Derek volunteered to go to every combat before Saturday. His mother didn’t mind, in fact came to expect it. Not the combat part, but leaving to socialize. He had many groups of friends, and he made excuses that he was seeing many of them throughout the week. Amanda nodded, her head bobbing slower and slower the more groups of friends he mentioned meeting with throughout the week. He felt a little bad about it, but the sessions with just him and the characters were the most fun he’d had in a while. He got the impression that everyone else felt like this was nothing more than grinding for experience points, but it was probably because they were all rolling from a distance. Derek got to see it in action. He remembered Wednesday’s battle especially, because they were up against a skeleton army and a demon trying to control them. The group separated the army from the demon. Granted, it wasn’t a large army, perhaps seventeen total, but still. The characters lured the demon away.

Ezekiel remained behind and surprised the skeleton army with his turn undead feature, and because he was a higher-level cleric, all skeletons that didn’t pass the wisdom saving throw got snuffed out of existence. Those creatures did not have high wisdom to begin with, ending up with three skeletons of the original seventeen still standing. Ezekiel then wiped the floor with them one by one. Derek was still laughing about it when he told Rafael what had happened. It was a legendary fight. As they all hoped, since Ezekiel destroyed the army by himself, he got all the experience points for it. While everyone else got about four hundred and fifty experience points for killing the demon, Ezekiel got well over eight hundred. He was bridging the gap from missing out on that first month of their arrival.

The difference was, Rafael was more than willing to take Ezekiel on missions. Everyone kept their eyes peeled for any smaller creatures trickling into town, and Ezekiel was always the first one called to take care of it. Rafael and Alejandra dropped everything to find the creatures before teleporting Hraktar and Ezekiel to the problem. Hraktar usually came to make sure it didn’t get out of hand, leaving Grizzizzik to be watched by two elves who trusted him marginally more than the fighter.

Ezekiel didn’t have to fight many little monsters before he caught up, surpassing Clarissa in experience points. Rafael reported Hraktar had to help Ezekiel with fighting a scarecrow, and once that battle was done, Ezekiel was comfortably within everyone else’s range. If smaller level creatures were within the town, the person with the lowest experience points would go after them with another person to help in case it got out of hand.

Everyone would report their experience points at the end of each battle. It was a nice system going forward, since the smaller level monsters got braver and tried to attack Elmwood. The bigger creatures were easier to spot, and therefore easier to wipe out in sessions.

It surprised Derek to realize Grizzizzik had the most experience points until he remembered that he and Nick did their own solo leveling. Derek vaguely understood he was throwing himself into these sessions every day because he was avoiding processing how he felt about what Nick did. It seemed like a onetime thing, and judging by the depressed look on Nick’s face, Derek doubted his friend would ever do it again. It was complicated, no doubt, the need to keep leveling up to keep an apocalypse at bay. But they needed to keep doing what they were doing now. Leveling up together and not separately.

Unless there were smaller creatures in town. Still, no one was allowed to go on their own.

Derek’s thoughts returned to Nick. His friend looked miserable, and what he said to Alejandra seemed so out of character for him that Derek couldn’t help but want to ask Nick about it himself, but Evelyn begged him not to.

Of everyone, Evelyn was who Derek was most concerned about. It was clear the bond Evelyn and Nick had as siblings was deep, and she was suffering. But Nick kept pushing her away. Nick pushed everyone away. Derek tried talking to him during lunchtime, but Nick barely said more than a few words at a time. None of it made sense. So Derek threw himself at battles instead.

By the time he pulled into his home on Friday night, he felt fantastic. They had taken out quite the chunk of monsters who had trickled in. Having level five and six monsters caused a small influx. Enough for them to comfortably fight every day.

The last of the reports came in for experience points, and Tyler got them all organized before texting the list from highest to lowest.

Grizzizzik—9470

Hraktar—9015

Milo—8975

Ezekiel—8840

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

Princess Clarissa—8810

Prince Sylvar—3545

Not bad for a week’s work. Level six was at 14,000 points, so there was still a bit more to go. Sylvar was now at level four, and Tyler was in contact with one group, and they agreed to meet up in Las Vegas on Saturday. Tyler would fly from Pheonix to Las Vegas, and once he met up with the group, he’d teleport Sylvar to them, then come home Saturday night on a later flight. He’d miss the session, but Tyler assured them they’d be okay on their own. They’d done pretty well so far without him this week.

Derek woke up Saturday morning and threw himself into his homework. He had a little, but it would be a busy day. He fully intended to focus most of his time on CCNC once he was done with homework. Despite fighting every day, Calawit would no doubt have a fight to lead them toward today.

It was after lunch when Derek was almost done with his math homework, blocking out his sibling’s loud noises. He almost didn’t register the doorbell had rung until Miguel came back. “Derek?”

He glanced up at his dad, smiling. “Yeah?”

“Emma wants to talk to you.” Miguel gestured toward the front door.

Derek blinked. Emma. Here. At his house.

“Right.”

The other thing he’d ignored all week and instead threw himself into CCNC battles over processing what happened. The news had spread that Derek Perez would attend the winter ball with Annie Williams. Derek noticed Emma’s depressed face in drama the past week, because he realized how similar Emma and Nick’s faces were. It was again one of those things that pricked at his soul, an uncomfortable realization that he was an asshole. Nick was pushing him away, but there was no excuse with Emma.

Derek stood up, giving his dad a smile as he walked past, stuffing his hands in his pockets. He walked outside to see Emma there, playing with the bottom of her light jacket.

“Hey,” Emma said.

“Hey.”

They said nothing for a bit. Derek wasn’t sure what to say, other than to admit that he distracted himself with other things, so he wouldn’t have to apologize to her. Or that he ignored sitting down and plainly communicated with her about what they expected out of each other. As a drama kid, he wasn’t sure he could do that without a healthy dose of drama.

“So… Annie?” Emma asked.

“We’re not dating.” Derek didn’t know why he needed to tell Emma this. He doubted Emma wanted to go out with him again. As much as it was painful, operation reverse kiss the girl was a success. It also proved he was a horrible person. His soul pricked him during moments like this. “She wanted to go to the dance. She broke up with her boyfriend, so…”

“So you’re like an understudy,” Emma said.

Despite himself, Derek smiled. “See? I knew you’d get it.”

Emma shook her head, but there was a smile on her face. “Yeah. I do.” The smile disappeared as soon as it came. “It’s, um… it’s been fun. I hope you… have fun. At the winter ball.” She nodded before turning around and heading down the paved parking lot.

Derek winced, watching her walk away. Why did he always feel like such an asshole after he made big messes in his life? Didn’t regular people have a little cricket on their shoulder that stopped them from making the messes in the first place?

Emma hunched over, wiping her cheek before she headed toward her car.

Derek rushed after her. “Emma, wait.”

She stopped, trying not to look at him, but Derek saw the tears. “Don’t worry about me, Derek. Really. I’ll be fine.”

“You will, Emma. But I’m left feeling like I failed miserably in this. I shouldn’t have manipulated you. I shouldn’t have made you angry at me to make it so you broke things off. And then I shouldn’t have avoided you until you had to track me down at my house to formally break up.” Derek sighed, placing his hands on his hips. “God, that all sounds so awful once you say it out loud.”

Emma smiled, shaking her head. “Ah, Derek. It was… fun. In its own way.”

“Yeah. I suppose,” Derek said.

“It will still be fun, though.”

Derek’s brows furrowed. “I… don’t follow.”

Emma smiled, then her eyes grew red. Derek’s hands dropped to his side, and his heart plunged into his stomach. “Emma… did you… did you go back to…”

A hand appeared behind him, slapping over his mouth. Derek shouted in shock, but a far more scaley hand muffed it.

Derek collapsed to his knees, his hands forced behind him and quickly pinned by a snake’s tail. Derek looked back at Emma, hoping that she wouldn’t be so calloused as to not help him, but then again, she might be charmed to leave him alone. Emma pulled out a gag, and Derek started hyperventilating.

Smoke rose off Emma’s body, pieces of her changing until all at once it was Pippa standing before him. Derek’s eyes widened, all thought of teleporting Milo to him vanished. Pippa gagged him, tying it tight as Akshi bound Derek’s hands. He tried to fight. There was no way this was happening on the driveway of his house. He was pretty sure Milo was the only person who could see him, but he was also certain his mana fusor was reading through his lab notes in Derek’s room.

Akshi grabbed Derek and pulled him around to the other side of Emma’s car, opening the trunk. Derek felt sick to his stomach as he realized what this meant. They had Emma’s car. What did they do to Emma?

Akshi placed a hat on his head. It glowed, then Derek’s image stood in Akshi’s place. A deep fear settled in his muscles as the copy of Derek felt for his pockets and pulled out his phone.

“Can’t we just use dimension door?” Pippa asked.

“No,” the Akshi-Derek clone said, placing a burlap sack over Derek’s head before slamming the trunk door. “I’ve already tried dimension door two days ago on someone else, to no success. Our mana isn’t strong enough to work on them. I’ll drive us to the destination, then come back for the others.”

Holy shit, Akshi knew how to drive. He was coming back for others. Derek tried to say something, anything, but he couldn’t speak. His heart hammered in his chest as Milo’s character sheet flooded his vision. But he couldn’t teleport Milo. Not to the back of a car Akshi and Pippa were in.