I checked up on Jacob next, finding him, Raj and Esmeralda gossiping over a ton, and I really did mean a ton, of different furs, scaly pelts and empty shells strapped to the man. The spectacle looked ludicrous. As if some poor circus had strapped all their equipment onto the back of single tiny elephant.

  “I hope you enjoyed your hunting.” I told Jacob. Once more trying to move my face into the semblance of a genuine approachable smile.

  “You betcha!” Jacob grinned. His recently shaven beard revealing a multitude of old, poorly healed scars that he had neglected.

  It wasn’t that he couldn’t get rid of the completely now. I could have done it for him in a second. No, the issue lay in that he didn’t want the scars to go away.

  “Oh Sully I caught me all manner of beasties. This one here…”

  He pointed a thick stretch of hippo-like hide.

  “Used to sweat a compound that would aerosolize and turn into a poison gas when you cornered it. Or when it thought you were cornering it. It killed three dozen people when it broke into one of our villages. I put a stop to that I tell you. And I got myself a ton of fame and fortune in the meantime! I’m practically a rockstar!”

  “That’s great.” I said with full sincerity.

  “Maybe we’ll be able to stop by your world in one of these new Excursions. I could make it all stop. Like that.”

  The statement was supposed to inspire all of them. And it would, once they’d had some time to process their conflicting emotions.

  As for me…

  I went back to using the now opened forums.

  It was a simple thing, really. Merely open up the screen and think about what you wanted to say.

  The lobby was then vacated by all other users. Leaving me alone to read the old comments.

  I went through them a couple of times. Then I closed the feature and tried again.

  And again.

  And again.

  Many, many times in many, many lobbies.

  I wasn’t doing this because I liked to see people cowering away, but rather, because I knew full well that this was the only way to start a conversation.

  The… incident. Was still fresh on their minds. So it was better to present an affable front sooner rather than later so as to avoid that image of me becoming the only thing people remembered.

  People would bite.

  Eventually.

  As a matter of fact, I could predict such an event a few hours from now.

  So, I kept popping into lobbies for another ten minutes to plant the seeds and then moved on with my team for an Excursion of our own.

  “Holy (Gnome)!” Monique exclaimed. Immediately dropping to all fours and gasping for breath. “I can… I can’t….”

  “I got you.” I said calmly. Pulling out a flask of water from my ring and dabbing the contents into a cloth, before applying it to her forehead.

  At the same time, I placed a hand on her and willed her lungs to expand. Ordering the rest of her body to grow and to better handle the heat.

  “Guess I hadn’t given too much thought to the little things about being an Enhancer.” Charlie mused.

  “Indeed not. Even as a Shifter, I got abilities like [Heat Tolerance]. I mainly considered using it to deter monsters that spat fire, but this is a nice perk too.” Boris agreed.

  “Have you started generalizing with the rest of your Types?” Charlie asked.

  “Naturally.” Boris confirmed. “To do anything else would be the height of stupidity, given how well it’s worked out for me thus far.”

  Dusty and Slab approached from the side. Both of them eyeing each other after seeing how much Monique was struggling.

  “She’ll be fine.” I told them. “We just need to cover her with some piece of cloth while we make our way over to the city. I’ve got just the thing.”

  I removed the white fabric from my storage ring and proceeded to grow four small arms from both of my shoulders. Then I had those arms carry the cloth so that the shadow covered a large area around me, before I bent down to pick up Monique.

  “Take it easy now.”

  She gasped instead of answering.

  “I know. I know. I did warn you ahead of time mind you. And I did tell you what you stood to gain if you toughed it out. This is all going according to plan.”

  “Shouldn’t you give her some more water?” Charlie asked.

  “Not right now.” I countered. “Most of the water we brought with us has been accounted for in any case. The people in the city will need it a lot more than we do. Speaking of which, we better get going.”

  The trek was nowhere near as arduous for the rest of us.

  I mean, sure. My skin was scorched by temperatures that would have outright killed most normal people and the air was dry as a bone and I was pretty sure the sun was giving me lethal doses of skin cancer, but that was all negligible when compared to the levels I had in Shifter.

  Not to mention the fact that normal people were already surviving under these conditions.

  None of the locals were actually insane enough to wander around during noon hours but that was beside the point.

  Soon, we began to see the signs of a city on the horizon. One built from a collection of different kinds of stones crudely mashed together into walls and a ceiling.

  The city itself was a pit in the ground, whose edges were connected to several caves systems, who were themselves connected to an underground river. The only source of somewhat fresh drinking water for…

  Well…

  An entire world.

  “What happened here?” Charlie asked in astonishment. “I don’t see any crops around the city. How do these people live?”

  “With great difficulty.” I answered. “As for what happened, it was actually not the people’s fault. Some non-Labyrinth aliens came by and sucked it all up.”

  “So, the world is always going to be like this?”

  I forced myself to laugh, so that they would see my feelings.

  “Of course not! I [Dominated] their whole empire the second we got here! I’m usually all for jolly cooperation between species, but if you’re going to (Gnome) with humanity, you should know that I’m more than willing to (Gnome) you back ten times harder. They’re on their way with all the water they took but they won’t get here before the time limit is up.”

  “I see.” Boris spoke. “And what would we have to do in order to make the mission a success?”

  “Well, there’s this mage king guy down in the coolest, temperature-wise, chamber of the inverted pyramid there. He’s got a series of crystals channeling light into his little palace and he spends his days being a general nuisance to everyone and everything around him. He’s part Telepath and part Shifter. Like me. Unlike me, he’s a bit of a tool. He’s got this whole slavery / survival of the fittest / Conan the barbarian aesthetic going on and he’s lived so long he’s gone a bit funny in the head on top of that.”

  If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  “But he’s not the one we’re supposed to stop.” Dusty clarified.

  “Technically no.” I answered. “Since he does keep some sort of order in what may as well be the last civilization on the planet. The militias that are revolting think the underground river will be cleared of toxins naturally in about a week or two and they have enough stored water to last that long. However, they are wrong and their actions will kill just about anyone actually left standing.”

  “Does that mean we’ll leave the king alone?” Boris inquired. His voice gaining a bit of an edge to it.

  “Ha! No! Of course not! Like I said, I got to work as soon as we got here. We’re only going to the city to finalize the changes I’m going to implement and to give out the supplies we brought in our storage rings. That, and we’ll be giving Esper powers to everyone in the city, so that everyone has at least an equal chance of thriving once the aliens bring the water back.”

  And so, it was done.

  We spent a few hours handing out emergency aid. Receiving accolades. Making both the militias and the royal reserves see the error of their ways and generally being a good influence on the planet.

  By the time we left, I was feeling more or less recharged from the whole doppelganger incident.

  I mean, yeah.

  A copy of me did torture a lot of people.

  A lot, of people.

  But that doesn’t mean I’m a bad person.

  Why, I just saved an entire planet holding less than 20, 000 survivors from the human race and I made it so that they could rebuild the earth’s ecosystem. Eventually.

  I would have to go back once the Tutorial was over and we had open access to portals in order to drop in some more biodiversity. But hey, baby steps.

  ‘And speaking of baby steps…’

  I turned my head slightly.

  “Hey Dusty. Could you drag Ryan over here real quick? I’d like to have a chat with him.”

  “Sure thing.” Dusty answered. Getting up with a sigh.

  The next day went by more or less like the first one.

  We went on another Excursion. This time to a world filled with gladiators.

  That is, a world where all humans had been turned into gladiators by yet another non-Labyrinth alien species.

  Now, the whole stealing water deal was annoying, but at least those aliens had had no interest in humanity’s suffering.

  This whole, spectacle show business left a poor taste in my mouth.

  So, instead of doing what the Excursion said and freeing all the slaves, I settled for retaking the earth from the invaders. And to then wipe most of the invaders off the galaxy and leaving the rest of them in a perpetual stone age.

  Just to drive home the point.

  I left that version of earth with yet another song in my heart and even more feelings of self-fulfilment.

  After all, no one would be messing with humanity and getting away with it in that dimension, ever again.

  No one.

  I then turned to the forums again. Eager for the moment I’d predicted.

  Naturally, most other messages disappeared in an instant. As almost everyone else in the lobby who had up to that point been discussing their own Excursions left to do anything else.

  I waited.

  Knowing what would happen.

  I paused. Feeling as though I should compose myself, but once more realizing that my body was as composed as it was likely to get.

  There was another pause, before dad’s message came through.

  I smiled and sat back. Knowing damn well that the next message would not come anytime soon.

  I then moved about the place.

  Smiling at the efforts of all my other friends.

  These people were alive because of me. Because of my actions. Did I have any regrets about what I had done to keep them alive?

  ‘Yes.’ I told myself. ‘I regret my own weakness at the start. Several hundred people had to die, before I got a hold of myself. If I had been stern. If I hadn’t been running away from all these problems, then all of them could have survived. I would not have been able to absorb the Drake in the same manner, but I still would have had access to Randall. I would have been able to make my way back home after absorbing him. It would have been risky. Near suicidal. But I would have found a way. I’m sure of it.’

  I grunted and was about to make my way over to the sparring arena again, when Slab and Boris approached me from the side.

  “We need to talk about Charlie.” Slab began.

  “He’s got his head in the clouds.” Boris continued. “It’s been getting worse. His performance has been dropping.”

  “So?” I asked them both. “That means he’s gone from one of the scariest guys here to someone marginally less scary. What does that have to do with us?”

  Both of them looked surprised.

  “He’s out teammate and our friend.” Slab explained, as if I didn’t already know that.

  “He’s also been bitten by centipedes multiple times now. And not for training purposes.” Boris piled on. “If he’s struggling that much against the regular monsters, then he’s likely to get killed fighting anything stronger or close to his level.”

  “No. He isn’t. All the monsters here are under my control and they only fight back because I wanted everyone to keep training. I assure you that none of them are going to take a nibble out of Charlie. Nothing more than a scratch anyway. As for him being distracted…”

  I shrugged.

  “He’s got a lot on his plate. Me and grandpa and Mr. Park were as honest with him as we could have been. We laid out the problems and we laid out solutions. He’s trying to find a way around those solutions because they strike him as evil. That’s fine. I’m not going to pressure him into accepting anything. But that means he needs to arrive on his own answer by himself. It will take time. Give him space.”

  They both looked at each other, but left things as they stood.

  For my part, I could only sigh.

  Because I knew what it was like to wrangle with tough choices.