"And why do I have to put down my weapons?" Nathan said. "Seems a little unfair."

Her hands flickered with a yellow energy the color of her eyes. Around him, Nathan noticed tendrils of energy snaking their way through the ground.

"Look," Nathan said. "I promise you, no matter how strong you think you are, this is going to end in a really ugly way."

One of the men who had appeared out of the ground beside her snorted. "Don't you know who this is? You're looking at Bree. Seventh-highest delver on the leaderboards."

Nathan frowned.

Oh, that might make things a little more complicated.

Bree stared him down. He glared back. After a few seconds, she squinted her eyes and tilted her head.

"Usually, people panic more when they hear that."

Nathan reached up and tugged at his desert hood. He was glad it was so concealing. He didn't know what her reaction would be if she found out he was Nathan Lee, but he didn't feel like testing it.

"I don't know what the Hand has told you," Bree said, "but I can tell you it's a lie. Believe it or not, we're doing quite well for ourselves. We don't need your little cult coming in to take care of us."

Nathan froze. "Wait, you're opposed to the Hand?"

"...You aren't a member of the Hand?"

The two of them stared at each other for a moment longer.

Suddenly, Chad ran between them, his hands outstretched.

"Wait, wait, wait!"

Nathan blinked and lowered his hands. "Chad?"

"This is all a misunderstanding!" Chad said.

One of the men ran up and stood back-to-back with Chad.

"He's right! I can vouch for them!"

Bree stared at the man. "Explain."

"Don't you know who this is?" the man said.

Nathan’s stomach sank. They were about to expose who he was, weren’t they? He'd been hoping to avoid another situation where he'd end up with an overblown reputation. It seemed, however, that he would have no such luck—

"That's Chad Mann!"

Nathan stiffened.

The tension snapped. All of the men lowered their weapons. Bree blinked slowly.

"Chad Mann?"

"He's the streamer, right?"

"My daughter is a huge fan!"

Bree's eyes wandered from her troops back to Chad.

"What about your friend there?" she said.

Chad walked over to Nathan and slung his arm around his neck.

"This is my bodyguard, Nathan—"

Nathan shot him a glare with the heat of a thousand suns.

"—iel John. Nathaniel John."

"Two first names?" someone said.

“…yes. He was very frequently bullied as a child."

This is just slander.

Finally, Bree lowered her hands, and the orange glow surrounding them disappeared.

"Right then," Bree said. "Sorry about that."

----------------------------------------

After things had settled down, Bree offered to take them back to her survivor camp. They all fell in behind her, their footsteps cracking against the asphalt. Nathan naturally let himself fall to the rear. In a moment, Chad dropped back to join him.

"That was pretty lucky," Nathan said. "It seems like all of them had heard of you."

"Well, not to brag, but I am the number one apocalypse streamer."

"Is there such a thing as other apocalypse streamers? I think you're the only one."

Chad smirked. "Exactly. That makes me the best by default."

Nathan chuckled and stuffed his hands into his pockets. Up ahead, he caught sight of one of the people glancing back at him. He lowered his head, hiding his face a little further.

Chad raised an eyebrow and leaned in. "I was meaning to ask what all that was about."

"Are we back to my sister—?”

"No, I was talking more about your name." Chad tilted his head. "Why hide it?"

Nathan clicked his tongue. “Public attention put me in a very difficult spot in the last Circle, and I'd rather not repeat that mistake."

"You're going to have to tell me the whole story at some point."

"Trust me, as soon as you get inside my soulbound town, you'll get the full story from someone.” Nathan paused. “Also, ‘John’? Really? Naming me after the assassin?"

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

"I was panicking—!”

Chad froze. A set of footsteps fell in line with them.

Nathan glanced at her. His eyes narrowed. Her stride was smooth and confident, unhurried and relaxed. But the way she looked at him...

It was like looking at the tips of a hundred daggers.

"Hey.” Bree nodded at them. "Sorry about all that business earlier. We've just been on high alert due to the Harrowed Hand."

Nathan drew his desert cloak around himself a little tighter.

"I get that," he said. "We've heard of them."

"Actually, we had a run-in with them before we ran into you,” Chad said. “Some crazy assassin with a bomb strapped to his chest!”

Nathan's breath hitched.

Idiot!

He glared at Chad, who looked at him with confusion before it dawned on him. He looked like he’d just swallowed a lemon.

Bree furrowed her eyebrows.

"Why would they assassinate a couple of random people?"

Chad laughed, the sound high-pitched and squeaky. "Man, it really is weird. Actually, the reason why it happened was sort of... it was—“

"We figured out he was a member of the Harrowed Hand," Nathan interjected.

Chad nodded rapidly. "Yeah, that."

Bree grunted. "You're probably pretty skilled to have survived an encounter with one of their assassins."

"Assassins? They have assassins now?”

"We've only run into a few of them, but they're all characterized by the same thing. A last resort—an explosive strapped to their chest to eliminate themselves and anybody standing near them."

The energy drained out of Chad, and he shook his head. "Those people are insane."

"The Head Hand is a clever bastard, I'll give him that," Bree said, kicking a rock on the concrete. "It takes a special kind of cruelty to enthrall the number of people that he has."

The conversation died down a little after that statement. The three of them walked in silence, the only sounds being the empty streets and the wind whistling through the buildings.

"I was pretty impressed back there," Bree said.

Nathan continued walking, assuming she was talking to Chad.

"Excuse me? I said I was impressed,” she said.

Nathan jolted. Chad was looking at him with a raised eyebrow, while Bree stared at him.

"Impressed by what?" Nathan asked.

"The way you held your ground,” she said. “Usually, the amount of energy I give off intimidates most people into looking away. Not only that, but there's the psychological factor of knowing that I'm the seventh-ranked. But it was like you didn't even care. Even your buddy Chad here—his heart skipped a beat when he heard that.”

Nathan rubbed the back of his neck and slouched his shoulders. "I'm just really good at hiding my facial expressions. I was freaking out on the inside—"

"No, you weren't."

Nathan's eyes shot toward her. "Excuse me?"

She tapped her foot against the ground.

"I'm an earth cultivator,” she said. “Part of that means I can sense vibrations through the ground. Your bodily reactions were completely steady." She crossed her arms. "A little bit of toughness isn't surprising. We've all seen things. Anyone who's survived this far has at least some measure of grit. But still, a complete lack of reaction? I’d either think you were dead, stupid, or…”

Nathan's hands shook inside his pocket. "Or what?"

The slightest hint of a smirk cracked her glacial expression.

"Or higher up on the food chain than I am,” she said.

Nathan awkwardly shrugged. “Interesting theory.”

The two didn’t say anything and continued to stare at each other. One of Bree’s men awkwardly stepped away from them.

Chad clapped his hands together and got in between the gwo, a droplet of sweat on his forehead.

"You said you were in the top ten!” his words rushed out one after the other. “That's crazy. Have you run into anyone else who's in the top ten?”

Bree’s eyes flickered at Nathan before she pulled her gaze away from him and toward Chad.

"I have,” she said. “Number eight is a water mage. The intellectual type, not much of a combatant, but smart. Number five… a Harrowed Hand member, the head of their assassination branch. I only had one encounter with him, and I was very lucky to get out alive."

She paused. Nathan was about to ask her about the encounter when she suddenly continued.

"I haven't met him personally, but the rumor is that number three is the Harrowed Hand himself. Number two… he's a bit of an odd duck. That's all I'll say. Not necessarily the bad sort, but something of a maniac."

Nathan raised an eyebrow. "You've met a lot of them. Given the number of people still alive, it's pretty amazing that you kept running into them."

"Number eight theorized that it's a trick of the system. It likes to throw us against each other—put us in close proximity to watch the sparks fly."

One of the men up ahead turned his head. "What about number one? Have you ever met him?"

Nathan's lips drew into a thin line.

Don't make a facial expression, don't make a facial expression, don't make a facial expression—

"I mean, I've heard the rumors," Bree said. "Who hasn't? Especially with that stunt he pulled on the Second Circle—killing the Circle Boss on his own? I can't even imagine what kind of monster that man is."

Yeah, that's me. Me and my fishing rod—a total monster.

"Actually, Chad—you were in his party at one point, right?" Bree said.

All eyes turned toward Chad. The man up ahead had stopped pretending he wasn't eavesdropping, Bree stared at Chad with her iron-like eyes, while Nathan frantically tried to communicate via Morse code blinking that he should avoid saying anything of consequence.

"Oh—oh, yeah. We were on the first Circle together,” Chad said.

"What was he like?" Bree asked.

Chad's eyes awkwardly swiveled toward Nathan. "Well… I don't know if I should talk about him without his consent…"

Nathan shook his head as rapidly as he could.

Not a word!

"Oh, come on! What's the harm?" someone up ahead said. "None of us are gonna tell him, right?"

Chad laughed like a dying chicken. "I… I guess so!"

"So, is he a monster?" someone asked.

“N-no, I wouldn't describe him as that. For the most part, he was actually pretty normal."

"The number one? Normal?" Bree said. "I find that hard to believe. Every single one of the top 10 is a freak of nature in their own way."

Nathan's left eye twitched.

I'm almost certain I'm the most normal person out of all of you.

"You'd be surprised!" Chad said. "He was pretty good with a fishing rod—"

"A fishing rod?"

"Yeah, he used a fishing rod as his main weapon. You guys didn't know that?"

Bree rubbed her chin. "I see… Truly, the mind of the number one is entirely different from that of us lower-ranked."

"It was surprisingly effective," Chad said.

"It's not like it was by choice," Nathan muttered.

"What was that?" Bree asked.

"Nothing. Absolutely nothing."

They continued walking, her eyes pointed straight ahead.

"You know, we still haven't discussed what that huge explosion was."

"Explosion?" Chad said. "Explosion? I don't know what you're talking about. There was no explosion. Are you sure you weren't just hallucinating—?”

One of the other people next to him tilted their head. "There was an explosion. I definitely heard it—and, you know, saw the gigantic typhoon crashing into the building. That's the whole reason we caught up with you guys. We were wondering if you had something to do with it."

"Well?" Bree said. "Did you?"

Nathan and Chad slowly looked at each other. Chad pointed with his eyes toward him, then at Bree. Nathan shook his head quickly. Chad glared—

“Excuse me, I asked a question,” Bee said.

Nathan winced. He opened his mouth to respond when the sound of laughter reached his ears.

He froze.

He looked ahead, and his eyes widened.

It was a massive encampment, hundreds of people spread across several buildings. Clotheslines full of laundry stretched from building to building. Children ran around the streets without a care in the world. On the sidewalks were dozens of tents, with fires dotting the street like polka dots.

Bree stepped forward. "We're here."

Unlike the desert people… Nathan could tell in his heart immediately who these people were.

They're like me. They're Earthlings.