Nathan and Chad spent the next 30 minutes trying to see the limits of [Astral Fishing]. At first they attempted different food items. The only ones Nathan could summon were McDonald’s food products for some reason. When they switched over to weapons, it only went up to D-rank. And of course, it was limited by Nathan’s imagination. Any attempt to summon an dimensional raygun resulted in a random sword.

  When Mara and Lily came back, they were met with the sight of a small pile of french fries, a halberd, a Saga Dreamcast, and two rolls of toilet paper.

  Mara walked over to the toilet paper, leaned down, and put the rolls into her inventory without a single word. She glanced over at Nathan, who had his eyes locked forward on the air in front of him and his fishing rod out.

  “I’m gonna take a wild guess and assume that this was you?” Mara asked.

  Chad made a loud shushing noise and glared daggers at Mara. “Don’t break his concentration. He’s trying to get the Holy Grail.”

  “Like, the actual Holy Grail?”

  “No, you fool,” Chad hissed. “A Whopper!”

  Mara squinted her eyes. “Why?”

  “Because I’ve been craving Burger King ever since we came to this place, and this is my one and only chance. So don’t ruin it for me!”

  Nathan jerked up. “I’ve got something!”

  Nathan reeled it in, and an aluminum packet revealed itself, hooked on the end of Nathan’s fishing pole. He deposited it to his side and Chad eagerly tore it off the hook. He took a sniff, then his face set into a look of despair.

  “This is Mexican seasoning,” he muttered. “I don’t know what it is, but it isn’t Burger King.”

  He unwrapped it, revealing a Doritos shell with ground beef and lettuce on the inside.

  He threw it to the ground and sneered at it. “The one time it’s not McDonald’s, and it ends up being Taco Bell!”

  Nathan looked over at him. “What’s wrong with Taco Bell?”

  Chad scoffed. “Other than the fact that it should be legally classified as a level V chemical hazard, I guess nothing.”

  Mara, who’d been trying to keep up with what’d been happening, looked between the now-spilled taco and Nathan. “You can summon stuff now?”

  Nathan waved her off. “Something like that. I basically focus on the loot I want and it looks like I can get it. Though there are some weird limitations.”

  “Like the fact that you apparently can’t summon anything except McDonald’s?”

  “It even followed us into the apocalypse,” Nathan said. “You gotta give the franchise some credit. That’s real dedication.”

  “That seems really arbitrary,” Mara scratched her head. “And kind of stupid.”

  “You just described all my abilities. In a nutshell.”

  After he said that, Nathan looked at the massive pile of French fries. “Someone should probably put that away.”

  Chad stepped over to it, his hands outstretched. “Don’t worry, I’ve got it.”

  Nathan looked over at Lily, who up to this point had been off toward the back of the group. He walked over to her and held out his hand. Her vines reached out and wrapped around his fingers, and she crept up to his shoulder.

  “Anything interesting happen?”

  There was a beat of silence.

  “Nothing," she said.

  He glanced back at Mara and noticed that she was staring at Lily.

  Okay, so something definitely happened.

  Even someone like Nathan could pick up on those sorts of things. He took a few steps toward the group, then stopped.

  “I’ll be heading back," he said. "Feeling kind of tired after all of those burgers.”

  There were a few faint goodbyes from Chad and Mara. They were too busy inspecting the massive pile of loot that Nathan had created.

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  Nathan’s footsteps clicked through the empty yellow hallways.

  “So,” he said. “Want to tell me what actually happened?”

  Lily squirmed from her position on his shoulder. “Do I have to?”

  “It might make you feel better.”

  There were a few more seconds of silence before she spoke.

  “Mara wanted to talk with me about something.”

  “Oh?”

  “We had a fight.”

  Nathan wondered if this was the first time that Lily had ever had a fight with someone. Well, the nonviolent, emotional kind, which was what he was pretty sure this was.

  “What was the fight about?” he asked.

  “You don’t want to know.”

  Now Nathan was really intrigued.

  “Why don’t I want to know?”

  “Because it has to do with you.”

  And now Nathan was not intrigued in the slightest.

  “Okay,” he said.

  “The thing is—” she continued as if Nathan hadn’t expressed total disinterest in the topic “—she saw how attached I am to you and she wanted to know why. And the more we talked, the more she said that I needed to break out of my shell and make friends with other people.”

  Nathan was not at all interested in this, knowing it had something to do with him and how he was a total screwup as a plant dad.

  “I see,” he said.

  “So I told her that she had no idea what she was talking about and that she should leave me alone. But then she kept on talking and trying to tell me why I was wrong.”

  When did Mara take points in emotional sensitivity? Seriously, what on earth?

  “I was so angry at her,” Lily said. “But I think deep down, she was right. Maybe it was a little bit weird how she kept on comparing family to ammunition in a magazine, but her intentions were good.”

  “Yeah,” Nathan said.

  “I need to apologize to her.” Lily’s tone dropped. “You’re absolutely right. There’s no excuse for how I acted.”

  “Definitely,” Nathan said.

  “But how? How do I build up the courage to do that?”

  “I think that you—”

  “I just need to do it. I just need to go up to her and apologize. I’ll be right back.”

  Lily unraveled from his shoulder and inched her way down to his arm. She detached and dropped to the ground with a thud. Her roots burrowed into the brick and she vanished underneath the flooring.

  Nathan had no idea what exactly he’d done, but he got the feeling that he was somehow important in all this.

  He took a step to follow in her direction, curious about what it was they would say to each other, when he was suddenly hit with a wave of exhaustion. He stumbled over to the wall and gripped it to support himself. He found his knees collapsing, and he slid down the side onto his rear.

  When his eyes opened, he was sitting on the seaside.

  "I'm guessing that you have some questions for me."

  Nathan looked over to his right. Thalassa was behind the table with multiple cups set up in a triangle formation. There was a small ping-pong ball in a forward cup, and it immediately struck Nathan that he was watching the goddess of the sea play a game of beer pong.

  "What are you doing?" Nathan asked.

  "I saw this game in your activities—though you'd never really played that often. Also you were alone, which I feel isn't the optimal way of playing this game."

  "My college years were full of joy and fun," Nathan said. "Now, can you explain why you pulled me in here?"

  She threw a ping-pong ball, and it landed with a plop in the next cup over. "I was listening in on your conversation. You know just as well as I do that I'm the only one who can provide you with the source of answers you're looking for."

  Nathan inclined his head in a sort of nod. "Fair point. Mind if we just cut to the chase?"

  "Speak."

  "Why is my body starting to break down into pieces?"

  "Like all things, it has to do with the swirling orb of divine power that's currently melting your body from the inside out."

  Nathan slapped his palm into his forehead. "I knew it. Somehow I knew it from the very start."

  Thalassa waved him off. "It's not that bad. It's just that your mortal shell isn't strong enough to contain the divine essence flowing through your blood."

  "So what's the fix?"

  "You need to upgrade to the next rank of human, although in your case the system probably won't even register you as a human anymore."

  "What about the whole thing where if I do that I'm going to turn into a puddle of water?"

  "You've been making steady progress on that front. I am fully confident that once you finally make the leap, you should be able to hold together a human shell." She paused, and her tone dropped to a low mutter. "Probably."

  Nathan grimaced. "I heard that last part."

  "Anyway!" Thalassa said. "If that's all, I really should send you back to your body—"

  Nathan held up his hand. "Wait. We're not done."

  Thalassa froze. "What? Is there something else you need to know?"

  Nathan opened his mouth, then shut it.

  For a while, he'd been feeling a little bit guilty about how he'd forced answers out of Thalassa's mouth regarding her son.

  He slapped both palms against his cheeks. Come on, if Lily can apologize, you can do it too.

  Thalassa startled back, her eyebrows raised in alarm. "Nathan? What are you doing—?"

  "I'm sorry about your son," Nathan said. "I'm sorry about how insensitive I was."

  He dropped into a stiff bow. Even as he did so, he knew he was being ridiculously overdramatic and probably assigning guilt where there was no need to assign guilt. But something inside him just felt uncomfortable with leaving things where they had been.

  Thalassa coughed into her fist. "Please don't do that."

  Nathan unbowed and scratched the back of his neck. "I know, overkill."

  She remained quiet for a few seconds before she opened her mouth and shut it a few times.

  "Nathan, I have a rather unreasonable request to make of you," she said.

  Nathan's stomach twisted into a knot. Anytime she asked something of him, he felt like it had resulted in a lot of annoyance on his end.

  "Sure, what do you need?" he said, without even thinking about it.

  Curse my lips.

  "You managed to recover your family member. You managed to save the one dear to you," Thalassa said. "Now I need your help to do the same for my family."

  Nathan chuckled, the noise like that of a pained coyote. "Wait, you don't mean—?"

  "Nathan," she said. "I need you to save Leviathan."