Prissy came sauntering back, looking even cooler and sexier than before. Dane was distressed to find himself attracted to a furry cosplayer, but got over it when she tossed her cloak hood back and swished her pixie cut hair, opened up green eyes, and smiled at him.

Damnit, she was toying with him. How quintessentially cat-like.

Daniels was walking with her, doing all the talking. It wasn’t until several minutes later when they got near Dane, Guzman, Pugh, and Priscilla’s three otherworlders that he could hear anything. They were already discussing tactics and deployment.

“I don’t like it,” Daniels said.

“You don’ hafta,” Priscilla said. “It’s just the way things go, understand? You have no chance. Even ten levels from now. Your people will lose, and you won’t even take a single one of them. You won’t be an inconvenience.”

“So… what?” Daniels spat. “Give up on the que– uh, mission? That’s definitely not what we’re about. We are responsible for taking these Five out–”

“Four,” Dane said.

“Four. Whatever. And we are not going to just ditch a quest because some kindergarten teacher with knives got lucky.”

Rinna, Hale and Drell suddenly came to attention. They’d been standing by languidly, loosely, but now they snapped into combat readiness. Priscilla made a tsk sound and produced her Spectral Blade, then put it at his throat.

“What happened again, exactly?” she asked lightly, her accent mostly gone for just a second.

Daniels stared down at the magic purple dagger. “You beat my men fair and square.”

“Whaddaya know, that is what happened!”

She bent down and looked Daniels in the eye. “They had three months a’ practice, grabbin’ up levels and good cards and whatnot. You didn’t. And yer people are still chuckin’ crossbow bolts around like this is Baghdad or somethin’. It ain’t. The rules are different here. You want my help?”

Daniels looked like he was on the verge of saying no. Dane couldn’t allow that. He blurted out, “Yes! Yes, we want your help.”

Guzman was lying on the grass, gasping, but soon picked herself up slowly, wiping the tears away and rubbing her jaw and muttering ‘kindergarten teacher’ in between aftershocks of chuckles. Despite the anger from her male colleagues, Dane could see that she was reveling in their defeat at the hands of the teacher.

Priscilla the cat goddess regarded him without a smile.

“It’s time we got serious about the job we’re doing,” Guzman said at last.

What followed was a long pow-wow around a bit of a picnic lunch, where cards were laid out and discussions were had around how each character could use them. Daniels had no idea what core-locking even was, given that he’d been absent from the discussion a fair amount of the time, though Pugh and Niederhauer had the audacity not to look ashamed when Dane revealed that they’d both core-locked commons.

They had a fair collection, but Burst Arrow wasn’t even in the top 10 of what they’d gathered.

“We need to get used to the idea that one or two of us can take punches,” Dane said, and Priscilla nodded. He nodded over at Hale. “Can I ask what your HP is at?”

“1469,” Hale replied.

“Heh, sixty-nine!” Pugh muttered, only to receive a smack upside the head from Guzman.

“Take the Sabaton of Springing just as one example,” Dane said. “We could use it with anybody, but I bet it would be quite useful with Rivera. Imagine that falling on you from thirty feet up.”

Everyone looked at Rivera, whose eyes lit with an inner fire briefly. Otherwise he said nothing… weird, he’d started off like a Niederhauer clone.

“Daniels here also has a flurry of blows. Meaning if he has these boots on, he can zip in, slash slash slash, zip back out. We haven’t been looking at this from any sort of lens. Instead we just sell off the cards and buy more arrows.” And in the three days of monster killing, only their discipline and training and ingenuity had gotten them anywhere.

“Which,” Daniels retorted, “We could easily use against the Five. Divide and conquer, overlapping fields of fire, moving retreat, using cover–”

Dane couldn’t stop himself. “It won’t matter if the orc barbarian one has a glowing axe and can deal out two hundred damage per swing. He’s bound to have at least some protection card, or item, and if your arrows don’t bounce off him, they’re going to do a single point of damage to him.” He turned back to Hale. “You said one thousand four hundred and sixty-some, yes?”

“Sixty-nine!” Pugh declared, and earned another clout upside the head. “Quit it!”

“Quit being fifteen years old,” Guzman replied.

“We need at least one tank, and we’ll need DPS.”

“Double Penetration System?” Pugh asked.

“YOU KNOW WHAT?” Guzman roared, and pushed him off the stump entirely. He fell over laughing.

“Damage per second. Someone more fragile with tons of damage dealing potential. Priscilla would be one of those, though I think she has a more supporting role than that… we just don’t have a good example. From what I can guess, Drell is a high damage dealer, but can’t take as much punishment as Hale here.”

Both nodded.

“We call ‘em glass cannons, at the D&D table,” Niederhauer said. “Your wizards and your two-weapon fighters.”

“Right,” Dane said, feeling it was strange to agree with him on anything. Or that any of these people knew anything other than killing people in the traditional twenty-first century sense. “Meaning we should have a healer along with our glass cannon, for support. After that, we can add whatever like: a second tank, another glass cannon, a buff monster–”

Niederhauer stood and flexed. “I am definitely a buff monster. Check out the size of this cloaca–”

“Don’t!” all the earthlings shouted.

Well, at least Niederhauer had come out of his defeat just as cocksure as ever.

“I’m talking about someone who has auras and spells to make you stronger, faster, or give you magic weapons. A sneak would be great.”

“Where do you fit in all this?” Daniels suddenly asked, eyeing Dane. It was clear the usurpation of his authority was not being taken well.

“I…” Dane stammered. “I don’t know… exactly.”

“Well isn’t that convenient!” Niederhauer proclaimed. “Tells everybody else what to do constantly, criticizing all of us all the time, only to have no friggin clue what his role is.”

“Intel is crucial,” Guzman said. “I got the inspect skill when we hit level 5, and Dane was right. It’s important to know your enemies.”

“I can now sometimes see the weaknesses of monsters,” Dane said.

Rinna raised a hand and spoke up, pointing to the sky and speaking with the sort of cadence that told of an adage memorized since childhood. “Don’t underestimate a gnomish in their ability to craft what you need for the journey ahead.”

New Quest received! – I’m a Big Boy Now

Your inability to build a legitimately good character type has led to getting schooled by a school teacher. A kindergarten one at that. Suck in your gut, put up your pride and follow their advice. It is time to make some decent builds.

To successfully complete this quest:

Enter the local cave, find the treasure of the lost city, and traverse its depths to get to the outskirts of the walled city.

Go to the walled city without assistance from your new benefactors, rebuild your shit properly, then return with a properly thought out build.

Reward: It’ll be a good bonding experience. You’ll be like a family. Nothing is stronger than family. Oh, and a level up if you get it done in the next 24 hours.

LT Daniels and the rest of them had taken their defeat completely to heart. Perhaps too completely. After a stern talking too about their very poor core choices, tactics, and overall incompetence, their new benefactors had informed them that they needed to go to town and change them out for, quote, cards that didn’t suck and weapons that weren’t lame.

Not a bad quest, especially since they would apparently get XPs for doing it on their own as ‘Family’. Dane growled about that. Seemed like too much of a ripoff. Still, as far as he could understand, the rules of this world, or at least this part of it were dictated by the Five, and they were about as nerdy as you could get. He wondered how well he stacked up against them and sighed. Soon enough they’d all figure that out firsthand.

But what was going on here was ridiculous. Rather than marching amiably in their previous cocksure demeanor, dicks leading the way, the rangers had instead adopted a very cautious approach. One that saw them continuously cycling party members out to do patrols to their flanks and fore even as they crawled forward at a desperate three kilometers an hour.

“We just need to be careful, and strategic with our card choices,” pleaded Dane for the umpteenth time. “Not this.”

But something had happened after the battle with Prissy. They’d lost their oomph and now they quivered at every step.

Neiderhauer looked at Dane and shook his head, not in the mood to even throw a bard. Above them Dane’s eagle soared, its metallic whirring parts gleaming in the sun of the other world. It was looking for possible dangers on their way to the castle city, the supposed new capital of this realm, and the perfect place to maybe buy some decent cards and actually make a build worth something in this system. That was the hope anyways. As Daniels had said, they were in a new place with new rules and so they had to throw out the book and make a new one. Pugh had made a joke about just heading back and getting a DMs and Player’s book, but Daniels had not been in the mood.

Dane sighed. It was actually a pleasant place, all things considered. The air was fresh, little butterflies with human heads were flitting from flower to flower, noisily slurping nectar, and as far as the eye could see on either side of the road were deep expanses of solid oak. Within those tangled stretches was dark shade and the coolly omnipresent sense of foreboding. Which is why Dane had tried to argue with the LT.

“Don’t send patrols into the forests. We don’t need to know if anything is there. We need to know if anything gets to the edge and wants to eat us! And between us on the road, and my familiar up in the sky, we can see that completely.”

Not til we get new cards and proper builds had been his response. It was pointless. He understood this world, though, and he also had a bird to operate so he didn’t have to chance activating the random encounters of the woods. He could just walk along at a leisurely pace and enjoy the sun on his face. Maybe see if a bronze tan helped out his Charisma.

A guardsmen came huffing out from the western woods. Pugh, grinning ear to ear despite the rivulets of sweat running over his face. “You guys find anything fun yet?” he huffed. “Cause that forest sucks.”

The LT shot him a look. “Neiderhauer, you’re up.”

“Oh, man.”

“That’s Guardsman to you, man,” Pugh laughed. The LT gave him a harder look and he went mum. Neiderhauer jogged into the woods, crunching through the underbrush like an ogre wearing clogs.”

“If that doesn’t get us attacked, I don’t think nothing will,” Pugh said. Both Dane and Guzman snorted.

“Listen. I understand that this is a stressful time for everybody and that jokes make you laugh, haha, all funny like But right now, after seeing soldiers of my platoon get their asses handed to them by a goddamn kindergarten teacher, all those jokes are doing is pissing me the fuck off.”

The three of them stared at the LT.

“Sorry. Just, don’t. We have a mission, we need to do the mission and we need to finish the mission. And to do that, we need to get to this shop and buy ourselves the proper equipment. Dane!”

“Yessir?”

“You’ll be in charge of everyone’s build. This whole thing is going on your shoulders. I very much trust in your ability to keep us all from making stupid decisions. Got it?”

“But Neiderhauer . . .”

The LT grimaced. “All of us have been doing a shitty job. All of us except you. I don’t give a flying rat’s ass about anyone’s opinions right now except your own. Call the eagle back if you need to, do whatever you need to, and have a plan ready for us by the time we get to that city.”

“Yessir.”

Dane’s mind reeled. It felt good to be given such praise. He was looking forward to earning it. To be honest he was looking forward to having a party that played to their character types and obvious strengths as well. The rest of the trip saw the other soldiers cycle in and out from roving patrol as he imagined what types of cards they should look for and what types of set up they should make for themselves.

***

Dane had never seen actual battlements. Not with his own two eyes. They were tall, they were thick, and wow did they look impossible to take down. He wondered if maybe these walls were exaggerated from the real world ones and also if they had some sort of innate magical dissipation. If the world had gone Dnd then fireballs and other explosiony spells almost certainly abounded.

The party had traversed the road without incident and finally reached the line of merchants and peasants lined up at the front gate. Or what appeared to be. It was impossible to tell who might be from Earth and who might be from that other place, what with everyone having changed to something else. There were humans in the line, a few families of them, covered in a thin layer of dust and grit from the fields that had no doubtedly provided the produce in their carts. There were also fae, dwarves, nellwynians, dragonites, felinians, at least one being apparently composed of green-gray energy, and at the front of the line were two fairies and a hamster arguing with the guards over the entrance tithe.

From the walls hung banners that wouldn’t look amiss in some nerd’s basement. They said The Five in golden braids of thread, backgrounds emblazoned with some Picassoesque version of a gold and red phoenix. He might have called it stylish back in the real world, but out here it made him wary. What sorts of powers might be woven into that cloth?

Up ahead the incredibly buff hamster had just knocked a sword out of one of the guardsmen’s hands and the other was waving them through, laughing heartily. The line inched forward.

“Does everyone know what to take?” Dane asked. They’d all collapsed back into a single party and he noticed none of them could quite meet his eyes with the question.

“Look, we’ll discuss over a couple of beers. I’ve drawn up a list of what sorts of stuff will work best for each of you, assuming it is there. Neiderhauser, your idea to double up on fire wasn’t bad but you have to read the fine print in these sorts of games. You literally have the fire ability twice. Which does nothing for you. But a card that enhances your fire attack would be awesome. I’m thinking something that improved duration, length, or damage, of course. But really something like a multi-targeting special would be perfect. An ability that lets you sweep it around like a flamethrower while keeping your aim true. And for fuck’s sake start putting Attribute points into Intelligence so you can have more magic points.”

Neiderhauer’s face twitched with annoyance, but he nodded.

Dane turned to the LT. “Sir, you are a dwarven berserker type. Never ever use a missile weapon. I’m hoping we can find you crazed kamikaze type abilities. The sort of stuff that battle ragers employed in D&D.”

LT Daniels perked up. “Yeah, if I’m going to die anyways, it’ll be good to do it in style.”

“And Pugh. Guardsmen as a class sucks hard. We are going to remove that core and find something that is more your style.”

Pugh cracked a smile. “Pimp?” Guzman elbowed him and everyone gave a short little chuckle.

“Nah. Something Bardic. I’d love to get you something that enhances the power of your jokes, your insults, and your words. Maybe music too? Do you play?”

“Nope.” He beamed.

“We’ll get you a triangle. Nobody can mess that up.”

Dane looked over at Rivera. The stone monster faced him without expression, shovel-sized hands hanging by his side. “You might actually be good to go, Sergeant.”

“Removing core cards, if it is possible, is almost certainly going to be expensive,” LT Daniels stated. “It might be best that we just work with the mistakes we have.” Everyone turned from him to Dane, their eyes curious.

Dane nodded. “Sir, that’s true. And I don’t know if we can even afford it. But judging from what we just witnessed, we want to maximize our battle potential in every single way. And, more importantly, we aren’t very high level. The way we were talked about, I expect with the proper build we could reach the level we are already at in just a few days of questing.”

“How does that have anything to do with our core cards?” Neiderhauer snarled. His incisors glinted in the sun, reminding Dane of how innately dangerous his squadmates had been before they’d gotten fire breath, and the razor’s edge he was walking now, the outsider presuming to give these badasses commands.

“If we can’t afford to get rid of those core cards, Neiderhauer, then we can get rid of them by killing you. Over and over again. Till your slot opens up.”

Neiderhauer blew a flaming snort from his reptilian nostrils. “I’d like to see you try, little man.”

Dane laughed. “In the real world I was afraid of you. Here, you are the scrawny combat-challenged pogue. Bring it.”

Jaws dropped and eyes bulged. Rivera started to boom an earth-shattering laugh. “Neiderhauer, stand down. Dane says he can take you and I think he can. Dane, congratulations on becoming a man. We’ll schedule a fight to the death if we can’t afford to remove Neiderhauer’s cards. And, Neiderhauer, if you win, no dying. Hoorah.”

“Hoorah,” the rest of them said, as if in prayer.

“What about me?” Guzman asked. She was fluttering in the sky, staring him downa nd challenging him to find something wrong with her.

“Uh, no idea. Good to go?” He swallowed, his bravery finally exhausted and his nerdy shell beginning to rise back up over him. It hadn’t just been words he had with Neiderhauer. He was rather sure that his optimized build would win over the draconian bully. But having said them, he felt hollow inside. Cold and afraid.

Guzman fluttered over. “Oh no you don’t. You’re one of us and we need you more than we ever knew. You keep talking. What do I need to do?”

Dane nodded. “I’m not exactly sure yet, but I’m almost positive that I’ll have ideas once I see what cards we can land in the city.”

LT Daniels nodded behind him. “We’re up.”

Dane turned and realized that this entire time he had been walking backwards, lecturing them, totally oblivious to the world. It was very uncharacteristic and it filled him with pride. He was actually filling in the role that he had obviously been meant for.

“Alright rangers, what are we waiting for. Let’s go get strong.”

The city interior was medieval, but not in any style that he exactly recollected. Houses mostly clung to a two-story building code and the roofs rose sharply like hands clasped together in prayer, almost ninety degree angles that seemed to flow down from some point in the sky and pour over top of the homes rather than rising up from beneath. And there were strange little towers all over the place, each tops with a bulging minaret that reminded Dane of an ice cream cone. Well, if ice cream cones were large, hard, and residence to circular windows.

Basically, it was what he would expect from a bunch of basement nerds who suddenly had access to reality’s setting option.

And it stank. Good lord did it smell bad. He always read about such things in his cherished history tomes, the smells of older times. He’d even read that a British company had created a cologne that smelled like Rome during its height, and that this recreation had caused a class of school children to become violently ill when applied to the reconstructed ruins of a museum-based Roman village.

But words didn’t do the smell justice. About him he saw that his companions, all but Rivera, were equally drenched in suffering.

“Dane, what the fuck?” Neiderhauer asked. Pugh tried to laugh and started coughing instead. The LT sighed, glancing here to there, his short and thick dwarven neck struggling to move independent of his broad-shouldered body.

“My guess?” Dane asked. “I’d say that indoor plumbing has gone the way of the dodo and people are back to pooping in buckets.”

As if on cue, wooden window slats flapped open and a middle-aged woman surfaced in glittering scales swung her arms out, a basin in her hands. Moments later a splash of dung and golden liquid blasted over the pavement just steps from where they were standing.

Neiderhauer turned sideways and hurled, a strange mixture of flame and meaty chunks plus the strange glint of metal. Everyone’s eyes followed that bit.

“Neiderhauer, have you been eating coins?” Rivera asked, his voice booming. The locals shied away from him, finding reasons to be on the other side of the street.

“No!” Neiderhauer paused, bent over, and picked a shiny golden coin from his leavings. “Yeah! I don’t know why man. I just have this hunger, now, this small little thing that wants me to eat metal.”

Dane nodded. The LT shot him an arched bushy eyebrow.

“He’s like a dragon. A lot of draconic lore says that they like to snack on precious metals and gems,” Dane explained. “Heck, in some of the game systems I’ve played in they build up that value as mana in their bodies, storing it for an emergency.”

LT Daniels turned back to Neiderhauer. “Are you storing up magical powers?”

“No, sir!”

“Then knock it off. The mission is paramount and we need every single scrap of currency we can get our hands on. Now—”

“Tavern,” Rivera stated. “And a shop.” His voice seemed so emotionless and a bit sandy. Dane peered at him more closely and found himself envisioning the construction inside him. A cold feeling crept through him. What they’d become was changing how they thought and acted. He was sure of it.

But neither here nor there, as they say. A card shop was indeed ahead of them, just a hop, a skip, and a jump away really. All of the party currency had been pooled and given to him, and Dane could now feel the weight of it, and the decisions they would require, lay heavy against the ballsack under which he had hidden it.