A few minutes after one of the tavern's servers swept away the remains of their early lunch, a nervous looking Todd hurried over to Inari and whispered something to her.

The foxkin for her part only smiled and nodded at Shiori before leaving with the receptionist, returning a few minutes later followed by a tall blonde woman wearing fancy blue robes and a wide-brimmed, pointy hat. As media illiterate as Jun was, even she had to admit that if anyone from Earth saw how that woman dressed, they'd agree she screamed "mage."

Despite Inari's smile, she flicked her tail in a way Jun recognized from Shiori as being irritated. "We've been approved to enter the Forest. Finish your meals and let's go," Inari said before she headed off to wrangle the rest of the students.

Jun watched the foxkin leave before looking to her mother. For her part, Shiori seemed amused at Inari's mood, her tail slowly waving as she slowly finished the bowl of stew in front of her. Inari came back in less than a minute leading the rest of the students, her eyebrow raising at the rest of them still seated in the booth. Shiori slowly put her now empty bowl down on the table with a clack, which the blonde woman seemed to take as a signal to speak.

"Good morning, Miss Shiori," the blonde woman said, approaching Jun's mother. "I have already introduced myself to your associate Miss Inari. I am Kora, a Platinum ranked mage and—"

"You are interrupting my meal." Shiori's words were delivered with her usual apathetic bluntness, lacking any heat, but the blonde woman's teeth audibly clacked shut at Shiori's words. A confusing mixture of emotions warred across the woman's face as Shiori ignored her, instead focusing on her mug until it too was empty.

Setting the empty mug on the table, Shiori flicked her wrist, leaving a small pile of coins in the center as she stood. "You may introduce yourself as we walk. Hurry up now, we've lost enough time to bureaucracy as it is."

Without another wod, Shiori padded out of the tavern, only pausing long enough for Jun and Aya to slide out of the booth and rush after her, the rest of their team close behind.

Inari sighed internally at her friend's antics. She was sure Shiori knew who Kora was, why a Platinum ranked girl had been assigned to "guide" their mixed group. It was pretty obvious, even if they didn't disregard everyone's privacy.

No, Inari was certain Shiori listened in and knew exactly who the Platinum girl tagging along with them was, yet she still chose to tweak her nose. Even if the mage was far from a threat to her, the same couldn't be said about the kits in their care.

The Guild mage was easily a match for the fox warriors she'd brought with her, and neither she nor Shiori could simply crush an IAG member without cause. Doing so would draw the wrong kind of attention. Frustrating as it was, they'd have to play along for now.

Kora sighed to herself as she trailed after the beastkin and their pet students. The favor Gally and Lana asked of her was already getting more frustrating than she thought it'd be. Watching the foxkin woman from the side of her eye as they headed for the gate, she recalled the conversation with her friends just a few minutes earlier.

"Sean filled the open Advisor position with the Guild Leader's support, giving it to two Peak Gold beastkin women that only just arrived in the city. Those same two just showed up with their students in tow to enter the Forest which is currently restricted to Gold and above. Kora, I'd like to assign you to guide them and act as an unofficial Advisor," Gally said with a familiar look on his face. One she'd seen time and time again when they were in a party together. Before the incursion teams. Before they lost Boro and Zack.

"Sure, can do. What can you tell me about them?" Kora asked, glancing between Gally and Lana, two of her closest surviving friends.

"One's a foxkin named Inari. She has silver hair and white fur. Peak Gold, and Todd suspects she's an aura master."

"Aura master?! What's that idiot been drinking?! It's almost impossible to become one before Diamond! The weakest recorded aura master was still mid Platinum when he broke through!" Kora exclaimed, looking at her friends like they'd just spouted second heads and sang a bawdy tavern song.

"Short of the Guild Leader, Todd's the closest we have to an aura expert. He's close to becoming an aura master himself, probably by the time he's Peak Platinum. He took a look at Inari with his enhanced aura sight, and as he tells it her aura control is better than his. At least rivalling the Guild Leader's." Gally said firmly.

"And," Lana said, continuing where Gally left off, "Todd said the other woman, a catkin with black hair and fur named Shiori, is probably one as well. He didn't get as good of a look at her, but her aura control seemed to be just as developed as Inari's."

Lana's statement sent a chill of awe down her spine. Two Peak Gold aura masters… Even one beat the records of near legendary entities like the current IAG Director of Combat Operations and Alramad the Army Breaker. She could accept one such logic defying monster as a possibility, but two appearing at the same time, in the same place? This was something out of ancient myths from a time when Merinthia supposedly had a second moon and dragons were more common than sparrows.

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"Careful of those two Kor," Lana said. "It's not been made public yet but the Winter Expedition was cancelled over an incursion breaking out in the Forest, and we suspect those two had something to do with it."

"An incursion?! Why didn't you tell me sooner! Let me just switch my gear and—" Kora said, already stripping out of her robes as she pulled out a piece of armor, only to see Gally shaking his head and looking away with a faint blush at the stripping mage.

"The incursion's been handled," he said, talking to the ceiling.

"Oh. Wait what do you mean those two had something to do with it? Were they already grabbed?"

"Oh she says, put your tits away and listen," Lana said with a laugh before her face grew serious again.

Kora blushed, as she realized she'd effectively flashed her friends in her rush to switch out her gear.

"Well it's good the incursion was handled. Did the Guild happen to have another team in the area? Were there many casualties? Need help with cleanup?" Kora asked, absentmindedly dressing as she considered the fallout from an incursion on this continent. It was lucky the Guild had a team that could handle it in the area. They'd have to have one, otherwise the retired incursion response veterans like her would've been mobilized.

"Casualties were light. One death and a few injuries from the main outbreak, a few more deaths among the lower ranks before the restriction went up, but the biggest problem isn't the deaths, it's who sealed it. We don't know who they were."

Kora stopped, not believing what Gally had just said. "You don't know who sealed it?"

"No, all we have is two witnesses who saw the incursion start. Brava, Ghorro, and Arwen were fighting a Gold ranked Goblin Horde Leader when Arwen died at the same time as the Goblin. Their deaths triggered the incursion somehow. We have some ideas about how a mere Gold, even sacrificing a peak Gold, could start an incursion, but we just don't know much about it. Brava and Ghorro didn't know what they were looking at. Instead, they evacuated the students from the area."

"Smart of them. Staying would've been suicide. But none of this tells me how the beastkin were involved."

Gally nodded. "I was getting to that. Before Brava and Ghorro got back to the students, a catkin woman they described as black haired and wearing all black had captured one of the students. Brava and Ghorro couldn't get a read on her ranking before they briefly fought, but they both said she was untouchable and eventually just let them all go. We don't know what happened with the catkin after that, but there was a catkin woman spotted in the area right after the start of the incursion. But other than the statements from our two Peak Golds, there's no evidence of anyone other than the Advisors and students in the area. Lana couldn't even find Arwen's body or badge to officially confirm his death."

Kora frowned at the news. Sealing an incursion took more than raw power. You needed to know what you were doing or you'd just make things worse. Incursions corrupted and empowered monsters and also spawned endless hordes of powerful beasts from the realm of nightmares.

An incursion filled the surrounding area with thousands of Void-Twisted monsters and Voidspawn, with more arriving every second until it was sealed. Left too long and it would corrupt the world around it, twisting reality into a space anathema to life itself.

Sealing a rift meant fighting through thousands of powerful monsters to lay out a ritual, then defending it until it completed. Even the fastest such sealing ritual they knew took nearly a day to complete, costing an astronomical amount of gold in rare resources, and during that time the ritualists were exceedingly vulnerable. Every sealing mission was the effort of entire armies of adventurers with hundreds of high rankers to clear a path and hold the ritual site until the void rift was sealed. And even if the rift was sealed, it didn't guarantee survival. Kora had taken part in several such missions, and they always ended with hundreds of dead knights, champions, and prodigies.

That there wasn't a trace of whoever sealed the rift meant it had to be a small team, one powerful enough to hold off the monsters and complete the ritual, but small enough that they could easily grab their dead and any trace of their identities.

"So a catkin, matching the description of this catkin woman you want me to keep an eye on, was spotted near an incursion in the Forest, something that shouldn't even be possible on this continent, and that incursion was sealed by unknown entities that left no trace. You think the woman Brava and Ghorro fought was this Shiori, and she and possibly Inari were part of the team that sealed it. Since you want me to keep an eye on them, it means you're hoping you can track down the rest of their team through them."

"Or at least identify their backers and plans in the area. Only the major international organizations like the IAG and Towers of Sevren, as well as the combined forces of the International Court, are capable of sealing rifts. The sealed continents and rifts aren't even public knowledge. At best it means there's a rogue sealing team that's abandoned the reclamation. At worst there's an organization that either could be part of the reclamation or already is, that is using such a capable team for something else completely."

Lana and Gally shared a look and nodded as realization dawned on Kora's face. "Fuck."

The walk from the Guild Hall into the beginning of the Forest was faster than usual despite the muddy and snowy dirt road. Jun wasn't sure if it was Shiori, Inari, or the mysterious blonde woman following the foxkin around that did it, but magic had been put to work firming the ground beneath their feet, and she soon found their group standing in a half circle around her mother, Inari, and the blonde woman within the Forest."

"My apologies for not introducing myself sooner. I am Kora, a Platinum ranked mage and your assigned Guide for the Forest. Guild Leader Vestros and Lord Mayor Avide have restricted access to the Forest to Gold ranks and above. Anyone below Gold is required to have at least one Guide of Platinum rank or above until the order has been lifted. This applies to all parties with anyone below Gold."

Inari stepped forward as Kora stopped speaking, a smile on her face. "Right, so as Kora said, she will be accompanying us for the duration of our trip into the Forest, right?" Inari asked, turning to look at the blonde mage.

Kora nodded, prompting Inari to smile even wider.

"Perfect! Then as we discussed yesterday, I hope you all have prepared supplies for the next two weeks until the Academy term begins, as we will not be returning before then. If you run out of supplies, you will have to hunt and forage for food. If your equipment gets destroyed, you will have to do without. Let's go!"

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