Nathan spent a lot of time thinking about the encounter he had just had when he woke up in his office. Thalassa’s words seemed to ring in his ears. What exactly was up with her? She hadn’t meant to summon him, if that’s what happened. She’d been off for a while, and Nathan was determined to get to the bottom of it.

  Still, he figured he should listen to what she had to say and figure out this golden realm nonsense.

  For a while, he just sat in a room with a bowl of the mysterious pseudo-water, staring at it and hoping he would magically be able to apply its properties to his own body, soul, or whatever it was that Thalassa wanted him to do. He was annoyed at how useless the instructions had been, but that was Thalassa in a nutshell.

  Unfortunately, he didn’t make much headway there. After about three hours of staring, he sighed and banged his head into his desk. The water sloshed in the bowl, a little of it spilling out and hitting the wooden top of his desk.

  Nathan picked himself up and poured the golden water back into his inventory. Maybe it would be better to work on one of his other skills? Like his Astral Fishing. He needed to figure out if there were any rules or limitations. For example, would it work inside his Soulbound Town?

  Nathan got up from his desk and focused on opening a rift in reality on the floor. He pulled out his fishing rod and cast a line. The hook dropped into the floor, and it rippled outward in small waves.

  After several minutes of waiting, Nathan realized he hadn’t baited it. Maybe it would be a good move to do so?

  Nathan reeled in his hook and took it in hand. The issue was that he didn’t know what was on the other side. If he did, then he would know what to bait the hook with.

  He thought about it for a few moments, then slowly brought his head forward toward the portal.

  He trusted his constitution to allow him to survive, even if it was freezing cold, like it had been when he tested the yellow hallways of the Sixth Circle.

  A droplet of sweat rolled down the back of his neck.

  He took a deep breath, then thrust his head forward.

  Rather than the freezing cold he had been expecting, he was greeted with a vague sort of humidity and lukewarm temperatures. He blinked.

  He was staring at the yellow brick hallways of the sixth circle.

  So, using astral fishing inside a soulbound town would just result in being sent back to the circles, noted.

  He was about to pull his head back when he heard a yell.

  Steel clashed against stone. Nathan wasn’t sure he wanted to get involved.

  Then a vague sense of guilt hit him, and he realized he should at least go check it out.

  It might be one of our scouts. What if they’re in trouble and I just let them die? That would be pretty messed up.

  Nathan pulled himself through the portal and dropped to the ground on his feet. He stood up and reached behind himself toward the portal to confirm it was still there.

  His hand passed through the air and vanished.

  Okay, so it’s still there. Is there a limit to how far I can go before it disappears, if at all?

  Nathan took a few hurried steps in the direction of the sound when, after about ten feet, he heard a strange snap and a hum. An invisible link he hadn’t even noticed between himself and the portal cut, energy flooding back into his body in an uncomfortable manner.

  He glanced behind himself and noticed that the hazy ripples in the air that marked the portal were gone. Ten feet, then.

  He turned his head back and broke into a full sprint in the direction of the sounds.

  Alongside the sound of steel, there was the occasional sound of a blast of wind or a burst of fire. A spellcaster, then. The sounds grew louder and louder until Nathan turned the corner and saw who’d been fighting.

  He was in an open room where a treasure chest sat in the center atop a pedestal. To the right was a long, pale creature made entirely of ribbons, its body and arms elongated and stretched out. The ribbons were a dark yellow, in sort of the same fashion as the bricks, but with significantly more shade to them. The creature was about a foot taller than Nathan, maybe a bit taller.

  He looked to the right to see who it was who’d been unlucky enough to run into this creature and blinked when he saw who it was.

  Emi, full of scratches from head to toe, rubbed the sweat and blood off her head with her arm. To her side was none other than Bjorn, looking similarly beat up.

  How on earth did these two end up together?

  The sound of cloth rubbing against cloth caught his attention, and he turned back toward the ribbon monster. There would be time to ask questions about what happened later. For now, it was probably best to focus on the actual enemy.

  The ribbon creature stretched out its “arms,” and the ribbons seemed to extend outward. They branched off from each other and split apart, creating a complex web of ribbons all entangled and mixed with one another. Nathan noted that if he were assigned to untangle it, he would probably immediately commit seppuku.

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  The ribbons launched out like an overwhelming tidal wave, attacks coming from left, right, all over.

  Nathan, fishing rod in hand, swung backward and then swung forward, the hook whizzing through the air with a high-pitched sound. The ribbon monster continued its attack, undeterred, even as Nathan’s hook went directly for its center.

  Nathan narrowed his eyes. The hook continued forward in slow motion. These new opponents of the Sixth Circle would be dangerous. Who knew what kind of capabilities they might have that he’d never seen before?

  The hook smashed into the ribbon monster’s chest and sliced directly through its center. A second later, the ribbons exploded into thin strings of confetti.

  Nathan stood there for about a minute, waiting for the creature to get back up.

  Instead, the only thing that happened was a soft ding and click from the treasure chest. It opened automatically.

  Nathan stared at the confetti and sighed. He supposed it was better if a fight were simple rather than the opposite. Still, he couldn’t help but feel that it had been a little disappointing.

  With that done, he looked over at Bjorn and Emi. Emi was glaring at Bjorn like he’d killed her cat. Bjorn, on the other hand, had an expression somewhere between neutrality and a vague sense of worry. After a few seconds, Emi dropped her staff and looked over at Nathan with a confused expression.

  “How exactly did you get here?” she asked.

  “Well, it’s a long story—wait, no, it’s actually pretty short.”

  Nathan explained his newfound skill to Emi and Bjorn. The whole time, it felt like their attention was somewhere else. Nathan got up to the part where he had fallen into his own Astral Fishing portal when he stopped and looked between the two.

  There was a burn mark on Bjorn’s shoulder. Emi looked like she’d been cut by something a little bigger than ribbons. It hit Nathan what had happened.

  “You two were trying to fight each other, weren’t you?”

  Emi clicked her tongue and looked away with a sharp frown. Bjorn grimaced, then rubbed his face.

  “I honestly was not seeking a fight,” Bjorn said. “We happened across each other and had what almost felt like a pleasant conversation—before she tried to kill me.”

  “You were about to pull a weapon on me!” Emi shouted. Her eyes flashed, and Nathan sensed magic flowing out of her. “Don’t try to play dumb. You’re on Fenrir’s payroll, aren’t you?”

  “Paranoid much?”

  Emi’s eyes widened, and she started to raise her staff. Nathan quickly jumped between the two with a nervous laugh.

  “Wait, let’s, uh, talk this out?”

  Emi adjusted her grip on her staff, then lowered it once more. She scoffed and turned around toward the treasure chest.

  “This had better be worth it at least,” she muttered.

  She reached into the treasure chest and pulled out a . . .

  A bright pink and blue pi?ata.

  Nathan squinted his eyes. “What?”

  With a quick mental command, [Inspect] activated.

  [Pi?ata of Doom] – B-rank.

  Behold, the Pi?ata of Doom. When hit with a particularly strong attack, the Pi?ata of Doom has a random chance to drop either something extremely good or something that could end your circle-climbing career in a heartbeat. Highly recommended to open at a children’s birthday party, where you can do maximum damage and carnage. The pi?ata is pleased with the sacrifice of human souls, so if you have any of those lying around, it would probably do the trick.

  “We’re not sacrificing human souls to this thing,” Nathan said.

  Emi rubbed her chin. “I mean, maybe just one or two?”

  “No.”

  He could see the edges of her lips curl into a smile before it disappeared and turned back into a frown.

  “Come on,” Nathan said. “Let’s get back to the quest hub so we can get you guys healed up.”

  The two fell in line behind Nathan, though Emi was noticeably closer. She’d explained to him the direction she roughly came from. Given that Nathan was fresh and ready to rumble with any potential threats, it was decided that he would lead the way.

  As they walked, Nathan signaled to her with his head to step forward and come up beside him. She hesitated for a moment before speeding up her walking pace.

  “What is it?” Emi said.

  “First of all, I’m going to need you to assign some people to hunt down any information on how you guys managed to get through the circles the first time,” he said.

  “I already have. We haven’t had much luck. I’ll tell our people to double their efforts.”

  “Good.” Nathan almost wanted to stop there but continued forward. His volume dropped to a low mutter. “Did you really just attack Bjorn out of nowhere?”

  Her lips pursed. “No, I didn’t. He was trying to attack me. I saw his hand reaching for his inventory.”

  “You think there’s a chance he might’ve been trying to get something else?”

  “. . . He said he was getting his lunch for the day.”

  Nathan had to use every cell in his body to stop himself from face-palming right then and there.

  “What is up with you? Why would you try to kill one of our allies?” he said.

  “He’s not an ally!” Emi said sharply. “Don’t you understand that? We can’t rely on him! His loyalty is to Fenrir, not to you. He’s known that man ten times as long as he’s known you. No, twenty times!”

  Nathan was about to shoot back an instinctive reply when he bit his tongue. Emi had a point. As much as he wanted to believe in Bjorn and wanted to believe that he was a good person, that didn’t change the fact that Nathan really couldn’t rely on the guy, especially given that they’d been separated for what felt like . . . months? Nathan had long since lost track of the amount of time they’d spent in the circles. Maybe a few months, maybe even a year?

  “Okay, that’s fair,” Nathan said. “That doesn’t give us the right to randomly attack him. And look, I don’t know about you, but I don’t feel comfortable genociding another species. We need the orcs on our side if we want everybody to get to the bottom.”

  “Shouldn’t you be focusing on just getting down to those other quest hubs?”

  “Actually, I have a plan in mind for how we’re going to buy time,” Nathan muttered. “But anyway, that’s not relevant right now. Look, can you just promise me that you won’t randomly attack the guy, or any other orcs? If your life is actually in danger, I understand, but you can’t just randomly assault people.”

  Emi looked at him, then at the ground, her eyes filled with frustration. Her hands clenched tightly, and her shoulders shook. Finally, she sighed, and the tension seemed to flow out of her.

  “Fine,” she said. “I’ll play nice.”

  “You.”

  A fourth set of footsteps filled the hallways. Nathan froze and signaled for the others to stop with his hand.

  Emi looked over at him. “What is it?”

  Nathan made a shushing motion.

  Emi nodded, then clamped her mouth shut. Behind them, Bjorn seemed to have picked up on what was happening and also stopped.

  The footsteps got closer. Nathan’s heart started to race inside his chest. He recognized the footsteps on some instinctive level—it was someone he knew. An enemy, then?

  Instantly, his mind jumped to the only person who might’ve given him a run for his money: Leviathan. Nathan was confident that he could take Leviathan nine times out of ten. It was that one time out of ten that worried him. Not only that, but Nathan had bruised, beaten-up allies he had to protect.

  A figure appeared at the edge of his vision, a person in ragged, beat-up clothing. They continued to walk, one step after another.

  Nathan’s lips went dry.

  The figure stopped.

  It was the slightest whisper, so far away that Nathan shouldn’t have been able to hear it.

  “Nathan?”