The band of would-be adventurers rested against the wall of the intersection that they currently occupied, the earthen walls and ground of the Burrows far more comfortable than one would have assumed.

All except for Goodie.

He was communing with Her majesty as she scouted the various tunnels ahead. Communicating with her was far from being hard, in fact, it was so easy that he could literally do it in his sleep; with their shared link always being open, Her Majesty had unintentionally, and sometimes intentionally, awoken him in the middle of the night on more than one occasion.

No, what he was really doing was putting on a show for the idiots around him. With the excuse that the more detail that he wanted from his summons, the more he needed to concentrate on communing with her. Utter rubbish and something he could only get away with thanks to the lack of summoners in the group. Or at least that was what he assumed, not actually knowing what each of their classes was. If there was one amongst them, they either decided to keep mum on his little fib or they assumed it was due to the particulars of his class. Either way, he got to waste their time whenever they asked him to scout ahead.

He had been delaying them as much as he could, but there was only so much he could do without making his intention obvious to the rest of the group. He was forced to keep his manipulations to a minimum as being caught in a lie would not only have brought the group together but against him as well. So, he kept to being as honest as possible, though that was not to say that he ever told them the truth.

He had spent most of his admittedly short life wasting away in front of a computer playing game and reading manga, so he knew of the many ways that psychopaths, demons, and genies could twist words and their meanings. And he did his best to try and emulate them.

Unfortunately, knowing something and doing it were two vastly different things.

His social ability, or inability to be more accurate, and his average grasp of the English language meant that there was little he could do to properly sway any conversation or decision taken by the group. And as much as the guy was an idiot, Alpha-Male knew how to lead, so there were rarely any moments of indecision to insert himself into.

Thus, despite his best efforts to halt their journey, they had spent the last two days making good time to their first destination. Their target being a remembered corpse that was supposed to be in possession of a magical ring and dagger, the exact nature of their enchantments unknown to him as even their hot-tempered idiot in charge had not been stupid enough to let that bit of information slip out.

But fancy trinkets were not important.

What was important was that they were far too deep into the burrows for his liking, hell, just being inside the entrance to this place was far too deep for him, but here they were.

Their quick journey down having nearly taken him past the point that he would feel comfortable with trying to escape on his own. Soon he would need the help of the others if ever hoped to make it back up top.

The problem was, as far as he could see, the only people that he had a hope of converting to his cause were the Invisibles of the group, the people that were like him. The outcasts that were least suited to fighting, least suited to surviving.

Simply put, they were far from being his ideal choice in allies. But beggars could not be choosers, he reminded himself.

Otherwise, however, their journey so far, for him at least, had been a good news, bad news, worse news situation.

The good news was that he rarely had to lie about the dangers ahead of them. The bad news was that he rarely had to lie about the dangers ahead of them.

The worse news was that…well, he did not know how to explain it properly.

The groups of rabbits that they had been encountering seemed to be getting more and more common. And harder and harder to beat, he tried to keep himself from thinking. Their steady rate of progression almost like a game in its gradual rise in difficulty, but life, even within a world of magic, was not a game.

There were also the odd tunnels that were strangely void of any of the local critters. He had no danger sense, not that he was sure there was such an ability even existed, but those tunnels filled him with such dread that those were the ones that he steered the group away from no matter what he had to say, even when he was sure that he could have used them to lead the group away from their destination, even when he was sure that some of them lead back towards the surface.

Thankfully, most of those tunnels seemed to lead deeper underground, towards the heart of the burrows, something not even his current ‘masters’ were stupid enough to desire.

Speaking of which, it was about time he finished his seance or whatever he was supposed to be doing. Over the past few days with the long marches, the Invisibles losing sleep from having to take turns guarding the camp at night and the confrontations with the rabbit monsters that called the Burrows home, the idiots had grown weary to the point that tempers had already begun flaring up. One fight had already broken out between Beta-Male and Spear-Guy over some insignificant thing last night.

But while a pissed off mob was what he wanted; a mob pissed off with him was not. He only kept his communing going this long so that the others would not realise that his previous attempts were all a load of bullshit.

He was already pressing his luck.

So, brushing off his hands and picking himself up from the dirt floor he had been kneeling on, he walked over to their illustrious leader, Alpha-Moron.

Pointing at two of the tunnels, Goodie told the fool, “Those lead off to the right and down a bit before turning to the left, both with two groups of rabbits and some type of lizard thing at the end of the left one.” He moved his arm over to point at a tunnel entrance laying directly between the two previous ones, “I couldn’t go far down that one, there’s just too many groups too close together for Her Majesty to go undetected.” He pointed to a tunnel on the far right, “There’s only one group down that one, but it leads away from where you want to go, but the tunnel’s too long to say where exactly.”

Goodie took a moment to breathe before pointing to a tunnel on the far left. “That tunnel would be the quickest way to take, but there are about five groups of rabbits along it, with two groups in sight of each other.”

“And I suppose you would prefer us taking that one then, right?” Asked Beta.

Goodie rolled his eyes. Beta had been riding him these past few days, never missing an opportunity to jump up his ass. At first, Goodie thought that the guy was onto him, that he saw through his amateurish attempts at manipulation, but no, the guy was just an arsehole that needed to shit on people to make himself feel like a big man.

“As long as I’m not the one doing the bleeding, I don’t give a shit,” Goodie replied bluntly.

“Yeah, you see? How do we know you’re not just trying to screw us over?”

“Trick question. Of course I’m trying to screw you over, you’re keeping me as a slave.”

It really was a trick question. Admitting to the prick’s accusations may have not been the best choice, but weirdly, denying that he was trying to worm his way out of this predicament would have been even more damning and would have put everyone on guard against him.

Damned if he did, damned if he did not.

“Well then. How about we put you upfront for a bit,” Beta tossed back.

Some of the group visibly tensed as idiot threatened him, obviously, unlike Beta, they were smart enough to recognise what a stupid idea that was; not just with putting him on the front line, but also threatening him in the first place. Either they did force him to fight, and if they were not all slaughtered after the rabbits just ploughed through him, then Goodie would then have had little to no reason to not then betray them, or they did not and he would still have more reason to turn on them, but then he would also know that they had no bite for all their barking, giving him even more reason to retaliate.

“Then I would have even more reason to screw you fuckers over, are you really this much of an idiot?”

“What the fuck did you just call me?!”

Goodie looked at him square in the eye and said, “I called you stupid; because you can be assured that the moment I think I’m going to die I’m going to take as many of you fuckers with me as I can.” He then turned towards Alpha and pointed, “Starting with you.”

Redirection. It was a method he had used often back on Earth; first, work a bully up to the point that they’re just about to blow their top, then redirect everyone’s attention to someone or somewhere else.

The emotion of extreme anger and the singular focus that it brought to a person served to heighten the inherent confusion brought about by a sudden change in subject.

“What?!” Alpha asked, no doubt confused as to why Goodie focused his attention on him. “Why me?” he continued, “Why not Jennifer, she’s the one who put the bombs on you?”

Goodie had not planned for him to drag Alpha-Bitch into the conversation, he assumed Alpha-Male started the blame game on instinct, probably a habit born from a lifetime of blaming everyone else for his problems. It did serve Goodie’s purposes, however, and he was sure the girl in question was seething as they spoke, despite Alpha-Douche being right in that Goodie’s anger should have been focused on her and not him. Thing is, it was, he was just not going to display it openly. He was furious at the girl for doing what she did and he wanted nothing more than to see the look on her face as what he assumed was her boyfriend turned on her, but he did not dare to look over for fear of losing the momentum he had built up…althoughhhhh…

“Simple,” Goodie answered, “She’s clearly not the one in charge here.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Goodie noticed the momentary scowl that crossed Alpha-Bitch’s face as he spoke, her ego bruised by his words. Good, he thought, she was the type of person who needed to be in control, the type who needed to be in charge. Hopefully, his words would work their way through her head and force her to react. The only problem was that he was not sure what that reaction would be; his attempt at manipulation could just as easily backfire with her turning her aggression against him. With him currently being at the mercy of her whims, what with the collar of magical exploding runes around his neck, that situation would not be in his best interests, but he needed to do something to change their situation.

Unfortunately, any plans to sow further dissension amongst the group came to halt as a nosey geriatric stepped in between everyone.

“Please, everyone, fighting here and now would only serve to endanger us. I know this journey has been tough, but let’s not do something that we’ll all regret later.”

“Ugh,” Goodie said to himself. Geezer had once again stepped in. Whenever anyone was about to finally lose their shit, the old fart always broke them up with a few simple words; the sole exception being that fight the other day due to him being asleep at the time. He still did not understand why an old man like him was hanging around with a bunch of teens when he could have easily gotten a normal job back in the city, nor why said teens gave so much authority to his words.

Paying heed, most of the rest stood down, the Invisibles visibly relaxing their sphincters as their unelected leaders did not tear each other apart. They were still pissed off, of course, but they heeded the Geezers plea for peace, much to Goodie’s dismay.

Beta, however, could not leave things alone and Goodie saw the guy turn back to him, presumably to continue his little pissing contest.

Fortunately, he was not the only one to head towards Goodie as all their yelling had drawn two groups of the rabbit-things to their location.

Any ideas of further conversation were brought to a halt as Alpha Bellowed, “Formation!”