They'd been traveling down the barren yellow hallway for hours at this point, and Nathan had just about had it.

  He'd had been looking for a chance to talk to everybody with Chad's stream muted, but that had yet to happen. He'd also considered using Dither to tell them all to slow the hell down, but he was worried that Chad's camera would catch the text on the system window.

  That would be bad.

  Nathan was glad for the three-hour stretch, though. It wouldn't be long before he would hopefully be able to convince everybody that they should take a break and get some sleep.

  Although, come to think of it, his sleep schedule had been completely screwed due to the lack of natural sunlight. He suspected it was the same for everybody else, so maybe they might just end up saying that they should keep going straight on until they finished the dungeon.

  He reached his hand up and touched his own shoulder. "Hey, are you awake?"

  The flower, well hidden by his clothes, stretched against his sleeve.

  "I am," Lily said. "I don't think I even rest like all of you do."

  "Oh. I guess that makes sense." Nathan shook his head. "I almost forgot that you're a plant."

  "Only you can forget that one of your party members is a walking and talking plant," Lily said.

  "That feels like an insult, but I'm not going to comment on it." Nathan's tone dropped and he said his next few words in a whisper. "I forgot to ask—how did things go with Mara?"

  "Good." She was quiet, and he could feel her roots retract back into his body, like she was trying to hide. "But she gave me a lot to think about."

  "Like what?"

  "Like… what exactly am I, Nathan?"

  "You said it yourself, right? You're a walking, talking plant."

  "Yes, that's one aspect of who I am. But I'm more thinking… do I have a family, Nathan? Are you my father? My brother? My creator?"

  "Uh…"

  "I was created by accident, wasn't I? I believe you mentioned that to me at some point. So what exactly is my purpose? Why am I here?"

  Nathan hadn't been expecting to deal with a plant existential crisis at three o'clock in the morning or whatever time it was.

  "Did Mara really ask you something like that?" Nathan asked. He really couldn't see Mara as the type to suddenly cause Lily to start questioning her existence.

  "I don't think it was on purpose. We were just talking when the conversation somehow got around to what I plan to do after we're free. Mara said that she's trying to decide, but she's thinking that she's going to run a gun store."

  "Yeah, that checks out." Nathan rubbed his palms against his face. "I'm gonna be honest, Lily. I don't think anybody can really answer that for you. You have to decide those things for yourself."

  He could practically feel Lily droop against his shoulder. "Oh, I understand…"

  "—With that said, I can still give you a little bit of help."

  She perked up. "Really?"

  The problem with trying to give advice in this matter was that Nathan really wasn't much better off. He'd kind-of-sort-of-ish found a purpose at the current moment. But that was gone as soon as they escaped the Nine Circles.

  Even so, he played enough video games and read enough books to have a rough idea of what he should say.

  "I think I'd start by thinking about what I value most in the world," Nathan said. "Like, make a list or something."

  "Well, there's you," she said. "And then everything else."

  "… That's a good start, but we can probably expand on that a little bit."

  She shifted around.

  "Mara can come in second," she said.

  "Okay, progress." Nathan scratched his chin. "You don't have any hobbies, right?"

  "What's a hobby?"

  "Oh boy." Nathan struggled for the words. "It's like… things you do when you have free time. Like reading or writing or playing music or gardening."

  "Gardening is that thing where humans make new life, yes?"

  It was then that Nathan realized that from the perspective of Lily, everybody who was gardening was a god creating brand-new creatures with some vague sense of sentience. What a wonderful thought.

  "Yes," Nathan said.

  "I've tried that," Lily said. "I took some seeds and poured a little bit of my energy into them. They took root and came to life."

  "Did you enjoy doing that?"

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  "Not really."

  Not helpful, Lily.

  He sighed. "Do you think there's anything that you've seen us do that you would like to learn how to do?"

  She hummed to herself several times in different intonations.

  "That thing that the talkity one does—where he speaks to ghost people. What is that called?"

  Talkity one?

  Wait, did she mean Chad?

  "You mean… streaming?"

  She made a small gasp. "Yes, streaming! It seems like such a strange thing to do. I understand that other people can watch him—I've seen people observe him while he's doing his 'streaming.' But why does he use this opportunity to discuss food preferences?"

  "Is that a thing Chad does?"

  "I like to watch him when he's in his house."

  "Wait, what?"

  "He always seems to have so much fun, but I don't understand it! And what's with the strange symbols that appear on the window that he keeps on looking at?"

  "Those are letters. You use them to read. But can we talk about the fact that you're apparently spying on my friends—"

  "Reading?"

  "It's a way of communicating. Again, can we go back to the part where you mentioned that you've been committing espionage—"

  "Nathan." Her voice had dropped to a deadly serious, frozen tone.

  "… Yes?"

  "Can you teach me how to read?"

  "… Sure."

  When they finally came to a stop and set up camp, Chad was still talking into his camera. Nathan was amazed at the man's endurance. The entire time that they had been walking, Chad hadn’t let up once, jumping from topic to topic with the same ease he used to wield his sword.

  When Nathan woke up, he sent a quick message to Gius back in his soulbound town.

  The message he got back was exactly what he was looking for.

  Fifty million people had funneled into the various soulbound towns of the sixth circle. There were only one hundred fifty million left.

  Only one hundred fifty million.

  Only.

  Not too much.

  Nonetheless, the point was clear. He just had to maintain the fiction a little bit longer and then they would be ready to finally teleport down to the next circle without any losses.

  There was only one thing that was concerning him.

  He put away his sleeping bag into his inventory, his mind whirring with the thought.

  Or rather, circling around it in a rough approximation of thinking.

  A certain individual who he hadn't seen in quite some time. He’d encountered her twice, then she had seemingly vanished off the face of the Nine Circles.

  And that made Nathan nervous because if she wasn't harassing him…

  What was she doing?

  "Nathan, are you almost packed up?" Chad said. "We're just waiting on you."

  Nathan put a stray blanket into his inventory, then turned and nodded at Chad. "Yeah, I'm ready."

  Nathan's footsteps crunched against the yellow brick floor. Step after step, he continued on. Emi had dark circles under her eyes and a tight frown on her face. Bjorn looked significantly better. Then again, Nathan was pretty sure he had never seen more than a small frown or an absolutely minuscule smile from the orc.

  “And that's how I almost caused an international incident in Monaco,” Chad said.

  There was the slightest lull to his words that indicated Chad wasn't quite as peppy as he seemed.

  Nathan frowned. Why were Chad and Emi looking so awful?

  Then again, they'd only had around four hours of sleep.

  Yeah, that would do it.

  Nathan looked at the bricks up above. The magic glowing bricks that provided illumination.

  He still wasn't used to it.

  Last night, it had been difficult for Nathan to sleep due to the way it felt like the sun was right against his eyelids. Nathan guessed that they'd been sleeping in the soulbound towns up till now and hadn't had to deal with the practical challenges of trying to go to bed on the Sixth Circle.

  The way Nathan had gotten around it, himself, was by wearing a strip of cloth around his head, but even that hadn't been enough to block out all the light.

  Nathan bumped against Emi and widened his eyes. He looked over at her and gave an awkward smile. “Sorry about that.”

  “It's fine." She yawned into her hand. “We're all out of it, aren't we?”

  No kidding.

  She glanced around from left to right. “How did you bump into me? We were standing several feet apart.”

  Nathan furrowed his eyebrows together. She was right. They had all been standing a pretty decent distance apart. And now they were all together, like fish in a can.

  He looked back, then ahead.

  “The hallway's tapering,” he said.

  Chad perked up and glanced back at Nathan. “You said it's tapering?”

  “Yeah, that's why we're all squeezed together like this,” Nathan said.

  Emi chewed her lips. “If it keeps on tapering, then we won't be able to move forward.”

  Oh no, Nathan thought. That would be so terrible. Damn. More time to get more people into the Soulbound Towns.

  “There's nothing for it,” Nathan said. “If we come to that point, then we'll just have to figure it out. Let's keep going.”

  The group continued to move. They were eventually forced to go single file. Then they had to turn on their sides in order to make further progress. It eventually got to the point where Chad was breaking through the brick using raw strength to squeeze through.

  After about ten minutes of this, Chad yelled out, “I think I see sunlight!”

  Bjorn made a gargling noise that Nathan was unable to understand.

  His lungs are probably being squished like a grape, Nathan thought.

  “How far away is it?” Emi said, her voice strained.

  There was a pause. Nathan couldn't see what expression Chad was making due to the fact that there were two other bodies between them.

  “Like, not too far.”

  Nathan awkwardly adjusted his head to try to get a better angle to speak to Chad. “How far is not too far?”

  “You know, a mile.”

  Total silence.

  “You know, Chad,” Nathan said, “I would consider a mile to be pretty far.”

  “Oh.” Chad paused. “I mean, it's all a matter of perspective, isn't it?”

  Nathan was going to strangle this man.

  For the next hour, progress was made inch by inch. The light came in view and Nathan felt a rush of relief.

  “What does it look like?” Nathan asked.

  “Uh, I don't think you're gonna believe this.”

  “Believe what?”

  “It's better if you just see.”

  There was a shifting noise and a plop.

  “Oh my gosh, this is so much better,” Chad said.

  Emi was the next one. When she came out, she groaned and there was some kind of cracking noise. “I think that I've caused permanent damage to my back.”

  Bjorn came out and dropped to his knees. He wheezed against the ground. "I saw my life flash before my eyes!"

  Nathan slithered through. He was so focused on getting through the final obstacle that he didn't even look ahead to see what was on the other side.

  He forced his way out, and when he did, he stared in a circle at everybody else.

  “Good job, team.” Nathan looked over at Chad. “So what exactly is this weird thing you want to show me?”

  Chad pointed behind himself and stepped to the side.

  Nathan's jaw dropped.

  Desks. Desks as far as the eye could see in every single direction. And every single one had a brick seated in an office chair. All of them were moving, and there was the faint sound of talking. None of it pointed in their direction, but...

  “The bricks are talking,” Nathan said.

  “Yes.”

  “Chad, the bricks are talking.”

  “Yes.”

  “Chad, why are the bricks talking?!”