“Hey, Volt! It’s been a while!” Frost waved as he left the hangar and entered the Larunda Concourse. “Sorry I’ve not been around. Been busy… sleeping… and stuff…”
Volt waved back, but Frost could tell he was a bit distracted. He was standing by a Ducat Kiosk, clearly going through his inventory.
“It’s not a problem!” Volt shrugged as he closed is inventory. “I’ve been busy too. Was trying to work out if it was worth selling some of these 100-Ducat Prime components or not. But I’m sitting on about three thousand ducats so I don’t think I need to.”
Frost blinked his neural sensors. “Three… thousand… ducats?”
“Yeah. Been busy hoarding things. Been closing a lot of fissures lately. Been doing a lot of things actually!” Volt pointed at one of the sigils he was wearing. “I’m now at Mastery Rank 21, I’m sitting on about 20 million credits and I’m pretty wealthy when it comes to platinum…”
Frost rubbed his neural sensors, looking very confused. “You’re… the same rank as me now. What happened to that little, confused Volt who would awkwardly put Electric Shields on everything and try to melee Heavy Gunners to death?”
“I…” Volt paused, then bounced on the spot. “I still do that. Except I actually have a loadout that means I don’t die all the time while I melee Heavy Gunners to death.”
Behind them, the rest of the Larunda Concourse was starting to fill up. Tenno in all shades of colour were stopping by, patiently waiting for the Void Trader to show up. Frost patted Volt on the shoulder and the two of them headed to the east wing, where things were quieter.
“Never been a fan of New Loka…” Frost muttered as they walked past one of the Syndicate hubs. Several New Loka operatives pretended not to hear him.
“Well, they’re basically hippy fascists…” Volt seemed to agree. “But I’m ranking up with them and Red Veil anyway. It’s the only way I can keep Perrin Sequence and the Steel Meridian happy, you know?”
“So… Not only have you reached Mastery Rank 21 all of a sudden, not only are you plenty rich, but you’re also ranking up with four syndicates?”
Volt shrugged. “Yeah. I don’t want to piss off Steel Meridian or Perrin Sequence. They do good things.”
“But that means working with mass murderers and space hippy fascists…”
“Meanwhile we’ve been mass murdering our way across the Origin System on behalf of the Lotus and Ordis and…” Volt hesitated, then sighed. “I don’t even know what we’re doing any more. That’s why I’ve been focusing on increasing my mastery and trying to get some good done, you know? I spend most of my time murdering hordes of Infested or closing Void Fissures, since they’re dangerous, or I’ll go to Cetus and wander around there… Just doing… something that’s helpful and out of the way, right?”
Frost nodded in agreement. “That is part of the reason why I went back to sleep. I was directionless. But in hindsight maybe what you’ve been doing has been better?”
“I doubt it.”
A loud cheer echoed from the Concourse. The Void Trader had arrived, and clearly he had brought some interesting items.
Frost sighed. “Eh. At least we can be directionless together, right?”
“Sure!” Volt perked up a bit. “You want to go and see what Baro’s brought?”
“I… kinda need ducats first…” Frost admitted.
Volt patted Frost on the back as they waltzed towards the Larunda Concourse. “Don’t worry about it. Whatever you want is on me!”