Against his expectations he actually had quite a smooth experience. He still had to prick himself on the circle and wait a few minutes to get out, though.

At least there was no more drugging; they just sent him on his way without so much as a sideways glance.

The first thing he did was walk all the way back to the canteen and grab himself a nice cool drink of water, alongside a small helping of nutrient paste.

Afterwards, he wandered around for a little bit, just taking a gander around the facility. Eventually, he had to stop since he kept getting weird looks and crinkled noses.

Luckily, he managed to find Axel and ask for directions to the showers in time. Unluckily, he had to go all the way back to his room to get a towel and some clothes.

He had no clue at all which room was his, but that didn’t really matter too much since the rooms got shared around a lot.

Taking Axel's word for it since he seemed responsible, Thomel just opened a random door, walked inside, and grabbed some of the plastic-bagged company clothes.

He tried to find a towel as well, but there mustn’t have been one because even after uprooting the entire room and checking all the drawers, he couldn't find one.

He ended up just grabbing a bunch more packaged clothes to use as substitutes for the missing towel.

He felt a bit dumb heading to the showers holding half a dozen clothes, but not a single person he came across cared and, honestly, he didn’t really care either. He regretted not just doing this earlier rather than wasting time trying to find a non-existent object.

Even with Axel's clear directions, Thomel had a bit of difficulty finding the shower room, and when he did find it and stumbled inside, the water pressure was uncomfortably low. He just dealt with it and cleaned himself up as best as he could.

The feeling of being pure made everything worth it.

Once he was clean, he headed off to one of the random sleeping quarters and hopped onto the bed with glee. He fell asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow.

No dreams disturbed his weary sleep, which made it all the more jarring when he woke up thanks to some indeterminable loud noises. He got the urge to sleep in and, rather than fight it off and push it down like he had done to so many of its predecessors, gave in to its siren call.

He was like a dam and his stress was like water. If he didn’t want to get so full he burst, then he had to manually let out some water every now and then to cause a minor flood.

At least that’s how he justified it to himself as he fell back asleep.

He was woken up again by loud noises, except this time they were somewhat discernable. It sounded like hundreds of people were all jousting against each other.

Letting out a big yawn, he continued to lay in bed until the noise had subsided in volume a great deal, and then he left his room.

There was still a small flood of people going down the stairs but, for the most part, he had succeeded in escaping the rush.

“Hey Thomel, how’d it go?” Marace asked, appearing at his side like an apparition.

Thomel jumped slightly in surprise before responding. “Yeah it went pretty good, definitely the easiest out of the two missions I’ve done so far. That’s what you guys call it, right? Missions?”

“We call it everything, missions, tasks, quotas… Anyway, happy to hear it went well. Yo-” Marace cut himself off with a massive yawn before continuing like nothing happened. “You want to help us out with one of the tasks?”

“Are you sure about that, Marace?

“Oh yeah absolutely, the more people we have the better.”

“Won’t I bring you all down a bit? It would be everyone's first time working with me and that could really mess with the teamwork.”

“Yeah we know, relax, we’ve talked it over and we’ll choose an easier mission. That way we can all get more in tune with each other.”

“Hmm, if you say so Marace.” Thomel replied, unconvinced and a bit baffled.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Yeah I know, just relax and we’ll talk it over during breakfast.”

“How did you all meet up anyway?”

“Axel helped Volly out with something but I don’t remember what, and Volly knew me since we worked together for this fairy thing. So the three of us started doing stuff together and then Cale kind of just joined,” Marace explained.

“Very detailed.”

“It happened a few months ago and I’ve almost died twenty times since then, my bad for not remembering.” He replied, shoving Thomel lightly in the side.

“All is forgiven so long as you can forgive me in the near future for devouring that slop in front of you guys.”

“Yeah sure, but the others won't be so quick to forgive, haven’t seen Volly vomit like that. Ever. And that means a lot. You need to see what she does to literally anything with a pulse.”

“Honestly, I wish it would stay like this forever, I mean I’m saving so much money by just not paying ten credits for a chicken wing.”

“You’ve got to give yourself some joy now and then, food is one of the few you can get in here. Just you wait, you’ll come around.” Marace said, clomping down the stairs.

“True, true, but then again maybe not. Why don’t we just cook up some lizardmen meat or something once we pop over to another world?”

“Uhhhhh… because it would probably taste worse than the food in the cafeteria. Those chicken wings have seasoning and a half on ‘em. Seasoning we can’t buy, plus just general illnesses and stuff. A few people did what you’re suggesting and contracted some kind of parasite from it. No one died or really got hurt, but what if next time it’s a more deadly one?”

“You're telling me that you wouldn’t eat dragonflesh?”

“Well now that’s a bit different. I mean, that’s a dragon. Axel probably wouldn’t like it but yeah in that case I would take a few bites.”

For the rest of the trip, Thomel needled Marace with countless questions about what he would and wouldn’t eat and, before he knew it, he was at the canteen.

Walking into the cafeteria, the duo scanned the place, trying to spot the upright and still figure of Cale, or raggedly red-haired Volly. Axel didn’t have any proper distinguishing features but, as it turned out, that was who they spotted first.

Walking over to grab some slop, Thomel piled it on his plate like it was going out of stock and headed over while Marace was still busy getting what he wanted.

Sitting down in the seat opposite him, Thomel made Axel jolt a bit.

“Sorry.” He said, halfway towards eating the first spoonful of paste.

“My fault, you doing okay?” Axel asked, a warm smile forming on his face.

“Feeling a bit stupid, I didn’t cheap out on the gun or bullets but I did cheap out on water and a few energy bars. Made the whole thing so much more difficult for myself.”

“That’s awful. Was it over fast at least?”

“Not really” Thomel said with a wince, touching the back of his flaming-hot neck.

“Well I’m sorry to hear that, do you want a bit of this chicken?” Axel said sympathetically, gesturing down at his plate and then towards Thomel’s.

“Can’t taste anything so you enjoy it. Why does everyone seem to want to eat the chicken by the way?”

“It’s inexpensive and tastes quite good, the other options are good as well but chicken is just the best bang for your buck.”

Before Thomel got a chance to reply, Axel continued. “By the way, you should probably wear some sunscreen from now on.”

“Sunscreen?”

“Yeah sunscreen, you don’t know what that is?”

“I know what it is, I just sort of forgot it existed.”

“Oh.” Was all Axel said in reply, looking at Thomel with an expression in between sadness and regret.

Thomel was a bit taken aback by such a sorrowful response but then he realised how he must have come off to the empathetic man.

“I didn’t live in one of the smog areas, don’t worry.” He said, but it looked like his words were falling on deaf ears.

Distracted with trying to rectify Axel's misunderstanding, Thomel didn't notice Marace approaching until he was already sitting down at the table.

That seemed to cheer Axel up a bit, and his sad expression was replaced with a slight smirk.

After a brief yawn Marace spread his curse to his two friends, making Thomel and Axel yawn as well.

“So what were you guys talking about?” He asked before stuffing a piece of pumpkin into his mouth.

“Not too much, you got here before we could really get started on a topic.” Thomel answered as he also shovelled a spoonful of food into his mouth.

“Hm, I guess I can pick one then. What did you do before all this Thomel?” Marace questioned, pointing his spoon at Thomel’s chest.