Nathan blinked.

  He blinked again. He reached up and stuck his pinky finger in his ear, attempting to dislodge whatever had gotten trapped in there.

  “Come again?” Nathan said.

  “I need you to save Leviathan—”

  “Okay, looks like I heard you correctly the first time.” Nathan sighed and rubbed his palms against his face. “What exactly is your concern here? Like, if you’re asking me not to kill him, I guess I can try to pull that off. But you do know he’s not really in danger, right?”

  She bit her bottom lip and shook her head. “That’s where you’re wrong, Nathan.”

  The fear in her voice was enough to cause Nathan to stop. He frowned and brought his full attention to her. She deserved that much at least.

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “At the rate he’s going, Leviathan is going to be caught in an impossible battle. But unlike you, there will be no one to save him. He has no friends. No allies. Indeed, you were the closest thing he had to one, and he burned that bridge.”

  “Yeah. When he tried to kill me.”

  Thalassa had the grace to give a pained smile at his words. “He’s a problematic child.”

  “Thalassa.” Nathan emphasized her name. “He tried. To kill me.”

  “He’s a very problematic child.”

  Nathan threw his hands up into the air.

  “He’s not a child at all. He’s a full-grown man, and he made his own choices.” Nathan let out a soft breath and lowered his voice. “I understand where you’re coming from. I really do—I was in the same situation you were. But I don’t think he’s salvageable.”

  Her face crumpled up in an expression of shock and pain that had Nathan reeling. But then it disappeared, replaced with the most wane smile he’d ever seen on her face.

  “What’s your price?” she said.

  “My price? What are you talking about?”

  “I have very little I can offer,” she said. “I’ve already given you most of what I have. But anything that remains—”

  Nathan felt very uncomfortable with where this line of conversation was going. He held up his hand and motioned repeatedly for her to stop.

  “Okay, we’re not going there,” he said. “No matter what you say, my point still stands. I really don’t want to put my life in danger trying to rescue somebody who really doesn’t want to be rescued. If he were just stuck in a tough situation, I’d probably be a lot more amenable. But he’s exactly where he wants to be, Thalassa. There’s nothing I can do about a guy like that.”

  Memories of his own time in his apartment, back when he’d been a useless nobody, flashed into his mind.

  “I would know better than anybody else,” he said. “For some people, it takes a miracle. And unfortunately, I’m not a miracle maker.”

  “Most of the people who know you would disagree.”

  “Most of those people are wrong. And stupid. And several of them have started worshiping me as some sort of god.”

  “I mean, you do have divinity flowing through your veins—”

  “No.”

  The two remained quiet for a full minute. The look on Thalassa’s face became more and more despondent the longer Nathan looked at it. An uncomfortable flicker of guilt twisted his stomach like a knife to the gut.

  I was right, wasn’t I? he thought. There’s nothing that I can do. There’s no need to feel bad about it. That’s just how it is.

  Even so, that annoying feeling refused to go away.

  He let out a long sigh.

  “I’ll try,” he said.

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  Thalassa jolted forward in her seat and grabbed Nathan’s shoulders. “You will?!”

  She shook him back and forth like she was making a protein shake. Nathan grabbed her hands and took them off.

  “I can’t promise anything,” he said. “And if it comes down to him or my friends, then I’m picking my friends. But—” he clicked his tongue. “I’ll try. That’s all I’m promising.”

  A small, grateful smile appeared on Thalassa’s face. “That’s all I’m asking.”

  She clapped her hands together. “Wait, I really can’t let you go without doing something nice for you.”

  Nathan raised an eyebrow. “What exactly would you even give me? If it’s something lame like power, I would hope that you’ve already given me everything that I can handle at my current stage of development.”

  She tapped her index finger against her chin. “No. Any more power and you would explode into a puddle. Which I don’t think you really want right now.”

  “Yes, that would be bad, Thalassa.”

  She tilted her head left and right, her eyes locked on the horizon.

  “Oh, I think I have the perfect gift,” she said.

  She shut her eyes and a burst of energy came out from her. It washed over Nathan and sent a shiver down his spine.

  The feeling faded as quickly as it came. “What was that?”

  She winked. “You’re going to want to check your harpoon. I know that it’s been due for an upgrade for some time, so I thought I might as well take care of that for you.”

  Nathan felt a small smile rise to his face. “That’s surprisingly practical of you.”

  “Yes, I think—”

  She froze.

  She stood up from her seat and stared around in a circle.

  “Thalassa?” Nathan stood up with her. “What’s wrong?”

  “There’s someone else here.”

  “You mean Lily?”

  “I can tell the difference between her and an intruder!” Her voice came out sharp. “No—Lily was kicked out by whatever just entered here.”

  Nathan felt himself freeze in place.

  “Is she okay?” he asked.

  “I think so. It looks like she was just knocked away from this place.”

  If Nathan knew Lily, then she would be stopping at nothing to get back inside here to make sure that he was okay. The fact that she hadn’t meant that whatever had come inside was far more dangerous than he suspected.

  The air above flickered like the static of an old television.

  The ground shook and Nathan steadied himself at the last second.

  Then, all at once, it receded.

  Thalassa stared at some unmarked point on the horizon, her jaw clenched.

  “What the hell was that?” Nathan said.

  “There aren’t a lot of people who even know that we have the ability to communicate with each other like this, Nathan.” Thalassa grimaced. “Take a guess.”

  Nathan knew exactly who she was talking about.

  “You should get going,” Thalassa muttered. “Check in on your flower. I’m going to investigate this further. Even in my limited state, I should be able to do that much.”

  “Are you going to be okay?”

  She shrugged. “If I’m not, then honestly we’re all doomed anyway, so it doesn’t really matter.”

  “That’s comforting.” Nathan slapped her on the back. “Good luck.”

  She gave him a dirty look, then the expression went away to something a little bit more fearful.

  “I’m afraid our meetings will have to cease,” she said. “For now, at least. If she’s tracking me using you…”

  Nathan frowned.

  It wasn’t like he was dependent on Thalassa. Not at all. But she had been one of the few constants ever since the Nine Circles began. She’d even been with him in the tutorial, though he hadn’t recognized it at the time.

  The idea that she would be drawing back made him feel like the world was turning upside down.

  “It’ll just be temporary.” She laughed and covered her mouth with her hand. “Don’t worry. I will not leave you without the privilege that is my presence for very long.”

  “That’s good. I was starting to get used to you—” he shrugged. “You know, like how someone gets used to toe fungus.”

  She cocked an eyebrow. A wave of water splashed into him from the side and sent him onto the ground. His vision flickered.

  He blinked, and the world returned to that of the Sixth Circle. A faint giggle echoed in his ears, along with the faint sound of waves splashing against the beach.

  “Nathan, there you are!”

  Nathan turned his head to the right. Chad was sweating buckets, looking like he’d just been through a marathon.

  “What is it?” Nathan said.

  “They found it!” he said. “They found the third quest hub!”

  “Oh.” Nathan’s eyes shot wide open and he stood up to his feet. “Oh, that’s really not good, isn’t it?”

  “There are only about seven hundred million people accounted for across all of the top ten,” Chad said. “At the current rate they’re coming in, we need another week of collection.”

  Nathan’s anxiety spiked through the roof. Two hundred million people would be left behind if they tried the circle bypass. If they tried to win the competition, that would mean the destruction of the elves and the orcs.

  “Please tell me you have good news.”

  “I have good news.”

  Nathan waited for several seconds for Chad to continue speaking only to receive total silence.

  Chad threw his hands up into the air. “You told me to tell you that we have good news! That doesn’t mean that we actually have good news!”

  Nathan massaged the temples of his forehead.

  “How many people know that we found the third quest hub?” Nathan asked.

  Chad scratched his chin. “The people who found it were travelers who went into our town. Other than that, everybody in the upper echelons of the town knows about it.”

  “So that means by the end of today, everybody’s going to know about it.” Nathan felt a rising headache build in his forehead.

  They needed a way to buy time. Some way to maybe make sure nobody could gain access to the third quest hub?

  “I don’t suppose you happen to have a giant lock?” Nathan said. “One that can withstand people trying to break it down?”

  “Who do you think I am? You think I could just pull miracles out of my ass?”

  “Well, sorry for my faith in you.”

  Nathan slid his palm down his forehead to his cheeks. “Let’s just check out this damned quest hub.”