“Why are you in such a hurry?” asked Kelima. “And why didn’t you want me to talk to the guild master? Do you know what a wasted opportunity that was?”

“I’m in a hurry because I’m smart. As for that guild master, I don’t know who he actually is, but I do know that we want to avoid annoying him.”

“Since when do you care about annoying people.”

“Since I’m pretty sure that man could kill me.”

Terry took a few more steps before he realized that Kelima had stopped walking. He looked back at her, only to find her staring at him. Except, it wasn’t her usual stare, which was typically composed of three parts bafflement to six parts infuriation. At that moment, she was staring like he’d suddenly become the lead in some artsy foreign film made in a language she didn’t speak and, for reasons known only to God and the film’s director, there were no subtitles available.

“What?” he asked, hoping to move that day’s shitshow along as quickly as possible.

“He could kill you? You, the rank two adventurer who seems to take a grotesque satisfaction in pissing off hugely powerful organizations and everyone with a title? You think he could kill you?”

Terry gave that a two-count before he said, “Yup. Kill me dead. Deader than dead. Super dead. The deadest anyone has ever been deaded. Now, I’ve answered your question. Let’s go!”

He turned on his heel and started walking toward the wall, if not exactly toward a gate. Kelima caught up with him and he could just tell from the look on the teenager’s face that she wasn’t done asking him stupid questions. No, they’re not stupid questions. They’re just stupid-to-be-asking-right-now questions. I think those are different. Not that making that distinction made him any happier about the word bullets she was about to start firing into his taxed patience and questionably stable sanity subroutine.

“How could you tell? I didn’t get that sense from him.”

“You just can,” said Terry, unable to come up with anything better. “Maybe it happens when you get to a higher rank. Maybe I’ve just had enough awful things and people try to murder me in this terrible, horrible place you call home that I’ve developed a sixth sense for it. All I know for sure is that he’s powerful. Scary powerful. I-don’t-want-to-fight-him powerful.”

“It’s not that bad here,” said Kelima.

Terry tried to think of a better word than huffy to describe her tone, but he couldn’t. She was just being huffy. He tried to see it from her perspective. He really did. He spent five, maybe even ten complete seconds trying to put himself into her shoes. Then, he responded.

“You have to be shitting me. Do you not recall how many things I had to kill just to get us here? And that’s not even counting the church dumbass who challenged me to a duel. Or all his minions. Any of whom would have been happy to put a crossbow bolt through my eye.”

“Please don’t say and then there’s the nobles.”

“And then there’s the nobles,” said Terry with faux-cheer. “Every goddamn time I turn around, some noble is trying to make me do things I don’t want to do. Given all those city guards, I’m pretty confident there’s one in this very city looking to force me into some stupid plan. Not a plan to help the people living here. God knows we can’t have that. No, it’s practically guaranteed to be a plan that will end with them becoming a bigger and even more colossally entitled asshole than they already are.”

“Okay. I understand. This world has not been very kind to you, but it’s not some literal level of hell the way you make it out to be. Not everyone has your experience. People live long, happy, productive lives here. Lots of them.”

“Oh really?” asked Terry, not even trying to hide his skepticism. “And just how many of these long-lived, happy, productive people have you ever had a conversation with?”

“Um, that is—” Kelima stumbled over her words.

“Right. I’d be willing to guess that the answer is none. In fact, I’d bet that if you ever did have a conversation with them, you’d discover that they think this place sucks just as much as I do. The difference is that I know it sucks instead of just believing it.”

“This is still my home. It might not be some paradise to your thinking, but I happen to love it. Do you imagine you’d react well to it if someone came to your world and did nothing but say that it was shitty and hellish?”

“I don’t need to imagine that. We had the internet. People said things like that all of the time. I’m not even denying it. My world sucked in all kinds of ways. Even so, I’m telling you, this place is objectively worse. I’m not saying that no one ever got eaten by the wildlife where I lived. But it was damned rare. Here? People expect it. That is by all objective measures, fucked up. I also never needed to worry that I was going to get killed by some jackhole wielding the magical power of a god that might or might not exist. As for all the attempts at coercion here… I’m not going to lie. That shit happened all the time in my world. For me, it was usually just my lousy boss trying to get me to work for free in my off time. The difference is that I wasn’t going to get killed for saying no.”

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“All I’m hearing is that it was safer in your world. Not better.”

“Safer is better.”

“That depends on what you want to get out of life,” said Kelima. “Risk brings rewards. You of all people know that. How much risk have you gone through since you arrived here? How powerful have you grown?”

Terry wanted to tell her she was being naïve. Back in his world, he would have even had a leg to stand on. Most people who took big risks there failed. Best case scenario, they were just humiliated. In other cases, they lost everything of found themselves buried under mountains of unpayable debt. In more extreme cases, they died. In Chinese Period Drama Hell, though? Kelima was right. Here, risk and reward truly did go hand-in-hand and not in some ephemeral, emotionally-affirming way. He had hacked and slashed his way out of a whole lot of problems and become demonstrably stronger. It didn’t seem like it worked exactly the same way for everyone else as it did for him. If it did, there would be way more rank one and rank two adventurers running about. Still, there was definitely some kind of level-up process going on.

He just didn’t want to admit any of that out loud. It would have been too much like losing the argument, which he had. But it felt wrong to lose that kind of an argument, especially to some teenager, because he should be the wiser of the two. Right? He was older, so that meant he had more experience. Right? Or maybe I’m just being petty and willful about this.

Oh, you’re definitely being petty and willful about it, said other-Terry. Is your man pride seriously so fragile that you can’t bear to lose an argument to a girl?

No, thought Terry way too quickly. Probably not.

Uh-huh, said other-Terry.

Fine. Yes. My man pride is actually that fragile. Happy now?

Why would it make me happy to be trapped inside the mind of someone who’s afraid of being wrong in front of a teenager? It’s not like she’s your kid. It’s pretty clear she doesn’t idolize you. So, why do you care?

That’s— It’s— Why are you even butting into this?

I’m bored. I could dress it up and say that you’ve been a complete slackass about learning how to cultivate and survive in this world—which would be true, I might add—but it’s mostly boredom.

Terry was spared from addressing that Kelima mercifully changing the subject.

“Where are we going?” she asked. “I don’t think this takes us to a gate.”

“I’m thinking about avoiding the gates,” said Terry. “After what the city guards did back at the guild hall, I’m not getting happy feelings about seeing more of them.”

“Okay,” she said slowly. “I guess that makes sense, but how are you planning on getting us out of the city?”

“I was thinking about just climbing over the wall. I might even be able to jump it. I’m not sure.”

“And you don’t think that might draw some of that attention that you hate so much?” Kelima deadpanned.

“We’d have to be quick about it,” admitted Terry.

“You do realize that there’s no way I could climb over that wall as fast as you, right?”

He looked at her for a moment and sighed. She was right. Again. He’d been thinking about what he could reasonably do, not what she could do. Goddammit. He ignored other-Terry’s chortling.

“If we go to a gate, there’s going to be a fight,” he complained.

“If we try to go over the wall, there’s going to be a chase and then a fight. Either way, we end up fighting. Might as well just get it over with.”

“I guess that’s true,” said Terry. “Alright. Let’s go find a gate.”

It took a little while for them to reach one of the gates. As they approached, Terry saw a guy in what looked like a uniform standing next to a horse. He was talking sternly to the city guards.

“That doesn’t look promising,” muttered Terry.

Kelima made a vaguely unhappy noise but didn’t actually comment. Much to Terry’s astonishment, the city guards ushered them right through the gate, all while casting fearful glances back at the man with the horse. Once they’d gotten out of the city and away from any listening ears, Terry looked at Kelima.

“What the hell just happened?” he asked.

“I have no idea,” she said with a perplexed expression.

Terry’s eyes narrowed. There was a trope at work here. He could feel it. He didn’t know what trope, but that easy departure had the stink of one all over it. He wanted to take the win and not think about it. He wanted to, but he couldn’t. If someone or something had intervened on their behalf, there could be all manner of invisible strings attached to that favor. Unfortunately, the deed was done. He’d just have to deal with the repercussions as they came. There was something else he had to deal with in the right now.

“So,” he said. “It’s decision time.”

Kelima looked at him askance and asked, “Decision time about what?”

“You saw what happened back there in the city. Despite your constant attempts to get us killed by challenging the universe, all of that was within what I consider the bounds of a normal day for me. It isn’t going to get better, which means that you’re signing up to deal with that shit full-time. This is your chance to decide that it’s not worth it. We’re still on a road, which means that it would still be pretty easy for you to go home. Once we head up into the mountains, there’s no turning back. You won’t survive out there alone. So, what’s it going to be?”

Terry was happy to see that she at least looked like she was really thinking it over. It gave him hope that she might make a good choice. Then, an expression of resignation marred her features and his hopes were dashed.

“I’ll come with you. I have to,” she said.

Terry reached up to massage his eyes and said, “Everyone in this world is insane.”