"Right." Don shook himself and looked around. "Why haven’t our levels come back yet?"

Nobody had an answer. The White Bone General had crumbled into a pile of broken bones, but the experience hadn’t moved. He filed the question away and got moving.

He took Kira and Lily to search for the quest item while Diana, Yates, and Bernita swept the loot from the floor. Two minutes remained before the mine collapsed. Every second counted.

It was Lily who found it. Her eyes swept the room methodically until they caught on something pale and unremarkable in the far corner, a piece of paper half-buried in coal ash. "Brother Don! Over here, come see if this is it!"

He crossed the room in a run. Lily reached into the ash and held up a badly damaged manuscript, its edges crumbling, its ink faded.

[Ancient Poem Manuscript] – Quest item. Deliver to the warrior Long Wu to receive a generous reward.

The golden light hit Don before he’d finished reading the description. It poured over him in a column that drove the darkness back, and his level shot upward, more than two full levels in a single surge, landing him at level 27 with sixty-four percent progress. Around him, every member of the group blazed with the same light.

Diana made a victory sign with both hands. "One level and fifty-six percent! That makes up for so much!"

Lily was already laughing. "See? Don’t be upset. There might still be more waiting when you hand the quest in!" 𝐟𝕣𝕖𝐞𝐰𝕖𝚋𝐧𝗼𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝗰𝐨𝐦

Don exhaled slowly. "Diana, is the floor clear?"

"Not a single item left behind. Let’s go, we are genuinely out of time!"

Return scrolls came out. Paper tore.

The countdown hit its final second, and the mine answered. The ground rolled underfoot. Coal dust rained from the walls and ceiling in curtains. The system chime rang through the darkness like something final and inevitable.

"The Anya Mine has begun to collapse..."

The ground beneath their feet shimmered with silver light, and the escape was clean.

They materialized in the village of Brno in a loose cluster, and for a moment they simply looked at each other. Then, almost simultaneously, they started laughing. Every one of them was caked in soot — faces, armor, everything — smeared so thoroughly with black coal dust that the midnight players gathered nearby stared at the group as though they had arrived from another world entirely.

Diana cleared her throat with exaggerated dignity. "Don. Go turn in the quest. There appears to be a river on the edge of the village, and I intend to make use of it at the earliest opportunity."

Lily was already scratching at her arm. "Same. My whole body is itching. Please hurry."

Yates’ eyes lit up with an enthusiasm entirely inappropriate for the situation. "I’d like to wash too."

He was kicked before he finished the sentence. The reason required no explanation.

Don took the manuscript and made his way to the crooked locust tree at the edge of the village. Long Wu was stretched out beneath it in the game’s eleven o’clock darkness, apparently asleep. Don approached, and the old warrior opened one eye before he’d gotten within ten meters.

"What happened to you, kid?" Long Wu sat up slowly, taking in the coal-blackened figure in front of him with something between amusement and concern. "You came back looking like that?"

What do you think happened, Don thought, keeping his expression neutral. Your quest nearly buried us alive.

Long Wu smiled as though he’d heard the thought anyway. "You’ve all worked hard. Let me see the poem."

Don handed over the badly damaged yellow notebook without a word. Long Wu received it with both hands and opened it carefully, turning the fragile pages with a slowness that suggested he knew exactly what they had cost. He read in silence for a moment, nodding to himself.

"The battle was hard," he said finally, his rough voice carrying something quieter beneath it. "Please pass my thanks to your comrades." He glanced past Don at the five teammates waiting a short distance away, still coated in soot. "From these pages, I can see what kind of people you are, how you work together, how you hold to each other. I won’t pretend it didn’t move me, kid. You reminded me of people I fought alongside a long time ago." He paused. "Thank you."

Don had not expected that. The old man’s face was weathered and blunt, the kind of face that didn’t suggest poetry. His resentment dissolved before he could hold onto it.

Then the system chime rang.

"Congratulations on completing the quest [The Lost Manuscript]! Rewards: +3 levels, +3,000 reputation points, 40 gold coins. Each teammate receives +2 levels, +2,000 reputation points, 25 gold coins. Quest reward equipment obtained: [Courageous Gauntlets]!"

Golden light bloomed over every member of the group at once. For a moment, nobody spoke. They had gone from near-total loss to this in just over ten minutes, and the whiplash of it was genuinely disorienting, levels restored, reputation climbing, gold stacking quietly in their inventories.

Long Wu watched the excitement flicker across Don’s face and coughed once. "A brat is still a brat. That face of yours really does need a good smack sometimes." He let the moment breathe. "Done celebrating?"

Don’s stomach dropped pleasantly. He has another quest.

He arranged his expression into something appropriately eager. "Sir, whatever you need, just say the word. I’ll handle it."

Long Wu studied him for a moment, and the look in the old warrior’s eyes had shifted. It was something steadier than before. Trust, maybe, or the beginning of it.

"With where you are right now, you’re not ready for what I’m going to ask," Long Wu said. "But you’re someone I can rely on, so I’m giving it to you early." He leaned forward slightly. "When I was on campaign, I lost a military knife somewhere in the northwest of the Seno Kingdom. The area is occupied now, evil creatures, the whole region. I want you to take your people and go find it for me. That knife matters. Bring it back and I’ll make it worth your while."

"Have you accepted the quest [Liu Lang’s Battle Blade]?"

Don confirmed without hesitating. The mission details unfolded in front of him.

[Liu Lang’s Battle Blade]: Travel to the Wind Chime Desert in the southwest of the Seno Kingdom. Explore the Gobi with tens of thousands of inhabitants. Defeat the powerful Haldak in the largest cave of the Gobi. Retrieve the battle blade and deliver it to Long Wu.

Difficulty: D (Top Level). Level requirement: 35 and above. Participants required: 8.

Don stared at the details long enough that Diana came to read over his shoulder.

D-rank top level. They had just barely survived a D2. This was a full tier above that.

"Don." Diana’s voice was calm and practical. "The difficulty goes up, but so does our gear. By the time we hit level thirty-five, we won’t be the same group that walked into Anya Mine. Stop worrying."

He exhaled. "Fair. But everyone needs to spend time on equipment between now and then. You all saw what today looked like."

Unanimous nodding from the group.

Don said his goodbyes to Long Wu and walked with everyone down to the river. The girls didn’t even deliberate, they waded straight in, fully clothed, and began washing the coal dust off with the focused relief of people who had been waiting to do exactly this for hours. Don and Yates lasted approximately ninety seconds on the bank before the temptation became unreasonable and they jumped in as well.

From somewhere in the middle of the river, Kira called out to Diana. "Sister Diana, I’ll get your equipment back to you once I’m clean."

"Actually, keep the last two pieces I gave you," Diana said, wringing coal water from her sleeve. "You’ll have two high-level pieces now, and they’ll serve you well when you’re running bosses with Don." She paused, glancing around at the group. "Also, everyone out quickly once you’re done. The White Bone General dropped a fair amount of loot and we should go through it."

That got everyone moving faster.

A few minutes later they were gathered on the riverbank beneath a weeping willow, dripping and considerably cleaner, watching Diana lay out the boss drops on the grass between them. The haul took shape: a longsword with a cold metallic sheen, a metal helmet burning with bronze-red light, a plain metal ring, and a rolled parchment scroll.

Don let out a slow breath. Of the three equipment pieces, only the helmet was bronze-grade. The other two were silver. The scroll turned out to be a crafting blueprint for silver-grade leather shoulder armor.

The helmet’s base stats were solid without being spectacular, five hundred additional health and physical defense, strength and agility allocations, a single seal slot. Functional. Reliable.

The silver pieces, though, were more interesting. Diana looked at the longsword, weighed it for a moment, and set it back down.

"My crafting team is already working on a weapon for me," she said. "I’ll pass on the roll."

The ring had physical attributes. Everyone except Bernita was eligible.

Don rolled first. The number that came back was one hundred.

He stared at it. The group stared at it. Nobody said anything for a moment.

"Well," Yates said finally.

The helmet went to a roll between Kira and Yates, and Kira won it with a thirty-four, a low score that somehow still came out ahead.

Both Don and Kira turned to look at Lily with the same expression at the same moment.