The air in the campground clearing was tense. Nobody wanted to move, nobody dared to speak. Despite Melia’s overwhelming power, her instinct was to run away and hide or flee.

  No. Not despite. Her power was exactly the problem.

  She was strong. Too strong. Stupidly strong. And it scared her.

  So why wouldn’t her friends be terrified?

  She was this world’s equivalent of a tactical nuke. Minus the tactical, extra nuke.

  The moment in the clearing stretched on in painful agony. Nobody would look at her, but they seemed frozen to the spot, unable to leave. Eventually, Melia couldn’t stand it anymore and resorted to something she never considered possible for her back in her old life.

  Stress eating.

  Melia didn’t look into her [Cookbook], she didn’t query the system for the perfect-fit solution. She didn’t even retrieve the fanciest, most impressive cooking station she had available to her. Melia wasn’t concerned with impressing anybody or showing off. All she wanted, what she needed, was to feel better. Comfort food. She didn’t care if it gave her added stats or impressive buffs. She didn’t care if it was an actual [Recipe] that got a graded quality.

  She needed something sweet, tasty, filling, and dense. Her mind went back through the years to a time when she was still running around and laughing, when the news of her condition was first revealed to her.

  Understandably, she was devastated. Even her young, developing mind understood that what was happening to her was tragic. She was depressed for days, until finally her mom took her to a small, hole-in-the-wall local diner that served breakfast all day. Her mom ordered for her, uncaring about the cost or the fact that she was giving a child a literal feast. When the plates came, they were filled with the one thing that could help cheer up a sad heart.

  Thick, crisp, greasy bacon; two entire scrambled eggs; four triangles of inch-thick French toast drowned in syrup and buried in powdered sugar; and an entire plate of crispy, browned potatoes O’Brien, still sizzling from the skillet.

  Melia couldn’t remember what it tasted like, but she’d never forget how, in that moment, it cured her tears.

  She’d fallen asleep on the booth at the diner, and her mom had to carry her home.

  Her mom was gone and she didn’t have a diner, but Melia was desperate to reclaim even a fraction of that feeling. To be honest, as she pulled out a frying pan and started cooking, she wasn’t thinking of much else. She pulled out plates, utensils, ingredients, and seasonings. Bacon was first, using the leftover meat from the wild boars, and a very pleasant sizzle blanketed the clearing. Soon, the aroma began to permeate like an invasive weed, and her stomach growled loudly in anticipation.

  Hers wasn’t the only one.

  Her companions, still frozen where they sat, said nothing, but Melia wasn’t so absorbed that she forgot about them. She pulled out more meat, more plates, and began cooking in earnest.

  Her maxed-out class did more than its fair share of heavy lifting.

  Soon, the bacon was done and it was perfect. Golden brown, with just the right amount of burntness, crunchy with a satisfying, audible crunch when snapped in half or bitten into.

  Next were the potatoes. She had them quickly sliced and diced into bite-sized chunks, sprinkled with a little salt and pepper, and she even threw in some chopped-up bell peppers. Melia gave a weak smile. Maybe she’d pick them out like her mom allowed her to.

  Eggs were no less impressive than the two previous dishes. Despite being possibly the easiest way to make eggs, once scrambled, they came out in fluffy, creamy, buttery sheets.

  Melia initially thought the French toast would be the trickiest part of the meal, but the system and her skills assisted her the entire way. She pulled out several normal loaves of bread they’d bought in Eastshire, sliced them into hearty portions, and dredged them in a bowl of milk and eggs. She tossed them into the buttered skillet and let them cook.

  As each side was completed, she dished a portion out onto every plate. She didn’t play favorites and she didn’t bother to make any particular plate bigger or smaller. She simply wanted there to be “enough” for everyone, and if they had leftovers…who was she kidding? She’d eat them.

  Melia put the first helping of toast onto a plate, buried it in powdered sugar, and drowned it in syrup. Without looking up, she pushed it a little further away from herself. As she turned back to the skillet to prepare the next batch, she heard a scraping, a tinkle of cutlery, and a small smile broke out over her face. She didn’t look up to see who it was.

  Even when she doled out five full servings, she kept her head down and focused on eating her fill. It was woefully inadequate, but at the same time, absolutely perfect. In a perfect world, she’d eat a dozen servings of these…for a warm-up snack. In the moment, she could only be thankful that her [Chef] class provided the skills to prepare this, and her vault for keeping all her ingredients fresh.

  Melia was the first to finish, so she quickly gathered her dirty things and retreated to clean them. “Clean”. For the frying pan, she doused it in a gout of flame, incinerating all the built-up grease, and for the plates, she set them into a small dugout of melted snow. She really needed to learn some home-ec magic.

  When she returned, her party was finished eating, and they were all sitting around, looking rather dazed. Melia was dying to know what was on their minds, but she kept to herself. One by one, she crept close and gathered their dishes, and when she met no resistance, she cleaned everything up. When all of that was done, and her party still showed no signs of real movement, Melia began to get a little worried.

  But when she eventually turned away from them and started tearing down the tents, a shadow fell over her. She froze, barely daring to look up, and out of the corner of her eyes, she caught a glance of vibrant red hair.

  Jessica said nothing, but began helping pack away their things.

  Very soon, she was joined by Alastair, while Ellesea and Y’cennia got to work on theirs.

  There wasn’t any talking in the clearing, and barely any noise. Just the steady shuffle and crunch of rumpled belongings getting rolled up and stored, heavy booted feet grinding down stones and dirt. Even when they were done, things packed away and the fire smothered, nobody said a word. The others glanced at Al, who took a deep breath, and everyone began trudging through the snow toward Lakeridge.

  ?

  With the [Frost Giants] slain and [Froljnar] defeated, summer returned in full. The fury of the sun, seemingly enraged by being hidden for a day, was unleashed upon the Sienna Mountains. Still, all the snow banks from the sudden, unnatural blizzard did not instantly evaporate. Going was slow, slogging through thick, squelching mud while forcing their way through knee-high snow. Melia was all but lost beneath it; some of it came up to her chin at its highest point.

  Alastair forged resolutely on, saying nothing but taking, as always, his responsibility seriously. His broad shoulders and strong arms made for a good plow.

  Feeling emboldened by the lack of hostility against her, Melia dared to try something. She shifted into her draconic form, with the horns and the tail, and felt for her internal reserves.

  Fire. She could breathe fire.

  Dragons were known for the unquenchable fires in their bellies, and Melia’s fire burned hottest. She didn’t want to turn back into an actual dragon yet, not so soon, not with this tentative peace the party found themselves in, but this would do. She had stamina for days.

  Melia waddled several feet away from the group, who slowed in their steady forward march to see what she was doing. She opened her mouth wide, steadied her nerves, and breathed deep. She felt something click in the back of her throat, like an ignition switch for a flamethrower, and her cheeks bulged with power.

  Very briefly, it felt unpleasant, like throwing up, but that feeling quickly passed, replaced by the joy of working a muscle that begged to be used. She felt herself leaning forward, as if her body was eager to expel the flames. Soon, after only a few seconds of releasing the gout of flame, a wide, deep path was cut before her, the ground still incredibly wet and muddy from the suddenly melted snow, but at least it was traversable.

  Jessica glanced at Alastair, who had a complicated look on his face. Without a word, all of them fell into line behind Melia, who chuckled at her new role. A dragon clearing a path through the snow…it gave a whole new meaning to the term “trailblazer.”

  ?

  “Did you really defeat an entire army of rank 10 adventurers?”

  Ellesea was the one to finally break the long silence. They’d been walking for hours, it was almost noon, and they had stopped for a quick rest atop a rocky hill, free from melted snow and a minimal amount of mud. From their higher vantage point, Lakeridge could be clearly seen, though at their current pace, it was still at least an hour away. The lack of idle banter and small talk wasn’t as painful as it was in the morning, but the air remained heavy. Ellesea should be forgiven for her bluntness, since she probably had to work up the nerves to say just that much.

  Melia turned to face her slowly, giving the question serious thought.

  Did she fight an army of adventurers?

  To her knowledge, no.

  But that was knowledge based on a life lived in a protected cage, unable to lift an arm, let alone throw a punch.

  So what about the supposed life she lived in the game? This world had memories of her exploits; this she already knew, her brief encounter with Jonathan at the bank told her as much. Honestly, Melia was mildly terrified of running into somebody who actually knew her, as a combatant.

  Even then, most of her adventures in the game revolved around teaming up with other players, not fighting against them.

  Except…if she considered the growing story arc her RP group was building…

  “I mean,” Ellesea fidgeted, taking Melia’s silence for disapproval at this topic, “I know you said they didn’t call themselves adventurers back then, but they were still incredibly high level, the largest concentration of such high level people in recorded history, but if you don’t want-.”

  “Yes,” Melia said, stopping the girl’s rambling. “I suppose I did.”

  Ellesea swallowed hard and Jessica decided she was next.

  “Why would they attack you?”

  Melia supposed the unasked question really was: “What did you do to deserve it?”

  “I don’t know,” Melia answered honestly. Even if she thought about it from the aspect of a storyteller, her old friend never gave her the entire plot line. At least not from the perspective of the opposing force. All she knew was that there were supposed to be plot twists, reversals, and betrayal. The story arc was framed as a simple “good versus evil” morality tale, but the deeper plot meant to muddy those lines, point out various flaws and misconceptions, and prove that it was more “shades of grey” than “black and white”.

  “Many of those people were my friends,” Melia said, thinking of one of her last “battles”. They hadn’t gotten to the point where the entire guild of [Victorious Secret] or [Exodus] needed to confront her, but even “in character”, she had fought against people she had once run dungeons with. Raided bosses with.

  “Your friends attacked you?” Y’cennia asked, likely thinking how foolish such a thing would be, putting herself in their shoes. “And you fought them off? Did you…kill them all?”

  Melia took a deep breath.

  “Some of them, yes,” she sighed. She was scripted to win most of their fights. “But they respawned.”

  Something tickled a recent memory in the back of her mind. She turned to Alastair.

  “They were heroes,” she explained. “They had the blessings of the gods.”

  “Did the gods…want you dead?” he asked.

  “Who’s to say?” Melia barked a short laugh. “I would guess no…or else I would not have woken up.”

  Silence fell again, but it was comforting this time, an avenue to process thoughts rather than something to choke them out.

  “So, we’re good then?” Jessica asked. Melia looked up at her and tilted her head. “You and us? You aren’t, I dunno, gonna slaughter us in our sleep or something?”

  “Jess!” Y’cennia hissed, while Alastair slowly shut his eyes and groaned.

  “No,” Melia laughed, appreciating the girl’s bluntness. “We’re good. I don’t think you’d have those titles if we weren’t. And besides…they attacked first.”

  “Got it,” Y’cennia nodded seriously. “Don’t go poking the dragon.”

  Everyone laughed, even the normally serious [Mage], and Melia smiled brightly at the jovial sound. Things might be a bit shaky right now, but she was sure it would get better.

  “What’s it like?” Jessica asked, emboldened now that the group was feeling so suffocated. “Fighting against an army of rank 10s?”

  Melia glanced up at the girl and gave her a curious look.

  “Do you really want to know?”

  Jessica gulped, looking torn, but nodded.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  “Like swatting gnats,” Melia sighed, and left it at that. At first, the group thought she might be kidding, but they remembered the dragon, how impossibly huge it was, and, more than anything, its level. Jessica’s tentative smile quickly turned grim.

  “I shouldn’t have asked. But now that I have, there’s something I gotta know.”

  “Yeah?” Melia asked. Jessica stopped in her tracks and the party followed suit. Melia knew it was going to be serious.

  “What’s with your party invite?”

  “What do you mean?” Melia tilted her head to the side. As far as she knew, it was normal. She went into her system screen and used it to create a party. While the exact method was different from the game, where she would have clicked on a player’s name and interacted with that interface, it was functionally the same. The system did most of the heavy lifting; Melia simply thought of who she wanted to send invitations to and the system did the rest.

  “What do you mean, what do you mean?” Jessica parroted. “Normally, when you invite somebody to a party, you invite them to a party.”

  Melia understood from the inflection in Jessica’s voice that something strange had happened, but she still didn’t know what.

  “Isn’t that what I did?” she asked. “I invited you to my party.”

  “Wrong,” Jessica denied, now standing with her hands on her hips. “You summoned us. The system said so. It changed the wording and everything!”

  “It did?” was all Melia could ask. She had no idea.

  “Yes!” Jessica threw her hands up. “First, the screen itself was black and it had blood red writing. Then, this big old golden dragon swirled around and opened up its big old mouth and I thought it was going to swallow me whole. It didn’t, but it froze with its fangs surrounding the screen and the rest of the world went dark. You know how when the system gives you messages it does so while being very subtle? Your ‘invite’ was anything but! It even switched up the wording to accept or decline!”

  Melia stood there, staring at Jessica, stunned. She really had no idea. And the worst part was, she still didn’t really understand exactly what she was talking about, even though it clearly affected her.

  It affected all of them.

  Melia glanced around, noticing how Alastair had gone one or two shades more pale, while Ellesea had closed her eyes as if to block out the memory, while Y’cennia was rubbing her arms.

  "What...exactly did it say?"

  Melia was hesitant to ask, but she needed to know. If she was going to ever get comfortable in her new skin, part of that meant knowing all of its quirks and irregularities.

  Especially if said "quirks" caused problems for her teammates.

  “I’ve never been so afraid to make a system decision in my life,” the catgirl said. “I thought that…I don’t know, I thought that if I messed up, something…something bad was going to happen.”

  The way she was hesitating told Melia the catgirl clearly wasn’t comfortable talking about it, even after the fact. The way they looked at her, even now, subtly flinching and unable to make eye contact, told her they feared she would do something…unreasonable.

  Jessica had no such problems and spoke up despite her discomfort.

  "Meliastraza Obsidianheart summons you to a party. Do you dare decline?" Jessica repeated. Melia had to admit, that sounded a lot more intimidating and aggressive than was strictly necessary. Even for a so-called "destroyer of worlds."

  ...It was suitably draconic, though.

  "On top of that," Jessica continued, "It only says 'yes' and 'no'. There's no explanation that, technically, the normal responses were switched. If I said yes, then I would have actually declined your invite. Not cool."

  Jessica seemed extra annoyed at that last point more than anything, but Melia could see why that would bug somebody. Especially a person like Jessica, who if she could, would have already turned on a setting to auto-accept any invitations from people she knew, simply so she didn't have to read.

  Melia didn’t know what was worse.

  Having the power to somehow affect the system itself, making it seemingly bend to her will, or her friends thinking they were in danger simply because they displeased her.

  That wasn’t true friendship. She didn’t want that at all.

  Melia shook her head and drove away the bad thoughts. First was her class, [Destroyer of Worlds]. Her friends truly believed that’s what she was, and the system itself seemed to be backing them up. She wasn’t here to destroy the world, not this one or any other one. She couldn’t lie: what they described to her scared her a little. She didn’t know if she’d have the fortitude to hang around somebody like her if she was in their shoes.

  So she tried her best to focus on the good. They hadn’t run. And as far as she knew, the system hadn’t done anything to them for joining her party, which she could see them in, even as they stood there.

  “But it didn’t,” she said at last, trying her best to sound convincing, even to herself. “It didn’t do anything bad. You’re all here, right? And you’re fine? Nothing happened?”

  She practically pleaded when she asked that last part, and a huge wave of relief washed over her as the group slowly shook their heads.

  “Don’t worry,” Melia tried to reassure them, though she knew it wouldn’t ease all their fears. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare you all. I didn't know my invitation would be any different than normal. I didn't do it on purpose. Even so, I promise if you didn’t accept my invite, I wouldn’t have been mad. I know my class might have a lot of stories associated with it, but I don’t plan on destroying anything.”

  ?

  By the time [Sunrise] reached the shores leading to Lakeridge, most of the snow from the unexpected blizzard melted off, and the sun was baking the squelching mud into something close to a marshy quagmire. It would dry soon, but for now, in the heat of the early afternoon as the sun lingered high in the sky, every member of the team wanted nothing more than to find an inn, some real shelter, hang up their sweaty, dirt-caked clothes, rest their aching feet, and put the last two days behind them.

  Lakeridge was the main settlement of the Sienna Mountain zone, much like Hammerfall was to Gold Coast. The city rivaled Hammerfall in population if not in physical size: most of its buildings went up instead of out. This was mainly due to the fact that the city was built entirely on the water; any expansions beyond the borders didn’t mean simply building on new ground. It meant building the ground itself, as well as any supports going down into the lake. While the shores of the lake were shallow and mild, the main body of the massive pool of water was quite deep and treacherous. At least the foundations were solid, built with great assistance from the dwarves. Nothing short of an attacking dragon would see them routed, and that was part of their reasoning for building into the lake.

  Melia had thoughts on that.

  But for the moment, her mind was not theorizing how she might squat on a floating city, but on the bridge they were crossing over.

  Large, strong, quarried stone, the same which made up the entire town, constructed a broad and stable connection from land to settlement. Melia paused, taking in the full expanse, wide enough for several carriages to travel side by side, and the several-foot-tall stone guardrails.

  Especially those rails, which were a source of amusement for her.

  “Something catch your eye?” Jessica asked. She tried following the gnome’s eyes, but all she could see was the bridge.

  “Mmm,” Melia sighed in contemplation. “Just thinking back. It seems like the foreman finally got the bridge fixed after all.”

  “Was it broken?” Y’cennia asked. They weren’t natives to Lakeridge, but as far as they knew, there hadn’t been any disasters recently.

  “Oh, I don’t know if it was ever actually ‘broken’,” Melia laughed, “But it certainly was…incomplete, shall we say?”

  One of the first npcs players met when wandering into town, aside from unlocking the local flight path, was a quest giver standing on the town side of the bridge. Several large blocks of stone stood piled to the side, parts of the railing were missing, and several wooden foundations and scaffolding stretched over the water where work was supposedly being done. No workers were present, and the foreman tasked the player with diving into the lake to retrieve his tools, which had fallen in.

  Not that any work ever actually got done, not in the game. Day and night cycles existed, but time didn’t really pass, not like years going by, unless the developers specifically programmed it to. So, while most players only took the quest to retrieve the tools once, maybe a few more times depending on whether they rolled new characters, Melia had taken it dozens of times.

  She gave the bridge, now fully built and, indeed, over a century old, an appreciative, if nostalgic, stare. Sadly, the foreman was nowhere to be seen. Back in the game, he was a low-level quest giver himself, already in his 30s by looks. He had probably long since passed.

  “Was something keeping it from being repaired?” Alastair asked. Melia stuck a finger to her chin.

  “Incompetence, maybe?” she guessed. “Or laziness?”

  Her eyes slid from the glassy surface of the lake to the roof of the Magistrate’s Mansion, the tallest building in the town.

  “Or maybe he was really clever, working the system,” she shrugged. “The bridge is maintained by the city, right? He probably got paid by them, too. Hard to do work when your tools are at the bottom of the lake.”

  “He lost his tools?” Jessica scoffed. “Why the heck wasn’t he fired?”

  “Bureaucracy,” Ellesea muttered, rolling her eyes.

  “Maybe it wasn’t his fault?” Y’cennia bristled. She wasn’t sure why she was trying to defend some unknown [Carpenter] or [Mason] from ages ago, but as a crafter herself, she felt for the guy.

  “Who knows?” Melia laughed. “But I, personally, dredged them up at least a dozen times.”

  Once again she paused, letting her eyes float back over the water.

  “Are there still [Threshers] in the lake?”

  “[Threshers]?” Y’cennia frowned. “Definitely not his fault. No way I’d go diving into [Thresher] territory on my own. Yeah, I’d send adventurers too.”

  “We are adventurers, Cennie,” Ellesea sighed.

  “Yes,” Y’cennia pronounced without a hint of shame. “If I dropped my kit into the lake, I’d send you too.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Jessica barked, slapping the catkin on the shoulder.

  “I’m not sure if they’re in season or not,” Alastair admitted. “They spawn in migration.”

  Melia digested those words. She always thought of monster spawns as something rather…binary. Either on or off. Like a godly light switch.

  But for [Threshers], even before considering real, live monsters, it actually made sense. Lakeridge was a hub for low to mid-level players, finally leaving the safety of the nest and heading out into the great unknown. The devs wanted the world to feel alive, so they sometimes included monsters that were much higher level, or otherwise inadvisable to fight, in certain zones. Since the lake was such a large feature of this zone, it made sense to fill it with enemies of all shapes and sizes.

  This included [Lake Threshers].

  The mob was originally aggressive, attacking players on sight, and to top it off, they were elite. For a zone ranging from about 25 to 30, they were placed near the top of that limit, too, usually spawning at level 29 or 30.

  Players complained, as players do, when they wandered over to the great big beasts modeled after Nessie…only to get owned in several hits. As many players’ first introduction to elite enemies outside of dungeons, [Threshers] earned a fearsome reputation. It didn’t help that they didn’t have a loot table. The devs intended for them to be more of a “look, don’t touch” type of mob, but of course, players immediately ignored that.

  While the zone itself never received a total overhaul, the [Threshers] were modified quite a bit. Some patches saw them stripped of their elite status, turning them into base mobs that could easily be outgunned…again, for no reward. Other patches and updates saw them removed entirely. Only for an expansion to release every few years, and somebody (likely a suit in an office) would ask, “Why does the lake feel so empty?” And then somebody (like an intern or fresh-meat programmer) would put a [Thresher] back in.

  Eventually, the company caught on to what was happening and made it a sort of inside joke. The mobs would get re-added at the beginning of an expansion, buffed, and sent into the world to terrorize noobs. Slowly they’d get nerfed, until they eventually got removed several months before the final raid updates for the current expansion.

  Yeah. Migratory spawning. It made sense, in a weird sort of way, if Melia didn’t think too hard about it.

  “You think we could take on some [Threshers]?” Jessica asked, raising her arm and flexing her bicep.

  It wasn’t particularly impressive. Ellesea gave it a flat stare and made a point of pinching the small lump between her fingers.

  “Says ‘miss 299’,” she teased, making the [Hunter] puff up in indignation.

  “Maybe,” Alastair shrugged, but he looked doubtful. If [Threshers] in real life were anything like the game, there wouldn’t be a point to hunting them.

  “If we do, maybe we can harvest some [Blubber],” Y’cennia cooed greedily, rubbing her hands. Melia perked up. Having more [Alchemy] materials never hurt.

  “And I hear their meat is super tasty,” Jessica added enthusiastically. “I hear it’s a specialty of the far east, and sometimes they eat it raw over rice-”

  “Eugh!” Ellesea stuck out her tongue and made a face, but Melia was instantly sold.

  “Can we check the local quest boards?” she pleaded while tugging on Jessica’s pants, perhaps a little too enthusiastically. “Oh, oh, oh, and maybe run down to the docks, see if they have a fish market too….”

  Her party reeled at her sudden interest, before Jessica burst out laughing.

  “Oh, I forgot you’re such a foodie. Relax, even if we can’t hunt them ourselves, we’ll check the markets. I’m sure we can find something to sat…isfy…you.”

  Her eyes narrowed as she stared at the “gnome” suspiciously. She must’ve just remembered who she was talking to.

  “You’re really planning on eating them, aren’t you?” she accused. “Like, whole.”

  “No!” Melia denied…but instantly caved in. “No? I mean…maybe? Okay, so maybe I was! Do you have a problem with that?”

  Her whole party slowed to a stop, and Melia feared she may have teased too far. They all looked to Alastair as the unspoken leader.

  “No,” he eventually said with a smile. “So long as you can, uh, avoid scaring the daylights out of everybody.”

  “Oh, that’s easy!” Melia beamed. “If I need to, I can just [Stealth].”

  Four bodies froze. Jessica’s mouth was half open, whatever she was about to say utterly forgotten. Ellesea was in the process of brushing some hair out of her face, which went untouched and continued tickling her nose. Y’cennia’s ears slowly flattened on top of her head, but perhaps Alastair summed it up the best.

  “I really don’t think I needed to know that.”

  “Relax,” Melia said in a small voice. “I don’t plan on scaring anybody. Or eating anybody, or hurting anybody. I’m not as scary as you think I am.”

  “I think we’ll have to be the judges of that,” Jessica eventually said. “But I really hope you’re right.”

  “Let’s get inside,” Ellesea said, shaking her head. “I’m tired. I just want to go to sleep.”

  “I feel you!” Y’cennia threw up her arms. “I wanna sleep for a whole year!”

  The group crossed the final few yards remaining on the bridge and passed under the large gates built into the walled town. In these days of peace, travelers were welcome to come and go as they pleased, so the doors remained fully opened and unbarred. But it was still customary to check in with the city guards. Some towns had strict requirements on what could be brought in and sold, embargoes, levies, or taxes. That didn’t really apply to [Sunrise], as a party of adventurers, and Melia wondered how that even worked when somebody could just stuff their contraband into their inventory.

  Ellesea explained quietly that it was more of an honor system. Since nobody could check somebody else’s inventory, it was an unspoken rule that any illicit goods that couldn’t be legally sold needed to remain hidden. How that affected things like drugs, illegal trade, or any other dangerous thing like weapons or explosives, Melia didn’t really want to know. That was a whole ball of wax she wasn’t prepared for. Ellesea assured her that was why towns employed so many guards. [Thief Catchers], especially ones granted the class by the system, were generally very good at what they did.

  As Alastair finished explaining that [Sunrise] was a hopeful group of young, upcoming adventurers potentially looking to make Lakeridge their new home for a season, they were welcomed with open arms and pointed toward the city center. Houses mostly filled the outer rings and back streets, while inns and shops tended to be more central. They received directions to a solid, mid-grade inn that wouldn’t draw too much attention one way or the other, and made their way toward it.

  They found it with little issue, but when Alastair climbed the front steps to open the door, it swung open before his outstretched hand could fully grasp the handle.

  “Oh, excuse me,” said a deep but polite voice. [Sunrise] stood to the side and let the exiting party pass. Four men left the building, wearing robes strikingly similar to Alastair's.

  The men, noticing the [Paladin], paused. They looked him up and down, taking in his form, especially his tabard. Their calm, polite smiles remained, and the one who opened the door first nodded.

  “Brother,” he said, nodding to Alastair.

  “Brother,” Alastair said back.

  And then they were gone.

  “Do you know those people?” Melia asked. The term “brother” was used often in the Church. However, when two dudes on the street locked eyes…one could never be too sure.

  “No,” Alastair sighed, dispelling any theories of long-lost relations. Not that they looked anything alike. “Those were [Templars]. The Brotherhood of Stalwart Order.”

  Oh.

  Like how Alastair was a [Paladin] belonging to the Holy Order of Light.

  “Is that going to be a problem?” Melia asked, giving the backs of the men the stink eye until they vanished out of sight.

  “No,” Alastair chuckled. He didn’t have any beef with that particular sect. He paused, glancing down at their small, oblivious troublemaker; unfathomable terror in disguise.

  “Just don’t call them the ‘Order of Order.’ They hate that.”