"This is a graveyard," Nathan stated.

"Yes, Nathan," Keith groaned. "This is a graveyard, just as it was the last ten times you said that."

"It's an ugly graveyard."

"Yes, we got that," Keith glanced at a gravestone, which resembled the ones back on Earth, just with the language of the demons rather than English. "How many more times are you going to comment on it?"

"Keith, look at it with your magic sight."

"What?" Keith looked at Nathan, then groaned as he realized the demigod wasn't referring to the ordinary appearance with his comment.

The psychic began reading the magic in the area and found everything imbued with enchantments. Every gravestone, every obelisk, every thing in the graveyard had enchantments. When viewing them through magic sight, Keith could also see what appeared to be bridges of magic spanning the tops of the gravestones.

They seemed to serve no purpose, but as he didn't know the history of the place, Keith couldn't make a guess as to the reason for them. He shut off his magical sight and gave Nathan an amused look.

"Why are you even just walking here?" Keith asked. "We already cleared the Dungeon located here and the others have already left to return to the trip."

The team was steadily making its way to the next Tower of Magic, having decided to travel to it and clear the Dungeons on the way, then travel back down to the next Temple, stopping by the maze on the way to complete it. They would complete every Dungeon between the two locations as they made their trip.

As a group, they decided that the Tower of Magic after their thirtieth Dungeon would be the last one they needed. With the deadline Nathan and Keith had given themselves and the psychic's estimates on how long everything would take, they had concluded as a group that they would not need more than two years to finish everything off.

Every Dungeon so far, including the Temples, were quite easy for the group to handle, so they knew that they only truly had the travel times to deal with. More than once, they had contemplated simply running between Dungeons, but a nasty surprise caught them when they were on their way to their fifth Dungeon.

A trap which activated if something moved over a certain speed in its range. Nathan, having wanted to stretch one evening, had taken off at high speed, activating the trap. Due to the way the spell had been set, neither he nor Keith had noticed it.

With the help of the elementals, Keith's wind magic, and the barrier spells of everyone else, the group was able to make it out of the range of the trap, which extended far enough that even Nathan had been affected by it several miles away.

It took them three days to be able to return to their camp, and another week to be able to use their gear again that time spent washing and drying it.

The team moved faster, but nowhere close to their top speed, and Nathan and Keith made sure to keep an eye out for any signs of magical traps. In the week since then, they had caught a total of four more traps. Two were activated by speed, one was activated by weight, and one was activated by enough mana being used in the area. For all three, it took high amounts to trigger – amounts great enough that a normal person or group of people would never manage to activate them.

Because of that, everyone assumed the traps were meant to protect against things such as dragons, which could fly at high speeds, could use a lot of mana, and weighed quite a lot.

It was because of the traps they had encountered before that Nathan was walking through the former Dungeon rather than simply rejoining the team.

"The bridges," Nathan told Keith. "They remind me of the traps' enchantments in their design."

"What do you mean?" Keith looked at them with his magic sight once more, then realized what Nathan was saying. "You're right."

The magic of the bridges closely matched the magic of the enchantments they had encountered before in the style of their design. There was an elegance to them which most of the enchantments the demons used lacked. Even if they couldn't read the enchantments, there was enough of the style in the blocks to that which made the difference obvious.

"We won't manage to figure it out, though," Keith told Nathan. "And it's best if we just return to the others, Nathan."

"Yeah," Nathan shrugged. "Let's go."

Nathan shrugged, then followed Keith out of the graveyard. They had already studied the traps as best as they could, but learned little. He knew the same would hold true for the strange bridges in the graveyard.

Once they regrouped, the team resumed their trip, and Nathan thought over the bridges. He imagined little fairies walking across them, keeping the dead from returning as shades. While he knew such a thing was a ridiculous thought, it entertained him as they walked.

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An hour before the sun began to set, the team stopped in the forest they were traveling through and set up camp for the night, Nathan preparing a stew using meat from a deer he'd caught the day before and several roots and other vegetables they had harvested during their trip.

After dinner, Nathan pulled out his viewing orb and pushed his mana into it, focusing on his son. Immediately, Cyrus came into view, and Nathan started at his son until Samantha took the orb and tossed it to Keith, who caught it and sent it into his own storage orb.

"Come on," she tugged on Nathan's arm.

"Why?" He asked.

"Just come with me," she told him.

"Why?" Nathan asked again.

"Just come on," she pulled again.

Nathan sighed, but allowed Samantha to lead him away. Ten minutes passed before they came to a river snaking its way through the forest, cascading through a series of falls only two feet tall each, a total of seven falls over twenty feet, ending in a moderately-sized pond, from which the river continued.

"Come on," Samantha told Nathan as she stripped off her clothes. "Keith already checked this to make sure it's clear, there's no monsters here."

"Can I just watch?" He asked, and she gave him a playful slap on the arm. "Okay."

Nathan stripped as well, then joined his girlfriend in the pond, immediately moving to float on his back. As the demigod did his best to relax, Samantha watched him. She noticed that Ichtvar wasn't concealing his marks, the red-and-gold markings on Nathan's chest quite visible, along with the white marks on Nathan's side showing that the demigod had pulled his wind elemental familiar back in.

"Nathan," Samantha splashed him. "You want to leave right now, don't you?"

"I miss him," Nathan told her.

"So do I," she splashed him again. "I mean, we barely had any time with him before we came here, when you think about it. I feel like we abandoned him, even though no time will have passed for him."

"I feel the same way."

"I figured," she splashed him. "That's why I had Keith look for something like this. Somewhere to just relax."

"What gave it away?" He stopped floating and turned to face her. "I thought I was hiding it."

"The last few nights," she laughed. "You've stared into that orb until Keith or I pulled it out of your hands. Not only that, but you've had almost no libido. You're Nathan Hunter, sex fiend, son of a god of sex, yet you've only had sex once since we came here. You were more active back in the Survival Challenge, but that was mostly to ensure Katie and I had the permanent blessing. Once you got into it, you really got into it, but now that it's not necessary, and we aren't in the Survival Challenge anymore, you've basically stopped entirely. You've given up."

"Maybe," he sighed, and she splashed him with water again.

"It's obvious," she pulled him against her and kissed him. "You're depressed, Nathan."

"No, I'm not."

"Yes, you are," she said. "Nathan, you're depressed. You're even more sullen than usual. If you aren't killing something, staring into that orb, or sleeping, you're pushing yourself into your training or your enchanting. I've known you since we were practically toddlers, and know what that means."

"What does it mean?"

"That a decision needs to be made."

"What kind of decision?" Nathan asked.

"We should arrive at the next Tower of Magic in about two weeks," she said. "If we continue the way we're going. There's no need for you to be here. None at all."

"What are you getting at?" He asked.

"Nathan," Samantha said. "If your head isn't in the game, you're going to potentially endanger yourself, even if the monsters here are quite weak."

"So?" He tried to pull back, and she pulled him back against him, wrapping her arms around him and pressing her head against his chest. "Samantha, why do I feel like there's something I'm not understanding?"

"When we complete the Tower of Magic," she said. "The five of us are going to say we want to leave."

"Why?" He asked.

"You really aren't needed here," she said. "This place is easy. We'll leave, then just the five of us will reenter. Keith will ensure that if something stronger comes, he deals with it. He's already looked with his powers, there's nothing that's a true threat to us."

"You're kicking me out?" Nathan asked, hurt in his voice.

"No," she said, her voice soft. "Nathan, you're depressed being away from Cyrus for this long. You have no need to be here at all, and it's only hurting you to be. I can handle being away from you for this long, and can tough out being away from Cyrus a lot better than you seem to be doing. We want to do this so that you aren't as sulky as you've been getting. We're just worried about you."

"So," Nathan said. "At the next Tower of Magic, we'll leave, then a day later, you guys will return to do this? What if someone else makes it in and finishes everything up?"

"Keith's done the estimates," Samantha said. "Chances are, unless someone does it within an hour of us, enough time will pass in this dimension from others doing Dungeons and Mandatory Challenges for things to respawn and need dealing with again. He's basing this on it always being available when you two check the Dungeons. We're doing this for you, Nathan. For your own mental health."

"But if I-"

"Nathan," she cut him off. "It's hurting me, seeing you like this. I can get by knowing that I'll see him again and to our baby, no time has passed. It's clear it's hurting you despite knowing that. That's why we want to do this. Please, just accept it. No time at all will pass to you while I'm here, so you won't even miss me, and you'll get to be with Cyrus again."

Nathan sighed, then wrapped his arms around Samantha, burying his head into her shoulder.

"I miss him a lot more than I expected," he admitted. "I want to return home, to him."

"I know," she told him. "So you'll do this without fighting us?"

"Yes," he answered. "I'll accept returning home. But it won't stop me from worrying about you while you're in the game again."

"I know," she moved her head back and kissed him on the cheek. "And I promise, we'll do something special when we return. Just you and me. And Keith said he's going to do something with you, too. A social event."

"A social event?" Nathan managed to pull away from her. "What do you mean by that?"

"No clue," she shrugged. "I'm guessing it means a guys' afternoon out or something."

"With Cyrus?"

"Probably!" She laughed. "Or you can leave Cyrus to me for a few hours, though I know that might be tough for you."

Nathan narrowed his gaze at her, then punched the water, sending the water spraying up into the air, most of it directed at Samantha, drenching her completely.

"Enough of the depressing talk," she laughed. "Let's enjoy this swim, Nathan."