Chad walked rigidly next to Max through the heart of the Patriot Guild. Max's conversation with Lance had taken an extra thirty minutes, where they caught up with each other as quickly as possible. They did their best to reconnect, given the time constraints. After all, Lance really was a very busy man.

  After their conversation, they’d returned to the original meeting room. The same people were still there, including Chad. If the mood in the room was any indicator of how things had been since Lance left, it had been tense the entire time. The room had been plunged into an even more awkward vibe once Max and Lance came back.

  Not long after that, Lance had issued some orders and sent Max and Chad off to the Patriot Guild teleportation room so they wouldn't have to fly all the way back to Vegas.

  One of the lawyers was leading them–the male lawyer, and two Patriot Guild guards were following from a respectful distance. Judging by the guards' auras, both were S-ranked Challengers. Chad was impressed. An honor guard with this much power was an extreme sign of respect from Lance and was probably meant to prevent any incidents until they were back in Vegas.

  Chad muttered, "Did you tell Lance to fire that guy, Ian?"

  Max shook his head. "Nope, I had nothing to do with that. I think that happened for the exact reason that Lance said once he came back."

  All of the various managers in the Patriot Guild, whenever they were escorting anyone to a meeting, were supposed to do a background check on every individual in the group. "Remember what he said? Nobody looked into my background or even really really asked for my name. And it would have been easy to do so. That's why Lance fired that guy. It wasn't for his attitude, it's because he wasn't doing his job. Ironically enough, if he had done his job, he might have figured out who I was and also realized that I was the guy Lance had been looking for for so long. Then maybe he wouldn’t have been so dismissive."

  Chad shook his head. "Wild, man. Absolutely wild. I mean, I knew you have things I don’t know about going on, and I knew you were in the Summoner Quartet. I knew Lance was a Summoner and I'd even seen interviews where he talked about some of his friends in the Summoner academy. He talked about how he hoped one in particular would come back to earth, someone he owed a lot to. But I just never put them all together. Too much was going on, I guess."

  Max nodded in understanding. "Lance said something similar, actually," he said. "I mean, this guild makes our guild look tiny, but you guys are both guild leaders, and you've probably been busy as hell for quite a while."

  "That's actually pretty nice of you to say," said Chad. He looked around furtively and said, "Some of the other stuff I'm sure you have to tell me still has to wait, right?"

  "That's right," said Max. "Let's just get back to Vegas first."

  They traveled in silence for another fifteen minutes, taking another short tram ride until they were in a portion of the Patriot Guild that was truly built like a fortress and had security practically everywhere. Now Max had a greater appreciation for why Lance had sent one of his personal lawyers and an honor guard with them.

  Eventually, after passing through several more layers of security, they wound up in a large room that would have looked sort of like a gymnasium if not for the fact it was round. In the very center of the room rose a crystal spike. A woman wearing professional makeup and business casual clothing stood to one side. The effect of how she was dressed was only ruined by the mystic looking staff she carried.

  Max noticed that the crystal ball on the end of the staff seemed to be made of the same material as the spike in the middle of the room. As he got closer, he noted that the woman had dark skin and seemed to be about thirty years old. Her eyes were hooded, like she was viewing the world past a wall. But Max could tell that before Portal Day, before she'd gone to the quartet, she must have had a different attitude. Even though her face was set in a frown now, she still had old laugh lines at the corner of her eyes.

  The lawyer who’d been leading Max and Chad sped up his walking pace to the world-weary woman to whisper something in her ear.

  She nodded, and then the lawyer approached Max. "This is where I leave you," he said. "I have been instructed by the guild leader to inform everyone that from now on, you will be treated as one of the guild executives within the Patriot Guild. That's the highest level in the guild under the guild leader."

  "Cool," said Max.

  The lawyer's eyebrow twitched when Max didn't even pretend to care about the honor that he was being bestowed. Truthfully, all he really cared about right now was travel and finances, and both had already been secured. People bowing and scraping and kissing his ass weren’t things he valued in the slightest. He was under no illusions that any real respect would need to be earned. The lawyer stiffly nodded and Max still didn't know the man's name. Lance had said it in passing before, but Max had never formally been introduced and right now he didn't care that much to begin with. He had other things on his mind.

  "Please approach the crystal," said the woman.

  "I take it you're the teleporter?" asked Max. “It’s kind of an obvious question, but it seems polite to ask.”

  "I do have a teleportation Path, that is correct. Now please approach the crystal. I will be sending you to Las Vegas once I get the clear signal."

  "Got it," said Max. Organized teleportation hadn’t existed on Albion. "This signal, is this so we don't get teleported there and end up being merged with a cow or something?"

  The woman's stony visage temporarily cracked as she gave him a quick, surprised smile. "Something like that," she said.

  Max and Chad didn't have to wait very long, only about a minute, until the woman said, "You're ready to depart”

  “Oh, if I see you again, what is your name?”

  “Justine.”

  “Cool. My name is Max. This is Chad. He's the guild leader for the Trifecta guild, which has been getting some bad press, but we are on the up and up now."

  "Oh," said Justine, she blinked. "That's good, I guess. Well, I hope to see you again then."

  "Likewise," said Max. He casually saluted with a couple fingers. A second later, light pulsed from the crystal in the center of the room. Energy washed through his body and he instinctively understood that he could fight it if he wanted to. Knowing what it was, he didn’t prevent it from pulling him away. A second later, without even any sense of movement or discomfort, he found himself in a different room.

  This teleportation chamber was a little bit smaller than the one in the Patriot Guild and had more decorations. However, the crystal in the center of the room looked very similar and there was another woman standing with a crystal top staff. However, unlike the professional look that Justin had, this woman looked like she was about to go to the club. Her clothing was pricey and high quality, but it also didn't cover much. When she bowed, Quartet-style, it did things to her appearance that Max would have noticed more if he’d been as young as he looked…or maybe if he'd been less preoccupied.

  However, he'd lived long enough now that something as simple and crude as physical beauty didn't have the same effect on him anymore. Not only that, this was a woman with real power, a teleporter, one of the most sought-after Paths in the world.

  Max has been giving himself a crash course on Paths since he was back in the Quartet. For any Challenger to find themselves on any teleportation Path meant that they had to be extremely intelligent. So an extremely intelligent person with serious power and influence, wearing seductive clothing… Max sensed that this was not a woman to be trifled with. He suspected that her appearance was a calculated ploy to make people around her act dumber than they otherwise might.

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

  Of course, he could be reading into it and she just liked this style. It was entirely possible the last few days might have led him to start seeing politics where politics might not even exist.

  He needed to get the hell out of this place.

  After the woman stood from her bow, she said, "My name is Tina." Her brown eyes sparkled at Max and she grinned.

  I didn’t imagine it. This one is definitely dangerous, thought Max. Now he could see it in her eyes–the recognition that he viewed her as a formidable person, not just some pretty girl in a cute outfit. She was very obviously amused. When her gaze flicked over a bit, Max glanced at Chad and mentally face-palmed.

  His friend wasn't staring, but he might as well have been with as many looks as he was trying to steal. Max wondered how Chad could still be so simple after working as a guild leader in this new world for as long as he had.

  He answered his own question a second later when he remembered that Chad was a family man. He was married and his wife had still been alive back when Max first visited Earth. Chances were she was still around. And Chad had likely never been to a party or a club in his life. Max suddenly got the feeling that living in Vegas had been an adjustment for his friend.

  "Thank you for the teleport," said Max, "or I guess I should thank you for sending the all-clear so that Justine could teleport us. I’m pretty sure the paperwork is already done and everything has been paid for. Anyway, we've got to go." Then he turned and headed for the doors.

  "Aren't you going to introduce yourself?" called the woman. Her tone was playful, her amusement obvious.

  "I will when I come back," said Max. He waved a hand behind his back in goodbye, went through the double doors, and then walked past the many lines of security like he didn't even register their existence. Chad tried to emulate the nonchalance and did okay, but still turned his head in surprise when they walked past a couple of S-rank Challengers sitting across a table from one another and playing cards. Their auras were so strong and they were putting so little effort into hiding it that it was very obvious they were very powerful guards.

  Once Max and Chad left the last layer of the impressive security outside of the bunker-like teleportation room, they found themselves at the rear of a casino. At this point, Chad led the way, proving that he had been through the teleporter before. Max wasn't particularly surprised. Part of the reason the big adventurer guilds were in Las Vegas in the first place was so proximity to the teleporters.

  As Max put his body on autopilot, just following his friend as Chad secured them a ride back to the Trifecta Guild, Max thought about some of the new things he'd learned. Foremost on his mind was the fact that all of the adventurers in the world, all of the registered Challengers anyway, were expected to fight on the front lines if they were called upon to do so. Some Challengers already worked as full-time soldiers, and although they were not treated the same as the regular army, had still adopted more of a military lifestyle as they fought the monster invasion full time.

  The adventuring guilds were the world's answer to portals. They were called upon to kill monsters behind friendly lines, and the reinforce the front lines when necessary. They were also at the forefront of portal R&D, efforts to find or forge better weapons and armor to outfit humanity. Even after years of portal diving, Challengers were still bringing back new magical tech or components that could be used to create new weapons and gadgets.

  Max was deep in thought so it didn't seem long before he could see the large, main building of Trifecta Guild with Chad. He started paying attention to what was going on around him as soon as they got out of the rental car. They weren’t at the guild building yet. Max held his tongue as Chad confidently led him through alleyways, winding up at the back of the Trifecta Guild near some loading docks.

  His friend was more on the ball than Max was, helping keep their presence less obvious.

  At the back of the building, Chad took them up a service elevator and then down the hall to a main elevator that led to the top floor where they'd been before. Not long after that, Max found himself sitting in one of the oversized recliners again across the meeting table from Chad.

  "This has been a long day," he said.

  "Tell me about it," Chad sighed. "Hold on. One second, I'm going to order us some food."

  "Sounds good," Max leaned back in his chair. "I’ve got to admit that I'm glad we didn't have to fly back. Otherwise we'd probably be eating terrible airline food right about now."

  Chad laughed and punched something into his laptop before closing it. Then he said, "This is a secure room. Until my secretary brings us the food, you have the floor."

  "Okay," said Max. "Here's the deal. We haven’t really talked much about this, I don't need money from you because Lance is going to pay me. I don't know how much he's going to give me, but I'm assuming it's going to be substantial because he’s rich as hell and if he cheaps out on me, it'd be ridiculous after everything I've done for him."

  "What is your history with Lance?" asked Chad.

  "Not important right now.”

  “Fair enough. That was kind of a dick move to hint at it then shut me down, though.”

  “I know.” Max grinned. “Anyway, the Patriot Guild is going to fund and support the Trifecta Guild. I'm going to tell Lance to look into all your debts and maybe even pay them all off depending on how much it is. I don't know how much money he has, but we’ll see. However, just the fact that the Patriot Guild is going to be working with our guild, even if it's not made public, is probably going to help matters a lot."

  "Yes, yes it is," said Chad. He pulled a pad of paper and a pen from somewhere and started making notes. "I need to come up with a plausible reason for why all this happened to tell everyone as long as you're staying incognito."

  "Good idea," said Max. "That's another point, actually. I don't know how long it's going to take, but I need everyone to leave me alone for a while while I'm in training. It shouldn't take me too long now that I'm back on Earth, but I have a lot of work to do until I go find those brothers."

  "You were really serious about that, weren't you?" asked Chad.

  "Serious as a heart attack, yes. There's more at play here than just the fact they stole the Western Wind style or screwed over the guild. I looked into some of the information you sent me, the contracts they signed, and some of the magically binding ones too. The fact that they haven't suffered from breaking those is…very worrying to me."

  "Why is that?" asked Chad.

  "In your reports, it states nobody knows how they were able to break those contracts, but they obviously have.”

  “It’s aggravating, but I just figured that they found someone with the right Path to help with that.”

  “Yeah, no. Probably not," said Max. "It's just a hunch right now, so I don't want to say it's a fact. But it's a possibility that the brothers are working with some real evil bastards."

  "What do you mean?"

  "It's very simple," said Max. "The types of contracts you used, through two or three different Paths, are binding. They cannot be broken without severe consequences, with very few exceptions. And the exceptions that would allow people to break them, most people would not use because it would be worse than keeping the contract. Far worse. If, and it’s a big if, these bastards used that method, it would be because this world is new to magic and nobody knows what it means–they wouldn’t think they’d be caught."

  Chad's eyes widened. "So they're working with…like, magic criminals or something?"

  "Worse," said Max. "Some Paths out there are not for good people or even sane people. Some Paths are for people, or create people, that want to watch the world burn. And their motivation is often to light the world on fire so their masters would be more comfortable."

  "Oh," said Chad. His eyes widened further. "Oh.” He looked at Max in horror. “Over the last year, some strange things have been happening on the front lines, like people winding up dead with no monster attacks. Things like that. Some people have been suspecting for a while that some Challengers might be enemies of humanity, but other than a few actual crazies, or criminals that have been killed or arrested, most Challengers have been fighting the monsters. After all, even the worst type of challenger out there wouldn't have a world to play with anymore if the world ceased to exist."

  Max just nodded. Chad said, "It looks like you don't think that the weird things on the front line were coincidence huh?"

  "Probably not," said Max.

  "Great," Chad looked up at the ceiling and his shoulders slumped. "It's like you came back and solved all my biggest problems but now I have new problems that are bigger and probably harder to solve."

  "Sorry man, that's what I'm good at."

  "That's not all you're good at," said Chad. "You're also good at breaking shit, which is why I don't think it's utterly insane you're going to challenge the entire Victory Guild."

  "I didn't say I'm going to challenge the entire guild. I'm just going to kill the people that need to be killed."

  "Geeze. I'm not going to even pretend to understand what that means."

  Max laughed and then briefly told Chad what he needed for training. Not long after that, the food came and the two of them ate, spending time together as old martial arts friends instead of a guild leader and a Returner.

  Once Max was full, he bid his friend goodbye and used a key card that Chad had given him to leave the building the same way he'd come in. Once outside, he checked his account balance on his phone and grinned. Lance had sent him more than enough money. If Max was a regular person, he could easily retire right now. Instead, unfortunately, he had a feeling he was going to end up burning through this money as fast as he had in the Quartet, just for different reasons.

  Max took his newfound wealth and got himself a room at a cheap hotel. If Chad pulled through for him, hopefully the next day he'd be able to start training.