Chapter 233: Casual Morning and Gathering Up

Joshua woke up feeling more refreshed than he had felt in a long time. All of the tension before the canyon expedition kept him from getting such a nice sleep and then while they were actually on the expedition itself there wasn't any time for him to get a full night's rest. They were always on the move and whenever they slept they took precautions to make sure the entire group was safe. In the end sleeping in safety was just completely different from sleeping during an exploration where you have to wake up at any moment. Plus having an actual comfortable bed to sleep on was like sleeping on clouds after having to sleep on the ground in a thin sleeping bag for weeks.

Joshua found it was fairly early in the morning when he decided to get out of bed. He was used to waking up this early at all times at this point since he either had to help get things situated for the group while out exploring, or would get up early because he planned to go get his training in regularly. It was just something his body was used to doing at this point so he forced himself out of bed. He could still hear his sister snoring in the room across the hall so he was sure she didn't have the same type of alarm clock in her head as he did. When he looked over at the clock he realized it was six-thirty in the morning and it was about the time his mother would get up and start preparing for the day.

He decided to make his way down stairs to see if his mother was already up getting things together and knew his answer when he started smelling food coming from the kitchen before he even got down the stairs. When Joshua made his way into the kitchen he saw his mother already in her work clothes while sitting some food back into the refrigerator. "You're up early mom, something going on at the hospital?"

"Yeah, unfortunately some small guild got ahead of themselves and tried to take on some sort of poisonous frog dungeon on their own. The poisons from the frog were too much for their healers to handle so now we've got a large group of patients to take care of at the moment." His mother said while finishing packing up the things she was taking with her.

"I guess that's why you cooked everything early then?" Joshua said as he opened the refrigerator and looked over the breakfast meal that was already prepared for the rest of the family. He could see his mother had made some sort of breakfast sandwich for herself to eat on the way to work.

"Yeah you can set it up for all of you to eat when they finally decided to get up for the morning. I've got to get going." She said with a smile and gave Joshua a quick hug before heading out the door.

"Well I guess it shouldn't be too long before they decide to get up." Joshua muttered to himself as he made his way over to the living room and took a seat on the couch while turning on the television. At the moment they didn't have much entertainment on T.V with such industries just starting to get back into the swing of things. Most of the things on television were news related at this point. From what Joshua could tell the news channels mainly reported on what all of the guilds were doing and any types of confrontations going on between fellow explorers. Of course the world government guild took up a large portion of the news with it being the biggest guild around worldwide. So it wasn't to surprising to Joshua to see the news talk about what they were up to most of the time.

For the most part Joshua tuned the news out and focused on his own thoughts as he waited for his father and sister to wake up for the day. The long rest had done a lot for his aura exhaustion, but he could still feel the remaining aching pains that came from over exerting himself and realized that even though his aura had come back at this point the toll on his body was still too much for him to recover from within a day. It felt like he had run a marathon the previous day while having only prepared for running a mile. He knew that his body would get more accustomed to using aura in the way he had while facing the boss, but he'd have to slowly get to that point instead of rushing ahead.

It didn't take long for him to hear signs of his father and sister getting up. The first sign was a loud thumping sound which Joshua knew right away came from his little sister since she tended to roll out of bed sometimes. It was the main reason her bed frame was so low to the ground. He was certain she'd just get up and shake it off before going to the bathroom like always. A few minutes later he heard another sound, but this time it was two loud thumping sounds instead of one. He was certain they came from his father punching the punching bag hanging near his parent's bed early in the morning. It was something he always did to wake himself up to get the day started. Luckily for his mother she was an early riser and always got up before his father.

Knowing that both of the late risers were going to be coming down soon Joshua made his way over to the kitchen to finish preparing the breakfast his mother had already prepared. By the time his father and sister were down the food was already at the table for them all to eat.

"Did your mother go in for work already?" Joshua's father asked with a bit of a sleepy expression. Although his father and Amy were both extremely excitable people, in the morning they would both act like what amounted to zombies. His sister was even struggling to do anything more than eat the food in front of her at the moment. She even had her shirt on backwards which Joshua was going to have to point out before they met up with the others.

"Yeah she had to go in early for an emergency. Apparently some small guild bit off more than they could chew." Joshua said as he started munching on a piece of bacon that came from an evolved pig. It tasted amazing and Joshua could see why some explorers considered themselves full time hunters. They didn't dungeon dive or anything along those lines, but just hunted in different areas so that they could take down specific animals that they knew people would like to by to eat back in the hub city.

"Well I'm probably going to have to go in early as well. Today's the day a lot of the new members of our dojo will be trying for the promotional exam. I have to be there to get the ones that passed up to date on their new roles." His father said with a proud smile. Joshua could tell that his old man was happy being the owner of one of the biggest dojos in the city while also being the best hand to hand dojo around. "What are you two going to be up to today?"

Joshua looked over to Amy to see if she wanted to respond, but with her half closed eyes that only seemed focus on eating the delicious food in front of her he knew that it was a lost cause to bet on her replying. "We're going to the blue print shop to get all the types of blue prints we found in the new dungeon inspected. We got quite a lot of them so I'm expecting something good." From that point on the conversation became a bit more muted since Joshua was the only one at the table that could even string several coherent sentences together. After they had all finished eating Joshua went back to watching the news while his father and sister got ready for the day. He was already cleaned up and ready to go at any time so he decided to wait on his sister before heading out.

The first person to leave the house was his father who left with a simple wave, but Joshua could see the excited look on his face. He knew that his father would use the new promotions as an excuse to spar with the new teachers at his dojo for the day. He guessed his father considered it a rite of passage for the new teachers under his lead, but in the end he just liked to fight with others especially now that he was back in prime shape from back when he was young.

Soon after Amy made her way back down stairs ready to go with her clothes actually on in the proper way this time around. Joshua got up and headed out with her as the two of them got the system to set up a portal that would take them to the area near Nathan and Naomi's shop. It was still fairly early when they got their being around nine in the morning so the crowd wasn't at its peak. Even so there were quite a few people there that they had to make their way around to be able to reach their friends. When they got to the basement they weren't too surprised to see Nathan and Naomi helping the other workers set up equipment for the day.

"Joshua you're here already. I thought we weren't going to get the blue prints checked out till noon." Nathan said with a smile seeing his friend. Naomi and Amy greeted each other as well with a bit of excitement now that Amy was back to her energetic self.

"Yeah but I figured we might as well bring in all of our banged up gear from the expedition early on before we went over." Joshua said as he walked over to look at what Nathan and the others were working on. Apparently Nathan had found a whole new set of ruins and enchantments that he seemed to have been working on lately. Joshua was looking forward to seeing if the new gear that he'd be getting from the blue prints would give Nathan any ideas for enchantments going forward. Of course they could end up getting something ridiculous and useless from the blue prints in the end, but he was hoping his high level luck would help out in that regard.

Nathan nodded at Joshua before Joshua stood aside and watched as Nathan and Naomi went over the gear that he and his sister had brought back from the expedition. In Joshua's case most of his gear had been fairly torn up from the beating he had taken. Outside of his scale blade which had been designed to fight against creatures up to level one hundred all of his other gear was in fairly bad shape. There was only so much the potions from the system and the patch work repairs he did on his own could do to keep his gear in top shape. In the end he needed a professional to take care of it. Amy on the other hand barely had any damage at all on her armor. The only gear she really needed fixed was the pair of gloves she used to protect her fist and the heavy boots she had on.

After having a look at the gear they put it away to fix up later on. In the end they would only fix the things that weren't going to be replaced by new equipment going forward. With all of the blue prints they had found it was likely that some of the blue prints would have new gear for them to put together and that would be the preferred situation for everyone. They were going to need as many advantages as they could get before taking on the haze creatures. After they had gotten the gear set up Joshua and Amy decided to help the twins out to see if they could pass the time until they would meet up with everyone at the blue print shop. They were looking forward to seeing what they would end up getting from all of the stuff they went through back at the canyon.