Relationships. Oh, relationships. Ask anyone their story, and their relationships with other people will no doubt come up. Whether it’s family, friends, or love interests, you’ll rarely find a story without them.

It should come as no surprise that with a long road ahead of us, relationship drama decided to rear its ugly head. Though, perhaps any sane party would have made it more than a few days…

---

The first few days of travel north went about how I would call routine. Walk and run during the day, pitch a camp, and then I head off away from the party during the night.

Fortunately, I convinced the party to continue having someone on “Titus watch” because it meant I at least had someone to talk to during the long nights.

Well… Most of us talked.

I gave a grunt as Lindsey slammed me into the ground and pinned me again. Her pressure points may not have worked, but she still knew a lot of different ways to trip me up or throw me around.

I struggled uselessly against her for a bit but then finally gave up and tapped her arm twice.

She immediately let up and popped up to her feet. She offered me a hand even as I received the notification that I had lost the duel.

Yeah, we decided to spice it up by making our sparring matches into duels. If you think that it would be stupid for me to accept them, you’re probably right. That’s why I only had to last a certain amount of time against her and why we didn’t have any rewards for the victor.

Even with my handicap, I was still 0/35 after a few nights, and I was starting to get a bit peeved. Peeved enough that I had to actually deactivate my wrath aura for the first time in a while.

“Again,” I said.

She simply shrugged and sent me another duel invite with the same terms. She won if she pinned me or made me give up. I won if I managed to last 5 minutes.

We started.

She feinted, and I managed to mostly not fall for it. However, my footing was still not as good as it needed to be in the snow, and I slipped just a bit.

That was enough for her. She moved inside my guard and grabbed me. I also saw her foot on its way to sweep my leg out from under me yet again.

I was heading to the ground, and that gave me an idea. Why not do it on my terms?

Her leg didn’t connect with mine because mine was no longer there. I went with her motion and turned the push that should have landed me on my back into a backflip with her in tow. A maneuver that I’m not entirely sure would have been possible on earth.

We crashed heavily to the snow with me on top of her, and I just barely managed to get her into one of the pins she had used on me before.

She struggled but then sighed and tapped me twice.

I released her, and we both got up. “Good move,” she grumbled.

I was shocked. “She speaks!”

She glowered at me, swept my legs out from under me, and then pinned me. The duel notified me that she won, and then we both got up. It turns out that we hadn’t included a clause for her being pinned or surrendering, and it hadn’t been 5 minutes yet.

0/36. Though I still personally like to think I won that one.

Also, she didn’t let up after that, and if anything, she seemed to have kicked it up a gear. I was soon 0/50 when she finally paused.

“Got the duelist achievement?” I asked.

She nodded curtly.

“Congrats,” I said.

She said nothing and walked away.

“Wait!” I called after her. “Was it something I said?”

Then I finally noticed that Sam was coming the other way for the last watch of the night. Lindsey whispered to her some, and then Sam nodded along and wished her a good night.

As soon as Lindsey was out of earshot, Sam said, “Dang, you ticked her off. I haven’t seen her that livid in ages.”

“But what did I do?” I asked.

Sam snorted. “Don’t worry about it. She’s just a sore loser.”

“But… She didn’t even technically lose.”

Sam’s cat ears perked up. “Oh? I guess I didn’t get the whole story.”

I related the incident to Sam, and she freaked out.

“Lindsey spoke to you?!” she said.

“It was only two words,” I muttered.

“You don’t get it! She hasn’t spoken to anyone but me directly in…” Sam looked like she was trying to add up the time on her fingers, but she gave up. “Ages!”

I raised my eyebrows. “Really? I thought she would’ve said something to someone else in the party by now. Maybe to the [Hero] or something.”

Sam shook her head. “Nope. Or at least, if she has, I haven’t heard about it.”

“Huh.” That made me curious, though. “What’s her deal anyway? I can understand being shy, but she seems a bit… Beyond shy.”

Sam sighed. “You mean functionally mute? Yeah. It’s a bit more than her just being shy, but that’s a long story.”

I shrugged. “We got time.”

She pursed her lips. “I dunno… I kinda think it‘s something that you should ask her about.”

“You think I should ask the mute girl about her backstory?” I asked dubiously.

“Right.” Sam thought for a bit, and then she finally groaned. “Alright, can you keep a secret?”

I thought momentarily about all of the secrets that I was currently keeping from the party. “Yeah, of course.”

“Keep this quiet from everybody.” She gave me a pointed look. “Especially don’t let Lindsey know I told you.”

I nodded. “Got it.”

“Where to start…” she muttered. “Well, I guess at the beginning. It happened when she was little. Back when she had both her parents.”

Uh-oh. Past tense.

“She doesn’t remember much about those days, but she remembers being happy. And that she wanted to be a singer.” Sam noticed my unspoken question. “Yeah. Hard to imagine, right? But her mom was a singer, and apparently, she had the talent for it.”

Sam paused, so I lightly prodded her. “What happened?”

“Well… Her mom got sick. She… Didn’t make it.”

“That’s awful,” I said.

She shook her head. “It gets worse. Her dad… Didn’t take it well. He started drinking. And getting angry. It all came to a head one night when her dad caught her singing one of her mom’s favorite songs.”

Sam seemed to be struggling to find the words and close to tears, so I didn’t push it.

“He beat her. Badly. Fortunately, someone called the cops, and they were able to get her to a hospital. But… She refused to speak to anyone after that.”

“Wow,” was all I said. “But she speaks to you, so you must be pretty special to her, right?”

“Yeah,” Sam sniffed. “But that’s another story, and I don’t think I’m up for telling it.” She wiped some of the tears from her eyes. “Can I be alone for a bit? This brought up some bad memories.”

“Sure, of course,” I replied.

I gave her space and only spoke to her briefly to ask her to loot the bodies after we were attacked by a wave of wolves.

I could tell she was still feeling down even as we traveled the next day. So, when it came time for our first walking break, I decided to try to make it up to her the only way I could think of.

“Hey, Sam,” I said. “Wanna try to cheese out an achievement?”

That got the gamer girl’s attention. “Sure?”

“Then I challenge you to a duel!” I pointed at her and near shouted.

And that was enough to get Jake’s attention. “Woah, woah, woah!” he said. “No duels! You remember what-“

“In rock-paper-scissors,” I finished.

“Oh,” Jake said. He looked at the rest of the party, who shrugged. “Go ahead, I guess?”

I decided to quickly explain to them how Richard and Lindsey had both gotten an achievement for winning a bunch of duels, and also my theory that it just mattered how many times you won, not the content.

So, Sam and I walked together while challenging each other to duels. Since my goal was to cheer her up, I figured we should try to get her to 50 duels first. That meant that I threw scissors into her rock every single time.

It went smoothly, and we were a few dozen duels into it when she paused and looked off into the distance.

That should have been my first clue. We were traveling across a boring plain. There was nothing to look at.

“Is something wrong?” I asked

“Nope, nothing,” she said, and it seemed like she was desperately trying to hide a smirk. That should have been my second major clue.

I had already accepted the next duel and was throwing scissors yet again when I finally realized. Wait. Wasn’t that duel notification longer than the others?

That was the third and final clue I missed that would have saved me a bit of grief.

The notification for losing the duel popped up.

“I hate you so much,” was all I could say to Sam before the duel’s compulsion took effect.

I ran forward a few steps to be in front of Lindsey, who was walking on Sam’s other side. I turned around and stopped in front of the now very confused [Defender].

She stopped too, and as she did, I took her hand in both of mine. “Lindsey, my beautiful [Knight],” I said as I went down on one knee in front of her, my words and actions both dictated by the terms of the duel. “I have loved you since I first saw you. Will you marry me?”

I didn’t know it was possible for someone to turn that red. In fact, I half expected steam to start coming out of one or both of her sets of ears.

The rest of the party stared in shock while Sam was trying not to laugh. Fortunately, that was the end of the duel conditions, so I quickly let go and stood up. “I’m sorry! Sam made me say that when she won that last duel!”

Lindsey’s look of embarrassment shifted to one of anger, and she pulled out her sword.

I involuntarily took a step back and then closed my eyes. I winced, waiting for the blow to come.

It never did.

I opened my eyes and saw an irate bunny-eared swordswoman chasing after a terrified cat-eared [Sorceress] who started shouting apologies. “I’m sorry! It was just a prank!”

Jake eventually got things settled down after Lindsey got in a few good whacks with the flat of her blade.

During the entire ordeal, I felt like someone’s eyes were trying to drill holes through me, but I didn’t see anyone. Which immediately made me realize the culprit.

Megan? But why would she care about me confessing to Lindsey? I almost concluded that she was actually interested in me, but I quickly brushed that off. Yeah, right. If that’s not wishful thinking, I don’t know what is.

Fortunately, Sam distracted me from that mess of a train of thought by starting up our rock-paper-scissors duels again. I noticed that Lindsey made it a point of not walking near us.

“Is everything going to be okay between you two?” I asked. I felt a little bad because the entire point of this exercise had been to try to cheer her up.

She waved my concern off. “It’ll be fine. She’ll calm down after a bit, and things will go back to normal.” She grinned. “And that was so worth it. I wish I had a camera for the face she made when you proposed. That face was priceless.”

“In that case, I won’t feel bad about this,” I said with a smug grin. Sam finally looked down and realized I had thrown paper. Her eyes also went wide as she realized that I had added 5 little words to the terms if I won.

Confess your love to Garrett.

“No,” she said.

“Turnabout’s fair play!” I said. “You don’t have to go so far as to propose, but-“

“You asp hole!” she hissed. She grabbed my head and lowered it down next to her so she could whisper in my ear. “Making me confess to Garrett is definitely not the same as you confessing to Lindsey!”

“Why not?” I whispered back.

“You don’t actually like her!” she whispered back furiously.

“What does that-“ I finally caught up. Oh. Then for good measure, I said that out loud. “Ohhhhhh.”

“Get it?”

“Yeah.”

At this point, the rest of the party noticed that we stopped. I waved them on. “Uh, don’t worry! We’ll catch up in a minute. Just had something come up with the last duel.”

Jake sighed. “Okay, but hurry it up. I want to get us to the ice dungeon as soon as possible.”

After I thought people were out of earshot, I turned back to Sam. “So wait, you aren’t interested in the [Hero]?”

She looked puzzled. “No? I mean, Jake’s a nice guy and all, but how on earth did you come to that conclusion?”

I thought about it and then shrugged. “Probably too much anime, if I’m being honest.” Not that I could remember any specific anime for the life of me, but I definitely knew that was where my expectation of the [Hero] being surrounded by multiple possible love interests came from.

“Weeb[1],” she snorted. “Anyway, duel condition. Take it back, please.”

I almost offered her a duel that would revoke the last one's conditions since I had learned that was possible during my duels with Richard, but then I had an idea. Maybe I shouldn’t revoke it. I eyed Sam. Maybe I can get them started on the right foot.

“Sorry, I can’t take back the conditions of the duel,” I lied.

“What! No way!” she groaned. “This is going to be so awkward. And then he’s just going to shoot me down.”

“Why would he shoot you down? You’re a cute girl with cat ears.”

“Weeb,” she muttered again.

“Oh, come on, we were at a Comic-Con before we left! Like everyone there wasn’t at least a little geeky, or nerdy, or a weeb,” I replied.

Her cat ears twitched. “You have a point. But how am I even going to do this? It’s not like he has a shoe locker I can shove a love letter[2] into.”

It was my turn to snort. “Who’s the weeb now?”

She chuckled lightly. “Heh, busted.”

I could tell that she was really struggling, though, so I helped her develop a plan. It wasn’t much of one, but that was part of the point.

First step, be in charge of watching me when Garrett was in charge of watching the camp.

We immediately ran into a snag. Both Sam and Garrett offered to do “Titus watch” for the night.

However, Emilia came to our rescue. “Garrett, would you mind swapping me? I feel like getting in a bit more target practice tonight, and nothing ever attacks the camp.”

“Uh, sure?” Garrett replied. His surprise was echoed on basically everyone’s face. She had never volunteered to watch me before, after all.

How does she know? I asked myself as she gave me a slight nod that I returned. It must’ve been [Enhanced Senses], right? But there’s no way she heard most of our conversation.

I came to a conclusion. She must have figured out our play after hearing that Sam likes Garrett. Huh.

Nighttime came soon enough. Well, it came soon enough for me. For Sam, the day probably felt like it dragged on forever.

Either way, the first watch was with Emilia.

“Hey Emilia,” I said. “Thanks for your help getting this setup. I appreciate it.”

“I didn’t do it for you,” she said, looking slightly disgusted. “I did it for Sam so that she can finally stop pining over Garrett. She’s been so obvious I’m amazed he hasn’t picked up on it by now. The rest of the party has.”

I chuckled slightly. The rest of the party but me apparently. Oops.

“Speaking of, how did you not know?” she asked.

I gave a very articulate and well-thought-out answer. “Huh?”

“How did you not know that Sam had a thing for Garrett?” she clarified.

“I had my blinders on because our situation seemed too much like a stereotypical harem anime.” She raised an eyebrow at that, so I continued. “Right. You don’t know much about anime… Well, anyway, a harem anime is just one where the main character basically has a bunch of different girls all falling for him.”

“That’s ridiculous,” she said with a look of disgust.

I nodded my head. “Yeah.”

Her disgust was replaced with confusion. “Wait. You don’t like harem anime?”

I snorted. “No. Not really. There are only a few ways to pull it off, and each of them is stupid. The first way is to have the hero just not notice all of the women falling for him left and right, which means he has to be denser than a neutron star. That gets old pretty fast. The second,” I continued my rant. “Is for the hero to actually pick a girl. Of the three possible outcomes, that’s the one I actually prefer, but it also sucks for all the girls. The hero and his chosen girl get a happy ending, but the others get heartbreak and jealousy. Yay.”

Emilia was still listening intently, which surprised me, so I kept going. “Then, the third route. The hero just marries all the girls. First off, you have to have a setting that allows polygamy, which is already a little sketchy, and then all the girls have to somehow agree to it. And in an anime taking that route, you know they will. Eagerly. Even though I can’t think of a single girl that would actually be happy sharing the man they love with multiple other women.”

“So, your main issue is that you think that harem anime devalues women?” Emilia asked.

I thought about that for a second. “Yeah, I guess so. I’m not sure that’s how I would have put it, but I guess that’s pretty close. Any way that the trope runs, you know that the girls won’t end up truly happy, and that peeves me a bit.”

“Hmm. Titus, are you a feminist?”

“Not really?” I said, but it came out as more of a question. “Why?”

“I am, and I was just curious because you had almost the same reasoning for why you don’t like harem anime that I did. Though, I probably have more issues with anime than you do.”

“Like what?”

“What was it called?” she muttered. “Oh, right. Fan service?” She raised an eyebrow and gave me a dubious look.

I winced. “Yeah. I can’t really defend fan service in anime, so I won’t try.”

We stood there in awkward silence for a bit before Emilia asked, “Why did you think that our party was a setup for a harem anyway? Excluding Tim, since he’s too young, there’s an equal number of men and women.”

“Ah, but Andrew’s ineligible because he’s too old, and I doubt anyone would want to be co-responsible for Tim. Garrett is also a fair bit older than the girls in the party, and I imagined that he would be more of a wingman for the [Hero] than anything else. That leaves me, and I doubt that anyone wants to date someone that looks like me.”

“You say that, but didn’t you break up with Megan?”

I snorted. “No, I would say that she’s the one that broke up with me.”

“Hmm, you sure?”

“Positive,” I nodded. “She’s the one that said we should break up.”

“Odd,” Emilia muttered.

“Odd?”

She looked like she was debating telling me the next part, and then finally said, “When you had your fake proposal to Lindsey, she looked livid. And jealous. Until you said that you were just proposing due to the duel, I actually thought that you had dumped her for Lindsey.”

So, does that mean I was right? Does she actually like me? Or was she just acting to make sure that no one questioned it? Wait. I didn’t see her, so she must have been [Sneaking], which means she didn’t expect anyone to be watching. Fortunately, my descent into that rabit hole was ended when Emilia spoke again.

“By the way, why aren’t you a feminist? You don’t have to be a woman to be one.”

I shrugged. “I guess I just don’t like how they seem to act,” I smirked. “I mean, they do things like shoot a guy in the foot with a bow and arrow, and then intimidate an entire crowd.”

She folded her arms and then shot me her death glare, which only phased me a little bit. “Hey! To be fair, I was still under the assumption that we were in a game. I knew it wouldn’t cause any permanent damage!”

“Okay, fair point. I guess I just don’t like the fact that most feminists basically want female superiority.”

She shook her head. “If that’s the case, then they aren’t true feminists. What true feminists want is equality. Both good and bad.”

That sparked a discussion. A surprisingly civil discussion.

The wage gap. Gender roles. The glass ceiling.

None of these topics are ones that you would really want to get into with a feminist, but that’s what we ended up talking about. Well, what we talked about in between the two waves of wolves that came during her watch.

I would love to say that I completely outdebated her and changed her mind, but that simply didn’t happen. However, she didn’t do that to me either. It honestly ended as more of a stalemate where both of us were exposed to opinions that neither of us had heard before.

Which I found profoundly weird.

Isn’t this supposed to devolve into shouting and name-calling? I thought. Then I shook my head. I guess we aren’t on the Internet…

We did also acknowledge that a lot of it was a moot point since we were in a new world, and there were likely to be a whole host of new issues.

However, there was one last thing she took exception to.

“You don’t like words that end in ess?” I asked.

“I don’t like it when it is forcefully shoved on there to make a word gendered when it didn’t need to be,” she corrected. “Take [Sorceress], for example. Why can’t Sam just be a [Sorcerer]? If you need to know her gender, you would just say a female [Sorcerer].”

She then rubbed her head as if she had a headache. I immediately caught on. Really? A patch for that?

“What were we talking about?” she asked.

“You were mentioning that you didn’t like words where they put ess on the end to make it gendered. I think we were talking about [Sorcerers]?” I wasn’t entirely sure of the contents of the patch, but I decided to guess that it made the obvious change.

“Hmm, I don’t know why I would bring that up, though,” she muttered. “Unless I was giving an example of the system doing it right since both men and women are [Sorcerers].”

Phew. Guessed right.

“Speaking of [Sorcerers], Sam’s coming now,” Emilia said. “Has it really been 2 hours already?”

“Guess so,” I replied.

“Wow. Time really flew. I guess I expected things to be a bit more… Awkward.”

I huffed. “I’m not that introverted.”

“No, I meant… Well… I almost shot you.”

“Killed,” I corrected. “I was at really low HP, so you almost killed me. You have, in fact, shot me two other times.”

She winced. “I did apologize for that, right?”

I shrugged. “Kinda, I guess?”

She looked me in the eyes. “Titus, I’m sorry for accidentally shooting you during combat. I am also truly sorry for almost killing you. I know it was done while under the effect of wrath aura, but that doesn’t excuse it. Do you forgive me?”

“Yup,” I nodded.

She blinked in confusion. “Just like that?”

“Well, a majority of my friends here have tried to murder me, so I’ve forgiven you all for it. If I hadn’t, I doubt I’d be traveling with you.” I didn’t feel like explaining to her how desensitized I had become to my own death after the tutorial and how a lot of my close calls with death didn’t really feel real.

When this is all over, I could really use some therapy.

Emilia was still standing there with an unreadable expression.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Do you really consider me a friend?” she asked.

I shrugged. “Maybe? I mean, in the worst-case scenario, you’re the girlfriend of my friend, so that’s kinda like being a friend, right?”

“G-Girlfriend? What do you mean?”

“I mean, I heard about you two hanging out at night during your watch. Don’t think I missed him calling you Em, either.”

Emilia was definitely embarrassed, but she didn’t deny it. Fortunately for her, Sam was finally there to relieve her. Emilia beat a hasty retreat, while Sam looked like she was still nervous.

Before we executed the second phase of our plan, I decided to check something first.

“If it isn’t Sam the stupendous [Sorcerer],” I said. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Yup, that’s me,” she replied distractedly.

I decided to deploy my test. “By the way, do you prefer [Sorcerer] or Sorceress?” I asked.

“Sorceress if there was an option,” Sam replied. “I mean, I get that [Sorcerer] can be gender-neutral, but it still just sounds like it’s a class for a dude when I say it out loud.”

She then grabbed her head in a now-familiar gesture as the patch took hold. She then asked. “What were we talking about?”

“Oh, nothing,” I said. “Just how awesome your [Sorceress] class was.”

She grinned. “Yeah, it’s pretty great, isn’t it?”

System, I don’t know if you can hear me, but if you keep trying to please everyone by making things politically correct, you’re gunna have a bad time. I mean… A lot of the people you brought over are my age and are therefore millennials, so you’re basically doomed.

My internal plea to the System was interrupted by Sam pacing and asking a question. “Maybe I can just do this tomorrow?” she asked. “I mean, your duel conditions didn’t say when I had to do it. Tomorrow would be fine, right?”

“No,” I said flatly. “Emilia helped us out to get you two lined up just right. You’re doing it tonight.”

She continued pacing back and forth and started wringing her hands. “But what if he rejects me? What if things get really awkward for us after that? Or worse,” she said and turned to me. “What if he hates me?”

“Sam, this is Garrett we’re talking about. Unless he’s [Raging], I don’t know that he’s capable of hating anyone.”

She paced for a few more minutes, and then I continued. “Okay, I think now should be about the time for you to go. Remember, you don’t have to do anything fancy. Just be open and honest about your feelings.”

Where did that bit of advice come from? Well, I basically just took what I remembered of rom-coms and realized that basically 90% of all the problems in them would be solved if people just talked to each other.

“Open and honest,” she murmured. “Okay, I can do this. I can do this.” She looked at me with wide eyes. “Titus, I can’t do this. Maybe I really should put this off. It can wait, right?”

I had one last card to play. I didn’t want to play it. It was honestly a kind of mean one. However, her continued hesitation left me no choice.

“Of course, it can wait,” I said. Sam visibly relaxed. “Of course, that just gives Garrett all the more time to find someone else. Maybe he’ll go after Megan now that she’s dumped me. Or maybe he’ll determine that he really likes bunny ears.”

Sams breath caught, and I felt pretty bad. I was almost ready to apologize when she said. “Okay, I’ll go.” She took a deep breath, clenched her fists, and then started walking back to camp. “Wish me luck.”

“Good luck, Sam,” I called after her.

That left me alone with my thoughts. Well, my thoughts and the puny wave of wolves that decided to attack while she was gone, but I basically just fought those on auto-pilot.

Part of me wondered why I was pushing her so hard. Why should it matter to me whether those two got together? I wasn’t sure my awkward relationship with Megan made me want the others to have happier ones, or if I honestly just thought they would be a cute couple. Either way, when I saw Sam trudging back with her head down, my heart sank.

“What happened?” I asked her gently.

She replied softly. “He turned me down.” I was looking for the words to comfort her when she looked me dead in the eyes with conviction. “But he only turned me down because he thinks a relationship would be distracting when we have the fate of the world in our hands. He said if I was still interested in a geezer like him when it was all done, that he would be more than happy to go on a date.” She clenched her fist and looked up at the sky. “THAT [DEMON LORD] IS GOING DOWN!”

I involuntarily took a step back and chuckled dryly. I would hate to be the [Demon Lord] standing in her way. Then my eyes widened. Ship. I AM the [Demon Lord] standing in her way.

That bit of drama concluded, I convinced her to finish up our rock-paper-scissors duels so that we could both get the achievement. To make sure we didn’t have any more issues where we had to profess our love for a party member, we started the duels off with one win each. The win condition was to not make any duel victory conditions until both of us had the achievement.

After that, it was smooth sailing for the dozen duels Sam needed for the achievement, and then the 45ish duels for me.

System: New Achievement. Duelist. Class Perk Points Gained 1

That put me up to 2 class perk points. So it was nice, but honestly not that helpful.

So, just need another one, and I can get [Status Display], I thought. Meh. I think I might as well save up. What should I get next? I mulled it over for all of a half-second before I remembered. Oh yeah, 5 points for [Party Interface]. I chuckled. The only reason I had ruled it out earlier was that it would make it impossible to do things behind the party’s back. Since that wasn’t an issue anymore, it was now at the top of my list.

I guess the real question is, what am I going to do after the ice dungeon? The answer? I honestly wasn’t sure. I guess if the [Hero] comes up with some other quests to go on, I wouldn’t mind tagging along. Otherwise… I suppose I have a subclass now. I wonder if anywhere needs a [General]?

I was pulled from my thoughts by Sam giggling and shooting a [Fire Bolt] into my face.

“What was that for?!” I sputtered. It, of course, didn’t deal any damage, but it was still a shock for it to come out of nowhere.

“You gave me permission,” Sam said.

“And how did I give you permission?” I asked with a sigh.

“Well, while you were totally zoned out, I may have warned you that I was going to [Fire Bolt] you and that you keeping silent was implied permission for me to do so.”

I glared at her a little as she whistled innocently.

However, with the night she had, I didn’t have it in me to stay mad at her. I was actually slightly happy that I could get a laugh out of her, even if it was at my own expense.

The conversations I had the rest of that night were a lot less serious, and then it was back to traveling the next morning.

At around midday, we entered a stretch of forest. And that is when we encountered something odd.

System: Zone entered, Unnamed. Faction - Neutral

“Huh, you guys see this?” I asked.

“Yeah, an unnamed zone,” Jake said. “Not wilderness, so I guess there’s probably a dungeon around somewhere?”

“But why is it unnamed?”

“It could be that there is no surrounding territory to name it after,” Tim wagered a guess. “The Faroff Forest was likely named after its neighboring zone, and we lack any landmarks to give it a name.”

“Hmm,” I said. “Then why was The Great Southern Swamp a named zone?”

Tim thought for a moment. “It could also be the case that what an area is known as colloquially determines what the name of the zone is. If a majority of the people of this world knew that area as the Great Southern Swamp on their maps, it’s possible the system is just following suit.”

Our discussion was interrupted by howls, and we quickly got ready for a fight. It was 25 wolves and an alpha, which was honestly no longer much of a threat.

We mopped up the small-fry quickly, and Jake decided to just [Sunder] the alpha. Then we were back to walking.

I had some concerns, however. “We’re in a zone again, so doesn’t that mean that we’re going to get attacked way more often?”

“Probably,” Jake said. “But it’s not like there’s much we can do about it. We just have to keep moving, and we’ll get through it eventually.”

“Or we could try to find the dungeon and clear it. Then if you claim the zone, we wouldn’t have to worry about monsters for the rest of our way through.”

Jake sighed. “The only problem with that is that we have no idea where the dungeon is. With Faroff Forest we were pretty confident where it would be. Clearing it also sped us up on our quest since we wouldn’t have to wait for reinforcements.” Jake stopped the entire party for a bit. “Look, I know this world is gamelike in a lot of ways, but I highly doubt that the [Demon Lord] is going to just wait while we go off on sidequests.”

I totally would, actually. Since I would be going on them with you. I obviously didn’t voice that thought.

Jake continued. “So, no sidequests. Not unless they’re absolutely necessary. We’ll clear the dungeon if we happen to stumble on it, but not otherwise. Got it?”

There was no dissent from the rest of the party, so I just shrugged. I guess we’ll just see how this goes.

It didn’t go terribly, but I also wouldn’t say it went well. We started getting at least 1 wave every hour, and the number of wolves also started ramping up until we fought a wave of 50 with 2 alphas.

Despite all that, Garrett was the only one who ended up taking much damage, and that was only because his [Rage] skill activated all by itself again during one of our more hectic fights.

While the party was looting the bodies, I managed to overhear Sam complaining to Lindsey, “Wolves, wolves, and more wolves. We’re in a fantasy world! Why aren’t there more fantasy enemies? Why is it only wolves?”

Her wish was, kinda, granted with the next wave. A wave of 5 daves.

We saw them slowly hopping towards us from about a hundred feet off, so that fight was anticlimactic at best. Sam and Tim [Mage Bolted] one to death before they could even get to us, and then Jake just decided to speed things up. It turned out that he was able to one-shot them with a normal attack.

Good gravy. More than 50 damage with a basic attack? I had known that he was dealing a lot of damage, but that was the first time I had actual concrete numbers. I looked at my 190 HP and cringed. Really glad I don’t have to fight him. That definitely wouldn’t go well, even without [Sunder].

“Hey, I got an item!” Jake said.

“From the daves?” Sam asked. “What is it?”

“It’s dave- err- slime jelly and the description… Just says ewwww?”

“Eww is right,” Sam said. “Why would you want that?”

“Maybe an [Alchemist] can use it in potions or something.” Jake shrugged. “Dunno, maybe we can ask around when we get to a bigger town.”

We kept going and eventually came to a stop for the night. Though Sam was usually on the list for going with me for a watch, this was one time where the party decided it didn’t really make sense to send in any magic casters. That meant that I was on rotation with Jake, Garrett, Lindsey, and Emilia.

Megan also had the option since she also had a class that depended on SP instead of MP, but I had barely spoken a word to her since our “breakup,” and it didn’t look like she wanted to change that.

The increase in enemies made things a bit sketchier, and I even ended up summoning a dave or two to help. However, the worst part was honestly when I was stuck with Lindsey since we weren’t going to waste SP sparring when the waves of enemies were that big. That meant we both just kinda stood there awkwardly waiting for waves of monsters to come.

However, that bit of awkwardness ended when Lindsey’s ears suddenly perked up, and her eyes went wide. She gestured me to follow and then took off running.

I stood there confused for a second but finally understood her meaning when I heard a thunderclap echo through the woods.

“Oh, sit! The camp’s under attack!” I finally stated the obvious.

Lindsey nodded her head and then gestured impatiently, so we both tore off back to the camp.

When we got onto the scene, it was a mess.

Wolves were everywhere. Garrett was down with Andrew running to [Heal] him. Jake was nowhere to be found. Emilia practically had wolves chewing on her bowstrings, and Sam and Tim were point-blank casting at wolves that were jumping them. Megan was also nowhere, but… That wasn’t exactly unusual.

Fortunately, that was as sketchy as it got. When Lindsey and I arrived on the scene, I somehow managed to take the aggro of quite a few of the enemies. That gave our ranged fighters a bit of room, and soon we got back to something close to a formation.

A second thunderclap also heralded Jake’s return as he came back from the woods where he had soloed a group of three alphas and a bear.

We made short work of the normal wolves with both of us there, and the party breathed a sigh of relief.

“What happened?” I asked.

We found out a few reasons why the fight went so poorly. It was an extra-large wave. Garrett’s [Rage] triggered. They were missing two of their frontliners since Lindsey and I weren’t there. However, the biggest issue that we uncovered? Andrew had fallen asleep on Tim’s watch.

To be honest, it was news to me that Tim was even on the watch rotation, but it made sense after I heard it. To have two people cover 8 hours at 2 per watch, they would need everyone, wouldn’t they? And we are trying to treat him like a full member of the party…

Apparently, Andrew had disagreed with that and had been taking Tim’s watch for him without letting anyone know. That made Jake mad enough that he ended up taking a walk for a minute, and I silently rejoiced that I wasn’t the one causing it for once.

He came back to a heated discussion about what we were going to do since we didn’t have a clue how much further it was to get out of the zone. I was mostly keeping quiet because I knew an answer, but I really wasn’t sure if I liked it.

However, with the party cranky from lack of sleep and now low on resources, I finally decided to pitch my idea.

“Hey guys, maybe I should just go on ahead?” I asked. “I can cover ground faster when I’m alone, and that would mean that we would get the [Monster Magnet] out of the zone sooner.”

Jake didn’t like the idea. Garrett didn’t like the idea. I honestly didn’t like the idea either. However, I somehow managed to convince them. I don’t remember what my argument was, but I do know that it included the words, “I’m sure I can handle it. I mean, what’s the worst that could happen?”

Words that I started kicking myself for the very next morning when I broke off from the party because I knew as well as anyone that I had just signed myself up for a very interesting trip.

[1] Weeb – shortened form of the word weeaboo which is a deragotory term for someone obsessed with Japanese culture (or more specifically, anime)

[2] In Japanese schools there are usually shoe lockers for the students since they change between indoor and outdoor shoes. In anime, this makes for a prime place for a student to leave another a love letter or a note asking them to meet somewhere else so that they can confess their love.