From one quest to the next, the crew advanced each time.
The Plains Wanderer, Theef, had completed his world quest and successfully become a World Wanderer.
Over the course of the quests, they switched from the easy fetch quests to more difficult obstacles like kill quests.
Wanting to stretch his legs, Theef used his chimera form to better adjust to each of his absorbed abilities one by one.
His opponent was just an immortal level being of no noteworthy background; the target was someone who wronged a member of the Wanderer's Guild by killing their close friend
Needless to say, when someone from the Wanderer's Guild was wronged, they had the connections to bring hell onto the one behind it.
When it came to requesting a quest be made against a person, group, or even other organization, the Wanderer's Guild allowed two options.
They were to either capture or kill the designated target depending on the person's desire.
For this reason, those that openly went against those apart of the Wanderer's Guild were either confident in their ability to escape the grasp of the guild or brazen enough to not care for the consequences.
The target for the mission Theef was currently facing was able to hold their own with their ability of telekinesis.
They would control a few daggers to attack him with, but also attacked with them at the same time to make things harder.
Theef simply used the opportunity to shift between suitable abilities to further his assimilation of each as they felt more and more like second nature to him the more he used each.
With so many things in his arsenal, it was going to be difficult to learn some combinations aside from the default abilities.
The golden horns he had worked great with the rebounding runes to return them and his buff abilities that worked passively like the vampiric blood were useful as well.
He had to keep in mind the use of abilities like the armored skin as it had to be actively channeled which for him sucked as there were many to remember.
Needless to say though, he overpowered the target with his wide range of abilities compared to their single power of mild telekinesis.
Unfortunately for Theef, the telekinetic opponent had yet to reach the point of consolidating his power into a physical item like Barter's Ruler.
That would of course make the strength of the target on the level of Transcendent and in turn the level of power they would wield would be more dangerous for Theef.
When the time came however, Theef would become a horrendous threat to Transcendent beings as he could absorb their consolidated powers.
Once he reached such a level, advancing his own prowess would be as simple as stealing others'.
But for now, he cycled between the abilities he got from the various items and critters he consumed to overtake his opponent.
With the quest completed, the crew continued on with others and overtime each elevated their basic combat skills to a level of familiarity with their abilities.
This was at the time where the quests had also increased in difficulty as fetch quests would typically be found in the territories of strong creatures and kill quests would be out for more dangerous targets.
Null was currently their strongest combatant with Barter's Ruler at a close second.
Klein and Z'oelo were each in their own right a force to be reckoned with at either close or ranged combat.
The only one who needed the most combat training was Theef despite his experience in stealing and assessment.
With all of the crew having attained a decent level of strength in the context of the Wanderer's Guild, they took on more difficult quests.
For a particular quest, they were tasked with guarding a shipment of minerals from bandits on an industrial planet.
The investors of the mining planet had issued the quest due to the fact that their shipments of valuable ore were being besieged by groups of well-informed bandits.
It was not as if the investors had not provided their own guards on the trip, but as of late there was a surge of powerful bandits that killed them no matter what defenses they set up.
Upon accepting the quest, the crew simply stayed inside of an empty container staged as just another carrying the valuable ores.
And like that, the bandits did not hesitate to show themselves on motorbikes that reached the sides of the shipment transport.
The guards of the shipment immediately alerted the crew to which they went outside to assess the bandit group.
On first glance, they seemed to be a fairly organized band of people the way they situated themselves along the containers.
The transport itself was a hovering train-like vehicle that ran without the need for tracks.
The constant speed of the hover train was high, but the speed of the bandits' rides was equivalent.
After reaching the side of the hover train, the bandits used magnetic gloves to climb up the train and reach the top where they were safe from view.
Unfortunately for them, they were already spotted, and the crew were on their way.
Null simply hopped up and reached the top.
Barter's Ruler summoned his flying gold-trimmed carpet and flew up to the top.
Theef stretched his tendrils outwards and pulled himself to the top.
Klein propelled himself with the combination of a protruding earth steppingstone alongside a jet of air and gracefully landed on the top.
Z'oelo simply stabbed Muni's physical form into the side of the container and pulled himself to the top.
"Really man?" Null facepalmed.
"I'll fix it with a bit of gold," Barter's Ruler went to restore the hole.
Meanwhile, the bandits had noticed the arrival of the crew.
"Lookie what we have here gang! A weird bunch came to stop us, ha," a gangly man shrieked with a horrid voice.
"Shut it, Fleck," one of the other bandits barked at his companion.
The rest of the bandit group knew that since there were people other than the typical guards, the ones behind the mineral transport must have sought outside assistance.
There were several of them that reached the top of the hover train, but only one of them seemed truly dangerous of them all.
"How do you guys wanna handle this," Null asked the rest of the crew.
"Just stay in the back and help when necessary. Me, Klein, and Z'oelo still need some improvement compared to you two," Theef was ashamed to say that of the crew's overall rankings, he fell to the bottom when it came to technicalities.
He was starting to feel more and more feeble as time went by, but he knew that it was only a matter of time before he was back on top like when he first met with Barter's Ruler on the ship.
The feeling of domination over an opponent and the power to command a Universal Rule was exhilarating.
However, he neglected the variegated nature of his chimera form that was undoubtedly an unpolished gem among his arsenal.
He trusted that learning the intricacies of his chimera form early on would be a boon for his future standing.
Take the use of the divining sprout for example; finding treasures was a walk in the park for Theef now that he was equipped with a detector like that.
Building upon this, his acidic saliva which helped break down a treasure to its basic nature made absorbing abilities possible.
The last component to his arsenal was his adaptive body that was capable of transforming based on the energies and materials he had consumed.
Becoming a powerhouse was dependent on one's foundations and in terms of foundation, Theef possessed an all-encompassing foundation.
So, when he started for the bandits, he transformed from feeble minded to battle ready chimera in an instant.