Todd ushers the team into the room in a train. As they pass through the boundary in turn, their pupils constrict, their gait steadies, and they exclaim in helpless frustration and relief.

  “It gets better if you cycle cosmic energy through your head,” Todd explains.

  Joe rubs his pate then pats Todd’s shoulder. “Nice work getting us through. Whatever that was, it really did a number on us.”

  Candra holds herself and stands apart. “We aren’t going to have to go back through it, are we?”

  “I mean, if we don’t then we’re trapped here,” Todd tells her.

  Officer Bernice takes back her feather. She ruminates, “well, it depends on whether we’re going to be here very long. Who knows how long we have before the pixies bring us back?”

  Candra walks forward. “Is this it?”

  “Check your quest,” Joe tells her.

  Todd pulls up his menu and inspects the top entry.

  (Hard) Seek the buried treasure of Yín Dòng. (Complete)

  “Oh thank fuck,” Candra exclaims.

  “As long as they’re not trapped too,” Todd mutters.

  The four of them delay.

  “You know, we should invest some nexus coins in a watch if it’s available,” Joe proposes. “I’m sick of not knowing how much time we have.”

  Todd agrees readily. Candra offers her approval as well.

  Officer Bernice goes “hmmm.”

  Joe addresses her. “What is it?”

  “This is as good a time as any to tell you,” Officer Bernice says. “I don’t think I’m willing to do this again. Neither should you. It’s too dangerous.”

  “Are we sure the pixies will keep sending us down here?” Joe considers. “They didn’t say there were more missions coming.”

  “Maybe. But they did say we’re here a month,” Officer Bernice reminds them. “I can’t help but feel like they’re not done with us yet.”

  “It could be that we get a long break, but yea. They’re gonna test us again,” Todd posits. “If not on Caqaiba, then somewhere else.”

  “I don’t understand. You did good. This was easier than the last one,” Candra states.

  “I was on edge the whole time. The dark? The swarms? This was terrible,” Officer Bernice shakes her head. “You should quit while you’re ahead.”

  “We have to do this. There aren’t enough meal tokens to go around,” Joe relays. He walks toward the table and lays his hand on one of the wooden boxes. He starts fingering the lid.

  “Wait!” Todd cries. Nothing happens. “Never mind,” he mutters.

  “If people just share, then there’s plenty of coins for food,” Officer Bernice claims. “I earned three thousand coins from normal mode. Admittedly, I did all the fighting. But spread out, that’s more than enough for five people to eat.”

  Joe and Candra reel as they think about it.

  “But what about equipment? Armor and camping gear,” Todd asks. “What about healing pills?”

  “We’ve barely been able to afford our own stuff,” Joe admits. “And look at my armor, it’s already basically ruined. I’ll have to buy a whole new set. Maybe taking it easy is the way to go.”

  “I guess…” Todd trails off. He could avoid a lot of pain from here on out if they took easy mode the whole way through.

  “Anyway, let’s at least see what we’ve got here,” Joe proposes.

  He slides the wooden slat lid open on the box and reveals a cotton lining with a glass vial nestled inside. He picks them up and rattles them. The small round contents are a muted spring green: ten knobby little orbs.

  “Pills,” Joe announces. “Catch,” he calls out, tossing them at Candra.

  She snatches them out of the air and inspects them.

  “More pills,” Joe declares as another box is opened. “Here,” he says, lobbing them at Todd.

  Todd looks at an impression stamped in wax over the stopper. “I wish it had a label,” he complains.

  “We’ll ask the pixies what they do,” Joe assures him. He rubs his hands together excitedly. “Let’s do a big box.”

  He sets a few smaller boxes aside and then opens the lid of a moderately sized chest.

  “Nexus crystals,” Joe tallies. He runs his hand through the contents, making clinking noises. “A whole bunch of them. We’ll have to divide them up.”

  “This will take forever,” Candra blurts. She moves to the table and opens a narrow arm-length box. She removes a long wooden bar attached to a carved round dipper with a pour spout. “Weird,” she says, turning the implement over in her hands.

  “Who gets the sword?” Todd asks. He nudges the bottom of it with his toe.

  “Honestly? I kind of want it,” Joe requests. “My little one doesn’t really work well with my skill. Why? Do you want it?”

  Todd thinks about it. “I’d like something longer than what I’ve got. But I dunno, I need to keep a hand free.”

  “You could take the boots,” Joe offers.

  “I could…” Todd hesitates. He steps in to lift the crate of nexus crystals. Setting them down on the floor, he squats over them and starts counting them into four piles.

  “Oh look. Magic belt!” Joe cheers. He draws out a heavy leather kidney belt carved with intricate patterns. The faint shimmer of a fractal sits at its belly plate.

  “How do you know it’s magic?” Candra asks.

  “Come on, it looks magic,” Joe scoffs.

  “Fair. How about this shield?” Candra asks. She hefts a silvery buckler on a white wood backing.

  Joe regards the shield with approval. “Nice. You look very Lord of the Rings. Okay, last box! What do we have here… huh. It’s a bunch of metal.”

  The four of them lean over to check the contents of the container. They see a stack of ingots, mostly dull gray, two bright gold, some burnished reddish-yellow, and one silvery white.

  “Well, that looks heavy,” Officer Bernice deadpans.

  “What are we supposed to do with it?” Joe asks.

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  “Well if that’s gold and silver, it’s worth money, isn’t it?” Candra considers.

  Todd dwells on the intentions of the pixies for a moment. “I feel like it would be a waste if we just sell it. This is stuff we’re supposed to make something out of.”

  “Except we don’t exactly have a blacksmith around,” Joe shakes his head, “as this stuff is, it’s useless to us.”

  “We’re still going to take it though, right?” Todd asks.

  “Oh yea. We’re taking everything we can carry,” Joe laughs. “It’s gotta be worth something.”

  “Well, it looks like we’ve got eighty nexus crystals,” Todd determines. “I’m gonna run out of room in my bag.”

  “One last thing,” Candra declares. She collects a small, opaque, red crystal from the final box. It doesn’t glow or noticeably leak energy so she puts it back in its box and hands it to Todd.

  “Load up the heavy stuff first,” Joe encourages. He shuffles room in his [greed satchel] and starts stacking metal bars in the bottom.

  The four of them divide up the ingots and the stones. They groan as they lift their bags off the table one by one.

  “Wow,” laughs Officer Bernice.

  “And we have super strength now, too,” Joe chuckles. “Okay, for the rest of this stuff, everybody just grab something and carry it. We can divide it up later after we ask the pixies about it.”

  Todd picks up the buckler, Officer Bernice puts on the belt and sticks the ladle in it, Joe carries the zweih?nder over his shoulder, Candra changes out her shoes for the boots.

  Todd’s spine bends under the weight. He tries to straighten. “So what do we do now?” he asks.

  “I guess we just wait it out,” Joe replies.

  Candra huffs. “I’m going to sit down.” She lays her bag down and sits cross legged, leaning back.

  Everyone joins her.

  “You know, I’m trying to decide whether this is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me or not,” Officer Bernice says after a long moment.

  “It’s hard because it still doesn’t seem real,” Joe sighs. “A whole lot people have died, but we haven’t really faced the consequences yet.”

  “Except for Randall,” Candra points out.

  “Except for Randall,” Joe acquiesces.

  “Really? Why, what’s the worst thing that’s happened to you?” Todd inquires.

  “I dunno, when my gran-gran died,” Joe shrugs.

  “Your grandma?” Todd asks.

  “Yea. I found her,” Joe states, matter of fact.

  “Sorry,” Todd offers in condolence. He looks at Officer Bernice.

  “You shouldn’t ask women that question,” she scolds him. “The answer might be more than you can handle.”

  “Right! Sorry,” Todd stammers.

  “In my case though, the worst thing that happened to me was a drug bust in Orange Mound. Things went fubar and I had to shoot a perp. He survived, but it turns out I really should have just tased him.”

  “Shit,” Candra mutters.

  Todd can’t help himself. He presses. “Why did you shoot him then?”

  “You make decisions in life or death situations, and they happen fast. It looked like he had a weapon, and I acted. It was as simple as that. Then afterwards, I had months of internal investigation, civil review… I had to undergo psych eval. They almost made me go in for therapy. So, yea.”

  “I dunno, nothing that bad has ever happened to me,” Todd admits. “Some bullying, but I kind of deserved it at the time.”

  “Nobody deserves to be bullied,” Joe comforts.

  “No, I was kind of being a jerk to people,” Todd shakes his head. “I kept acting like I was the victim, but I was the one pushing people away.”

  “At least you learned your lesson,” Officer Bernice uncomfortably inserts.

  Todd keeps his mouth shut. He hasn’t learned anything. He’s been a bad friend.

  Joe redirects the conversation from there. He starts talking with Officer Bernice about the teams which most need help. The cop’s memory is incomplete. Really it was Nina Golubeva who was organizing everyone, so the two of them blank when trying to think of wide swaths of the tutorial group. Todd and Candra offer their opinions on the teams that they nearly led, but in many ways those people were better prepared now.

  The survivors anyway.

  That was a hard thing to swallow. People didn’t make it back. Some of them were people he had been lined up to protect.

  Even with a new, gentler option, people might still go missing again.

  Maybe he was better off shepherding other people through missions. People would survive eating slop for a month. He could keep innocent people safe.

  After a while, Officer Bernice changes the subject. They talk about the mission, they talk about the pixies, and about finding family once they return. Finally, she asks about the [fine food token] and whether the others had redeemed theirs yet.

  “I had my luxury meal,” Candra announces. “When we got back to the tutorial. It was: ridiculous. It had these meat cubes with sauce and like, paper thin pastry shells, rolled vegetable flowers, dumplings, mushrooms with pasta, crabs with baked cream, and like, this zesty citrus salad. It was so much food, and it was so good!”

  “Damn,” Joe laughs, “I really need to use mine.”

  “That does sound good,” Todd practically drools.

  “For fucks sake. We almost died, we might as well enjoy it!” Candra belts out.

  “The fine food has meat,” Joe begins, “it’s just that it’s grilled. It’s pretty decent. It’s like going to a regular restaurant. There’s roasted something like potato, something like coleslaw but spicy, and a little pot of beans and cheese.”

  “That doesn’t sound bad. I might have to save mine for a little while, make it count,” Officer Bernice sighs.

  It’s a nice thought. Todd is considering whether or not to redeem his luxury food token when he senses the system calculating in the space behind space.

  “Guys, I think we’re headed back,” he says. He grabs his bag and stands up with an “oof.”

  [Teleporting Participant Todd to Tutorial Instance 438 Subsection 4]

  It seems like they had been cutting it close. Not as close as in the movies, where the heroes had seconds to go as the clock strikes zero, but they had had less than two hours to spare.

  Todd braces himself for the transport. The black space is always unnerving, but it lasts a short time before he reappears standing in the blue tile plaza of the tutorial square.