“Well, that’s not good.” Naea muttered, her words sounding like a question more than a statement. I wasn’t sure myself, to be honest. There was a fairly clear fracturing in the party down below, and this was literally the first combat since the dungeon. It was possible the pressure of the magical prison was the only thing keeping them together. Although…

“Actually, I’m going to see it as a positive.” I shrugged and dropped down in front of Aaron. He was making to follow Tom and there was no need for that. The mage just needed to clear his head, and Aaron was a prick. Having met them all as a group, I could easily say he was my least liked of the bunch. Despite my general disdain, he was still useful and had been able to grasp the edges of his Dao.

I threw him a wink as I shook my head towards the mess the group had made, throwing off his anger, still bubbling from his interaction with the mage. He hadn’t really done anything wrong, though I sided with Tom’s sensibilities when it came to brutality. It wasn’t Aaron’s fault that Luke and Tom had been having a bit of a moment themselves. Unlike the other three, the archer and the mage seemed to be getting hit with something I was calling real-world vertigo.

It was something I had been feeling myself. Since the first moment of the Shift, I had been thrown into chaos. The dungeon which I had left felt like it would be my entire life, though in actuality, it had been less than six weeks. Coming back to the “real world” had its own challenges, one of which was simply believing it was the genuine article. Not recognising any of the local flora, fauna or landmarks didn’t help.

I waved dismissively in the direction Tom had stomped off in. “Let’s just leave Sparkles to his meditations. Congrats! You killed the big beastie. Technically I guess that’s a completed quest from me to you all? That’s a thing guild leaders do, I think.”

“Yup,” Naea confirmed at my side. Since her evolution to Grade One, Naea had become even more confident than ever. I knew that without the connection to the dungeon, she was feeling a little worried about her ability to remain useful. I rejected the idea she had to be useful to be happy but it was good to see she hadn’t lost an inch from her forthright energy.

“See?” I nodded back to Naea in thanks. “Quest rewards and all that.” While I hadn’t received my qualification, I still had the instincts of a psychiatrist. My reaction was impromptu, brought on by the bad energy of the group and the desire to give them back some form of social adhesive. Given that I didn’t actually have a plan in mind when I started speaking, I quickly opened my inventory to see what I could do.

Inventory

Gold Coins (Xaverion Minted) - 5442

Gold Coins (Standard Mint) - 15,423

Storm Arrows

Assorted Earth foods

Guidance Stone Of Breaching

Alternating Armament (Epic)

Various Furniture

Aside from my amazing new weapon, which remained a staff for now, I was kind of flailing for ideas. The Guidance Stone was still calling my name, but I hadn’t had the chance to use it yet. The chairs and stuff I had decided to shove in there from Home Base were hardly appropriate. Not wanting to make it seem especially unplanned, I ran with the first idea that came to mind. Thankfully, the System had my back for once and as the decision to give out some coinage came to mind, a Guild notification pinged into existence.

Guild - Quest Complete

Choose rewards for participants?

Instead of awkwardly producing the fifty coins I arbitrated to each of them as a random number, I just had to think about it with intent and the System did the rest. I knew through the System’s wonderfully intuitive ability to implant memories and understanding that the items I chose would simply appear in their inventories. The group were reacting to their own new notifications - from me - as I pulled out one of the coins.

I had never paid special attention to the currency at my disposal during my stay in the dungeon, mostly because I had bigger things on my mind. I had, of course, inspected both for any discernible markings that could help me but found nothing but general confusion. Each of the four were now looking at a coin of their own with varying levels of wonder.

The standard mint coins had a more simple design than the Xaverion ones. At around an inch across, there was a decent weight to the gold circles. On one side, which I decided was the heads side, a pair of wings lay in front of a staircase. On the reverse, tails side, was a concentric set of six circles. Without anything else to go off, the iconography meant next to nothing.

The Xaverion ones were a little more on the nose, with one side being a literal spiked tail and the other a roaring dragon's head. In mine and everyone’s opinion, they were much cooler, but ultimately they were just a different style of coin for now. Still, they were shiny enough to distract these guys long enough to get them back home. Once everyone had separated, Naea also decided to do something on her own. She clearly had no interest in joining me for this next part.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

She wouldn’t tell me what it was she had planned, which I found both slightly adorable and ever so slightly annoying. It was only a slight bother because I could feel her excitement through our familiar bond. I felt like my brain was being itched from the inside, but it was manageable, mostly due to Naea’s happy eagerness. Her mood was a helpful ballast to the uncomfortable energy I found waiting for me at Tom’s home.

Each of the houses has been personalised somewhat through the use of the Guild and Building tabs. I had the choice of keeping my own control, but that was just about the weirdest idea I could think of, so it was nice to see he had made it his own a little. A set of windchime-like batteries were hanging, collecting ambient mana in the air and funnelling it into the home. I knocked, and there was no answer, so I decided to sit outside.

Within the dungeon, our six homes along with the larger guild hall had made something of a little neighbourhood, which had been transplanted outside. Well kept lawns and defined boundaries against the changing natural world kept the shape of our little slice of this new Earth nicely. In every direction, the new chaotic growth fought for dominance, but stopped where it met the area which was considered under my control. I pondered a few theories on why this might be while I waited for Tom to answer his door.

I could sense him inside, and he had no doubt felt me coming long before I knocked the door. The common courtesy had simply never had the time to fall away, but as I rested on the grass outside Tom’s house, I had discovered a better way to get attention. Every two or three minutes I released a heavy thump of Dao. It was an interesting application, and definitely a part of Naea’s influence on me. It was almost nostalgic, like annoying a sibling.

As much as I would give someone their space when needed, I wouldn’t let Tom brood just for the sake of being upset. “What?” His shout as the door flung open, himself still a few strides behind, made me beam up towards the sky. “What is it, Grant? You can’t leave me alone for five minutes?”

I turned my head towards him slowly, leveraging my calm demeanour and genuine understanding while leaning on the weight of my Dao. I was tempted to police his tone towards me but instead I just let my gaze linger, no words needed. The air all around me calmed down as Tom’s own Dao settled and his expression turned from anger to sadness. I just smiled slightly and gave a small nod. “You’ve got as long as you want,” I smirked, completely strangling my energy and giving the man some silence.

His expression softened even more, until his bottom lip quivered slightly. We were all creatures of a higher nature than humans of the past, yet his knees were shaking the same as they would have three months ago. I silently thanked Tom for his human nature. My heart needed to know that we hadn’t lost it all quite yet. “Was I wrong?” He asked quietly.

“I’ll let you know in five minutes, go make us a drink and take a deep breath.” I simply put my head back down on the grass and looked at the clouds. My senses had all been upgraded massively and there was a new level of breathtaking views available because of it. I watched the frost around a small wisp of white in the sky glitter in the evening sun and a peaceful tranquillity blanketed my thoughts.

Tom joined me within two minutes, a pair of steaming mugs in his hand. He realised belated there was no real place to put them, the area on a slight incline. I chuckled and raised an eyebrow while standing. “You can’t just… make a table or something?” I half-joked, half-suggested. Tom’s own eyes widened, before a line appeared between his eyebrows and his face furrowed.

“I… don’t think so…” Tom’s face was almost horrified and I couldn’t help but laugh. I removed a pair of ornate chairs from a sitting room in my Château along with a bedside table. I pushed them all into the dirt a little before sitting down. Tom looked like he’d been tricked as he realised he was overthinking things. He sat down with a sheepish look on his face. “Oh yeah, the inventories.”

“There should be a few coins in your’s, but they’re not important right now.” I didn’t continue for a while, choosing to take a few sips of my tea first. “It’s weird. This should be way too hot to drink, but I could chug something twice this temperature and come out completely fine.”

Tom blinked, but smiled. “I stubbed my toe earlier when I went into the house and instead of hurting myself, I kicked through the floorboard. Cost me two gold to fix the flooring.” I tried to keep a straight face, but within seconds the two of us were absolutely howling with laughter. We eventually calmed down, but it took not looking at each other for a few minutes to reach normality again. The world had become completely ridiculous. Not laughing at it would be a strange choice, really.

“God, I needed that. Everything has been so fucking serious for the last month and a half.” I sighed, long and deep. I forced myself to think back on the trauma I had faced in the dungeon but even then, the worst of it was locked off even from me. The lives I had been forced to take by the dragon Naeboroseax, then in the form of an old woman, were both blood on my hands and not. I couldn’t forget them, either way.

I took my teacup in hand and raised it high above my head. “To the ones who aren’t here, and the ones we can’t help.” I had not for one moment forgotten the reason the members of The Ascent had come into my dungeon. The fallen brother of Harry, best friend to Tom. “To Jason and the, hopefully, not many others like him.”

Looking slightly touched, Harry raised his cup slightly and nodded. “To the others,” he intoned. His gaze returned to me, confusion on his face. “So? Was I wrong?” I looked at the slightly younger man and did not answer immediately. In his red robes and blue hat, he was not an easy person to take seriously, but I forced myself to. It wasn’t Tom’s fault that his magical items looked a little goofy.

“I can’t say. Not because I don’t have an opinion, but because it doesn’t matter. You didn’t like it, so that’s enough, right? Just don’t work with those guys again if you don’t want to.” When Tom’s confusion only seemed to grow, I continued. “You’re not a married… quintuple, Tom. You don’t owe them anything, and honestly, they’re not that nice to you. My advice would be to find something else, a different path or just another group.”

That quivering lip returned. “Do you-”

I cut that shit out at the bud. “Stop. No, Tom, I’m not saying to leave the guild. You’re a member of The Ascent and while I’m not completely sure what that will mean in the future, for right now it means you have a place. You have a home,” I gestured towards his house, then to myself, “and you have at least two friends. Naea counts, too.”

“Then?”

“I’m saying go exploring, go find other people who you actually like and then invite them to the guild, obviously. I guess you could make your own if you wanted, but if I’m being honest, I’d love to share the burden a little.”

Guild

Create a deputy guild leader?

Yes. Oh, System, I do enjoy you sometimes.

Tom hesitated, just for a moment, before accepting the prompt. I smiled. He smiled. I didn’t have all the answers, not least of all for what comes next, but I was pretty good at dealing with them now. For right now? This was enough. Peace in a garden, talking about magic, thinking about how to save my family from the already ended world.

All completely normal things, these days.