Nathan assessed his surroundings. They were in a cafeteria with the kitchen open to it, separated only by the food bars. The space itself was not that large, with only twenty tables, each with three chairs on either side of each half and one on each end. There were several trashcans resting beside pillars, with tray-holders on their tops. Napkin dispensers were set up as well, located at both the food bars and on each trashcan.

From the reports, that was a standard appearance for the school they appeared in for extended Survival Challenges. The showers, restrooms, and laundry room were all separated, though much like the cafeteria they were in, no monsters would appear or enter them.

"Things will be relatively easy here at the start," Nathan said before reading the messages. "It will only be later that things grow tougher. Keith, you and I will keep our familiars out, everyone here has already seen them."

Keith nodded, and the two let their familiars out, then pulled their shirts back on, Nathan fixing his tie and blazer back on as well.

"Okay, I have to ask," Michael looked at Nathan. "Even though we don't have a uniform anymore, you still wear a dress shirt, tie, slacks, and blazer?"

"That's just his style," Samantha nodded as the familiars moved off to another area, their masters noticing that they seemed to be communicating. "He's worn clothes like that since before we were at the school. He looks pretty handsome in a sweater vest, too. Damn adorable when we were younger."

"Right," Nathan cleared his throat. "According to the messages, we'll receive a 'food drop' every fifth day, and it will alert us when the food drop appears, and where. Keith, Ichtvar isn't responding, but does your familiar know him?"

"Apparently," Keith snorted. "Though he's refusing to answer me on that, too. You were saying?"

"Keith and I will seek those out," Nathan said. "Elise and Michael, you two are the weakest ones here, so you'll stay behind with William to protect Samantha."

"I can still fight," Samantha told Nathan.

"For now," he said. "But what about in two or three weeks? Or months? You can come back and get Levels after you give birth to our boy. So don't worry about fighting. Take it easy and rest. As for the rest of you, same thing goes. William, Keith, and I will go out regularly to hunt monsters. Anyone else leaves, they leave with one of us."

"I," Keith pulled out a card and activated it, removing a five-gallon bucket. "Am going to rune up this space. Some of the runes will apply a passive healing bonus to everyone as long as you're inside, so it should help us recover if, for some reason, our Health is nullified and we're hurt."

Nathan nodded as Keith got to work.

"How long have you two been planning this?" Michael asked.

"A week," Nathan answered. "You and William fold up half of the tables and move them to the walls. This is our sleeping space as well. The T.V. over there acts as the shop for thing like sleeping bags and clothes, all of which are locked to here in the game."

"Let me guess," Samantha snorted. "You have several changes of your own outfits in your cards?"

"Of course," Nathan responded. "I'm not going to wear bloody clothes all the time."

"No," Michael said, frowning. "Elise and I won't have an issue since we're together, but are you sure you can handle not sleeping with her for eight months?"

"I have a hand," Nathan responded. "William, you and Michael go scout out and explore the school once you finish folding up the tables. Let us know if the dimensions are the same as everyone else has given and if there are any starting bonuses we have. Mitchell and Elise, you stay here and watch Samantha. Samantha, I'm serious, stay here. We can come back after you give birth to him so that you can gain the Levels you missed here."

"Are you leaving?" Samantha asked.

"No," Nathan answered. "I'm just claiming some space to do a few things. Ichtvar, please stop flirting with Keith's familiar and come here so we can work on something."

"I wasn't flirting," Ichvar told Nathan. "I just haven't seen him since we parted ways fifteen centuries ago, so we were catching up. Did you know that Keith-"

"I'd rather not," Nathan grunted as he pulled out several cards.

He sat at a table and triggered one of the cards, releasing the items contained within. As soon as they were out, he began working with them, drawing curious looks from everyone remaining other than Keith, who was absorbed into his painting of the runes.

"Nathan?" Samantha cautiously asked.

"What?"

"What are you doing?"

"What does it look like I am doing?"

"Playing with Legos."

Nathan opened up another one of the plastic bags from the box he had just opened, dumping their pieces into a small pile of their own.

"Nathan has a tendency to fiddle with things," Ichtvar told Samantha as Nathan continued to open up the packages and create more small piles. "He reminds me much of other demigods. They've always needed to fiddle around with their hands. I've yet to meet a demigod who wasn't a craftsman in some way."

"Including Master Torzin?" Elise asked.

"Torzin enjoys creating jewelry," Ichtvar told them as Nathan began looking through the instructions, building quickly, his hands almost never idle as soon as he began. "Which may be part of why he forced Nathan into learning how. If he recognized Nathan as a demigod, then he would have known that getting handsy would be something Nathan would be happy to do."

Samantha looked at the other cards Nathan had pulled out and frowned. She picked one up.

"Can I use this?"

Nathan didn't respond, so she looked at Ichtvar.

"He normally responds when he starts fiddling around."

"He's normally paying attention to his surroundings," Ichtvar responded. "But has tasked me with doing that for him. I've just asked. He said you can."

Samantha pushed mana into the card, then crushed it in her hand as she reached out with her other, catching the twenty-four pack of fruit punch Gatorade with both arms, carefully setting it onto the table.

"He has snacks and refreshments in his cards."

"He never said he didn't," Ichtvar said. "He had an agent take him shopping at a bulk store yesterday and has requested permission to have a large supply of bulk goods be delivered to the facility. I believe he intends on storing them in cards. They follow the standard expiration path, so as long as he keeps a note of things, nothing will expire on him in the games, only out of these alternate dimensions."

"So we are in alternate dimensions?" Mitchell asked.

"Yes," Ichtvar looked around. "A very well-crafted, temporary one. The amount of magic that would have gone into this is mind-boggling. I am curious as to how they power it, especially if time is frozen outside and these are merely copies of everything and everyone outside."

Samantha frowned at that comment, turning over another card in her hands.

"Nathan said," she said. "That the System couldn't recreate his cards as part of the reward, yet they work just fine, despite being copies of the real things."

Ichtvar shrugged at them. He and Nathan had already discussed the oddity of it, and Nathan finally stated that until he had more information, he would not draw any conclusions. When the phoenix pushed, stating that Nathan must have had some idea, the demigod said he didn't. The game had told him several minutes after the reward that it was unable to do them and had assessed their worth. He guessed that it had scanned the items frozen in the actual dimension to perform that assessment.

The phoenix then pointed out that it could have just copied them then. In response to that, Nathan shook his head, saying he didn't think the System could actually bring anything into the game after it had begun – that it could only copy things into it from reality only at the start of it, and that it had created the replicated rewards.

The ancient being decided not to point out to the demigod that he had just given some form of theory. He had to admit that it was the only plausible explanation he could think of as well, unless it was simply a case of the administrators not wanting to restore to Nathan something so powerful.

Something Nathan had already dismissed, saying he could not conclude that with any confidence based on a single instance, even if he had been given what he felt was a very lacking reward in response.

"Not even a theory from Nathan?" Samantha asked. "That's unusual."

"Not if he doesn't have the necessary information to form one," Ichtvar stated. "I've only known him a couple of weeks, and I already know this. Have you not known him for fifteen years?"

"Until the game," Samantha told the phoenix. "Nathan never shared his theory-crafting with me. And we hadn't talked in almost four."

Ichtvar shrugged, then looked at Nathan, who was building a boat from a kit. It had more than a thousand pieces to it, and would probably take him a couple of hours. Playing with Legos was something the phoenix had quickly learned was the demigod's biggest stress-relief.

What had him so stressed? Was it the idea that he would be a father shortly after they left the game? That his pregnant girlfriend was in the game again? That they were in the game for an extended period of time, one even longer than their initial game? That he would be away from Katie for so long, even if no time passed for her?

In the end, the phoenix decided not to ask his master and just watch, the other students doing so at first, then moving away so that they could work on their force magic under Elise's supervision and guidance.

A sudden blast of force magic sent the phoenix tumbling, before it quickly righted itself and looked at Nathan, who looked rather disappointed.

"Was that really necessary?" Ichtvar asked.

"I didn't get a damage notification."

"That's because I don't have Health, Nathan," Ichtvar told him. "I told you that last time you randomly blasted me with force magic and said the same thing. You know you could join them if you wanted to practice, right?"

"I'd rather practice hitting Keith's shields," Nathan said as he resumed working on the project. "As long as he's consistent, it gives me a better idea of how much I'm progressing in controlling my mana and the amount of power in the blasts. Your shields as well."

Nathan then muttered something about how he needed to be able to send his force blasts out more than five feet, and Ichtvar suppressed a snort. The demigod was talented in force magic, but he was still new to magic. It would likely take him another month or two of training to triple the distance, and the phoenix knew that he wanted to be able to shoot as far and with as much force as Keith.

At least he acknowledges it will take him time, the phoenix thought to himself.

"Why did you just pull out an inscribing pen?"

"To perform an animation enchantment on the ship's crew."

"Are you sure that will work?"

"I practiced it a bit when I got tired of making cards."

"That doesn't answer the question."

"Can you help me enchant the ship so it will sail through the air as if in water, once I'm done?"

"Sure."

Nathan opened up the case of juice and pulled one of the bottles out, before activating two more storage cards, removing the boxes of snacks from them. The first contained individual serving packages of gummy bears, while the second contained individual serving packages of cookie sandwiches with cream filling between them. He pulled out a package of each and began snacking as he worked.

When Nathan finished enchanting the boat and the figures that went with it, he set it to the side, then triggered another storage card, pulling out an identical boat, but with green flagging instead of red.

That piqued the phoenix's interest, as he knew Nathan would likely enchant that one as well and had poured a lot of mana into the first one's enchantments so that it could generate cannonballs of mana. There were mana crystals involved in that, though the phoenix wasn't sure why Nathan was doing that.

Other than to see the two ships destroy each other, but the phoenix didn't understand why Nathan would waste the precious mana crystals that were there. It wasn't like he could obtain more in the game, he had to bring them all in with him.