The two were walking through the bowels of Nathan’s town. Nathan wasn’t quite sure why it was Chad who’d been sent to talk to him. Perhaps it was simple convenience. Better not to look into it. Every now and then, Nathan would get a stare or look from a werewolf or simply a wandering adventurer. Who wouldn’t want to get a look at the number one survivor of the apocalypse?

  …Nathan really needed to get his ego under control, holy-moly.

  “So the people who found it said that the quest description is basically an Easter egg hunt," Chad said.

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah, there are five hundred yellow pins scattered across a ten-square-mile radius with the quest hub at the center.”

  “I see.”

  Chad raised an eyebrow. “We also found a dungeon where all of the monsters are monster girls, and several of our people have been seduced by them.”

  “Interesting.”

  A hand rested on Nathan’s shoulder, and he looked over at Chad in confusion. “What is it?”

  “Review the past ten seconds of our conversation, please.”

  Nathan thought back to what Chad had been saying and then fronze.

  “. . . To be clear, there aren’t any monster girls?”

  “No.”

  “Damn.”

  Chad looked over at a mushroom-shaped building. “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.”

  Nathan thought through his response and scratched the back of his head. “Did they already trigger the quest?”

  “Not yet. We wanted to get this information to you before we decided what we were going to do.”

  “You do know that we’re not planning to actually try to win these, right?”

  Chad stopped in his steps and stared at Nathan. “What?”

  “Don’t worry. I talked to a giant talking fish, and he and I are working on an alternative solution to get to the next circle.”

  “Wait, giant talking fish—”

  “We’re going to basically go out of bounds and glitch our way to the next level.”

  Nathan patted himself on the back for using terminology and lingo that Chad would recognize. Truly, he was a gracious lord, willing to condescend to his subordinates and speak in a way that they would understand.

  Chad opened his mouth, then shut it. “We should still do the Easter egg hunt, yeah? Like, just in case.”

  Nathan shrugged. “Sure.”

  “Nathan, you are aware that if your plan fails, we’re all going to die?”

  “Yeah, yeah, but it won’t fail. Don’t worry about it.”

  “Your nonchalance is not really bringing me any comfort here, Nathan.”

  Nathan turned and placed his hands on Chad’s shoulders.

  “Chad, I promise you . . .” Nathan locked his eyes onto Chad’s. “If we die, you’ll get a totally sick-ass funeral. With strippers. And blackjack.”

  Chad reached his hand up and massaged the bridge of his nose. “First of all, I think your sister’s a terrible influence on you, because that's the only thing that I can think of that would've compelled you to say that. Second of all, I’m not sure how you’re going to pull off a funeral like that. If we’re all dead.”

  Stolen story; please report.

  “I’ll find a way, Chad. That’s how much our relationship means to me.”

  “You know what? I’m gonna go tell them that you gave approval to accept the quest.”

  “And after that you’re gonna go check out the monster girls?”

  “What is wrong with you?”

  “Many things. Many, many things.”

  Chad rolled his eyes and made to walk off when he paused and turned his head, his expression turning into something more serious. His sunglasses dropped as he looked at Nathan. “If you’re going to pull off this plan, you’re going to need the orcs on your side to coordinate things.”

  “We could just give them the win, then use the method down for ourselves.”

  “I’m very doubtful it’ll be that simple. First of all, nobody else knows about your little plan. Unless you want to tell everybody and their mother that you have a way to get to the next circle, it’s going to stay that way. Second of all, even if you did tell people, I think a lot of them will still try to go for finishing the quests. Especially the elves—even if Emi trusts you, I doubt the rest of them do.”

  “Her people are out and about in the circle?”

  “She opened up her portal recently. Their numbers are way fewer than ours, so they’re not going to win this specific quest. But for the other two tasks, there’s no guarantee it’ll be the same type of challenge.”

  “So it all comes back to the orcs. I need to find a way to get them in the loop in case things go wrong.”

  “Yeah, good luck with that.”

  Nathan stroked his chin. “Actually, I think it’s going to be a lot simpler than you think.”

  “Oh?”

  “After all, we already have a way in. Don’t you remember? Our dear friend—”

  Chad’s eyes widened. “—You don’t mean Bjorn?”

  “That’s exactly who I mean.”

  Chad had agreed with Nathan that Bjorn was their best chance. However, he'd insisted that Nathan not go alone to talk to him. Nathan had grumbled a little bit, but accepted that having a partner to watch his back would be a good thing. In case of emergency, the other party could flee, or shoot off a quick message via Dither. If the battle was intense enough, Nathan might not get a chance to do that.

  Surprisingly, the person Chad had picked was—

  “So we're going to do some target practice, right?”

  “No.”

  “But why not?”

  “Because your idea of target practice involves live rounds and living people, and that would look really bad for everybody involved.”

  Mara pouted and adjusted the rifle in her hands. It was the one that Nathan had picked up in his first go using [Astral Fishing]. He made a mental note to himself that he needed to grind away at that skill for a while and see if he could get any more good loot.

  He glanced around at the continuous yellow brick hallways and sighed. He was fairly certain that Bjorn was in this area—thanks to Dither and all of the so-called adventurers wandering through here looking for loot and monsters, Nathan had a surveillance network of immense reach and power. And last he'd seen on Dither, Bjorn had been spotted somewhere in this area, looking for yellow pins.

  “By the way, how's the flower doing?” Mara asked.

  “The flower?”

  “Yeah," she said. "The one that started talking and following us around . . . I was trying to convince her to learn how to use a firearm, but she didn't really seem interested in that.”

  It was then that Nathan realized that he had talked to Lily in what was probably several days.

  He glanced over at his shoulder. Last he remembered, she'd slithered her way back up onto his arm.

  “Lily?” he said. “Are you there?”

  He stopped in place and his breath caught. He waited to see what would happen.

  His shoulder twitched.

  “Oh, so now I exist.” Her voice rang out. “You're the worst, you know that? All I have to do is be quiet for a few hours and then you forget that I exist.”

  Nathan opened his mouth to make a defense, but swiftly realized that what he had done was completely inexcusable.

  “Were you really just completely quiet?” Nathan asked. “Why?”

  Nathan felt something stretch underneath his shoulder.

  “Maybe I just wanted to be.”

  There was a hesitation, there. Nathan furrowed his eyebrows.

  “You were sleeping, weren't you?" he asked. "You're still exhausted after your long nap. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that you can now separate from me and walk around—well, not really walk, but you get my point—”

  “It was entirely your fault!”

  Nathan frowned. “Hold on a second, that really seems unfair.”

  “I don't care!”

  Lily really was rather unreasonable. But that made sense. She was less than a year old. With that in mind, she was actually pretty intelligent and mature. He was quite proud of her, really.

  Nathan's thoughts ran back to Sarah noting that he was essentially Lily's parent. He then swiftly extinguished his neural pathways.

  “Hey, stop that!” Lily shouted.

  Nathan looked over at the direction of the noise. Mara's index finger was poked halfway into Lily's petals. Mara had the good grace to at least look sheepish at getting caught.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I was just wondering if there were any fleshy bits on the inside.”

  “. . . Why?”

  “Curiosity.”

  Before Nathan could question any further as to why his friend was acting like a completely insane person, there was a loud boom from up ahead. Dust from the ceiling fell down and hit the ground. Nathan coughed and waved away the remaining flecks in the air.

  “What was that?” Mara said.

  “I don't know, but I'd rather deal with it than whatever this conversation is.”

  Before Mara could respond, Nathan took off running in the direction of the crash. He made a right turn, then a left, then stopped.

  A large, muscled, green back. An orc.

  The orc turned around.