The first thing Matty did after breakfast was, with Alejandra's permission, to send Dinah over to take the gold coin spinning over the alpha's body. It had become clear that the coins were not keyed to whoever had earned them, but could be taken by anyone who was close at hand.

"Which is weird," Olivia said, frowning as her friend went over and took the coin, then received her scroll from a frog-like creature that hopped out of the mud at the riverbank and then just as quickly hopped away. "If the coins are, like, XP, then they should only go to the person who earned it. Otherwise there's all sorts of weird exploits you could get into. It'd be like Mom earning fifty bucks for Dad working at McDonalds for eight hours. It just doesn't make sense."

"But like, that's how money works isn't it?" Lucas asked. "I mean, if Mom earns fifty bucks, then she can give some to us as an allowance, and some to Dad as a gift, and then keep the rest for herself. Or someone could try to take it from her, and then it's his money until it gets used. Right?"

"But that's now how XP is supposed to work!" Olivia practically wailed.

"I don't think it's XP," Lucas said, frowning. "I'm not even sure it's even, like, a thing that's supposed to be connected to the system."

Olivia paused in mid wail and blinked, then her eyes went unfocused and her mouth stayed open as her brother's words settled into her brain.

"Liv?" Alejandra asked, raising an eyebrow. "Are you–"

"Shhhhhhhh!" Olivia thrust an upraised finger out at Alejandra, not looking at anything. "I'm thinking."

"This may take a while," Isabel muttered to Dinah out the side of her mouth.

Matty raised his eyebrows and made eye contact with Alejandra, then just shrugged. Liv got like that sometimes, when a new idea hit her. The best course of action was to just let her ride it out and wait for her to come back up for air.

"So," Matty said, clearing his throat. "I guess the first thing to do is just open up our scrolls and see what we can see, right?"

"But I thought you said this stuff was broken," Dinah said. She was still holding her scroll, seal unbroken, in her hand. "How are we going to make sense of it if we can't understand half of it?"

"I understood my scroll when I got it," Luc said. "I mean, it took a little bit because of all the weird bracket words, but the main stuff I was able to figure out."

There didn't seem to be much more to say, so after a moment more there was a communal shrug and everyone unfurled their scroll.

The wording was the same on all of them. The same broken phrasing, the same exhortation to go complete 'quests' to gain in strength, the same everything. Alejandra read through hers twice more, and then shook her head and looked up.

"I have no idea what I'm looking for," she admitted freely.

"I've got the option to choose a boon," Dinah said, holding up another scroll. "A bird dropped this off when we were reading. But it's the same kind of stuff. I can get my own 'possessions', or everything else is all bugged up and unreadable. And much as I'd like to get my clothes back, I'm not sure that's the best option."

"I've got that too," Lucas piped up. And Bel raised her hand as well.

"I didn't want to pick anything until we were sure it wasn't dangerous," Bel said, staring at her scroll. "I swear, this is all so weird. Like, I wish there was a tutorial program or something."

"YES!"

The entire family jumped half a foot in the air at Olivia's yell.

"Olivia Albright," Alejandra growled, trying to force her heart to start beating again. "What in the world was that?"

"Tutorial!" Olivia jabbed a finger at Isabel. "That's exactly what we're missing! Every Isekai in the world has a Dungeon Fairy! Where's ours?"

Everyone blinked, except Lucas who suddenly got wide-eyed.

"Hey yeah," he said, snapping his fingers. "Where's ours?"

"Could someone clue me in here?" Matty said, looking as perplexed as Alejandra felt.

"It's a creature or program or something that comes up when the heroes first get their powers," Olivia said, starting to pace back and forth. "Its job in the books is to explain the system to the newbie, and help them get their footing. Every Isekai I've ever read has one. There should be one here! It's like… Required!"

"Maybe we need to summon it somehow?" Lucas said, frowning at his scroll. "Maybe there's like a second scroll we're missing or something?"

Olivia stopped her pacing and stared at her little brother for a heartbeat, then whirled around and glared up at the sky.

"Hey! Animal-System-Thing! We need our Dungeon Fairy! So send them down, or give us the scroll, or whatever! Chop chop please!"

Alejandra exchanged glances with Matty, who shrugged. Apparently their daughter had finally gone crazy. She wished she could say she hadn't been expecting it.

Stolen novel; please report.

Then a bird that looked like a cross between a seagull and a shark swooped down and dropped a scroll into Olivia's outstretched hands before uttering a croaking caw and flying off.

Then again, maybe a little insanity is required for this place.

"Does thou wish to activate the Tutorial," Olivia read from the little scroll she unfurled. She rolled her eyes and huffed, then glared up. "Of course I do! Why do you think I was yelling at the sky?"

"Because you've gone nuts," said Lucas, Isabel, and Dinah all at once and all with the same straight face.

"I hate you all," Olivia said, not looking away from the sky. "Just so you know." She glanced down at the scroll as it began to glow softly with a golden light. "Hey, I think it's working!"

The golden light intensified, and the scroll lifted from Olivia's hand and floated out into the center of their group, where it hung for another moment before disappearing with a bright flash.

And when the scroll disappeared, something else appeared in its place.

It was a skeleton.

The girls all let out screams in various notes of surprise and panic. Lucas let out a shout of surprise. Alejandra's hand jerked towards her pistol before she remembered that it had been lost in the fight with the gator-cats and hadn't been recovered yet. Beside her, Matty launched to his feet, his shotgun coming off of his shoulder and up to aim at the thing–

But it was already starting to collapse forward. Like a puppet with cut strings, it collapsed in on itself as it fell. And when it struck the ground it came apart completely, rendering itself into a pile of bones. And a sword. A sword with its blade stuck halfway to the hilt in the skeleton's skull.

Everyone stared at the pile of bones, eyes wide.

"I uh…" Lucas swallowed. "I guess that's why we haven't been visited by any tutorial fairies yet, huh?"

"Oh come on!" Olivia threw up her hands in disgust. "Broken system, dead tutorial fairies, weird animal messages and scrolls… This is the worst isekai ever!" She growled and kicked a rock hard enough to send it skidding into the bone pile. "Look at this stupid thing," she growled and reached out to pull her own scroll out of thin air. "It doesn't even show us our stats or anything! It just has those same stupid words on it. "Welcome to the blah blah blah". It's just as busted as everything else around here!"

Lucas, who was closest to the ranting Olivia, moved over to pat his sister on the shoulder consolingly.

"It's okay Liv, we're gonna–Hey, why doesn't your scroll have the coin counter on it?"

Olivia paused mid-rant and blinked. "The who with the what now?"

Alejandra glanced at her own scroll, then back up at her son. "What do you mean, Lucas?"

"Right at the top, on the handle. See?" he turned his scroll around. Everyone crowded close for a look, and sure enough, there on the wooden handle of the scroll was a stylized coin symbol and the number 0 next to it. A quick check confirmed that Lucas's scroll was unique in this regard.

"Let me see that!" Olivia made a grab for Lucas's scroll, but her hands passed right through the paper as if it were incorporeal. She growled and her hands balled into fists, but she took a deep breath and seemed to calm herself with effort.

"Okay, okay, I'm good now…" she took another breath. "Luc, dear brother, how did you get a coin counter on your scroll?"

"Uh, it was when I got my profession, I think?" Lucas scrunched up his face in thought. "Yeah, the scroll I got for it said something about a bunch of errors, and–"

"Let me see it!" Olivia demanded.

"Liv," Alejandra said quietly but firmly. "Calm down and speak to your brother politely."

Another deep breath, another balling of fists. "Okay. Okay, sorry Mom. Sorry Luc. Just… May I see the scroll? I think it's important."

Lucas started to nod, then stopped and grinned. "Say please."

"Luc," Matty's voice held a tone of warning. "Don't be a dick."

Their kids gasped. "Dad said a bad word!" Isabel said, pointing at Matty with her eyes comically wide.

Alejandra barked out a laugh as Matty dropped his face into his palm.

"Okay okay, sorry," Lucas laughed and brought up a smaller scroll that he turned around to show to Olivia. "There, see? Right in the middle there, before it talks about the stuff I can do with it."

Olivia bent close to examine it, then her eyes bugged out and she let out a triumphant whoop. "It's not part of the System!"

"What's not?" Dinah asked, leaning in.

"The coins! It says so right here! Well, sorta. You gotta read between the lines. See? Right here it says all this stuff about stuff being unavailable and disengaging interlocks and stuff? I think that means the coins… They're not XP at all! THey're like… Some kind of alternative power system! That's why Luc's spell only healed Mom part of the way! He didn't have enough coins to power it completely!"

A memory hit Alejandra like a brick. Your ally hath granted thee a boon.

"Matty," she asked, turning to him. "Did you send me coins when I was fighting the gator-cats?"

"Croco-kitties," Isabel corrected.

"Kity-crocs," Dinah and Olivia countered.

"The things with teeth and claws," Alejandra said, rolling her eyes.

"I did," Matty said, trying to help her get the conversation back on track. "I had no idea what it would do, but I figured if it was something that could help you, I'd better do it."

"I think it fueled that Desperation Art thing," she said, thinking back to it. Remembering how the Art had only triggered after Matty had sent the coin to her.

"The thing that nearly tore your arm off?" Matty winced. "Now I almost wish I hadn't sent it."

"It saved me. That's what matters." She smiled and laid a hand on his shoulder, and he nodded, covering it with his own.

"It's weird that it hurt her so bad though," Olivia said, frowning. "I mean, it's in the name, right? Desperation? Something you pull out only when all other options are gone. Which means, like, when you've been really hurt maybe? Why would something that hurts you so bad be something you can trigger only when you're hurt really bad?"

"Well I mean, it's like the healing spell right?" Lucas asked. "It had enough coin to start the art, but not enough to finish it?"

"Oooooh," Olivia pointed a finger at Lucas. "But unlike your healing, it didn't have a shut-off condition! So when it ran out of power from the coins, it tried to take it from Mom! That makes sense!"

"So I guess that means that the coins probably power everything, huh?" Dinah asked, peering at her own scroll.

She looked up when the silence stretched out to noticeable lengths.

"What? Why are you all looking at me like that?"

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