The same team of Demon faction players from the goblin raiding incident stood against the party. They were all smiling, grinning ear to ear.

“Like a mouse,” T, the Assassin, said, “in a trap.”

“I can see our information was good,” Seth reiterated, sliding his sword from its sheath. “They really are just stuck in here like sitting ducks.”

“Fun smash,” the enigmatic Erla added, hefting a large axe onto her shoulder.

Jay and his team paused in front of the dungeon’s entrance. He didn’t hear the sound of stones rubbing together. The opening wasn’t closed yet.

He wasn’t particularly interested in being splattered over the floor before the guild could come and rescue them. He needed to stall the Demon players and, if possible, discover more information. If he could get them to slip anything about how they were creating fake quests, Lester and the guild might be able to do something about it permanently.

“How did you even get into Elvish territory?” Jay asked. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

Katya said, “You really are a noob. Anyone can get into the other territories after level sixty.” She grinned, “But we aren’t level sixty.”

“We’re important,” Erla added, nodding sagely.

“Suffice it to say, there are plenty of ways,” Seth said, interrupting the flow. He could tell what Jay was trying to do. “We aren’t going to reveal them and put our methods at risk.” The sound of his voice reminded Jay of a sleazy Cheshire cat.

“You already let slip about the quest,” Jay said, goading them a bit. “Don’t you want to give us a good villain speech? You can tell us all about the master plan so we can ultimately discover a way to foil it.”

“No, thanks,” Katya sneered.

“You’re stalling. I just don't know why,” Seth said, watching Jay appraisingly. He turned to the rest of his team. “Take them out.”

Jay backed up, forcing the party backward with him. Lester was challenging to push. He still managed. The dungeon stone door slammed shut before them, barring the Demon players from entering. The party heard the blast of spells trying to blow up the dungeon doorway, but the game protected them nicely. Abruptly, the growls of frustration stopped. The other side of the door became silent.

“The silence wizard guy,” Ken said, reminding everyone of the other player. He was still all too familiar with that player.

“What’s next?” Jenny asked, disappointed she couldn’t hear the guild beating up on the Demon players.

“We need to catch up to Jay’s level,” Taylor Lynn said. “We’ll have to go run a dungeon without him. Once we all have level seventeen, we can probably handle a harder dungeon. Or just farm away for gear until we hit level twenty.”

She glanced at Jay after explaining everything, her face flushed. “Unless you had another idea, Jay?” Working together was not always her strong suit.

“Sure,” Jay agreed. “I have some real-life things to take care of, anyway. I need to talk with Tumult about the weird experiences, too. Once I do that, I’ll find some way to kill time. Maybe try to fill up the Bestiary.”

As the party forged the rest of their plan, messages started to roll in from guild chat. Lester gave a play-by-play of the events in the outside area.

Ichibad and Lucille respawned, leading two additional parties into the area. They trapped the Demon players. Red Player’s Society outnumbered the enemy players five to one. They brought along plenty of consumables and took down the Demon players while only losing a single guild member. It turned out that only one of the healers could cleanse the debuffs the Plague Knight used. Seth had spread enough diseases—like the cockroach he was—to take someone down.

At the end of the excitement, Lester said, “It’s clear for us to leave. All enemy players are down.”

“We should have joined to help take them down instead of letting the guild do all the dirty work,” Ken complained.

“We’d get eviscerated without level twenty gear,” Lester said. “No sense making the healers work even harder.”

Ken grumbled under his breath but ultimately let it go. There was plenty more time to player kill some people. The party left the dungeon, finding the corpses of all five enemy players. Everyone in the guild was still celebrating, slapping each other on the back and distributing excessive high-fives.

A bunch of people Jay didn’t know high-fived him. Kylar was there, too. He fought with the desire to tell the other player he was interested in Taylor Lynn. In the end, he followed his gut—insecurity was not attractive.

Everyone walked back to Ilra, continuing happy chatter and celebration. Jay was introduced to a flurry of other guild members he wouldn’t be able to remember. They all seemed friendly enough, offering to help him out and gushing over how cool his unique class was. One person even asked Jay if he would save a class change token.

Jay happily chattered along, not letting anyone down, without committing himself to anything he might regret later. He had no idea how expensive it was to create a class token, so he wouldn’t promise any to anyone.

When the large group reached the gates of Ilra, the Red Player's Society dungeon parties dispersed to go back to business as usual. As they left, only Jay’s party remained. Lester was the first one to speak.

“So, I have a few pieces of business to take care of with the guild. We have to pass a few motions to create the four membership exceptions. Then I need to set up your onboarding schedules.”

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“We’ll level to catch up to Jay after that?” Taylor Lynn asked.

“Yeah,” Lester agreed. “Can you handle stalling until tomorrow, Jay? Maybe plan to pick things back up together after lunch?”

“I can handle that,” Jay assured them. Lester agreed the rest of the group would start farming dungeons after dinner. Everyone said their goodbyes, with Jay lingering to try and talk to Taylor Lynn alone. She chatted with him politely for a few minutes but disappeared quickly to find new gear and restock potions to level up.

Jay brought himself to the ice cream shop, Icy Frost Creams. His first step was to make sure and spend his ten waiting statistic points. He put eight points into Speed to see what the fifty Speed threshold might do. Testing his Balance—to ensure it was not troublesome—he put the final two points into Perception.

After people-watching for a bit and chatting with a few random new players who asked about his class, he logged out of the game. He pulled the laser away from his eye, detached the various sensors plugged into his body, and stepped out of the large machine pod.

The first thing he noticed was, despite the supposed stimulation his muscles would receive while he was gaming, his legs were extremely shaky. He wobbled a bit as he jumped off the platform, catching his balance on the machine. Given his discombobulation, he ultimately checked his messages on his standard computer. The mere idea of augmented reality goggles made him nauseous.

There was an email written from the head of legal at Tumult Corp. waiting in his inbox.

Jay, I hope you enjoyed the soft update to item transfer functionality. I received word from the team that they made transferring items within the party easier. We’re looking out for you to succeed. I hope we can talk soon. - Mr. Georges

The email was nice. On the other hand, Jay hadn’t lodged his issues with item transfer to the company. The obvious implication was that team members were watching his conversations with his party. He shouldn’t be that surprised. The lawyer had made it clear this project was essential to the company.

It was another thing to know that big brother was watching.

In the end, Jay replied to Mr. Georges, asking if they could meet the following day. He explained that he wanted clarifications about the Monster Hunter class and what he was allowed to discuss. The opportunity would allow Jay to figure out what hospital his sister was at, thank them for the item transfer update, and hopefully acquire money for his collection work. He could also discuss the strange quest he received and get clarifications on his non-disclosure agreement.

There were a bunch of other emails waiting for him, so he moved to those. Jay went through them, deleting a dozen spam offers. There were three different phishing attempts. There were even a few people who somehow obtained his email address and were pestering him for information about the Monster Hunter class. Some players were relentless.

He blocked almost everyone bothering him about the class. Although, he noticed one of the emails was different from the others. Looking it over, the person seemed to know Sarah.

Hey Jay. Uhm, it’s me. I mean, I’m Sarah’s friend. Oh, sorry, my name is Casey. I’m a Beast Magician, but Sarah mentioned you might be able to help me in the game. That’s why I created an Elf. I have a quest to obtain my first magical beast contract, but I’m unsure what to make a contract with. Since you’re a Monster Hunter, you can help, right? Thanks in advance!

Seeing the person’s verbal pauses written out in the email was disorienting. Reading it made Jay’s head spin, but he decided to write a reply back. If this person was Sarah’s friend, he didn’t want to let her down. Thinking on it more, he definitely knew the name as one of Sarah's close friends.

The hunting would be something for him to do this evening while the rest of the party was trying to catch up. There was some logic, he had to admit, in going to the Monster Hunter to select a monster. He wrote the other player back, asking her to meet up with Jay at the gates of Ilra. He included an explanation of where the city was within the Elvish zone. With that done, he looked around his apartment.

His apartment, as it turned out, hadn’t cleaned itself while he was inside the game. While waiting for Casey to reply, he put in his headphones, turned on an audio podcast about keeping your house in order, and cleaned.

Jay rid his apartment of the extra pizza boxes. He cleaned out all the leftover food containers in his fridge, which had further spoiled during the two days he spent in-game.

He rechecked his computer, finding an email response. Sarah’s friend confirmed that she would be able to meet at Ilra. She asked if meeting in an hour was okay. Jay wrote back, simply indicating that it was, and went to find some food in his apartment.

In the end, there was a package of ramen noodles. There were a few cans of soup that hadn’t spoiled since they were canned soup. There were a few protein bars. Sighing to himself, Jay made himself a dinner of ramen noodles and protein bars. He desperately needed to get some of his money from cataloging creatures from Tumult Corp.

After he finished eating, he was left with forty-five minutes to kill. He rechecked his email. He wasn’t entirely sure what to do with himself outside of the game, but he found nothing interesting. He searched around, looking for some more information about Tumult Corp. They were under two pending lawsuits for intellectual property. It wasn’t that surprising since they were a successful new game. Plenty of people would be looking to get their piece.

A few people were outspoken about the lawsuits, so he found an interview with one of the allegedly wronged partners. The owner of a small game studio claimed they had been in discussions to license a piece of their game engine. The technology aided game masters in live development for quests. It was part of the quest engine.

During those negotiations, the studio executive claimed Tumult Corp. stole his ideas and implemented them into their own system. He claimed this obviously circumvented the exclusivity agreement both parties put in place at the start of discussions.

By the end, Jay almost found himself on the side of the small studio executive. Of course, he also knew that was the point. Still, this executive was doing an excellent job of selling his story. When Jay looked at the clock, he realized he was already five minutes late.

Preparing his apology, Jay strapped himself back into the pod and logged into the game. He was a Monster Hunter once again. At that moment, Jay realized something: he was starting to truly enjoy the game. He heard the sound of Sarah’s friend almost immediately upon zoning into the game.

“Hey!” Casey exclaimed, rushing over to Jay upon spotting him.

The other player was quite the sight. She was wearing furs, carrying a staff with a bird head on it, and wearing a necklace made out of feathers. She was also adorned in jewelry that looked to be made of teeth.

“You have quite a lot of gear,” Jay pointed out.

“Oh yeah,” Casey agreed. “I saved up some money to get the Founder’s Pack. I’ve had a hard time figuring out the game. These Beast Contract things are kinda complicated. It took me a couple hours just to memorize the spell.” She smiled energetically, adding, “I’m so glad Sarah suggested we link up!”

“Yeah,” Jay said, not yet sure he was glad. Of course, he loved the opportunity to do a favor for his sister. On the other hand, it sounded like his evening was going to be dedicated to helping a new player level up. It wasn’t that long ago he was starting the game himself. He was even forgetting basic things like eating ice cream for dungeon runs. Duh.

“First,” he continued, “Let’s get some ice cream.”

“Why ice cream?” Casey asked though she seemed delighted by the idea.

“For the bonus experience, of course,” Jay said. “You never want to forget your experience boosts. That would be ridiculous and should never happen, especially in a dungeon.”

The Beast Magician player nodded emphatically as if she was absorbing excellent advice. It was going to be a long night.