“Run!!” Alastair yelled.

  “Do you want me to kill it?” Melia asked, as if she was talking about the weather.

  “Melia, now is really not the time!”

  “Are you crazy?!” Jessica shouted at Alastair. “This is exactly the time!”

  ?

  [Sunrise]’s first few steps into Lakeridge had already gone to pieces. No sooner had they left the coach station and set one foot off the beaten path, they were attacked.

  By a level 298 [Wild Boar].

  Supposedly, this zone was rated rank two, meaning most monsters ranged in level between 210 and 250. Occasionally, there might be a stray 260, and there were known pockets, dens if you will, climbing all the way to 280.

  Nobody expected their first encounter to be nearly rank 3.

  It all started when Y’cennia got distracted by an herb. In her defense, it was a plant she’d never seen before, as different regions had different climates and different ingredients could be found all over the world. What she hoped to be some new sample for use in potions quickly turned into a chase.

  [Tortruffle] turned out to be a small mushroom that grew under the shade of large, moist rocky outcroppings, and the pattern of the mushroom’s cap resembled a tortoise shell.

  It also happened to be the favorite of local pigs.

  The moment Y’cennia slid her hands around the stalk to gently ease it out of the earth, an enraged squeal rent the air. The passive [Wild Boar], which had been obliviously minding its own business several yards away, instantly turned aggressive.

  And charged straight at the catkin.

  Having probably not the smartest idea of his life, Alastair threw himself directly in the path of the charging beast, hoping to divert its rage.

  All he got for his troubles was a scuffed rear end as he was easily tossed aside and a rather large dent in his brand-new shield.

  Melia glared at the shield as if it personally insulted her mother. She worked hard on that! How dare it fail to stop a simple boar? Then again, it was only made of bronze.

  Ever since [Sunrise] returned from the dungeon, they had been working on response times for unexpected combat. Jessica and Ellesea leaped aside, Jessica letting loose a few arrows as she dodged out of the way, but she might as well have been tossing sand. The first arrow didn’t find purchase and plinked harmlessly off the monster’s hide, while the other one stuck into the shoulder like a conveniently placed pin in a cushion. Alastair pulled himself quickly to his feet while Y’cennia threw her hands over her head, all the while screaming at the top of her lungs: ahhhhhh!

  Sadly, the mushroom was still in those hands, in plain vision for the boar to see.

  “The mushroom! Get rid of the mushroom!” Alastair yelled. Y’cennia complied without a single hesitation.

  The boar simply trampled it under-hoof as it charged, undeterred.

  “Al! It’s still running!”

  “I see this!”

  “And now my mushroom is gone!”

  “Not really important!”

  “It’s totally important!!”

  ?

  Meanwhile, all this time, Melia simply stood there, watching, with an amused smile on her face one might reserve for a playroom full of toddlers.

  Yet again, she refused to join their party, but in her eyes, none of her teammates were in any bit of danger. Her hoard senses weren’t even tingling.

  “Are you okay?” She asked calmly, suddenly appearing by Alastair’s side as he ran full out. He glanced down in surprise, only to find the gnome skipping sideways, easily keeping pace. For some reason that irked him, and he scowled.

  “Just fine, thanks,” he grumbled, forcing his attention straight ahead.

  If Melia didn’t know any better, she’d say he was putting up a front, worried about appearances.

  Actually, she didn’t know any better.

  “I can kill it if you want,” she said earnestly, doing her best not to sound patronizing despite her buoyant, sing-songy voice. “But if I do, you won’t get any experience for it.”

  Alastair’s eyes twitched, letting Melia know he heard and was instantly thinking about capitulating. Sadly, for him, Jessica heard her too.

  “Oh no you don’t! Not yet! We almost got him!”

  “You don’t have anyyyyythingggg!” Y’cennia wailed, continuing the large arc she was making around the outcrop of boulders. Melia found the whole thing highly amusing.

  Until Ellesea hit it with a [Pyroblast].

  A gigantic flaming rock hurtled through the air with an audible whoosh and impacted dead on with the boar’s face.

  It skidded to a stop, slowly turned around, and stared at the foolish [Mage] that dared attack it. It pawed the ground two times before letting out a mighty roar and charging at Ellesea.

  Its face was bright red, in part from the searing blisters disfiguring its now broken and misshapen face, but mostly due to rage. Three-quarters of its health was gone…but it was all the more terrifying for it.

  To this point, nobody in [Sunrise] had ever seen Ellesea’s [Pyroblast] fail to kill a target in one shot.

  For good reason, it was her most powerful spell, despite falling outside her specialization. But she didn’t have the 6 seconds required for her to cast it a second time.

  The [Wild Boar] barreled toward her with the ferocity of a dwarven steam tank, promising every bit the same amount of death and destruction in its retribution. Only a second or two remained before Ellesea was impaled by four gruesome tusks.

  She didn’t have time to dodge. Not the reflexes, not the Agility or Dexterity to throw herself to the side. Instead, she held her ground until the last moment possible, calming her hammering heart as best she could while she clamped down on her nerves. The boar was on her, mere inches away from gouging great holes in her chest-

  [Blink].

  -and it skidded to a halt, disoriented and confused, its prey vanished in a hail of purple sparkles.

  Ellesea vanished just before the strike came, teleporting several yards in front of her, all the while the boar traveled through her, through where she was just standing. Ellesea did not stop to turn around and look at her handiwork, running as quickly as her awkward waddle-in-a-dress allowed.

  Jessica and Alastair were not idle. Jessica put two arrows through its left eye socket and Alastair slammed his hammer down with all his might. It crashed down on the boar’s head with a sickening crunch, splitting it in two. With a final bewildered squeal, the monster spasmed twice more and grew still, dead.

  Three rays of golden light erupted from the party members, each one struggling to catch their breath.

  “Congratulations!” Melia squeaked in delight. “What does that bring you to now?”

  “307,” Alastair said, followed by Ellesea and Y’cennia.

  “332.”

  “302.”

  Jessica perked up, having not leveled, and threw her hands in the air in mock outrage.

  “I’m still 299! I’m the weak link now, you all need to carry me harder!”

  Typical Jessica, she said so with a huge smile on her face and no heat behind her words.

  “I want to join the 300 club!”

  The others laughed and joked, taking a moment to gather their wits, while Melia thought back on the last few days.

  ?

  [Sunrise] was not allowed to leave the abbey for two whole days. In Melia’s last life, only needing two days of convalescence after sustaining grievous injuries was nothing short of a miracle. But here they were, hale and whole, laughing while patting Y’cennia consolingly on the back as she lamented her lost mushroom.

  Gone was the malaise of fear and uncertainty cast upon them by the shadow of the dragon, replaced with renewed hope and joy. They still gave Melia strange looks now and again, got caught off guard when she did or said something too far outside of their expectations, but she had inserted herself fully into their lives. She was so over the top in most everything she did that they were mostly numb to her now.

  The fact that her [Dancer]’s buff was still active for a brief time and had already put in a ton of work didn’t hurt.

  When the sisters finally released the patients (with dire warning of how sad the children would be if the party got hurt), Melia presented them with new and repaired gear.

  It wasn’t anything special, as far as she was concerned.

  Her party didn’t see it that way.

  Each of them held a brand-new garment or piece of armor in their hands, fingers trailing numbly over the soft leathers or gleaming plate.

  The only exception was Ellesea’s [Scholar’s Robes], which Melia elected to repair instead of replace. She figured the robes might have sentimental value to the [Mage], and for her current level, Melia couldn’t upgrade them to anything drastically better.

  To Ellesea, seeing her robes repaired was more of a shock than anything.

  Magical equipment, anything granted stats by the system, anything greater than “common” quality, was difficult to repair. Damage reduced a gear’s effectiveness, lowering the stats it gave the more it got destroyed. Repairs needed to be made by qualified professionals, and even then, the gear did not always return to its original, undamaged state.

  But her robes were pristine. Better than new. Apparently the thread Melia used to stitch the pieces back together counted as [Embroidery] and wasn’t just decoration.

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  She actually gained two points in Intelligence.

  The noble instincts which she tried to bury threatened to rear their head. She didn’t like how “being better” was drilled into nobles as children, despite how caring and attentive her parents were, and the notion that she should be better than everyone else, she was more deserving, standing above…

  Before, she was the only one with a green piece of equipment. Now everybody had something that was uncommon. Jessica’s pants, Y’cennia’s apron, Alastair’s chestplate and shield.

  She was no longer special, and she did her best to squash those childish, dour thoughts.

  ?

  The group decided it was long since overdue that they moved on from Hammerfall and the Gold Coast. Melia purchased them a normal ticket for a private coach to take them to the border station just past Serenity Forest into the Sienna Mountains. Lakeridge was the biggest settlement in the zone and it would have taken weeks to walk there on foot.

  As it was, the coach needed to layover in Eastshire. Well, technically not Eastshire proper, since the halfling village did not have any amenities sized for the “Big Folk”, as they called the larger races, but an elf-sized inn and tavern was constructed on the edge of town, and it was a lively, happening place.

  Melia’s first encounter with the halflings was quite amusing. Meeting somebody closer to her size that she didn’t need to stare waaay up into the clouds to see was novel, even if the shoeless farmer only came up to Jessica’s stomach. To Melia, he was quite tall.

  She told him as much, which earned her a hearty laugh and a free drink at the tavern, which she repaid in kind, buying a round for everybody present. Needless to say, nothing productive happened for the rest of the day.

  ?

  The plan was to take the coach to Parker’s Station, the small settlement that cropped up around the old guard tower on the border of the zone. From there, they would walk the rest of the way to Lakeridge on foot. While the carriage could have taken them all the way in several more hours, it was something of a tradition for adventurers to make their way into a new zone on their own, getting a lay of the land, exploring, and otherwise familiarizing themselves with their surroundings. Once they were settled, faster travel options would be explored.

  “And we’re doing this because we want to, right?” Melia asked. “Not because some rule says we need to walk or because we’re worried about a budget?”

  “Yes,” Alastair said gently as Jessica snorted. “We’re grateful for your generosity and our suddenly deep pockets, but we don’t want to get ahead of ourselves. We would have made it here eventually, and when we did, we would have walked.”

  “We brought tents and everything,” Y’cennia moaned, as if she had to actually physically carry them and they weren’t stuffed into her inventory.

  They left the small outpost, which in reality was probably considered a tiny village, and crested a small hill to get a better view of the land.

  ?

  That’s when they ran into the [Wild Boar].

  ?

  As the group sat down to recover, Melia went ham on harvesting. [Skinning] saw her recovering a very nice sheet of leather, [Alchemy] helped her preserve a thigh bone, and normal [Looting] procured two intact tusks.

  To top it off, her eye for [Cooking] won them three pork chops, one juicy boar steak, and five whole pounds of bacon, which Melia set about cooking immediately.

  “I love you,” Jessica declared the moment the tantalizing smell of sizzling bacon wafted into her nostrils. She would have picked the gnome up and smothered her in a hug…but Melia was cooking, and that would have delayed the bacon.

  “Every party needs a pocket gnome,” she continued, surveying their spoils. “Look at all this. Food, loot, and tradeable goods? I’m sold.”

  “Be reasonable,” Ellesea laughed. “Gnomes don’t fit in pockets.”

  “That’s what you take issue with?” Alastair mumbled, but he was ignored.

  “Fine,” Jessica admitted reasonably. “Stuff her in a backpack then. She’ll fit in one of those.”

  “True,” Melia laughed, “But also, you just want me for my bacon.”

  “Not gonna lie, that’s a big selling point,” Jessica shamelessly replied. “But also, look at the rest of this stuff. That’s one monster dead, we got experience for it, and the food alone will last us all day.”

  She paused.

  “Unless you eat it all.”

  “No, I wouldn’t do that to you,” Melia laughed. “But really, you’re overselling the impact a single utility person brings. Don’t compare them with me, right? That loot right there? That’s the product of at least four high-level classes.”

  The team stared at their spoils wistfully. That’s right, they were traveling with an anomaly.

  Silence passed for several peaceful moments as the party fully recovered. It wasn’t long before Jessica became too restless.

  “What’s taking so long?” she demanded impatiently. All thought about Melia being some sort of overwhelmingly powerful entity was forgotten as she was currently the only thing standing between Jessica and that divine smell.

  Melia stifled a laugh. If this was how Jessica reacted to simple bacon fried in a pan, not even a [Cooking] recipe, what would she do for a full-course meal with buffs?

  All Melia had on her was salt, a little rendered fat from the boar itself, and a sprinkle of crushed up pepper from her inventory.

  Well, the frying pan itself was made of [Elementium], but that wouldn’t affect the taste.

  “Here,” Melia giggled, picking up a piece of bacon straight from the pan and holding it up for Jessica. The [Hunter] quickly snatched it, huffed loudly as the heat nearly burned her fingers, and stuffed the whole thing into her mouth.

  Jessica’s eyes went wide, her eyes dilated, and her rapid chewing slowed to a crawl.

  A very…interesting sound escaped Jessica’s lips.

  Ellesea gave the frying pan a wary glance, scooting a tiny bit away, while Y’cennia inched closer.

  “Ohhhhhhhh, goddess above, devils below, and everything in between! What the hell was that?!”

  “I told you, I’ve got levels in [Cooking].”

  “Yeah, but that’s…wait. When you say ‘levels’, you mean high levels, right? Are you actually some sort of [Chef]?”

  “Hmm?” Melia asked, before glancing at her list of titles. Yes, in fact, she was a chef.

  “Ah! There we go.”

  ?

  [Chef Melia]

  ?

  Level: ???

  ?

  “Ughhh, I should have known,” Jessica groaned. “I don’t think I have the energy to care. You can be the world’s first [Chef Tailor Bard] for all I care, so long as you keep making that bacon.”

  “Not a [Bard],” Melia grumbled with a smile, passing out slices of bacon to the rest of the team. They didn’t react nearly as drastically as Jessica did, but each and every one of them froze momentarily as the taste hit their buds, each one savoring it in their own way. Y’cennia licked her fingers long after they were clean and Ellesea stared dreamily off into space.

  Alastair summed it up best.

  “Okay team. Hunting [Wild Boars] just became a priority.”

  ?

  The team fell into a comfortable rhythm. Going was slow but deliberate, marching forward into the wilds away from the beaten path, all the while maintaining their bearing towards Lakeridge. Spawning monsters mostly included vultures, which flew too high and didn’t seem interested in [Sunrise], and gigantic tarantulas, which Ellesea demanded be eradicated from the face of the planet instantly, from very far away, which Melia easily agreed to.

  Those were the only monsters the group did not attempt to fight. For the sake of their [Mage], they were willing to forgo the small amount of experience.

  Wolves were on the menu, which had upgraded from the abbey’s [Young Forest Wolf] into a plain old [Wolf], and, of course, [Wild Boars].

  Now that they knew mushrooms enraged the boars, Y’cennia didn’t pick any when the monsters were alive, waiting until after the party killed them to harvest the goods. It seemed [Tortruffle] tended to grow near [Wild Boar] spawns, or maybe the other way around, so by the end of the day she built up a respectable stack.

  Once the sun began to set, Alastair pulled them aside and had Jessica scout out a good location for camp. She found a small dell in the clearing beneath a large boulder in between two little hills. The heat of the day was present even as night fell, but at least they were spared the searing winds blasting their faces. Tents were set up and a fire was lit, more so for protection and visibility than the warmth it provided.

  ?

  “Is this what you thought it’d be when you became an adventurer?” Melia asked after dinner. She and Alastair were sharing a log, staring up into the starry sky. Melia told the others to sleep and let her handle the watch, but Alastair decided to keep her company for a little while.

  “Mostly,” he said after giving the question fair consideration. “I think, for the five years we’ve been doing this, there hasn’t been too much outside of our expectations. We learned, we leveled, and we grew. It’s never been a race, though I suppose there’s an argument to be made saying we stayed too long in an area we outgrew. But Abbyton is where our roots are, and we were hesitant to leave it behind. I’m sure we’ll go back and visit from time to time, but….”

  Alastair closed his eyes and drew in a big sigh.

  “But we always knew this day would come. We researched it and planned for it and the time to head out is finally here. Before we met you, Lakeridge was going to become our next base of operations. We’d probably spend the next decade in the area. The first few years would be settling in, getting to know the area, the locals, the spawns. Establishing a name for ourselves. Building reputation with the locals. Diving deep into the community.

  “Yes, we would still make trips to visit the abbey now and again. Depending on where Ellesea’s studies take her, she would still need to travel to Horizon from time to time. But at that point, we’d be higher level, hunting stronger monsters, making more money. We could afford to fly to the nearest flight path instead of spending days on a coach. Ellesea might even know how to [Teleport] herself by then, so her commute would be negligible. I think part of our delay was because it was hard to let go. In some ways, leaving meant growing up.”

  Melia digested Alastair’s words, once again reminded that these people weren’t simple npcs. They had just as much capacity for emotion as she did, and they certainly worked through it better than her.

  “Do you regret it?” Melia asked. “Moving on. Letting me join your party.”

  Alastair snorted and shook his head.

  “We didn’t exactly ‘let’ you do anything. But regret? Not a single bit.”

  He gave her a warm, friendly smile.

  “If it weren’t for you, the group would still be worried about Y’cennia. Sooner or later, a rift might have formed. Now she’s higher level than Jessica, which I admit is quite hilarious. If it weren’t for you, we would never have entered a dungeon.”

  “Ah, [AB],” Melia sighed fondly. “I’m sorry I didn’t join you guys. I should have. Did you at least have fun?”

  “Fun is…maybe not the word I’d use. I’d say we can look back on it now with a positive light. Will we seek out more dungeons? Absolutely. We’ll need to be more prepared next time.”

  “Next time, I’ll come.”

  Alastair gave her a knowing look.

  “You’ll have to join our party to do that, you know.”

  “I know,” Melia sighed explosively. “Honestly, I don’t know what I’m thinking. You guys are so much stronger than I give you credit for, you aren’t some fragile things that are going to break at your first sight of me. I’ve already lost the will to keep hiding from you, but…”

  “But?” Alastair prodded. Melia fidgeted.

  “But now it’s just awkward,” she said bluntly. “It’s all in my head. What if it’s so not a big deal, and you all are like, ‘this was the big deal?’ I’ll feel mortified! Right now, I'm already embarrassed enough to crawl in a hole and die.”

  “Then we’ll laugh!” Alastair said, doing exactly that. “And we’ll tease. Especially Jessica. Once she has something like that to lord over somebody else, she’ll never let them live it down. But we will grow, you will grow, and we’ll move on.”

  Melia could feel her cheeks burning, but surprisingly, she didn’t have the urge to run away. Maybe it was because he was a [Paladin], but Alastair was a grounding presence.

  She stared up at the night sky, stars twinkling innocently in the heavens. Melia found it strange: she knew more about this sky than she did the one back home…back on earth. Her family had camped out a few times and her dad had taken her stargazing before, but that was when she was very little. Intellectually, she knew what several constellations were supposed to look like, but she could never pick them out of a starry canvas on her own. And on the few times somebody did point them out, they simply looked like twinkling lights.

  Even the Big Dipper was hard for her to spot.

  Here?

  Melia could easily point out half a dozen formations and what they meant or represented.

  There was, of course, a “north star”, though it was called Centralis, not Polaris.

  To the southeast was Ostis, the Ox. It was made up of 12 stars: four stars in a box for the body, four stars in a smaller box for the head, two stars for legs, and two stars for horns. It reminded Melia of a children’s stick-figure drawing.

  To the west was Compri, the Wheel. It wasn’t always visible at night, though Melia couldn’t say why. 14 stars made up its grouping, forming a rough circle that, when stared at hard enough, resembled a ship’s helm. Sailors swore by it, saying that navigating westward under the guidance of the Wheel was good luck.

  Ebonvale’s astrology had a whole new horoscope that Melia had discovered over the course of reading the game’s lore, and she knew that certain sects of people in this land were just as devout believers in star signs as some had been back home. There was a Zodiak, a rotation of animals and creatures given to various years, and many other similarities the developers threw in to tie the two worlds together.

  Melia couldn’t help but wonder how deep the lore she used to consider fluff truly went. If everything she read about the history of this world was true, then not only were its deities real, but some of them were very active in the lives of mortals. She glanced across the fire where her [Paladin] was sitting contemplatively.

  Thankfully, not all of them in bad ways.

  ?

  They sat in silence for a while longer; nothing else needed to be said. Eventually the fire died down as it got late.

  “Get some rest, Al,” Melia said. “You don’t have to worry about anything while I watch.”

  ?

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