JohnWillStab, as well as all the other humanoids, were forced to mine in search of some silver-coloured ore.

In the distance, colossal, mountain-sized pillars joined the floor and roof of the massive cave together.

“Alright, everyone! Dinnertime!” a fishman guard with a bandaged forearm announced gesturing to a now-open gate.

All the prisoners including John and Foxly made their way there, once they left the walls of the quarry JohnWillStab could see that they were in the middle of a massive underground lake, in a massive underground cave.

This was their Alcatraz; the only way out was to risk swimming in the massive lake and hoping to out-swim the fish-people.

The entire island they were on looked familiar to John; though he couldn’t put his finger on why.

He could see that there was more than one walled-off quarry, in fact, there were dozens, each one with tall watch-towers and tents in which the prisoners slept.

As they walked, JohnWillStab was able to see Alex.

“Alex!” John exclaimed speed-walking up to him, Foxly also sped up to match their pace.

“John! You two are up!”

“Yeah, what was the rock thing about?” John questioned thinking back to the time the rich-looking fishman complement Alex’s rock pile.

“Well, I didn’t actually want to do any work, so I asked Thal if he could make some illusionary ore and one thing led to another, everyone started congratulating me and I kind up ended up here!” he laughed.

The three chatted as they slowly came closer to the next open gate.

Once they reached the even-bigger, walled off camp where dozens of benched allowed all the prisoners to eat and rest before more work, JohnWillStab immediately spotted another group, Bonifacius, Revenberry and Crown.

“Look!” he exclaimed gesturing Foxly and Alex towards the rest of their group.

He ran up to them.

“Guys!”

“JohnWillStab! Alex! Foxly!”

“Tis good to see thee are alright!” Bonifacius said breathing a sigh of relief.

“You’re alright!” Revenberry and Alex said to each other in unison before embracing the other in a hug.

“Did you guys see the others?” Foxly asked.

“Yeah, I saw Bromy for a while…”

“He was sitting around and pissing the guards off until one of them threw a rock at him, it hit his head and his personality did a one-eighty, he grabbed a nearby rock and bashed one of the guard’s teeth in before reaching into his mouth, pulling out his intestines and using them to strangle another guard… everyone from that quarry got evacuated… I’m pretty sure he’s still in there…” Crown shuddered.

“They tried to stop him… a dozen guards… at first the miners celebrated until Bromy turned his attention to them…”

“Ah, good to see Bromy is alright as well!” Bonifacius remarked.

“What about the Thief?” John asked anxiously.

“Haven’t seen her…” Alex replied.

“Me either…” Crown shook her head.

“I see…” JohnWillStab replied sadly.

He was considering using shadow-step again in hopes of it eventually working, but he knew it would be pointless.

“I have tried using the friends menu to contact the jGuardians to no avail… it would seem some sort of spell is blocking us from doing so!” Bonifacius explained.

“So…” Alex looked around, making sure nobody was looking at them.

“What’s the plan?” he asked.

“I think we should wait for some action from the jGuardians… if nothing else Curstl will search all of the last coat top to bottom in search of Bonifacius…” John replied.

Crown nodded.

“True,”

“Just to confirm, nobody here can use their abilities, can they?” John asked, his expression devoid of any joy or excitement.

“Nope…” Crown shook her head, “Not even the geese…” she added.

“Indeed… I am in the same predicament…” Bonifacius agreed.

The others also nodded.

“Thal is gathering info for us right now, he became invisible as soon as the enemies showed up,”

Even now, Thal was communicating with Alex telepathically.

“Alright…” John sighed.

“For now, we need to hope Curstl gets us out of here… in the meantime, I’ll try and get these chains off…”

“We can’t get too careless…” he sighed.

After a few more minutes a cart appeared, it was a massive cauldron on wheels, inside a steaming liquid that was probably meant to resemble soup bubbled from the residual heat of the fire the cauldron stood over only minutes before.

The man dropped six bowls onto the table and with a massive wooden ladle roughly poured some of the soup into each bowl.

JohnWillStab looked at the bowl of yellow-green liquid, carefully he lifted the bowl to his mouth as he tried some, everyone else looked at him as if they waited for him to say its eatable.

“…”

“…”

“We break out tonight!” John announced.

“Oi! Don’t plot escape plans so loudly!” the food distribution guy warned them.

“THEN GIVE ME SOMETHING DECENT TO EAT!” John demanded.

“You’re prisoners! What did you expect?” the man smirked.

JohnWillStab clenched his fists.

“At least give me some bread and salt!” he demanded.

“What else? Caviar? Truffles? Clean water?” the soup-man rolled his eyes.

JohnWillStab walked up to him, grabbing him by the collar.

“GIVE ME BREAD OR GIVE ME DEAD!” he exclaimed shaking the man violently.

“We don’t have any bread! Let go of me already!” the soup-man exclaimed.

JohnWillStab looked at him with an expression of disgust.

“And you call yourself a chef…” he said wryly.

“Quit acting so stuck-up! We’re stuck in a cave!” the man replied.

JohnWillStab looked into the pot.

“What’s in it?” he asked with folded arms.

“Uh… carrots… potatoes… cabbage… flour…”

He was using the real-life names for the in-game vegetables.

“And you’re telling me you couldn’t cook a basic meal with those?!” John demanded.

He only shook his head and went back to his bench, occasionally glancing back at the soup-man.

“…”

“…”

“Are you ok?” Foxly asked.

“…”

“Just a bit worried, I guess…” he sighed.

Meanwhile on the surface, near the hole…

Curstl stood near the deep it.

“I can sense Bonifacius is in trouble,” she said looking down into the hole.

“I… see… well, I’m going to get going, you go in and do your thing!” Kevin shrugged.

The other jGuardians were searching the zone top to bottom.

Curstl was about to call the rest off her guild when she felt the ground below her trembled and the sandy ground under her feet began to slide down into the hole.

“…crap…” she remarked before also falling into the abyss.

She fell for a long time, eventually, she fell down into the massive cavern where a gust of wind threw her away from the prison camp John and the rest landed in.

Instead, Curstl was flung far to the west where she eventually landed in a big, bubbling swamp, lit by several yellow mushrooms that glew like modern-day lamps.

She fell onto a massive bush which stopped her fall.

Curstl took a few seconds to collect her thought.

“That… was a rough landing…” she remarked only for a rock from above to fall down and hit her in the head causing her to fall back down to the ground.

After a few minutes, she got back up, confused.

She looked around seeing the bubbling pools of tar and the silhouettes of trees lit up by big, round, yellow glowing mushrooms.

“Where… am I?”

She looked down at her hands seeing violet robes and brown gloves.

“Who… am I?” she asked.