I woke up very early that next morning, before anyone else had gotten out of bed. My mind was still playing through everything that had happened the day before, and it still seemed a little hard to believe that so many of our problems had been taken care of so easily. But, the moment that I saw Aaron and Lily coming into the kitchen to greet me – their faces bright and cheerful, and their necks no longer collared – the whole thing felt very vivid, and very real, as each of us talked about what had happened the day before.

A few moments later, Roger came in to join us, and the four of us talked for a little about where we were going to be headed towards next. Both of the kids seemed pretty excited about traveling to the town of Riverdale, and they had a lot of questions about what the town was like, and where it was located. But once they found out that it was right on the border of the Great Lake, they seemed to be especially eager to head out that way, and to go on a bit of an adventure.

Of course, it was also clear that Roger had a lot of business left to attend to. So, after keeping him for a bit longer, the old mage said farewell to us for the time being, as he made his way out through the little forest that lay outside.

For a moment, there was a warm, comfortable silence, as the rest of us thought about what to do now.

As we sat there together in silence, I decided that this would be as good of a time as any to talk with the two of them about what Roger and I had discussed, with regards to becoming their guardians.

Mostly, I wanted to make sure that would be alright with them. I knew what it was like to be passed around from one adult to the next, even when I didn’t want to, and I didn’t want either of them to have to go through that, if they didn’t have to. But neither of them had any objections, and each of them seemed to be really gladdened by the news. So, after a few moments, we agreed that we would work out all of the details in the future, and that the three of us would continue living together here for now, just as we had done before.

Then, we all spent a long time cooking up a meal together, and talking.

Afterwards, I let them know that I would be heading out towards the dungeon for the day, but that I would be back a little later on in the afternoon.

Each of them said goodbye, and wished me well, as I headed out through the woods that lay beyond my home, and in towards the town of Westfall.

A little while later, I saw Praxa standing in front of the large, wooden gate. I had been looking forward to seeing her for almost the whole time that I had been walking through the woods, but even still, I somehow managed to be happier to see her than I could have expected… and soon, the two of us fell into a pleasant, enjoyable conversation, as we made our way towards the Beginner’s Dungeon.

Once we had arrived at the entrance, we each agreed to meet up at the hub of the First Floor. Then, after a brief moment of separation, we were standing together again, as we talked about where we would want to head towards next.

“Is starting at the First Floor okay,” she asked, “or, have you made it up to the Fifth Floor by now?”

“Ahh… no, I haven’t,” I said. “Starting at the First Floor should be fine.”

I had made it up to the Fifth Floor, of course. But, I didn’t want to tell her that just yet, since I doubted that I could explain how I had managed to get up to the Seventh Floor in only a few days’ time.

At any rate, after we had looked around for a moment, Praxa suggested that I pick which door to go through first, so that we could start off in an area that I was comfortable with. Gladly, I agreed at once, and pointed over towards the golden framed door with the small “five” inscribed on the center, and suggested that we started there.

For just a few seconds, there was an uncomfortable silence, as Praxa looked at me with a curious expression.

Then, I pointed once again towards that same place.

“We can just start at that door… can’t we?”

A longer pause, this time. And then…

“… what door,” she said, softly.

“… I’m sorry?”

“The place that you’re pointing to…,” she said, “… I don’t see any door there.”

If I had been a little more composed and prepared, I might have had the forethought to try and pass it all off as a joke. But, as it was…

“… how many doors do you see in this room,” I asked.

“I can see three of them,” she said, pointing to the doors that didn’t bear any inscriptions on their center. “That one, that one, and that one. But you… you see four in here?”

“Well...” I said.

“Does that mean… that fourth door… have you already opened it up, and seen what was on the other side…?”

There was a long pause, as I tried to figure out what to do.

But…

I had always been impulsive, and trusted my instincts. And I knew from what Torver had said that telling your friends and family wasn't that much of a danger - and I felt confident that I could trust Praxa, and that whatever was happening to the Interlopers in this world, that a person like here would have nothing to do with it.

And so, without saying a word, I walked over, and opened up the door.

Praxa’s eyes widened, and she looked at me with a mixture of astonishment, and of wonder.

“Let’s get inside, and talk,” I said.

At once, she nodded her head, then quickly followed me in through the now opened entryway. Then, I closed the door behind me, and looked around.

She still seemed to be almost too amazed to talk. But after just a moment or two, she asked me in a soft voice if there was something special about me, that had allowed me to see that door, and to open it up to the other side.

I nodded once, then slowly began to take off the glove on my right hand, before showing her the mark on my palm.

It took her a long time to be able to get any words out after that.

“You’re… you’re an Interloper,” she finally managed to say. “When did you arrive in our world…?”

“About five days ago,” I said.

Then, I started to tell her about how I had arrived in the forest, and then about the wolf that I had encountered, and the slavers who had chased after me, and my meeting with Torver, and the two children, and Roger, and all of the progress that I had made in the dungeons up until then. I told her everything about my journey through this new world, in as much detail as I could, only leaving out some parts about the city of free folk, in order to protect its location.

As I talked, she listened with a real sense of curiosity and of wonder.

“So… well. I think that’s everything,” I said, at long last.

“That’s… that’s so amazing,” she said.

Then, she started to laugh a little. “I feel like I should be able to think up more of a response than that, you know? But… really, that’s the most extraordinary thing that I’ve ever heard. I want to say a lot more, but I just have no idea where to even begin.”

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“Yeah,” I said, grinning, “I know the feeling.”

She laughed, and poked me softly in the side.

“I’m sure that you do,” she said. “But, so… you must be planning to head out towards that canyon sometime soon, right?”

I nodded.

“I think that I’ll try to head out there once I hit about level one hundred or so. That way, I should be able to hold my own against the monsters in the area, without getting too overwhelmed.”

“Well… what will you be doing until then? You mentioned that Roger had a second home out in that city of free folk. Do you plan to go out there with him, and to take each of the children?”

“I do,” I said. “The three of us are going to be leaving in a little over two weeks, I think.”

At those words, there was a flash of real sadness in Praxa’s eyes. But almost as soon as it appeared, it was gone once again, as an apparently quite natural and genuine smile passed across her lips.

“That sounds like a really good plan, I think,” she said. “I hope that you’ll manage to make it out there safely.”

Despite her best attempts to be warm and polite, she wasn’t able to say much more than that.

For just a moment, there was a brief pause, as I hesitated about what to do.

But… even though I definitely didn’t feel like I knew Praxa all that well just yet, and even though I didn’t have any real idea what the future might be about to hold…

… well.

I didn’t want things to end here, or to end like that – no matter what.

So, I did my best to muster up my courage, and to speak.

“I don’t know what your plans are, but… I’d be sad to say goodbye to you right now, you know? So, if you’re interested… well… maybe you could come along with the four of us, and join us on our travels.”

“If you’d like to, I mean,” I added quickly. “I just wanted you to know that you’d be welcome, and that you have the option to come, if you’d like.”

This time, for just an instant, I saw a look of almost pure surprise and of joy in Praxa’s lovely, pale green eyes. Then, once more, it faded into a somewhat natural and polite smile, as she did her best to restrain her own emotions.

“Well…,” she said. “I...”

“I would like to – a lot. But, would that be okay with everybody else?”

“I’m sure that it would be fine with everyone. I can’t imagine that any of them wouldn’t be happy to have you come along. Honestly… you don’t need to worry about that at all. You really would be welcomed – by all of us.”

“Well… thank you, then,” she said. “I honestly didn’t have any idea what I was going to do next… but, taking refuge out in Riverdale, and working together with the free folk – that seems like a really good idea.”

“And, well… I know that we hardly know each other. But it made me sad to think that you were about to leave, right when I was just getting the chance to get to know you. So… well.”

She laughed a little at her own awkwardness, then gave me a gentle smile.

“I’m sorry – I’ve never been the best at this sort of thing. But, honestly… this makes me really happy. I’ll be looking forward to traveling with you, whenever it’s time to go.”

“I’ll be looking forward to it, too,” I said. “A lot.”

After that, we took a long while in silence together, as we sat beneath the leaves of the jungle. Eventually, however, Praxa’s curiosity seemed to awaken once again, as she looked towards me, with a bright, lively quality to her eyes.

“There’s still one thing that I’m… well,” she started to laugh. “There’s a lot of things that I’m confused by. But… you said that you saw a ‘five’ on the door that you just opened. Do you know what that meant?”

“No, I don’t,” I said, shaking my head. “I haven’t actually given it that much thought, just because, you know – to me, it’s just one of about a thousand different mysteries, so it didn’t stand out that much. But… well, that is a good question. What do you think it might be?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “But, ‘five’… hm.”

“I imagine it means that you must have at least ‘five’ of something that I have less of,” she said. “So, if you don’t mind me asking, what are your statistics, William?”

“I don’t mind at all,” I said. “Let me see...”

System, I thought, what are my statistics?

Level: 7 Affected By: Blessing of Kalia

HP (Hit Points): 150/150 HP Regeneration: 16.5 HP / min MP (Magic Points): 55/55 MP Regeneration: 0.33 MP / min Strength: 23 (19+4) Intelligence: 14 Dexterity: 13 Wisdom: 11 Agility: 27 Luck: 9 Vitality: 15 Insight: 7

“Let’s see… my statistics are...”

“Strength, 23. Dexterity, 13. Agility, 27. Vitality, 15. Intelligence, 14. Wisdom, 11. Luck, 9. And Insight... 7?"

… that was odd. Shouldn’t my “Insight” have increased by now? It wasn't 1 when it started, after all.

Praxa must have found something odd about that too. Because the moment that I mentioned it, her eyes grew wide, and she seemed absolutely focused and alert.

“… could you… could you tell me what you said that your Insight score is, again?”

“Seven,” I said. “Is that high for this world?”

“… no one in this entire world has an Insight score of more than zero.”

“… what?”

“Everyone is born with an Insight of zero, and no one has ever found a way to increase it…”

“So… the fact that your Insight is 7 is… well...”

Praxa burst out into laughter.

“… how in the world did you do that, exactly?”

I started to laugh, too.

“I have absolutely no idea,” I said. “It was 6 when I got here, so that just kind of happened. Then, it went up by 1 when I saw the Blue Tower. Apart from that, there hasn’t been anything else too special that took place.”

“Huh,” she said. “Why the Blue Tower...”

After that, we talked for a while about what might have taken place, and what the likeliest explanations were.

Eventually, after a lot of deductive reasoning, we arrived at the following, very tentative explanation.

My Insight had originally been raised to 6 by encountering Kalia.

Afterwards, it had been raised by 1 more after I had seen the Blue Tower.

But of course, many other people had seen the Blue Tower as well. So I must have some sort of special power or gift that allowed me to gain Insight in a unique way – but I had no idea just yet what that power might be.

However, the simplest explanation was that it was related to the Insight that I had already acquired… so for now, I took that as a very tentative solution to the riddle.

Once we’d finished working through things, I summarized the results of our conversation.

“Yeah… that’s what I think, too,” she said. “But if that’s true, then those two things must be connected somehow - Kalia, and the Blue Tower.”

“I think that’s right,” I said. “And they must be joined together in the past, somehow.”

“Why the past, exactly?”

“Well… because of what the system says when you ask it what Insight is.”

“… what does it say? To you, I mean.”

… oh, of course. It probably says something different to me than to other people.

System, I thought, what is “Insight”?

“Insight is a measure of your understanding of the secrets of this world, and of the mysteries of the past.”

I repeated the definition to Praxa.

“The past...”

She paused.

“That’s what I thought… when I ask, it only tells me that ‘Insight is a measure of your understanding of the secrets of this world.’ It doesn’t mention the part about the past.”

At that, the two of us paused again, as we did our best to put everything together.

If our explanations so far were correct, then Kalia and the Blue Tower were connected somehow, and they were connected by something that had taken place a long time ago. But what that connection was, exactly, was very hard to say. I wondered for a moment if Kalia might be inside of the tower, or a part of it, or if they had been there once before, in an especially important moment. But none of that seemed quite right, though I couldn’t have told you exactly why. Even so, neither of us could actually come up with anything that was better, at least for now.

Right then, it seemed pretty likely that we just didn’t have enough to go on. But even still, this was at least the first real, genuine clue that I had managed to receive since I had first arrived in this world… and even if it wasn’t much, it was at least a good start. It also raised the prospect of finding other sources of Insight, as well – which was a very exciting possibility.

Somehow, even then, I knew that the vaults would contain something that gave me an even greater degree of Insight into the secrets of this world. But even now, I can barely understand how I knew that all the way back then.

At any rate, after we had talked about these things for a little while longer, we decided to give up on the investigation for now, and planned just to keep our eyes and ears open for anything else that might help us to explain what was going on.

“Well, then,” Praxa said. “Let me now attempt to provide a summary of the proceedings, if I may.”

“You are a traveler from another world, who has more Insight into the secrets of this world than anyone else alive, and you are on a quest to find an ancient, mythical vault, that no one has seen in hundreds of years – and you probably have a remarkably good chance of doing so, all things being considered.”

“You also have the amazing ability to progress through the dungeons about 10-15 times faster than anyone else that I have ever met, and you probably also have all sorts of other powers and abilities that will make themselves known in due time.”

“Is that a good summary of who you are, and of what’s taken place so far?”

“Yes,” I said. “That seems about right.”

“Well, then… now that we’ve established all of that – should we get out of here, and head up to the Fifth Floor?”

“That sounds good to me,” I said. “After you, Praxa.”

And so, the two of us told the system where we would like to go, as a faint light appeared around us, and the two of us made our way up to the higher floors of the dungeon.