"Whoa," I say. "The lake is really beautiful."

The lake is pretty large and with a more organic shape than I was expecting. It looks like a natural lake rather than one someone created for the purpose of being a decoration in a Dungeon. There are a few more trees and shrubs and other plants around the lake, as well as some boulders and rock formations.

Hills rise up along the western and northern side of the lake until they form a cliff thirty feet in height toward the northwestern part of it with the upper fifth of it protruding out about eighteen feet. A five-foot-wide waterfall flows down from the "flat" as it's known here, crashing down into the lake. Despite the constant feed of new water, there's no visible external flow.

The waters of the lake shimmer lightly, sparkling in the evening sun. Despite this being a Dungeon, it does have a day-night cycle that matches outside, though the weather does not. It's still a little bit chilly here, but not enough so that I might wonder if snow is on its way.

"Thought you said there were giant frogs?" Leif looks around in confusion. "I don't see any-ack!"

Leif jumps back in shock as a giant frog jumps out of the lake and onto a nearby boulder. The frog is easily nine feet in height and has a green-brown skin that's slightly slick with mucus. It lets out a deep ribbit that causes the air to vibrate upon sighting us and begins to turn to face us.

"Yo!" I give the giant frog a wave as I send a pair of [Air Bolt]s to it.

The spells slam into the monster's side and blast small holes into it, though not enough to actually kill the thing. It has around 20 Constitution and I have 18 Magic at the moment, so my attacks won't be enough entirely on their own. I'll definitely have to use several hits to take this thing down.

As I send another pair of [Air Bolt]s at the giant frog, it attempts to attack us using its tongue-strike attack where all it does is flick out its tongue. That's easy enough to avoid if we know it's coming and there's a tell to look out for that makes it even easier. If the monster isn't readying a jump and it's facing directly at me, it's going to lash out its tongue.

See? A simple and easy tell, so all we have to do is keep moving so that the monster doesn't face us directly. That's what I do as I continue to shoot [Air Bolt]s at the beast in an attempt to dish out enough damage that it dies. Death by a thousand cuts can work against monsters. All I need to do is make it bleed too much.

The monster lets out a massive cry of pain as an [Air Bolt] slams into its right eye. I click my tongue in annoyance. Both eyes were supposed to get taken out but only one bolt struck true. The other bolt was a little low and grazed the monster's side.

I take a sip of potion to restore my Mana, then keep dodging attacks as I cast a spell new to me. Fire plus orb plus travel plus burst. It takes me almost ten seconds and roughly 15 Mana, but a three-inch ball of fire forms above my hand.

You have learned [Fireball].

"Oh, no," Leif sounds a little bit scared.

"We'll be fine."

I shoot the [Fireball] forward at the next moment I see the frog preparing to shoot its tongue forward. Already in the action of attacking, the monster is unable to stop and the [Fireball] soars straight into its mouth. Just before the [Fireball] hits, the monster's mouth clamps shut again. Perfect timing and that wasn't even planning.

A fwoomp sounds out as the [Fireball] detonates within the monster. The beast's body expands a little as heat and force are blasted out in all directions inside of it. Flames shoot out of the monster's mouth as it's forced open by the spell, though they don't travel too far.

+0.88% [Elemental Wizard] Experience!

"Oh, good. That worked."

"You're insane!" Leif exclaims. "What if that failed?"

"Eh. I would've figured something out."

Leif groans as I walk over to the frog monster's remains to use the looting trick on it, sipping some potion to restore my Mana in preparation. I receive some frog leather, a glass jar of magic frog mucus, and a small glass jar of magic frog eggs. Those are all sent into my cuff, then I look at Leif.

"I take it we're going to clear out this area, then set up camp for the night?" Leif asks. "Since it's starting to get late."

"Actually," I say. "Now that I've fought one of the giant frog monsters… I'm kind of bored."

Leif stares at me for a few moments.

"What?"

"Bored," I say. "Like… I'm not really enjoying the Dungeon run. It's just boring stuff. When I was running the other one, it was mostly just to get stronger and earn money so that I could have the funds and ability to figure out what I want to do. Now that I'm in another city and I'm not as pressed for that… I kind of don't want to keep running Dungeons? Not as a regular thing. Or even hunting monsters. I just want to sit back, relax, and… hang out with Adam and stuff."

At this point, I really am disinterested in running the Dungeon. I might run it again from time to time just to acquire more stuff to sell, but even that's not really a necessity. It would mostly be to stretch myself and flex my powers a little. The only reason I even wanted to run it today was to get my magic Classes up in Level so that when the full group comes to run it, I can properly provide support as a mage.

However, there are two issues with that. First, I'd gain the Levels during such a run, anyway. Second, Caleb is only here to investigate the missing guild members, Leif is leaving once his brother realizes he's gone, and Adam's only interest is being with me.

None of them actually care about running the Dungeon… and nor do I. When I think about things more, I just want to settle down a bit and move away from having to be active all the time. Raising my siblings in place of our asshole parents pretty much required nonstop activity from me.

Things like learning how to properly make pizza from scratch and in a brick oven were rare 'breaks' for me, but even those were aimed at doing stuff for my younger siblings. I never really had me-time and here, I'm spending most of my time doing some sort of work or training or running a Dungeon and… I want to stop.

Chances are good I'll come back to run the Dungeon just for fun or to fill time, but I think I want to settle down into a slower, more relaxed life. It's time for me to have some real me-time instead of squishing it in between training or hunting or Dungeons.

"Are you alright with leaving the Dungeon now?" I ask Leif. "Or want to keep going until we clear the stage?"

"Leaving now is fine," he says. "But how would we do that? We haven't killed the Zone Boss yet so we don't have warp stones, and even if we had, we could just go through the Gate there."

"Er… I bought some?" I pull a pair of the small grey orbs out of my cuff's storage space. "Just because I could."

Leif mutters something under his breath.

"Okay, yeah, it probably was just 'spending money for the sake of it'," I say. "But I ran another Dungeon solo three times just to loot the twelve floors of library in the tower that was its third Zone and paper is kind of expensive. So is ink. I can earn thousands of gold just from that, and that's not even getting into me being able to sell some pretty rare ingots if I needed the coin."

I'll probably still have a sword made from the metal just because I can and I'll definitely keep the sapling for any future extended Dungeon runs. Aside from minor issues here in Amadikols, however, this isn't a bad place to live. Those issues will fade over time as well.

"You're insane," Leif says.

"Just a tad," I say. "Before we leave here, how long do you think it'll be before your brother notices you're missing? Just wondering since you were comfortable coming in here for a few days despite waiting to go home."

This was a thought I had since we're getting ready to leave early.

"Depends on how soon he realizes he was being an idiot and decides to find me so he can apologize," Leif answers. "Usually takes another week or two. So I felt I'd be fine with it for a few days."

"Ah," I offer him one of the warp stones.

"Can I have, one, too?" A voice says from our right.

Leif and I both jump as we turn to face the speaker… who's wearing armor made of bark and dark green fabric, including a helmet that conceals all but his deep green eyes. A pair of beautiful, black-and-green butterfly-like wings extend out of his back, probably in holes within the back of his armor, though how he put the armor on with wings… that's another question.

He grips in his right hand a spear with a dark wooden shaft and a dark grey metal head with green runes etched onto it. A vine-like pattern runs from where the spearhead connects to the shaft all the way down to the butt of the spear, a small green crystal set here and there along the length of the spear (but not in the vine pattern).

"Who are you?" I ask. "Wait, how did you get in here? You're not a part of my Party!"

"Light?" Leif looks bewildered. "W-what are you doing here?"

"Light?" I ask. "Wait. The Fairy King?"

"I broke in," Light responds. "Breaking out is a little bit more difficult and would draw unwanted notice from those in the city. My original plan involved doing that, but I see there is no need."

I look at Leif, since it seems the Fairy King is ignoring me.

"It's Light," Leif tells me. "He's in battle armor. Which is overkill for a place as weak as this, Light."

"One can never be too cautious," Light says. "When dealing with a potential attack on a fairy."

If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

Leif exclaims something in a language I don't know, which leads to him and Light to start bickering in that language. As much as I can't understand their words, I think I know what's going on. It seems that Leif was deliberately hiding from me the fact that his brother is the Fairy King, for whatever reason he had.

I let them argue for all of a minute before intervening.

"Hey! The Party Leader for this Dungeon here! Stop bickering or so help me, you are both in trouble!"

Both fairies stop arguing and look at me, Leif looking a little stunned while Light is… hard to read considering he's wearing a helmet.

"Now," I say. "I ain't sure what the fuck y'all are arguing about, but this is my Dungeon run, which means my rules until we leave."

Light "whispers" something to Leif in their native language, who then responds in the same. I clear my throat.

"How the fuck did you break into a Dungeon run?" I ask Light. "Especially considering how many instances there are? As far as I knew, interfering with a Dungeon ain't possible."

"I'm almost two thousand years old," Light scoffs. "And I directly slept with four different gods in just seven hundred of those years and was a Hero of the God of Mystery, the creator of the System and Dungeons. Figuring out how to access their administrative controls wasn't that difficult. All I had to do was look for which one you went into and then change the Dungeon Gate's destination to that. But I can't do that from inside so I'd either have to kill the Zone Boss, which would count as you doing it and thus enable you to just warp to the end of this Zone with the Boss dead, or actually use dimensional magics to tear a hole through the Dungeon's fabric and exit it."

There are administrative controls for a Dungeon… and a fairy figured out how to access them? I'm going to assume that either they have lesser security measures because actually finding them in the first place requires being a god or Light was able to because of the spark of divinity within him.

"Setting aside that mess," I say. "Why did you follow us in here?"

"I've been suspicious of you ever since I first saw you," Light states. "I was just about to rescue my brother when you suddenly dive-bombed the cultists. After that, I decided to follow you four in secret to ensure Leif's safety and see what your plans were. The fact that you were so weak yet also somehow able to interfere with my ability to hear some discussions, see some things, or even follow you at times heightened this suspicion. When you allowed Leif to come into the Dungeon with you, I suspect you were going to take action here."

There are several things in what he's said that creates more questions.

"What kind of action did you think I was going to take?" I ask.

"Fairies are creatures of magic," Light states. "I expected it to be something such as killing him and then harvesting his parts and storing them in your cuff for later use. Claim he died through an accident here. Fragile little fairy."

"I'm not interested in killing people."

"Then you're a rare one."

"My only interest with Leif has been keeping him company until he returned home," I say. "That's it."

"Liar."

"Er… that's not a lie?" I say. "That really is the extent of it."

"I am able to detect lies," Light says. "You want something else from him. You have another desire."

"Er… I didn't think 'sex if he wants it' counted."

"…anything else?"

"No."

"You want sex with me?" Leif asks.

"If you want it," I say. "But I knew it'd be a temporary thing so I was avoiding getting too attached. Wasn't too hard as long as I accepted that you'd be leaving soon."

"Huh," he says. "Well, you're very handsome."

"Thanks," I say. "You're very cute. Now, Light. You were about to rescue Leif when I showed up?"

"Yes," he answers. "I was contemplating which of my mystic beasts I would summon to slay those foul cultists and-ack!"

"Destroy that, would you?" I ask to Light catches the tome and starts examining it. "Since you apparently decided not to take care of it or bring your brother home right away. Jeez. You could have just revealed yourself then and destroyed the tome, then brought Leif home. He'd have been happy."

"Leif was still angry with me," Light says as the tome bursts into golden-white motes that drift a little as they fade away. "I was concerned that revealing myself right then would make it seem as if I was trying to prove a point to him. It was part of the reason it took me so long to decide which beast to use to rescue him, though I would not have let them harm him further regardless."

"Was it really a demon bound into there?" Lei asks.

"Yes," Light answers. "An archdemon that I once battled, back when I was weaker. You didn't hear it, but he was begging me to not kill him. I am now powerful enough to simply wipe him from existence."

"And your holy power wasn't affected by the declaration?" I ask.

Caleb retained his ability to use holy magics without needing to pray to the gods and repent. That was most likely because he was part of the group that caused the intervention from them and didn't display the characteristics that led to the situation.

"Indeed," Light answers. "My holy power stems from the spark of divinity within me rather than a power the gods have granted to mortals. Only Myst is capable of removing it as it stems from him, and despite the gods now interacting with the world once more, he has not returned."

"Uh… yeah, actually, he has," I say. "In fact, he and another god started some light bickering over me while I was at the bathhouse on my first day here. You said you haven't been able to see or hear everything involving me, that you're sometimes blocked… did the lack of being able to follow me include when I went there on the first day."

"If Myst were to have returned, he'd have already let me know," Light says. "I do know how you are interfering with-"

"Whoops!" The voice of the God of Mysteries fills the air. "Sorry, Light! Forgot to let you know! Here, have another of my pouches! We can hook up after I finish some stuff."

A [Pouch of Infinite Tricks] appears in the air in front of Light. All three of us stare at it for a few moments, then Light sighs and grabs it and the pouch vanishes.

"The God of Mysteries is the one who summoned me to this world," I tell Light. "More specifically, he was visiting my world, saw me, and decided to see how I'd react to a world of magic. That was something he told me when he actually approached me the other day."

Light mutters something that is probably him insulting the God of Mysteries, but I can't understand the fairies' language so I can't know for sure.

"I think it's time to get out of here," I say. "I think we all want to get home, yeah?"

"Yeah," Leif quickly nods.

"Of course," Light says. "I hate being in this realm. And speaking of that… the Fairy Realm is is another realm of the universe entirely. One with far more magic than this one. So you were wrong, Leif. I just don't talk about it much because the Fairy Gates are currently the only safe way to pass between the realms unless you're a divine being. The fewer people who know this, the better."

"And you're letting some random human know?" I raise an eyebrow.

"I would prefer not to, but Myst has told me to," Light explains. "He said that you're trustworthy and won't spread it around."

The God of Mysteries is talking with Light right now? That's pretty awesome that Light can maintain two conversations at once like that.

"Ah," I say. "Well, he's right about that. I can imagine how that can be problematic. The fewer people who know, the fewer people will try to make their own version of the Fairy Gates."

The presence of the System and the gods there suggests that there's some connection to this realm as well. Though in all honesty, I wouldn't be surprised if that was just because of the God of Mysteries.

"Indeed," Light states. "Leif, you are coming home, yes?"

"Yes," Leif nods, then looks at me. "As fun as hanging out with you has been, Jamie, I'm ready to return to the Fairy Realm."

"That's fine," I say. "You know where to find me if you want to get into trouble again."

"Yeah," he chuckles. "Unless you decide to move, but I'm sure I can find you even if you do."

"Also," Light says to me. "In exchange for taking care of my brother, I'll give you one bit of knowledge before we leave here."

"Oh?"

"Yes," Light says. "Caleb is not on an official mission from the Titan's Grasp Guild. He has been relieved of duties to allow him to travel and be with you."

"He's looking for-"

"That's a lie," Light tells me. "It was the excuse he came up with in order to stick around. I know not what his plan is for continuing the lie, but he purchased used gear and some supplies in order to pretend that he had found a lead. He requested permission from his Guild Master to quit the guild in order to stay with you. From what I read in the letter he left in his room, he was given permission to travel and be with you without quitting the guild as long as he sent them information on where he was or where he was going anytime he traveled so that they could let him know if they needed something taken care of there."

"It's not nice to read other people's mail," I say.

"I have been thoroughly investigating the three of you to ensure my brother was safe," Light says. "I will stop at nothing to do so."

"That's a discussion we will continue once we get home," Leif tells Light, then looks at me. "Sorry. And… I kind of suspected it was something like this. Caleb's seemed happier when you're around and didn't seem that interested in investigating things."

"Huh," I say. "Well, I guess that's good to know, though I might let him continue with it just to see how long it takes for him to admit the truth. Maybe not. It depends. Anyway, let's get out of here."

"I'll be imperceptible," Light says. "But I'll be accompanying you the whole way. Once Leif picks up his things, I'll teleport the two of us to the Fairy Gate and-"

"I don't have anything I need to bring with me," Leif says, then looks at me. "Can you tell them I said goodbye?"

"Sure," I say. "It was fun hanging out with you, Leif."

Leif nods, then Light turns invisible and we activate the warp stones. Immediately, Leif and I are standing at the Dungeon Gate. Leif gives me a light hug, then vanishes after stepping back. I'm a little disappointed he can't stay longer but understand his desire to return home.

Instead of selling my loot, I make my way to my new home. When I enter it, I find Caleb relaxing on the couch and Adam sitting with a tray of large rolls on the table. Both of them look at me when I approach.

"You're back early," Caleb says. "Thought it was going to be a few days, not just today?"

"Originally planned on it," I say. "But then I realized that I'm not that excited for Dungeon runs. I just want to hang out and relax, and maybe occasionally do a Dungeon run or hunt a monster."

"Ah," he says. "Adam was trying to figure out if he bought the right rolls to use as buns for burgers, he was going to try to make them tonight instead of just cooking up some meat."

"Yeah, we can use those," I say. "By the way, Light is Leif's brother, and he can apparently break into Dungeons. He followed us in to see if I was planning on hurting Leif in there."

"Since he's not here, I take it that means he went home?"

"He said to tell you guys goodbye," I say. "But he might come back from time to time just to visit and hang out."

"Aw," Adam pouts a little.

"Before I go take a shower to scrub off today's sweat," I say. "I just wanted to ask about the relationship between the three of us."

"What do you mean?" Caleb asks while Adam frowns a little.

"What I mean," I say. "Is what are we? I know you two don't get along too well, but I also know you're both interested in me. Adam, you literally gave up returning home and being among those who won't treat you bad just for being a demihuman as well as being with your grandfather just so you can keep traveling with me. Caleb, you literally tried to quit your guild and made up a mission and even spent money to buy gear to try and support the mission claim just so you can be with me more. Honestly makes me think you both like more more than just as a friend-with-benefits."

"You knew?" Caleb's eyes widen.

"So," I say. "What are we? Just friends-with-benefits, or are you two both my boyfriend?"

"Boyfriend," Adam answers without hesitation.

"Boyfriend," Caleb more calmly responds. "If you're okay with that."

"Of course," I say. "Then we're boyfriends. Alright. I'm going to go get cleaned, then I'll make dinner so that we don't end up with steaks on buns instead of proper burgers."

Caleb snickers at the reminder of Adam's attempt at making burgers the other day and Adam growls at him.

"If you two start wrestling," I start making my way to the bathing room. "Don't break anything."

"Got it!" Caleb exclaims, then charges Adam.

"Wha-hey!" Adam protests.

I snort at their antics. Coming home from whatever I was doing to these two being my boyfriends rather than just friends-with-benefits is definitely something I'm going to enjoy. The short time that I've known them has been more than enough for me to know I like them. Caleb was a bit annoying at first but he's become more tolerable and acceptable now that we're here and I think it's because he's given up on being annoyed by Adam's rejection of him.

My time here in this world has definitely been a breath of fresh air and I'm extremely grateful to the God of Mysteries for bringing me here. I really can be whatever I want here, and now, I'm going to be a semi-rich guy with two boyfriends and who does basically whatever he wants. That means just relaxing and hanging out with some hunting and training mixed in. A simple life without the chaos of my old.

"Thank you, God of Mysteries," I send up a prayer to him. "For this opportunity and journey."

It's been much appreciated. Now, however, I'm going to take things easy and just relax.