Mark and Tobias were walking around the Gamer Fortress. Their general, Johan “ILoveFurries” the Seventh, was showing them around.

  Eventually, Johan had managed to get some answers from Mark and Tobias about their adventures. It hadn’t taken him long—mostly because they were desperate to brag. The only reason they hadn’t done so earlier was that they had agreed to wait a little to create some mystery—the plan was for a full day throwing little hints at the awesomeness of their adventures, but in less than an hour, they had started telling everything, grinning like idiots the whole time.

  “That’s fucking awesome,” Johan said. “So you took down a Mongol battalion on a Viking ship in the Glimpse of Valhalla? Sorry Tobias, Mark’s right—Glimpse of Valhalla is way cooler than pocket dimension. And you guys think I have my own Glimpse of Valhalla? We should try that. We could use it for training—to catch up with the other armies.”

  “We’re not sure we should take the risk.”

  Mark told him about the massive monster on the island and their fear that maybe all Glimpse of Valhalla’s had similar threats.

  “In this case, the monster was pretty far away. But who knows? Maybe in other Glimpses, there are monsters nearer to the arrival point.”

  After visiting the kitchens, they arrived at the infirmary—a small, well-ventilated room on a side of the fortress.

  “We have a couple of nurses and one doctor from Earth,” Johan explained. “I asked them to start Leveling in their professions. One of the [Nurses] has [Anesthetic Touch], and it allows her to numb a part of the body she touches.”

  Mark entered the room and realized Emily was already there, sitting in a chair near an injured young man lying in a bed. She was very red, looking as if she wanted the ground to bury her.

  “I’m sure you can do something…” was saying a woman in her mid-twenties, standing near her. She looked angry, and Mark assumed she was one of the [Nurses].

  “What’s going on?” Mark asked.

  “They have injured people, Mark,” Emily said.

  “So? Just [Heal] them. What’s the… oh.”

  “Yes, that’s the problem,” Emily said, standing up. “I told you not to go too deep!”

  Mark remembered himself slashing Tobias on the chest, in front of an astonished crowd. It had been glorious, epic. Magnificent.

  Sadly, it had probably emptied Emily’s mana.

  “Don’t try to pin it on me,” Mark defended himself. “You wanted to do it too.”

  “I don’t care whose fault it was! Who’s gonna help him?” said the nurse, pointing to the half-unconscious young man, who was mumbling incoherently.

  Apparently, he was the guy who had fallen from the massive statue back on the first day. He had broken both legs, and he had been in a feverish daze since then.

  “Oh my god!” Mark suddenly shouted, realizing something horrible.

  “What?” asked the nurse, alarmed.

  “I made a bet about this! You remember, Tobias? The first day, when we were going back to the battlefield—we started gambling about how the idiot would get down from the statue. I bet that he would break his legs, right?”

  “I’m pretty sure you did not.”

  Mark looked at Johan.

  “Back on the first day, the guys who came back before us… Did they arrive safely, or maybe they were killed on the way back here?”

  “Wow. You’re a terrible person,” Emily said.

  “What? There were zombies out there. Maybe they died.”

  Mark tried to hide the hope in his voice. Because dead people didn’t collect debts.

  Johan grinned.

  “Don’t tell me you’ve started gambling again… You’ll be the first person ever to go broke in two different worlds. I’ll let you know that those guys came back without a problem. I’m sure they’ll be very glad to see you.”

  Johan looked at Emily.

  “Where the fuck is Arthur, by the way? I want to tell him he’s going to form a special squad, with you guys on it. But my people couldn’t find him,” Johan had sent some of his soldiers to find Arthur, without any success. “He’s been fucking for the last three hours? That’s not possible!”

  Mark was still thinking about his predicament—he clearly remembered having gambled one of his daggers. And he was pretty fond of them.

  “Will you pay us money, Johan? For belonging to the special ops squad. You will, right? I want my salary to include the fourteen days we spent in the Glimpse of Valhalla.”

  "Wasn't it ten days?"

  “I’m pretty sure days were longer inside the Glimpse. I could feel it—deep in my bones.”

  Johan rolled his eyes.

  “I’m sure they were. Days are always longer when a junkie doesn’t get his fix.”

  “What are you insinuating?”

  Emily interjected, a little shyly—as if still a little embarrassed for not being able to help the injured young man.

  “Mark’s problems aside—and you do have a problem, in the ship you tried to gamble on how many Mongols Tobias would kill with the cannons…”

  “How many?” Mark asked Tobias, hopeful.

  Tobias shook his head.

  “Twenty-three. Harald got closer than everybody else. He’s kept it cool for now—but you do owe him a dagger.”

  “Fuck. Another one? What am I supposed to fight with?”

  Emily interjected again, this time less shyly. She punched Mark on the arm.

  “As I was saying, what did you mean by a special squad?”

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  “Seeing our success and how well we work together,” Mark explained. “Johan has decided to make our team an official special ops team directly under his command. He insists it’s a great honor. It will be Arthur, Tobias, Liam, me, and you if you want to join us.”

  Johan looked at Emily.

  “It is a great honor. But you don’t have to join if you don’t want to. If you prefer to stay in the fortress, you can do it. Your healing spell makes you extremely useful anywhere.”

  “What? Of course I’m joining the elite special ops Gamer squad! I’m one of the team! Same as Tobias, Arthur, Liam, and the gambling addict!”

  Mark smiled at Johan.

  “See? I told you she would come,” he looked down, realizing that the words he was about to say wouldn’t help his case. “You owe me twenty bucks—or whatever is equivalent. A dagger’s fine.”

  Johan sighed.

  “I’ll give you two if you shut up.”

  “And Gustav? Isn’t he part of the team?” Emily asked.

  “He decided to form his own team,” Mark answered. “Cool for him. Hope the best for him.”

  “Fuck him,” Tobias summarized.

  “Yeah. Fuck him,” Mark said. “We don’t need him. Never wanted him.”

  Although it did sting a little that Gustav had decided to leave them.

  Emily was about to add something else when a young man barged into the room.

  “Aha! You’re hiding here, Johan! I’ve been searching for you!”

  Johan seemed to deflate when he saw the young man.

  “What, Lukas? What’s the problem now?”

  The young man, who was pretty short, his face marked by pox and acne marks, started shouting:

  “Corruption! Corruption at the higher echelons of this army! The most cruel of corruptions!”

  Johan looked towards the open door. People were looking into the infirmary to see what was going on.

  “Don’t shout, Lukas. There’s no need to shout.”

  Lukas ignored him:

  “Two days in a row, Johan! I’ve been assigned to latrine duty two days in a row!”

  “It must have been a mistake, Lukas. We’re just starting to…”

  “Was I brought into your goddamned army to be a slave, Johan? Do I look like a slave? When we studied together computer science did you look at me and think oh, what a good slave would Lukas make. If I’m ever brought as a general into another world, I’ll bring Lukas to be my good slave and have him clean latrines for the rest of his existence.” Lukas suddenly had another idea, “Or maybe this is your way of punishing me because I was more successful than you?”

  Johan answered without any energy. This seemed to be a common enough occurrence.

  “You were not brought to be a slave, Lukas. I never thought about enslaving you when we were back on Earth. And I’m not envious of your success—it barely lasted a couple of years before the supervolcano killed us all.”

  “I’m sure when you learned about the supervolcano your first thought was Ha! Now Lukas will no longer be a superior programmer to myself, working on tackling the hardest problems of our generation.”

  “Actually, yes. That was my first thought when I learned that I and every person I’d ever loved were going to die. It’s weird that you were so accurate.”

  That confused the young man, who took a few seconds to realize that Johan was kidding.

  “Don’t mock me! How dare you? You know I hate that!”

  “Sorry, Lukas. I’ll look into the latrine situation, okay?”

  “Fuck you, Johan!” Lukas answered, storming out of the room.

  The weirdo hit against Erik Bloodaxe’s chest when walking out. He bounced back as if he had hit a wall. Then he looked at the serious-looking Viking and said:

  “My apologies, good sir.”

  And walked out.

  The Viking king was pensive. He looked at the weird little guy walking away. Then he focused on Johan, looking very confused:

  “How can you allow such disrespect, Johan?”

  Johan, who had intended to keep the disarray of his army a secret, said lamely:

  “I prefer to run a more chill army, you know?”

  And you could tell that Erik Bloodaxe, king of two nations, a man who had caused fear in the hearts of his enemies for all his life, did not know.

  Johan looked toward the Viking king and the many Gamers who had been witnessing the weirdo’s outburst. He seemed to decide that it was better to explain himself before he lost everybody’s respect.

  “Lukas has always been weird. I don’t know on which one, but he’s clearly on some spectrum. But he’s one of the most intelligent persons I’ve ever known. Not emotional intelligence or bullshit like that. I mean the deep, analytical kind of intelligence. He studied computer science and mathematics. When we were in college he was already working on super high-level shit in the open source community, and as soon as we finished college, all the big tech companies in the world were fighting to hire him.”

  Johan kept talking, focusing on the Viking king:

  “You need to understand this, Erik. When you were alive, the world was smaller. There wasn’t a big effort to find the smartest people and nurture their talent. Imagine a brilliant person who was born from a couple of farmers—how many opportunities could he expect to fully utilize his intelligence? In the end, the most intelligent person you ever met was maybe chosen among a thousand nobles. Or ten thousand. It doesn’t matter.”

  He continued talking:

  “But when we were alive, the world was bigger. Billions lived in it. And there were better ways of detecting intelligence, of nurturing it. And this means that Lukas is special. Unique, in a certain manner. Because he was one of the smartest among billions of people. I doubt any other army has somebody like him—and I’m sure his contributions to our success will be amazing.”

  “But you have him cleaning latrines?”

  Johan looked a little guilty.

  “Somebody has to do it—and I haven’t found any use for him yet. Now that we have the magic book, hopefully he’ll show some magic skills,” he seemed to have an idea to further defend himself and added, “And even cleaning the latrines, I guarantee you that he did an excellent job. He’s not the half-assing type of person.”

  Erik Bloodaxe thought about it for half a minute. Then, he shrugged.

  “That seems interesting. I’ll talk with the little man later.”

  Then the Vikings approached Emily to talk with her. All six of them loved her like a daughter—and she loved to be loved. The [Nurse] wisely decided to keep her complaints to herself for the moment.

  Johan stared at Eric the Zealot, who had entered the infirmary following the Vikings. Johan seemed to be angry about the Vikings having witnessed the whole Lukas debacle. They moved to a corner of the room so the Vikings wouldn’t listen to them. Then Eric muttered:

  “What? You told me to show them around. I was showing them the medical facilities. If you allowed me to put some order…”

  “I’m not letting your eighteen-year-old Zealots put some order. We’ll end up like Mussolini—tied from a lamppost and beaten to death.”

  “Or like that other dictator, sodomized with a bayonet and then beaten to death.”

  Johan winced a little and looked at Mark, as if he had forgotten he was still there.

  “Thank you, Mark. For the image. And for how helpful your comment was.”

  “You’re welcome,” Mark smiled. “You handled the Vikings well, Johan. Don’t worry about it.”

  Johan seemed surprised at the encouragement. He smiled a little and nodded. Then Eric the Zealot continued talking:

  “Sure. You don’t want me to put order. Great. But don’t blame me when people act out. My people are currently training and Leveling Up.”

  Johan calmed a little.

  “I know. I know. And I’ve told you how grateful I am. It’s just that I need another path to gain their loyalty,” then he lowered his voice even more. “Why didn’t you bring the Vikings to their rooms?”

  “What rooms? I assume the king doesn’t want to bunk up with a bunch of noisy teenagers. So I sent a couple of my people to kick everybody out of one of the towers. And now they’re cleaning up.”

  “Which tower are you giving them?

  “The one on the east. Near the storage room. The king can take the room at the top—it is pretty well-appointed. And his men can bunk up in the lower room.”

  Johan thought for a second and nodded.

  “Good job, Eric. Good job.”

  “Thanks, Johan. But what the fuck should I show them now?”

  “Try the theater room. I think they might be getting somewhere with their reconstruction of the Mamma Mia musical. ABBA’s a Norseman’s band, after all. They’ll love it.”

  Theater room? ABBA? Mark thought. Mamma Mia!

  Eric the Zealot probably agreed. He approached the waiting Vikings—Emily was telling them about her exhausted magic and the little situation she found herself in. Harald chuckled and gave a commiserating pat on the leg to the young injured man, who whimpered in pain.

  The [Nurse] rapidly used her [Anesthetic Touch] to quiet the pain, and she seemed about to explode and kick everybody out when Eric the Zealot showed some diplomatic skills by defusing the situation.

  “Come with me, sirs. We’ll visit the training field and I’ll introduce you to some marines. Elite. Absolute elite. You’ll love them. I thought about joining the marines myself, you know? But I was going to die a few days after I turned eighteen, so it seemed like a waste of time…”

  They waited until the Vikings were gone again. Then Johan yawned.

  “Let’s go have some breakfast. Then we’ll start testing everybody to see who can become a [Mage]. Eric wants his people to be tested first. And I agree—if possible, I want the [Mage] Class to go to useful people.”

  Johan looked at Mark.

  “By the way, if I learn that you gain a Class as a [Gambler] or something like that, I swear to God I’ll hurt you, Mark…”

  “Come on… I would never do something that stupid,” Mark answered, waving his worries away.

  Then he walked out, already thinking about how to organize the gambling on who would become a [Mage].

  He needed to recover his losses, after all.