The long road.

When I say those words, there are so many things I could mean. The long road that I took to go on adventurers and befriend Jake and the others. The long road that was still ahead of me since this story wasn’t over. Or even the long road that made me into who I am today.

However, in this case, I mean the physical road between DeepMine and the village of Holdover.

Frick that stretch of dirt in particular.

---

After the caravan settled in for the night and Jake took watch, I took Lindsey, who was on Titus watch, and we went back into the unnamed zone to see how bad the monster spawns were. The results were… Not great.

We went back and found Jake. “Good news or bad news?” I asked him.

“Well, since it’s always bad news with you…” he said with a grin.

“Ha, ha, ha. You get the good news first, then. The spawn rate isn’t as high as Starry Forest.”

Jake nodded. “That is good news. So what’s the bad news?”

“It’s still churning out waves pretty quickly. I couldn’t get an accurate count, but I think I would put it at about one every 5 minutes.”

Jake grimaced. “That’s… Doable.”

I shook my head. “Not really. Unless you want to keep the entire party up all night. I think the just run for it game plan is our best bet.”

Jake sighed. “I really wish you didn’t have to keep splitting from the party, but you’re probably right.” There was a lull in the conversation, and then Jake asked. “So, you’re leaving first thing in the morning then?”

I nodded. “Yup, I plan on booking it at first light.”

“Well, stay safe, man. We’d all hate to see anything happen to you.”

“I promise I’ll stay as safe as I can.”

The three of us stood there awkwardly for a bit after that. Jake had basically just said his goodbyes when I wasn’t leaving until the morning, and Lindsey wasn’t a good one to count on for conversation. I didn’t quite know how to salvage the situation, but a set of howls reminded me that I shouldn’t be near the camp at night anyway.

Jake, Lindsey, and I effortlessly slew the monsters, and then Jake and I bid each other a less awkward goodnight.

As for my time with Lindsey, we had moved on from sparring. The party insisted after we woke them up one too many times from damaging each other. Yes, I was finally able to land a hit on her every once in a while. To fill the time instead, she was taking to her role as a sensei and teaching me different forms.

To this day, I still have no idea what any of them are actually called.

When our time was finally up, we bowed to each other. Then in a soft voice, she said, “Stay… Safe.”

That was the most touching of the goodbyes that I had that night, including the one from my girlfriend, who had the last watch and was the one to see me off.

Megan saw me off with a kiss and an admonishment to “not be an idiot.”

Not as touching, but probably a more important message.

With that, I went off back into the unnamed zone. I stayed on the road and left the bodies of all the enemies I killed where they fell since I could be reasonably sure that the party would be along later to clean them up.

The first warning sign that this wasn’t going to be an easy trip came a bit before noon. I saw a break in the forest up ahead, and when I got a better look, I realized that it was nothing but rolling plains. What’s the problem with that? Well, for about 90% of our fights while traveling, I always had “climb a tree” as a panic button. That was apparently going to be removed for the next stretch.

I stopped at the last line of trees and frowned. I’m a bit under half a day through. I could go back the way I came? But that’s just delaying the inevitable, right? I stood still a bit and debated. If I go back, I could try to circumnavigate the zone. The problem is that I can’t be sure if that’s even possible.

I sighed. “I wish I got a better look at the map.”

I checked my stamina and saw that I was about to be back at full, and any delay after that would make either option worse. As it ticked up, I decided to press onward.

“Those slow carts can make the trip in two or three days. I can do this.”

My pep talk was successful enough, and I took off at a run.

I still encountered the occasional monster attack as I ran, but that wasn’t actually the most concerning thing about those plains. I nearly lost the road once or twice because there was still a thin layer of snow covering everything. That had never been a problem when I was with the caravan because they knew the route, and it hadn’t been an issue in the forest because a path of cleared-out trees makes a road pretty easy to discern.

Instead, I had to just figure it out by trial and error. If my footing suddenly took a turn for the worse, that was usually enough of an indication that I had gone off-road.

However, that caused slight delays, and as the sun got closer and closer to setting, I got more and more worried.

It has to be just over this hill, right? I assured myself that I would crest the hill, and I would see a small village off in the distance with a dark-blue obelisk marking the end of the unnamed zone. That will give me plenty of time. I’ll go into the village, then out the other side before midnight to avoid a monster wave.

I made it to the top of the hill.

I saw nothing. No village. No obelisk. Not in any direction.

I saw only more plains and more hills.

“It’s okay, Titus. Just calm down and keep going.” I tried to remain positive, mostly to avoid the panic that was creeping up on me.

I took off slightly faster than usual and even let myself get down to a quarter of my SP before resting instead of half like usual. However, it wasn’t enough to even get to the next hill before the sun finished setting.

I slowed to a walk as howls echoed through the night.

“Looks like I’m fighting my way through after all,” I murmured to myself as the monsters rapidly approached. If I rest in between every group, I still have a shot. I can do this.

I did my best to conserve stamina, and I made my way through half of the incoming monsters. Then as if they were mocking me, even more howls sounded out from somewhere behind me.

“No,” I whispered in disbelief. The spawn rate had increased from where I had first tested. I wasn’t going to get a break in between attacks.

I finished off the first group right as the second arrived and then the second right as the third group approached me.

I frantically tried to think of options. Wrath form? But I don’t know what it will do. I wasn’t willing to risk it. However, that did put my thoughts on a helpful track.

Wait. Wrath form… Wrath aura… The fear aura! I immediately suffused the area with it. The attacks died down as the wolves shied back from me in terror.

Now. Just walk to town and deal with the wolves later. I put a bit too much faith in the strength of my aura. It held the wolves off by itself for several seconds, but that was all it could do for me. Soon enough, I was attacked again.

I ended up taking 3 bites from that mess because I simply wasn’t used to the attack pattern that terrified wolves took.

At this point, it would be better to use wrath aura. At least then I know how they’ll behave. I was about to drop my aura and replace it when I had a much better idea. Why not both?

However, I wasn’t going to just make a bunch of wolves become both terrified and afraid. That would defeat the point. Instead, I tried to focus all the wrath into a single enemy, the one in front of me.

It was a bit of a headache keeping both auras active at once, but it was well worth it. The rest of the wolves stayed cowed while the one in front immediately snarled and lunged at me.

I smiled briefly as I put that one down. I was now in complete control of the battlefield. Instead of having to react to their attacks, I could orchestrate which wolf would attack me when. However, my smile slipped as I knew that wouldn’t be enough. I’m still not going to have enough SP.

I risked a quick check of my SP and took another bite for the trouble. I was down to 210 HP and 70 SP.

I tried to split my focus between maintaining the two auras, killing enemies, and frantically trying to think of ways to conserve SP. The first thing that I could think of was Lindsey’s martial arts lessons, but I was already putting those into practice as much as I could.

The other memories that kept getting dragged up were my time getting attacked by fire wolves in the Faroff Forest dungeon and my time spent mining, of all things.

Now is not the time to be wishing I was on vacation! I practically snarled at myself. However, my subconscious kept bringing those two memories up. Eventually, my conscious mind finally realized what it meant.

“That’s it!” I shouted. However, my eureka moment didn’t come without a cost. I lost my concentration on both auras, and several wolves jumped me at the same time.

I ducked under two, punched a third, but was bitten by two others to drop to 190 HP. After that, I hastily locked the area down with fear aura again and beat the two wolves off me. Then, with my composure regained, I was ready to put into practice what my subconscious was telling me.

Rest in combat. Like I learned from the fire wolves.

I focused my wrath on the next wolf, and it jumped at me. I took a step along the road and hit it with a punch.

And rest between strikes. Just like I had learned from my stint as a [Miner].

I had found my path to victory. Rest. Refocus aura. Step and strike. Rest. It by no means started out perfect. Spend too long resting here, accidentally leave a wolf for too long there. Some of the time, I was still able to pull out a dodge by expending just a bit more SP, but other times I ended up getting hit by the attack and had to struggle to maintain everything.

I took a total of 8 hits before I finally found my rhythm. After that, there was nothing to do but leave an ever-growing trail of dark wolf corpses behind me as I proceeded step by step.

However, since my life wasn’t complicated enough as it was, Placeholder decided to throw yet another variable at me. Alphas.

I didn’t even notice the first one until it was gnawing on my arm. I lost control of my auras for half a second due to the pain but quickly clamped them back down. As for taking care of the alpha, my body practically moved on its own.

My free hand swung towards its head, and the words were out of my mouth before I realized it. “[Summon Dave]!”

The summon latched onto the monster’s head, and I pulled my arm free. After that, I doubled down on the fear aura on the alpha as I waited for my slimy minion to finish it off.

It takes a dave 9 seconds to kill an alpha wolf on its own. However, each of those seconds felt far too long as I had to stay near my dave to ensure the other monsters didn’t kill it. With only enough MP to summon 3 of them, every dave was precious because I knew that was just the first alpha of very many.

When the alpha finally died, I bent down, grabbed my dave, and perched it on my shoulder. “Hold on! Don’t attack me!” I ordered it. Then I immediately got back into my rhythm.

So, like that, the two of us slowly made our way along the road. I took care of the hundreds of regular wolves, and my dave took care of any alphas we came across. From everything I’ve said so far, you may think that I would basically be able to go like that forever. Unfortunately, that was not exactly true.

My weakness was the only part of my existence that didn’t behave completely like a video game character.

My brain.

I was mentally exhausted from everything I had to keep track of; two auras, dozens of enemies surrounding me at all times that I had to send at myself in order, and then alphas that I had to handle differently. That’s in addition to the mental gymnastics I had to go through to be able to rest while I was in combat.

All told, with that level of mental strain, there was a good chance of me just giving up. I was this close to throwing in the towel and dying there. However, cresting the next hill, I saw lights off in the distance.

I had a target. I had an end goal. I would keep trudging forward until I made it to those lights of safety.

Speaking of brains, though, it’s fascinating everything they do in the background without us noticing. In this case, it was things that filtered through my vision without me even noticing because they were firmly in the “not relevant to continuing existence” category.

While I was on the top of the hill, I actually saw a pack of wolves spawn off in the distance. They materialized, and all howled simultaneously before running in my direction. I had just definitively answered the question of where all the mobs came from, but I wouldn’t realize that fact until later. My brain decided it wasn’t relevant at the time.

That wasn’t the only thing that got filtered out. The other thing was a set of System messages that came when I was about a quarter of the way between the hill and the town.

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

System: Martial Arts skill can no longer gain experience. Raise its skill level cap to continue leveling it

System: ERROR. Skill level cap cannot be raised

Any other time the achievement would have been met with joy, and the final message with confusion as to why [Martial Arts] was stuck at level 5.

Instead, the words were barely acknowledged as I continued my slow march towards the distant lights.

I don’t know how long I was in that state fighting monsters. All I know is that my brain was tuned to do nothing but kill in the most efficient way possible, and if I had any room to think about that fact, I likely would have been horrified.

Fortunately, I was eventually snapped out of it. It started with hearing other noises that my brain mostly filtered out too. Shouts that may as well have been underwater. The sounds of weaponry and spells that my mind saw as nothing more than another threat to deal with later.

Then a man with an ax was in front of me. He paused and trembled a bit as my aura washed over him. He also said a few things.

I wasn’t listening. Alpha. My brain told me. I got ready to bait it in and pushed my wrath aura.

The man bellowed and swung at me. I dodged the ax and was moving to hit him with my dave when I saw it.

The light. It was here. I made it.

That woke me from my stupor, and I took stock of my surroundings as my auras deactivated. Taking stock of my position took a bit longer than usual for me.

There were no more living monsters surrounding me, but I also hadn’t made it to town yet. It looked like an adventuring party had come out to meet me. A [Ranger] and either a [Wizard] or a [Sorcerer] were shooting at the approaching enemies. A [Knight] was playing frontline with his sword and shield and baiting the enemy in.

Then there were the other two who had come over to me. I realized that “the light” was just a torch held by a female [Cleric]. She was currently yelling at their final member, a [Berserker], to stop attacking me. My brain didn’t quite work out that I was still in danger until his ax hit me.

I stumbled backward and tried to work out what was going on. I dodged the next two heavy strikes more out of reflex than thanks to any form of conscious thought.

It was about then that my brain was finally willing to parse language again.

“Ollie!” the [Cleric] shouted. “Stop [Raging], you idiot!”

I dodged another strike. Getting a grip on my thoughts felt like trying to fight through quicksand, but I finally remembered what to do with a [Raging] [Berserker].

“[Disrupt],” I said and snapped.

The man in front of me calmed down and then looked confused. “How did you?” he started, then shook his head. “Nevermind.” He called out to the rest of the party. “We got him! Let’s get back!”

“About frickin’ time!” the [Knight] called back. “As lovely a pay-day as this’ll be, I really don’t want to become doggy chow!”

“Can you run?” the [Berserker] asked. I nodded. “Let’s go then!”

We took off running, and the rest of the party soon followed after us.

“You’ve caused quite a stir,” Ollie said as we were running side by side. “Your fight has probably woken the whole village up by now. I’ve never heard so many howls in my life. It’s a good thing we came out to get you, huh?”

I nodded briefly in acknowledgment.

“And were you really fighting that horde by yourself?”

“Yeah,” I replied. I wasn’t attempting to make my replies terse, but that was about all my brain was willing to put out at that point.

As we got closer, alarm bells started going off in my head. I knew that there was something wrong with our plan, but I didn’t figure it out until we crossed into the town for real.

System: Zone entered, Holdover Village. Faction - Vir

System: You have entered an opposing faction’s zone after midnight. Valid allied or unclaimed zone is adjacent. Beginning monster wave

I looked out across the plains as we heard a massive chorus of howls. A monster wave. I had taken too long to get to the town.

“Oh no,” I groaned.

“Don’t worry,” the [Cleric] reassured me. “They’ll stop at the barrier. Oh, and let me heal you up a bit. [Heal]!”

I didn’t have time to stop her before the spell was already en route. Mental exhaustion or no, I still had one crystal clear thought. I hate [Clerics].

I grunted in pain and then gave a rambly mess of an explanation of [Healing Inversion] as I checked my status.

I was down to 52 HP. My SP was at 112, though, which meant I had actually managed to gain SP during that entire ordeal. I also felt that I probably regained a few points of HP during that since 52 seemed off, but I wasn’t willing to try to do the math.

Either way, 52 was not a lot of HP to work with. However, if that was the end of my problems, the solution would have been straightforward. An incredibly sketchy fight with how fried I was, but straightforward nonetheless.

However, the night decided that it would just keep giving.

A boss health bar at the top of my screen that said, “Heart of Undeath.”

How is that possible? Didn’t the last one take weeks to form? The answer to that was pretty simple. The last one hadn’t had hundreds if not thousands of bodies to work with.

I was sure that we’d have to take care of a couple dozen wolves that were chasing us, then the entire monster wave, and then have to deal with the undead heart after.

Fortunately, that assumption was dead wrong.

In programming, there’s a concept known as integer overflow (or underflow if you go the other way). If you keep incrementing an integer, it will eventually wrap around and become negative. I’m fairly certain that Placeholder doesn’t have a luck stat, but I like to think my luck was so atrociously bad that it ended up becoming good.

The wolves that had chased after us stayed stopped at the edge of town. That meant that the town’s obelisk was still working to repel them, even though a monster wave was coming.

It got even better. As the horde of monsters I summoned came charging, they started fighting with the ones that had followed us.

I stood slack-jawed as the monster wave wiped the floor with them in minutes. I guess wave monsters don’t get along with neutral ones?

That thought was shelved as they turned to me.

Wait. I recognize this. I tried to dredge up the memory. Meanwhile, the wave and the party stood there uneasily, looking like they were uncertain if they were supposed to fight or not.

It came to me. “[Form Army]!” I said.

System: Choose Army Faction. Choices available: Hero, Demon Lord

I get the distinct feeling picking Hero faction here would go poorly. I looked around. But I don’t want to say it out loud. Can I just think it? Demon Lord faction?

System: Choose army name

“Whatever,” I muttered.

System: Whatever army has been created for the Demon Lord Faction

“So, what are they doing?” the [Knight] finally asked me. “Are these monsters, uhh… friendly?”

“Maybe?” I shrugged. “Probably only until the boss dies.” I looked out at my gloriously named “whatever army” and called out a command. “Drag as many bodies as you can to these five.”

The monsters obeyed, and the adventurers gave me even weirder looks.

“But, they won’t be able to get to… us…” the [Berserker] trailed off as a dark wolf dragged a corpse right up next to him. “Why do we need the bodies?”

“Loot it,” I told him. “The heart of undeath raises any corpses as zombies. There are a lot of bodies out there, and we need to clear them as fast as possible.”

“But why aren’t you looting them?” he asked.

“No inventory.”

“But…”

“No more questions,” I growled. I was developing a nasty headache.

“Is it safe to go out there and help loot to speed things up?”

I paused and processed that for a few seconds. “That should be fine. Go ahead.”

The five of them awkwardly shuffled out after the monsters, and they started clearing bodies as quickly as they could.

As they got farther away, the [Cleric] called back. “Shouldn’t you come with us? Since you’re in charge of… these things?”

I thought about it. “Nope,” I called out. “If I go outside the town, more wolves will keep spawning. More spawns means more undead. I’m staying here.” My head was also not in the right place to try to command an army. Then I realized I didn’t have to.

“Obey the commands of those 5 as if they were my own,” I called to my monsters.

I could practically feel the monsters balk at that, and the adventurers were stunned too. However, I just made a shooing gesture until they turned and left.

Honestly, having an army of monsters go out and do my bidding while I stood back was probably the most [Demon Lord] thing I had done yet. I suppose that was offset a bit because I was using my army to protect a town instead of razing it to the ground, but that’s a minor detail.

I wonder if I could’ve controlled waves like this from the beginning, or if it’s just because there’s another threat nearby. That wasn’t a very productive line of thought, and my head was still killing me, so I did my best to just zone out and watch.

Soon, some of the corpses started reanimating and attacking. The adventurers freaked out a bit at first but eventually pulled it together. However, the thing I found more interesting was that my wolves were one-shotting the zombies.

“I thought it took them two attacks to kill a zombie wolf,” I muttered to myself.

That was when I finally realized that my wolves had a slight reddish glow.

What could that be? Because I’m their [General]? I thought back to the other army. No, the monsters in Monster Army definitely didn’t have a red glow. What else has changed? I haven’t leveled up in [General], right?

I sat there debating possibilities as the adventurers frantically fought zombies and commanded the wolves.

These are wave monsters. Could that make them different?

An alpha wolf went down to zombie bites and came back as undead. The [Knight] frantically fought off its blows and called for support.

Wait. Last time there was a wave, everyone was put into magical sleep. Those 5 didn’t seem affected by a sleep effect, so maybe it doesn’t do that every time? Maybe it gave them a damage buff or something instead?

The adventurers took the alpha down and quickly looted it. After that, they stuck close to the alphas and kept advancing.

My army started taking more and more casualties as they went. Eventually, the adventurers called for a retreat, and they began slowly fighting their way back.

I watched for a bit more but realized there was really nothing for me to do. Going out to help would just make things much, much worse. Instead, I sat down, lowered the dave off my shoulder, and shut my eyes to rest for the few minutes I had before they would be back inside the town’s zone.

There was a flash of light off in the distance, and my eye’s popped open. It was followed soon after by the sound of a thunderclap.

“What the fudge?” I asked thin air.

Then I took a look at the boss’ HP bar. It was down to practically nothing, and then seconds later, it was gone.

[Hero]? But… How? I asked myself. I realized once again that I wasn’t firing on all cylinders. Backtracking a bit mentally, I realized that Jake had actually been fighting for a while.

I cycled through the entire party just to try to figure out what was going on. Jake was down a good chunk of SP, but he was the only one. He was also the only one who was remotely close to me.

He must have come after me alone, I thought and then shook my head. I probably would’ve been fine, but I guess it’s better to have him here one-shotting the boss than have to risk everyone’s lives. Then I had another thought. Crud. How am I going to explain all of this?

I frowned and tried to think of a way out, but that didn’t last long.

The remains of my army fought off the last zombies that were in view. I could also practically feel the malcontent radiating from the wolves, and I got a System message immediately after that.

System: Whatever army has been disbanded

The wolves immediately turned on the adventurers. It was yet another hard-fought battle that I couldn’t help with at all, but the party came out victorious without losing anyone. They looted the bodies and made their way back to me.

They had some strong words for me about the wolves turning on them, but I just reminded them that I had warned them earlier.

Of them all, the [Knight] seemed to take it the best. “Yeah, it was sketchy as heck, but have you seen how much gold we made off this? We’re filthy rich now!”

“How much gold he has made off this,” the [Cleric] said while pointing at me. “He killed most of the wolves. We mostly killed those zombies that don’t drop gold.”

“What?” the [Knight] asked. “We looted the bodies! It’s ours!”

“You know the laws around monster looting give the rights to the killer,” she replied. “If he goes to the [Guards], we’d be in huge trouble.” She walked over to me and paused. A look of confusion briefly passed over her face. “Can’t trade? Oh. You weren’t joking about the no inventory thing, were you?”

“Nope,” I replied.

She frowned. “Will you even be able to carry all the junk drops[1]?”

“Probably not, so don’t worry about those.” I debated about just letting them keep it all but thought about it a bit more. Actually, there is something I could use the gold on. “How much gold are we talking here, anyway?”

After that, the group compared their gold before and after their looting spree. The end result came to 2437 gold. I confused them a bit when I asked them to give it all to the [Cleric] and then confused them, even more, when I asked her to hand it to me.

“But you don’t have any way to carry that many coins,” she said.

“Don’t worry, just try it,” I replied. I still wasn’t mentally up to doing the math, but I figured there had to be at least a 100 unit coin, so the worst-case scenario was something around 30 coins.

She shrugged and materialized the coins to drop into my hand.

She looked shocked as I counted them. “1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Nice. Denominations go higher than I thought.”

“So, the inventory just automatically converts coin denominations?” she asked.

“Yeah, pretty cool, right?”

“I suppose.” We both looked at the coins. “Which ones are which, though?”

“You know, I don’t know.” I flipped them around, trying to find markings. There weren’t any. The only difference was that each coin was a slightly different shade of gold, which isn’t very helpful when you hold 6 denominations of wildly different values in your hand.

She snorted. “You would think that this world would have something better than that.”

Then she and her other 4 party members simultaneously grabbed their heads.

Another patch, here we go. I looked down at the coins again. They were now marked with the value. The highest that I was holding was a 2000 gold coin, and the lowest a 2 gold coin.

As the [Cleric] shook her head, I placed all of the coins except the 2000 gold one back in her hand. “Here,” I said. “For your party’s help.”

She looked at it. “Are you sure? Even just selling off the items, we’ll still make quite a bit.”

I nodded and slipped the coin into my pocket. “Definitely. I don’t want a whole bunch of coins jingling around in my pocket. It would just draw the wrong attention.” I paused. “Especially since I doubt anyone else actually carries gold in a physical form.”

“I guess 300 gold and all the pelts isn’t bad,” the [Knight] grumbled.

The [Berserker] laughed. “Isn’t bad? We probably made a month’s worth of grinding today!”

The [Knight] grudgingly agreed, and that made me pause. Even in my fugue state, that math didn’t add up.

“How do you guys only make that much a month?” I asked.

They looked confused for a moment, then their spellcaster finally spoke up. “Do you attract monsters like that everywhere you travel?”

I shrugged. “Kinda. It’s not nearly as bad in wilderness zones. Why?”

“Our party doesn’t tend to do many quests, so our primary income is from fighting monsters. How many fights do you think we get in a day?”

“I don’t know. 10? 12?”

“2 to 4. And alpha wolves are a rarity.”

“Huh,” I said. “Have you tried hunting at night?”

They looked poleaxed. “Uh, no. Does that make a difference?”

I nodded. “Yeah, the spawn rates seem way higher at night. It also seems like different spots have higher or lower rates.” I paused. “Since that was the most monsters I’ve ever fought, that spot is probably a good one.”

They were pretty excited by that news, and they offered to let me stay with them at their inn. I politely declined. I didn’t feel like getting into the fact that I don’t sleep, so I instead just told them that I was waiting for someone. Which was true, Jake was headed my way, and I was sure he would want to speak with me.

Jake got attacked by another small wave of wolves on the way, but he made it to me in short order.

We waved when he got close. “Hey, [Hero],” I called out.

“Hey, troublemaker,” he called back. When he got closer, he asked. “So, what the hail happened here?”

We decided to swap stories with me going first. I figured the cat was out of the bag about the undead, so I didn’t bother hiding my “suspicion” that it was a concentration of dead bodies that caused it. Other than that, I mostly told him the truth.

I hesitated when I got to the monster wave part, though. I wanted to just sweep it under the rug. However, my brain had recovered a little bit, and I remembered that last wave the [Village Elder] of Faroff had mentioned receiving a message from the System about it. It would be incredibly easy for me to be caught lying, so I told him the truth.

Or at least, part of the truth.

“When I entered the town, it started a monster wave.” I barreled on without waiting for his reaction. “It ended up working out since I recruited them to an army and fought the undead with them, but…”

As I trailed off, I was ready for accusations. I was ready to prove that I wasn’t the [Demon Lord].

I wasn’t ready for Jake just nodding in understanding.

“Ah. Tim must’ve been right about the triggers then,” he replied. “We’ll have to be careful where we send you off solo.”

I was dumbfounded. “Triggers?”

Jake nodded. “Yeah! Tim has this theory where the [Demon Lord] doesn’t actually exist yet. In games, events don’t happen unless you do the trigger action for them. He thinks that you showing up and completing our party was the trigger for the first wave and that you poking around near the earth dungeon was the trigger for the [Demon Lord] capturing it.” Jake paused. “I guess, in this case, the trigger was you getting here at night or something? Either way, we’ll just have to be careful.”

“Huh.” I had a look of puzzlement on my face that Jake must have misunderstood.

“I know. I didn’t buy it either, but it makes the most sense.” Jake laughed. “I mean unless you’re telling me you’re actually the [Demon Lord] or something.”

I was alone with Jake. I could trust him to take it in stride. That was my opportunity to come clean.

However, I was too afraid.

“Of course not!” I laughed along with him. Sorry, [Hero]. I’ll tell you everything after the next dungeon.

He explained his side of the story after that. Jake told me that after nightfall, the entire party was getting spammed with me going in and out of combat every second.

Having a party member enter a fight was a little jarring. Having them get hurt was worse. And apparently, having one go in and out of combat over and over again drew even more attention.

Jake knew that I was in trouble, and he wanted to go after me immediately. The party tried to talk him down, but he wouldn’t have it. He cut one of the horses loose from a carriage and rode since he knew that was the only way he would be able to get to me in time.

I stopped him there. “Wait. Doesn’t that mean I could’ve just taken a horse earlier, and we would’ve avoided all this mess?”

Jake and I looked at each other. “Well, I mean. The carriage can’t go without both horses, so we would’ve delayed it,” he said.

“And I guess we don’t know how a horse would do during a wolf attack, right?”

“Yeah! I had a safe trip because you kept all the mob spawns to yourself. So, it definitely would’ve been a bad idea.”

I’m about 90% sure that we came to that conclusion to make ourselves feel better about the fact that neither of us had thought to have me go on horseback.

Either way, Jake continued his story. He made it to the start of what he called my “trail of wolf destruction” right around when the heart spawned. He remembered what I said about looting the bodies and knew that they would start rising from the dead soon. He dismounted, shooed the horse off back the way he came, and started looting as he ran.

Eventually, the bodies started coming back as zombies, and Jake fought his way through them. He made it to the heart with a bit of difficulty and a moderate amount of stamina, and then he [Sundered] it.

With that, we were caught up. Jake decided to go find an inn to stay at, and I spent my time looking for an area outside of town that wasn’t in a zone. I eventually succeeded, and that’s where I spent most of my time while we waited for the rest of our party to catch up.

The rest of the party joined us two days later, since the horse successfully made its way back to camp, and the next day we were back on the road to Vir.

The road to Vir was uneventful, especially when compared with my struggles on the road to Holdover. However, there were still two more things of note that happened.

---

The first came at midnight, one of the days we were traveling. I was standing around chatting with Garrett, waiting for the next inevitable monster spawn, when all around us, the snow suddenly melted.

I looked around in panic and immediately went to high alert. “What the frick?”

I was sure that a dragon or some weird type of heat magic was the only thing that could cause such a rapid change in ambient temperature.

Garrett just laughed. “What’s the matter? Never seen spring before?” he asked.

I gave him a look that was dumbfounded enough that I didn’t even have to ask the question.

“Yeah, season changes are a bit… Abrupt. I didn’t stay up for the last one, but I remember being shocked when the next day it was suddenly just cold and snowy.”

“That’s weird,” I said with a shake of my head. “But… Why midnight?”

Garrett shrugged. “I guess this world just takes the first day of each season seriously.”

It was now officially too warm for the party to wear their dark wolf pelt clothing, so they were back in their adventurer’s gear the next day. I was slightly happy about that because that meant I finally matched them again.

---

The second thing of note came when we were riding in the back of the carriage, and discussing swear words of all things.

“I’m just so tired of wanting to swear, and then it coming out like fudge or ship,” Megan complained. “We need some Placeholder approved swears.”

“What about hail?” Jake asked.

She gave him a dubious look. “Yeah, that one sounds similar, but it can also come out as heck.”

“Not if you just actually say hail,” Jake countered.

“That sounds stupid,” she complained. Then she snapped her fingers. “Hey, driver!” she called to the front. “How do the people of Vir swear?”

The driver shifted uncomfortably. “Uhh, I really shouldn’t say, Miss.”

“Come on! I won’t tell anyone. This is important!”

He eventually relented. “I guess the most common would be to swear by System. Or by the blue text. Some even swear by Vir.”

Megan thanked him but then turned back to us and scowled. “No way in… Hail. Ugh. That still sounds so stupid. I need a nice punchy four-letter word.”

I just chuckled. “Good luck with that.”

Then we heard the howls.

“Titus and Lindsey’s turn,” Jake said.

I groaned but stood up to take my turn killing off the monster attack. However, I forgot about the ceiling of the carriage. Garrett had already done that once or twice and proven to us that hitting your head on stuff can, in fact, make you lose HP.

My case was a bit worse. Why? Because of a certain part of my anatomy that I had honestly almost forgotten about. My horns. Hey, in my defense, it’s not like they had done anything except get me weird looks up to that point.

My horns jammed into the ceiling of the carriage, and I was stuck. I tried to pull free but couldn’t.

“Son of a…” I trailed off as I thought about the conversation we’d just been having. Then my eyes landed on David Junior the Second, and the end of my swear practically finished itself. “Dave.”

The party laughed at my expense while Lindsey took care of the monsters on her own. I ended up needing help extracting myself, and Garrett eventually stood up and yanked me free.

When I sat back down next to Megan, she raised an eyebrow. “Son of a dave, eh?”

I shrugged. “Why not? Dave is a four-letter word. The monsters are also slimy, idiotic, ugly-“

Sam gasped and put her hands around David Junior the Second. “Cover your ears!” she said.

“and they could probably be killed by a sufficiently motivated five-year-old with a stick,” I finished.

Megan snorted. “I thought you liked your minions?”

“Oh, I do. They are fantastic at taking out monsters. However, they are definitely only good for being minions.”

“And pets!” Sam interjected.

I sighed. “And I guess they are good pets… If you have bizarre tastes.”

This time the laughs were at Sam’s expense as she pouted a bit, but she eventually joined us.

---

That was the time that I view as the second half of our vacation. We spent more time together. Laughed together. And fought off monsters way below our skill level together.

Unfortunately, our final vacation together was over sooner than I wanted when we arrived at our destination.

The capital city of Vir.

[1] Junk drops (AKA trash loot, garbage items, pretty much any term containing a synonym of “trash” and “loot”) – Generally, useless items that drop from killing monsters. Their purpose is primarily to just be sold for a small amount of currency, and they are responsible for clogging many a gamer’s inventory