Toby entered the guild early this morning. The sun was shining as it always did in town, and he had a good feeling that unlike the first time's total failure, everything would work out this time.

Especially if Alice managed to come through and get them the funds to go the Divine route for getting the world settled.

“Good morning Toby.” Alice's well-known voice greeted him at the door to his office when he was just about to enter it.

“Good morning Alice,” Toby replied cheerfully, before walking over to his chair to take a seat.

Alice remained at the door, and as soon as he sat down she closed it tight.

“You have attracted some very dangerous attention, Toby,” Alice said with an accusing tone, eyes narrowed and showing him their green irises.

“How so?” Toby frowned.

He didn't think he'd done anything to harvest more attention than strictly needed to get things moving along.

So what could she be referring to? And even more importantly Who were these people that had an interest in him?

"This is making things complicated in so many ways.” Alice sighed before rooting Toby to his chair by placing herself squarely in front of him.

She leaned in over him with a look that made Toby's spine tingle in worry.

She had dropped her Alice mask completely now, clearly showing off all her predatory qualities in all their intimidating glory.

“I am going to give you a message from someone you shouldn't know. You are to neither confirm nor deny anything at all in that regards.”

She said sternly while holding a finger up to his lips in a hush sign before continuing.

“When TIME visits, follow the White Rabbit.”

User: secret Quest updated

You have been given a hint about what to do: When TIME visits. Follow the White Rabbit.

Toby's eyes widened and he was instinctively drawing in his breath to say something when Alice leaned forward and pressed her hand to his mouth to prevent him from making even a sound. She was furiously making the hush sigh again.

“You are not to say a word about this matter to anyone! And that includes me.” Alice looked angry. Her piercing green eyes looking straight into his as if she was trying to read his mind through them.

Toby nodded meekly. Alice could be really intimidating when she got angry at something.

After almost a minute of eye contact, she seemed satisfied that he wasn't going to try to say anything anymore, and started to relax her grip on him.

“I can't afford you failing in this matter Toby, it's too important for everyone involved, Not just you and me, but our new friends and your people.

You must follow instructions for now.” she finally growled before her visage slowly changed back into the blue-eyed innocent looking Alice again.

Toby swallowed hard. This was getting complicated and quite a bit scary. He didn't want his secret quest to involve her like this. He even less desired to keep it from her like she demanded.

How could they trust each other if they couldn't even share their troubles?

There were no doubts that she had links to the same people that had given him this quest in the first place either.

“For completing a quest, I was given 4 tokens for divine level character creation.” She continued as if what had happened just a few seconds ago hadn't happened at all.

“We are set to go back in and try to actually do something other than just dying this time around.”

“We are also obliged to negotiate access to the world with both the Band of Uncles and Anima Alliance.” She sighed. “We desperately need the money even if I got these tokens this way."

Toby nodded. “I have anticipated, and made preparations for that.”

"I have had some correspondence with both factions, and they only desire access to roam the world for now, not settle any proper civilizations.”

“That is good,” Alice replied with a breath of relief.

“I'm glad to see that you are on top of guild business at least.”

“I used to help run a major guild in one of Earths many games before the end,” Toby replied with a shrug.

“It's one of the few things I am pretty confident about my abilities to do well.”

“You certainly got the right mindset to make us successful,” Alice replied on her way out.

“I made the right choice when I chose you for this job.”

“It's strange how it all seems to turn into one of my cultures fantasy worlds,” He sighed thoughtfully when she was gone. He was getting the full fantasy cast to work with it on his world it seemed.

It was as if someone had planned all of these events out well in advance.

Possibly long before Earth was assimilated, even purposefully having leaked enough information about the races of the nexus to inspire Earths rich mythological history and entertainment industry.

Preparing a subset of humans to be compatible with what was to come.

Humanity was so screwed if the plan was to have the social outcasts of introverts that defined the core demographic of hardcore fantasy, sci-fi, and RPG consumers.

Her parting words echoed through his thoughts again while he sat there pondering his circumstances.

After his promotion to User.

Everything had happened so fast. He'd literally been tossed from one thing to the next, in a rush of activity.

No sooner than he had gotten his room in order, had he been dragged through the procedures for creating a guild.

He had even been directly made its master despite his status as newly promoted.

He had found new allies and business partners with far too much ease.

Heck, He had even kind of slain a dragon. Their best customer to date by far.

Without them, they wouldn't have been able to progress at all. Not to mention their hidden benefactors working in the shadows.

All this was far too much to be just coincidence.

There was also the matter of the secret quest to consider.

It was as if he was in the eye of a storm of events that he had no idea bout, bor control over, and he was apparently the fulcrum that it all was going to revolve around.

Toby closed his eyes to focus better on his thoughts.

What were the goals of these people that operated in the shadows?

What were they expecting of him that made them so sure that he was the one they needed?

What if anything should he do with it?

He pushed the distracting questions to the side in his mind and started to focus on what he needed.

A Blue tinted empty field appeared in his mind for him to work with.

He put himself and what he knew about himself in the center, then he proceeded to add Alice and drew a link between them. She had a quest to fetch him, and a mission objective that somehow included him reaching some unknown objective.

Possibly there were feelings involved too, but he suspected that what they had done might be no more than a bit of fun. That part was probably irrelevant, so he pushed it away for now.

Then he added and linked in Ortho and Urist, together in one picture, representing their status as a couple.

They hadn't said anything directly, but it was rather obvious that they were more than just normal friends if one judged by how they treated each other. Not that it mattered to Toby either way as long as they didn't take any domestic dispute with them into a quest or other.

Next, he added all the business partners they had managed to gather up, linking them to himself and whoever had brought them in.

the guilds, the major alliances, and finally the unknown joker in the deck. The hidden faction working in the shadows.

The shadows were clearly linked to himself and Alice. However, he suspected they were a factor behind Ortho and Urists timely arrival as well.

There was no room for luck when the clear traces of a puppeteer was this evident, so he added a maybe link towards them as well.

Toby took a mental step back and took a hard look at the map he had just drawn in his mind-space.

It became obvious that Alice was a key player in setting the puppeteers plans into action.

She had been pulling a lot of strings to get them where they were now after all.

Toby wrung his mind for any idea how the major factions interacted with each other apart from the eternal war between the Damonians and the Order.

No matter how hard he tried, he was unable to figure out their relationships with the minor neutral factions like the Anima Alliance and the Band of Uncles who were also eternally at war with each other.

Since he couldn't make any more progress, for now at least, Toby saved the relations map he had made in his mindscape for later and sighed.

Nothing he could do at present except keep doing what he was already doing. No matter how frustrating it was to not be in any kind of control of his own fate.

Tomorrow they would go back in, as well as send the Draconian's off to settle the mountain lairs the triplets had identified for them. At least something was turning out as he had hoped.

Despite this mornings optimism being totally misplaced.

He also had to carefully choose the first set of settlers before he could summon them. They would be key people for the task of developing their civilization work.

He needed to give the Alliance and Uncles the good news as well. That part would at the least be pleasant enough.