Gordon McKaine ordered another basket of fries, methodically eating his way through them as he wondered what had gone wrong to make this his life. The past… day? Days? He’d honestly lost track, it was all a blur. He hadn’t slept, hadn’t stopped moving. He’d been either driving or fighting in a dungeon nonstop since this whole mad nightmare began.

Why did it take sitting down in a random diner to hammer that home to him?

He supposed he’d been swept up in it all, caught by the wave of Levi’s convictions, but the moment he stepped back and looked at it from any distance whatsoever it all seemed insane. He’d heard less insane stories from actual cultists.

He wouldn’t believe it himself, if he tried to explain it aloud.

“So, basically, magic is real, monsters are real, demons are real and coming soon. And I'm the designated personal chauffeur for my co-worker who's either a time-traveler or completely off his nut, and I’m now qualified to walk around with pet monsters and a magic sword of my own. What is my life coming to.”

“Dessert?”

“Yes. Please.”

The waitress didn't seem concerned by his muttering, but held out a laminated sheet displaying the day's specials. He chose by pointing at random, too distracted to make a reasoned decision, just needing an excuse to stay here a little longer. Here, everything made sense again. Here, he was just a man with a meal in front of him and not a car full of mythological creatures on a treasure hunt across the country.

Levi Morrison could wait a bit longer.

Levi ended the call and held the phone against his thundering heart. He allowed himself another minute before reigning in the indescribable blend of emotions flooding him, wiping his face and setting his expression to something approaching normal. Relief, anxiety, hope, dread, and deep tangible longing warred with the logical plan he’d laid out for himself.

Finish the treasure hunt, then head straight for Gold Beach to rendezvous at her parents’ place. He hadn’t meant to say so much, and he still hadn’t figured out how to explain everything. But, as Gordon said, he had plenty of proof. As soon as he could show her, they could figure this out.

Something poked his shoulder, and he spun. Centoo had rested his head on the back of Levi’s seat, and patted his front leg on Levi’s shoulder. Levi chuckled and patted him back. “I think I’m okay now, thanks.”

Skarm peeked up, nodded to himself, and disappeared back behind the seat.

“Always trying to solve problems, eh Skarm?”

Skarm popped up long enough to nod.

“Well, I’ve got problems of my own to solve.” Levi returned to the laptop and the open wiki page he was editing. It would take more than a few hours to share everything he knew, more than a few days.

Despite the importance of his work, his mind kept drifting back to Irene. Should he call her back? Was he making a mistake taking the slow way back? Would the levels and minions and treasure hunt rewards really be worth more than an extra week with his family?

He wrenched his mind back to the task at hand. He prioritized general leveling principles and low-level details, though those were surprisingly sparse once he actually wrote them out. By the time he was drafted into the demon war, most dungeons were in the 40s at the low end, so his personal knowledge of beginner dungeons was almost exclusively hearsay or recent experience. He’d be much better able to describe the ninth-wave demon forces than level 1 dungeons.

After some internal debate about how, and if, he should broach the topic of the demon portals, Levi eventually decided that the best solution was to share as much as possible and only disguise its source.

He started a new page for the ‘Demon Portal Event (Upcoming)’ and detailed as much as he could recall of the first wave from a purely event viewpoint. He didn’t mention the aftermath, or society’s decline, or the other changes to the world, just the appearance of several hundred portals across the globe, and the relatively high level creatures that would flood out of them, along with admonitions to hurry to reach level 20 in the next three months.

Reaching level 20 wouldn’t be easy, but the kind of people who thought dungeons were a game and made online forums about it seemed like they’d respond well to a challenge. Which left the bigger problem of how to inform the rest of the world.

What would Irene think of it all? She was adventurous, always wanting to explore new places. Maybe she’d like visiting dungeons. Peter would have a blast. Levi imagined his son as a Summoner, escorted everywhere by his own custom army. He would definitely want some dinosaurs. Levi would have to take him to a Beast dungeon as soon as he’d leveled him enough.

Levi shook away the distracting thoughts. Later. First he had to decide what to do about his big announcement to the world. Or if he should even make one. Maybe it would be enough to let it trickle down through gamers.

If not for the inherent interference quality of mana, he could have just gone on TV with his minions, but mana distortions had a way of messing up pictures. Even the images of dungeon gear on the website were less crisp and clear than those of pure cosplay, though it was harder to notice with the crappy camera quality employed by most of the gamer strata here represented.

Unfortunately, the question of being believed was less important than the question of remaining free. Revealing knowledge of the future could be very risky with the wrong sort of people. Going wide with the information to help as many people as possible was one thing, outing himself as a time traveler was another.

Whatever he ended up deciding, he would have to handle it very carefully. This was one thing he couldn’t afford to rush into. Some things he wouldn't be able to fight his way out of.

Gordon returned before he’d reached an answer, carrying a takeout box which he proffered towards Levi. “Fries?”

Levi took one, grimaced at how overly salty it tasted, and shook his head when Gordon offered him more. Flomper ate hers in four quick bites with admittedly rather cute rapid chewing, while Skarm nipped at his cautiously, staring at it between bites as though he expected it to fight back.

Centoo leaned forward to observe the fry-consumption at close range, but backed away rather than accept the potato Gordon waggled in his face. “You sure? They’re good.”

Skarm snatched it instead, and nibbled both by turns. Flomper looked up at Gordon pleadingly until he gave her more too.

“You decided on our next stop yet?” Gordon asked.

“No.” Levi checked the RL Game forum again. He had two more trade offers, but neither had the Seed Fragment. One offered a Destruction token for his weather stones, and the other wanted the wand and orb for a pair of knives. He politely rejected both, but added a ‘lower priority’ section of things he’d consider accepting: wands or spellbooks with tracing, specialty tokens, or elixir bases. If people were going to make side offers, they may as well be ones that could be useful.

It felt surreal, typing in his requests and watching others respond. Trade had gone non-digital so long ago, it felt like one of those ‘I remember when…’ things you’d tell your kids, and having it back was weirdly nostalgic.

“Still haven’t heard back from Triple X.”

“I hope we didn’t get that kid in too much trouble,” Gordon mused.

Levi closed the laptop. “I can’t concentrate any more right now. I have to do something.”

“If you’re going to say ‘find another dungeon’, I may just hit you. Can’t we go somewhere normal, like a hotel, and just… not fight horrifying monsters for one evening?”

“You’re welcome to. I can make my own way.”

Gordon groaned. “You’re going to wander around looking like that, aren’t you?”

Levi looked down at himself. Sure, the armor was a bit scratched and stained, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been. He'd spent much of the past week looking much worse than this. “Why shouldn't I?”

“I’ll drive you.” Gordon sighed. “Where is it?”

Levi sent out a ping, receiving a faint impression of the level 2 dungeon back at Tom’s house, and nothing else. He pushed more mana into it, expanding its reach and overpowering it, ignoring the system to do it manually. This took longer to echo back, and showed nothing nearby apart from the one they’d already cleared.

“Nothing close. Maybe we should go back and talk to the kid.”

“No way. That mom was about ready to tear our heads off. You can’t go messing with someone’s kid.”

“I need to talk to them.” Any loss of urgency he’d felt before his conversation with Irene had vanished, leaving him more anxious to get moving than ever. He was half inclined to just hand over the Seed Fragments and map to someone else so he could get home faster.

He barely managed to convince himself that the eventual value would be greater than the time lost. Barely. It wouldn’t take much to send him spiraling off course and straight back to Oregon.

“And you can do that in a less abnormal way than knocking on their door in the middle of the night.”

“It’s not that late.” Levi looked down at the time on the dash, and winced. “Okay, I lost track of time.”

"Can we please slow down, just a little?"

Something in Gordon's voice gave him a moment's pause, a deeper weariness than he'd heard before.

He supposed he had asked a lot of the man, who wasn't used to this life. As much as he wanted to keep moving, he knew he'd end up much slower in the long run if Gordon decided to leave him to his own devices.

"Alright." Levi exhaled slowly, pushing aside all his worries about timing and rushing and falling behind schedule. "Find someplace we can sleep the night."