While Bromy and Crown were doing some catching-up and some alcoholisation, JohnWillEdge stood outside the main building of the base.

The sun was already out, the distant cliffs and hills of sandstone painted a pretty scene.

The mix of warmth from the sun and the remaining cool air form the night before made the temperature perfect.

"Alright, this is starting to be a real problem..." commented the Thief.

"It's been like twenty chapters and I have no clue what to do with you..." she complained.

"And neither does anybody else!" she added.

"Bonifacius and the others were looking for a way to track down JohnWillSmart... but so far we've got no leads..."

"Why not just leave me as the main character?" asked JohnWillEdge.

"That's what this story needs! Edge, explosions and a badass protagonist that will save the world!" JohnWillEdge said smugly.

"..." the Thief looked at JohnWillEdge with a look pity.

"Hah! Your pity can't harm me!" JohnWillEdge announced.

"Dude! Focus! We need to get you and the smart you to form back into John!" she exclaimed.

"Meh," JohnWillEdge shrugged.

"Don't "meh" me! You need to help Jordan get his brother into the game, remember!" exclaimed the Thief.

"That's not a problem, his bro's soul is in this world, it's just waiting its turn to take over his body!" John exclaimed.

The Thief's expression shifted in shock as he looked at John.

"What?!" she demanded.

JohnWillEdge scratched the back of his head.

"Smart was afraid Jordan would do something retarded, like kill himself until his brother respawned or something, so he didn't tell him, it'd be a pretty edgy backstory if you ask me," John laughed.

The Thief grabbed John by the shoulders and shook him for a second.

"Dude!"

"You shouldn't be so loud! What if he hears you and does do something stupid?!"

She breathed a sigh.

"Dealing with this John is spiritually taxing... we need to stick him back together before he drives made crazy..." thought the Thief.

JohnWillEdge was facing the sun this whole time, he was convinced that by "winning" a staring contest with the sun he'd increase his luck stat since "He would have won against the world"

"Don't worry about it..." JohnWillEdge said quietly.

"Hm?" the Thief looked up to him.

"THE SUN WON'T DEFEAT ME!" John cried as he burst into a bout of laughter.

She grabbed John by the arm and dragged him indoors, tearing up some of the grass as she made her way inside of the base.

JohnWillEdge was dragged into the main room on the first floor as the Thief exclaimed something loud enough for everyone to hear.

"Me and John are leaving, we'll be back later!" with than she did a one-eighty and walked into the sun before casting shining step with John in-hand teleporting to the general area of the jGuardian base from which she teleported to the town of Levelgreen.

She breathed a sigh of exhaustion as her stamina dipped far below the norm.

She looked around the town, compared to how John described it looked in the past, this place looked livable, grass, stone roads, glass windows and even a few new buildings.

A fair amount of people walked around the town, traders, locals and even just travellers.

She dragged John into the inn which was tightly packed with people, it didn't resemble the quiet locale from the past.

A new person now stood behind the bar.

"Hi and welcome to the Reluctant-Drunk, how can I help you?" asked the barkeep in an excited tone.

"Alcohol!" the Thief exclaimed as she sat John down at a table before sitting down opposite him.

"If you wanted to go out with me you could have just asked," JohnWillEdge said smugly shooting her finger pistols.

"Yeah, John's age divided in two is fourteen, nice try FBI..." said the Thief as she took out a stack of paper.

She began writing on it, after writing a short paragraph she pushed the page towards John who didn't even look at the page.

Instead, he maintained eye-contact with the Thief in total silence.

"Read it," she said.

JohnWillEdge looked at the page and up to her.

He grinned.

"Totally!" he exclaimed.

Her expression shifted to a more tired one.

"You didn't read it, did you?" she asked.

"...no..." he admitted.

"Please don't tell me you're illiterate..." the Thief said half-jokingly.

"Alright, I won't," John replied.

The Thief's expression grew dark as if all colour were drained from her.

"Why did the rogue-John get all the brains?!" she demanded.

"Bold of you to show your face here, traitor!" Atwoz exclaimed.

He's been saying this for the last few seconds, but John and the thief couldn't hear him over the noise of the inn.

"What?" called out the Thief looking at the distant Atwoz.

Atwoz let out an angry sigh.

"I said, bold of you to show yourself here, traitor!" he repeated.

Again, the Thief couldn't hear anything.

"What?!" she demanded.

"ARE YOU FUCKING DEAF!?" Atwoz demanded.

She still didn't hear him.

"If I ask him to repeat what he said again it'll be super awkward..." she thought.

"Yeah, man, totally!" she exclaimed with a thumbs up.

Atwoz felt his blood boil as who he thought was JohnWillStab didn't even bother to look his way.

"SO SHE ADMITS IT!" he thought.

Atwoz let out a sigh.

He looked to his brand new recruits.

Two individuals, he hired due to their promise of being great assassins and spies.

"Can you see the papers on their tables?" he asked.

His two allies nodded.

The inn was renovated to look even nicer, polished wooden floors, glass windows, lights and even the alcohol selection increased.

"I need you to take those papers at any cost!" he said in a hushed tone.

"Got it!" the two recruits said in unison.

They walked right up to the table John and the Thief sat at.

They didn't look old enough to drink, much less work as spies.

Both of the figures wore cloaks, as such their features were obscured.

One of the figures pulled back their hood revealing long, messy, light green hair and large blue eyes.

She reached into her sleeve and pulled out a tiny wallet.

"How much gold do you want for the paper?" she asked.

"...if you guys want some paper you can have it for free," the Thief shrugged, she handed them a few pages from her table.

A wide smile spread across the green-haired child's face as she rushed back to Atwoz with the other cloaked figure.

"We did it!" she exclaimed placing the pages on the table.

Atwoz was pinching the bridge of his nose so hard he left a red mark.

"WHAT KIND OF ASSASSIN REMOVES THEIR CLOAK WHEN CONFRONTING A TARGET!" he demanded.

"Well, it's pretty warm in here with the fire, you know..." the green-haired one replied.

"Besides, I wanted you to steal it! Not pay for it!"

"But you said we had to get it at any cost, so we tried paying for it but the target said they didn't want money!" exclaimed the green-haired one.

Atwoz sighed, he looked through the pages and saw that they were all blank except for one.

The message the Thief wrote down for John to test his literacy.

"The quick brown fox did a load of coke and died in an unrelated plane crash," read the page.

She forgot how the "quick brown fox" thing goes after the word "fox" so she improvised.

"...the quick brown fox... did a load of coke... and died in an unrelated plane crash..." Atwoz repeated the words in his head.

From across the room, the Thief eyed the man.

"John! Look! He can't read either! He's looking at the paragraph like it's some top-secret message he needs to decypher!" she laughed.

John shrugged.

"It's Atwoz, the sliver-light guild leader! A deadly foe!" John said as he cracked his knuckles and threw off his coat which he always kept unbuttoned in case it needed to be removed.

He stood up and began walking towards the table where Atwoz sat.

The Thief walked up behind John, put him in a choke-hold and dragged him back to the table.

"Relax R*mbo, we don't want to start a bar fight!" she said in a hushed tone.

"I really want to start a bar fight..." thought JohnWillEdge.

"Still..." the Thief began.

"The silver-light guys are hiring kids now?!" asked the Thief with a look of smugness as she chuckled.

Meanwhile, across the room, Atwoz stood, sweat building upon his brow.

"I... I can't decipher this..." his eyes darted to JohnWillEdge who was eyeing him.

"The quick brown fox..."

"That could either represent JohnWillStab on account of the word quick..."

"Or it could be their least popular member, XxFoxlyxX..."

"Did a load of coke..."

"There's no way they managed to refine chemistry to that point in this world... it must mean something..."

"Drugs... medicine... Healing?"

"Died in an unrelated plane crash..."

"We can take died as a literal meaning... and unrelated too..."

"So... Foxly or JohnWillStab died in some unrelated accident while creating or using experimental medicine?!" asked Atwoz.

JohnWillStab was looking at Atwoz,

"He's definitely talking shit about me to his allies..." John thought.

John jumped to his feet before being dragged back to the chair by the Thief.

Atwoz felt a chill run down his spine.

"Judging by his reaction... that was it!"

"They must be experimenting with something... and that Bromy is in their guild... what did they do...?" Atwoz was worried.

"Our guild... we only have a dozen members left... I can't get involved with this..."

Atwoz swallowed his pride and crumbled the page before everyone.

From across the room, the Thief burst into laughter.

"He gave up! He really can't read!" she fell down face-first on the table in an uncontrollable fit of laughter.

She looked up at John.

"Don't you find it f-" she was cut off by the realisation John wasn't there.

She looked around and saw JohnWillEdge holding Atwoz by the scruff of his shirt as his two allies helplessly beat John's legs since they couldn't reach the rest of him.

"SHIT!" she exclaimed as John punched Atwoz square in the face causing him to fall down to the ground, unconscious.

His two allies dragged him out of the inn and to safety as JohnWillEdge endured more upset looks from the Thief.