Natsuko put her hands on her hips. “Shui, you’re not gonna need—”

  “But what if I do need my slide rule? Just because we’re out adventuring doesn’t mean my research stops,” Shuixing said.

  Natsuko pointed at her friend’s bag, bulging and threatening to explode. “The other two slide rules you included should be enough.”

  Shuixing huffed. “Those are Mannheim and circular slide rules. This is a duplex.”

  “Tell that to the laws of spatial geometry,” Natsuko said.

  “Doesn’t your pack have room?”

  “Nope!” Natsuko said. She went into her closet-apartment and came back with an equally bulging bag. As though presenting a marvelous treasure, she drew back the strings to reveal 99 baked potatoes.

  “Why potatoes? They heal for almost nothing. And surely my medico-magic should be enough for us in a pinch,” Shuixing asked.

  “Because, my dear Shui, per unit of healing, potatoes are the most cost-efficient healing food. You could get some expensive Cascadian or Sibe-Lander dish that heals your entire health pool. But baked potatoes?” Natsuko slapped the sack of potatoes. “These babies are the best food for a Hero on a budget!”

  Shuixing’s eyes narrowed. “What else is in there?”

  “Ahaha... what’d’ya mean?”

  “Natsuko…”

  “It’s potatoes all the way down baby. Trust me.”

  Not trusting her, Shuixing stuck her hand down the pile of potatoes and quickly found something glassy and bottle-shaped. She pulled it from the sack, sending potatoes flying, and held up a bottle of Pine Schnapps.

  “Hehe, must've been in there since my last trip. You know, during my pre-sobriety days,” Natsuko said.

  “Uh-huh,” Shuixing said, fully aware Natsuko knew at all times the physical location of every alcoholic beverage within 100 feet of her person. She wondered sometimes whether it wasn't some kind of hidden Passive.

  “I'll put it away,” Natsuko said, grabbing the bottle and sticking it back in her closet-room.

  The packing didn’t go much quicker after that. Shui had to keep an eye out for Natsuko sneaking booze back into her pack while Natsuko had to veto sacrificing baked potatoes for scientific equipment. Eventually they were packed up and ready to make their first trip outside the region of Verm?genburgh in years. It was supposed to be a short one, but Natsuko felt compelled to go around and say good-bye to all her Non-Hero friends as if she wasn’t going to be back in a week anyway. Once she was done, she and Shuixing headed for the town gate.

  “You don’t need three lacy pillows, one is fine.”

  “Excuse you! One is for my head, the other two go between my arms and legs. I can’t get to sleep without my grasping pillows.”

  “And the fur coat?”

  “Alternate costume. Need it for Ero-Art appeal.”

  “And the shoes?”

  Sofiane gave Daisy a look like she was ridiculous for even asking about the shoes. Of course he was bringing the hanfu shoes. How else was he going to pull off his Tianzhou-inspired Lunar New Year Alternate Costume? Daisy herself had packed nothing but the bare essentials: A spare pocket watch with better crit rate and attack speed in case she needed to take over DPS duties, some top-tier healing items encased in a wooden box to keep them from getting smooshed (the maple-salmon croquettes from the Cascadia region didn’t heal as much as horse mince pie from the Sibe-lands, but she liked the taste better), some attack-boosting bottles of Airag, defense-pumping barbecue Khorkhog, and move speed-buffing Boortsog.

  Daisy could afford to pack light since she also had a couple million Ying on hand for incidentals like mid-journey equipment and skill upgrades or for a nice cup of tea. And she got another million or so every Monday as part of her weekly compensation for Celestials using her emanation. Sofiane, who did not have quite the same luxury, had to give more thought to what he took with him. Despite him holding them up to choose between two different alternate outfits, he and Daisy arrived at the town gate around the same time as Natsu and Shui. The only one missing was Pechorin.

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  Dark, phantasmagoric hellscapes painted the inside of Pechorin’s eyelids. Writhing in his tormented sleep, he dreamed of showing up to a dungeon without his clothes on. Despite the characters in his dream—Natsuko, Shuixing, and Hemiola—not remarking on his nakedness, it continued to torture him. Just as he thought his tortured nightmares would finally allow him the sweet release of rest, the ground beneath began to tremble as though from the pounding wrath of an angry god

  “Pech? You in there?” he heard Natsu's voice say.

  “No one is sleeping in a dumpster, Natsu. Have at least some respect for the man," replied Sofiane.

  Pechorin's eyes flickered open, thrusting him into a nightmare worse than his slumbering mind could possibly concoct. His eyes were stabbed by beams of harsh radiance like divine truth.

  “Why are you sleeping in a dumpster?” Sofiane asked.

  Behind Sofiane he could hear Natsuko burst into laughter.

  “A warrior sleeps where he finds his head resting,” Pechorin answered, nudging a garbage bag away from his foot.

  “I would’ve let you stay in my room at the inn if you’d asked,” Sofiane said.

  Pechorin shrugged his arms into his black trench coat and began the process of sticking his inventory back into its pockets. “I’m a gunslinger. We get by.”

  This would have been a more dramatic declaration if there wasn’t a moist napkin clinging to his shoulder.

  “Need some time to pack up?” Daisy asked, eyeing him up and down.

  He shook his head, long dark hair shaking with it. “I carry with me only what fits on my person. Anything more would tie me down,” he said, jamming the Opto-box picture of his former party into a side-pocket.

  After extracting Pechorin from his ruggedly functional dumpster, they left Verm?genburgh. There was a hint of ceremony as they left, with some of the Non-Heroes and even a couple of Heroes in town completing backtrack quests coming out to watch Daisy leave. To Sofiane’s immediate and profound chagrin, Koyon, his archetypal replacement, was among the crowd.

  “Lucky little shit,” Sofiane muttered. Daisy patted his shoulder but said nothing.

  Past the gates and out of the spotlight they found themselves walking along the cobble bridge that spanned the outer moat of the city. On the other side lay miles and miles of coniferous forest, spires of pine and fir trees stabbing at the sky with little bursts of fire from maples near Hammertal Canyon. Farther still lay mountains: Bare and rocky in Verm?genburgh, pearly and moss-covered across the border in Tianzhou. To Natsuko and Shuixing this was almost their entire world. To Sofiane and Daisy it was a quaint backwater. The real world, the world of important things happening, existed beyond the jail bars of Verm?genburgh’s pines.

  “It feels strange,” Daisy said as they walked along the banks of a creek running through Duftenderwald Forest. “Coming back here I mean. Tell the truth, I think I came back for nostalgia, and the pie contest was just an excuse.”

  “Funny, I feel weird cuz I’m going somewhere else for once,” Natsuko said.

  “I drift. It’s all a blur to me. One place or the next, makes no difference,” Pechorin said.

  Natsuko snorted. “Bullshit! I know you’ve been hanging around Verm?genburgh when you’re not getting your ass-handed to you by monsters in al-Nuwba."

  “Al-Nuwba? Why there?” Daisy asked.

  “Shikjima was the last region the Yishang de-misted before most 1st-gen heroes stopped having the stats necessary to tackle new quests and dungeons,” Shuixing explained.

  Daisy whistled. “Gosh, that’s earlier than I thought! You really can’t fight anything there?”

  Natsuko muttered something about gods-damned sand worms and gods-damned expensive ass food. Shuixing translated for the others:

  “Even if we could beat the Scytheworm, which we tried to do at the height of our power and before losing a lot of our stats to deaths, it wouldn't really matter much. The Celestials won't come back and start summoning us again. It's more comfortable to relax somewhere inexpensive like Verm?genburgh," she said, electing to censor some of Natsuko's choicer words.

  “Hmm, never thought about it like that. Does that mean you’re doing al-Nuwban quests, Pech?” Daisy asked.

  He shrugged. “Only when my overarching goal of finding my clan’s murderers becomes too daunting. Then I reset my mind with meaningless number-building.”

  “Wow! Super cool!” Daisy replied. "Couldn’t you try that, Natsu, what with your kill-everything bottle?”

  Natsuko scoffed. “Tried it. Dungeons and quests can’t be completed unless you kill a monster. But if you throw them through the floor…”

  “You’re not killing them,” Sofiane finished with a hint of bitterness.

  “Right. Works great if you’re trying to stay alive, but not if you’re trying to power-level, know what I mean? And I can’t grind the normal way cuz I already died a bunch, so my stats are lower, which makes it even harder, and I can't get my stats back up to normal unless I complete one of those quests I can't complete."

  Daisy nodded. “Quite the conundrum, huh?”

  Daisy had built up enough good will with Natsuko that she had the decency to stop herself from saying, “no shit.” Plenty of other, high-ranking Heroes had offered her advice for how to overcome the severe stat differences between newer and older generation Heroes. Why they all thought she was too stupid to have tried everything already, she wasn’t quite sure.

  “With no detours we ought to be at the Lanbaoshi Roadhouse by this evening and Tianzhou City the evening after that,” Sofiane said, bored with the sad-sack, woe-is-me conversation. “I’d like to get some soup in me. I’m big about soup. Huge about it. Hot bowls of soup are kind of my thing, and Lanbaoshi Roadhouse has some of the best soup in Po-Lin, so no distractions or detours, got it?”

  He said this looking directly at Pechorin. The insinuation was no more side-tracks to explore an entry in the Tome of the Unnatural and Cursed. Pechorin just nodded. Not long after saying this, however, their path was blocked by three figures emerging from the forest: Harald, Faisal, and the raccoon girl, all standing with their weapons brandished.

  Harald pointed at Sofiane. “You!”

  Sofiane pointed to himself. “Moi?”

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