“Ralph, do you have any idea what's going on?” I asked, a pang of fear hitting me. The moment Ash selected her class, her eyes had rolled to the back of her head as she collapsed limply into her chair.

  “I believe she's fine. She did just become the acolyte of a god that doesn't normally take them, so she is likely interacting with him in his realm. I wonder if she did that before, the last time she was asleep, and she just wasn't able to remember it,” Ralph replied, stroking his beard calmly.

  “What makes you so sure of that?” It wasn't as though I fully doubted the man, but she was my daughter, and this last week had amplified my worries about her through the roof. Even if this was the best shot she had at beating cancer, it still tugged at my fatherly instincts constantly. How do you send your sick daughter into a fight?

  It wasn't like anyone ever truly understood what a System integration truly meant, so even if I was giving her the best leg up on understanding I could, there was still so much that I knew I couldn't properly impart. There was so much I was going to have to let her learn on her own. So many things that would have to be done the hard way, the painful way, the long, grueling, unforgiving way.

  “The energy connection that I saw between her previously has grown quite a bit stronger. It's also fluctuating, interestingly, in a way, I would generally attach more to dimensional travel than I would dreaming. I can't say any of this with complete certainty, of course, but I think Ash is going to be better this way than she was before.” His words came with a very large smile. That likely meant there was more certainty than he was willing to say.

  “Adam, my family is going to work on cleaning up the remains of the spiders and seeing what they can do with the parts. Is that okay with you?” Lukiss asked, interrupting the conversation.

  Before I could reply, he noticed Ash, unconscious in her chair. “Wait, is she okay? What happened?”

  “She's healing from her own class choice. She should be fine. Be very careful if you are going to collect the spider parts. There is some potent venom in them. I don't want anyone to get hurt.” I switched topics immediately, trying to distract from Ash's current situation. I didn't need a million questions about what was going on with her.

  Especially because I wished I knew exactly what was going on with her.

  “My dad took a class that lets him make things from monster parts. He thinks he can do something pretty useful, with what remains of the spiders and some of the leftover pieces from the other dead things,” Lukiss said nervously.

  “Ah, okay, I understand then. If it helps, the other things were minor acid slugs. We killed them when we first returned to the houses. Do you know exactly what the name of his class is?” I asked, not expecting a good answer.

  “All I can give you right now is the direct translation, which is ‘Monster Part Stewer’. If there's some way to put that better in your language, I'm not able to do that yet.”

  “It's alright. Your class will get better the more you practice at it. Just keep it up. We'll probably need your help more than you'd expect in the coming days and weeks. Translating language is a critical asset in times like these,” I said reassuringly.

  “Thank you.” I watched him walk back to his parents, saying words I couldn't understand. The smile and the nod from his father were enough, though.

  “I think you know what you need to do now, Adam.” Ralph gave me a stern look as he said this.

  I sighed slightly, suspecting just what the man was going to say. “And what's that, Ralph?”

  “It's time for you to relax, to recover. You almost died in that fight. You might have one of the strongest weapons on the planet, but your body isn't quite able to handle it yet. I have a pretty good feeling that whatever class you just picked, it's going to take some time for you to get used to, isn't it?”

  The fact that the man wasn't wrong was almost more frustrating than if he had been.

  “Probably, yes. I could also use some time to commune a bit more with the runic blade.” I looked in the man's eyes as I asked the next question. “Ralph, how much can I trust you, really?”

  Obviously, if the answer was very little, he was going to lie, but we thought it was worth asking anyway. I wanted to discuss something with him, and before I did that, I at least wanted his answer here.

  “Hard to say. I have no intention of betraying you, but at the same time, I'm bending a lot of rules to be here. I don't know what will actually happen if the System gets annoyed with that.” It was one of the only times so far I had heard the man speak without at least a bit of humor in his voice.

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  “Has an observer done this before?” Just because I, personally, didn't know of any who had, didn't mean they hadn't. I had met some before, of course, but none who had gotten so directly involved.

  “Probably. Rules rarely come into existence without someone being the reason for them. The problem is, I'm sure you know this already, the System does love to reward you for pushing just right against where those rules are, but it can get very annoyed if you push past them.” He was right. The System rewarded exploits, and punished direct breaking of its rules.

  “Fair enough. Since we're already talking about it, the class the System gave me directly references me in it. How often do things go well for people once the System starts caring about them to that level?” I had never heard anything good, but that again didn't mean it hadn't happened.

  Ralph laughed. “You didn't expect that? Come on, Adam. How many people do you know who actually leave System space?”

  I actually hadn't considered that. I still didn't believe that any of this was happening because I was here. At least I hoped it wasn't. I was just someone unexpectedly caught up in another integration. That was the logic I was going to go with, even if I wasn't entirely sure it was true.

  “I haven't had a lot of time to give it much thought, but you also sidestepped the actual question. For everything I have done before this, I had basically always avoided having any sort of personal relationship with the System. And while I've heard of people who have had more direct interactions with it, I've never heard of it going well. In fact, from what I usually know, that's the first step towards a life of maddening philosophy.”

  “How many heads of System-level factions have you ever met?” Ralph asked.

  “A few, but not for very long. My brother and I never had a chance to grow large enough for those sorts of interactions.”

  “Yeah, that's kind of what I thought. There is a breakthrough point that most people on the Systems path encounter where things start to become much more personalized. Now, yes, there are those who get involved with the System earlier for whatever reasons, and they tend to give a bad impression to everyone else. But also, most people aren't going to be discussing their personal quests or classes or messages from the System because that gives away far more information than they would like to their enemies.”

  “So you're saying, as powerful as I was before, there are still tons of things I know basically nothing about?” I wasn't entirely surprised by that. But at the same time, it was interesting to hear it laid out so plainly.

  What Alecks and I had managed to build in our short time, while impressive to us and other people who held factions that were around the same size, had nothing on the true galactic powers. When we had finally drawn the attention of a faction of that size, that was the beginning of the end.

  “Adam, I'm an observer, and there are infinite things that I know nothing about. Honestly, whatever is going on here, when I say it's interesting, that's because I don't fully grasp what's happening. This could be a cosmic fluke. The System is finally just catching up to your hiding place. Or the System has decided you need to be back within System-space for whatever reason.” Ralph finished his small speech with a large shrug.

  “How do I protect her if I don't understand what's happening?” I knew he wouldn't have an answer, but that had been the real question plaguing my mind through all of this. It wasn't the only worry, of course. It was the rest of our family we had to find, but Ash was the sick one.

  “Same way as every father, I imagine.”

  “Thanks,” I said, considering the words. Ralph was correct with that simple sentence. No one knew what the future brought. Everyone just did their best every day to be prepared for as much as they could.

  And I had a couple of ways I could work towards that. But at the moment, I really did need to spend some time healing before truly getting worse. Leaning back into the lawn chair, I spotted that last System message I had received today still floating in my view.

  __________

  2/10 Recaptures Unlocked for Lost Hero Progression.

  __________

  After some much-needed rest, I’d determine just what counted for a Recapture. I’d never heard of a class ability quite like this, and wasn't even sure how it was going to progress, or just how fast any of my old abilities would come back. The poison resistances had likely only happened because of how near to death I had come.

  I knew one thing for sure, though. Ralph had been right. This was all going to be very interesting.

  “I liked Grimbleflork. Pretty sure without him, a lot of the shopkeepers would have ripped us off.” Adam said, once they had been transported back to their cave.

  “I agree. He was a nice guy. I'm glad we met him. I'm also glad we found Ulrun. I really wish we could have just gone with them, though. I'm a little worried about trying to find our way back to the village, Eighdum,” Alecks replied with a very loud sigh as he slumped against the cave wall.

  “Me too, but we have to do it. We can't just stay out here alone forever, Alecks. The monsters keep getting bigger, and we're going to need help eventually,” Eighdum replied.

  “I know, I know, and we're going to go. Don't worry about that. I'm just tired, Eighdum. I miss our family. I miss Mom and Dad, and I hate everything our lives have become. It's not fair.”

  Well, this wasn't the first time Adam's brother had voiced some of these words. It was the first time he had looked as forlorn as he did then. Adam was reasonably sure meeting the blacksmith had finally pushed him over the edge.

  Neither of them said much else to each other the rest of that day or night. But the next morning, both of them set out back to the village without the slightest debate. Alecks had looked a little better by the next morning, but that worry was still etched deeply into his face.

  That distraction had been exactly how the scorpion managed to surprise them.

  Memories of Adam Miller before he found Earth