7. Strange Reunions

Before he set off early next morning, he checked his mini-map. His dot wasn't pure white anymore; instead a golden S ran down the middle, presumably for signature.

He was up to level 28 now and had a host of unused stat points. Most still went to Strength and Vitality. But after the last fight, he'd grown a newfound appreciation for Regeneration. He stuffed a few points there too.

He headed on out. Yesterday, he was hosed with all kinds of new powers. He could sit there theorizing about how best to use it, but he'd much rather get a feel for it, get hands-on with it. So, he made his way due northeast. He didn't come across a single red dot. Once the Hobgoblin Chief de-spawned, it seemed that was the last of them.

It took about an hour of sprinting before he saw the terrain change. The thick twilight canopy, which had been so seamless, started to thin, started to leak streaks of sunlight. The vines thinned and receded; the towering trees shrank too, giving way to a thick underbrush which grew sparser and sparser as he went. The ankle-length grass was slowly replaced by patches of purple moss.

The tree line began to thin out quickly. By the time he neared the border, the ground grew rugged, and clumps of clear crystal sprouted from the ground, faintly glowing. Most dotted the landscape like prettier weeds, but some went up to his knee; he even saw one as tall as a man.

The landscape of the Crystalback Highlands was dominated by purple-fuzzed plains. The trees were clumped tight and spread much sparser, and he could actually see a blue sky streaked with wispy clouds. It was refreshing after so long in the pseudo-dark.

He followed his mini-map, trekking across the rocky ground, waiting for a red dot to pop up.

To his surprise the first dot he saw was white—a person? It wasn't moving. He drew closer and saw something else: two red dots quickly closing in.

He ran for it. He sprinted up a small hill, slid down the rocky ledge on the other side, and saw them. There was a little girl sprawled on her back. And not thirty paces away were two boars, frothing at the mouth. They had black fur and red eyes, and chunks of translucent crystal poked out of their backs.

ℂ𝕣𝕪𝕤𝕥𝕒𝕝𝕓𝕒𝕔𝕜 𝔹𝕠𝕒𝕣 (𝕄𝕠𝕟𝕤𝕥𝕖𝕣)

𝔼𝕤𝕤𝕖𝕟𝕔𝕖 𝕃𝕖𝕧𝕖𝕝 𝟟

ℂ𝕣𝕪𝕤𝕥𝕒𝕝𝕓𝕒𝕔𝕜 𝔹𝕠𝕒𝕣 (𝕄𝕠𝕟𝕤𝕥𝕖𝕣)

𝔼𝕤𝕤𝕖𝕟𝕔𝕖 𝕃𝕖𝕧𝕖𝕝 𝟠

The girl was curled up in a ball, shivering. She cried out as they charged her.

Instantly, the Prometheus Chains were in Zane's hands. He chucked with all his strength. They whipped through the air; their long shadows descended on the monsters like guillotines. Then they struck.

The ground trembled with the impact, and the girl screamed louder. But when the dust blew away, then saw the aftermath—the boars' heads and legs were intact, but their midsections had been crushed nearly flat. They dissolved into streams of white light. Zane ran for the girl.

"You okay?" he said.

She wouldn't uncurl. She was younger than he'd thought; she couldn't be more than ten. What was a child doing in a dungeon? He stood there awkwardly, waiting. She finally looked up, sniffling. Her eyes were red-rimmed. "Are you—" she began. "Did Brad send you?"

Brad? Zane frowned; he had bad experiences with the name, but he brushed it aside. "No. I'm here on my own. Wait—are there others here?"

She looked like she was about to cry again. "Hey, hey," he said, crouching, speaking as gently as he could. "I've got you. You're safe now."

She wiped at her face. "Really?"

"Really," he assured her. "My name is Zane. I'm very strong. I won't let anything hurt you, alright? I promise."

She seemed to calm down a little. He used to tutor after-school math for elementary schoolers; it was pretty much advanced daycare. He was strangely good at it. One of the first things he was taught was kids went through all kinds of emotional ups and downs, but if you're patient with them and stayed calm, they'd latch on to that. He found it far easier than most of the other teachers—that was pretty much who he was all the time when he wasn't fighting.

"What's your name?"

"Annie," she said.

He just remembered—the system came with some kind of latent identity skill. If you just focused on her, inspected her closely—

𝔸𝕟𝕟𝕚𝕖 𝕏𝕦 (ℂ𝕣𝕖𝕒𝕥𝕦𝕣𝕖)

𝔼𝕤𝕤𝕖𝕟𝕔𝕖 𝕃𝕖𝕧𝕖𝕝 𝟙

"Okay, Annie," he said gently, "I need you to tell me what happened. Can you do that for me?"

Haltingly, sniffling, she did. She was walking back from ballet practice with her mom when suddenly everything changed. She saw boxes and she went to tutorial. Her mom protected her.

"So, what happened next?" he said.

"Then we saw Brad, and Zach, and the rest of the tribe."

There was a whole group of stragglers he hadn't met?

Zane nodded. "Can you tell me a little about this Brad? I don't think I know him."

"He's big," said Annie, "Not as big as you. Um. But he said, he said he was gonna protect my mom and me..."

"And then?"

Annie shook her head quickly; she started crying again. "Shhh," he said, "You're okay. You're okay." He sat there with her and waited patiently until she was ready.

"They—" the little girl finally got out. She gestured at the place where the Crystalback Boars used to be. "They— they—"

It took two start-and-stop minutes to coax the full story out of her. There had been a Boar attack. It had scattered their tribe, and they'd all ran off in separate directions. Annie got separated from her mom. She tried finding them but must have wandered the wrong direction. Now she was here, alone.

"You were very brave," said Zane. "Let's go find your mom, okay?"

"Okay…"

Together, they wandered up the mini-map. As they walked the plains, they passed some spots marked with a black X, but there was nothing there. Zane guessed that was where people had died.

After maybe half an hour of walking, a cluster of white popped up. "There they are," he said.

He sighted them in the distance, a ragged-looking crowd of a few dozen. They seemed to have sighted him too, since they sent a party out to greet him. There were five of them: a Warrior, a Ranger, two Mages, and two Priests, none over Level 12. Dirt-streaked, haggard men and women with wild eyes and wilder hair.

"What are you?" shouted the Ranger.

Zane frowned. "What?"

"On the mini-map. Your dot—what's with the—the thing on it? What are you?"

"That's just a Title. I mean you no harm."

Annie piped up. "He exploded two monsters that were trying to kill me! He's a good guy."

They exchanged nervous glances. Then the Warrior nodded. "Come with us."

The rest of the tribe stood there waiting for them. There were a few elderly people, and just a handful of kids. The rest were young and hard-looking, dressed in clothes as torn as his were. Almost all of them were under Level 5. He was shocked at how weak they were, how drained they looked. Every face he saw was drawn with dark circles under their eyes, and the dead-eyed look—they looked frightened and miserable.

He'd been having the time of his life. He'd almost forgotten that by any normal standard, this place was hell.

A thin Asian woman pushed her way through the pack—"Annie?!" She cried, teary-eyed.

"Mom!" The girl dashed off, and her mother wrapped her in a long, sobbing hug.

Zane looked around. He didn't recognize any of them.

"False alarm, chief!" called the Ranger.

Then a familiar face pushed through, and he froze.

"Good man," said Brad.

Brad. It was that Brad—Brad from high school. He'd been Captain of the football team, and for four years, Zane's worst tormentor.

Zane couldn't believe he was here. He'd put on weight since high school, had a grizzly beard and a paunch now, but Zane would recognize those cruel beady little eyes anywhere.

Brad must have recognized him too; when he saw Zane he stopped cold. "Holy shit," he said. "Is that you? Brick Walker! Yo Ralph, look who it is—shit, man. It's been years!"

Ralph emerged, huge and lumpy, the one who would pin Zane's hands behind his back as Brad slid the centipedes down his shirt.

"'Brick?'" said Annie's mother, blinking tearily at him. "Thank you, Brick. Oh, thank you!"

"No, Brick's not his real name," laughed Brad. "We were buddies in high school. That's his nickname. I mean, just look at his face! It's like that one emoji, you know, the stone head? It's like he has no feelings, he literally doesn't get mad, it's insane! Oh, man. You should've seen some of the shit we did to him—" He got too carried away; when he saw the look on the woman's face, he must have realized how it sounded. "No, no, it wasn't like that. We were just playing. Having fun, ragging on each other, you know—it's a guy thing. Tell her, Z."

'Z'? Was he serious?

"How's your back?" said Zane dryly, and Brad flinched.

Zane had snapped exactly once. This was before he took up wrestling, before he learned to stand up for himself—back when he was just a shy, scrawny, awkward kid. The day after his parents' fatal car crash, he'd broken down in the lunchroom—one of the rare times he let loose like that. And Brad decided it was a good idea to make fun of him for it. He'd tackled Brad through a wall. Brad had walked hunched for weeks.

"…Right. Uhh, pretty good, actually. Pretty good," said Brad, forcing an awkward laugh. "We're all friends here, right?"

Before Zane could retort, yet another painfully familiar face emerged from the crowd. Big blue eyes, fluffy blonde curls, and a soft, cherubic face. He stood there, struck dumb.

It was his ex-girlfriend Sophie. Spunky, artsy Sophie. They'd met in high school, and dated for four years after, and in the middle of the worst of his depression she said she couldn't be there for him anymore because his sadness was too toxic for her mental health, and her therapist said to cut people with negative energy out of her life.

"Zane?" She gasped. "You look… different."

Her eyes trailed down his body. In just a few days, all that fat he'd put on had melted off, unveiling slabs of hard muscle and a sharp jawline. Putting points into his physique had cleared his skin, firmed his muscles; he was pretty sure he'd even grown a few inches. With how shredded his clothes were, these changes were all blatantly visible.

Then he saw her new boyfriend push his way through. Zane's replacement. Cale—he looked eerily similar to Zane; at the time, it had felt like she'd swapped Zane out for a less depressed version. Zane couldn't even hate the guy—he was a good dude, friendly, laid back, well-liked; Sophie said he 'gave golden retriever energy'. It was petty, but Zane did take satisfaction in seeing that after his time in the dungeon, he was the taller one now.

"Jesus, it really is you! It's been too long—dude, you've gotten huge!" said Cale. Then Cale squinted, inspecting Zane, and his eyes widened. "Wait, you're level twenty eight? Where'd you get all those levels?! Yeesh."

"Took out the Hobgoblin Chief," said Zane evenly.

"That was you?"

He shrugged again.

Brad squinted at him, inspecting him for himself, and went wide-eyed too. "No shit…"

He saw the same look play across most of their faces. Shock, awe. Even a little horror.

Brad in particular seemed queasy.