When she opened her eyes, she faced the darkness and shivered. This was not what she had expected when she logged in, though she couldn’t say she was surprised, either.

Soon, a white speck of light came into view. Playfully, little light bobbed up and down as it drifted toward her.

“Welcome back!” Biku-Biku’s voice carried over to her. “Don’t worry! You have died in-game, but your soul has been guided into the aether. In a moment, your body shall be rematerialized at the last holy place you visited!” he went, then bounced up and down. “And there you go!”

The black turned into colorful pixels until Guin found herself back in the Cathedral of Miala De Ri. The memories and emotions about Ibraxis’s betrayal returned as the thick scent of earthy incense hit her—but so did the joy of being in the game. Stretching, her mind felt out the differences in her body’s movements, trying to once again acclimate to her enhanced physical abilities.

“Are you quite done?” a deep, resonant voice asked. The High Priest approached her, red and gold silks flowing as he walked. “You there, girl. I remember you. Have you done the tasks that were asked of you?”

Straightening up, Guin blinked at him. Had she? “I... Don’t know?” she replied honestly.

“Of course,” he said tersely. “Sending such a girl to do a job like that. Still. I expect results! Hurry along now!”

As he walked away to scold another young-looking player, Guin pulled up her quest log. There were several quests she had left to do, but when it came to the Catacombs, each quest she reviewed just fueled the worries she had about Ibraxis turning up. She almost wanted him to show up so that she could try to punch him in the face.

Taking a deep breath, she reviewed them one by one. The one that the High Priest had given her was:

[The Rodents Below]

[Mice Slain] - 100 of 100

[Rats Slain] - 100 of 100

[Gremlins Slain] - 0 of 10

[Lost Key] - 1 of 1

This quest is optional. It can be skipped. (Difficulty: C)>>

Save for the gremlins, which she still didn’t know the location of, this one was almost complete.

The ones she was more worried about, however, were the ones that she had originally gone to the catacombs for: those given by the Head Scribe of the Bone Quill Scribes: [Dust and Essence], and [The Glowing Carvings].

Being a gathering quest, [Dust and Essence] was more of an annoyance than a concern. Worse still, the only thing she had left to collect was Death Moss, though she had gathered quite a bit with Ibraxis's help. I could have finished it if he hadn’t decided to kill me... she reflected.

The other, however, was a potential problem:

[Quest Offered: The Glowing Carvings]

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

UPDATE: You have gone into the catacombs and investigated the glowing carvings as the Head Scribe has asked you to. There, you saw that these carvings were from an ancient civilization. The carvings did, in fact, glow, but only after you touched the wall, triggering a reaction. The power source remains a mystery.>

This quest is optional. It can be skipped. (Difficulty: C)>>

It wasn’t entirely wrong. It wasn’t entirely right, either. The game probably didn’t take her dreams into account, but hadn’t the character creation system been able to read her emotions? Not that it mattered either way, she supposed. The game’s story was going to follow the path that was set at the get-go.

What information did she really get from the glowing inscriptions? Biting her finger, she tried to recall what had happened in the moments before Ibraxis had ended her life. While the pang of annoyance at him filled her with an ember of rage, she focused on the critical details: What was it that she learned about the inscriptions? What were they supposed to have told her that the game would have picked up on?

All she could remember was that nostalgic feeling as she gazed upon the stone etchings. Things that she knew, yet did not. Even thinking back on it felt like a dream.

In any other game, she probably would have shrugged it off, but the lack of her own thorough investigation made her start to rip at the skin around her fingernails. TheirWorld relied on player-environment-NPC reaction to the point that most of the time she needed her own personal assessments to get under the skin of the quests. This time, however, what did she have to report to the Head Scribe to get her to assign a new quest? Images from a dream?

Glowering at the log, Guin put her hands on her hips with a deep sigh. For starters, if Ibraxis hadn’t killed her, she probably would have been able to finish both of those without a problem once she had figured out where the gremlins were hiding. For another thing, there was no way she could hunt those wraiths all on her own.

She needed to stop dwelling on Ibraxis’s discretions against her and start working toward solving the problems that were within her power to solve.

Opening her friends list, she sent out a flurry of messages to Drakov, Stella, Bahena, and, when she saw that he, too, was currently online, TeaforaDragon. Of them, only Drakov had the ability to see into the Veil, but Tea had decent support when they were a group in dire need of healing, and Bahena and Stella could be useful in most other situations.

Drakov and Tea were, unsurprisingly, the first to answer her, and Tea, being still in the Catacombs himself, was also the first to arrive.

“Guin!” The happy little garule ran up to her from the dungeon door with a flared tail of blue and orange. “Did you and Ibraxis not finish those quests you had?” he asked curiously.

Guin twitched. Absent in the last part of her former adventure, Tea was ignorant of the trauma that Ibraxis had inflicted on her. Still, trying to force the incident back into her subconscious where she believed it belonged, Guin sighed and crossed her arms with a snort. “No,” she shook her head.

“Noona!” Drakov was the next to run up to her. He gave her a big hug and cried, “Noona! Gomen! I should have been there!”

“It’s fine,” Guin pat him on the back and clasped his shoulder, trying to remind herself that there was no way for him to know how annoyed she really was. Channeling that hateful energy into an evil grin, she told him, “I’ll just be having you make it up to me today.”

He clicked his heels together and gave a crisp salute. “Yes, Ma’am.”

“I am not a ‘ma’am,’” Guin told him sourly.

“I’m TeaforaDragon!” Tea held out his scaly hand to the young boy. Guin left them to their introductions as she went through her inventory and took stock of supplies while she half listened to their conversation about class and experience with the game. StarShine messaged her a few minutes into the discussion and BronzePaw a few minutes after that. Over on the other side of the map, StarShine would take a bit of time, but in the same boat as Guin, BronzePaw hurried over.

Still looking a bit ashamed, BronzePaw laughed awkwardly, scratching the back of her neck as Guin often saw Sathuren do. “I guess this is take two?”

Guin chuckled. “Well, three, for me,” she said, thinking. “Or four.”

“It will just take as much time as it takes!” Tea laughed. “I’ve been working on this dungeon forever.”

Stella came running up to them as they chuckled, huffing and puffing apologies for holding them up but cheering everyone onward.

“What are we all standing around waiting for?” she asked. “We have a dungeon to defeat!”

“We were all standing around waiting for you,” Bahena answered, crossing her arms and eyeing the young woman with narrowed eyes.

“Well, here I am!” Stella said, posing.

“Yes,” said Bahena. “Here you are.”

Sensing that there was another war brewing within the party, Guin walked in between them. Shifting into her [Coat of the Moon] form, she said, “Let’s take all our pent-up energy and aggression out on monsters, okay guys?”

“Yosh!” Drakov exclaimed, and, as a party of five, they marched back down the depths of the Catacombs.