You absolute toad-licking, bleach-drinking, fiddly-diddling moron. What in the absolute... just... What. Is. Wrong. With. You?!

The Ring’s exasperation came through loud and clear.

“You’re insufferable on the best of days, what is it now?” Oliver asked.

You! I don’t understand what is wrong with you! This is your quest, your chance. Your chance to right the great wrongs that the universe and this blasted, bloody System has wreaked on you and get your wife, and your life, back! What do these other people mean to you? They don’t matter!

Oliver couldn’t answer right away. When he did, it was slow. Hesitant. “I guess... I guess I don’t want her to come back and be... disappointed in me. She was quirky and spontaneous, but she was kind. Unfailingly kind. What good would it do me if she came back only to leave me again?”

What is going on? What is different? I don’t... I don’t understand. Where did I go wrong?

“What?”

I’m not talking to you, shut up. The ring chastised Oliver then went right back to muttering to itself. Pretty standard, I don’t see what could have-

“Listen,” Oliver interrupted the Ring’s monologue. “You can try and diagnose your own failings later, how do we get out of this one? How do we get down, and where’s the closest Temple?”

You don’t get it, do you? This has quickly become a failed run. At this point, it would probably be better for you to die so I can try again with another lost cause.

“At least tell me the direction to head in.”

Why should I? This is all becoming pointless.

“What’s it cost you? Do you lose anything by sticking around to see me fail?”

The Ring paused before it answered, Only time.

“Then at least give me a direction.”

Fine. North. There’s a shrine in a small glade, next to a clear pool. About two miles. Now, leave me alone.

Oliver sat down and began going through his satchel. Since he was the only member of the party with a bag, much less one that stored more than it should, Oliver had been tasked with carrying the group’s assorted Dungeon gains that they hadn’t used. Right now there was one in particular that Oliver was hunting for. Another smooth, shiny round disc. The kind that gave one free perk to a single Entity.

He used it on his spear and scrolled through the myriad choices until he found one that he had noticed long ago in the menu, but ignored in favor of the suggestions of the Ring.

[Teleport to Entity]

User Bound to this Entity may teleport to this Entity’s location at will. Only works within 100 meters.

Oliver selected the upgrade while the Ring continued to mutter to itself. Upgrade complete, he crept to the edge of the giant opening in the side of the great tree and looked down. The forest floor was well over a hundred meters down, so he’d need to do this in steps. He found a large enough branch, took aim, and launched the spear down. It sliced through the air like a diving falcon and embedded itself in the branch with an audible thump, throwing shards of wood and splinters into the air.

Closing his eyes, Oliver activated the perk. He felt a change in the ground beneath his feet and the wind on his face. Opening his eyes, he found himself standing on the train-sized branch, well below his starting point, his hand wrapped around the spear shaft. Trinket skipped down to him through the air, but Barton was stuck back in the opening above. With a triumphant grin, he jerked the spear from the tree.

“Barton, it’s okay!” he shouted up. “If this works, you should pop through to the next Stage with me, even if we’re not together.”

The dog sat down, clearly unhappy about the arrangement, but didn’t complain.

Several throws later, Oliver found himself on the forest floor. Trinket was able to follow him all the way down, skipping down through the air each time he teleported. Oliver found North and grinned at his companion.

“Race?” he asked, a twinkle in his eye.

Trinket’s lava mouth split into a wide smile, and the sprite assumed a sprinter’s ready position in mid-air. Oliver shouted, “Go!” and launched his spear. Trinket sprinted through the air, each step taking her nearly ten meters. She wasn’t nearly as fast as Oliver’s teleports, but she didn’t have to stop to pull a spear from a tree and find a new target in between. It was a close race.

Oliver spotted the pool that the Ring, who was still muttering in his head, had told him about. He whistled to Trinket, who had continued her sprint through the forest, and the sprite skipped back to him, obviously gloating over her victory.

“It’s here,” he told her, gesturing to the small clearing and pond.

Oliver’s gaze locked on to a small stone shrine on the other side of the pool. He was so fixated on his end goal, that he never saw the massive hammer coming.

The Ring was not having a great day. His charge was a stupid, unfocused, buffoon. Three-hundred and some-odd charges, and he’d never had one as frustrating as this. So what if you killed people in the Tutorial? They didn’t really die, after all. Same with the stupid child of a sprite and the mutt. They could be resurrected later, if need be. You gave up a Perk to bring a Bound creature back, but the dog wasn’t worth much, anyway. No price was too high, that’s what the moron didn’t get.

So absorbed was the Ring in its musings, that it didn’t detect the attack coming until the hammer struck the back of Oliver’s head. Oliver’s body fell to the ground in a pile. His spear had been knocked back several meters by the wild swing.

Not dead, it mused. Pity. Well, at least I get a turn to play. It has been a while.

“He’s not dead, you dolt!” Caleb shouted. This crew was pathetic, but the job paid well. Wait by this pond until some loser with a spear showed up and take him out. Caleb thought a dozen was way too much manpower for a job like this, but the employer had already chosen them and hired the team. All he had to do was lead.

The thug with the oversized hammer wound up for a crushing blow, but the man they were supposed to kill suddenly disappeared.

“Hmm, thank you for that. I don’t get out nearly often enough, you know.”

His men tensed up and turned to where the man was now standing, several paces back from where he’d fallen. He was leaning on the spear like a walking stick and smiling. The flaming pixie-fairy thing that was with him had frozen, too. Caleb hadn’t been looking forward to putting that thing down. In his experience, tiny monsters like that tended to be hard to hit and could do a lot of damage before you did get them.

Their target stood up straight and stretched his arms up high, then twisted his torso back and forth several times like he was warming up for something.

“Quit gawpin’ and kill ‘em!” Caleb ordered.

The man stopped his stretching and smirked. With one hand he plucked his spear from the dirt and tossed it, underhanded, like somebody rolling dice or rolling a ball to a toddler. The spear shot from his hand like a missle, running the hammer-wielding thug through the face, then embedding itself a few meters off the ground in a tree. Thankfully, the hammer-wielder exploded into dust instead of brain matter. The spear hadn’t even slowed down when it blasted through him.

Then, the man was standing on the branch of the tree where the spear had landed, plucking it from the tree.

“You know,” he said. “I don’t often recommend picking this Perk up, but, I’ll be danged if it’s not fun. It’s important to have fun once in a while, you know? Blow some steam off?”

The man continued his casual conversation as the spear launched itself again, this time dusting two of his crew before embedding itself in the dirt. Again, the man was just there, plucking his weapon from the soil as the dust of his last two victims floated in the air behind him.

“I’d like to get in some melee practice, if you gentlemen don’t mind obliging me,” the insufferable man asked. His tone was casual and conversational, like he was ordering lunch at a little sidewalk cafe.

The remaining eight of Caleb’s hired hands obliged, charging in together. Only Caleb held back, and he was glad he did when he saw the corner of the man’s lip quirk up as the other’s charged in.

To Caleb’s eyes, the man only swung the spear once, in one great lazy, looping sweep. It was as smooth as a forest stream, flowing around the man with a few gentle ups and downs. It almost looked like the man was a conductor in front of an orchestra, the spear his baton. He finished the movement, and eight bodies worth of dust floated in the air around him.

Caleb was frozen to the spot. There was no way that this man started the Tutorial at the same time as the rest of them. No way. The man turned his gaze to Caleb, but the tiny fairy flew in from nowhere to smack into the man’s face. The man looked surprised for a second, then used his spear like a flyswatter to knock the fairy to the ground. He walked over to where it lay, and pinned it to the ground with the bladed end of his spear. Tiny bits of molten rock began to flow out from where the spearhead gently pierced the tiny thing.

“It’s you, isn’t it? I don’t know how, but it’s you. This whole wasted run is your fault. What did you do? How are you different?”

He pushed the spear in just a tiny bit more, and the tiny girl of obsidian and fire wailed. Caleb flinched at the haunting sound.

“No, I won’t kill you. He’d waste another Perk to bring you back. I’m nothing if not efficient,” the man decided, withdrawing his spear from the fairy-thing.

He turned back to Caleb, and Caleb felt the blood drain from his face. His hands took on a tremor that he couldn’t seem to stop as the man stepped towards him, a smile on his face.

“Why are you here? Who sent you? I can’t have any enemies at this point, it’s far too early.”

Caleb hesitated long enough for the man to sweeten the deal. “Tell me now, and I’ll let you go. I’ll even tell you where another Temple is so you can clear this Stage.”

“I don’t know,” Caleb started, and hurriedly shouted, “I swear!” when the man’s smile disappeared. “There was a note and a bag of Credits beside my bed when I woke up! It promised another bag just as big after the job. All of us met up at the same place and headed out here first thing this morning.”

The man leaned back and looked confused. “Hmm,” was all he said for a while. Then he waved Caleb away with one hand and said, “Fine. Go. Shoo.”

The ring watched the pathetic mercenary run for his life through the forest. He waited until the throw would be a challenge, then launched the spear. He gave a small smile when he saw the cloud of dust in the distance, then recalled his spear.

“Now I’m curious,” the Ring spoke with Oliver’s voice. “Someone is playing games. Yet another mystery in this curious run. Perhaps I’ll let things play out as they will, see where this is going.” He bent over and snatched up Trinket’s barely moving body from the ground and carried her by a foot towards the Stage exit.

“On we go, I suppose.”

Stage 6 Complete!