Will said that they were planning on delving again tomorrow at one, and that they would meet at the shrine. I thanked him for inviting me and together we sat on a short root to wait for Rose to emerge from the shrine. Several people exited the shrine in a row, and Will started talking about how cool (and weird) the instances on the shrine were.
“I mean how do you even do that, well magic obviously, but even then, I mean avatars are magic but I can’t do anything like that, though admittedly I am only tier one, so maybe I will be able to. Oh cloning myself would be awesome…” he jumped to different tangents like this several times, occasionally asking a tangentially related question like what superpower I would want to have or what my plan was for my avatar, to which I never had a good answer. He didn’t mind though, he just shrugged, said that it was fine, and resumed talking.
After about fifteen minutes Rose reemerged from the shrine grinning, and we stood to meet her. Will was the first to speak.
“I’ve been waiting ages, what's your avatar like!” he said excitedly, and Rose grinned a similar grin. She crouched and a vague layer of something settled over her that made it a bit harder to focus on her.
“It took a while to figure out how to summon it, but I got it. Now I just need something to attach it to… Oh! Do you think I could attach it to an arrow?” Will grinned at this.
“Yeess, that would be awesome! Imagine you're just walking around, and then boom! ya stabbed.” Both of them cackled at that, I didn’t quite get it, but I went along with it. We left the dungeon together soon after. Turned out we all were using rental gear, so we stuck together all the way to the adventurers guild. I had to pay a small fee for the damage to the shield, but it was only five dollars, and it saved my life.
“Man, what did that to your shield?” Will asked as we left the rental armory.
“I got caught off guard by a tier two wasp while I was fighting beetles.”
“Dang, sounds horrid, I’m glad I had Rose keeping an eye on me during our fights. I would be shishkabobed if that happened to me.” I felt vindicated in the fear I had felt, only getting reinforced when Rose chimed in.
“Yeah, and I didn’t even have an avatar earlier, that would have been bad.”
“Yeah, it almost was, after the first hit I froze up and it definitely would have gotten me it the beetles intervened. There were three of them, and they all latched onto the wasp. Once it was on the ground it couldn’t escape, and two of the beetles tiered up on the spot.” I hadn’t been planning on elaborating, let alone so much. I guess Will and Rose made me feel heard, and I found I really wanted to feel it again. Rose was the first to speak after I finished.
“What was it like? The beetles tiering up that is. Did it glow, was it cool?”
“Ah well they just kinda grew. I guess their carapace did break apart and dissolve as they grew into their new one.”
“Kinda like super molting.” Will interjected, and I nodded.
“Yeah, kinda like super molting.”
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“So what happened after the beetles supermolted?” Rose asked, and I explained how the fight had gone. Will and Rose actually looked impressed when I explained how I had crushed the tier one beetle by falling, and I pretended it was on purpose instead of an incredibly lucky turn of events. We talked outside the delvers guild for a while, jumping along topics. I practically glowed when Will complimented my avatar.
“I didn't realize armor could be a shield, like it makes sense, but I don’t think I would have thought of that, plus the shape is super cool.”
“Yeah, honestly it was mostly on accident. I was just having trouble deciding where to put my avatars' armor and I thought maybe I should just have moving armor. I only came up with the shape because I wanted to make a spike for punching with. It was too spear-like for the avatar to let me, so I ended up with this.” we kept talking for another half hour before we went our separate ways. Apparently Rose was working a night shift and didn’t want to be late. I started to leave, but before I left Will got my number to make a group chat for the three. Only then did he let me go, waving happily
“See you tomorrow!” Will called after me. I felt great as I walked home. I made myself a quick sandwich and watched a quick episode of my new favorite show before remembering how my last day had gone away. Deciding not to let that happen again I tried exercising while watching, doing pushups, sit ups, and some jogging in place. After building up a bit of a sweat I took a shower. Once I was clean I remembered that I still had some avatar left. Dang it, I should have used the rest up and then took a shower. Well I couldn’t do anything about it now, so I manifested my avatar a few times, trying to do it without moving, but I didn’t make much progress. I decided to work on getting up from my back, I didn’t want to be stuck in that position ever again. I ran out six minutes later, and feeling much better about myself I sat on the couch and watched a few more episodes. Eventually I fell into a comfortable sleep. As the hours passed the sleep got less comfortable as my anxieties started to eat away at my peace, rewriting the good parts of the day from another angle. Did Rose and Will actually like me, or did they just want a meat shield? Did they notice I didn’t talk like them? Would they realize I wasn’t like them? In my dream I watched Will and Rose stand by as a beetle attacked me, only laughing as I cried out for help.
I woke up abruptly, my eyes slightly damp. I took a few breaths to try and calm down and wiped my eyes as I tried to sort through the nightmare. They wouldn’t sacrifice me like that, that was ridiculous… but I had to make sure I didn’t stand out like usual, and they wouldn’t notice I didn’t fit in.
I checked the time, 8:00. I tried to think about the positives. I had almost reached the next tier, and with Will and Rose’s help I could delve safer and longer than before, and hopefully get the shards I needed. I just needed to make a good impression, I couldn’t look desperate or clingy. I went through my new clothes, putting on jeans and a plain white t-shirt. I gave my hair a quick comb, trying to figure out how to make it look, I tried several parts before just combing it back and looking in the mirror. Nope, I looked a leather jacket away from a greaser. Going through my clothes again I swapped the shirt out for a green shirt, and looked again. Much better, not too interesting or boring.
Happy with my appearance for now I went upstairs to get something to eat. I went through the fridge trying to decide what to eat before deciding to just make an omelet like usual. I looked at the time, still only 9:30. What Could I do to pass the time? I guess the house was getting dusty? Deciding why not I grabbed a broom after a quick search and got sweeping, amassing a decent amount of dust before moving on the vacuum for the carpets. Cleaning was a great way to keep busy, and there was no shortage of cleaning to do. There was plenty of dust buildup, and several chunks of carpet were troves of dust and debris. Jake must not clean very often, especially since he spends so much time in the dungeon. I ran out of floors to clean at 10:40 but I still had plenty of time to burn so I moved on to wiping the windows, which were pretty cloudy. By 11:05 they were all clear, and the mirrors were too. It was still too soon, so I moved on to general tidying up. I put away what was obvious, and left what I wasn’t sure about. Plenty of dishes could use cleaning, and I did some quick handwashing. I stacked the last dish onto the drying rack and looked at the time. It was about 11:45. That was close enough I decided, and I got ready to go. I grabbed my socks, sneakers, and backpack, and stepped out the door.