"I see," Evala said after they finished explaining. "And it doesn't bother the two of you that your actions are partially predetermined?"

"It does," Nathan turned down a passage between the cliffs.

"But there's nothing we can do," Keith said as he and the catkin followed. "It's… simply a part of who we are. We don't feel any different than other people probably do, and we act as if it's part of our nature without the forging. It's not like we're conscious of if our actions are because of the forging or not."

"The attraction is," Nathan said. "The Well of Souls guaranteed the three of us would be linked to each other, and it's resulted in some sexual attraction."

"Yes," Keith nodded. "Samantha and I are interested in Nathan and want him. Strangely, Samantha doesn't have any interest in me, even though I'm male, too. She thinks I'm cute, but nothing romantic or sexual there. And I have none for her."

"That's because you're gay," Ichtvar piped up. "You are biologically inclined towards males, with no biological inclination towards females. The attraction instead focuses on friendship. It's not as strong of a bond as romance, but works as a suitable substitute. The forged soul aspect causes stuff like this."

"What about Samantha?" Nathan asked.

"Same reason," Ichtvar said. "Keith is gay, so he has no sexual appeal to a forged soul that does not suit his sexual preferences and would not be inclined towards him. In other words, only males with attraction to males would find attraction in him if they were forged souls. Since Samantha isn't a male, even if she's attracted to them, it doesn't cause the sexual and romantic attraction. This only affects forged souls, though, which is why the three of you are drawn to each other – that's a better term than 'attracted', since that is often used for another sense. Another effect on the body of a forged soul is heightened sexual attraction of those with a forged soul, by the way. Even if Keith doesn't have a 'preferred' body, there are enough subtleties there to increase his attraction."

"Samantha made up a list of them," Nathan muttered, causing the phoenix to laugh and Keith to give him a curious look. "You'll have to ask her if you want to know, I didn't bother looking at it. She can make up her lists of why guys are attracted if she wants. Keith, can you send a slash of light in that direction?"

Keith looked at where Nathan was pointing, then aimed his hands and summoned a slash of light, sending it out.

"A little more to the left," Nathan said, and Keith fired off another.

The pair of them worked together, Nathan targeting as Keith attacked, and Evala watched, confused.

"Dead," Keith said.

"How did you know where it was?" Evala asked. "You can't see in this darkness! Only in the ring of light made by the elemental and the lantern!"

"He has Breezy scouting ahead," Keith informed her. "Elementals 'see' in a different way, which gives them an advantage in territory like this. The light is only so we can see each other and walk without tripping over ourselves and any potential rough terrain. How did you think Nathan knew which path to take? We started walking an hour ago."

Evala only then realized that she had completely neglected to realize that. They had passed by several other passages before turning down that one.

"Is… the wind elemental going to inform us every time there's a monster?" She asked.

"No," Nathan answered. "He's killed several already. He's an Elemental, even if a young one. A weak Elemental is an Elemental. Even Keith could only hold him off temporarily, and that was when Breezy was only trying to stop him with a fragment of his power. If we wanted, we could have our familiars kill almost everything here."

"Then why don't you?" She asked.

"Because," Ichtvar yawned. "Then they wouldn't gain Experience, and they sort of want it. Nathan was able to draw on my power while I was unconscious despite us not having a bond allowing us to. The two of them defeated a siren king, even if one of them nearly died. Do you know how rare it is for someone to be able to take down a member of the Grand Set, even with the System, as just a pair?"

Evala thought it over.

"It normally takes a team of five of at least 500 Levels each," she nodded. "With expected losses of at least one. Having a higher Level would be best for them, then."

"Speaking of Levels," Nathan looked at Keith, who nodded and asked Evala about training in extended Survival Challenges.

"Yes," she nodded. "We are only permitted to perform up to two Survival Challenges lasting longer than one month without completing a Dungeon. If we do not have enough slots to perform a Dungeon after the second one, it will not allow us to enter the second one. The records do mention this began sometime after the initial few years. We usually run up to one hundred days, no matter the difficulty setting we place it on. After that, monster amounts usually become too high for even a team of eight to deal with at once, even if all eight have familiars. Most do not have familiars at or above the Grand Set."

"Because most creatures there," Ichtvar said. "Would never contract themselves to someone. Grand Sets are looser on this, but still rare enough. I know someone who has a griffin, for example."

"Says the phoenix who's contracted," Keith snorted as Nathan looked between two passages.

"Beyond that," Ichtvar said. "Grand Set will only contract to forged souls. I've never heard of one that contracted to another, and neither have the others I've spoken with on this. Elementals will only contract to forged souls with touches of prodigy or high magical ability or power to them, and not just as a 'requirement'. As for Ultimate Trinity, like myself, we only contract to forged soul demigods. Forged souls are rare enough, and forged soul demigods are even rarer."

"Merlin was a forged soul?" Keith asked as Nathan continued to look between the two passages.

To Keith and Evala, he seemed like he was having some sort of mental argument with something, which meant he was probably arguing with Breezy about which passage to take.

"From a past universe," Ichtvar confirmed. "Before my time. I'm not sure what he did, but I do know a phoenix who does. We can ask him someday. Merlin's soul was inclined towards magical power, but not in the way that Keith's is. Whatever the purpose of these three, the Well of Souls intended for them to be powerful beyond what forged souls normally are."

Nathan and Keith hadn't informed Evala about the suspected reason for their existence. They still weren't completely sure why the Well of Souls wanted them to destroy the game. For Nathan to, specifically. They also didn't mention to her that it was apparently rare enough for the Well of Souls to forge more than one soul at a time.

"How did Merlin die?" Keith decided to steer the topic away from him and Nathan, just in case.

"Poison," Ichtvar answered. "Nathan, will you just go the way Breezy wants you to go? He knows what he's doing."

"Fine," Nathan muttered, then began walking again, going straight instead of down one of the two side passages.

"Merlin was poisoned?" Keith asked.

"Yep."

"By who?"

"They never found out."

"Why didn't you save him?"

"Erm, I was elsewhere at the time," Ichtvar explained. "He had my babysitting his kid a lot."

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"Merlin had a kid?"

"Two girls and a boy," Ichtvar nodded. "It was the boy he had me watching all the time. Little tyke kept getting into trouble. Hurt, actually. Not from others, he was just a daring boy. Adventurous. I remember this one time…"

Ichtvar told them tales of Merlin's son as the trio continued to walk through the maze of cliffs, Nathan occasionally interrupting to have Keith attack in a certain direction. The phoenix continued even as they passed several corpses from time to time, and when they stopped for lunch and dinner.

"Hey, we're at the Altar of Light," Keith said as they entered an open area with an altar matching the one from the previous island.

"Yeah," Nathan gave him an amused look as Breezy returned, dropping several talisman fragments onto the altar. "That's because Breezy and I collected all of the missing pieces as we walked. You didn't notice that we've been walking for twelve hours? Or that we'd covered the entire island?"

"I was too focused on Ichtvar's stories to notice," Keith admitted as Nathan began restoring one of the talismans. "I'll get the other."

Keith took care of the second talisman as Nathan finished with the first, and the warrior set his into the slot.

Immediately, the altar began to glow, same as the previous had, and runes along the cliff walls revealed themselves. The suppressing darkness faded away as the island's enchantments began to work, and within moments, the entire island was clear of it.

Isles of Darkness has been completed! Your reward upon leaving the Isles of Darkness has increased from 50% to 100%. There is 1 (one) Secondary Dungeon remaining on this island.

"If we went through the whole island," Keith said. "Where's the other Secondary Dungeon?"

"We passed it up," Nathan answered as he sat down, exhausted. "That makes two second talismans, too. Let's get some sleep, Keith, Evala. When we finish resting up, we can go to the caves."

"Caves?" Keith asked. "I was looking around, Nathan, and I didn't see any caves."

"I didn't, either," Nathan said. "I only knew about them because Breezy mentioned them. They're hidden by some sort of illusion magic. He said we should be able to just pass through it, since he only saw an illusion."

"What about you, Ichtvar?" Keith looked at Nathan's backpack, only to find the phoenix had retreated back inside of it, pulling the zipper closed behind him.

"He went back to sleep," Nathan said. "He had to force himself to stay awake as we traveled. He's still recovering from that magical overload borrow whatever. Let's get something to eat."

Keith began setting up cooking supplies and preparing pasta. They brought a lot of pasta, since it stored easier and longer for them. Thinking about it, the magician realized that they had probably already begun to subconsciously know that provoking a limitation, or an early limitation, on extended Survival Challenges was best to be avoided. They'd prepared as if they expected to do something else, even though they hadn't discussed doing that, as they both knew they would be thriving on the Survival Challenge's supplies during them.

As Keith began preparing for dinner, Nathan stripped to his pants and began practicing martial arts. He had done it that morning, too, but wanted to add in extra practice, especially with touches of his force pushes mixed with his attacks.

"Does that really do extra damage?" Evala asked after a few minutes of watching, her tail twitching back and forth. "Keith mentioned they did earlier, and I cannot see how."

By then, she was already naked and comfortable, having shed her clothes to relax and prepare for sleep, and the warrior rolled his eyes at her, both at the question and at her state.

Nathan turned and walked over to one of the cliff walls surrounding the altar's safety area, then punched it using Impact. A small crater around his fist formed, only around a foot in diameter, despite his immense, System-enhanced Strength and the Skill.

"That's with Impact," he told her, walking several feet down and punching with his force push used at the moment of impact – or as close to it as he could. "That's with the force attack."

The crater that formed was nearly three times as large as the first, but several inches deeper as well, forming almost a cone of damage leading up to Nathan's punch. The damage itself went deeper than his fist had touched, the magic pushing through the dense, durable rock easily.

"By the gods," Evala gasped. "I'd rather not be on the receiving end of that. I've seen people imbue fire or ice into their punches, maybe even electricity, but force directly? That's frightening."

"I use what I have," Nathan told her. "Which are my weapons and martial arts. Now, if you don't mind, I want to return to practicing punching with this."

"Don't want to take a break?" She asked suggestively, rubbing herself.

"Maybe later," Nathan walked past her and returned to practicing martial arts.

"First rule of Nathan's training time," Keith told her. "Don't interrupt it. He is extremely serious about honing his skills. Not even sex will get him to stop, and that's when he likes someone. Try offering him sex after dinner. From what I've seen, he's usually more open to it then."

"After dinner?"

"After eating a meal," Keith clarified. "He even let his girlfriend give him a blowjob a couple of times while he was serious about not letting her do anything sexual, all because she caught him at the right time after he ate."

"He didn't let his girlfriend have sex?"

"We told you about his protectiveness as a result of the forging?" Keith asked, and she nodded. "It makes him paranoid that having sex with her while she's pregnant will cause damage to the baby. Despite most of it being extremely illogical and irrational, the forged part of his soul makes him adamant about it. Admittedly, he is rough when he has sex, but it shouldn't be enough to actually cause harm to his son, and he does know how to hold back, as he obviously did with you. But forged souls are forged souls, so he can't help that paranoia.

"Breezy," Keith gestured to the wind elemental, which was chasing around his own familiar. "Was obtained specifically to act as a bodyguard for his son, even before birth. Part of his duties, out of the game, are to ensure that his girlfriend doesn't come to harm, even if it's from tripping, which she can catch herself doing and avoid harm from."

"Oh," Evala said. "He really can't help it?"

"No," Keith answered. "Unlike you, who can avoid being that close to me while you're naked."

"Sorry," she backed up, then returned to watching Nathan practice.

He stopped when Keith finished dinner, then the three of them ate. Keith washed the dishes using the supply of stored water they had, then he began practicing magic, so that he could work on decreasing his mana costs for his three new elements.

"So," Evala sat beside Nathan, letting her tail rub against his bare back and arms. "Want to take the rest of your clothes off and have some fun?"

"Later," Nathan told her, and he frowned. "I want to watch Keith practice magic while practicing my own."

"You two said you aren't a magician," she said.

Nathan sat by his backpack and opened it up, pulling out the phoenix, which he set on his lap.

"Keep watch," he told her. "Shades and phantoms aren't the only threats here, there are boars as well. If one enters this area and it doesn't have a Health bar, it's using a Skill to enhance itself that drains its Health. Just so you're aware."

Nathan began to generate a barrier around himself, and Evala did her best not to laugh at the uneven shape of it. He ignored her and focused on strengthening it rather than fixing its appearance. If he pulled Ichtvar back into him and had the phoenix help, he could probably make it a perfectly-round barrier every time, but he wanted to succeed in that on his own.

Once he was sure of the durability of the barrier, Nathan began adjusting its edges. Slowly, section by section, it smoothed out. Areas that dipped in too much moved out, while areas that stuck out too far began to retreat. Almost ten minutes passed before Nathan had reshaped his barrier into the standard disc form.

"Good job," Keith told Nathan. "Mind if I throw fireballs at it?"

"Go ahead," Nathan stood, willing his barrier to move up. "Holding it is exhausting."

"Mentally," Keith snorted. "I know it doesn't take much mana for you."

"Evala," Nathan said. "Might want to pull out that staff of yours."

"Why?" She asked.

"Because you're taking care of the boar coming in from the tunnel over there," he and Keith pointed in unison, and she looked over to find one of the boars charging in.

"By myself?"

"You're a high enough Level," Nathan said. "You should be able to handle it. If it seems like you can't, then we'll step in. Or would you rather Keith and I claimed all the Experience and Points here?"

"Alright," she pulled out her staff and took a stance as the boar began to charge.

Rather than practicing, Nathan and Keith watched as she fought. The demigod struck with her staff, leaped out of the way, flipped over the beast, jabbed with her staff. She aimed at its eyes, neck, and legs, and they could tell she was using some form of Impact with it based on the crack that sounded out every time it struck and the slight dip in her mana that accompanied it.

Unlike Keith, who fought with pure, powerful magical might, or Nathan, who relied on quick strikes and powerful blows, the catkin demigod mixed precise jabs with her staff and the System's Skills to whittle away at its Health while using her agility and reflexes to nearly dance around the beast. After a few minutes of her graceful movements, Evala succeeded in removing the boar's Health, and a few more strikes killed it.

"There we go," she smiled at the other two teens. "It's-why is your familiar-eeek!"

She jumped to the side, then watched as the heavenly storm elemental quickly removed the tusks, before flying around using them as fake horns, chasing Breezy as it did.

"He does that," Keith said, then threw a fireball at Nathan's barrier. "Wait, let me check with air slashes and force pushes, first, so we can see how it compares to the past."

"When you finish testing my barrier and using your new spells," Nathan pointed at the boar. "We're having fresh meat."

"I figured," Keith said. "Just, like, ten minutes. Hey, Evala, can you start butchering that? You never know when you'll get fresh meat here, and it's best to use it when you can."