“What is it?” she asks, finally at the bottom of the stairs. “You’re looking at me weirdly.”

“Ah, no, sorry. I was just thinking. Didn’t mean to stare.”

“No worries, I wasn’t…” She pauses. Blink, blink. She breaks into a smile. “Oh, hey, I can understand you like normal again! Also, one of your Ps went away. Did you finish one of the quests while I was asleep?”

I touch a hand to my forehead. Oh, yeah, one of them is gone. “I guess so,” I mumble. “Thanks for that, by the way. I don’t think I could have finished it without your help. Not to mind everything else, too.”

“Don’t mention it,” she says, walking across the room to take the seat opposite mine. She puts her hat down on the table, exposing her wiry head of hair. “It’s what friends do, right?”

“I’m not sure we’re that close yet, but…” I smile at her. “Yeah. You’re right.”

For a few seconds, she watches me, the atmosphere between us quickly turning awkward. “So, um…” She leans out, away from me. “Where will you be heading now?”

“I… don’t know,” I admit. “There are still six quests left, but I’m not sure if I’m actually going to go for them. At first, I was mainly interested in doing them because I wanted to get better, and because I wanted to beat the tutorial, but now… I’m not sure. Moleman… The guy I was with during the tutournament… We kind of had a falling out. He’s off doing his own thing now, and if I know him half as well as I like to think I do, I’m certain he’s heading back to Earth. So, if I beat the tutorial, I’ll just get in his way again.”

She frowns. “Is the Earth off-limits all because Man is there? It’s a big planet. You can just be elsewhere. Or do you not want to return?”

“That’s a good question,” I mutter. “What do I have to return to, really? My family wasn’t exactly sad to see me go, and they had no reason to be, either. Technically speaking, I still haven’t served my prison sentence, so if I return, there’s a fair chance I’d have to either keep being homeless and on the run, or I’d get thrown in prison. Really, there’s not much on Earth that I can’t find here. There are some basic comforts I kind of miss, like a good bed or proper food, but nowadays, I don’t actually need any of that. So, all and all… I don’t really know where I’m going from here on out.”

“You don’t have to know the final destination, as long as you can put one foot in front of the other. Likewise, you don’t need to return to Earth. I haven’t.” She smiles gently. “After you complete the quests, you’re free to do as you please. Some people stay, others go to continue with the tutorial. I decided to stay, since I believe there is more I can do for people by remaining here than if I were to return.” Head in hand, she watches the open doorway, the green meadow outside. “You’re not the only one who won’t be missed by their family.”

I follow her gaze. Blue sky, white clouds. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

She turns away from the outside, facing me once again, her expression mellow and true. “Even then, it’s not like I know where I’m going, either. Day by day, life continues. Hunter gives me missions sometimes, some herald or another to hunt down and kill, but that is only one of few things that serve to organize my days. I eat, I sleep, I travel… Sometimes, I do wonder where it’s all heading. But I think that’s wrong. You know that expression, ‘The goal means nothing, the journey is everything?’”

I nod at her. “I think I’ve heard that somewhere, yeah.”

“That’s what life is. One big journey. You walk and you walk and you walk and you walk, but you never really get anywhere. There’s no big goal, no final hurdle to overcome. Even if you shoot bullseye every time, what awaits you is always just another target. There’s no competition to win life in. You just live, and then you die. But that’s the beauty of it, right? It’d suck if there was a point to life. Like, ‘if you don’t do this one thing, your life will have been meaningless!’ There’s nothing like that. We’re free to decide what to do, and whatever happens is our own responsibility. It can feel daunting, of course. Life’s a big, blank paper, and it’s up to us whether to paint, or write, or draw, or tear it in half and set it ablaze. It’s all up to you, in the end.

“But, if you’ll take advice from a friend-to-be…” Leaning across the table, she flicks my nose with her finger. “I think you’re way too fun to sit still and do nothing! You don’t know what to do? Do something! Anything.” She leans back a little, looking me up and down. “If you had one year left to live, how would you want to spend it?”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

I swallow the urge to say ‘I don’t know.’ Instead, after a moment of thought, I say, “I’d like to get to know you better. I want to see the world. Meet new people, make friends… I want people to remember me after I leave, not because I did something horrible, but because I made them smile.” I hesitate. But it has to be said. “I… I want to prove that even someone like me can get better. I know it’s a silly thing to hope for, but…”

“Perfect!” she exclaims, abruptly standing up. “In that case, you have two great options for the journey to come.” She holds up a finger. “One, you follow me as I go through my day-to-day, living here and there, going from town to town and hunting heralds wherever they pop up. Or…” She holds up a second finger. “Two. You get your butt in gear and keep clearing those quests! During that time, you’ll travel across the world, meet new people, and live your own life. Well? Which do you think sounds better?”

She’s clearly biased towards one. However, I have only one question.

“If I choose the second one…” I look up at her. “Will you come with me?”

Her smile twitches. “...Only if you want me to?”

“I want to get to know you better,” I say. “So, yes, I would like for you to come along.”

Her hands fumble for her hat, and in a mere second, she’s got her face covered and hidden. A shy little “Thanks,” comes out from under it, mumbled. It takes a few moments for her to recover, at which point she smashes the hat back down, takes a seat again, and pulls a rolled-up map from her satchel. “Right! In that case, I think it might be good to set up a route. Which Gods do you have left to appease?”

I think for a moment. “Cowardice, Want, Fire, Cruelty, Children, and… Dragons, I think?”

“Gotcha. Right, so, that would be…” She rolls out the parchment. It seems to portray the entire central continent. The continent is split into eight parts, the only names I recognize being Acheron, the empire, and Ret-inn. The portion below the empire feels familiar though… Isn’t that the black desert where Simel and I started our journey?

More interestingly though, the map is covered with dots in various shapes and colors, probably signifying the various gods and their churches. My eye quickly moves over to Acheron. Hm. Somehow, it looks slightly bigger than when I last saw it on the map? Did it always have this section over here…?

I lean over it. Hey, there’s Oran! Ah, it’s been crossed out. That makes sense, I suppose. Anyways, more worryingly, a suspicion I had before is fully confirmed now.

There’s only one church of fire, and it’s in the capital of Acheron.

“Is there something wrong?” Rice asks.

“Ah, oh, no, I just…” I poke at Acheron. “This place is kind of a no-go zone for me. There’s a guy there I really upset, so I don’t want to show up there and tick him off even worse…”

“—With the obvious problem being that it has a church you need. Hmm. Well, in that case, you can just save it for last! This will take some time, so when you reach that point, things might have changed. Who knows?”

“That makes sense.” I watch the map for a bit more. So, the capital of the empire is over there, which would mean that we are… Oh, there’s a red cross right here. “Is this…?”

“Our current location, yes.”

“Ah, I see.” My eyes move across the map. There are a lot of crosses. Only a few are red, but plenty of them are black, or blue.

“The black ones are friends who’ll let me spend the night or week,” she says, pointing, “and the blue ones are inns or similar who accept human customers.”

“Clever.”

“Thank you.” leaning over the map, she points at a place a few paces East from here. “This would be the closest relevant church, for the Goddess of Children. I’ve visited the town before, so they shouldn’t mind the visit. From there, if we travel Northeast a month or two, we should reach Mount Fear, which contains one of two dragon churches in the central continent.”

“Ah, would it be okay if we went to Loathe Summit instead?”

“Hmm… It would take a few weeks extra to get there, and the place itself is pretty dangerous due to the heavy concentration of dragons… But I trust you have a good reason?”

“Absolutely,” I say. “I get along well with dragons.”

She snickers. “I’m not surprised. Anyhow, after Loathe Summit, we’ll have to travel pretty far. The Goddess of Want has the majority of Her churches in the southern continent, and the God of Cruelty has His in the far west continent. So, either we could head for the fire church while we’re still in the central continent, or we skip it. I guess that’ll depend on what your position with the guy in Acheron is like at that point.”

“Yeah.” I rub my chin. “I just… I think you might have forgotten the god of cowardice?”

“Oh, he…” Her smile turns strained. “I don’t know where his church is.”

“You don’t…?”

“That is, most likely, nobody does. When I made this map, I scoured the forums for all the known locations of every church and hospitable inn, but I never found anything on the God of Cowardice. There were a few others whose churches are unknown, but this one seems particularly hidden.”

“Must be because he’s such a huge coward,” I grumble.

“Yeah. Finding that one might be a bit difficult, but from what I’ve seen, as long as you aren’t actively looking for it, you’ll probably find it.”

I nod silently. She’s so right. “Either that, or you ask your mom. That always worked for me when I needed to find something.” In return, she nods as well. Humming, I lean in and check the map again. “So, up here, then down to the southern continent… You know, once we get to the southern continent and complete want’s quest, I should be able to sniff out cowardice’s location, no sweat!”

“How sly,” she says. “I bet you’d be great at formulating schemes.”

“You flatter me,” I say with a mock-British accent.

“Indubitably,” she says back, her accent equally ridiculous.

We can only bear to look at each other for about two seconds before bursting out into laughter.