The Guide Jelly floats above the path as it addresses a group of 18 people, floating before an entire army of sword-wielding arrivals. The Guide Jelly looks worn out and fed up with everything. Its light is completely dim and its eyes are narrowed into an uncharacteristically irritated gaze.

  "Okay. You have all completed the basics for the world of [Niwaki]," the Guide Jelly tells everyone. "With that, onward you go! Welcome, once again, to the World of [Niwaki]! Please. Leave."

  The Guide Jelly is blunt at the end. Teaching 18 people at once the basics of Niwaki is a lot more exhausting than the guide thought it would be. Right now, the Guide Jelly just wants to get these people moving along. So it deviates slightly from its little script and just tells them to leave.

  So they do. The crowd begins walking along. Off to the village they go. The Feral Jumping Jacks Guy is no longer doing jumping jacks, so there's no further reason to stick around.

  The Guide Jelly lets out an exhausted sigh as it flies over and lands right on the ground, choosing a cozy little spot to rest. Its gelatinous jellyfish body just lies against the ground as the situation simply... got way too out of control for it to handle. The Guide Jelly desperately needs its rest right now, just a small little break to rest its appendages.

  As it rests, it... it looks over to the cause of its exhaustion, staring at the man who it knocked over.

  "..."

  ... Noel Nakamura.

  He's been here for literally only a few hours, and already the Guide Jelly is spent of energy. The Guide Jelly had put its everything into teaching all of those people, all because Noel has a strange and inexplicable allure that draws new arrivals to make fun of his exercising.

  The Guide Jelly is meant to be a cheerful, happy, energetic creature that smiles and helps go over the basics and essentials to Niwaki, to teach new arrivals and players how to create basic tools with their own essences and energies, and to send each person on their merry way to the village. It is not meant to spontaneously wrangle up 18 people, and it is not meant to work itself to the nonexistent bone, but it did. The Guide Jelly had to do so before more new arrivals showed up and contributed to the congested area.

  The Guide Jelly currently lacks its cheery, happy energy. The Guide Jelly's cute and happy behavior is gone and replaced with tired exhaustion. It lies against Noel Nakamura and uses him as a bed for a little bit, resting its small body for just a moment.

  Because of Noel, because of the promise it made to Noel to never give up on him, the Guide Jelly is going through with it. Part of the Guide Jelly almost holds the same sentiment it had for those 18 people, that it just wanted Noel to get through its tutorial and finally move on to greater adventures, to greener pastures. At the current moment, if it had its way, Noel would be gone and out of its hair.

  It's not that simple, though. The Guide Jelly has to deal with the fact there's a tent. The Guide Jelly has to deal with the blemish on its perfect guiding record. Noel Nakamura just had to be a difficult arrival with the inability to create the Axe of Light, huh?

  ... the worst part is that the Guide Jelly knows Noel's trying his best.

  The Guide Jelly is under the belief that Noel is working his hardest, that he's trying his hardest to make this axe. Someone doesn't just do jumping jacks nonstop for a crowd of people if they don't have the motivation. Noel really wants to continue the tutorial, to try his absolute hardest and everything.

  And golly, the Guide Jelly will try its hardest! It swore on Noel's pinky that it would never give up on Noel, that Noel would never give up on himself! This moment is nothing to the Guide Jelly! It will do all this again if it has to, as long as it can help Noel succeed in the end!

  The Guide Jelly raises its appendages to the sky and lights its eyes up, curling the tips of its appendages into swirls. It proudly, proudly looks up at the sky and illuminates its orange light. It will never give up, it will never surrender, and it will go on and on until Noel Nakamura can complete its tutorial!

  Yeah!

  ...

  But for now, it takes a moment to begin dragging Noel's body back into his tent. Noel's sweaty, slippery body is pulled through the grass and dirt as the Guide Jelly just moves along, taking Noel to his requested tent with all of its might.

  Once Noel is in the tent, his body is placed atop the sleeping bag, and the Guide Jelly wipes the front of its head with an appendage. "Phew..." the Guide Jelly noises, its body raising a couple of feet into the air as it tries to fly. Noel is now in the tent, so the Guide Jelly thinks it's time to get back to work. Time to get back to its natural position and wait for new arrivals once more.

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  But its resolve alone is not enough to give it energy. The Guide Jelly falls again, landing on top of Noel's chest once again. Its jelly body feels numb and it cannot muster the energy to endure the tax on its body. Its body just simply refuses to fly.

  Is this what being exhausted feels like? The Guide Jelly has never felt this way before. This is the first time it worked so hard that its body refuses to fly. In all the time it had spent guiding new arrivals to Niwaki, it's never felt this bad.

  Maybe it's because the Guide Jelly's workload has always just been one person at a time. It has a strong record of devoting its full focus to one person at a time, after all. It usually just has to fly and act motivational while these new arrivals do the work themselves. Of course, zipping around and spawning items for 18 entire people to go through would prove to be so tiring for it.

  This is just... a new experience for the Guide Jelly. Just like how Noel exercised for a little under an hour, now the Guide Jelly feels tired from spawning eighteen trees, eighteen rocks, and eighteen boars.

  Heheh, heh... hm.

  So, since it's already there, the Guide Jelly flops and goes limp against Noel's chest, making itself comfortable while regaining its energy. The Guide Jelly, with nothing else to do, moves its eyes to stare at Noel, to think about this entire situation.

  In this moment of rest, the Guide Jelly wonders to itself: what is it doing wrong? Why is it speechless whenever it tries to think about motivating Noel to create that axe? It feels bad for not having enough to tell Noel beyond its excessively simple explanation, that it requires heart and soul to create the Axe of Light. This whole time, it's blaming itself for the shortcomings.

  As it lies on top of Noel, however, there's a new thought... that it could be something about Noel. Maybe there's something about Noel that makes it hard for the Guide Jelly to teach him and understand his way of thinking.

  What is that, though? What exactly is it about Noel that makes him difficult?

  It thinks for a moment about who and what Noel Nakamura is. Noel Nakamura is an arrival who does things like scream, shout, and swear when things don't go his way. Noel Nakamura is impulsive enough to run down a path blindly, as well as perform unending jumping jacks to the point of losing consciousness. Noel Nakamura seemingly has his own ways of doing things, from requesting a tent to rest in for the entire time to having curious moral standards for eating his food.

  Above all else, from what little the Guide Jelly knows of him, Noel Nakamura is an individual who takes his time. He seems like he wants to take all the time he needs before he can do something. That's what this tent is, Noel requesting a space for himself to take his time.

  Is that it? Does the Guide Jelly just have to trust that Noel will eventually fulfill his potential? Does the Guide Jelly just need to be more patient with Noel?

  If that's the case, then the Guide Jelly regrets trying to rush Noel, going so far as to spring on him a sudden exercise he needed to do. There's probably a chance that the jumping jacks didn't even do anything for Noel, and that he wasted his time just exercising like a madman for nothing.

  All the suggested, unorthodox jumping jacks did was make Noel the center of attention to random arrivals. And to think, the Guide Jelly could have given him even worse exercises to do.

  Thinking about this, the Guide Jelly just giggles for a bit. As stressful and exhausting as the whole experience was, it thinks about how silly it is that Noel somehow got every new arrival looking at him. Even if the 18 people were off on their separate conversations, they still took the time to surround and crowd Noel, grouping close and chatting near him. Someone has to be special for that to ever happen to them.

  Ahhh... the Guide Jelly sighs and stares, thinking to itself that it needs a break. Since it temporarily can't fly, there's nothing to do but finally take some rest and recover alongside Noel.

  So... it just goes limp, squishing against Noel's chest, about to think of what to do next. At the very least, if it continues to suggest more exercises, Noel may muster the courage and motivation to—

  Ah!

  Just as it begins thinking, the Guide Jelly has its eyes widen as it feels arms wrapping around it, as Noel—his unconscious self turning to just a sleeping self—pulls the Guide Jelly into an embrace, a close embrace. A full hug that keeps the Guide Jelly in place, as it lacks the energy to slip out of Noel's arms.

  The Guide Jelly is caught off guard by this, not expecting Noel to just spontaneously hug it! It holds completely still as Noel pulls it close, its squishy jellyfish body being treated like some kind of... huggable object. Noel's arms, his possibly sore and aching arms, are wrapping around the Guide Jelly tightly and squishing it against his chest.

  Something about this is making the Guide Jelly feel a little nervous. It's never been hugged like this before. The way that its body is flopped, the side of its head is currently pressing against Noel's chest, and it...

  ... it can feel Noel's heartbeat.

  After all the exercise, Noel's heart is still racing, beating and thundering actively. It shows no signs of stopping whatsoever. Noel worked his body to its limits, and now the heart just roars.

  The Guide Jelly blinks as it's made to listen and feel Noel's heart. The feeling almost reverberates and ripples through its entire body as Noel keeps the entire thing close. Never in the Guide Jelly's life has it ever been close enough to feel an arrival's heart like this.

  Its eyes just... sparkle a little. The Guide Jelly feels... happy.

  It talks a lot about putting one's heart and soul into creating the axe... and... feeling Noel's heart brings it joy. It likes listening to the heartbeat, it likes feeling the heartbeat. The Guide Jelly feels like the racing heartbeat, a product of long effort and vigorous exercise, is a sign that Noel has what it takes, that Noel has the heart to create the Axe of Light.

  The Guide Jelly thinks again and again that it wants Noel to succeed, that it wants Noel to finally conjure this axe. It associates Noel's heartbeat with hard work and determination.

  So it happily accepts this hug from Noel. It closes its eyes and accepts this feeling. And, for the first time in a while, it goes to sleep after its long, long work. It falls asleep in Noel's arms, cozy in his embrace and lulled to sleep by his heartbeat, using this time of respite to regain and recover its energy.

  The new arrivals can wait just a while. The Guide Jelly just goes back to its roots for a moment. Focusing on one person to guide, instead of juggling aimlessly.

  It focuses heavily on Noel, by sleeping in his arms.

  Good night, [Noel]...