"It's been forty chapters and I've yet to be mentioned..." Crown complained sitting in the back of the cart.

"Think about it this way, we're the more interesting group since we're left for last!" Pedecree exclaimed, as expected, he was the one driving the cart.

"At least I got a few mentions!" Foxly exclaimed seemingly satisfied.

"Is this how low you've fallen? So desperate to get some spotlight that you'd consider four name-drops screentime?" asked Crown with a wry expression.

"I'd rather know... why we're stuck in this frozen hell-hole!" exclaimed the thief, she was wrapped in no less than two large blankets.

"South Kearudown should be better, with the hotsprings the place is... tolerable..." Foxly replied.

"Can you not complain about the cold for five minutes?" asked Crown.

"I'm sorry! I'm just not used to hypothermia..." she replied.

"I'm literally a level seven druid healer, relax!" Crown assured her.

"We should find a place to stay for the night, I think a blizzard is coming in..." Pedecree said looking around, he was dressed in a shirt and cloak, all wolf-people were very cold-loving creatures.

"Again?!" asked Foxly looking over to where Pedecree gestured, a massive wave of white crashing down from the higher up region of the mountains.

"Dear god no..." thought the thief.

In the distance, a large cave came into view.

"I guess we'll stay there if that's fine with everybody," Pedecree said gesturing towards the massive cave, its top half covered with icicles thicker than tree trunks and its bottom half piled up with large amounts of snow.

Crown turned to the thief, "So, do you have a name, or do we refer to you as a crime for the rest of time?" asked Crown looking at the thief.

"What do you mean?" asked the thief.

"Your name, what is it?" Crown reiterated.

"My name? Oh, just call me thief," she replied with a shrugged.

"How much longer until we reach the south?" asked Foxly.

"At this rate, two and a half days," Pedecree replied.

"Man, you're really precise about this stuff," Foxly replied.

The party sat around in complete silence.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

"So... it's been a week, is nobody going to acknowledge the strange thing here?" asked Crown gesturing towards the front of the cart.

"So you guys see him too! Good, I thought I was tripping!" Foxly breathed a sigh of relief.

The cart was pulled by the massive man the party met in the real world and assumed he was Foxly.

This nameless character they dubbed Fakesly has been pulling their cart for days.

When the party reached the massive opening to the cave, they saw light coming from inside.

"People?" asked Foxly.

"Be on your guard everyone!" Pedecree exclaimed as he grabbed his starter weapon, a slingshot.

Foxly pulled out four pieces of paper from his pocket, it worked like the cigarettes, where Foxly could produce virtually infinite spell-paper for his magic.

"Muffle~" he spoke into the paper as black runes appeared on it.

He tossed the pages into the air only for each one to fly to a different party member making them produce a fraction of the noise they usually would.

Foxly looked over to Crown who was ready to attack as well, the word "Fairy-Flies" was at the tip of her tongue, ready to be exclaimed before stinging her foe to death.

Pedecree reached into his pocket and retrieved a small black orb, the basic ammo for the slingshot class, again, he could produce as much of it as he wanted, though the more he made in advance, the weaker the ammo got.

The thief took out her dagger, though in her right hand she wielded the "confuse" spell, a basic ability of the illusionist class, upon extensive testing on Foxly, they discovered the spell caused a temporary reduction in cognitive abilities - as if you were stoned for thirty seconds.

Crown, level seven.

Foxly, level six.

Pedecree, level six.

Thief, level four.

They slowly snuck towards the cave as their faithful "steed" remained, he sat in the snow, he took the liberty of grabbing a blanket for himself while he waited.

As soon as they climbed over the slight, snowy slope, they saw a group of a dozen people.

"An orc, five humans, two harpies, two fish, a frog and a wolf." Crown counted the people.

"It's another one of these, they're dead," Crown noted.

Foxly and Crown looked around, checking if they could heal any of the people.

"Looks like one human is still alive," Crown exclaimed gesturing for someone to move him closer to the fire.

"The harpies are dead, so is the ogre and wolfman," Foxly added.

The thief made her way towards the dead bodies, she shuffled around their pockets in the hope of finding anything useful.

"Found gold..." she sighed.

"The one time I'm not happy to be able to say that..." she thought.

"Falsely and I will bury them outside, you guys focus on helping the survivors out."

Said Pedecree with a grim look as he grabbed four bodies, two under each arm.

"Both of the fish-people are alive!" exclaimed Foxly before reaching into his pocket and pulling out three pages.

"Warm~" he said and the three pages got engraved with new runes.

He dragged the two bodies closer to the fire and placed a rune on each one of the survivors.

"I wonder what the towns are like?" wondered Crown.

"I bet they're overpopulated, it's like this cave but ten times worse." Foxly speculated.

"You think? I guess we can't afford to die and test out our theory," sighed Crown.

The bright, albeit small fire, let out the last of its sparks as if finally turned cold, leaving everyone in the unlit cave.

Once all the bodies were cleared out, Falsely and Pedecree dragged the cart inside.

"Who are you people?!" demanded one of the fish-people.

"Relax, we found your cave and healed you up," Crown explained.

"...what about the others?" asked the fish-man.

"Well, the two next to you are alive and well... ish... but the other nine are dead," Crown replied.

Pedecree was cutting up slabs of rabbit meat, he hunted some far up north since he expected a lack of food the further you head into Kearudown.

"..." the fish-man fell silent.

"Relax, for better or for worse they respawned in the closest town," Crown assured him.

"Speaking of which, we should be able to cut our travel-time down for half a day if we go through Everfrost village."Pedecree offered.

The fish-man tore the warming-seal off his chest and threw it to the ground, Foxly could feel his mana returning.

The fish man rolled into a fetal position and lay on the icy ground.

"Oh, great... another one," Crown rolled her eyes.

"Hey now, you're being too harsh!" Pedecree said heading over to the depressed fish-man.

"I'm sure we'd all like to hear what happened to you and your friends, so come sit by the fire and let your two friends here rest a while longer."

Pedecree extended his arm towards the fish-man who hesitantly took it and stood up.

He sat by the smaller fire started by Foxly's fire seal.

"We got teleported here a week ago... most of us..." she shivered as he talked.

"I was wandering the wasteland nearby when I finally passed out from the cold, when I woke up I was being healed by a harpy," he explained.

"A harpy?" asked Pedecree.

"Yeah, he never introduced himself by name, but he always walked around half-naked except for a hat and rapier," he explained.

"At one point this cave housed almost thirty people, that was when the harpy decided to lead them out in hopes of finding a town... they haven't been back since... they probably froze to death..."

"Most of use were still level one, some level two..."

The group looked outside seeing the raging blizzard.

"Did you say the harpy was naked... except for a hat?" asked Crown.