Sometimes a good night’s rest really did change your perspective of things. The people he had failed still hurt of course. But things were different without a cloud of exhaustion hovering over him. It was a clear reminder that he wasn’t a machine that could keep going without pause. Quasi-Legendary title or not.

  “Ryan, it’s only been like three hours. You should sleep a little more.”

  “That’s one more hour than needed at my realm, it’s fine.”

  They were all back at the table after his nap. Clara was more than a little annoyed at her lack of sleep. Barry was still Barry and Milo… his friend also had bags under his eyes. Ryan had probably been worrying him a little too much.

  He grinned.

  “So… did I mention I got a quasi-Legendary title?”

  That did perk everyone up at the table. The fact that he had missed that out was the biggest reminder that he’d failed the previous after-action report.

  Barry was the most impatient of the three. “Spit it out.”

  “It’s the [Undisputed Apex of the Fourth Realm]. It only provides a massive buff to literally every single aspect, physical and metaphysical. Skills and no skills.”

  Milock’s tone was a little less excited than Ryan expected. “By how much? Give us some comparisons”

  “Even without my right arm I’m like a peak fifth realm [Warrior] and [Rogue] combined. I might even be as strong as a regular sixth realm. Include my arm into the mix and even average conditions and I’m probably fighting at the eighth realm.”

  Clara seemed a little confused at that. “Didn’t you destroy the Witch Tyrant’s hex? Everyone’s saying that’s a dragonslayer level feat.”

  “The difference is peak ability vs average ability.” Ryan elaborated “That was near perfect conditions and the strike was real slow. I wouldn’t expect to defeat a proper eighth realm [Rogue] that’s not willing to let me build up either.”

  Barry grunted. “That fourth realm to fifth realm jump isn’t a small grade either. That’s where people go from being an enhanced human to being nearly impossible to stop by conventional means.” The orc explained to Clara, then turned to Ryan. “Hope you’re not overestimating yourself. The fifth realm is when you go up against more and more unexpected skills. Not to mention squads–teams of adventurers with more synergistic skills.”

  Ryan saluted the orc. “Sir, yes sir.”

  Barry huffed but didn’t respond to the taunt.

  Ryan moved on. “Oh yeah, I forgot to mention. I got a Legendary upgrade quest for that title as well.”

  Barry quickly tried to hide his surprise but it was too late. Ryan had seen the surprise and was grinning at him already. The orc just crossed his arms, pretending to act like he wasn’t interested.

  Clara just blinked in confusion. “Isn’t that crazy? Aren’t legendaries what separates the Tyrants from everyone else?”

  “It’s more than crazy.” Milock said. “I don’t think anyone has a Legendary title other than the Chieftain and the Passive Tyrants. Those might be rarer than Legendary skills.”

  Ryan made a face. “If the Witch Tyrant doesn’t have a Legendary title I’ll eat her fucking hat.”

  Clara looked at him weirdly. “I think that’s the wrong saying Ryan.”

  “I said what I said.”

  Barry the ex-[Berserker] lost his patience. “Out with it. What’s the quest?”

  Ryan considered continuing to banter but even he couldn’t hold back on sharing his Legendary quest.

  “Hold on, what do you mean question marks?” Clara asked.

  “Not sure, sometimes it happens in quests where you don’t qualify for enough information. All I know is that getting the Witch Tyrant punched in the face was considered a Legendary feat.”

  Milock raised an eyebrow, a little confused by there only being one feat on there. “And fighting a flesh titan and uplifting thousands of primitive elves isn’t?”

  Clara was even more confused. “You didn’t even punch the Witch Tyrant, wasn’t that Pinkie?”

  Ryan shrugged. “Yeah but if I had to guess, I think the feat itself is just that crazy. Think about it, that might have legitimately been the only time the Witch has actually gotten hit in the face. I bet she’s been illusioning herself this entire time and not actually taking any hits from anyone.” Ryan thought about it for a second. “Actually, could I see the video? I wonder how it looked to the rest of the world.”

  Milock left the silence bubble to grab his laptop. His friend had the video loaded before he brought it in. It showed everything in perfect detail. Much more than what he’d seen. All he’d seen at the time was a blur and Pinkie standing over a falling Witch Tyrant.

  …The video showed a slow motion reel of a pink lightning bolt flying into the sky, then is paused as Pinkie the dragon looming over the Tyrant. The Witch Tyrant’s face actually distorted in slow motion as the giant draconic fist collided with her face.

  “Holy shit.”

  The few clips that had been released of her fight against thirty dragonslayers had shown the Witch Tyrant as a struggling heroine against a band of ruthless murderers.

  This video was just straight up mocking her. posted by a certain account called Gamgam546. At first Ryan laughed, then he stopped laughing when he remembered she could post a lot of his embarrassing moments online.

  The video didn’t stop there. It showed everything, from her multitude of pupils coming together, to what looked like an apocalyptic bombardment of light as she chased Pinkie away from the city of Defiance.

  In the end the Witch Tyrant came back with a massive iridescent dragon wing in hand. Then demanded that the fourther tournament continue.

  “Everyone’s going crazy with conspiracy theories.” Milock said. “Mods have gone wild banning everyone and everything because they’re afraid of all the servers getting fallenangeled. Everyone else is trying to figure out which dragonslayer this gamgam account is. Behind the scenes, higher rank adventurers are all agreeing that the Witch Tyrant had been messing with the dragonslayers.”

  “Behind the scenes? How do you know that?”

  “Leaks and stuff.” Milock answered quickly. “Stallqueen, sorry, the [Stallmaster Thief] is trying to push the agenda that the Witch played the rabbit to eat the tiger. That she baited all the dragonslayers into attacking her, knowing she’d win. That theory is spreading like crazy.”

  “Huh. Maybe something good will come out of that.”

  Clara turned away from her side-eying of Milo to stare at Ryan in confusion. “What do you mean by that?”

  “I mean everyone steering clear of the Witch Tyrant until she’s resurrected her daughter or she’s died trying.” Ryan shook his head, not quite willing to continue this topic with his friends. “Anyway–”

  He was suddenly interrupted by something being played on the TV. Outside of the silence bubble was a video of Shara and Sideark shaking hands. The Unwanted and the adventurers had managed to make it to the surface and must have been close enough to have started to hit the 24 hour streaming channels.

  “Hey Milock can you turn off the silence bubble? I want to listen to this.”

  “Wait gimme a sec.” Milock started fiddling with his ring. “I can make it so that sounds come in but can’t come out.”

  Ryan blinked at the sophistication from the ring gifted by the Secretary but then shook his head. It wasn’t like he was sharing earth-shattering details anyway.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  The TV that had been streaming constant reruns of the semifinals had changed with breaking news. Someone doing a voiceover and a flyby with a drone, showing thousands of Unwanted, climbing out of the Cataclysm Abyss, setting up a camp near the Fourth Trial outpost. The group being led by both adventurers and Shara.

  Then a different video played.

  One of Sideark and Xxshareshvil shaking hands, then her turning to the camera and giving a slight nod of her head.

  “My name is Xxshareshvil, but you can call me Shara. We are the Unwanted. Elves that have adapted to the blighted mana of our ruined world. We come in peace and thank the adventurers and Tar’el the Leafstalker for seeing us as people and helping escort us out of the darkness.”

  She pointed towards a certain young Leafstalker that suddenly looked embarrassed to be on camera. Probably more than a little guilty that he was taking a lot of the credit.

  Clara went out of the bubble, grabbed a remote then went back into the bubble. She found out moments later that radio waves didn’t extend out of the bubble so she had to lean out to pause it.

  “Sorry, she calls herself Shara?”

  Ryan had kept Shara’s name distinctly out of the story for this moment. He grinned. “Yeah, that was my nickname for her and it stuck around. ”

  Clara threw the remote at Ryan’s head. “You named that after me?!”

  Ryan caught the remote then placed it on the table. “Hey, Shara’s a sweet girl. I mean, I didn’t know that when I named her after you, but you know, she’s cool.”

  Clara crossed her arms and snapped her head away from Ryan. In her defence, the Unwanted really did look like terrifying monsters. Even now, despite Shara wearing some decent clothing for the camera, she still looked like something out of a horror movie. Milock just nudged Ryan in the arm.

  “Clara’s surprisingly shallow huh?”

  The insulted girl immediately looked around for another object to throw. She laser focused on Barry’s teacup as Ryan put his hands up, trying to play peacemaker.

  “Alright, alright. Does it make you feel better that she used to be the princess of her people and is now basically the queen? she’s going to be the queen elf leading her people out of the darkness.”

  Clara huffed, crossed her arms, then thought about it. Then uncrossed her arms and stared at the bowing Shara on video.

  “I guess she’s kinda cute in a really fucked up way.”

  Ryan turned to Milock. “Yup, shallow.”

  Clara reached over to try to strangle Ryan as he laughed at her. Barry was obviously suppressing a smile as the orc reached over for the remote in front of Ryan. He stepped outside the bubble and pressed play, continuing the stream.

  There was a supercut into an action scene. One where Sideark was in the front, battling a horde of rushing monsters. Ryan blinked. The fight was several times more brutal than he had expected. Sideark’s dull metal weapon broke on a Bullipede’s chitin, so the adventurer smashed his fist into the insect’s skull, then ripped apart the large insect mandibles.

  When those broke, he ripped the metal off the walls and started using that to batter away at the rushing monsters.

  Sideark started waning after thirty seconds into the video. “Switch!”

  The streamer suddenly rotated with another adventurer, a [Rogue] that had been recording swapped places with him as Sideark stepped back, now holding the camera in selfie mode. The bloody, heroic adventurer was grinning at the camera, panning back towards the group of Unwanted that he was protecting.

  The tunnels shook around them. The older Unwanted were holding up the walls, making sure it didn’t collapse. The children were huddling closer to their parents, their big bulging eyes looking up at the video.

  “We are only two of the great Eternal Delvers group, there are others of us that heeded the call and are leading the other groups. Ahead is Tar’el, a brave leafstalker holding up the front. We were called, and here we stand! Eternal Delvers and Leafstalker alike, fighting to protect the Realmers!”

  If Ryan was being cynical, then he would say that the horde wasn’t that bad, they clearly had enough capacity to swap between cooldowns while making a heroic recording. On the other hand…

  Ryan clapped.

  “Perfectly done.”

  For the Unwanted, this video was pretty much as perfect as you could get. An immediate attention grabbing brutal combat into a quick turnaround to show the Unwanted as nothing but a scared people. Children hugging their parents, terrified of the crumbling tunnels around them. Adventurers fighting and leading the way, dragging them out of a dark world that tried to keep them down.

  This video was only one minute. The perfect amount of time for a short video that every doomscroller would end up watching.

  All three of the people sitting were watching him. Ryan turned to the table and frowned.

  “What?”

  Clara started. “That looked a lot worse than what you said Ryan. Was the video part of your plan?”

  “Uh, I mean I expected the greedy heroism part from Sideark and the Eternal Delvers, but I didn’t expect his video to be that good. I also didn’t the fighting to be that bad. I think… I think I would have done things differently if I had known.”

  “And how were you supposed to know the fighting would be that bad?”

  “I… I don’t know? Maybe I should have asked Shara about the density of monsters in the Abyss?”

  Barry shook his head. “You’re doing it again. It’s bad form to look at things with absolute hindsight. What was the rest of your plan with the Unwanted? You said you gave them advice on how to approach the rest of the world.”

  “Well after that video, the rest is simple. They have to be careful not to go near System portals. I told Shara to quarantine themselves at the outpost near the Fourth Trial instead of going to Gravenmarch. The excuse for now is that they want to slowly adapt to the culture of The Realm. Staying close to the entrance of the Fifth Trial also lets them keep a constant media presence when the hype starts to die down.”

  Clara raised an eyebrow. “But you didn’t know about the portal thing until the end right? You said that this wasn’t your original plan?”

  “Yeah. The original plan was to play both Earth and The Realm for sympathy. Show how rough their life had been and let Earthers think The Realm isn’t such a great place. Then Realmers would automatically get defensive. Then they’ll be forced to band together to protect the Unwanted, just to spite Earthers online.”

  Now Ryan was getting excited, things

  “They can still do it, of course. It’s just a little harder now that the quarantine location had to be changed from Gravenmarch. Either way, give them some clothes and a big sign that says ‘Please don’t kill us Unwanted. There are children here.’ and everyone’s going to love them sooner or later.”

  “Ryan, are you listening to yourself?”

  “I know it sounds like a longshot with how they look but trust me–”

  Ryan was interrupted by Clara threw up her hands in exasperation, she turned to Barry.

  The orc did not sigh this time. He just looked Ryan straight in the eyes.

  “Listen up, because it seems you need to hear this and get it in your thick skull.” Barry the eighth realm ex-[Berserker] took a deep breath. “Good work adventurer. I don’t think anyone else could have done better in your situation.”

  Ryan blinked for a couple seconds. He stood up silently, then walked out and pocketed his phone. Ryan reentered the silence bubble.

  “Huh. Could you repeat that?”

  The orc didn’t miss the phone. “Hmph, no.”

  “Damn, I guess you’re a little smarter than Rax.”

  –

  They continued to sit and discuss while Ryan explained his encounter with the vault. Milock shook his head and called him an idiot while Clara told him she was proud of him. Barry didn’t say anything other than tell him he should have taken more time to see if there was anything actually useful for him.

  Which was fair.

  The discussion continued to One-Eyed Rick, and Ryan told them of his dilemma.

  “On one hand, it’s the cherry on the top. The Witch leaving a damned final trap. After the entire trap that was Sector Four.”

  Milock frowned. “I don’t see it.”

  “I accept the deal and then let Rick free to roam around in The Realm. I don’t accept it and I lose a huge opportunity to get stronger.”

  It wasn’t guaranteed or even likely that Ryan would be stronger with a self-evolved fifth realm mana core. He just had a feeling part of the reason why he could so easily call upon the concepts of the [Aura Tyrant] was because the class suited him he had advanced.

  Clara asked an obvious question, though not at Ryan, it was directed at Barry. “Is Rick really that bad?”

  Ryan was just dumbfounded at the question. “Clara, Rick’s killed thousands of people.”

  “They say that Artigan is a horrible person too.”

  “Point taken.” Now it was Ryan’s turn to look at Barry. The orc had mentioned he’d met Rick before and he did seem to be a good judge of people.

  “It was a different time back then.”

  “That’s what every Settler says.” Ryan groaned.

  Barry glared. “I know. But it really was different. Back then, the only thing we were sure of is that we had to get stronger before the other side did and wiped us out. Do I believe Rick would kill thousands in pursuit of power? Yes. Was getting stronger at any cost considered a sane decision? Yes.”

  Ryan understood the point that Barry was making. He just didn't like it.

  “I just feel dirty accepting this deal. After everything I've done and the Witch Tyrant puts this decision here just to mock me.”

  “Well, I don’t think it’s that big of a deal. Didn’t you say he’s only in the tenth realm? The big problem is the Witch Tyrant. You need to get stronger to stop her.”

  “Milo, that’s not the point.”

  His friend just shrugged. “You’ve come this far defying the Witch Tyrant. I’m sure you’ll figure something out.”

  "Huh."

  Sometimes all that was needed was a nudge in the right direction. Ryan blinked. How could he have been so stupid? There was always more than one solution to a Trial like this.

  "Thanks Milo."

  Clara nudged Barry.

  “Saw that lightbulb moment?”

  The orc just nodded.

  –

  The banter lasted for a few more minutes. When the showed up to give their uneducated thoughts on the Unwanted elf situation, Ryan stood up.

  “Well, I might as well get going.”

  Clara elbowed Barry, hard. Or at least, as hard as she could.

  The orc glared at her. “He has enough on his plate already.”

  “” Clara mocked, trying to look down at Barry. “Is that what you thought when you kept your secret deal with the Witch from Seffara?”

  Now that was some unusually blatant hostility from Clara. Bringing up Barry’s past wasn’t banter, that crossed a line.

  Ryan frowned. “What’s going on guys?”

  Clara glared at the unrepentant orc that had his arms crossed. Clara had her hands on her hips.

  “What did you say about lesson three? Trust team members with everything?”

  Barry finally grunted then stared up at Ryan. “Fine. Something’s wrong with Seffara.”

  If there were words to send shivers down his spine. Ryan had thought Seffara was just busy. It had been a miracle that such a famous adventurer had so much free time to mess around with him already.

  “

  “. She’s fine, alive and with her husband in The Realm. But she should have returned to Earth by now. We had a video call and she’s telling me she’s fine. The thing is, she doesn’t do that unless she’s pissed off about something.”

  Ryan let out a breath and drew back his aura, a little embarrassed he had let it happen. It wasn't that hard to control his aura. This wasn’t The Realm where he had to wrestle with an unruly fear based Epic. Then he took a second to digest Barry's words properly.

  “So, what? She’s being kept prisoner by the Witch Tyrant?”

  The orc saw Ryan’s steeled expression and shook his head. “If I had to guess, Seffara tried to do something during your confrontation with the Witch Tyrant and got caught. Though I don’t think the Witch Tyrant would go back on her deals.”

  “I said she’s different now, Barry.”

  “Different enough to break two direct deals? As a [Witch]?”

  Touching Seffara violated both Barry’s and Ryan’s deals with her. No matter what, it wasn’t a move Ryan expected from someone with a [Witch] class.

  Ryan hesitated. “That’s why I said it might have been a mistake to break all her mental threads. Anyway, it’s fine. I can just ask her myself.”

  “Wait–” Barry started.

  But Ryan just turned to Clara. “I probably won’t be back until the Highest Trial gets completed. Tell my parents I’m sorry I was careless.”

  “Wait–”

  Now both Clara and Barry were telling him to wait.

  [Return to The Realm]

  Ryan’s upper torso fell forward, his head slamming into the table in front of him.

  Barry glared at Clara. “I told you not to tell him.”

  Clara just glared at Ryan’s unconscious body. “Yeah, we are so drawing dicks on his face this time.”

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