Nobody ever said I was smart. Okay, well, actually some people have said I am pretty smart, but they’re wrong; I’m just a fast learner and they mistake that for actual intelligence. Would a smart person do so many dumb things? Things like, oh, say, spending weeks inside my inventory while only one day passed in the outside world, which is, you know, flying in the face of the whole “if you spend too long in there with wonky time your body’s gonna get all messed up and you might go bonkers or worse” warning.

  After meeting with Lianna, I stepped out of the portal directly into my treehouse in the elven village and immediately sought out my favorite artisans. A few days ago I had requested of them to make some special items, then as soon as the quest had been announced I put a rush order on the job and now it was time for me to go collect.

  I had a lot of enchanting to do, and only a little over a day to get it all done. I wanted to finish everything in time for the quest, and all I knew about when it would start was that it would be sometime after the recruitment deadline. My goal was to complete everything before then, just in case it started right away.

  Luckily, elves only spend a few hours each day meditating to refresh themselves instead of sleeping, so they were fine with my request for a rush job on the items.

  I, on the other hand, was a mere human and I did need sleep, but I really wanted to finish the new magic items before the quest. So I risked the potential side effects of screwing with time and, after one good night’s rest, spent the time I needed inside my inventory working constantly between brief catnaps and quick forays into the real world to get supplies, while only about a day passed outside.

  I guess I got lucky, because I came out no crazier than I was when I went in. At least I think I did. I spent all the rest of my Reward Points on mana potions, and quite a bit of gold too, and begged a bunch more from Morgan, but I think it was all worth it in the end.

  When I go into my Fortress of Solitude, I always come out at the same place I was when I entered it. This time, I’d been in my room at the dojo, so that’s where I appeared. I’m not big on swearing, I think it’s lazy. I think there’s almost always a better way to express yourself. But on this occasion, there wasn’t: I felt like complete dogshit. I felt even worse than last time I used the inventory to mess with time, probably because this timer I spent so much longer in there.

  I might have come out with my sanity more or less intact, but my body definitely wasn’t happy about it. The good news was it was nothing that a nice bath, a good meal, a shave and a haircut, and a few uses of various healing and buffing powers couldn’t fix to get me back to normal.

  Once I’d cleaned away the miasma of much accumulated unwashed ick and visited the dojo’s resident barber, I went to scrounge up that good meal. I found Lianna eating with Jane and Sigrid. After I’d left her about 36 hours earlier (or nearly two months from my perspective) she’d immediately quit her job and taken me up on the offer of moving into the dojo. There she’d been greeted by Sigrid and Jane and they’d all become fast friends.

  She’d also taken my instruction to go shopping very seriously and spent every last coin I’d given her. As part of that she’d treated herself to a suit of armor and was keen to show it off, so after we were done eating Jane, Sigrid, and I waited in the courtyard while Lianna ducked into her room to put it on.

  There we found Morgan and Arthur crouched around the zen garden with the four new recruits to Team Maple Leaf.

  This was the first time I got a look at who they chose as Maple Leaf newbies. Two of the four were people Sigrid and I had invited to the open house.

  One was a guy who I’d singled out to Stratos from a board game table at the convention. He was the silent type, but a solid player who treated every game like a chess match. You could tell his mind was always working, thinking several moves ahead.

  I had a feeling he’d be chosen. Thanks to the game’s wonky power titles and descriptions it would be easy to overlook him because of how his powers were named, but dig a bit deeper and the diamond in the rough was revealed.

  The game doesn’t always use the same words for things. For example, it uses the words dexterity and agility interchangeably. I’d noticed it does the same with mana and energy, and health is the same as vitality and life energy. It would be easy to miss the fact that Martin was able to buff by giving mana to other people and recover his own mana quickly, a very useful power combination for any team.

  As for his other power, with a little creativity the ability to move earth had a vast amount of potential as a supportive, defensive, or even offensive ability.

  It was possible to create these effects with enough mastery of Affinity Control in Earth, but the degree of control afforded by the power made it vastly superior. Specialized affinity-related powers like this also used far less mana than what it’d cost to accomplish the same thing through Affinity Control. His skills were lacking, but skills could be learned.

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  The other Player I’d picked out was in a similar boat, with easily overlooked powers that could be great if used properly. He was an older guy, and by that I mean middle aged, who’d been one of the dungeon masters at a D&D table.

  At first glance, nothing too special, but Adam was made for crowd control. The frozen ground power, another of those specialized affinity-related abilities, was basically a grease spell making it slippery under people’s feet, and could potentially also be an immobilization spell if used to lock someone’s feet in ice and prevent them from moving. Like Martin’s Digging A Hole power, it was possible to do the same with Ice Affinity Control — I’d done it myself — but not nearly as well.

  His other two powers could pull or push objects, which sounds only kind of handy, like a mono-directional telekinesis, until you remember that people are objects too, then it becomes amazing. When used in combination, Michael could pretty much slide people around or freeze them in place at will. Potent crowd control. I was also keenly interested in that multi-tasking skill.

  The third new recruit was a woman in her 40’s I remembered as tabletop RPG player. She’d been dressed in full-on gothic lolita at the convention: jet black hair, black dress with a built-in corset that bloomed from the waist down with lots of frills and lace, as well as petticoats, knee socks, severe makeup, the whole shebang.

  As the name implies, gothic lolita was a youthful look. You didn’t usually see anyone past their early 20’s choosing to sport that particular aesthetic, and I’d found it impressive the way she’d pulled it off with a confident elegance. I don’t know how she’d managed to cobble together Victorian-style emo clothes and armor here to match the look, but somehow she had. Then again, given her skills she’d probably made them herself.

  I was glad she was chosen. She was actually one of the people I’d followed around in disguise so I could see her use her powers. They were pretty good abilities to have on hand.

  Her power to create an area of darkness was like blinding everyone inside it unless they could see in the dark, which she could. It was a great debuff on your opponents, although it also meant that your teammates couldn’t see inside it either. The even better debuff was her other power, the ability to slow people down.

  You know that dream where you need to run but your feet feel encased in cement boots and you just can’t move fast enough? Imagine trying to fight when your whole body feels that way. Shame her power only worked on one person at a time. My custom version let me choose multiple targets within range.

  Having Amy on board with her Darkness also completed the whole set of affinities for Team Maple Leaf. Now the team had all twelve represented in people other than Jane. Gotta catch ‘em all.

  The last newbie covered the area effect needs of the team, a guy I recognized as a very capable video gamer.

  It wasn’t the area effect power I’d been expecting, but a poisonous cloud would do the trick as an attack and crowd control. Like Amy’s ability to see in the dark, Manuel’s poison immunity meant he could function just fine inside his own poison cloud. Being able to fire acid bullets or spit acid or however that power specifically worked added even more to his usefulness, and gave him a fighting chance against someone with the Air affinity who could clear away his poison cloud as easily as blowing out candles on a cake.

  I’d say Morgan did very well filling up the team’s ranks. She’d managed to fill the vacancy in damage dealing Andy had left while also beefing up the team’s crowd control and buffing aspects. Apparently that Celeste woman who’d appeared at the last minute when the team was first formed also showed up to be interviewed. Although she had amazing powers and dual affinity with Water and Air, Sigrid used her veto once again. I couldn’t help but wonder what about her was triggering Sigrid’s danger sense.

  Jane, Sigrid, and I left the strategists to their devices and found a bench to sit on while we waited for my one and only teammate to rejoin us.

  “What do you guys think of Lianna?” I asked them.

  “She’s great,” Sigrid said. “Smart as a whip, and very personable, if a bit blunt.”

  “Yeah, I like her too,” Jane said. “She’s very pretty, though.”

  “Is that a bad thing?” I said.

  “I suppose that depends,” Jane said, nibbling her lower lip. “But it’s certainly on brand for you. There’s one thing I don’t get, though.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Why her?“

  Up next: Sigrid beats up the new girl