They hit the ground, falling flat on their faces.

Crown sat up and saw that they were in Highpark in Arlepia, distant mountains and tall evergreen forests made that much clear.

The short grass below them formed several patterns, its outside was lined with mushrooms and flowers.

They were pretty high up, a steep albeit grassy hill led down to a river going off to sea.

"Hold on! This weird spot was a portal all along!?" Crown knew of the fairy-circle before, though she assumed it was just an out-of-place bit of scenery.

Loads of other druids were already on their way out, some were already being mauled by local wildlife, though Bromy wasn't particularly interested in them.

Bromy breathed a sigh of relief as he looked around as well.

"Greatpark... good, that's the closest exit-point to our base..."

Crown turned to Bromy.

"What now?"

Bromy took out a cigarette and pinched the tip to make it ignite.

"I have no clue..." he finally said.

"I doubt we stand much of a chance against the skeleton guy... maybe we can get John to use his tentacles to delete his soul?" Bromy suggested.

"..." Crown scratched her hair.

"In any case, we probably won't be able to go into the zone any time soon..." Bromy sighed.

Larry stood up and cracked his neck.

"I'm heading back in," he said.

"What?!" Crown demanded.

"Yeah, what?" Bromy agreed.

"I appreciate your concern, but Moomglade is my home," he explained.

"You realise what'll happen if you go there?" Bromy asked.

"You'll keep respawning there until you get killed by the skeleton permanently, now that the portal's been broken you can't even leave..." Bromy explained.

Larry smirked.

"But on the flip side, if I do somehow make it, it'll be a pretty cool story, right?" he laughed.

"What the hell do you mean?! It's been a couple of weeks but it's not too late to settle down somewhere without the eco-friendly grim reaper!" Crown argued.

"A couple of weeks? I've lived here since before I knew it, I'm Larry the green-furred wolfman, a fisherman trainer in Moomglade!" he said proudly.

"An NPC?" Crown thought.

"I can't let my home get wrecked by a walking pile of bones!" Larry laughed.

Crown clenched her fists.

"Come on! You're only now sentient! Don't you want to give life a shot! Don't go dying for a stupid reason like that!" Crown erupted.

"..."

"..."

"Are you feeling alright, Crown?" Bromy asked.

"That outburst was uncharacteristically human..." Bromy thought.

Crown seemingly snapped back to reality.

"I... eh..."

A rush of embarrassment came over her, "I mean there's no need to be a retard and die for some fucking druid-only club!" she crossed her arms.

Bromy placed a hand atop Crown's hooded head.

"She has a point, Larry," Bromy said with a grin.

"I will absolutely tease her about it later..." he thought.

Larry let out a sigh.

"Look, I'm grateful for your concern, but I have to go and help the others,"

"Tch! Who do you take me for, some coward!? Of course we're going to go beat that glow-in-the-dark Halloween decoration back into hell, but we can't just charge in there! We need a plan first,"

"A plan?" asked the wolfman, he was interested in the idea of winning back his home and surviving.

"It just so happens we have a freshly put together strategist who should do something but cause trouble for once!" Crown exclaimed with a grin.

She breathed a sigh.

"How about it, wolfman? Are you interested in actually killing the skeleton?" Crown asked.

"..."

"Sure! If it means we can save everyone and get Moomglade back!"

With that, the group journeyed south-west to the L.F.T.O base, soon the tall silhouette of the base came into view, Bonifacius was in the process of carrying massive barrels of supplies off Pedecree's cart.

Inisde, JohnWillStab was doing a lot of strategising.

Alex, the Thief and Revenberry were in the process of planning out the interior design of the base.

Foxly was in the study with John, coming up with budgets and ways to extort the jGuardians for more funds.

Jordan was in the small garden located near the entrance, he was planting some flowers, he decided to plant one for every member of the guild.

An edgy black flower for John.

A bright blue flower with over-sized petals for Bonifacius.

An orange, tulip-like flower for Crown.

A dark blue flower with intricate patterns on the petals for Alex.

A curly, red-stemmed flower for Thal.

A small, gold-yellow lotus-like flower for Foxly.

A pulsating fleshy mound for Bromy.

A dandelion-like white flower for the Thief.

A big, gourd-rooted flower with white petals for Pedecree.

A bland red flower for himself.

Next to John's edgy flower sprouted a small black flower, at first Jordan was going to remove it but decided it fit John on account of the whole Arachnophobia thing.

Jordan tried multiple times to remove the dozens of little white mushrooms that kept sprouting around Crown's flower but eventually gave up.

Up in the study sat John and Foxly, they had separate tables and stacks of papers before them.

"Pedecree finished the drink prototype... the ingredients are about five gold a bottle... plus the bottle itself is about five gold..." Foxly mumbled as he wrote.

"We'll use quest-pages on the bottles, since those are replenishable and free..." Foxly continued.

"We might want to get someone to do a logo for us... "

"Ten gold a bottle... even if we minimize our profit and keep it as a PR stunt, selling a bottle for ten gold..."

Foxly thought to his time killing mobs.

"A single over-sized spider can drop one to five gold... an average of three point five gp each..."

Foxly tries to think about how much the average person earns per day.

"Once someone picks a house they don't really pay taxes... but clearly they make money for food, right?"

Foxly turned to John.

"We're going to need a few surveys, I have no idea how to price things..." Foxly relented.

JohnWillStab nodded.

"Yeah, how about we offer a bottle for free as compensation for their survey?" John suggested.

"Hmm... that might work... we could ask to keep the bottles which would cut our losses to five gp per bottle..." Foxly replied.

Foxly began drawing up a quick survey, "Actually! I have a better idea!" John exclaimed.

"Hm?" Foxly looked up to him.

JohnWillStab grabbed a quest page,

"Write your daily income and method of earing said income, both answers must be honest,"

"Reward: A bottle of jGuardian soda"

John wrote this on a quest page.

Foxly's eyes widened in excitement.

"That's an awesome idea! The items will be teleported to the people too, so we don't have to carry the drinks around!" Foxly exclaimed.

"Yeah, plus we can guarantee an honest answer!" John said proudly.

JohnWillStab handed Foxly the quest page.

"Here, try it out!" John instructed.

Foxly began writing on the quest page with a quill.

"Job, LFTO treasurer/business manager, average income... nothing..." The quest page disappeared, in its place appeared a bottle of Apple-Cherry drink from the stockpile recently delivered.

The drink wasn't even bottled yet, so the liquid from the barrel and the bottles were magically combined.

Suddenly the door burst open.

"JOHN! WE NEED YOU TO STRATEGIZE SOMETHING!" Crown exclaimed.