The hours had rolled on, mostly in silence, except for the kind of meaningless small talk that inevitably occurs in a home full of odd knick-knacks; all of Ben's possessions, or at least all of them that were novel enough to talk about were from the dungeon, and the subject had become somewhat sore for everyone. Alice was still sleeping in Ben's bed, Polk had gone out to her car and was on her phone, while Louden sat on Ben's couch, staring at her hand, occasionally flipping them; palm, back of the hand, palm, back of the hand.

Ben, scamming extremely high speed wireless internet from Melchsee's communication tower, was on his computer managing various orders; renting a large flatbed truck, three days; placing an order with a grocery chain for several pallets of bottled water, along with several pallets of basic foodstuffs; a deep and wide chest freezer; solar panels; a whole list of things that would simplify and enhance his standard of living that he had never quite found the time or motivation to order. Ben, in a moment of self-reflection, laughed at himself for doing it only now that three women were in his home.

He knew why Louden was staring at her hands. He turned his swivel chair around and leaned back, looking at her from across his nose. Polk, coincidentally, walked into the room at that same moment.

“Wondering how you've forgotten to do the simplest thing in the world?” Ben asked, and Louden looked up, nudged from her thoughts. She flicked all of her fingers out at once, like she was about to say 'boom', but instead just frowned.

“It was so easy,” she said “and now it's so mysterious. I was able to see exactly how long each of my finger bones were, just by staring at them. My index fingers were two and a. . .half inch?” she said, looking confused “or was it three. . . dammit.”

Ben, almost automatically, activated his analyze skill for a moment and threw a status window that was invisible to everyone but him. Louden startled for a moment as the window suddenly hovered over right hand, changed shape and then displayed a series of measurements, most of them a range of numbers with question marks next to them.

“What the hell is that,” Polk said, body stiffening in reaction to seeing it.

“Oh man,” Ben said, staring “Normally the mana's too thin out here for that sort of thing to be visible.” He looked out a window into the fading evening light of the desert “Something's going on. I'll have to check it out in the morning,” he said, then glanced back at Polk and Louden.

“That's a status window, Louden should have seen plenty of them when she was using Analyze.” Ben opened his mouth, ready to start explaining about thoughforms, the intermediary properties of mana between thought and physical matter, then thought better of it. “Though, this isn't the right setting to explain things. I'll meet you two outside in a moment.”

Ben dismissed the status window over Louden's hand, prompting another startled reaction from the girls. He stood up, brushed the dust off of his pants and headed over to his room. Alice was still inside, asleep, so Ben entered quietly, heading over to the mini-fridge and opening it. Rather than food, the fridge was stuffed with open top egg cartons, and rather than eggs, the cartons were full of smaller versions of the metallic object Ben kept around his neck. He smiled when when he recalled how many he had, well over a hundred. There were dates and skill names written on each of them, none older than a month. They were inferior, single use items, but none the less extremely valuable to him.

Next to the fridge was a plastic grocery bag, and Ben took a couple of egg cartons out and dumped their contents into the bag.

–

Ben wasn't sure where the day had gone, the sky told him it was evening and his watch told him it was six in the afternoon. Winter was almost over, and it had been an extremely hot winter, the night air never even considering going under fifty degrees. The Dungeon, Oasis Mountain was climate controlled, always somewhere between seventy and eighty degrees during the day, and always seventy degrees at night. The air was getting cooler as the sun set, Polk and Louden had started to rub their arms and bunch in on themselves. From their lack of jackets or any kind of layers, Ben could tell they hadn't been expecting their trip to take this long.

Wordlessly, Ben set the grocery sack full of skills on the ground and went around back the RV to where his Honda was parked. He opened the trunk and pulled an armful of thin branches and logs out, shut the trunk with some difficulty, and returned to the girls.

“Lets get a fire going,” he said, then grabbed his shovel and started digging a pit. As he worked, it was Polk who noticed all the signs of excavation, all the patches of disturbed earth. Ben looked up when he had suitably sized firepit, and noticed her noticing.

“Gold,” he said simply, breaking the ice on the subject “I've been burying gold out here every day. It's nothing sinister, just gold.”

“How much gold,” Polk asked, and Ben was surprised that it was Polk who asked the question. That was a good question, Ben thought, and retrieved an analyze skill egg from the bag and broke it in his hand. Immediately, the world started to make more sense, and would continue to keep making sense for about forty five more seconds. Ben scanned the field, little analyze windows flying out and scaring the girls as they tagged every hole.

“Lets see, I've been burying gold for about six months every day. . . about three hundred pounds a day,” Louden said 'holy shit' “So that's. . .” Analyze ran out right as he came to his conclusion “A little under seventy thousand pounds?” Louden was on her phone, using the calculator.

“That's!” she shouted “That's over a billion dollar! I mean dollars!”

“Oh,” Ben hadn't done the math in months, he'd stopped counting at fifty million.

“Oh.” Polk said, mimicking him “Oh. That's all you have to say about your billion dollars,” Louden cut in from the background 'One point four billion!' “About your one point four billion dollars in solid gold chunks that you've been burying in your backyard.”

Ben didn't need Analyze to tell him that he was in trouble. Before he could say anything, a memory of Melchsee and one of her 'wisdom classes' came to mind. She had said a warrior was not strong by his body alone, but by his mind and spirit as well, and that Ben required instruction in all three. She had been going over proverbs the wise lived by, and one of them was 'Even a fool can appear wise, if only he keeps his mouth shut.'

Ben closed his lips, nodded to Polk, and started stacking twigs and logs in a big mess of a pile. Much to his surprise, she let the issue drop and came over to where the fire would be.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

“Well,” she practically snapped “Are you going to get this fire going or not? It's freezing out here!”

--

Ben had been waiting hours for them to notice. Alice had woken up and joined them twenty minutes earlier, and she was the one who finally said it.

“Hasn't that wood been burning a long time?” The other girls took notice as soon as she said it.

“That's the same stuff you started the fire with, right? It doesn't look burned up much at all,” Louden said, uncharacteristically mellow, the question not really being a question. She looked at Polk, who nodded, then she looked at Ben. “Is it magic firewood?”

“No,” Ben said “But it is from the Dungeon, Oasis Mountain.” Ben opened his mouth to continue explaining, and if he hadn't been interrupted, he could have warned the group about why they should never use fire against one of Casimer's giant tree monsters.

“Why do you keep saying 'The Dungeon, Oasis Mountain',” Polk was the one who cut into his explanation, mimicking him to make him sound stupid.

“Because that's it's name. We wanted something that sounded cool, that made it sound important, while not being overly ominous.”

“It makes it sound like a really pretentious shopping center, like 'The Bluffs, Los Ve-gahssss',” she really drew the last syllable out, and then giggled; the exhaustion must be kicking in. Louden and Alice both laughed, clearly both having run out of fucks to give. Ben felt his face get red, and the girls started laughing more. Before he could lose his temper, say something stupid and ruin the mood, his phone rang. The caller ID said Nerd!, which meant it was McCrea.

“Hey, McCrea, what's up?” Ben gave a familiar greeting, eyeing Polk, who revealed through embarrassed body language who she had been talking to on the phone several hours earlier.

“Sup tweaker,” Vaughan's voice came through “McCrea's driving. Are you on drugs, Ben? Polk and Louden think you're shooting up, and they wanted to stage an intervention, though you were shacked up with Richard and got caught up in some bad stuff. Also, watch out, Richard's widow/ex is coming with them.”

“Drugs? Naw,” Ben replied casually “That mountain turned out to be a dungeon, like from a video game, and I've been fighting monsters and getting loot. I've got like a billion dollars in gold and a bunch of magic shit out here.” There was a pause, then;

“Ben you fucking rat! That sounds awesome,” Vaughan's voice got quieter, like he wasn't talking into the speakers anymore “McCrea, drive faster, Ben's in a litrpg!”

“What! He's in a litrpg?” Came the muffled, distant shout.

“Yeah, he's got like a billion dollars in gold and a bunch of magic shit!”

“That rat! Put him on speaker,”McCrea said, louder this time.

“Guys,” Ben said, feeling a warmth in his chest. He realized in that moment how much he'd been missing his friends.

“Ben!” McCrea's voice came from the speaker “We're going on an adventure as soon as we get over! You better set something up! We'll be there in soon!”

The call ended. Ben chuckled and put his phone away, then looked at Polk, who was attempting a poker face and not looking at him, her hands in her lap. The fire light illuminated her in yellows and oranges and contrasting shadows, her thin clothing hanging loosely, the whole scene suddenly vivid to him and making his heart ache. She had thought he was in trouble, and she got everyone together and she came to help. Nobody does that, Ben thought, not even me.

“Hey,” he said, looking at her “Want to try out some of those skills now?” Though she didn't respond, her body language softened and opened just a bit, so Ben decided to chance it. The plastic bag labeled with Grocery Store, the name of Hope's local grocery store, sat at his feet, full of various skills. Ben opened it and rummaged around it, snagging an analyze, which was labeled with sharpie, and using it, then looked into the sack again. Little labels appeared on the otherwise indistinguishable gunmetal grey eggs, and Ben realized he had an opportunity to make a smart decision. Initially, he had wanted to give Polk an Analyze, an obvious choice; but that was the one Louden had gotten, and Ben was pretty sure that Polk wouldn't be super excited about that. Instead, he reached down to the bottom and found a somewhat rarer skill.

“Here,” he said, and handed the skill over to Polk, who took it with more enthusiasm than Ben would have expected.

“What is it?” She asked while staring at the skill in her cupped hands, before looking up at him.

“It's a pretty powerful one, so be careful. You're holding Memory, it lets you perfectly recall anything you've ever experienced. You'll only be able to recall one with the weak version you're holding, so make it a good one.”

“I'll probably just end up remembering what I had for lunch yesterday,” she said, looking at the object in her hands, a tense expression on her face.

“I really doubt that. You'll understand why as soon as you use it. Just give it a squeeze, break it. It's not hard at all,” he said, and she hesitated for a moment, then crushed it by making a fist. She seemed to hang there in a trance for several long moments, her breathing shallow and her eyes half open. Louden looked concerned and was about to say something, when Polk started awake, looking around and getting reoriented.

“How was it? Are you ok?” Louden asked.

“Yeah, Yeah!” She said, suddenly chipper “Wow, that was pretty crazy, wow!”

“Let me guess,” Louden said “You went back to some really happy memory of a birthday party, and it was really great.”

“No, I was back in history class in February, sophomore year. We were talking about Pangea.”

“History class?” Louden asked, eyebrows upturned “Why would you want to remember history class in sophomore year? Did something significant happen?”

“No,” she said, sounding excited “nothing exciting happened at all. It was really, really boring!”

“Then,” Louden started to ask, but Polk interrupted.

“Ok, I know why you're confused. When the skill activated, it was like I suddenly knew about every memory I had. All of them, all at once. It was really fast, and when I realized I had an entire library of memories from high school I got curious, and then before I had a chance to think about it, I was learning about Pangea again.” Ben laughed.

“Memory can be a difficult skill to use. You really need to be focused when you use it, even a moment's distraction can throw you into something unrelated. I'm really not that good with it,” he admitted “and I usually just end up reliving something depressing or stupid.” Alice, who had been so quiet up until that point, suddenly spoke up.

“I want one of those,” she said, then looked embarrassed “Please. Could I please have one of those, those skills. The Memory one?” Ben shrugged, activated another Analyze, and dug through the bag, grabbing every Memory skill he saw. There were only three in there, and he handed them over saying 'That's all of them'. She looked like she wanted to protest.

“Alice,” Ben said, locking eyes with her “I've got very few things up in here,” he tapped the side of his head “worth reliving. You're doing me a favor by taking those off my hands.”

“Thank you,” she said, then stood up “I'd like to be by myself for a while, please excuse me.” She went inside the trailer and shut the door behind her.

“Poor girl,” Louden said, to Ben's surprise “He really is out there, right?” she asked him “Richard, he's really there?”

“Like I said, he's not her Richard anymore. He's- hang on, I think the rest of the crew's getting here.” Ben squinted, seeing movement in the dark night. In the distance, he saw headlights approaching their location very fast. Too fast. He heard honking and realized with a start that it was McCrea's car heading towards their location.

There was something chasing them.