From Zane's perspective, the first day back on Earth was a lot of moseying around. He saw lots of different faces. They all seemed quite excited to meet him, though they started to blur together after a while.

Reina told him that some of them were fringe top Rankers. There was this tanned Australian surfer guy in a straw hat—he seemed to have a hard time wrapping his head around how Zane had gotten up to Level 336. He was around 200, apparently which he had thought was quite good.

He started rambling about how in his part of the world, he was the best of all the prodigies. Something about getting a shock here. He started chuckling about small fishes in big ponds in an aw-shucks kind of way. Zane stood there and nodded.

There were other people, but they were all kind of like the Australian guy. One wide-eyed blonde girl asked if she could get some of his hair.

“What?” said Zane.

He did see some familiar faces—he had a brief catch-up with Eze. Eze congratulated him first of all, gave him a nod. “You’ve done well by malnkind, Zane Walker,” said Eze.

Eze was also a bit surprised. Before the Superdungeon opened up, even if Zane was ahead, they could at least be on the same tier. Now Zane seemed totally out of reach to him. He gave a little smile and a little sigh, but he didn't seem much surprised.

He also saw Vanessa Volkova, who was now the European #1—the highest Leveled in the world, outside of Zane and his friends. She was just as Zane remembered—a pale beauty shrouded in a frosty aura. She had gotten all the way up to Level 286. She was much less talkative nowadays than Zane remembered. She didn't even bother looking at most of the folk there, even World Rankers; when she did she came off blunt and a bit harsh.

She came up to Zane quite courteously though. She seemed a little dazed around him—not like she’d been before, in a way that would get Reina growling. Instead it was like she couldn’t seem to wrap her head around him.

She told Zane that after her mother passed, she felt like she had to live up to her—be #1 in the world too. She would keep trying. But she saw now it wouldn't be possible, she said. She gave him a complicated look.

She vowed to keep up, at least. “I know when you go out into the wider galaxy,” she told him. “You’ll become a great, wherever you go… but I will too. We’ll meet again, Zane.”

She curtsied and walked off.

***

Most of what Zane did was stand there in different colored halls, it felt to him. Reina did her thing. Lots of talking. He followed her around, nodding when he was meant to nod.

There was lots of parading going on outside. Cheering and explosions too—fireworks and firecrackers going off every few seconds… he was mostly looking forward to getting back though he felt like he had had enough explosions for a good while. Even the celebration kind. He yawned.

When he got bored he ended up looking at Reina. Not even paying much attention to the speeches—just looking at her, admiring her. The flush on her cheeks, the little movements of her lips, the way she tucked loose silky locks behind an ear when she got distracted, the way her chest heaved when she got all passionate… he felt he could look at her forever. It was a pleasant way to pass the time.

Then he would look out, and notice that other folk were seeing the same things he was. Except they were focusing a little too much on the chest heaving bit, and not in the way he was. He frowned at surfer guy in the audience, who was starting to drool a little—the guy shivered. Looked up, saw Zane, gave a squeak, and looked at the floorboards the rest of the speech.

** *

Then, at last, they could go home.

The sun had set. All the important folk had gone. The parades ran their course, the cleaners had come, activated nighttime arrays. Runes started spiderwebbing over the streets, clearing out the trash, wiping down the stains, disappearing the confetti strewn up the cobbled roads, up the limestone walls…

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Evan and Avery were already fast asleep by the time Zane and Reina made it back. They were on the sixth floor of their skyscraper home—which was a wide living room. Two of the walls were floor-to-ceiling glass windows, showing the softly twinkling city beyond, stretching into the reddish dusk…

It was a cozy little floor. With the zone crackling hearth in a stone fireplace. Evan lay on a couch in a little blanket. Avery was facedown on the floor, but she was fine. Her hoodie made for a good sleeping bag. There were lots of remnants of cakes around her. She seemed to have entered a sugar coma. She was snoring.

Reina sighed at the sight. Leaned a head on his chest. “Finally,” she murmured. She leaned up at him and smiled very prettily, blinked warm brown eyes up at him, and Zane wondered if it could get any nicer.

It could, as it turned out.

She took his hand gently, led him upstairs. Her dress slid to the floor.

…Zane supposed he could cut the surfer guy some slack.

Level up!

Essence Level 336 -> 337

***

The next day Reina upgraded the Beacon up to the peak of Mortal grade with all the resources they'd hauled in from their run. It had transformed into a behemoth of curving steel, a bunch of runed satellite-dish-like things welded together—it looked like the sort of place a space shuttle might dock.

She would have to get a special transmission crystal, she said, to upgrade it to Earth-grade. But she knew just where to get it.

Avery was gone when they woke. She left a note—she was going to go find and consume as many ice creams as she could get her hands on.

Evan tearfully reunited with his Superbara. Evan took him on long walks every day.

He also got back into baking. Cookies and cakes had been his specialty for a long time, but these days he started expanding into pastries. This seemed to be a big level up for Evan—he'd made some kind of breakthrough. He could never do pastries before, he gasped to Zane.

Evan’s Master once said that he would come back and reunite with him once Evan mastered the pastry, Evan said. Zane had no clue what he was talking about. The pastry tasted pretty good, though.

***

Zane and Reina ended up taking a few days off—escaping to one of their island properties, a hook-shaped land mass in the middle of the Pacific. All leafy palms and sunny beaches. Just them and a few big lazy furry animals and colorful birds about. Some whales floating around in the distance, schools of multi-colored fish darting about crystal clear waters.

During the day she took him bird-watching and surfing and painting, all of which he turned out to be naturally quite bad at, and which she was naturally very good at.

At night they got some unwinding done and picked up a few more Levels.

…A lot of unwinding…

Level up!

Level up!

Essence Level 337 -> 339

Skill evolved!

Mephisto’s Pleasure Sutra [Epic (E) -> Legendary (E)]

***

Late into the night, with her head resting on his chest, laying in a cabana, looking at the ocean and sipping on spirit fruit juices—they started talking a bit about the future.

It seemed she was might have to go off, Reina thought. Her Faction would likely contact her soon. She wasn’t sure what waited for her there. But based on the weirdness that had come with those Superdungeon gifts, she guessed she would have to be careful. It would be some work sorting it out.

Zane found this bit quite worrisome.

She said she didn’t want to leave him long either. If she really was as powerful as the System messages made her sound, she felt they couldn’t stop her from visiting him.

If he was as important as they made him sound, maybe it was true for him too. She wondered if they could use Earth as a kind of home base—somewhere they could both come back to often.

This would work nicely, he thought.

***

It would soon have to come to an end, though. Reina would go off the next day down to San Francisco, where she would meet with Elias. She would buy the crystal she needed to upgrade the Beacon off of him, she said.

Zane hadn’t thought of that fellow in a long while.

He hadn’t felt any kind of essence drain in a long while, either, come to think of it. He wondered what happened there.

“I bought out the contract for you,” said Reina. It happened before they went into the Superdungeon, apparently. She took a sip of her fruit juice, smiled up at him. “Something tells me he regrets it now, though.”

She pursed her lips. “He can’t really complain, I think.”

She said a quarter of the Superdungeon participants had already signed contracts with them. Elias was in the Top 20 World Rankers doing pretty much nothing.

She tapped her glass.

“I don’t like him,” she said to Zane. “But people like him find a way to do well wherever they go… it can be useful to keep an open line with him. If you know how to deal with him.”

She gave a happy sigh, nuzzled in, and fell asleep on him.

He blinked at her.

He wondered if she was always doing a bunch of these little things in the background to help him. He wondered what else she was doing.

…He figured it was a good thing she was on his side, and left it at that.