It took them six days to find Tophua.
For those six days, Gesai took us into the dungeon and had us farm like we’d been farming for the last four. Well, sort of. Trent let me sleep until noon the first day back.
During that time, every one of us, except Rix, leveled up. Which meant that we were now level three and four. The Black Team seemed to try to match our speed and I’m pretty sure they all hit level four as well, though I doubted they’d do much leveling. The preliminaries were in seventeen weeks and the maximum level you could be for those was level five. I wondered how we were going to get around Rix being level seven, but that was a problem for Gesai and Trent, not me.
When they finally came back with Tophua he was smiling ear to ear. He hadn’t lost a lot of weight and looked rather good for someone who had been stranded for almost a week.
The Adventurers in town started clapping when he walked out of the dungeon.
“THANK YOU! THANK YOU!” The blonde Blacksmith threw kisses to the small crowd.
“Don’t encourage him…” Arlo shook his head as he walked past me.
“What happened?” I looked at all the attention he was getting.
“He had almost the entire Authority Storage with him. He could have lasted a year in front of that gate and still been fine.” The blonde God sighed “And don’t ask him…”
“MY FAVORITE NUMBER!” Tophua was cackling. “I’m going to get it tattooed on my bum! One on each cheek!”
As naughty as it was, I couldn’t help but smile. The place wouldn’t have been the same and I was glad that we’d be able to leave. Aelin, Ether, and myself had all hit level four shortly before we took on the boss today. If we’d had to stay any longer, I wouldn’t have doubted that we would have mainly been doing evasion training.
I noticed that Jovena had moved away from the rest of the crowd and followed her back to our camp. I heard her crying softly in her tent.
“Knock knock!” I could’ve knocked on the pole, but I might’ve knocked it over and I really didn’t want to bury her in her tent.
“What?!” The white-haired woman wiped her eyes quickly.
“You okay?”
“Of course! We finally get to leave this Godless place now!” She tried to sound happy, but it was hard to mask how sad she was.
“You’re going to be okay.” I touched her hand from my seat in the door, “You and Gesai would have killed each other if you got put on her team, so I’m sure you’ll like the team that Warder puts together so much better.”
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“Maybe…” Her blue eyes bored into me. “Atlas..?”
I waited for a few moments, but it felt like she was building up the courage to ask something, “Yes? What is it Vena?”
“Do you think there’s any way that you can keep me with all of you?”
I shook my head. “Trent got a pretty clear order. Exactly one Noble…” I almost said reject, which was how a lot of the Nobles who got into the Cathedral referred to the Nobles that didn’t make it in. “... From each of the six cities are to be added onto his secondary team.” I shook my head, “Gesai wanted Mitchel.”
“I could have been nicer to her…” Jovena’s shoulders dropped. “I just didn’t…” She had to wipe away another tear, “I didn’t think I’d enjoy being here so much. I’ve learned a lot and I’ve gotten so much stronger.”
“Yeah…” I shrugged, “It’s actually been fun having you around.”
“You just like it because I make fun of the Black team.” She scooted closer to me and bumped into my shoulder.
“I mean, they make it so easy.” I chuckled, “But we can still do that once we get back to the Cathedral. We’ll still see each other a lot. Like in the Cafe and we’re supposed to be working together on the event on the fourth floor. So it’s not like we’ll never see each other again.”
“Yeah…” She looked at me, “Rix is so much higher than everyone else, what if I took her spot and she did, I don’t know, special training or something?”
“I…” I didn’t know how to break it to her that Rix wasn’t going to be moved off the team. It was true that we wouldn’t be training with her much until we caught up, but I didn’t see that ever happening. “I don’t…”
She leaned in and kissed me. I backed up just a little, “Whoa! Where did that come from?”
“I thought that if you and I were together maybe…” She looked like she was about to cry again.
“Hey…” I wrapped my arms around her. “You are going to be fine. Oz’s parents talk about how they spent more time with Trent than they did with their own teacher when they were at the Cathedral.” I let her go and pulled back. “You are going to be fine and in a couple weeks when we get back, you probably will have had so much fun that you’ll have forgotten all about us.”
“Doubtful…” She looked down at her knees.
I shrugged, “If not, then you can come over to our dorm and spend most of your time there. Gesai will probably never admit it, but I think she’s going to miss having you around.”
That seemed to brighten her up a little. I squeezed her shoulder, “And if you ever get lonely…” I tapped my CB, “Message me. Unless I’m helping fight God ghosts, I’ll message you back.”
She smiled and nodded. We sat in silence for a few more minutes, then I got up.
“I’m going to head to my tent. We’re leaving in the morning, so Ether wants to get things as cleaned up as possible.” I chuckled, “She’s probably going to try to sleep in a little since we won’t be going into the dungeon tomorrow.”
“Okay,” She forced a smile, “night.”
“‘Night.” I started to walk away and felt my CB buzz. I looked down and saw I had a message from Jovena. It read:
Thanks. I feel a lot better :)
I typed back.
Anytime.
I had a good feeling she’d be fine. I looked over at the bonfire in the middle of town that most of the Adventurers were gathered around. Aelin, Jenne, Tophua were arm in arm dancing around it singing Harem! Harem! I shook my head. Some things never change.