Hey guys. I am adding secondary intercardinal elements between the eight elements I already have. I would like it if you posted your ideas on the discussion thread. Partially because seeing that nobody is using it makes me think that nobody is reading this.

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Dali drew the short straw.

He would be the one to return to the monster king and tell him about their plan.

They would destroy the mindless undead that populated the city.

Then the monsters would be able to move in and start their own kingdom.

He was unhappy to be the one to go, because the others in the party would level up while he was gone.

He would not improve much with the weak monsters on the journey.

To make matters worse, there were only a few of them, and they would avoid him.

He had only himself to blame for that of course.

“Well,” he said, “the sooner I leave the sooner I’ll be back.”

He left, disappearing into the tunnel from which they had come.

Aesh turned to Rell and spoke.

“Did you rig the lots?”

Rell responded calmly, as though he had prepared a response.

“Do you want to see him get stronger than us?”

None of them brought up the ruse again.

[p=center]* * *[/p]

Dali walked through the forest.

He had been journeying for a while, and had not come across any monsters.

“Ugh. This is so boring.”

“What was that?!”

“Aaaaahrrg!”

Dali clutched his head and screamed.

What are you doing?

“AAAAAAH!”

His scream increased in volume.

Are you okay?

“AAAAAAARR-”

The scream stopped suddenly, and Dali collapsed to the ground.

“What happened?”

Then Dali’s heart stopped beating.

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

His body turned grey.

But he did not disappear.

[p=center]* * *[/p]

Aurora pulled her sword out of the zombie.

“Did any of you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“It sounded like…”

She trailed off, but Aesh completed it for her.

“Like a scream.”

Aurora went pale.

“I was going to say ‘like Dali’.”

They looked at each other.

“Maybe we should go check on him.”

“He could have been hurt.”

“He’s all alone.”

“No.”

They stared in shock at Rell.

“What do you mean ‘no’?”

“We are staying here.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s what we should do.”

“But he could be hurt!”

“Yes he could be.”

“Then-”

“He could be hurt, and that makes it all the more important that we do our job.”

“We have to find him!”

He turned to Aurora angrily.

“Do we? And how would we do that? We can’t find him, because all we have to go on is one scream that only half of us heard.”

He looked away from her.

“It would take us days to reach him, and we couldn’t find him anyway. If he can’t handle it on his own, we can’t help him.”

“So we should do nothing?!”

Paella was sounding angry.

“No. We believe in him. We believe in his strength.”

“That’s not-”

“We believe in him because he got us this far.”

“He’s-”

“We believe in him because he lied to us. We believe in him because he changed us. We believe in him because he would believe in us. He would believe in us with a certainty we can only hope to match.”

“He’s in pain Rell! He’s in pain and he’s just a man. He’s hardly even that!”

“You’re a priestess aren’t you?”

Rell was practically hissing.

“Then pray. Not to the god this game gave you. Pray to him. Pray to him until he is more than a man.”

Paella was silent.

“There is nothing we can do for him. Nothing except trust him, and show that he can trust us.”

[p=center]* * *[/p]

Jeeves couldn’t release his concentration.

He wasn’t sure what had happened, but it might affect the young master permanently.

It might even affect him in reality as well.

Until he knew, he couldn’t release his concentration, and until he did, he couldn’t know.

It was time to call in a favor.

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