[A/N: minor retcon here, James only has five slots in his inventory, and Inara has the Reading skill.]

  James sank to his knees.

  No. There wasn’t time for that. Inara needed him.

  James rose to his feet and rushed to her side, stumbling a little in the process. “Are you okay?”

  She gave him a look. The kind of look that said, “use your eyes, idiot.”

  He choked on a laugh. “Yeah, yeah, not okay, got it. But are you stable?”

  There was a pause while she checked, then nodded. “I’m stable.”

  “Desiree!” James called. “Do you have a healing spell yet?”

  “N-no,” she said. By the time she approached, James was already kneeling at Inara’s side, checking her pulse and looking her over for injuries. “What are you doing?”

  “Making sure she’s not hurt,” James answered curtly. He shot her a glance. “I thought you were going to get a healing skill. You obviously made it to level 25, Sanctified Bolt is a new one.”

  Desiree wrinkled her nose. “Yeah but why are you looking all over her body? Don’t be pervy, just look at her health bar.” A pause. “Her health is low but there’s no poison or bleeding status, so she’s not actively losing anything. And the battle is done, so you can do your healing touch or whatever that spell was you did on her last time.”

  James froze, his fingers still wrapped around Inara’s wrist. Blood rushed to his cheeks.

  “Yeah. Ah, yeah. That, definitely. I forgot about that. You, um. I guess you’re fine.”

  Inara smirked. “Go ahead, Hero. Use your healing touch on me.”

  James blushed further.

  Desiree cackled. She was too young to get the joke, but she knew it was at James’s expense and that was enough for her.

  “Okay, that’s not fair, you two ganging up on me.”

  Inara laughed, too. “It was Vital Pulse, wasn’t it? You found a loophole that made it possible for you to use it on other people, as well as yourself.”

  James nodded. “That’s right. Um. Do you mind? I do need to touch you — I mean, I need to feel your pulse — for it to work.”

  She bit her lip. “Of course.”

  His fingers closed around her wrist again, and he felt the steady thrum of her heart against her skin. He closed his eyes and sighed. The stress of the fight finally melted away.

  They’d gotten through it. They were all ok. And he and Desiree had managed to level up in the process.

  James focused on the beat of her heart, focused on his mana, and combined the two feelings to send healing energy her way.

  “Vital Pulse.” It was a slow spell. It only healed twenty points every thirty seconds, and she was down by at least 300 points.

  Not that he was in a hurry. For the first minute, all James could think about was the warmth of her skin against his fingers. He tried not to look directly at her, so she couldn’t see the heat rushing to his face.

  By the third minute, though, he’d relaxed. He stopped thinking so much and let himself enjoy this closeness. She was such a strong woman and he found himself so afraid to approach her… But at the same time, that was all he wanted. He wanted to know her and be there for her and protect her against all odds.

  At the start of the fourth minute, she cleared her throat. “That was quite a battle,” she said.

  James shrugged. “You’ve been through it before,” he said.

  “Yeah… It was different, though.”

  “How so?”

  “My Hero— I mean, the previous Hero — never wanted to let the bosses talk. He’d rush in right away and take advantage of their distraction. There’s something about them where they have this need to keep talking? And it made the fight quicker but also less interesting, somehow.”

  James chuckled. “Yeah, maybe he was right. Maybe the right thing to do is to cut them off before they can talk too much, but I’ve always been a sucker for more information. It was interesting, what the Librarian was saying.”

  He leaned back on his heels. His fingers were still wrapped around her wrist but he didn’t have to focus so hard, now, to keep track of her pulse.

  “It was similar to what the Warden said,” Inara commented.

  “Right. They both think Virgil is the first Demon King and that he’s the cause of all their problems. I mean, who knows, maybe he is, right?”

  Inara hesitated. “Maybe.”

  James could feel what she didn’t say. Virgil was part of their team. He’d fought with them, bled with them. He was their friend, and though he couldn’t remember much of who he was, and though that made it feel more and more likely that he was, somehow, the person all these dungeon bosses thought he was, he was still their friend and their party member above all else.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  He cleared his throat. “Do you think it’s true that we need to destroy the summoning circles?”

  She looked up sharply. “Why do you ask?”

  “Well. The previous hero thought so. Virgil thinks the opposite. The Librarian made it sound like the first Demon King planted the summoning circles to funnel his army into specific places.” He chose his words carefully and left much unsaid. They didn’t know if Virgil was the first Demon King or not. If he was, his opinion — specifically, his caution against destroying the circles — could be biased.

  Inara considered his words carefully. Finally, she shook her head. “I don’t know. I think, whatever the truth is, Virgil was right when he said that we don’t have enough information right now.”

  James considered that. Nodded. With his free hand, he reached behind him and grasped the grimoire which had dropped when the Librarian died.

  “Let’s get some more information, then.”

  Grimoire of the Last Archivist

  A heavy, leather-bound tome with an obsidian clasp. It contains the handwritten notes of the Librarian, who chronicled the rise of the First Demon King and the downfall of the Last Archive.

  James let out a low whistle. “Now that sounds like everything we just asked for.” He glanced around like he was checking for hidden cameras. “You don’t think the dungeon watches us and gives us exactly what we want, do you? More health potions, please!”

  Inara laughed. It was a quick sound, and she smothered it as soon as she realized she’d let it out, but her smile remained.

  “Not as helpful as you might think,” she said dryly. “Try opening it.”

  James flipped open the cover — only for the book to slam shut.

  Restriction: can only be read by someone with the Scholar class or an Academic skill.

  “Ah.”

  “That’s actually why I have the Reading skill,” Inara explained. “We decided the Hero’s skill points were better spent elsewhere, but it was worth one of mine to learn these secrets. I won’t be able to read this one, though, since my skills are locked.”

  James bit his tongue. If anything, he thought it should be the opposite. The Hero, after all, gained skill points much faster than any other class, even a strong class like Inara’s.

  Since she couldn’t use her skill now, though, they’d have to spend another skill point just to read the book. Virgil would be able to read it, of course, but that didn’t help if they couldn’t fully trust what he said. It would just put them in exactly the same position, with more potential misinformation.

  Then he realized what she’d said. “You’ve read it before!”

  She looked surprised, then chagrined. “Yeah,” she said. “I guess I have.”

  “Well?” James asked. “What did it say?”

  She thought back to that fight. It was ten years ago, so the memory was foggy. Some things had been the same, but it hadn’t been a Librarian, and they hadn’t had Virgil with them. The previous Hero had killed Virgil’s counterpart, a man named Gregor, before they’d even reached the first boss.

  After a minute she shrugged helplessly. “I’m sorry, I just don’t remember exactly. All I remember is that after this dungeon, we were convinced that the way to stop the Demon King was to destroy the summoning circles; and I’ve already told you that, so it’s not exactly helpful now.”

  James turned the book over in his hands. Part of him wanted to call out to Virgil and see what the Scholar — what his friend — had to say.

  Part of him wanted to be more cautious. He couldn’t blindly ignore the fact that the dungeon hated Virgil. He also couldn’t ignore Virgil’s infernal abilities, or all the evidence that pointed to him being some kind of reincarnation of the First Demon King.

  James slid the book into his inventory and reviewed what he was carrying.

  Health Potion

  Mana Potion

  Novice Fire Textbook

  Novice Earth Textbook

  Grimoire of the Last Archivist

  Any more books and he’d have to throw something out. He probably didn’t need to hold onto the textbooks anymore now that he’d used them, right?

  He shook his head. It was fine for now, so inventory management could wait another day.

  Desiree slid into view. She’d realized that without her boots on, she could slide across the marble floor.

  “Ohh my god, are you guys still doing this?”

  Inara rolled her eyes.

  James scoffed. “You wish you had as much HP as your mom does.”

  Desiree giggled. “Yeah, you’re right.”

  “What I want to know,” he went on, “is if you got a healing skill of your own, yet. Vital Pulse is helpful now, but it’s useless in combat. I have to get too close, and it’s way too slow.”

  Desiree toed the ground and wouldn’t meet his eyes. “I mean, I was going to, but then I leveled up after you broke the last sigil and he was almost dead and the only way I was going to be able to hurt him was with a new spell, so I did that instead.”

  James sighed. “Yeah, I guess that was a good decision in the moment. But you really need to get a healing spell next time. With your Holy affinity, you’re the strongest candidate for healing out of all of us.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” she said. “By the way, Virgil is kind of freaking out, maybe you guys should check on him?”

  James looked over, then did a double-take. Virgil was curled up in the fetal position, sobbing.

  James hesitated. He really wanted to use Inara as an excuse not to rush to Virgil’s side — not because he was worried Virgil was a dungeon-created simulacrum of the first Demon King, but because he’d never mastered the art of comforting someone who was crying.

  And Virgil was definitely crying. His body shook with desperate sobs, broken only by wet, gross sniffles.

  But while he hesitated, Inara grabbed his hand and gently pried his fingers off her wrist.

  “Go on,” she said, jerking her head towards Virgil. “Go see what that’s about. We just had a big battle; if that’s the case, some of his memories might be coming back to him.” Her expression took on a troubled cast. “They might not be pleasant memories.”

  James swallowed. “Right. Yes, of course I can do that. Let me just. Go do that.” Privately, he wished Desiree had maybe checked in on the scholar herself instead of interrupting his conversation with Inara, but maybe it was for the best. Desiree, after all, was still a child, and didn’t need to make a grown man’s problems her own.

  James crouched beside his friend, and, after a moment’s hesitation, touched him on the shoulder. He realized it was actually the first time he’d made physical contact with the other man. Even back home, physical contact was a rarity for him, exclusive to only his closest family and friends. It shouldn’t be a surprise that the same attitude would hold true here; the world might have changed, but he was still the same man.

  What surprised him more than anything was how solid Virgil’s shoulder felt beneath his touch. The man was real, as real as Inara, and James felt a sudden wave of shame for considering otherwise.

  “Hey man,” he said. “What’s going on?”

  Virgil continued to sniffle and cry. Every time he tried to get his bearings, a new wave of despair would overtake him, and he’d have to start all over.

  James kept rubbing gentle circles into his shoulder. Outwardly he remained calm, but inside his worry only deepened. If anything, they should be celebrating! They’d defeated another boss together and come out stronger than ever!

  By the time he was ready to speak, Inara and Desiree had come closer and were hovering nearby.

  “It’s the memories,” Virgil said. “I think I might have been the first Demon King.”