from extensive fungal connections and cultivations. Fungal form requires multiple fungal colonies to come together to protect their progenitor, the druid who maintains them. Fungal form can take upon many different forms depending on what final colonies are present at the moment. Those bound to fungi can use this ability as other druids use their wild shape. Fungal form replaces the wild shape ability.

  She was excited at the prospect of experimenting with her fungal form ability. It sounded as if different combinations of fungal colonies will result in different fungal forms. Because it replaced her wild shape ability, she hoped that she could have a catalogue of sorts of her different fungal forms, allowing her to transform into the one she needed for that moment. She also had to experiment with how often she would be able to make use of her fungal form ability.

  What she needed was a couple of weeks to experiment and build up her fungal form catalogue, not that she would get that any time soon. Experimenting with a new ability wasn’t grounds for time off. She will have to settle for smaller experiments that filled her weekends.

  She scanned through her fungal cultivation tab out of curiosity. She doubted she had any new colony cultivations because she hasn’t worked with any of her new samples yet.

  Chitinous Slime Mold: Capable of hardening to form an outer layer akin to insectoid chitin, forming a formidable natural armour that is both rigid and flexible. Has developed the ability to form shelf mushroom fruiting bodies, adding extra offensive capabilities to the armour they produce. Further development variants possible: thickened chitin, rapid growth, mucus covering, and insectoid appendage development.

  Fungal Form compatibility: Corpse Flower Mushroom.

  Corpse Flower Mushroom: This carnivorous fungus will use whatever means necessary to feed itself. It prefers to hunt insects, it is theorized, for the thrills. If there are no insects nearby, it will find other ways to feed itself. As it grows, it will develop an atypical fruiting body that smells like a freshly rotting corpse to attract even more insects to consume.

  Fungal Form compatibility: Chitinous Slime Mould.

  She hoped there would have been a change in slime Eugene, but knowing that fungal form compatibilities would be noted as she discovered them was more useful. This one small touch will make her future experiments infinitely easier.

  She spent some time drafting up a list of fungal colony combinations for her fungal form ability. She wanted to see what her puff shrooms and slime Eugene were able to create together. Next she typed up some of her thoughts on her team's performance and the assessment. When she was done, she put her matrix tablet away in her bag and set the infant mimic on her shoulder.

  They were still in the form of a stone, and she still needed to give them a name. She manifested a small cluster of short white mushrooms for it to eat, should it be hungry. “You like being a stone; I think that should inspire your name. Pebble seems too small but suggests you survived great hardships, which you have.” She mused out loud, stroking the top of the mimic gently. “Boulder is a much more formidable name that comes with presence and can intimidate. Stone, on the other hand, is just boring compared to the other two.”

  The mimic wrapped their long purple tongue around the stalk of one of the mushrooms and pulled it into their mouth.

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  “What do you think of the name Pebble?” She asked.

  The mimic seemed to think it over before their skin quivered and cycled through several colours of rocks before returning to their original grey colour.

  “Or Boulder?” She asked again. This time there was no response to her question. “I’ll take that as you prefer Pebble, as do I.”

  Pebble cycled through all of their colour options again in celebration.

  There was no one standing on the Ithika docks waiting for their arrival. Keylynn tried not to read into the obvious slight from the storymancer. She didn’t send advance warning that they were on their way to Ithika. She worried that Ody would attempt to prevent their arrival.

  “Human Eugene, where can we normally find Ody?” She inquired as he led them towards an impressive office building. The building mirrored their main office nearly perfectly; the one main difference was the absence of an adjacent research and development building. She assumed the height of the building was an illusion, as there was no reason for the Ithika office to be as tall as the main office.

  He raised an eyebrow with a grin. “The higher-level offices—his, Penny’s, and their break room mostly. Do we need to avoid him?”

  She didn’t trust Ody not to do something confrontational, and she would prefer to have Dauven’s team standing behind her when that happens. “I didn’t leave him with the best impression.”

  If Eugene thought her vague answer was suspicious, he didn’t show it. “I try to avoid him too. He’s an ass. He fired the last HR rep over missing pencils. The office doesn't have pencils. Dauven and the rest are on the lower levels anyways.”

  “Nessa was fired over a theft allegation? Do you have proof that it’s false and proper protocol wasn’t followed for her termination?” She had no doubt that Nessa was fired for helping her. Ody terminated an employee for helping a Royal Assessment Department and Adventurer Welfare Council employee, and that broke company policy.

  “I’ve been going through the records so I can dig that up no problem.”

  The main entrance of the Ithika office, as human Eugene explained, was allocated and curated for the recently ascended heroes. The first floor was filled with shops, Matrix kiosks, accommodations, and many restaurants. Each week there was a daylong celebration dedicated to that week's newly anointed heroes.

  The stairs took them past several floors filled with accommodations dedicated to the quest staff. They stopped at a 'staff only' door after climbing past several accommodation floors. Eugene pulled out his authorization card and held the door open for them.

  “Eugene, I was wondering where my HR floater wandered off to. You left unauthorized personnel unsupervised in the records room, and you brought even more unauthorized personnel into our staff-only office.” A soft voice crooned at them.

  Eugene looked as if all of the colour was drained from his face.

  With a clipboard in hand stood a beautiful elven woman with long, elegant pointed ears and flowing brown hair pulled into a series of intricate braids. Her eyes were a gentle stormy grey that was accentuated by the blue of her flowing dress with gold embroidery accents.

  Eugene tried to put on a casual face. “Penny! I see you recovered from your sudden illness. I was under the impression you would be bedridden for days! With how sick you sounded, I don’t expect that you will be up-to-date on everything. These are the remaining members of the assessment team who are conducting the annual assessment that we are very late on. I left the first half of their team in the records room, as was requested. I don’t need to explain to you assessment protocols and how working with RADAWC employees always benefits the quest in question.”

  Keylynn stepped forward with a bow of her head before Penny could respond. “Salutations, I am Keylynn, the HR consultant who worked with the previous HR float, Nessa, regarding case file HR-600-1I-N2B-C. I hope my presence won’t cause a problem with our assessment.”

  There was a slight roll to Penny’s eyes when she said, “Oh yes, I’ve heard all about your cavalier dispensing of corporate policy to liberate our cyclops from his contractually obligated duties. The next time you feel you are needed to step foot on any of my islands and help my employees, don’t.” Her cold eyes turned to Eugene. “As for this so-called annual assessment, I didn’t receive any appropriate notice of assessment, which means neither half of this team of so-called RADAWC employees is authorized to be assessing my quest, nor is my staff mandated to support their assessment. In fact, any help you did provide to them was unauthorized, requiring me to remove your authorization powers from my quest and terminate your work contract. I’ll be informing my superior of this complete abuse of power and sabotage of this quest.”

  Penny was the real threat of Ody’s Journey. Keylynn was foolish to assume it was the boisterous Ody who was behind everything that occurred behind the scenes. She was calm, cool, and collected, everything Ody wasn’t.

  Keylynn’s response was to withdraw a printed copy of the notice of assessment and hand it to Penny. “I assumed that you would have been notified by now. You will be pleased to know that all of your staff, upon hearing of the assessment and seeing this notice, have been exceptionally forthcoming and accommodating. I suggest looking internally first if something went amiss with your advanced notification. If that fails to unearth anything, I would reach out to the assessment notification department to rectify this matter.” She doubted that something truly went amiss with her notification, because the assessment notification department was exceptionally thorough. They will send a notice of assessment daily until it has been acknowledged, typically through a confirmation email.

  Penny’s cold grey eyes scanned across the notice quickly. The further down the notice she read, the thinner her lips became. The notice clearly stated that the assessment notice was acknowledged by the storymancer.

  “Please escort these so-called RADAWC employees and our previous HR float staff to the conference room. No one is to leave the conference room without my explicit permission,” she seethed at the tall muscular men that stood behind her. They were likely corporate paladins in training, as they lacked any of the conventional regalia, or they were hired private security.

  Keylynn silently seethed as they were escorted to a conference room. Penny cannot terminate a work contract without a proper disciplinary hearing, nor did Penny have any grounds for terminating human Eugene’s work contract. To make her frustrations worse, he shouldn’t be accepting the complete lacking of corporate protocol. He should be refuting his contract termination. She didn’t know what Grief would do to him should his work contract be terminated, following proper protocol or not.

  They were gently pushed into the conference room before the door was slammed behind them. She didn’t need to reach out with her magic to know that security stood on the other side of the door. Inside, sitting around a large conference meeting table, was Dauven and his team.

  Dauven looked up from his matrix tablet. “Keylynn, I see you’ve met Penny. I’ve already filed Hostile Quest Form subsection 5B—V3. Gwen has cookies and cupcakes, if you’re hungry.” He said calmly with his nostrils flaring. He was furious.

  “Welcome to Purgatory. We actually do have cookies,” Barnibus mused, taking a bite out of a cookie.

  The only one sitting at the table who didn’t look furious was BEEG; he looked bored.

  Gwen pointed at a stack of cookies and cupcakes on the table. “I’d get up, but what’s the point?”

  Keylynn walked over and picked up a collection of cookies and a cupcake before she took a seat beside Dauven. “Thank you, Gwen. The variety of cookies and cupcakes that you have is truly impressive.”

  “I’d have more if these heathens would let me out!” She shouted loudly.

  “That will tell them, calling them heathens. Keep at it; maybe you’ll stumble upon a real insult,” Barnibus muttered. “Please tell me you have something.”

  Keylynn sucked in a deep breath and began to explain to her team everything that transpired during her portion of the assessment.