“We better get going guys, the sun is starting to set,” Amelia hurried, as she marched back to the caves. A moody Alan and a silent Ashley followed her close.

“You can visit us anytime you like, Alan Warden,” Smudock, leader of the Slimes said to Alan as he escorted the group. “Just tell us with anticipation, if you decide to bring any new User.”

“S-Sorry, chief. It won’t happen again, I promise.”

“It’s okay. I didn’t detect any ill will from your new partner,” the slime humanoid said in a neutral voice, but he seemed to still glance warily at Amelia. “By the way, since we’re already acquaintances, why don’t we add each other to our Friend Lists? That might come in handy in the future.”

“Is that even possible? Aren’t you a… what was the word again?”

“A NU,” Ashley interjected, staring at Alan with empty eyes. “Non User. And yes, it is possible. They have regular System Interfaces, and we have been experimenting with them a lot while I was here.”

“Cool!” Alan grinned as Amelia urged them from the town’s entrance. “Ignore her. Add me, please.”

After a short moment, Alan received a new Friend Request, from ‘Char_W1_021’.

Is this his original name? It’s okay. I think I can add a surname to it… ‘Smudock’... That’s it.

“Neat.” Alan smiled, before glancing at Ashley. “Wait, if you knew how to use the Friend List, why haven’t you sent me a Friend Request? We could have messaged us all this time.”

“I did,” she replied, making him frown. “I could do it by just writing your name, but every time I tried, I got a ‘Failed to send’ message.”

That reminds me of the Error message she and I have in our User Interfaces, Alan thought, glancing at the impatient Amelia. But I’ve been able to receive messages and calls just fine. It’s as if our accounts have been restricted for some reason.

After noting that on his mental list of pending mysteries, he watched a small slime dashing toward Amelia. Isn’t that the same slime that attacked her before?

“Don’t even try it, buddy!” he warned it, but this time, the slime jumped on her arms and cuddled.

"Alan?” Amelia called while consulting something in her User Interface. “It seems that I got the Monster Tamer skill while interacting with it. So…" She then grinned widely, hugging it protectively. "That means I can keep it, right? Is no one against me KEEPING IT?! Right?!”

Alan hid his face in embarrassment. It’s as if she was asking for permission to kidnap a child!

He turned to Smudock, who seemed to remain calm. For some reason.

"What do you say, chief?"

"If the system allowed it, I don't have a reason to object,” Smudock said, exhaling. “Take good care of Slomiack, Amelia Laflamme."

"Yay!” She held the slime aloft, beaming. “But that’s a hideous name for such a cute thing! So I’ll name you Sloochie from now on! Do you like it?” she asked, and the slime squeaked, seemingly happy.

"Farewell, to one of our finest warriors…" Smudock said, adopting a solemn silence.

“You will not be forgotten,” the rest of the village said, making a slow bow in the slime’s direction.

“A-Amelia? Try not to say inappropriate things while we're still here," Alan whispered, watching the suddenly awkward scene.

***

**

*

Night fell in the Beginner’s Area, where stars looked brighter compared to the Londoru’s sky. While Smaio drove the cart to Unus Town, with a vigilant Ashley by his side in case the Weasenox attacked, Alan and Ashley rested in the back.

“I wonder if you could change your element to fire, hmm?” Amelia whispered to Sloochie while caressing it. “I could teach you all my fire spells once you level up. Would you like that?”

The little smile only squeaked back as a reply, making Alan wonder if it understood human language. Well, I suppose it does, since it’ll evolve into an Advanced Slime someday. He then stared at Amelia, who was absently looking in the distance, looking relaxed for the first time since she met her.

She can be cute too, huh? She was not lying when she mentioned that she needed a vacation.

Alan grinned as he folded his arms and leaned back to take a little nap, but an image flashed before his eyes. His brain stubbornly repeated memories of Amelia impaling him, decapitating him, burning him. All while she maintained a nasty glare in her eyes.

Why? Why am I remembering that right now?! He put a hand on his forehead and started sweating cold.

“Dammit…” he muttered with shut eyes, getting her attention.

“Is something wrong? Are you not feeling well?”

He looked at her, as his brain superimposed a furious expression over her worried face. For Alan, she looked preoccupied and furious at the same time.

“I’m low in sugar, okay? I just noticed that I haven’t eaten since I woke up today.”

“Now that you mention, I only had beer for breakfast, too,” she said, opening her User Interface. Seconds later, she throw something in his lap.

It was the first time Alan saw that brand logo, but he immediately knew it was a chocolate bar.

“Awesome!”

When the sound of aluminum foil getting unwrapped reached the front of the cart, Ashley glanced back, curious.

Amelia sighed at the sight of her puppy eyes. “You can have one too, I guess…” she said, throwing two more chocolate bars in Ashley’s direction.

“Thanks, Amelia.”

“Thanks, User!”

Only crunch noises were heard in that cart for a couple of minutes before Amelia decided to give the rest of her chocolate to Sloochie and sit next to Alan.

It was the first time he could admire her amber-colored eyes up close.

“You seem to know these slime people quite well, so tell me, do you have any idea why they were saying, ‘That the Goddess Viola blesses you’? What does that even mean? We have no gods in the Novus.”

So not everyone knows the names of the Administrators. That reminds me of The Dragon’s Belly and the guy that implied that getting in contact with one of them was difficult.

“Viola Lang it’s the name of the Monster Administrator,” he whispered in her ear, so Smaio could not overhear him. “She’s in charge of everything related to the monsters and creatures inhabiting the Novus. Their respawning rate, their habitat, the damage they dealt, to name a few examples.”

“So even the monsters know their ‘boss’, That Viola gal must love herself so much to program them with that knowledge.” She sneered while curling a strand of hair with her finger. “Now that you’ve reunited with your… partner, what are you going to do?”

“Well… I heard what you said about starting a new guild…” he replied while carefully folding the candy’s wrapping paper and putting it in his jacket’s pocket. She observed the scene silently, noticing little marks around his thumbs and index fingers. “And I don’t know where you got that idea. This is supposed to be a secret mission, you know? We can’t go, announcing we’re part of a guild and try to be discreet at the same time.” He then jerked his head to the opposite side, grimacing. “Besides, who’ll want to join the guild of the weakest User in all The Novus.”

“But, Alan,” she called softly. “I don’t think your secret is safe anymore. Look at what happened today.”

“The Weasenox!” Smaio cried, looking at the back of the cart. “It’s coming from behind!”

“Understood,” Ashley said, readying her bow and an arrow, but Amelia was faster.

“Dragonbreath,” the pyromancer casually cast, reaching out her hand. Flames burst out of her palm as if it was a flamethrower, while she kept locking her eyes with Alan’s. “And I’m the one that suggested starting a guild, didn’t I? So I’d obviously join you.”

Alan looked at the charred beast’s corpse illuminating the road behind as if it was an improvised campfire.

Just two days ago, I looked just like it…

He could not find his words for several seconds, which prompted Amelia to sigh and fold her arms.

“You don’t have to answer already, but I’ll give you a piece of free advice anyway, okay? Being a member of an official registered Guild comes with all sorts of bonuses. Gold, equipment, XP… All of that stuff will be less of a pain in the ass if you gather it as a team.” She paused, looking for his gaze, but he was stubbornly looking the other way. “I thought you were taking this seriously. So much in fact that you even asked Marco Souza for help.”

“And that worked so well…”

Annoyed, Amelia grabbed him by the cheeks and forced him to look her directly in the eyes. “Listen! You won’t be able to have an impact in this world if you don’t have the power and the resources! Or are you still feeling guilty about the fall of your ex-girlfriend’s guild to even start a new one and try to move on?!”

“And who helped ruin Shooting Stars, huh?! Oh, right! If I remember correctly, just 24 hours ago you and your ‘lord boyfriend’ were toasting to Astrid’s downfall! So let me say it straight out! If all of you weren’t playing around and stayed, you could have stopped that albino woman and his pet dragon!”

Amelia’s eyes glowed intensely. “That man is not my boyfriend…”

“Well, you seemed to enjoy doing his bidding, didn’t you? So what’s with this sudden change of heart, huh?!” He got closer to her face, glaring. “Do you want to know what I’m thinking? That maybe Marco ordered you to follow me as the ultimate mockery. To give me false hopes and make me think that I may finally overturn this streak of bad luck! So once he snaps his fingers, you’ll rejoin him and tell him all about how I fell into your game! A level 100 helping a puny five like me? Yeah, nothing suspicious about it!”

“Guys?” An anxious Smaio called quietly. “We’ve arrived.”

Alan ignored Ashley’s gaze and got out of the cart first while Amelia decided to stay a couple of seconds longer to collect herself.

“Let’s go,” Alan said, stretching out a hand to her, but Amelia refused to glance at him. He exhaled. “This… has been a very frantic day. We’re both tired and hungry, so let’s talk about this tomorrow morning. All right?”

“Whatever,” she replied, jumping off the cart without aid and striding toward the woods without looking back.

“Should we go after her?” Ashley asked as the little slime cried and rushed to catch her.

“No,” Alan replied dryly, walking in the opposite direction.

After what felt like an eternity, both returned to the same place where their mission was supposed to start, this time without any possible allies left.

***

**

*

Alan and Ashley walked through the main street, reaching Downtown in a couple of minutes. Having briefly visited the enormous Londorus and having seen the surrounding area from the sky, gave Alan a good idea of how vast the Novus was.

And Unus Town is nothing but a tiny dot on the map.

“Are we going to stay in an inn?” Ashley asked, getting a bitter sneer from him.

Yes, we’ve literally returned to our last checkpoint…

“I don’t have any money. If I knew things would go south with Amelia, you and I should have stayed with the slimes. I bet their huts are cozy.”

“I have some gold,” she blurted out, making him halt. “618 gold, to be precise.”

So you appeared in this world with silver gear, a higher level than mine, and money? That doesn’t make any sense.

Alan shut his eyes immediately, trying to discard those thoughts. I have no one left. If I can’t even trust Isabella, then who?

“Thanks, Ashley. Let’s go to the inn. I know the way.”

To Alan’s surprise, despite being a place to rest for the first adventurers of the Eurola region, the Moonlight Inn was brimmed with people. After asking the NPC receptionist, Alan found out that the majority of the Unus’s citizens slept there.

Since rooms cost 30 gold a night here, it’s way cheaper than renting.

Dinner is also pretty affordable. 10 gold for a loaf of bread a and bowl of tomato soup. But since it’s prepared by NPCs, infamous for their plain food, the residents seem to order from the User-owned local businesses.

Alan salivated at the sight of a man pulling a juicy burger out of a cardboard box with the Dragon’s Belly logo on it. The man then glanced back, but he frowningly concentrated on the number displayed above Alan’s head.

Alan looked away, annoyed.

“Alan?” Ashley called softly after sipping from her strawberry milkshake. “Could you tell me all about your trip to Londorus? How did it go? Could you talk with Astrid Bradford?”

“Sorry, Ashley. I’ll give you a full report tomorrow morning, yes? I… don’t feel like talking right now.”

“Of course.”

“As a matter of fact, I’d like to go rest, if you don’t mind.”

“Not at all. We’ll talk tomorrow. Your room’s number is 36, and mine is 37, if you need me. Good night, Alan.”

At that moment, Alan wished nothing more but to be invisible. To be able to sneak his way to his room without people looking at his current number. He wanted to tell them to mind their own business, but angering the wrong person would surely send him back to the Shooting Stars’ checkpoint.

I’ll save in this place’s downtown first hour in the morning, but right now, I just want to turn my brain off and have a dreamless sleep. No nightmares, no funny thoughts this time.

He found his room easily and the door unlocked automatically for him. I just…

“You look pale. Are you feeling all right?” a man asked as soon as Alan turned on the lights. After what had transcurred that day, Alan’s first instinct was to return to the hallway, warn Ashley, and run as fast as they could, but the door knob would not turn. “Ah, sorry! I locked the room so no one interrupts us. I also configure it to be soundproof just as an extra precaution. Is this a good time to talk? I could come back tomorrow if you want.”

Alan slowly turned around, finding a lanky black man with curly black hair, sitting on the bed. The bags under his eyes reminded him of his own.

A system window popped up in the wall at his right.

NOTICE: You have exceeded the Maximum number of people allowed in a single room. If you would like to proceed, you will have to pay an additional fee.

“Oh, crap. I forgot to disable that,” the man said, opening his User Interface, which Alan noted to be way bigger than the standard. “I don’t mind paying, but I’d rather not have my visit registered in this place’s log.”

Alan saw the system’s message getting erased until only a blinking dash symbol remained. As if it was ‘hacked’.

“Who are you?”

“Nice to meet you, Alan Warden. I’m Ricardo Silva, the Glitch Administrator.”