The four of us had made ourselves comfortable a little ways away from our previous campsite, since they were probably going to take a while to catch up.

Though the dry man’s reunion with Maria hadn’t gone as expected, I had to admit I felt more relieved than ashamed at my assumptions. At this point, I was fairly confident whatever the golden-armoured guard had claimed had been a lie somehow. Either that, or he was incredibly misinformed. The abyss-watcher’s handiwork, perhaps?

Still, things had turned out for the better, I thought. It had been a tall order, but I had successfully brought Maria home and that meant that the end of my quest here in the between lands was nearing.

As I sat there, leaning against one of the many examples of standing deadwood littered around the dry forest, I couldn’t help but contemplate my little journey through these cursed lands. Despite only a few weeks having passed, my time here had been eventful. Too eventful, perhaps. I had wandered through the deadly landscape filled with monsters that were neither dead nor alive, taken on challenges far beyond my current tier and nearly died more times than I could count in the last night alone.

I had a few levels to show for my efforts, but the majority of my time had been spent sneaking around, hoping not to rouse more tier 6 classers from their caves, asking me for requests I wasn’t fit to grant, like a beggar jingling a hat filled with copper coins.

Times were better when Cerion was around. He kept me out of trouble, at least.

On the bright side, I had somehow managed to complete both quests, with a little outside help. Whether the dry man had always planned for things to turn out this way, or whether he had only ever intended to use me as a distraction was a question better left unanswered, unfortunately, lest the unkempt man covered in beggars’ clothing took offense to me taking offense. Helios, I hated these tier 6’s...

Dismissing these thoughts, I instead opened up my new and improved mental palace. I hadn’t gotten the chance to play around with my evolved skill yet, so I felt like now was the time. I kept the time dilation running evenly with the outside world, and stepped outside of my little wooden shack that acted as the centre of my mindscape.

The moment I pushed the rotting plank that acted as a door aside, I noticed a recent addition to my little forest. The forest itself was fine, thankfully, though it seemed a little restless. A steady breeze was flowing through, pushing leaves with the wind. Notably, a small wooden fence surrounded the forest now, though it hadn’t reached the shack yet. The fence couldn’t be called that, yet. A few fence posts had been planted, along with a few planks nailed to them. It didn’t even reach up to my ankles yet, but it looked like it was still under construction. What was this fence supposed to represent, then? Closemindedness? Helios, I hoped not. Perhaps it had something to do with security and safety? No, that didn’t seem right either...

What had I changed about myself in the past few weeks? What major decisions could cause a change in... Oh. This fence represented my boundaries. The lengths I was willing to go to.

More to the point, they were boundaries that I had set for myself. Until here, and no further. I could work with that.

As I continued to focus on the fence, something strange happened. Suddenly, a few wooden planks appeared, neatly stacked in a pile.

Huh? Was my mindscape telling me something? I had noticed things changing in the mental palace, but I had never actually seen it while it grew... Hold on. Since my mental palace was already going to finish this fence on its own, why don’t I help it along a little? Wasn’t that the point of my new skill, that I could change things in here manually?

As I thought about this, a pile of iron nails appeared on the planks. Next to it what was unmistakably some kind of shoddy hammer had joined them.

A smile appeared on my face as I was proven right. At this rate, I could actually make this work...

I took the hammer, some nails, and a plank and got to work. I positioned the plank above another, to increase the effective height of the fence, and held it in place with my knee and free arm, before attempting to hammer a nail into it on one side. I had never done this before, so I felt a little out of my depth. Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained. With a bigger swing than necessary, I brought the hammer down onto the nail, only for my arm to reel back in slight, numb pain. The hammer had bounced off, and the nail remained in place, right where I had left it... Strange. I repeated the process a few more times, but the result wasn’t changing.

I supposed I was missing something, something crucial. I lacked something, and I had no clue where to begin finding that thing. I experimented for a little longer, but eventually exhausted my creativity and gave up. Progress would have to wait for another day.

In the real world, I opened my eyes, where I found the three generals staring at me curiously.

“Meditating, were you? Didn’t have you pegged for a mage, to be honest...” Ash commented dryly when he noticed my return to consciousness.

“I’m not. Just... working on mental stuff to counteract affinity problems...” I replied, not feeling sure how much I could share with the trio.

“Ah, I am happy you are endeavouring to avoid the mistakes that many youths make in these lands. Keep up your efforts, and you will thanks yourself for it when you are older.” The knightly mass of bone to my left advised.

His advice led me to wonder, though... How come these three seemed to be fine, and not the raging maniacs I was used to when it came to the dark affinity... Didn’t the system automatically make our kind insane?

I asked them about this, but Ash just laughed, while the golem was gracious enough to explain.

“First, you must understand that not everybody living in the between lands has a dark affinity. Exiles, robbers, murderers... all kinds of outcasts come to live here. I was an earth-affinity knight before I came here, in fact. Now, both me and Dullahan are undead creatures kept under the dry man’s control. We are given a large amount of autonomy and maintain our memories through his skills. Only ash here shares your affinity and... well, he paid his own price for the return of his sanity, something our lord helped him with. As for the lord himself, his situation seems to be similar to yours. He ‘wisened up’ in his later years, to put it in his own words.”

Ash chuckled, while Dullahan seemed nonplussed at the mention of his undeath.

“Really, Olgierd? Calling me ‘sane’? I’m flattered!” Ash joked, before turning to me, more serious this time. “But really, keep up your efforts. It’ll be too late to regret when you’re my age. Stay ahead of your affinity and don’t give up on yourself. And always remember, your affinity is out to get you. It seeks to fold you into everything that is ‘dark’. As you are now, you are an outlier amongst its kind. The dark is an insidious killer, a quiet one. Don’t expect it to announce its arrival... or its departure.” He explained, whispering the last part ominously. His eyes looked haunted, and he stood up and walked off. I suppose he wasn’t keen on being reminded of his past.

I nodded, taking in what he had said. My experiences with the dark affinity didn’t hold a candle to his own struggle, it seemed. Still, finding out that I wasn’t the only one winning that battle felt a little... relieving. Like I wasn’t the first to walk this precarious path. In fact, from the sounds of it, Ash had climbed back onto that path, after having fallen off... I wasn’t sure I wanted to find out how he had done that, though.

On another note, it seemed to bone golem had been called ‘Olgierd’ all this time! Now I had something to call him other than ‘golem’ or ‘knight’.

Before I could resume conversation with the two remaining generals, I suddenly heard Ash call us from the campsite.

“ALL OF YOU, COME HERE!” he shouted, his voice panicked.

A sudden gut-wrenching fear took over my body. Had the guard been right after all? Had the dry man put on an act this entire time? Had I failed?!

The three of us sprang into action and rushed through the forest, ready for war. When we burst through the treeline and appeared at the camp, we found Ash.

He was kneeling down and, in his arms, carried a crying, but alive, Maria. She was sobbing, bawling her eyes out, and couldn’t get out what she was trying to say. All the while, she pointed at the log I had used as a bench.

On it, the dry man sat. Except, he looked a little different this time. His entire body seemed to be encased in stone. It was as it the man himself had turned into a statue, his clothes petrifying along with him. You could still clearly see the furl in his lap where Maria had sat. In his hands, he held a small, thin book, that had been spared from his petrification.

‘The sword in the stone’, opened to the last page. I took the book from his hands and started to read.

On his deathbed, King Arthur looked at his kingdom one final time.

He hadn’t been a very good king, he thought.

Camelot wasn’t a very good kingdom, either.

Its food was bad. Its houses were bad. Its walls were bad.

Its king had wanted to give the people houses, had wanted to give them food, had wanted to give them walls.

But king Arthur hadn’t been a very good king.

Despite this, the kingdom’s people were good, and they loved their bad king.

At this very moment, all the kingdom’s people were right outside the castle, chanting Arthur’s name.

They chanted his name, while mourning his death, which was soon to come.

He hadn’t been a very good king, but his good people loved him.

And if there was one thing Arthur had done well, one thing he had given his people, it was love.

That was what made Camelot a good kingdom.

Arthur had loved its people since before he ever took the sword from the stone.

I closed the book quietly. Were children’s books always this sad at the end? Unfortunately, the book raised more questions than it answered. When I showed it to the generals, they stood perplexed as well, until Ash seemed to realise something.

“He’s tiering up.” He said, as if the situation finally clicked.

“...What?” I asked, incredulous. Maria was still alive! And how in Helios’ name did that statue look like it was tiering up?!

“No, really. He’s been at the edge for about a century now, in fact. He was just lacking one requirement to advance. Dry eye over there would never say what this last requirement was, no matter how much we pressed him about it.”

“I see. It all makes sense now.” Olgierd said, “The last requirement. A man that never knew how to feel anything at all had to learn... how to love. Hah. What an ironic requirement. The system becomes crueler and crueler the higher you reach.”

I sighed. Of course. It wouldn’t make sense for the system to issue an easy challenge. Asking a necromancer to abandon all attachments and they receive ultimate power in return? For most, that wouldn’t be an issue at all, and the system didn’t like easy challenges. Typical.

I scoffed. I should have seen a curve ball like this coming.

Then, Ash started to curse under his breath. In fact, Dullahan and Olgierd looked a little tense as well.

“What’s the matter with you guys? Isn’t this a good thing?” I asked, curious.

“It would be, at any other time, in any other place. Now that he’s stuck advancing, it means that the lord will be out of the picture for a few days at least. This will be the last chance for the abyss watcher to defeat him. Once our lord reaches tier 7, there won’t be a place on the continent where he can hide after kidnapping the lord’s daughter, and he knows that. By now, he’ll know what’s happening, high class- tierups aren’t exactly quiet, if you know how to listen... He’ll be preparing his armies as we speak.”

“Fuck...” I swore quietly. Though the other generals weren’t the type to swear, the dour looks on their faces spoke volumes.

“So what do we do?”

“We?” he asked back.

“We. I’m not coming this far only to abandon my quest and Maria at the last second.” I spoke confidently, my mind made up.

The generals nodded

“We have to prepare for war. Gather an army of our own. Thankfully, we’ve been preparing for quite a while...” he said, a mischievous grin on his face.