Bob started. "When you went to Earth, Arjun, Team R54 left Magicspestone. I trained Aryav until he left, too. I started taking contracts left and right, to reach silver. However, I got bottlenecked at bronze seven. I was sent to the city of Welshhwa, a hundred thousand miles from Magicspestone, to train with the Gokfurs over there. It had sapphire-category magic. Whenever I did contracts, I was assigned either a team of over a hundred, led by a gold or diamond-category, or a sapphire-category guard, whenever no one from the family was there. I did three contacts a day, with six hours of rigorous training. After a few weeks, I reached bronze eight. I went back to Magicspestone to speed run some more contracts."

That sounded like Bob to me. He had done that sort of thing for all the time I knew him. Now, he was twenty-eight, but it didn't sound like he had changed much because of the enthusiasm in his voice. "At silver-category, it was hard to find any good contracts. I finally understood why mom was always absent. Next time she left for being a Worldsafer, I asked to go."

I knew that she sometimes went away to high-magic zones to do contacts there. Bob continued. "We went to the city of Qualsh. It was a million miles north, then two hundred thousand miles east."

I pulled out the map. I had some dots for large cities. I zoomed out to the whole world. Ipigal was in central Glassfay-Indian subcontinent. That must have been why the language here sounded so homely. Like Hindi.

Magicspestone, which I had marked, was in Glassfay southeast Africa. Welshhwa was in Glassfay southwest Africa. Qualsh was in Glassfay northwest Africa. Hwasher, the city Team R54 was from, was in Glassfay northeast Africa.

"It was hard, being a Worldsafer there. I did it to progress. Silver-category was a huge struggle. I only reached gold-category eight days ago."

Doom started. "At peak bronze-category, we left Magicspestone when you did. After a month of trekking north, we reached Hwasher. We were in similar circumstances as Bob was in Welshhwa. Joe and Fesoul were already silver, reaching it when Team Milk and Cookies were in the space. We started grinding to gold. At silver four, we finally got a good contract. We were to find this water gem in the Greatest Lake."

The Greatest Lake was the Glassfay equivalent of the Mediterranean. It was a higher mid-magic zone, being gold in most places, with a few spots of diamond. That sounded like a good contact.

"Once we got there, we scouted out. On the seventeenth day, as I was about to lose hope, Joe noticed something. Fesoul scanned it, and it was the water gem. It was fourteen miles in. That isn't much, but the area was diamond-category magic, we couldn't do much. A platinum-category monster came."

It sounded like a lot to deal with for silver-categories.

"We fought it for four days. It was a hard battle, Joe being injured. He still has a scar from it. We won, but we were too raggedy to fight bronze-categories, and the area in between us and the gem was filled with diamond-category monsters. We waited a week before we went in. We started fighting our way through."

I didn't know may other silver-categories who fought diamond-categories, but I had been forced into it on Earth. It looked like Team R54 had done the same.

"We fought our way through. We got the gem, and used the mana in it to fuel my ultimate escape power. We were teleported to the castle, and we quickly got treated. We soon went to the Worldsafers hall and claimed our rewards. The treasure-hunter gave us extra for the hassle. I had got to silver nine, and the rest of the team silver eight. We slowly ground our way to gold, taking two months for me and five for them. After they reached gold, you came in one year. Now here we are."

It seemed like everyone had struggled to get to gold. Then Wopoimcl started.