Nothing soured a mood quite like uninvited guests.

As soon as Wolf had made mention of impending visitors, we were all to our feet with weapons drawn. I maxed out the card I was holding and found it interesting that I could see the icons above the rest of the Party to signify that they had the new damage buff from my drained health.

A few moments later, and even I could hear the movements and low voices of those approaching. It would have been a good idea for us to get into some manner of cover or defensive position, rather than standing like statues around the small campfire, but we had not. There was something about the voices that was off… nothing bad - but yes, that was it. Nothing bad.

Ren’s arrow now fully primed and ready. My hand relaxed a little. Not enough to dispel my card that still itched to be released.

Around the corner of a house stepped three figures.

Immediately I recognized them - the other Party who had left the campground the day before. But, not all five of them. No crimson hand-prints on their foreheads.

“Halt lest you perish where you stand,” I said, wanting to get ahead of proceedings.

To their credit, they paused, surprise on their faces. The emotion pushing away what looked like stress and grief. It was the woman with red skin and amber robes, the burly man in black leather armor, and the dwarf with a comically large white beard.

“We’re friendly,” the woman spoke first, raising her empty hands into the air. “You’re not with the Crimson Shadow, are you?”

Ren shot a glance toward me, her bowstring relaxing slightly, but waiting for me to take the lead.

“No, we are not. You left the campground yesterday - why?”

They were on edge. Something had been weighing on them, and they seemed uncomfortable being put under duress. Eventually the woman spoke again.

“We wanted to level up. Fiona kept telling us it would be too dangerous but… well, maybe we should have listened.” Her eyes went to the floor, emotion filling her up.

“You don’t know what happened at the camp last night, then?” Ren asked.

They turned to her, confusion on their faces. Too good to be putting on an act - and I should know about that sort of thing.

I sighed and dispelled my card. “Come, take a seat and we’ll get you up to date. Just be warned… any funny business and you’re dead.”

Despite not looking like they appreciated threats, they did as I asked. Slowly getting out their own chairs, they sat down as a trio on the other side of the fire from the rest of us. Naturally, they looked pensive, but I couldn't exactly blame them. I wouldn't take so easily to threats on my life. We told them about the zombie attack, the fallen party, and Fiona going back to the first area. They reacted with shock, sadness, and at the end, they were genuinely crestfallen.

The woman introduced herself as Leyla. “It seems nothing but turmoil drenches this land. We are just returning from… two of our Party have been captured.”

“Captured,” I asked, “not killed?”

She shook her head and looked at the other two. “We can still send them Chat messages, which means they are alive. But they don’t respond.”

I opened up my Map as she spoke. We weren’t near where the necromancer’s group was meant to be.

Quinn crossed his arms. “And you couldn’t get them back, even at the cost of your own lives?”

“They’re being held in a fort,” the dwarf, named Urist, said. “It was supposed to be a System-created place, but Crimson assholes have done something to it.”

“Corrupted the guards there, made it their own,” the man said, a wide-eyed stare not really focused on anything. His name was Yuri, and seemed have taken the whole event harder than the other two.

If anything, it caused a thrumming in my head. I was too far gone to play hero… but erasing the gang was my calling. Further from the Dungeon and supposed 'easy' level up. Yet, the System had just given me a cannon. How fortuitous that a fortress needed assailing now. Too convenient.

“What was your plan now, then?” I asked the question to slightly delay the inevitable. That I’d have to ask my troupe what they wanted to do.

Leyla exhaled. “We’d hope to go the easier route near the coast back to town and rouse up some help from the camp.”

I managed to stop myself from laughing. “Really? Perhaps you fell into luck by running into us instead.” My jaw worked as I raised an eyebrow in question to my fellow Party members.

Wolf shrugged, content enough to get to fight and chew through things.

Quinn gave me a nod, a valiant Quest if ever there was one, something up his street.

Ren was apprehensive and took a moment to consider it before giving me the nod, too.

Stolen story; please report.

I turned to the gathered three and gave a soft smile. “We will help you reclaim your friends. Send me the location, but we need to eat before we go.” Wasn’t about to die on an empty stomach, and Wolf might actually eat me if we didn’t start shoveling food into him. He’d been very patient.

Although the gathered three didn’t seem super comfortable sitting idle while we ate, when their alternative was going to be being turned away by Fiona, a handful of minutes wasn’t the end of the world. Might be the end of their friend’s lives, but if it was at that stage, then we couldn’t really be blamed.

“You want coffee, Max?” Ren withdrew the kettle into her hand, not even needing to wait for my response.

“Please,” I replied, as she was already hanging it over the campfire.

“Quinn?”

He shook his head. “My thanks, but I will have to decline.”

I narrowed my eyes slightly at him. Not that avoiding caffeine was a particularly heinous crime—not until I became king—but he seemed cagey around our new associates. Whether that was just pragmatic caution, or he sensed something untoward, I didn’t know. In fact… I wanted to find out.

[Max: Getting a bad feeling?]

I watched as his eye went to his intangible screen, then to me, before back to the screen. Although they couldn’t hear the notification, if they had their wits about them, he probably made it obvious what we were doing.

[Quinn: just caution^]

[Quinn: we’ve had a lot of… eventful meetings lately^]

[Max: Agreed.]

As much as I wanted to ask him why he ended his sentences with an up-arrow, I decided it was more fun not knowing. Wasn’t even going to make a guess at it - and it was just the two lines, so might not even be a trend.

He was also right, comparatively. He had spent some time hiding away before being kidnapped, and then it was all downhill from there. Fighting against zombies and Players alike, and now the prospect of taking down a fortress just for some people we barely had a passing acquaintance with.

Almost talked myself out of it there.

Certainly, with the campground group now in shambles, things looked pretty dry here. If not us, then who else? There must be plenty of other Parties that hadn’t been corrupted, but we just hadn’t met them yet. Would they be useful to our cause? I sure hoped so.

I turned in my seat to face the patient trio. “Roughly what kind of classes are you three?”

“Ice wizard,” the woman said, despite being red and orange all over.

The man was a type of thief and the dwarf was a cleric. Their class composition gave me some things to think over once we got moving, but all of that was drowned out but a question I just couldn’t shake from my brain.

What could I fire out of my cannon?

Ren stood before me and handed over the steaming mug. “Everything okay, trickster? You look… antsy?”

"Yeah.” I nodded. “I just have this big cannon and I don’t want to get it out in front of anyone just yet.”

She paused to stare blankly at me for a couple of seconds before sitting down on her own chair. It wasn’t that I was shy, of course, but it would take some lustre out of the surprise if everyone got to see it in action before I was ready to use it. I furrowed my brow at my coffee while my mind clicked around.

Atmosphere around the camp was tense and quiet. We ate, which was nice. I felt reinvigorated after such a odd morning and fueled for what was probably going to be an even odder afternoon. Everything was packed away in short order, and we gathered to set off.

“So, what can you tell us about the fort, Leyla?” I asked.

“It’s a reasonably tall stone outpost, probably used during a time the Crown was at war?” She pulled a face. “Or designed to look that way.”

“Three floors? Square shape?”

“Square, sure. Raised with a short staircase up to the entrance door. Four floors, if you include the top battlements. And there’s a ten or so foot wall that goes around the area - squarish as well.”

I nodded. “And all the System-created there are now hostile to any non-Shadow?”

“Yeah.”

Ren beside me, we exchanged a glance. The ramshackle building defending the bridge was easy enough to assail due to it being flammable. I could drop myself atop the battlements of the stone fortress, but it probably wouldn’t give me much advantage - unless the Player controlling it happened to be standing at the apex unguarded.

Given how brainless many of them seemed to be, that was likely.

I had nothing in my Inventory with the right shape or density to be a cannonball stand-in. The question would be on how it decided to engage with real world physics, and if I could fire smaller objects without losing most of the force from the… demonic gunpowder? I supposed that if it worked in demon ways, then it should let me.

So eager I was to try.

“Can’t break through stone walls,” Wolf grumbled from ahead of us.

“They have a gate?” I asked.

“No, just an opening in the walls near the front. It’s guarded by plenty of System-created, however.” She sighed.

Ren rubbed at her forehead. “Enough to be a problem?”

“Not on their own,” Leyla replied. “A good team could slowly work through them. It’s the addition of the Players that makes it impossible.”

It wouldn’t be fair to say that the System-created were two dimensional… although fairness didn’t really come into it given what they were. But, they were basic. You’d could almost guarantee what path they’d choose or how they’d react to you. Being smart and patient could get you through any such problem. Players were not only a lot more powerful, but had the advantage of a fully functional mind - even if they didn’t use it.

“We were fighting through, thinking it was just a normal Quest, up until we got inside the main fort building,” the dwarf spoke up. “Some manner of blast sent us back out the door as the other two were caught up by a trap set.”

“Then a barrier went over the door, and we couldn’t get back through,” Leyla added.

The Crimson hadn’t killed the pair; they were sure of it. So what purpose did they have for keeping them alive? At first, converting them forcefully sounded like the most obvious answer - but so far we were pretty sure that everyone had willingly joined up, at first. If not that, then what? Ransom? Something much fouler?

Either way, it soured my mood. Pleasant weather and pleasanter company excluded. I felt worn thin. While having the good times made up for the bad, moving back and forth had me tired of the process.

The truth was, I wanted to wage a war.

Pick the land clean of the Lady’s influence, without rest or remorse. Just keep at it until it was done. Then whatever ruins remained could be paradise for all of us. Especially Ren and I.

Trouble was, I had learned from past mistakes. The magician burned out on his day job but unable to quit had been buried long ago. Perhaps one of the head injuries had helped things move along, right next to the corrective glares of the elf. Burning out on wanton destruction would be swinging the dial in the opposite direction.

The show must go on, but that just meant abiding by the rules. We needed the downtime between sets and a break from the limelight to work on ourselves. It’s what made it survivable in the long term.

Now look at the troupe I had gathered. Oh. There was the energy coming back… we were about to put on a great show - I could feel it humming through my bones. The four of us, plus some extras, could put everything we’d learned lately into practice.

In no time at all, we’d be killing it.