The group had to stop as they approached the dungeon entrance. It turned out that Tram truly needed to switch out of his armor before they could leave, or he would hurt himself.

  “Any chance you could turn off your stream?” the man asked. “I wear clothes under this armor, but my contract says I’m not allowed to be seen without it.”

  Ian thought about it for a moment before mentally pulling up his streaming information.

  Notice: Your stream has been live for 8 hours and 19 minutes. You currently have 117,617,611 active viewers.

  “How do I turn it—oh,” Ian began as a prompt told him the stream would stop in thirty seconds. Clearing his throat, he looked up at the sky before saying, “Thanks for watching! Sorry for cutting it off before the end, but I don’t want to leave him alone if he needs more healing.”

  Ian gave Tram a thumbs up as the stream ended, receiving a relieved expression in return.

  “I can’t believe you broke character, Lana! I’ll make sure the penalty clause is activated, and you won’t get any pay for this dungeon!” Avra hissed at the smaller woman.

  “Now now, we don’t need to—” Kambis started before Avra rounded on him.

  “Don’t even start with me Kambis. Your performance in this dungeon was abysmal.”

  “Just shut up, Avra,” Lana said, pulling the woman’s anger back towards her. “You blew all of your mana trying to kill things with your crappy light arrow volley and couldn’t do your role when we needed you.”

  “I’m the leader of this group, and I decide how things are done. It’s not your place to question my decisions,” Avra shouted back as Ian decided it was a good time to tune them out.

  He had known that she wasn’t the same woman he had thought he’d known, but her anger was something that he could recall. It hadn’t ever been directed at him, but she had been sharp to others at times. However, he didn’t recall her ever having the venom in her voice that he heard now.

  How much did he really know, though? He couldn’t stop the part of his mind that wondered how much of his memory was just the stupidity of a young man in love for the first time. When he thought back, he saw the signs that she had been completely self-focused even back then.

  “You doing alright, Tram?” Ian asked, seeing that Tram was having problems pulling off his pauldrons.

  “Honestly, I’m not so sure,” he said, tilting slightly, causing Ian to reach out and steady him. “Thanks. Everything is just a little off.”

  Ian channeled a small amount of healing into him again, causing a pinching sensation between his eyes. He was forced to stop a moment later.

  “Sorry, my mana is getting too low. I keep getting small headaches when I use it.”

  “No worries,” said the man, finally able to get his fingers to work right. “I feel a ton better, though the bickering isn’t really doing it for me.”

  “A common thing?” Ian asked quietly, still steadying the man.

  “Yeah, though I think I’m done,” Tram replied.

  “Excuse me?” Avra said, having pivoted towards Tram, who seemed just as surprised she was able to hear him over her own complaining. “What do you mean you’re done?”

  Tram sighed and looked up at Avra with a worn look, “I mean exactly that. I’m no longer diving with you. My contract ends in three weeks, and I have three weeks of paid absence.”

  “So, you are going to abandon the people who got you to where you are?” she responded, venom in her words.

  Tram scoffed, then shook his head as he began chuckling. He looked over at Lana, who smirked and shrugged.

  “Might as well,” said the petite woman, taking over the conversation. “Tram and I signed up a couple of months before you. At first, we were excited because we were going to get to be part of a real adventuring party with professional support. We gave up the rights to our skill choices and dungeon preferences to get free gear and work underneath a ‘skilled’ leader.

  “While we got decent gear, we got stuck playing make-believe to make Peter money while the least experienced one of us called the shots.”

  “Oh, so this is all my fault?” Avra scoffed.

  Lana sighed and rubbed her temples.

  “This is what I’m talking about,” Lana said, looking up to meet the other woman’s eyes. “Regardless of what you think, we aren’t really a team, and you aren’t a good leader. We fight in dungeons specifically suited to allow us to look good to the masses, but we aren’t actually that powerful. The only reason we are in this dungeon at all is because we are contractually bound to follow your choices or face serious fines.

  “You literally brought us in here because Ze—”

  “If you say another word, I’ll have the full penalty clause of your contract invoked,” Avra said, no warmth in her voice. “You seem to forget we have a guest with us.”

  “Fine,” Lana said, “but know that unless something major changes, this was your last run with Tram and me.”

  Ian watched as Avra’s mouth opened and closed multiple times before she looked away from Lana, her gaze darting to his shadow-covered face. He just shrugged at her before looking over at Kambis—who seemed to be lost in thought at what he’d just heard.

  Tram finished pulling on the last piece of his ‘fake’ armor that looked just like his original armor, but apparently weighed next to nothing.

  “Alright, I’m good to go,” he said with a sigh as he placed the new helmet on. “Let’s get into character one last time and go play some make-believe.”

  “Okay,” Avra said, coming over to him. “Toss an arm over my shoulder with Zero supporting you from the other side. It will make for a great shot for tonight’s headlines.”

  The man just stood there as she walked up next to him. His head turned to regard her, and he just shook his head.

  “Avra,” he said after a moment, “Get away from me.”

  “What?” came her shocked reply.

  “The thought of helping you in any way makes me sick,” he said in a dark, quiet voice.

  Lana came up and gently pushed Avra out of the way, taking the spot opposite from Ian and got everyone moving towards the portal.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Kambis walked up next to Ian.

  “Hey, Zero. Thank you for saving us,” the man said, his normal pomp completely missing. “I’m required to play the role in public and during a stream, and I know it annoys you. I’m sorry about it, but there isn’t much I can do.”

  “I get it, man,” Ian said. “Knowing it’s a contractual obligation makes me feel bad about giving you shit about it the other day. Can’t promise I won’t do it again, but just know it’s only to piss off the Dinkmister. Nothing personal against you.”

  Tram and Kambis both chuckled before Lana piped up, “You really hate him, don’t you?”

  “More than you can imagine,” Ian stated, his voice cold enough to send a chill up the petite woman’s back.

  “He’s actually a very nice man. If you gave him a chance, I'm sure you would understand how much he cares and wants to help us succeed,” Avra stated, seemingly unaware of the glances she received from her party.

  Ian snorted in disgust as they walked through the portal.

  The sun was brighter than the gentle glow from the one in the dungeon. As he walked out, he pulled out his phone to find it was almost mid-afternoon. His phone also chirped with a text message from Claire.

  Avra is about to ask for a meeting tomorrow morning. Please tell her yes, and that she can meet with us in my office at 10:00 AM. I know you won’t want to, but trust me on this one. Please, please trust me.

  Ian nearly growled at the message but took a breath to calm himself down. Claire hadn’t ever steered him wrong. When he looked at the message again, he found that she had sent it nearly four hours ago. Which means she had known what was going to happen.

  Ian smiled underneath his shadowy mask as the pieces clicked into place. Snapping back to reality, he found that a couple of men had come over to assist Tram. Handing him off to them, Ian turned to Kambis and smacked him on the shoulder.

  “It was good seeing you again. We’ll have to grab a beer at my place sometime,” Ian said quietly.

  “I think that would be splendid!” Kambis said, fully back in character. “Just reach out, and I will make myself available.”

  Lana came over and gave him a small hug.

  “Thank you for everything,” she whispered before pulling back and walking off with Kambis to follow Tram.

  Ian began to walk away as his ex began conversing with a couple of reporters.

  “Zero! Please wait,” came the bubbly voice Avra used while streaming. “I felt like we had such a bonding experience today. I was wondering if you would be willing to meet up with me tomorrow to talk about maybe doing some joint dungeon diving in the future?”

  His initial reaction was to scoff and walk away, but his phone chirped at him. Checking a sigh, Ian just nodded.

  “Meet me at 1000 hours in Keeper Withers' office,” he replied, trying to keep the derision out of his voice.

  “Perfect!” she said with a wink. “It’s a date.”

  Ian was glad his skill stopped everyone from seeing his grimace as he nodded before walking away. He didn’t miss Peter Dinkum standing in the crowd, smiling.

  Reaching the checkpoint, his phone dinged. Checking his most recent message from Claire, he sighed and shook his head.

  Thank you! You won’t regret it.

  “I need a drink,” Ian said under his breath.

  “I could arrange that,” Mavin said as she moved up next to him.

  He gave her a nod as she motioned him to follow her. She led him to a car parked just past the crowd in front of a few SUVs with large decals of The Conquerors on the hoods and side doors.

  “Those are gaudy as all get out,” Ian said as he got in the back of the AO’s car.

  “Stupid expensive as well,” Mavin said as she got in on the other side. “Now, I got a call a bit ago from an old friend, or I’d be worried that this was your last night with the AO.”

  “Definitely not joining that monster and becoming one of her misfit toys.” Ian shuddered. “Apparently their team is about to break up.”

  “Oh?” Mavin said, giving him a smile. “I take it Lana and Tram won’t be renewing their contracts?”

  “Doesn’t appear that way, though you don’t seem surprised.”

  “It isn’t just their adventurers who are upset at the business practices of Peerless. There are a few former guild employees who have contracts that are coming up for renewal, who have already asked if we have any positions open for them.”

  Ian nodded. It made sense that the rank and file were probably treated worse than the adventurers who were the cash cows.

  *~*~*

  “Zero!” Ian heard Jen’s voice call out when he walked into the cafeteria. It was quickly followed by the rest of her party doing the same.

  “Grab some food and get your ass over here,” called Kibbles as Ian watched his brother capitalize on the man’s lapse in attention to swap his empty mug for the one Kibbles had just placed on the table.

  Ian chuckled and went to grab food. It was still a bit early for the dinner crowd yet, but he was absolutely starving. All the craziness had caused him to skip lunch, and dealing with his ex was even more mentally draining than he had imagined it would be.

  After loading a plate up with food, he grabbed a mug and worked his way over to the table, taking the seat between Jen and James.

  “You’ll never guess what happened today!” Jen said, nearly knocking over his mug in her excitement.

  “Let the poor man eat, Glade,” James said with a laugh.

  Ian chuckled and looked back towards Jen.

  “How about you fill me in while I stuff my face?” Ian suggested as he poured ranch dressing all over his side salad.

  “You know I got that sponsorship offer?” she began, not needing any additional prodding. “Well, Claire set me up a meeting with one of their folks, and after they did some research into Restless Hands, they offered to sponsor not just me, but the entire party! It turns out that the founder of that company has kids who are almost old enough to sign up, and he is having a hard time finding streams that teach basic skills for dungeon diving.

  “I ended up calling James, and he completely blew them away with his presentation on all the lessons he wants to cover on stream. Isn’t that right, James?”

  The man in question seemed slightly embarrassed.

  “All I did was show them the ideas for a few different things like group formations, buffs, and basic first aid,” he said.

  Jen snorted. “That's a funny way to say you showed up with over a thousand pages of lesson plans and a full slide deck.”

  Everyone laughed as James turned even redder and pulled out his phone to ‘read’ something important.

  “Anyways,” Jen continued, “They were so impressed with his spiel that they offered to sponsor the whole party. The reason we haven’t done a bunch of consistent training streams is mainly due to the difficulties of supporting ourselves while putting out that content. Now, we are all going to be making good money and providing some good teaching material for new adventurers.”

  “And they are decking us out with their top-of-the-line gear!” Wanda squealed before downing the rest of her mug.

  “Congratulations!” Ian said, letting his excitement show through to his voice. “I wonder if the AO will start showing them during the newbie courses?”

  Ian thought about the training his sister was going through right now. Most of it was provided through death by power point or pure reading. He was going to have to text his sister and see what she got out of their videos.

  “That would be phenomenal,” James said, suddenly focused on the conversation again. “Too many adventurers get injured or die because they don’t prepare properly. One of the reasons we all still teach is to prevent more people from getting hurt over silly mistakes. If we can get the AO’s support, think of all the people we could help.

  “I mean, thanks to Glade running the dungeon with you this weekend, we had over five million people watching us over the past two days. It started with a few hundred thousand logging in to watch her when we started, but our party’s stream took off after an hour or so in.”

  “The benefits of the exposure are worth the downsides,” Jen said with a smile. “A lot of the new adventurers we ran into on the way back today thanked us for our stream. Even if I did have dozens of messages sent to the AO for me.”

  “Oh, you have admirers?” Ian said.

  “Just because I can’t see your smirk doesn’t mean I don’t know it’s there,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Besides, I think the majority of them were begging for feet pics.”

  Nexa made an over-exaggerated gagging sound, causing everyone to laugh.

  “Sad, but true,” Jen said, giving Ian a wink. “Anyways, we have a few days off since we need to get with a Keeper and get the contracts finalized. Claire said she would be able to help the day after tomorrow, and we all trust her.”

  Ian nodded, “She is amazing. I thought she was supposed to be back tomorrow morning?”

  “She is, but she said she will be busy tomorrow helping you with something when I spoke to her earlier. What do you have going on?”

  Ian grimaced, not wanting to tell Jen about the meeting.

  “I...uh…I have a meeting with Avra tomorrow morning,” he said after a moment of hesitation.

  Jen went to open her mouth, then closed it. She blinked a few times and shook her head.

  “I couldn’t have heard that right.”

  Ian sighed, “You did, and no, I don’t know why.”

  “Then don’t do it,” Jen said, her voice cold.

  “I have to,” Ian said. “I can’t go into it, but I’ll tell you after the meeting.”

  “Promise?”

  Ian nodded, “Promise.”

  Ian realized everyone at the table had gotten quiet. As he turned to look at them, everyone was focused on him.

  “I didn’t think it was true, but are you and Glade actually dating?” Nexa asked.

  “No.” Both of them replied in unison.

  Nexa’s eyes narrowed as she brought two fingers up to point at her eyes, then at him. She did it twice before putting both hands back on her mug and taking a drink—her eyes never leaving his shadow-covered face.

  Wanda snorted, and everyone broke out in a laugh again.

  Regardless of what happened with Avra tomorrow, Ian looked around and realized how lucky he was to have found friends he could spend time with.