Jasper was strapped to a chair in an underground stone room. He heard the sound of locks clicking, before a menacing dark skinned man entered the room.

  "You lying piece of shit!" The man yelled at Jasper. "You led my men into a trap, didn't you? My spies said that the amount of people that came to intercept our groups was enormous! Now we're down multiple groups of powerful people, and we can't send as many after the damn universe-hoppers! Now we're going to torture every last bit of information out of you until we can find a way to get rid of the siblings."

  Jasper was still gagged and tied up, so he couldn't respond or do anything. He just watched in horror as more men arrived with tools that he assumed would torture him.

  Meanwhile, the group had asked Tabatha on what they should do since they didn't have anywhere else to go, but Tabatha said that most guilds wouldn't take teenagers like them.

  "However," Tabatha said with a curious expression on her face. "You're group definitely has what it takes to defend yourselves, after all, I saw your fight with that group that one time. I suggest you go from town to town, and get stronger. I know those symbols on the men that attack you guys, the Adventurers Guild is quite the powerful enemy to have. Go get stronger, and you may stand a chance against them."

  Tabatha teleported the group to a faraway town, where they paid for a room in the tavern.

  "So Tabatha recommends we just go from town to town?" James asked Janica, the pair sitting at a table in their room. "How would that get us stronger? Also will the Adventurers Guild get stronger? Is there some sort of video game level scaling thing going on here?"

  "Maybe it has to do with our leveling system." Janica said. "If we keep leveling up, we might get more advantages over the Adventurers Guild. We could also consider the fact that we can become more skillful with each encounter."

  "That would be sick, like imagine a level one-hundred us while the Adventurers Guild is still level one!"

  "Can other people level up like us?" Janica asked.

  "Dunno, but if they can, that would stink."

  "Can you guys explain what you talk about?" Wade asked them, sitting on a nearby chair listening to their conversation. "We're kind of in this together now, so we got to understand each other better if we're gonna stick like this."

  "Yea," Corin said. "I never understood what you guys always talked about, especially James."

  James and Janica explained to the group different things from Earth that James always references, what their abilities do, what a gun is, etc.

  "Why would your world create something that's sole use is to kill fellow people?" Corin asked.

  "You guys can't be talking," James replied. "Swords, axes, maces, all those are weapons designed to kill shit, right?"

  "Still though, your world is so advanced in the killing aspect that you have things solely designed to harm. Ours could be used for other purposes, like cutting wood, breaking down a door, killing monsters, the main use isn't just to kill others."

  "Fair point, I mean like a gun could be used for other stuff, but its main use is killing shit so..."

  After a bit of chatting, the group slept in the same room, with most of them sleeping in chairs.

  The next morning, the group set off to walk towards the next town. James had heard from townsfolk at the previous one that the one their heading towards has non-guild related assignments that are very similar to the assignments they get from the Sky Guild. James had purchased a giant portable tent and was planning to use it on the way to the town.

  While the group was walking, James got a few curious glances from group members as he laughed to himself while watching his phone.

  "Does James have laughing disease?" Wade asked, sounding quite serious when he said it. "If he does we'll have to quarantine him."

  James took off his headphones and immediately assured Wade that he did not have a disease he has never heard of, before showing Wade multiple Youtube videos of cats being buttered. Soon the entire group was watching cats with butter on them, passing the time while walking much faster. The group stopped walking and set up the tent when it turned night.

  "Maybe I should deal with that Adventurers Guild someday." The god said to himself. "Eh, I'm sure it's no problem, it's kind of funny that on Earth there was racism, and now in this universe there is something that's comparable to racism."

  "Sir," One of his sons said. "Mum is pissed at you again for ignoring her god messages. She wants to talk to you again about how morally incorrect it is to just take people from one universe and plop them onto another."

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  "Tell her to piss off. I don't want to hear another word from her godly mouth until she does something about people believing in fake gods on Earth. Make sure she deals with the different religions on Earth, then we'll talk."

  "Why do you want your brothers and sisters' followers to stop believing in them?"

  "Because I'm obviously the best god of course!"

  Inside of Derek's ability house, he was overlooking his plans on misleading the search groups and spies to lure them away from the siblings.

  "The spies have already spotted them heading towards a town, so I'll need to think fast if I want to pull this off. I'm going to have to travel and intercept their group, and use a disguise spell on them, to make it seem like they're just a normal group. I'll try to make it seem like they went a different direction somehow, so I'll figure that out later."

  Derek teleported to the town the group was heading towards, planning to run into the group and disguise them with one of his spells.

  The next morning, the group packed up the tent and headed towards the town. They were closing in on it when a man everyone, but James, didn't know. The man quickly cast a spell on them, making a transparent sphere appear around them. To outside eyes, the group now looked like a bunch of armed adults, but if you're inside the sphere, everyone would look the same as before. The man vanished soon afterwards, and the group was left being confused, until they spotted a note on the ground.

  "I used a disguise spell on you guys," The note read. "That'll help you avoid Adventurers Guild spies. Good luck, don't die."

  "Who was he?" Janica asked.

  "Derek, duh." James replied.

  "So that's what you meant by good looking guy with ridiculous t-shirt."

  The groups made it to the town later in the day, where they headed towards the assignments building and accepted a few.

  Jasper was on the verge of death, his torture continuing throughout the day. The head of the guild went back to his office while the torturers did as the pleased with him. After all the torture was over, and they realized they forgot to take off his gag all this time so they didn't even get any useful information out of him, they threw him into a prison cell in the guild before leaving him.

  "Ouch," Jasper said aloud, no one hearing him from how deep underground he was. "I'm gonna break out this cell sooner or later, once I regain my energy." Jasper collapsed to the floor.

  Jasper woke up a few hours later, where he attempted to break the bars of the cell with his firesword spell, before realizing that he didn't have a sword to use it on. He banged on the walls, but the walls were made of stone and on the other side was just stone and dirt. He tried everything he could, but it was no use. He was starving, still hurt, and dehydrated, with no one but him around. He laid down on the floor and slept, having exhausted all his options. He had nightmares when he slept, making him feel guilty about telling the Adventurers Guild about the siblings.

  He had nightmares of Corin, who was usually caring and understanding of people, looking at him with with disdain in her eyes. Wade, who usually had his back, looking at him with hatred. Zewei, who's fun and reckless nature gone in his nightmare as Zewei looked quite serious, scolding Jasper on his choices. The nightmare then flashed to the siblings, where they were being comforted by his previous group. He had that same nightmare on loop for as long as he slept in the prison.

  The group was on a roll with the assignments, with them usually consisting of going to an area and clearing it. Some assignments required them to retrieve an item, which was a bit slower but it reaped more rewards. The rewards were usually money, but sometimes it would be a choice of a few items like food, water, or money. James always chose food since he wanted to try and cook something after purchasing cooking supplies earlier, while the group selected money, since James already had the food and water ready for them.

  "I can't wait to try out this bad boy," James said. "I used to cook with my dad back home all the time!"

  "I miss dad's cooking," Janica said. "But I'm excited to try out this world's foods too."

  They headed to one of the bigger cities after being satisfied with how many assignments they cleared out, and they decided they would aim for the harder contracts only found in big cities, like the one they were headed to.

  "Are there horses or cars in this world by chance?" James asked Wade as they were walking. "Like surely they have some other transport option if they have flying ships right?"

  "There are these things called caros, they're similar to the cars you described to us before, but they're very slow and not good for long distances. They're mainly used by rich snobs who want to slowly go around places showing how much money they have."

  "The mayor of my old town had one," Corin said. "He was assassinated by my neighbor for some reason, how odd."

  "Since we're on the topic of backstories," James said. "Why don't we share things from ours?"

  "James," Janica said. "Me and you might have the most boring backstories out of anyone here. Two Asian teens that barely went outside playing video games for the majority of our lives? Hell, we don't even have people back home we could call friends."

  "Really?" James said. "Jamal, I have bad memory, but if I recall correctly, Janica here was hanging out with this cute Asian boy outside of school."

  "Hell yea she did!" Jamal replied. "I swear we thought you were dating because of how much you hung out with him. I wonder if he misses you."

  Janica's face turned bright red. "We weren't dating, we were just friends."

  "So we do have people we can call friends!" James said. "Man don't go putting us down, especially me who was super popular totally back then!"

  "James," Jamal said. "I might think like you, but I'm a bit of my own person now, and I know everything you do. You had zero friends and were a total introvert back then."

  "Fucking snitch!" James said.

  The group shared their old experiences. Zewei came from a tribe of human-tiger hybrids, Corin came from a small farming town, Wade came from a flock of human-bird hybrids on a tropical floating island, and the group told them that they didn't know much about Jasper's backstory.

  "What happened to Jasper anyway?" James asked. "He straight up just vanished! I know he was a dick and all, but I'm slightly worried about him."

  "We can only guess." Wade said.