One day, after Chika and Shashu had picked up the last of the six requisite martial arts skills to learn toron-do, I was training them in the dojo courtyard when Arthur and Jane approached me.

“Got a minute, Daniel?” Arthur said.

“Sure,” I said, then turned to my acolytes and told them to spar together for a bit.

“So we’ve been thinking about going after a dungeon and wanted to know what you thought.”

“Which dungeon?” I said.

“The Shadow Dungeon,” Jane said. “In the swamp.”

“Going after the Shadow Demon in the abandoned fortress, huh? That’s a great idea. I’ve been hearing about other teams raiding the dungeons they’ve found, like the Death and Earth Dungeons.”

Arthur quirked his head. “Uh, that’s been going on for a long time.”

“Really?” I said.

“You didn’t know that? Especially after the Light Dungeon announcement, people have been raiding dungeons a lot. Trouble is, they’re friggin hard and so far all anyone’s gotten out of it was their asses kicked.”

“But I’m sure we can beat the Shadow Dungeon,” I said.

“Yeah, about that,” Arthur said, shifting back and forth on his feet. “The thing is, we kind of want to do it ourselves.”

“Meaning...without me?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Let me guess, in case I accidentally did something that makes System give the dungeon to me again?”

“Pretty much,” Arthur said.

Arthur was usually the sort of person who looked you in the eyes when he spoke to you, but right now he was staring at his feet.

“Yeah, sure, go for it,” I said.

“You’re really okay with us doing it without you?” Jane said.

“Of course. It’ll be nice for the elves to have some friendly neighbors on both sides. Chika! No powers, that’s cheating. Sorry about that. Just make sure you or Kenji are there at the end, Jane. You’re the only ones with Shadow as an affinity and dungeons either you need an affinity match to win control or they give titles or other bonus rewards if you have it. I haven’t completely figured out which, but I know that having a matching affinity is a good thing.”

“Thanks for the tip,” Arthur said.

“And put Sam up in the front,” I said. “He’s got Nature and his summoned animals. Both should help against Shadow, and now he’s got his own claws so...sorry. Bad habit. My mind just sort of slips into strategy mode on its own. I’m sure you’ve got all your strategies worked out.”

“No, it’s fine, really,” Arthur said. “I hadn’t even thought about applying his Nature affinity strategically like that, so thank you. I’ll tell Morgan.”

“Why Morgan?”

“Didn’t you know? She’s the strategist.”

“I did not know that,” I said. Arthur gave me a look that I was sure suggested I might have known that if I’d talked to his sister more instead of ghosting her.

“Arthur here’s better at barking orders at people though,” Jane said, ruffling his perfect blonde hair. He accepted the gesture and the backward compliment with a gracious smile.

“I am sure you’ll do great,” I said. “Seriously? Come on Shashu, focus. Stop defaulting to kung fu all the time. We’ve gone over at least four better counters to that move using other styles.”

“Well, you seem busy so I guess we’ll leave you to it,” Arthur said.

“Yeah, no problem,” I said. “And hey, thanks for thinking of my feelings and talking like this. You really didn’t have to but I appreciate it all the same.”

“Of course,” Arthur said. “It was Jane’s idea to come talk to you like this.” I couldn’t miss noticing how he put his hand on the small of her back when he said that.

“When are you planning to give it a go?” I said.

“Not sure,” Arthur said. “We’ve been working on a few formations but we realized after our run through the Light Dungeon with you we’re not quite there yet. We’re going to train some more first so we’ll be ready for anything in the hope we can beat it the first time."

“Best of luck, not that you’ll need it. And hey, when the time comes, use the teleportation circle in town to bop over to the elf village, save yourself half the march.”

“Heh, thanks,” Arthur said. “But we’re planning to use our mounts.”

“You got mounts?” I said. This too was news to me. Just how much was going on that I had no clue about? I needed to fix that.

“Yeah. We all got one. We stable them closer to the gate.”

“Huh. Neat.”

“But we’ll take you up on the permission to cross through the forest.”

“Of course. Any time,” I said.

“Thanks, Daniel,” Arthur said. “You really are a stand-up guy. Jane, shall we?”

“I’ll see you in a bit, Arthur,” Jane said.

He looked at her, then looked at me, then nodded and started walking away. Jane stayed behind with me.

“You sure you’re okay with being left out?” she said.

“It’s fine,” I said.

“That’s exactly what people say when it’s not fine.”

“This time fine is fine. Honest.”

“Okay,” Jane said. She lingered for a moment, apparently not sure what else to say, then followed after Arthur.

I was lying to her, of course. I totally wanted to go with them and it hurt like hell to be excluded.

But it was fine. They really didn’t need me anyway. It was good that they were getting stronger without me. It was fine.

Yeah, I lied to myself too. Another bad habit.

I was just packing up after the toron-do training session, still smarting from my conversation with Arthur and Jane and eager to get away, when Andy burst in and announced that I was not going back to the elf village that night.

We were going to have a boys night out instead.

I tried to make excuses to decline but Andy wouldn't hear any of them. "Whatever anyone else says," Andy said, "as far as I'm concerned you're one of us. You are coming out with us tonight and that's final."

And that’s how I found myself out at a strange pub with Andy, Sam, Byron, Wayne, Bruce, Arthur, Lancelot, and Galahad. Kenji stayed home, for obvious reasons. The rare occasions I’d gone out with the gang it had been to their usual haunt, the Dragon Pub not far from the dojo. I expected that’s where we’d be going, but Andy had insisted we go somewhere livelier and dragged us to a bar off the town square. It was a much bigger place, and a much busier one too, filled with a curious assortment of people.

Team Maple Leaf and the Round Table had more or less claimed the Dragon Pub as their turf, so it was unusual to see very many other Players there. But this new bar was a no man’s land and I found myself surrounded by a wide variety of NPCs and Players, including lots from other teams. Andy and the guys seemed to know them all through their various team versus team quests, but they didn’t seem to be all that friendly with any of them.

We were lucky and managed to grab a table large enough to accommodate us all. The drinking started immediately. Andy took the lead, dropping a handful of gold onto a passing server’s tray and telling them to keep the drinks coming. After that tray had returned a few times heavily ladened with mugs full of beer, we must’ve triggered some efficiency protocol and pitchers started arriving instead. I’d planned on going easy, but Andy was very sly about refilling my glass so every time I reached for it I found it was full again, and I quickly lost track of exactly how much I’d had to drink.

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After a while, I felt a hand clap me familiarly on the shoulder. “Daniel! Great to see you, pal. How’s the extermination business these days?”

I looked up to see Achmed, leader of Team Legion, grinning down at me. “Nice to see you too, Achmed.” I saw several of the guys from his team with him, and greeted them too. We exchanged pleasantries for a minute, then the Legionnaires wandered off to find a table for themselves.

“What’s with this extermination business?” Andy said. “You know them?”

“Yeah, I helped them out with a quest a while back. Had to fend off a bunch of giant ants.”

“We had a few of those types of quests too,” Bruce said. “Troublesome.”

I hadn’t told anybody about my visit from Ruka, so I didn’t mention that there shouldn’t be any more of those monster invasion-type quests. None that came through the hexes I controlled, anyway.

“They’re good guys,” I said.

“Yeah. We faced them in a few quests,” Wayne said.

“Are they still doing the thing where they shout the name of their powers?” Bruce said.

I smiled at the memory. “Yup.”

It was a strange feeling, being surrounded by all the testosterone. I’d never really hung out with guys all that much, here or back on Earth. For whatever reason, I always seemed to gravitate toward the platonic company of women. After a while, I started to remember what that reason was.

“Oh man,” Bruce said, “she looks so good in that armor.”

“I know, right?” Andy said, topping up everyone’s glasses then motioning to the servers for another pitcher. “So fucking sexy.”

“It’s the wings that really do it for me,” Bruce said.

“Her everything does it for me,” Andy countered.

“Every woman’s everything does it for you, Andy,” Wayne said.

“Guilty as charged.”

That kind of locker talk made me uncomfortable. It went on for a while and nobody was safe from the lecherous evaluations. Pretty much every woman we knew became the topic of conversation. Well, everyone except Nina. Byron was there, after all. Some lines cannot be crossed. But that didn’t stop Byron from being actively involved in the conversation.

“So, Arthur,” Byron drawled at one point. “What’s going on with you and Jane?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Arthur said.

“I dunno, man,” Andy piped in. “That strange little grin of yours says otherwise.”

“You guys haven’t exactly been hiding how much you’re together these days,” Bruce said.

Arthur chuckled, casting his gaze downward evasively. He really was a handsome guy. And smart. And dependable. A real alpha type. The Man.

“That’s because there’s nothing to hide,” Arthur said.

“Suuuuure,” Byron said. “Cheers,” he added as Andy topped up his glass.

Arthur looked up. “I’m starting to regret agreeing to Nina’s request to make sure you’re not — how did she put it? — a sloppy mess when you get home, Byron.”

Byron peered at Arthur over the rim of his glass as he took a deep swig. “What, this? Pfffft. I can hold my drinkies.”

We all had to smile at that because we all knew better. Byron enjoyed beer more than any of us, but it also hit him faster than anyone. The very fact that he used a word like drinkies told me he was already on his way. Thankfully he wasn’t a bad drunk.

“All the same, try to slow it down, huh? I don’t want Nina to get angry with me too.” The slight emphasis on the last word did the trick. Byron wasn’t yet drunk enough to miss the implication that his wife would be angry with him if he didn’t pace himself better. He put down the beer and asked a passing server for a glass of water.

I picked up my own beer and chugged back a big gulp after catching a snippet of conversation from another table nearby.

“Look, there,” a male voice said. “It’s him. Elf dude.”

I’d chosen to come out without a disguise. Bad choice.

“He doesn’t look like all that,” a female voice said. “Why’s he with those Team Maple Leaf guys?”

“I heard he was their team builder but they kicked him out.”

“Figures. Bet he’s a real asshole.”

I glanced around the table. Nobody else seemed to have heard it. Then again, Kenji was the only other person in the gang who had super hearing. The only reason I had it was because I’d copied his ability and synthesized it with some other physical enhancements, otherwise I wouldn’t have heard it myself.

The guys were all busy with their own conversations. Byron was chugging water while listening to Lancelot and Galahad tell stories about their experiences in professional eSports. Meanwhile, Bruce was harassing Arthur about Jane, and I do mean harassing. Arthur was taking it all in stride, doing his best to deflect where he could and ignore where he couldn’t, but I felt Bruce was going a bit far. Some of the things he was saying about Jane were kind of inappropriate. For some reason, I was more annoyed with Arthur for not shutting it down than with Bruce for saying it in the first place.

I decided to change Bruce’s course.

“So what kind of woman are you into, Bruce?”

He leaned back in his chair. “If history is any indication, I seem to like petite women. That’s what my wife was.”

“Was?”

“Apparently her type isn’t prematurely balding overweight nerds,” Bruce said. “We got married young, and I guess she decided the man I became wasn’t what she’d signed up for.”

“That sucks, man,” Andy said.

“Yeah, sorry to hear that,” Arthur said.

“Any kids?” I said.

“One boy,” Bruce said. “He’s six and lives with his mom most of the time.”

“That’s rough,” Wayne said. “It must be hard being so far away from him now.”

“We’ve all got people back home we were torn away from,” Bruce said, running his finger around the rim of his glass. “I’m no different.”

I’d wanted to redirect the conversation, but it took an unexpected turn toward melancholy. If Jane or Sigrid were there they’d have been able to steer it properly, they have the social skills I clearly lacked.

I guess Arthur had the same idea, because just as Byron was about to take another drink he said, “You’ve never mentioned any kids, Byron.”

Byron lowered his glass. “That’s because we don’t have any, but not for lack of trying.”

“Oh,” Arthur said. “Sorry.”

“It is what it is,” Byron said, then winked. “We haven’t stopped trying, though. We give it a go nearly every day.”

“TMI, man,” Bruce said.

After that, the conversation flowed in a less personal, more positive direction. Byron and I ended up nerding out on artifice, and when I finally emerged from that I noticed that Sam and Andy had left the table.

I saw Sam sitting at the bar. He preferred liquor over beer so I thought he might only be there to get another drink, but he had a full cocktail in his hand and showed no sign of coming back. Then I saw one of the guys from Team Legion sitting next to him and the way he and Sam leaned in toward each other, and I got it.

As for Andy, I finally spotted him sitting at another table with four women. All Shall Be Revealed showed that they were all unaffiliated Players. He sat there with two women on either side hanging off his every word, looking very much like he was working at a host club. I wouldn’t say they were fawning over him, but he had certainly captivated their attention.

I don’t know why it surprised me. It hadn’t taken Sigrid long to enjoy his company in bed, and she could probably have anybody she wanted. He was kind of like the male version of her, outgoing and friendly with a physical presence that was hard to ignore. It would make sense that he was popular with women, and it was no secret how much he liked their company.

I had a hunch Sigrid would feel relieved to see him like this. She hadn’t complained about Andy being needy in a while, so I assumed that business had sorted itself out and this was Andy moving on.

Andy noticed me looking at him and gave me a wink before opening his mouth to accept a morsel of food that one of the women was trying to feed him. I turned my attention back to my own table, where Bruce was trying to wheedle out of Arthur if Jane’s red hair was natural and if the carpet matched the drapes. Arthur laughed it off.

Fighting several competing urges, all of which would only have gotten me into trouble, I chose the least harmful one and drained my glass, then reached for a pitcher and topped it up again.

From this point on, my memory of things started getting a bit hazy, and after another glass or two I have no recollection whatsoever of what happened that night. Everything I know about the events that followed were cobbled together from complete hearsay so it must all be taken with more than a few grains of salt.

Here are the facts.

I woke up in a strange bed. It was soft, but smelled of stale wine and cheap perfume. My head ached like a son of a gun and my stomach felt like someone had squashed it in a steam press overnight. When I opened my eyes, I saw a woman in the room with me, sitting at a mirror with her back to me, applying makeup. She was older, maybe in her forties if I had to guess, wearing a lush dressing gown. In the vernacular, she was what Andy would’ve called a MILF. I saw her eyes flicker in the mirror’s reflection. She must’ve seen me rouse.

“Good morning, hun,” she said. “How are you feeling?”

I opened my mouth to speak but found my lips sticking together. It was like a fuzzy caterpillar had absorbed all the moisture in my mouth then died on my tongue during the night.

“Like complete crap.”

She laughed. “Sorry to say I’m not surprised.”

I peered around the room. It was tidy, but tackily decorated with lots of nick-nacks, gold accents, and frilly things. “Uh, I don’t mean to sound rude, but who are you and where am I?”

“It’s quite alright. I’m also not surprised you don’t remember much. You were pretty far gone last night. My name is Madame Devorah and you’re in my room at the Gentlemen’s Club.”

“Wait, what? Gentlemen’s Club? Isn’t that a...”

Madame Devorah Prostitute Skills:

Gossip - Expert

Karate - Adept

Leadership - Adept

Management - Adept

Seduction - Expert

Yeah. I woke up in a brothel.

What the hell happened last night?