A lot had happened in the past day.

I’d watched Rock die and get brought back to life. I’d had a chat with some gods. Ended up killing a guy who was mind controlling me. Hell, I’d even seen Cal and Hartha get kidnapped.

To top it off, the skies above Emer’Thalis, which had up till now been perpetually dark and gloomy, had started to clear up. That would normally be a good thing, but one of the unfortunate side effects was that everyone in the city had a million questions for me.

Faced with all of that, I’d handled it by taking the most sensible course of action: I’d taken a nap.

I hadn’t expected to get much actual sleep, of course. Amak was bound to come barging in, prodding me awake. Maybe the fighters would track me down, hounding me with questions about the dungeon. Elphaea would wrap me up in roots, demanding to know what had happened to Hartha.

Even on a normal day, it wasn’t too shocking for someone to unexpectedly wake me up. And today really wasn’t a normal day.

With all that in mind, when I found myself waking up completely naturally, feeling refreshed and renewed, I considered it a tiny miracle of sorts.

Really can’t say I expected this, but I’ll take it? I took a brief shower while mulling over my plan of action for the day.

Outside of answering everyone’s questions, though, I had to admit, I wasn’t really sure what to do with myself. I’d been on this planet for a solid four months now, with almost all of that time revolving around my giant quest to stop the deadlands from expanding.

The fact that it was over was a good thing, of course. A great thing, even! No more worrying about dark gods. No more annoying quests from kings or battle-crazy mayors. No more freaky zombie bugs trying to kill me.

All very rad things.

Now that it was all over and done with, part of me was at a loss, though. In some sense, all that running around had saved me from having to figure out what the rest of my life as a Protagonist was going to look like. As I tried and failed to imagine what I’d be doing tomorrow, a week from now, a month from now, the relief from my quest being over rapidly shifted into a broad sense of anxiety.

All right. So we’ll take a second, yeah? Plan some things out.

The moment I ran outside, I was sure that someone would notice, and I’d have no time to myself. While I was still safe within my tent, I felt I might as well use my time to organize all of my priorities.

I’m feeling like it’s list time. There was, after all, no problem that a good list couldn’t solve.

Annoyingly enough, though, I unfortunately lacked any paper, and I was hardly going to go and ask for some right now.

“Um. System? Gods? No chance there’s a notes app built into this stuff, is there?” If a flip phone could handle it, maybe the all-encompassing framework for the entirety of the world could manage it too?

Nothing happened.

“Maybe too much to ask for. It’s probably some weird class skill for the Note Taker class.” I shrugged. With God’s Mind boosting my memory, I figured maybe I could do it mentally.

I summoned up an image of a blank piece of paper, finding that with my Intelligence and God’s Mind, my visualization abilities were scarily enhanced. It practically felt like I could reach out and touch my mental image.

Neat. All right: List time.

At the very top of the mental sheet, I wrote a header.

SHORT TERM GOALS

Before I could really give my future any serious thought, there were still a few outstanding tasks for me to deal with.

After thinking things over for a moment, I added my first entry.

1. Deal with everyone. (Amak, Elphaea, Elder Tafitz, everyone else.)

After a brief pause, I amended it.

1. Deal with everyone. Get Rock to deal with everyone??

It was tempting. He’d already gotten the gist of everything from me, after all.

In the end though, it was probably a bit mean. The guy had, after all, just died. On top of that, he was probably dealing with the fact that Aarris had accidentally made him glow-in-the-dark — an unintended consequence of her messing with his soul. Plus, he’d been dead for a lot of the important parts, which meant one way or another, I’d probably be doing a lot of explaining in the near future.

Reluctantly, I returned my first action item to its original state.

What else? This time, the answer was pretty obvious.

2. Go over your notifications.

Frankly, it seemed like I had a million of them. While I wasn’t working with too large a sample size, dealing the final blow on an ancient, high-leveled Protagonist and then talking to gods tended to do that to a person. I had little desire to leave them unchecked for too long, so if no proverbial fires needed to be put out by the time I was done with my list, I’d read them all before leaving my tent.

3. Look at those weird crystals Hex gave you.

The goddess had given me a reward for “saving” her, and it was presently burning a hole in my pocket. Seeing as the other notable rewards granted ranged from “get some cool rocks” to “get kidnapped,” I wasn’t really sure what to expect.

That largely seemed like it for the short term stuff?

Might as well look at the medium-term stuff too. It would be nice to not be jumping from one urgent thing to another all the time. Besides, I wasn’t sure when I was going to have the time to think through this all again.

MEDIUM TERM GOALS

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With a wince, I added one I was notably not looking forward to doing.

1. Tell the king his daughter got kidnapped.

The others, I had to deal with more immediately. Still, while he was pretty far away, I was going to have to tell him eventu-

I frowned, stopping that thought in its tracks. Do I actually, though?

At this point, keeping important secrets from the king of Ftheran was kind of a time-honored practice. He didn’t need to know that I’d been level six when I met him, or that Cal was secretly a blasphemous Infiltrator, or that I’d accidentally given him a crystal laced with mind-magic. What was one more thing to add to the list?

1. Tell the king his daughter got kidnapped. Hope that Cal and Hartha are returned before I have to deal with this.

Good. Much better. Why worry about problems when you could just ignore them and hope they fix themselves? Admittedly, not something I’d ever told my clients back when I was a therapist, but it was obviously different and healthy when I was the one doing it. In retrospect, that was probably why therapists tended to have their own therapists.

2. Open up the dungeon for everyone.

I couldn’t say that I had many feel-good memories of the dungeon right now, and personally, I wouldn’t have minded if we just closed it down for good. The fighters from Drawgin, however, wouldn’t be too happy with that. Getting to delve into a new dungeon was the entire reason that most of them had come here in the first place, after all. At least for a while, I’d have to keep it open.

That, however, only brought to mind a more serious matter.

3. Figure out what to do with Emer’Thalis.

I’d put in a lot of work into the city. Hell, I’d helped build half the buildings. Still, the only reason I’d done it was for my quest.

Sure, the sky was less depressing now, and there was a bar and a bathhouse around, but Emer’Thalis hadn’t really been built with long term habitation in mind. The builders from Ftheran would soon go back home. The fighters from Drawgin would eventually return to their city to train. The shadows would make the trek back to their home in the forest.

Maybe if the dungeon was popular enough, there’d be an effort to keep a small outpost here. Barring that, perhaps once a year, 500 fighters would come all at once to meet the dungeon’s population requirement and get a few runs in. It was pretty hard to imagine much more than that happening, though. Who in their right mind would want to live here year round?

Relatedly, that led to the next action item.

4. Figure out where you’re going to live?

While I wasn’t traveling, the shadows had housed me during this entire affair. There was a strong chance they’d even continue to if I asked them. While I’d enjoyed my time with them, however, long-term, the forest life wasn’t for me.

Ftheran, I’d probably pass on as well. I had an entire guild of thieves there who hated my guts, plus the many lies I was keeping from the king.

Drawgin? It was an option, at least. I wasn’t sure if it was my ideal location in the long run, though. I didn’t plan to make my life solely about training and running dungeons. I hadn’t disliked my time there, but I wasn’t sure if I saw it as a home.

In the end, I didn’t have any immediate answers, but then again, that’s why it was on the list. For now, I’d shelve it.

For medium-term goals, that seemed about it for…

Ugh.

5. Deal with the local bartender who wants to kill you.

In what must have been the worst stroke of luck possible, Nadja had somehow ended up in my settlement. Unfortunately for me, she was (kind of justifiably?) pissed at me. Like, super-pissed. Brain me with a jug of wine pissed.

Maybe just consider that one a long-term goal? Or a never goal? I’d been doing a great job of ignoring the issue so far, so there was no reason to stop now.

Well, it’s on the list. Just going to move on from that one for now. Last category!

LONG-TERM GOALS

This section was a bit more nebulous. It was also something I hadn’t had much time to stop and think about. What did I want out of life?

The first few were simple. While I didn’t want to be some bloodthirsty berserker, I did want to level up. Partially, it was because I wanted to feel better protected. On top of that, though, having higher stats came with a host of upgrades to my quality of life, including just plain-old living longer.

Additionally, spells were just cool. I didn’t need a better reason than that to want to learn more.

1. Level up.

2. Learn more spells.

3. Get more class points.

The third, thankfully, was largely just a consequence of the first two. As for non-leveling related goals…

4. Learn more about the world.

It still seemed like every day that I learned something that other people considered basic knowledge. Honestly, while it would be kind of embarrassing, I’d probably benefit from getting some kind of tutor, even if their lesson plans were geared towards kindergarten students. There was just too much I didn’t even know that I didn’t know.

5. Learn more about being a Protagonist.

My current sample size of known Protagonists was at a whopping two: Me and Ephesis. At some point, I wanted to hear about the others. Heck, who knew? Maybe there was some sort of club for us all.

6. Get more hobbies.

Woodworking had done me well, but if I wasn’t going to spend every moment running around anymore, I probably needed some other things to keep me busy.

7. … Make more friends?

I’d been off to a good start for a while, but… Well, my first and third friend had just gotten kidnapped. On top of that, the second friend I’d made now ran the local bar and actively wanted to murder me.

My dungeon delving crew was still around, and I did like them (at least mostly — Kex and her mud still sort of freaked me out, if I was being honest), but I wasn’t as close with them.

It was a pretty different sort of goal than learning spells or leveling up, but it was important nonetheless. I wasn’t going to start my second life on a new planet by being a hermit.

Lastly, I threw a goal on the list that had been on my personal list for over a year at this point.

8. Get a job/figure out a way to make money.

It was funny to think of now that I was a magical Protagonist who nominally owned a city, but it wasn’t like I was sitting on a pile of treasure or anything. Heck, a lot of my travel funds had been with Cal in any case — soon I’d probably have to figure out what to do with my life.

Ugh. Money stuff sucks. Maybe I’d convince Elphaea to let me chop down some trees before I figured out where I was going to live. Some mana-infused bracelets would at least tithe me over for a while.

Ultimately, though, that pretty much summed it up.

Feel like I’m forgetting something though.

Ah well. If it was important, it would probably come up sooner or later.

Hoping to start knocking out some of the short term goals immediately, I figured I’d start with the crystals in my bag. Figuring out what they were, after all, was probably the easiest of all my goals to sort out. After that, it’d be time to read through all my notifications.

Right as I reached into my bag, however, I heard the unmistakable sound of footsteps heading towards me. I cursed under my breath.

Well, my alone time was nice while it lasted.

Moments later, Amak’s voice called out from outside the tent. “Protagonist. Are you awake?”

I considered staying silent and trying to hide for a bit longer, but with a sigh, I responded. “Just woke up. What’s up?” I imagined he was here to hear the full story of the dungeon from me.

As it turned out, however, he was not.

“It would appear that there is a duo of kexids at the city barrier. Is this something you would happen to know about?”

Oh. That’s what I was forgetting.

Quickly, I added one last goal to the short-term list before closing it out.

4. Tell the kexids their god is on vacation and their underground city has probably caved in by now. Also apologize for… accidentally killing some of them.

Reading it over, I frowned.

Huh. Well this is shaping up to be a fun day.