The dark forms of the bats swirled around Elijah as the party mansion took shape around him. His feet hit the ground softly, and unlike the times he’d gone through Benjamin’s portals, there was no disorientation or nausea. One moment, the embracing funnel of bats wrapped him, and the next he was standing in their well-adorned foyer.

  The bats turned towards him, flying at high speed towards his body before angling sharply down and splashing into the ground at his feet, forming a puddle of shadows.

  Elijah expected it to sound like cracking bones and broken bodies as they slammed into the ground, reminiscent of the terrifying sound of the bats slamming into the library floor, but it sounded more like large raindrops landing against a tin roof. As the last of the bats merged into this puddle, it shifted and contracted, becoming his shadow.

  He watched curiously at the effect, then looked up at the faces of his two friends. Nicholas had his weapon drawn, and Benjamin had his hands splayed open, ready to ‘Thunder Clap’. They had seen the whole thing and looked like they were ready for a fight.

  Elijah wondered if they were going to attack him; perhaps they thought he was an extension of the glitch itself.

  “Uhh… Hey guys. It’s just me.”

  Nicholas looked over him wearily before letting out a breath of relief. “Damn dude, what the hell was that? We thought those glitchy bats had followed us here.”

  “After you guys teleported out, I unlocked a new spell for my Reality Warp class. ‘Dragontooth Teleport’. It feels pretty useful, but I don’t think it’s as powerful as Benjamin’s version.”

  He didn’t know what made him say it, but as the words fell from his mouth, he could sense they were true. Benjamin’s spell allowed him to teleport an entire party and would stay open until he went through. Elijah’s extended only to those who were physically touching him when the spell activated, and it was an immediate effect.

  “I won’t be able to teleport everyone like Benjamin can, but one or two other players shouldn’t be a problem.” The limit crystallized in his mind. He wasn’t sure how he knew that, but tried to brush it off.

  It could be useful, even if it wasn’t as much of a support skill as Benjamin’s spell.

  “How did your class that you got from the prisoner tutorial unlock something from the Dragontooth dungeon?” Benjamin asked him.

  “Crap.” Elijah hadn’t really thought that one through. He had to come up with something quick to hide what he had done.

  “It’s not just something related to the prisoner start, Benjamin,” he lied, the words flowed over his tongue the second he came up with them. “It’s a class that has to do with reality as a whole. Or at least, this reality. It’s growing as it levels up. I think I was just in the right place at the right time to unlock it.”

  “Your luck continues to astound me, Elijah. Glad you’re a member of the party and not some kind of super villain.”

  Elijah gulped but tried to let the comment slide.

  “So where are the others? I should tell everyone what happened after you left.”

  Benjamin finally relaxed, letting his hands fall to his sides. “Sasha is sleeping off the effects of the mana drain, and Bo went to ?see if you needed help getting back here while dealing with the Death Sickness.”

  “Speaking of which,” Nicholas said, his eyes glazing over. “I should tell him just to come back. He probably hasn’t made it there yet.”

  As Nicholas messaged Bo, Elijah remembered he had received a chat notification after the party had left. He opened and looked at it.

  Sasha > You damned fool. Please get back here safely.

  Elijah’s heart jumped. According to her and Benjamin, Mana Drain was one of the worst feelings in the world. It felt as if you hadn’t slept in several years, mixed in with the worst cold and flu imaginable. And yet, Sasha had still cared about him enough to message him to be safe.

  It gave him a warm fuzzy feeling that she would think about him, and his heart ached that he hadn’t thought of how saving the book for the party could have helped her in the long run before he had absorbed it.

  “Alright,” Nicholas said with a gruff voice. “Bo is on his way back, why don’t you fill us in on what happened?”

  Elijah leaned against a plush sofa and rubbed his face with his hands, a stalling tactic as he tried to figure out how much to say.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “After you guys left,” he started, “I avoided a few attacks by the bats while trying to find a way out. I honestly thought I was going to die, but I wasn’t going to make it easy for the game.”

  “I wound up finding a book that hadn’t morphed into one of those bat creatures,” he spoke. Everything he had said so far was truthful, “and the second I touched it, the bats stopped and I got a notification. Apparently, the book unlocked some extra part of my class and granted me control of the bats.”

  Nicholas tapped his chin in thought. “That could be really helpful the next time we take on that dungeon.”

  He stepped from the middle of the foyer off to the side where the team’s map was.

  Elijah considered what Nicholas had said. His control over the bats would be an invaluable aid, but he wondered how the Fort would react to him farming it. He could feel it through his ‘Dragontooth Teleport’ spell. The location was linked to him. It wasn’t a base as the tome had said, probably from the fact he had only absorbed the class instead of becoming it, but he was a part of that dungeon now.

  Greed filled his mind again. Hadn’t they said that Sasha had found her ‘White Mage’ class tome in that dungeon? What other powerful tomes resided there? He wanted them all, wanted to absorb them and grow his power more.

  His fists clenched and unclenched. Hee wanted more power. He wanted to rival even the Celestial-tier players.

  “What the hell?” Nicholas yelled, startling Elijah from his greedy musings as the Fighter stared at the map.

  “Benjamin, Elijah, get over here.” He barked, gesturing wildly to them.

  The two magic users rushed over to Nicholas’ side and looked at the map. Elijah didn’t notice anything wrong until Benjamin gasped and pointed out a heavily forested spot. “It’s gone.”

  Elijah saw it, the location where the Dragontooth King’s Abandoned Fort dungeon had been was now blank. It appeared identical to? the ?rest of the forest that once surrounded it.

  “It’s just gone,” Benjamin whispered, his fingers running over the map as if they could wipe away the forest and reveal the fort. “How can an entire dungeon be gone?”

  “I can still feel it.” Elijah’s own hand went to the map, a bit of theatrics to sell his cover. “It’s there, but I don’t think it’s accessible to anyone without a way to teleport inside.”

  Elijah jumped slightly when he heard another voice.

  “Teleport inside where?” Bo asked, having slipped into the house unnoticed. His ‘Stealth’ skill unnerved Elijah, and it was still in the Beginner tier.

  “The Dragontooth Fort is gone from the map, and Elijah has a freaky teleport now that uses those library bats.” Benjamin hadn’t even looked up. He was still staring at the map with wide-eyed shock.

  Nicholas grunted. “I’ll catch you up on the specifics later, Bo.”

  Bo slid in beside the three men and looked over the map. “Looks like the whole place glitched itself out of existence.”

  “No, I can still feel it. It’s still there. I think I can teleport myself and a few others inside.” Elijah’s heart was racing at the implications here. “Use it as a personal training ground, maybe? One that others can’t access.”

  Nicholas grunted in agreement. “That would be useful. Especially a dungeon like that. We’ve run it enough times that we can get to that library without wasting resources. Being able to farm it without having to race other teams would be a massive boon.”

  He looked up to see Bo staring at him. The look in his eyes was dangerous, but not unfriendly. “I really don’t think you should do that, guys. If that place is glitched, then it could bug out worse. You could lose your entire character if a glitch soft locks you, or worse, deletes important data.”

  Elijah wanted to argue, to tell the Rogue that he didn’t know what he was talking about. The man didn’t understand the treasures that were available in that dungeon.

  Elijah let out a deep, calming breath. These were his friends; he shouldn’t be considering them enemies. That was his greed talking.

  “You’re probably right, Bo. The risk of losing our characters doesn’t outweigh the benefits we could gain from farming that dungeon.”

  Bo’s face eased. “Glad you see it my way, buddy. We should probably fill out a bug report about the dungeon. If the devs can fix it, then we’ll take another shot at it.”

  Nicholas nodded his head. “Elijah should probably fill it out. Most of us were too busy fighting to see what was really going on, and he also stayed there longer than anyone.”

  “Yeah, sure, I can do that.” Elijah nodded and opened his menus. Bug reports weren’t the easiest menu to find, but Bo walked him through it. The man was especially familiar with the menus. Elijah wondered about that, but stayed silent.

  He stood there, surrounded by his friends, with the menu open. At the top of the screen, his player name and class had already been auto-filled in. That irked him a little, and fear set in.

  As he looked over the bug report, he thought the name and class boxes flickered slightly, but by the time he looked back up at them, they had returned to normal.

  Something about the boxes auto-filling, and no way to send an anonymous message, bothered him. It bothered him, but he couldn’t quite put into words why.

  What if the devs removed everything he’d worked so hard to get, or worse, banned him from the game entirely? He didn’t want to give that up. Worse, he refused to give it up. Surely there would be other reports of the dungeon disappearing. Maybe if someone else noticed it, they wouldn’t have any reason to suspect that it was Elijah who had meddled with the code.

  He mentally clicked the close button and watched his menus fade away.

  “Okay, the bug report is sent.”

  Bo eyed him suspiciously again before turning back to the map. “Sure. So, Nicholas, what’s next for the party?”

  Nicholas had been busy studying the map throughout the whole bug report discussion. He rolled his shoulders and shook his head.

  “Honestly,” he said, “we’re getting too strong for this area. It’s just a beginner area, and we’re already into the Apprentice tier, even without Elijah’s boosted gear. Bo, your dexterity is already Journeyman, and I think Sasha said her Intelligence had reached Journeyman as well. We should move on.”

  “What about the mansion?” Elijah asked.

  Nicholas shrugged. “We can retain it even if we aren’t staying here. Though it might be better to sell it and buy a new one in a larger town.”

  “We could always head to Raystown? It’s just a couple of days' travel from here. Slightly higher level than we are now, but grinding our way through the mobs on the way should help to cover the gap,” Bo suggested helpfully.

  Nicholas nodded. “Alright, I like that idea. Is everyone okay with heading there?”

  Elijah simply nodded his assent. He didn’t know anything about this town, but it should prove just as exhilarating if this starter town, Nethy, was any indication.