William struggled to escape my grasp. “Dude, let go!” he said. “Let go! Our dicks are touching! Our dicks are touching!”

  I immediately let go and jumped back. In my excitement at finding another human being, especially someone I recognized, I had forgotten that we were both naked. However, my moment of revulsion quickly passed as I examined William, reassuring myself that he was real and not just a figment of my imagination. Like me, he wore crude sandals and carried a burlap bag. In addition to the club he held in his right hand, he had a small wooden shield strapped to his left arm, a quartz pendant hanging from his neck, and a sheathed dagger belted around his waist. It seemed like he had been doing well for himself..

  “William … you’re alive. How? I never thought I’d see you again.”

  William smiled. “You didn’t see me rise up into the sky with you?”

  I shook my head.

  “Well, I saw you.” Then his expression sobered. “I’m sorry about Sarah, bro.”

  I swallowed a sudden lump in my throat. “Yeah, me too.” Those words felt inadequate compared to how I truly felt, but I had never been very good at expressing my emotions. “Did anyone else we know… manage to get out?”

  He shook his head. “None that I saw, but I was only focused on you. I thought about yelling to get your attention, but … well, you probably wouldn’t have heard me, considering everything that was happening at the time.”

  “Yeah, probably not,” I replied. “Anyway, how did you find me?”

  William’s smile returned in full force. “I followed your arrows!”

  “How did you know I made them?”

  “I didn’t. I was just following the trail, hoping it would lead me to you, and by pure luck, it did. Anyway, you still haven’t answered my question.”

  I stared at him blankly. “What question?”

  “The one I asked you first. Duh.”

  I replayed the first few moments of our reunion in my mind. When I understood which question he was referring to, I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or sigh. “No, William, I haven’t heard the news.”

  “I’m a mage now!” he exclaimed. He pointed his finger into the air, and a spark shot out.

  I blinked, momentarily blinded by the flash of light. “That’s cool. I considered choosing that class, but something made me pick warrior instead.”

  He nodded. “That makes sense. You’re a protector by nature.”

  I stared at him for a moment, unsure how he came to that conclusion and whether I agreed with it. Was I really a protector? I had certainly wanted to protect Sarah, but I thought that probably had something to do with my feelings for her. Throughout my life, I had been something of a loner, preferring to stay at home rather than go out and socialize with others. However, there was no question that the Rupture had awakened something in me—a side of myself I didn’t even know existed.

  “Anyway,” I said, “we’d better get moving. I’d like to find a safe area before nightfall. I’ll take the lead since, well, my class makes me a better frontliner.”

  “Agreed. We can talk on the way. But before we go, take this.”

  He unstrapped the shield from his left arm and extended it toward me. I hesitated to take it.

  “What’s this?”

  “A shi-eld,” William said, speaking slowly as if to a simpleton. “War-rior wear it to pro-tect him-self.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I know, but why are you giving it to me?”

  “It'll be more useful to you than to me. Besides, I don’t need strength.”

  Intrigued, I took the shield and cast Inspect on it.

  This is a Small Round Shield of Minor Strength. It is crafted from wood and reinforced with iron bands. While any class can use it, it is most advantageous for warriors. Equipping this shield grants the wearer a +1 bonus to strength.

  Just holding the shield made me feel a bit stronger.

  “Thanks,” I said, strapping it onto my left arm. The gift reminded me of something. “I have something for you, too.”

  I rummaged through my bag until I found the spell scroll I had recently acquired, and I handed it to William. His eyes widened as he stared at it, and I noticed his lower lip tremble. It seemed like he was about to cry, but he managed to hold back his emotions.

  “Eric … this gift is priceless. I … I don’t know how I can repay you.”

  I was taken aback by his over-the-top reaction. “Uh, well, you’ve already received a gift—the shield.”

  “That’s just a plank of wood. This… this is a spell! It’s much rarer and more valuable.”

  I felt the need to downplay the importance of my gift. “All it does is slow your falling speed, dude. How often do you think you’ll need that in this maze? Besides, you can’t even learn it yet. It’s a Rank 1 spell.”

  As he read the scroll, it ignited into glowing ash in his hands.

  “Wait, you’re Rank 1 already?” I asked in disbelief.

  “Yeah, bro, I’ve been killing bugs for hours,” William replied. “What rank are you?”

  “I, uh, don’t know.”

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  “Well, check your grimoire!”

  I spent 5 mana to cast Manifest Grimoire and turned to the relevant page.

  Eric Peters of Earth

  Class: Warrior

  Rank: 0

  Experience needed for Rank 1: 16/100

  Mana: 10/20

  “I still have a ways to go before I reach Rank 1,” I said.

  “Can I see?”

  I reluctantly handed over my grimoire. After all, wasn’t it a part of my soul now? But this was William, and I trusted him.

  His eyes widened as he glanced at my status page. “Bro! How many bugs have you killed?”

  “Not many,” I admitted.

  “You should have killed many more by now. What have you been doing all morning?”

  “Sleeping.”

  “Sleeping?”

  "I felt a bit shaky after falling through the sky and listening to the Overseer’s speech," I said defensively. "I thought it would be best to rest and calm down before setting out. I didn’t mean to fall asleep when I closed my eyes, but somehow I did."

  He looked at me and replied, "Actually, that was a very sensible choice. If I hadn’t been so intent on finding you as quickly as possible, I would have done the same."

  "So, you were shaken up by everything that happened too?"

  “No, but resting before entering a deadly maze seems like a good strategy. You never know when you’ll get another chance to sleep. Anyway, we should get moving; there’s loot and experience waiting for us.”

  He snapped my grimoire shut and handed it back to me. Instead of unmanifesting it, I slipped it into my bag and led us back to the intersection.

  “Any ideas on which way to go?” I asked.

  “I was keeping left before I came across your tracks. What about you?”

  “Right.”

  “And yet you deviated,” he noted.

  I pointed a thumb back in the direction we had come from. “I followed some tracks and found a dead person back there. They triggered a trap while opening a chest. That’s where I found the scroll and this bandolier.”

  “Good find,” he replied. He must have noticed something in my expression because he quickly added, “I mean, it’s not good that someone died, of course, but loot chests are very rare. I’ve only found four so far, and they always contain at least two items, mostly consumables, though.”

  I decided not to address his apparent indifference toward human life. Everyone coped with the trauma caused by the Rupture in their own way. Besides, I had long suspected him of being borderline autistic. Like me, he wasn’t comfortable with social interactions. Perhaps that was why we had bonded at work; we understood what made us different.

  “We still need to decide which way to go,” I said.

  “To find your way out of a maze, it’s best to choose a pattern and stick with it. If you consistently take the left or right passage, you may encounter many dead ends and have to backtrack. However, you won’t get lost, and eventually, you’ll find the exit.”

  I thought about this and realized it made a lot of sense. I had been instinctively following that strategy without even realizing it, simply because I didn’t have a better plan.

  “Well, then,” I said, “it would probably be best to follow your pattern since you’ve been navigating this maze longer and have covered more ground. Can you lead us back to where you deviated from your path?”

  He smiled and replied, “Of course. It’s not far from here.”

  William had found my arrow at the same spot where I had discovered the woman's tracks. This left us with a decision to make. If we continued following William’s leftward path, we would eventually circle back to my starting point. To me, it felt like backtracking, but William insisted that it was necessary. He believed that eventually, this path would lead us to new passages. With no better option available, I agreed to go along with his plan.

  Surprisingly, it didn’t take us long to reach my starting area. A journey that had originally felt like it took hours passed in just minutes. This was because we were retracing paths we already knew were safe, allowing us to travel at a faster pace. It also helped that we could bypass all the dead ends I had marked.

  Along the way, we encountered a few juvenile bone eater beetles clinging to the walls. I’m not sure if I had missed them before or if they crawled down from the top of the wall or from some other hiding spot. William insisted that I be the one to eliminate them since I was still at Rank 0. I checked my grimoire afterward and found that I had gained 5 experience points.

  From my starting area, we set out again, choosing to go left each time the path branched. The first leftward passage led us to a dead end, but it also revealed a surprise: a wooden chest sitting at the end of the passage.

  I exchanged a look with William.

  "I assume you didn't find this chest since you went to the right?" he asked.

  I nodded in response.

  "There was a chest just around the corner from my starting area as well," William continued. "Inside, I found these sandals and some extra biscuits."

  “Was your chest trapped?”

  “No, but I recommend you proceed cautiously just to be safe.”

  I swallowed hard. I noticed he hadn’t used “I” or “we” in his response. But I couldn’t really complain; I had volunteered to take point. That’s what I got for being a “protector,” I guess.

  I crept toward the chest, staying low and to one side. I tapped the ground and the wall with my club as I moved. I still wasn’t exactly sure what I was doing. William followed closely behind, scanning the area along with me. He didn’t seem nearly as nervous as I was.

  “Have you, uh, encountered any traps yet?” I asked.

  “Oh, yes,” William replied.

  “How many?”

  “Three.”

  “What kinds of traps were they?”

  “Spike traps. They were triggered by either pressure plates or trip wires. Trip wires are easy to notice and can be easily avoided by jumping over them. However, pressure plates are much harder to spot, and those are what I fear the most. I once stepped on one and was lucky to feel the ground give way just in time to jump back and avoid being skewered. Fortunately, none of the chests I’ve encountered have been trapped. That dead person you found must have been really unfortunate.”

  Finally, only a meter separated us from the chest.

  “I think it’s safe, bro,” William said. “I don’t see any tripwires or holes in the walls, and we obviously haven’t stepped on any pressure plates.”

  “The chest where I got your scroll was trapped. A cord extended from the lid down into a hole in the ground.”

  “Just flip it open quickly with your club, and then run.”

  I stared at him.

  “What?” he replied. “It’ll be fine. The traps always take about a second to activate, so there’s plenty of time to get out of the way. Do you want me to do it?”

  I sighed and shook my head. “No.”

  He smiled. “See what I mean? Protector.”

  I took a deep breath, then used the end of my club to flip the chest's lid open and ran away.

  Nothing happened. No traps were triggered.

  I let out a sigh of relief and then joined William in peering into the chest. Inside, there were only two items: a blue bottle of mana water and a folded tunic. Both of us noticed the tunic at the same time. We looked at each other.

  I could see that we were both thinking the same thing: were we willing to kill each other over that tunic?