It was annoying that I had to deal with political bullshit instead of infrastructure, but I guess that's just the nature of life. It was the same thing on Earth- I had been working on just making games and trying to entertain others, but then to get anything beyond text going, I needed money. I had met hundreds of people in the programming, art, and animation fields, mostly before any of them were actually worth any money. They learned of my ideas and wanted to play the games when they were done- but they all seemed to forget the fact that they were in college or the game industry to MAKE games. I mean, come on. To get into the game industry you had to be able to show your work on completed projects- meaning playable games. Multiple! If I had millions of dollars to throw around then I certainly wouldn't have restricted myself to nepotism.

So to find money to pay people in order to make more interactive entertainment that could generate its own content or at least not require my direct personal involvement for every interaction for every single player, I had to start making business connections. But with no billionaire investors I was friends with, I had to start from nothing. Find a 'one horse town' with a dead horse, and offer my services. Fulfill that promise. Start to schmooze the mayor and city council. Make the most of my cooking skills and feed meals to business and religious leaders and vocal citizens throughout the city so I get positive attention. Use that positive support to entice someone with a store chain of some kind that the city doesn't have- like a grocery store. Get the CEO to agree with me when I start trying to get more services added to the dead city, so it gets the ability to get more opportunities for more people.

Then get the more disinterested or hard-won people to support me since they, or their loved ones, now have more advancement opportunities and are able to live more fulfilling lives. Finally get the impossible-to-win people to join me too because they don't have a choice anymore. All I wanted to do was make a single game! Look what I had to do just to get someone with a college degree and no job to work with me to create a game they already wanted to play. I guess I have to do the same ridiculous bullshit in this world, too. Such games and things wouldn't be possible here because of the technology level, but at least I could enact some social reform. I knew how history went, and not just the whitewashed garbage taught in schools, so I'd hopefully be able to see what the detractors would do before they did it.

I was thinking about all of this as we walked. My robe was damaged enough now, and not just from the battle. Cloth like this was most definitely not designed to be in open weather, and even in the cave, I'm pretty sure it still counted. Sun poked me in the arm. "Yes?"

"Are you okay? The look kaiharos was rather displeasing."

"Yeah... I was just thinking about life and responsibility in my previous life."

"The one you shared with Djraine, Aneis, Malas, I, and Sting?"

"Yeah. But when you're putting yourself in a list, always add your own name at the end. Sting and I, is what you meant to say."

"It is a difficult language to learn."

"You are by no means the first person to say that. A ship shipping ship shipping shipping ships."

She looked really confused. The silence was almost immediately broken by Dulcet's laughter.

"Anyway, Sun" I started to ask, "I'm guessing you remember our previous lives too?"

"Uh huh."

"Why did you keep making giant webs across my lawn? You would have done better with smaller, stronger webs in less extremely obvious areas."

She shrugged. "It's what my kind had always done, so I did it too. It did take a lot less time to make replacement webbing once you put me in the... thing, and gave me food yourself. What was that thing called?"

"An aquarium. Well, an aquarium is made for water, and a terrarium is made for dirt. Aqua means water, and terra means dirt. While we're at it, pyro means fire, cryo means ice, chrono means time, bio means body. There are a lot of other words like this but there isn't a reason to give you too many all at once."

"I didn't understand all of those words..."

"I understood some of them!" Dulcet interrupted loudly.

I wondered if they were learning the same words at the same time, or different ones. Maybe they could teach each other my language. I'm almost certain it isn't called English here, especially since some of the words I knew were dudbear, Spanish, pig latin, hobgoblin, French, German, Italian, and klingon. The most fun was speaking in a combination of hobgoblin and pig latin! With the hobgoblin language, you just turn every letter into its own word. Add 'ob' to the end of every consonant, and say each vowel on its own. With pig latin, put the first letter of every word at the end, and add 'ay' to the end of everything. Hence, 'hello' would be 'ellohay' which would then become 'e lob lob o hob a yob'. If I actually wanted to be totally incomprehensible, I absolutely could.

We talked more about various things as we wandered up the road. It curved off in a few ways, but we always took the most beaten-looking path, hoping it would lead us where we were going. It was actually rather surprising there weren't many people on the roads at all. Most people we did meet were at least half-asleep, just letting their animals pull their carts on their own, used to making the pickups or deliveries they were on their way to collect or drop off, respectively. The one or two people we had met that were paying attention looked terrified out of their minds, but that was expected. I simply bowed, got out of their way, and said a slight courtesy and we continued walking. Hopefully lack of action would let them be at ease, but if I knew anything, I also knew that people would think whatever they want, and probably make stuff up and exaggerate whatever they spontaneously generated.

It was starting to get dark, and we'd need to find somewhere that no one would see us and attack us in our sleep. There wasn't anyone on the road anymore, and hadn't been for awhile, but there was no reason to allow for unnecessary risk. There was a glimmer over to a side, and I thought that it looked like water. I was right, and we all rehydrated. It was pretty important to do, and we didn't have anything to carry it with still. But, ancient cities were all built around water for that exact reason, so I was never really worried about it. The thin river, more like a creek really, seemed to dead-end, but I knew such a thing wasn't sensible. Investigating, it was a natural tunnel. The water was partially blocked by a wagon that had fallin in somehow, and by the state of the wood and cloth tarp covering the back, it had been sitting here for a few years. Inside the tunnel, there was something I was pleased to see. Spider webs. This world did have natural-sized spiders! I'd want to bring them with us if I could, but I'd need something to carry them in. We'd check the wagon once it was light. We didn't actually need a full night's sleep, but we might as well anyway since I wanted to check for loot. I could always use the lantern, but, well... I figured we should rest and recover as much as possible before continuing all day tomorrow, if it took that long.