They were out of time.

According to Caelyn's estimates, they still had roughly two or three more days before the Abyssal Corruption that spread out from the Void Crystal within the cave some distance outside the village of Alfeon. However, reports had just gone in that day, that a group of adventurers from a different area had tried their hand at Subjugating the crystal just a few days prior.

And instead of surviving and in turn subjugating the crystal, it seemed that they had lost their lives at some point, having been wholly unprepared for such an endeavor. Because of this, it had seemed that for some time the corruption had slowed down. But, a surge suddenly happened, and the Abyssal Corruption seemed to surge towards the town the Adventurers had set off from, completely engulfing the town in the process.

And such, they were out of time.

"If only we had more time..." Amalia said softly, sighing a bit as the young princess stood at the gate for the city the three of them were stationed at for the past three weeks. At the time, the young princess was dressed in her full regalia as an adventurer. Full leather armor and everything, despite being a magic-user. This was of course because the previous day she had spent the whole night prepping their armor for the Subjugation.

It was one of the production classes that the young princess had taken up as her elective back when she was a student at the Academy. While many Adventurers did not take stock in augmenting their arms and armor, the Princess knew, from experience, that such things were important when dealing with specific things. For instance, the Magma Flows that encompasses a northern plains region of the continent had a higher variety of Fire Elementals, thus fire protections were needed. As were weapons that dealt water damage.

As with Adventurer grades, skills had gradings as well. As did many other things in the world, such as unique arms and armors, though that is a tale for another day. For skills, however, the grading went from F to EX, with F being the basic lowest grade, and EX being the highest grading, though it was a Unique grading that was rarely seen with most people only ever achieving a grade S skill.

The Princess herself had raised her Augment skill to that of around the A grading, thus meaning she could augment a weapon or an armor with approximately 10 augments safely. This meant, of course, that her parties Arms and Armor could easily deal with any number of situations. Thus, she spent the whole night making sure that her armor, and the armor of the two others, had appropriate protections against the corruption that came with dungeoneering inside an Abyssal Dungeon, especially one that was formed due to a Void Crystal.

This of course was all done the previous night, since that day they were going to set out for Alfeon, and rejoin with the Adventurer that Caelyn had left behind to monitor the situation while she went off to look for other people to join in on the Subjugation.

While both Amalia and Caelyn wished that more Adventurers had volunteered to join in, Caelyn had assured Amalia that A'ari would be enough to handle the Void Crystal Subjugation, as the two of them had dealt with Abyssal Magic in the past, when they had partied together some time ago.

While the history the two of them had shared slightly aggravated the young princess, she was happier since she had her friend back. As well, she had met the wolf beast-woman A'ari, which was something that she could not have predicted.

The beast-woman in question was in fact, at the time, relaxing on one of the beds in the room the group had rented, as she had been doing since early that morning when Amalia was still preparing their armors. At the time, the A'ari was laying there, on her side, staring at Amalia, in only her underwear. Something that, while the young princess as well has done, made her rather nervous and embarrassed.

The previous night, when Amalia had asked the other two for their armor so that she could augment them, the wolf beast-woman claimed that the clothing she wore at the time was her only armor and that she had no spare clothes.

Thus, the predicament they were in now.

Amalia let out a soft sigh, as she shuffled a bit, before slowly turning to A'ari, who only smirked. "Why, exactly... have you not gotten back dressed yet?" The young princess then asked her, as A'ari continued smirking at her, though she did let out a slight chuckle as well.

"Because," The beast-woman would finally say, smirking still as she did so. "You're cute whenever you blush while looking at me." She continued, chuckling once more as she did so. "Yeah, just like that!" A'ari then shouted as the young princess blushed rather red, quickly looking away.

"Enough with the flirting." Caelyn soon said as she walked into the room, already dressed and ready to go. "Get dressed A'ari, we leave soon." She then added, crossing her arms over her chest, frowning as she glared at the beast-woman, who only shrugged and got up from the bed, saying nothing.

Soon enough, the three of them were all ready to head out, as both Caelyn and Amalia stood there, waiting for A'ari to return to the edge of the town, so they could set off for the village of Alfeon, hopefully to good news.