“So, when you two planning to have a kid?” Will asked Nick and Seo-ah as they neared the end of the drive to the rift.

  “I wouldn’t mind starting on the family stuff as soon as we—”

  “Nick, what the heck did I tell you yesterday about raising flags?!” Seo-ah shot him an angry look, nearly breaking his hand as she squeezed it as hard as she could while staring at him to make sure the message was crystal clear.

  “That you wanted as many death flags as possible?” Nick teased, “That you wanted me to help you get that ‘mom with side plait’ hairstyle, tell you how we’ll do something right when we get back, have a little flashback moment about how important everyone is to us, take on the kind old mentor role for some young adventurous upstart—I am a trainer after all . . . Am I missing one?”

  Seo-ah shook her head as Nick kept listing one death-flag trope one after another. “You are so lucky you’re handsome. I swear, good looking people have life on easy mode.”

  “This coming from the prettiest girl I’ve met seems quite rich,” Nick replied with a laugh.

  “You know I have thought about putting a few points into Charisma . . .” Seo-ah remarked, opening a mirror and looking at herself. “I could really use whatever magic it works on your skin.”

  Nick shrugged. “The real magic is whatever skin care routine you’ve got going on. From all the products you moved into my bathroom, I would swear you were doubling as a chemist or a physician or something.”

  “Our bathroom,” she quickly corrected him.

  Nick grinned again.

  “Yeah, our. Our bathroom,” Nick repeated it as he thought about how lucky he was.

  “We’re here . . . but I can circle the block if you two want to keep being cute back there,” Will offered.

  “No, no, we need to get in there. It’s not fair to the next team if we take too long,” Nick said as he got out of the car, popping his back and stretching a little.

  He was surprised to see Roland standing with a few of the others by the rift as he grabbed his backpack out of the trunk.

  “He really is like a wolf more than a lion, isn’t he?” Seo-ah commented as she grabbed her pack and then looked over at Nick to help him adjust the straps on his. “You properly beat him finally, and now he’s respecting the order of the pack instead of going all Scar on your Mufasa.”

  “Yeah, maybe, but let’s not bring up those two. I’d rather not ‘be prepared’ to get trampled by old movie references,” Nick replied, chuckling at his own allusions.

  “Alright, I’ll spare you this time, Mr. Gallows,” Seo-ah said as the two made their way to the rift.

  “Thanks for that, Mrs. Gallows,” Nick replied, feeling more than a little happy to say that in return.

  “You two know that going into a dungeon to train and kill monsters isn’t the normal honeymoon, right?” Will asked as he tossed a package at Nick, gift wrapped with a little bow on it.

  “Yeah, we’ll have to do a proper one when—” He paused just to see if the death-flag jokes were still getting a rise out of Seo-ah or if they had run their course. He was disappointed when she just rolled her eyes at his obvious attempt to tease her yet again. “Nevermind,” he then concluded, not wanting to bring on the bad luck himself.

  “Break a leg out there,” Will told them, “and wait till I’m gone to open that.”

  “Will do,” Nick replied, giving the gift a little shake to see if he could tell what it was as he walked with Seo-ah to the rift, where everyone from the Walters, to the Abyssal Knights, to Topaz and the rest of the impromptu wedding party was already waiting for them. Before he got there though, three limos pulled up in succession, their doors opening as Darleen, leading the pack, hopped out before Lady Isolde, Rosemary, Seraphina and Finnegan piled out next, each followed by what were clearly their servants.

  “We’re not late yet, are we, Master Gallows? I had to pick each of them up personally, which took considerable time given the reluctance of their parents, save Evelynne, to release their charges.

  “Tch, seems Evelynne is the only one that can read the way the wind is blowing,” Roland remarked, his derision was evident.

  “Indeed, Master Roland,” Darleen said, brushing off his comment. “However, leveraging the fact that it would be much more difficult for them to ever attain positions in the company, should they fail to join the effort, and that it would tarnish the family name that Grandfather Gallows worked so hard to build, as defenders of the realm, I was able to coax their guardians into gifting us their time.”

  “It’s a life or death expedition, so you could get killed at any time. Are you all sure you wanted to join?” Nick asked pointedly as he looked at the upstart nobles.

  “And have to stay with my mother and meet whatever power hungry brat she’s going to try to set me up with?” Rosemary asked before shaking her head. “No. I think I will pass on that.”

  “As much as I cherish my parents, I cherish the idea of exploring a whole new world even more,” Lady Isolde explained herself, “and I loathe the idea that a whole class of commoners will be better than I am if I don’t join this . . . workout regiment that Roland won’t stop going on about.”

  “I just came ‘cause she’ll probably get killed if I don’t,” Finnegan admitted with a shrug. “Oh, and Roland told me there would be ice cream.”

  “You realize it’s going to be below freezing over there . . . Shouldn’t you be hoping for hot cocoa instead?” Nick asked.

  “Ice cream in cold weather tastes the same as it does in hot,” Roland stated, looking at Nick like he was a moron for suggesting the weather would have anything to do with why one should or shouldn’t eat ice-cold foods.

  Nick shrugged. “Well, either way, cousins, it’s a pleasure to have you join us. I’m looking forward to training with you on the other side.”

  “Same. I want to see how our class-switching cousin somehow became the most powerful Gallows in a generation,” Rosemary said and then added, “and I’m definitely looking forward to a break from mom’s lessons.”

  Nick could only laugh at that before he noticed her looking at the wedding band on his finger.

  “You missed your chance,” Lady Isolde observed, not even bothering to lower her volume. “He’s taken now.”

  “He— He’s still my cousin!” Rosemary looked rather perturbed.

  “Yet quite far removed,” Lady Isolde made sure to note.

  “I can hear you, and I have a weapon,” Seo-ah stated, staring down the two women like they were about to get attacked for even hinting at the idea that Nick could have been a prospect.

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  “Ah, would you look at that? It seems I need to go work out early. See you all on the other side!” Lady Isolde announced with a smile as she practically pranced through the rift while everyone else just blinked in surprise.

  “You can be in charge of her lift schedule,” Nick said to Seo-ah, offering her some revenge against the girl.

  “No, let’s leave her to Elizabeth,” Seo-ah replied, a devilish smile on her face.

  “Has she earned my tutelage?” asked Elizabeth, who was with the Walters, waiting on Nick to join.

  “Not in my opinion. Only the best deserve your expertise,” Nick quickly said, stroking the ego of his would-be torturer before she was given access to her dungeon and tools: the gym and her medicine ball.

  “Speaking of the gym, I can’t wait to go try it out some, so I’ll be heading in too now,” Arnold told everyone.

  “Nnn,” Stacy grunted with a nod, saying goodbye to Seo-ah’s brother, who was apparently not joining them.

  After that, Nick led the way for the others, stepping through the rift, Seo-ah right at his side.

  ———

  The moment they stepped through the gate, Nick was hit with a blast of frigid air but was happy to see that everything seemed to be running in perfect order. The base was actually doing exceptionally better than he anticipated. People were moving in and out of the encampment with perfect synchronization, and to make things even better, in the single day that he’d been gone, the tent city where people had been living previously had been replaced by large, two-story solid-black stone buildings with columns of smoke coming out of their chimneys.

  “Woah,” Nick blurted out as he looked at the buildings. “That’s a lot of changes.”

  “And you’re late,” Kaylee chastised him, but she then paused, her eyes spotting the rings on Seo-ah’s finger before moving to the one on Nick’s. “Oh my God! You did the wedding without me?!”

  “It was a small impromptu family event,” Nick explained, trying his best to apologize.

  “Ugh, I can’t believe I didn’t get a chance to plan my boss’s wedding. I would have been the best wedding planner ever,” Kaylee grumbled, seeming more upset she couldn’t help than the fact she wasn’t invited.

  “Well, if I do another one, I’ll be sure to enlist your services,” Nick told her.

  “You better not do a second one,” Seo-ah harrumphed at him.

  “What? Some people do vow renewals. It’s a thing,” Nick said, defending his slip of tongue.

  “Nick, as your adjutant, I believe I must advise you that it is in your best interest to cease digging before you commit yourself to any additional expenditure of funds,” Kaylee told him and then quickly changed the topic. “But we do have base updates. We’ve managed, with the help of volunteers and some assistance organized by your Gallows compatriots, to not only finish construction on the walls, but begin to clear out the woods surrounding the base so we can’t be hit with a surprise attack. We’ve used that wood and earth to build up lodgings and infrastructure and used the excess power from the steam power plant the system provided to run the space heaters for each of the bedrooms.”

  “Wow, that’s great news,” Nick replied, nodding appreciatively at her work. From the pillars of hot air coming out of each building, visible like white smoke in the cold to the solid, sturdy-looking ramifications to the lack of towering evergreens to block his view of the horizon, it was very clear she had done a great job. The even more impressive part was that it had all been done in barely a day. In perspective, it had been less than three days since they crossed the threshold into the new world, and they had set up an outpost, fortified it, defeated a massive enemy army, and staked a hard claim in the new land. This was a blazing rate of progress, but it was all about to come to a head because the next task was one that couldn’t be rushed: training.

  “I’m glad you like it.” Kaylee beamed with pride, but that happy expression immediately faltered as she frowned and looked down. “And, uhh . . . I’m sorry about introducing you to the traitor.”

  “Don’t be. We all make mistakes,” Nick told her. “It’s just important you correct them. No matter how much damage is done, keeping a level head and analyzing the events is what’s most important. You can’t change the past, only the future.”

  “Thanks,” Kaylee said. “I’ll try to be a better judge of people in the future.”

  “I appreciate it,” Nick replied as he looked over to the Heart of the Gym. “Actually, how much essence are we up to now? Are there any more upgrades I can buy before we hit the gym?”

  “Well, we have 260 essence fragments, including the previously unspent ones,” Kaylee answered, “all of which are waiting for you to spend at your leisure.”

  Nick nodded, walking over to the heart of the base and opening up the build menu. There he was greeted with the plethora of options for modifying the base, but he wasn’t concerned with them. The only thing he was interested in was the gym.

  Much like the infirmary, each section of the gym building had several different upgrade options. The gym itself, which could now accommodate eighty people, the physical training zone, the magical-attack training zone, and the soulforge sauna, which was currently bronze ranked and allowed forty trainees, each had their own unique modifiers and upgrades available.

  “Have the attacks let up at all?” Nick asked as he stared at the options. He wanted to upgrade the soulforge sauna again first to raise it to silver rank, but that would require over 500 essence fragments.

  “Yeah. We expect that, given how relentless the attacks are, we should be able to harvest anywhere between two and three hundred more essences a day for the heart,” Kaylee quickly answered. “We haven’t had a let-up yet.”

  “I see . . .” Nick scratched at his chin as he stared at the options. The first upgrades for the physical and magical-attack training zone, to raise the stat growth bonus from 10% to 25%, to put them in line with the soulforge sauna, were each 100 essence fragments. There was also the option of spending 200 essences and raising the capacity of the gym again, but he decided not to deal with that.

  “It kind of makes you wonder about the upgrades the Black Witch must have gotten with the essences she harvested from that siege against her,” Seo-ah commented as she watched Nick scroll through the list of potential upgrades.

  “Yeah . . . if this is stuff we’re getting from small skirmishes . . . and we’ve only been here a few days, I wonder what her upgrades are like,” Allen mused. “I bet, with her points, she could afford the best drones ever.”

  “Allen, we’re focusing on the gym first until it’s capped, not drones,” Nick responded, shooting down his friend’s hopes quickly before they could inflate any more.

  “We could do both . . .” Allen grumbled. “I mean, more—”

  “No, we can’t let our people fall behind in levels and experience. We’ve been over this, Allen,” Nick insisted. “It is paramount we do not allow the efficiency of drones to cannibalize the progress of our defenders in getting stronger. When the gym is capped—and the infirmary and the kitchen—then we can talk drones.”

  “Well, it seems we don’t have to figure out what to buy next then. SPEND ALL THE POINTS, BRO! FLEX THEM ESSENCES!” Reggie shouted excitedly. “I can’t wait to see how strong the next upgrade will make us!”

  “You’re very cavalier about it, even itemizing out the flow rates . . . but those are living creatures you’re spending. The life blood of thinking, feeling, sentient individuals is going into upgrading these buildings. It’s hard to feel good about it when I can’t help but imagine that, if we were assaulting their base, someone would be carving up our skulls, breaking open our sternums, and digging the essences out of our chests just so they could add a little extra porcelain to their thrones,” Lorenzo, former head of the Abyssal Knights, who was joining the others as people began to gather around Nick, voiced his own opinion.

  “I’m not one to dwell on which worms will eat my corpse when I die,” Quinn, his right hand man in the last guild and this one too, shrugged. “And I think the moment they tried to murder us, they sort of lost the right to have us consider their feelings and dignity.”

  “Nnn.” Stacy nodded at Quinn’s words.

  “Stacy agrees, and so do I,” Amanda stated.

  “Fair point,” Lorenzo sighed. “Still feels wrong though.”

  “God always chooses the offerings of flesh over fiber. It’s the living, breathing lamb whose death means more than the harvest stalks of wheat,” Adelle said in an especially pious tone. “Even in this world, sacrifices must be made from the flesh of the living before boons can be provided.”

  “Just hit the button before this becomes some big philosophical talk, bro,” Reggie quickly advised, and Nick, not even waiting for someone else to object, did just that, spending 100 essence fragments each on the physical and magical-attack training zones, boosting them to the next stage of 25% increased gains for each of their respective stats.

  “Alright, done. Now let’s go grab lunch and then see what changes the gym has to offer. We have eight hours ahead of us to pray at the altar of steel,” Nick said as he popped his joints and gave his muscles a little flex.

  “Indeed,” Elizabeth, sporting one of the most evil grins Nick had ever seen, replied as she produced not just one, but two medicine balls. This caused everyone to stop in place, staring at the two balls, one white and one black, floating above her hand, circling each other like a yin and yang symbol perpetually spinning in place as energy started glowing off of them.

  “Uhh . . . Elizabeth. What are those? I thought you only had one,” Nick said as he stared at the two balls.

  “The black one is called motivation, and the white one is called encouragement,” Elizabeth answered. “I leveled up a skill during the last major conflict. I thought you might all enjoy tasting the benefits of my progress.”

  “Welp, glad we’re not in that group,” Captain Eizo told his second in command, Akiko, as the two of them made their way past Nick’s crew to the rift to take their day off with the rest of the forty people in their group.