I kneeled down beside my hellhound and gave him a pat. Both he and the Imp I had summoned had slightly changed. They both wore tabards now. Royal purple with silver-blue edging. My ascension to becoming king hadn’t improved their stats, but they certainly looked more the part.

“Good boy.” I gave him another pat and stood up. We had settled on a Guild name.

For once, I hadn’t pushed to the front to be center stage and the one who ultimately decided or guided the process. I felt… no need. There wasn’t really much else I wanted from this world, other than a break from the violence. I had enough fans in the deep, and up here. Nearly uncontested in power. Satisfied with most things.

The Imp gave me a bow before I sent him away, but I let the dog linger so he could roll around on the ground with Ren, trying to lick at her face. While she giggled and pretended to fight him off, I turned to the others and smiled.

The Unbreakable.

Not the worst name for a Guild, and it certainly had a certain amount of… grounding, for what we were. Ren seemed to think it was inviting trouble our way, being so brazen, but she had said it with an uncomfortable amount of excitement on her face. Naturally, I agreed and accepted the proposition of the name.

Perhaps if we invited the malady so openly, things could end sooner than us having to track it down. It would be inevitable, either way. We knew how this worked.

Quinn stepped up beside me, his eye looking at the elf cavorting with the pup. “You know, seeing her like this is almost as unsettling as when you returned.”

I saw his point, to some degree. Ren had always been rather stoic and proper, for the most part. Now she was laughing and snorting as the demonic dog tried to give her kisses, her outfit getting dusty as she writhed around on the ground.

“We became broken in some ways, but reforged.” I gave him a shrug. “There’s a certain amount of elation within us, as we are back in this normal world.”

He pulled a face in return, but gestured to the bear. “Wolf doesn’t seem that unusual.”

“No?” I followed his gaze. On the outside, Wolf didn’t appear any different. Now back into fur-only aside from his bowler hat, he remained stoic as we had eaten and prepared to set off this morning. Apparently, after getting washed down last night, he passed out and didn’t wake up until breakfast was cooking. “He is just tired, ready for all of this to be over.”

“Aren’t we all?” Quinn replied, giving me a grim smile.

More than ever.

If anything, our time in hell made us realize how nice the normal world was. How great it could be once the blight of the Lady in Red had been erased. We were close now, I could feel it. Our misadventure, giving us such a power boost, just drew where we could rid this world of the Crimson Shadows forward. Perhaps even tomorrow or the day after. It burned within me.

“Let’s get moving,” I announced to them all, allowing the hellhound to sink away back to my hell—much to the chagrin of Ren.

Thus, the gathered group packed up and got themselves prepared to go. My Party decided to go ahead at the front, with Fiona’s group at the back. Leyla’s five were the weaker out of all of us, so the middle seemed safest for them.

As we started walking toward the town where the Eternal Wardens had holed up, Tanya walked up beside me. Apparently they had been a little selfish with any Tokens that they had found, not knowing when we would return and needing any power they could grasp onto for themselves. Given how things turned out, I didn’t blame them for it. They did have three Tokens for the three of us, however.

In return, I gave them a bunch of spell scrolls and potion bottles. I could spend all day drinking them otherwise and still not run dry. As they juggled and looked through all that I had provided them, I decided which skills to upgrade.

seemed like the contender for the most important to see what it could do. The result, as the Token vanished, was somewhat surprising. I could now dismiss the card, and it would explode in a short radius. It meant waiting a while to summon it back from hell, so it didn’t seem super useful, but I knew better than to discount an additional trick.

Next up was another active ability - . I hadn’t even had a chance to use it yet, but upgrading it granted the demons summoned by it some additional time on this plane, along with a short burst of a defensive boost for when they appeared.

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The third Token I wasn’t too sure. Active abilities always had the best returns compared to the passive skills, so my hand was wavering between and … although, as I looked through my expanded list, perhaps would be nice as well.

With a shrug to myself, I settled for . Not only would my Party-shared cards protect a little more damage for my allies, but they would now regenerate like an aura. Every ten seconds, a new card would appear around the party member with the least remaining. All things going well that would probably be Wolf or myself, most likely.

“Isn’t the sunshine nice, trickster?”

I turned my eyes away from the System windows to see the dazzling smile on the elf’s face. Her hair was bright, radiating light under the glow of the sun upon it—hurting my eyes slightly. She was right, though. What I wouldn’t give to see some clear running water.

“Would you like to live out in the forest when this is all done?” I asked.

“More than anything.” She looped her arm around mine. “Somewhere like the cottage would be a dream.”

I tried to imagine a life without conflict or the need to grind. Just Ren and I out in the middle of nowhere, peaceful and with time to decompress from our adventures. Despite me believing the end was just around a corner or two, that kind of life felt miles away. Unrealistic, somehow.

“I’ll do everything in my power to make it happen,” I promised her. It was also a promise to myself. “I will also need some time to see what I actually have to do to run hell.”

Quinn interjected from just outside our conversational bubble. “So you’re actually the king, then? Is it like a Guardian’s power?”

While we were slightly outside the prying ears of the other two groups, I caught the other two members of our Party up fully. Everything to do with my apparent ascension and the new abilities I had gained on our accidental jump to max level.

“So, could you make a portal from hell to the city?” Tanya eventually asked.

I shook my head slowly. “No, I don’t think… I am pretty sure that I could only come here because you two were already present. A Party thing.”

“So if one of us got caught and imprisoned,” Ren said, “you could teleport in and free us. Stage our rebellion from the jail cells.”

“Yes.” I tilted my head. “Although, it is unlikely they are interested in taking prisoners at this stage.”

Their actual motivations were slightly murky, but the fact that Ren and I were still alive and breathing was probably the biggest sore spot the Lady had. If she had a way to try to kill us, she wouldn’t hesitate. Every attempt so far had failed, and while they…

I paused, and Ren stopped beside me.

“Something wrong, trickster?”

“Hmm. Just a couple my brain cells collided.” I gestured forward, where we were approaching the town. “A little while ago—I forget how time works—we told the Lady we were going to meet the Eternal Wardens as a distraction.”

She wrinkled up her nose. “And now they’re all dead or disappeared.”

Got it in one. The Wardens were the only other known Guild or group still standing against the Crimson Shadow. If they had been erased so simply because we had put the crosshairs on them, then… I didn’t really know.

I didn’t feel bad about it, which might partly be due to our recent vacation. Not that I wanted more corpses instead of allies, but the group had hardly been helpful to us. Instead of filling my head with useful information, they had tried to drag me along to no doubt run errand side quests to unlock the stupid fucking lore to understand this goddamned bullshit that-

Ren placed her hand on my arm, and her icy blue eyes cooled my fever off immediately.

“Thank you, moonflower.” I shook my head, and my usual show-smile returned to my face.

“Residual corruption, right?” She gave me a gentle pull, and we set off to catch the others back up. “I feel it sometimes. It’s like a wave of nausea, but for mental breakdowns.”

“Yeah. You’ve seemed normal, however?”

She raised her eyebrow and gave me a wink. “I’ve had to put up with you for weeks. Do you think some droll hellish energy is going to affect me?”

Her smirk gave it away, however. No doubt it was part of her holy side that allowed her to heal through or otherwise negate the mind-bending draw of corruption aftershocks. Despite being king of hell and having immunity to it, my soul had suffered enough prior to that. I had put on a brave face, but I was nearing death in that last week. If only everything healed as quickly as my actual health.

The other three members of our Party had stopped a little further ahead, although it didn’t look to be just because they were waiting for us to catch up. Ren and I exchanged a glance as we made our way over, the body language of the human pair enough to get our backs up.

Overhead, the tree cover started to peter out, showing us a decent amount of clouds making their way through an otherwise sunny day. The reason for the dwindling cover was apparent as we joined the others at this brief apex of a hill. Down below us, the road then dipped and curved down to the town.

And it looked deserted. The buildings—at least from this distance—seemed undamaged. There were certainly no smoldering wreckages, or piles of debris to set the stage for whatever story had transpired here. Zero signs of life whatsoever. Not even an idle System-created civilian.

My scouring glance twisted away from this potential tomb of the Eternal Wardens, however, as I clocked that the group wasn’t even looking down to the left. Instead, they were tense and gazing to the right. To the north.

And as I turned, I saw why.

From this vantage point, we could see across a great deal of the second area in that direction. Mostly trees, as expected—but the thing that had my heart racing was the odd hue painting the horizon and landscape far off. A deep red glow marred the sky at that very specific location for maybe a mile or so wide. It reminded me of hell.

That was Candlekeep, or whatever the Lady had done to it.