"Will you stop grumbling?" Samantha asked Nathan. "You are literally handing him off to his cousin for just a few minutes."

Nathan muttered something incomprehensible under his breath, then carefully handed Cyrus to Lucas. After triple-checking his son was okay, Nathan looked at Samantha, Keith, Katie, William, and Michael.

"Come on," he mumbled. "Let's head in now."

He looked at Cyrus again, then tore his gaze away as he pulled up the System interface for entering the game. After sending the other five players invites, he found himself in the Fields of Choice with them. Samantha rubbed his back.

"To him, no time will have passed," she said.

"It'll be forever," he muttered, then looked at Keith. "Can-"

"No," Keith said. "You are not getting the scry ball literally right after we enter the game."

"I can just make another one," Nathan grumbled, then looked at Samantha, before addressing everyone. "We'll do at least one extended Survival Challenge, partly so that Samantha can finish recovering from the pregnancy. From what we know, it won't affect her ability to breastfeed Cyrus – once we leave here, she'll still be producing as if she just gave birth three days ago, even if her body's already recovered from the pregnancy.

"We'll also," he continued. "Be in there to train the three of you, and for Keith and I to train a bit more as well. Depending on how it goes, either we'll stop there, or we'll do another run. Time is almost up for the four of you for the first Mandatory Challenge. Our goal is to find a Dungeon either with this set of runs or the next one that has enough Dungeons inside of it that none of you will need to perform a single Mandatory Challenge ever again. If we can't find that, we will just run Dungeons again and again until we've completed enough multi-Dungeon Dungeons with high Dungeon counts to meet that goal. For now, our goal is six exempted Mandatory Challenges. Any questions?"

"Do you really think five months is enough time for us to become strong enough to handle that?" Michael asked. "Didn't you and Keith say that you nearly died on at least two separate occasions and had to deal with two separate Ultimate Trinity monsters?"

"Keith and I will be handling most of the powerful stuff," Nathan said. "Based on my knowledge of the skills and abilities of each of you, five months of daily or near-daily training will make you at least somewhat competent in the runs. Only if it's not will we perform a second run."

"Nathan and I," Keith said. "Are going to perform a check of all of the Dungeons available, then we'll head into the Survival Challenge and start setting things up. You four just relax for now."

"I want-"

"Nathan," Keith shot him a look. "It's not even been five minutes. You have Samantha and Katie here. Focus on what's available to you rather than-"

"-to check something out while we're here," Nathan rolled his eyes. "So I'll be a little longer than normal. I'm going to do it after I check the Dungeons available."

"Oh," Keith said.

"But I do want to return to Cyrus as soon as possible, too."

"Don't worry, Nathan," Samantha rubbed his back again. "He'll be waiting in Lucas's arms when we leave here."

"That's not comforting," Nathan walked off towards the Dungeon archways to the east, and Samantha looked at Keith.

"How did you convince him to start this now?" She asked.

"I reminded him that the rest of you were almost to a month from the Tutorial," Keith said. "Keeping you from having to do a Mandatory Challenge – where he wouldn't be able to help you if it was too hard for you for some reason – is high on his priority list. Since we're exempt, we're literally unable to join others on the same Mandatory Challenge we'd be doing. I'm going to go check the Dungeon arches over this way, you guys relax. It'll take us about two hours to finish, most likely. I'm not sure what Nathan's planning on doing, so it might take longer."

Keith walked off and began checking the Dungeon arches. The rest of the team relaxed in the grass as they waited for the pair of enchanters to finish, and when they returned, Nathan's clothes were ruffled and his hair was unkempt, though he was in the process of fixing his hair with a comb as he returned.

"What did you do?" Samantha asked.

"I checked the Dungeon arches."

"Keith didn't return looking like you do."

"That's because he's a twink."

Keith groaned as the others gave Nathan a bewildered look.

"You're not going to let that go, are you?" The psychic asked.

"No," Nathan answered as he finished fixing his hair. "I'm not. Before we go into the Challenge, let's make a few things clear. Samantha, you are not having sex until after you've recovered from the pregnancy. The doctor recommends four to six weeks. That gives us enough time that if we only do one run, we can still get you the permanent blessing we told you about. Michael, Elise being gone doesn't mean you can fuck the nearest girl. If Katie wants you to fuck her, she'll come to you. That said, William is bisexual, so he'd probably be willing to fuck you instead if you'd rather give up women while we're in this run together."

"I forgot you liked making us uncomfortable in that way," William sighed.

"I did find out why Nathan says that," Keith told William.

"Because we're into guys and Michael's a man-whore?"

"Nathan's a man-whore, too," Keith said. "Did you forget that he's slept with something like six or seven women, and has sex pretty much every day?"

William frowned at Keith.

"Apparently," Keith smiled a little. "Nathan found out a secret of Michael's back in March, and Michael offered to let Nathan fuck him whenever he wanted, to basically just use him in exchange for keeping the secret, thinking Nathan would take it up because he was a horny loner who couldn't get anyone. He wasn't aware Nathan was getting ready to meet up with one of the ladies he sleeps with."

"You said you weren't going to tell anyone!" Michael said. "Even without the sex!"

"I said I wouldn't tell anyone the secret," Nathan said. "You never asked me not to tell anyone you wanted me up your ass. Oh. Samantha. If Keith decides he wants to give sleeping with a woman another try, just to see if he won't absolutely hate it like with Evala, I might be okay with that."

"He's gay, Nathan," Samantha said. "It's doubtful he'd ever want to sleep with a woman."

Nathan shrugged.

"If there's nothing further," Nathan said. "Let's head into the game. One hundred and fifty days. Optional Challenges on. It's going to be a lot of training for those of you with lesser skills. A lot of boring monotony. Keith and I will be working on a project as well."

"Does it have anything to do with all the clay you had delivered, then moved into a storage orb?" Samantha asked.

"He wants to try making a golem," Keith said. "There's no records of any sort of successful golem spell on Earth, so it might take us more than this one session to figure it out."

"Accept the invites," Nathan huffed. "I already sent them."

Everyone accepted the invites, then found themselves in the cafeteria of the extend Survival Challenge's location. Immediately, Nathan disappeared.

"Did he just run away?" Samantha asked.

"Yes," Keith snorted as he removed his shirt.

His familiar's runes began to glow, then stretched out of his back like wings, before pulling away completely, turning into the heavenly storm elemental.

"Halls," Keith instructed. "There's no hunting today, no one will benefit from that."

His familiar took off, then Keith began creating the protective and restorative runes around the cafeteria. The other four teens began setting up their beds and living spaces, pulling items from the storage orb Keith left out. He and Nathan had taught them how to use it before entering the game, so they needed no help with that.

"Keith," Samantha called to the psychic as they were setting things up. "Is that box of lube seriously in the orb?"

"Talk to your boyfriend," he told her. "He never gave it to me outside of the game, so if it's in there, he stuck it there."

"So that you can use it if you want," Nathan said as he entered the cafeteria. "Or William and Michael. Or Samantha and Katie with the dildos."

"Where'd you go?" Samantha asked.

"Restroom," he answered. "I had to crap. I let Ichtvar and Breezy loose. Breezy is playing tag with Splashy right now, while Ichtvar is just flying around. Oh, good, you set up our bed."

He walked over to the queen-sized mattress set out on top of a boxspring. After their discussion with Samantha the day before, he and Keith had gone mattress shopping so that they'd have proper beds during the Survival Challenges. With the storage capacity of the orbs, it wasn't an issue.

"Will it really be safe to leave the orbs in the Fields of Choice while we're running Dungeons?" Michael asked as he finished setting up his own bed.

"Yes," Nathan answered as he pulled out wall dividers from the orb and began setting them up to create small 'rooms' for the beds without elaborating on his response.

"Nathan and Keith tested things," Katie explained when she realized Nathan wasn't going to say anything and Keith had returned to focusing on the enchantments. "And determined that things placed in the Fields of Choice are frozen in time while in a Challenge or Dungeon, and that they'll be there when we return. As long as it's in the central area where we spawn, anyway. Outside of there, it disappears."

"Plus," Samantha said. "We'd have the 'original' ones when we leave the game. I don't blame them for not wanting to take the storage orbs into the Dungeons with us."

"We'll be taking one," Nathan said. "It's not as large, though, and has less space. But it has resources, nonetheless."

"There's a smaller one?" Samantha asked. "I didn't see you put it into your backpack."

"Because it's not in there," he reached under his collar and pulled out a mithril chain, hanging from which was a marble-sized crystal orb, tinted blue. "It's here. Keith has a second one in his pack, I believe, though he should be wearing it."

"I'm not going to put it on just yet," Keith rolled his eyes. "I'll do that once we're going to start the Dungeons. It's not necessary to keep it on us here."

Nathan opened his mouth to respond, then shook his head. Keith wasn't entirely wrong, even with their suspicions of William. The two smaller storage orbs were enchanted so that only Keith and Nathan could use them, among the six teens there. They required either being a psychic or a demigod to activate, and William was neither.

"Let's just finish setting up our spaces," Nathan said.

After separating the sleeping areas with divider walls, Nathan pulled out several thick blankets and stretched them across the top of his, stapling them to the divider walls, blocking out any light from reaching from above. Another thick blanket was added to the front of their section, the only side of his sleeping space not blocked with a wall divider. That blanket was stapled at the top, allowing for them to enter, but still have privacy.

"There we go," Nathan said. "A private room. I'm going to enchant it for durability, too."

"And soundproofing," Keith said. "Probably so that he won't have to hear others having sex… or others hearing him."

"I don't want you jacking off to me having sex with someone," Nathan said, earning an amused look from Keith, though the demigod didn't notice, his back turned.

"Enchanting for durability?" Samantha asked as Nathan pulled out a jug of enchanting paint.

"To prevent the walls from falling at all," he explained. "It will effectively turn the entire thing into a room with stable walls. It'll take someone intentionally attacking it to knock them over. Once I finish this, we'll set up the training area, I brought equipment for that."

"I'll set that up," she gave him a hug and a kiss. "I know you're probably wanting to use Keith's orb to watch Cyrus."

"Yeah," Nathan said. "And don't forget we'll be in here for a long time, doing the training, so make sure it's set up good, or we'll just have to rearrange it again later."

"Will do," she walked over to the orb. "Good luck with the enchanting."

"Thanks," he muttered, then began painting runes onto his room.