Sofiane gasped. It’d been a long time since he was last pulled from the dark. He died a few times earlier on while he was getting his footing, but his last death was two years ago. It was not a pleasant experience at the best of times, but being hunted by his former teammates who just nuked him to death did not improve the occasion. The one up-side, he thought as he stared out at the dark beach in front of him, was that Xiuquan’s sword came with him.

He needed to thank Koyon for that. That little shit came up with a better escape plan than Sofiane could have, even if he didn’t mean to. And since Sofiane had “equipped” Xiuquan’s sword before being killed, it was his now.

Sofiane grinned and swished it around a bit. It was a little heavy and cumbersome, and the stats weren’t a 1:1 fit for him (+20% Wood Elemental damage was not optimal), but it was a Tier-5 weapon on par with his ex-rapier and, even better, it meant Xiuquan was either unarmed, or running around with Sofiane’s dinky katana.

The next order of business was finding the others. Having all died in the same spot thanks to Mr. “Fuck it, nuke ‘em,” his and Harald’s team—sans Margaret—ought to be somewhere along the beach he was standing on. Resummoning was kind of a crapshoot, but they’d all be on the main Shikijiman island. Glancing at the dense jungle that started right where the beach ended, he supposed they were all probably smart enough to head for the beach.

Sofiane picked a direction and walked. It was still dark out, but with Xiuquan’s weapon in hand, he was reasonably confident he was the most dangerous person on the island, unless Yuna had come after them too.

The first person he came across was Faisal sitting on a rock.

“Bonjour,” sofiane called out.

Even in the dark, he could tell Faisal was giving him a leery glance.

“Good morning to you too. I guess we must have lost then?” Faisal asked.

“No. Or, yes. Well… we lost in the best way we could, which was to have Koyon get impatient and kill everyone so they weren’t able to nab Shui and firecrotch.”

Faisal raised an eyebrow.

“Natsuko,” Sofiane explained.

“Ah. A little rude to call your teammate, no?”

“Eye for an eye. She’s the rudest of all.”

“Hmm. You all work well together so who am I to judge?”

Sofiane blinked. In a weird way, Faisal was right. Things had worked on Xiuquan’s team too, but whenever they didn’t go exactly as planned, everything fell apart. It was why their tactics were so rigid: Xiuquan dealt damage, Koyon defended, Gula healed, Baran controlled the fight. But despite Shui, Pech, and Natsu being some of the weakest Heroes in Po-Lin, Sofiane had more confidence in their ability to keep up when things went to shit. They would’ve made a great team if the other three didn’t have intrinsically shitty stats.

“Shall we go find the others?” Sofiane asked, offering his hand to Faisal who pulled himself off the rock with it.

“I suppose so,” Faisal replied.

“So, what’s your personality trait?” Sofiane asked as they walked.

Faisal pointed at himself. “Me? Oh, a rather tragic one. I am the straight man.”

All of the Heroes got one or two essential personality traits they were encouraged to play into. The foundation of their archetype, more or less. Sofiane’s traits were hyper-sensitivity (which wasn’t faked) and touchiness about his femininity (which was). It was only ever one or two because the fear was that too many would confuse the celestials and Heroes would start to run together. Better to have two or three Heroes with the same, easily-identifiable traits than 100 with a realistic slurry of complexity. Plus, it was easier to remember how to behave.

“Ah. Sorry about that,” Sofiane said. “You don’t have any zany back-up traits from your backstory?”

“I pathologically insist people try my spicy food,” Faisal replied.

“Gods, the Yishang did you dirty.”

Faisal shrugged. “Even if my archetype wasn’t terrible, the stats would’ve gotten me eventually.”

In short order they found Shuixing stumbling around blindly in the sand looking for her glasses in what would have been a perfect archetype-building exercise were it not for the fact that she actually had lost her glasses and was desperately trying to find them. While Sofiane and Faisal helped her, Harald, Pechorin, and the raccoon girl came down the beach from the other direction.

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“So that’s your name, huh?” Pechorin said.

“Yes. It’s pretty embarrassing,” the raccoon girl replied.

“I think it’s fine,” Harald said.

“Yeah, because you don’t know what it means in Shikijiman! It translates to— oh, there they are,” the raccoon girl said.

Three more people joined the hunt for Shui’s glasses and eventually spotted the crab scuttling away with them. Harald grabbed it, handed the glasses back to Shuixing, and then stuck the crab into his pocket for “future ingredients.” No one batted an eye at this because crabs were good ingredients.

Shuixing adjusted the sandy glasses on her face. “So that leaves…”

The dark of the early morning was split by a plume of fire erupting from somewhere in the jungle. Roaring wind rushed through the trees. Apparently Baran had found her first.

“Let’s go rescue her before Baran’s teammates find them,” Sofiane said.

“Or anyone else,” Harald added.

The thought chilled Sofiane. He’d been so caught up in the fighting he’d forgotten that while Xiuquan’s team might have been the first—second, if you counted Harald’s team—to find them, they were hardly going to be the last. Hiding in the jungle hadn’t worked out so well.

The six of them ran towards the spewing columns of fire to find Baran being chased around by a maniacally laughing red gremlin

“Not so tough now, are ya!? Your stats don’t mean shit now boy!” Natsuko screamed, whirling Baran’s hourglass-rod around over her head. Apparently, she had lived long enough to learn Sofiane’s weapon-stealing trick before getting nuked into oblivion.

Baran himself was scrambling through the underbrush and getting tangled in vines. His defense and HP were high enough that Natsuko didn’t present a serious threat of killing him again, but getting scorched still wasn’t fun.

“Natsu, quit it! You’re telling everyone in a five kilometer radius where we are!” Sofiane said.

“No Heroes, just monsters,” the raccoon girl corrected.

“Oh, so we have time to wipe him out again,” Sofiane said.

Baran wheezed and continued scampering away. Natsuko might not be able to kill him, but armed with Xiuquan’s sword, Sofiane definitely could.

Sofiane aimed a Coup De Grace at Natsuko. “On my mark, Natsu, swap yourself with him.”

“Wait! I surrender!” Baran yelled.

Sofiane dropped the ability and Baran emerged from the undergrowth covered in vegetation with his arms over his head. His eyes remained fixed on Natsuko who was brimming with years of cathartic smugness at getting to torment someone with a high Use-Ranking. The thought made Sofiane check his own and was pleasantly surprised that the Use-Number hemorrhage had slowed somewhat. Probably since it was a Sunday and the new emanation generated for him had the outfit Master Sima made for the card tournament on it.

“Well? What do you have to say for yourself?” Natsuko said.

“Nothing, you homicidal maniac, what do you have to say?!” Baran replied.

Natsuko smacked him in the stomach with his own rod, but the difference in their stats, along with the fact that Natsuko couldn’t equip rods, made it so Baran barely even felt it. Perturbed by the lack of reaction, Natsuko queued up another Fire Gale.

“Stop it, Natsu. We need to get information from him,” Shuixing said, bringing her friend’s arms down.to her sides.

“Fine. But I get to burn him when we’re done.”

Baran brought his arms down and folded them. “What could I possibly have to tell you that you don’t already know? We were hunting the people that killed Shrike—” he eyed Natsuko and Shuixing, “—and happened to have a head start over the other groups. That’s the short and long of it.”

“How much of a head start?” Shuixing asked.

“And how did you get it?” Pechorin added.

Baran pointed at Harald. “Because those clowns kept yammering to everyone who would listen about Natsuko’s special bottle, so we figured they would lead us right to you since they’d been on your tail for longer. Which reminds me, where is that bottle?”

“You don’t need to know,” Shuixing said at the same time as Pechorin said, “I broke it.”

Baran squinted. “You what? It’s a prop. They don’t break. Don’t try to bullshit me you edgy bastard.”

Sofiane stomped on Pechorin’s foot. “That’s right, Pech, treat my former teammate with more respect than that. I didn’t fall in with a bunch of idiots, after all.”

“Jury’s still out on that one,” the raccoon girl muttered.

“Okay, so you found us because of Harald and them,” Shuixing said. “But I repeat my first question. How much of a head start?”

Baran frowned. “I say this not to help you, but to screw over the other people trying to get the reward: Everyone else is about a day behind us. By afternoon tomorrow— er, today, Shikijima is going to be swarming with Heroes on the hunt for those two.”

The windy silence that followed was so chilling it made Pechorin want to compose a poem, but he decided it was probably better not to in this instance.

Natsuko scoffed. “I’m sorry, reward? What reward? Did Yuna put a bounty on us?”

Baran shook his head. “No, the Yishang did. Do you all really not know? I guess not if you haven’t encountered any Pengwu…”

Or if the Pengwu hadn’t felt like telling them anything useful, Sofiane thought.

“The Yishang are offering a permanent stat increase to the team that finds and brings in the people that dimension-jumped Frederick and Shrike,” Baran said. “And the implication is that the stat increase comes with a spot in the Top 10.”