It was the fifth time waking up in that pod in this past month. And the third time she got company upon waking up.

  A team of five was waiting for her, all dressed for combat but with no weapon at hand.

  They were cautious but not hostile about her, the newcomer in their midst. And as always, she effortlessly escaped the pod, shrugging the slime away, and went for her safe without a care for her audience.

  "See? I told you it was her." A shy boy in light armor said to a girl in chainmail at the center of their formation.

  Rogue and Fighter.

  The others were a bit more difficult to ascertain with their mismatched equipment: One guy in a blue Robe was also wearing light armor. While another seemed to have given up on his armor entirely, wearing a clean respawn suit, but still had rogue boots, a belt, and sheather. While the last one was again wearing light armor but his weapon didn't match.

  It did not take a genius to deduce that at least half of their equipment had been scavenged from the dead.

  So she was cautious, in case she would end up next on their shopping list.

  But at least, they had the decency not to bother her until she was all dressed up.

  "So you are that lunatic who serenades the stone giant. What exactly are you? Certainly not one of the four starters, that's for sure." The girl leader said.

  "It's complicated," Sophia said. "But long story short: I'm a witch with a weird patron. You?" She looked at all of them, one after the other, gauging them.

  "I'm Arya a light paladin." She declared before introducing the rest of her team: "Jeong-hoon, he is a pure rogue. Chakkrit, he is a spellsword. Valeriy, he is a barbarian fighter. And Muhammad, he is a swashbuckler rogue."

  "No sixth member?" Sophia asked, though her previous made it clear that member, if it existed, was currently missing.

  "Our cleric, she died to poison on the second floor and we got separated. So I took the mantle and became a paladin."

  So they were originally two fighters, two rogues, one cleric, and one wizard. But they had to mix things up after losing a member. Still, that team was different than any she encountered before and that made her suspicious.

  "Well, I got a team of my own which I would like to see again. So I'm going to prepare and get out your hair as soon as I can." She promised.

  "You sure?" Arya exclaimed. "We could use someone like you on our team."

  And Sophia already did not like the way she talked about using her. But she kept her cool:

  "Look. I'm sure you are an amazing team. But I don't know you. And other people are counting on me."

  "It's okay. I won't push it." The girl said appeasing though she was doing the exact contrary. "We will give you some space. Though if you could give Chakkrit some of your time, I would really appreciate it. He is really spell-starved and your mojo looked really good."

  So that was what it was about? Her entire time was close combat, including their Wizard. And they wanted her to supplement for their lack of a long-range blaster. Except she did not fit the bill, although they could not possibly know that.

  "I think there is a misunderstanding here." She said before they could leave. "I'm not a primary spellcaster and unless someone here wants to learn how to unlock their magical bloodline or how to make a bargain with a shady higher power, I can't really help you."

  Before she counteroffered: "However, believe it or not, one of my teammates is a badass battlemage bookworm with a lot more knowledge than I can offer. You help me get back to my team and he might be willing to help you sort your own problems."

  "So you are asking for help but only offering a maybe?" Arya reformulated before she put an end to all negotiations: "You know what? Go on and get yourself killed."

  The Indian girl had no way to know that her help wasn't required and that on the contrary Sophia had been genuinely trying to help them rather than the other way around. Though her empathy did not extend so far as making any further concessions for the sake of strangers.

  So she left the respawn room and went straight to the library, which was a lot less furnished than it used to.

  Was it because she got separated from her team? Or because she died? Or because she ignored the library entirely on her last visit to the resting area?

  Anyway, there were a few books neatly aligned on a couple of shelves, a table, and two chairs but that was about it.

  There was no paper or ink. And the room felt incredibly empty.

  So she took the purple master book waiting for her and started perusing through the titles.

  And again, the system seems rather opinionated on what she should be reading. It was about 70% lore, 15% music, 10% alchemy and 5% magic. The 5% was being generous as it consisted of only one book.

  She perused through the lore first, one tome at a time, carefully reading their index for anything new that would be relevant to her current predicament. But she quickly dismissed them, all nineteen of them. She outright ignored the music, putting it aside for potential before-bed light reading, and went straight to alchemy instead.

  And she did the one sacrilegious thing she would never have done before: she tore down the books, only taking the recipes she needed, before adding the new pages to her already heavy collection of recipes.

  And finally, she forced herself to read the entirety of the magic book, just to spite the system. It was again about theory, of which none actually applied to any cantrip she knew. And some passages were so obscure that she understood the words but not their meaning, which was saying a lot about her current understanding of that writing system. Almost every sentence relied on context clues she simply did not have.

  And so she left the library and decided to go to bed early, so she would leave the resting area even earlier in the morning.

  ★☆★

  It was after resting that she realized she had forgotten to contact Paolo. She had been so surprised the system did not reunite them and so focused on preparing her trip back to him that she forgot the essential:

  She did not expect any response but ten minutes later, she got an answer anyway:

  There had been some misunderstanding here but it was to be expected. If Michel was reading all their message, the last things he had read must have been about Paolo saying he got to the 4th and would wait for her, as well as her laconical "Okay, I will meet you there ASAP."

  Without any more information, Michel had no way of knowing she already had died sending her message and worse: that it had been all part of the plan. In addition, he had no reason to assume the system would separate them. She had also assumed as such and been proven wrong. Unless Paolo's resting area was somehow full, so the system had no choice but to redirect her elsewhere?

  The response came within seconds.

  Ouch. Even if she did not carry Blake and Sienna in her heart, that was brutal.

  Her question was answered just as quickly:

  She already had a good idea how unfair her weavesinging was but that did help put things into perspective.

  True, her diminutive presence was nothing like invisibility but so far, it did the trick just as good. But if she ever had a bad encounter against an enemy without an actual mind, all her little tricks would not do her any good.

  Anyway, she was incredibly lucky not to suffer the same extreme limitations with her weavesinging.

  And then, she left the safety of the resting area.

  ★☆★

  The heat was unbearable. As expected of a forge powered with freaking magma, but still. If it had been magma abiding by the law of physics, she would be dead from the heat, the lack of oxygen, and the fumes. So maybe the system bullshit that made that environment livable for humans could have made it a little bit more comfortable? But so far, the only countermeasure she had against the heat had been to cast prestidigitation on her clothes to cool them down.

  At least, she had confirmed that none of the enemies here had been able to detect her presence so far, so she had been moving smoothingly. Although she went a long way to meet Michel. According to her map, her rest area exit had brought her to the north-north-east of the forge.

  And she suspected the roguish wizard was not entirely correct and that though she did not doubt his sense of direction, it was somewhere in the southernmost part of the second floor, as she had encountered more than one empty corridor heading west. And when she had asked for precision, he told her it had been the first on his left, with the 'sun' setting in that direction.

  So after confirming that his 'west' was indeed the geographical west on her map, she had a couple of ideas about where Michel's western aisle could be, depending on the entrance he took. As though she had not revealed that part of the map yet, the forge had so far proved to be a masterclass in symmetry. She did not know the purpose of any of the things she had passed through on that forge but it was absolutely nothing like foundry.

  A lava pump was definitely something new. She had seen heat crucibles, lava-powered steam engines, and weird lavamills, as well as cascading from the ceiling of the entire facility and many weirder things. But a lava pump was about as reasonable as the lavamills in the absolute insanity of this forge.

  Sophia continued her journey toward Michel's location but some odd detail was giving her mixed feelings: the complete absence of corpses. It should be a good news. But if people had been fighting for today and the sentients' armors liked to fight dirty as Michel suggested, she should have encountered a ton of them already.

  'Something is wrong about this place.' She thought.

  And then, she finally got to the right corridor and found nothing. There was no one in there and no place for Michel to possibly hide from her there.

  Michel's answer was immediate.

  So Sophia kept checking the other locations that might fit the description and then, scout the entire forge before she concluded the evidence:

  Again, Michel's answer did not keep her waiting.

  An elevator? That's something Sophia had missed on her way here, and so she started making inquiries:

  And so she traced her way back to the center of the facility, where the lava melter where, and indeed, she found the metal cage Michel mentioned. She completely disregarded them on her way in as it felt like another weird contraption with no apparent purpose.

  But inside the cage, there was a mechanism with an inscription on it saying:

  "Underground — Ground Floor — 1st Floor — 2nd Floor — Roof Floor"

  And indeed, she could move the mechanism toward any desired floor but nothing was happening. So she started to inspect it more closely. This entirely alien technology looked like it was taken out from some madman lava-fueled steampunk wet dream. The mechanism was supposed to activate a steam engine fuelled by the surrounding lava that should be strong enough to cook her alive many times over. And the gears were only there to open the water valve and supposedly control the amount of water to get to the desired floor.

  Only the water valve was not opening. That was where the missing piece was. And so she realized on closer inspection that it wasn't the water valve itself that had an issue but the safety mechanism that was blocked. Something was wrong with the device and so it did what it was designed for: preventing users from falling down into the surrounding lava.

  The missing piece was a star-shaped clockwork gear, of which only one point of the star was remaining.

  It was a puzzle.

  Finally! Since the first floor, it had only been traps and monsters! Puzzles were finally making a comeback.

  'That's a really wrong timing to finally get cooperative, Prince!' Sophia thought.

  And that's it. She was going to murder Prince.

  But no time to waste. And so she started searching the area until she got news from both Michel and Paolo.

  That was surprisingly useful. A clear report on their current situation and a head-up on future objectives they had to clear on this floor! Any more than that she would start thinking that their useless tressym mascot got replaced by someone else.

  And then, only ten minutes afterward she received a new message from Michel.

  'Hell yeah! That's what teamwork should be like.' Sophia thought, excited by all the good news coming all at once.

  Michel found the elevator and she found what was wrong with it. Prince did something constructive for once and provided useful Intel about what awaited them on the roof. And Michel found the solution to the missing pieces, though it still needed to be tested.

  Now, she just needed to be on her A-game and find a way to contribute some more.