The house was smaller.

Only one story tall with three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen, and a gathering room. The yard was smaller, but large enough for the six of them to gather on. The rooms themselves weren't very big, but there was space for them to move around the beds and get to the single dresser that the two of them had to share.

Penelope sat on the edge of her bed and ran her hand over the blanket. The fabric was soft but not too silky. Textures that were too smooth or too rough were difficult for her to touch. The cloth the Shadows wore was almost too coarse, but considering her need to wear them, she'd pushed through the mild discomfort.

"This is home now?" Circe flopped on the other bed. "I never got my things from the wall."

"Nochi said they put some street clothes for us in the dresser." Penelope tugged on the gray robe and pulled it off her shoulders. She looked down at the green shirt she'd been wearing when she'd been taken. Despite her many resets, she'd still been hit enough times that the shirt deserved to be in the rag pile, but the thought of throwing it away felt like getting rid of her last connection to home.

Circe bounced up to her feet and walked over to the four-drawer wooden dresser by the door. She pulled open the top drawer and pulled out one of the blue-green-black-brown camouflage shirts. "Well, do you want camo or camo?" She tossed the shirt to Penelope, then opened the second drawer. "More shirts." She closed it and opened the third one. "And… we have camo dresses." She pulled out one of the dresses and held it up to her. The bottom of the dress hit her just above the knees.

"And it's sleeveless." Penelope felt the fabric of the shirt. Unlike the blanket, the shirt was made out of something light and airy and reminded her of a compression shirt. The elastic fabric stretched in her hands as she pulled on it.

"And made out of the same stuff as the shirts." Circe tossed the dress to Penelope. The brunette closed the drawer and opened the last one. "Oh, you're going to love this." She winked at her friend.

Penelope set the dress down. She'd never liked wearing dresses; feeling the air between her legs left her feeling naked. It was the same reason she had trouble wearing shorts and why the sandals that she had to wear for the stats made her skin crawl.

Circe held up a camo skirt to her waist. "I didn't realize these things were so short." She giggled. "Dad would kill me if he saw me wearing something like this!" Her soft laughter ended abruptly as she remembered that her father had been brought with them. She quickly put the skirt back in the drawer and closed it.

"Hey…" Penelope motioned for her friend to come back over. "They're not going to let many people off campus and I doubt any of them are going to make it to the island, so you don't have to worry about him."

Circe sat down next to Penelope, then twisted on the bed so she was facing the other woman. "But what about when we go back into the Dungeon?" She let out the nervous breath she'd been holding. "He's going to be in there."

"He didn't go into the first three floors." Penelope tried to point out something positive. "He's going to need a pretty good reason why he deserves to be power-leveled up." She touched the large device on her wrist. "I can message Cirdor and make sure that he's not in line for leveling. Then the only place we might run into him is the surface."

"You think he'd do that?" Circe tucked a stray lock of brown hair behind her ear.

"I do." Penelope touched the device and looked through the menus as she tried to figure out how to send a message.

"That one." Jeru pointed at the icon of a book. "You don't have many people in your contact list, but there's still a lot of mages in there, most of whom are off-world, so you can't contact them anyway." He pointed at the bar at the top. "Hit P to filter by last name and then select Pengal and you can type out your message like you would on a phone."

Except the phone isn't on my wrist.

"They have models like that." Jeru insisted. "They just had buttons instead of a touch screen."

Can't I hook this up to the system menu and type it out with my thoughts? Penelope resisted the urge to take off the pad and use both hands to type.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

"It's possible to link that to the system, but you'll need an enchanter who can connect the two, so that's not something you can do right now." Jeru sighed. "I thought about trying to set up something like that from the beginning as well as giving people a personal dimensional pocket for like an item bag, but that would've taken too much mana to pull off. And to answer your next question, giving it to the looper would have broken the first time the next one was tagged in."

You could have left a cache of helpful items in the admin building where only the card could let the looper in. Penelope looked up from the screen to her friend. "What was your dad's name?"

"Alexander Scofield." Circe shivered.

Penelope typed out the name, then sent the message. "Done."

"What did you say?" Circe leaned over to look at the screen.

"That he worked with a group who tried to kill us and that while I don't have any proof, I suspect that he might have some ties to the fanatics." Penelope shrugged. "That should be enough to keep him detained for a while."

The color drained out of Circe's face. "You think he's working with the Demons?"

"I don't know, but Cirdor is going to need a reason to hold him and that will be a good enough one to ensure that he doesn't get any levels until he can prove that we can trust him." Penelope shrugged. "Once we get back to the main group, I can make sure he never gets on a leveling team." She smiled at her friend. "Cheer up! Even if he tried to do something to you, you're Tier Three and he's level one. I doubt he'd be able to even scratch you."

"Yeah…" Circe picked at her fingers. "Do they make levels to protect you against words and memories?"

Penelope took a deep breath. Trauma wasn't a place that she was comfortable going. She'd had her share of 'attitude adjustments' because she'd been overstimulated and couldn't process everything that was happening around her or because looking at someone in the eye had made her hyperventilate, leading them to declare she was admitting she was guilty. The scars ran deep and she didn't know how to tell someone else how to not flinch when a hand was raised because she still shrank into herself when that happened. She pushed the deluge of memories back behind the red door in her mind and took a minute to center herself.

"We'll figure it out." Penelope put her hand over Circe's. "As long as I'm around, I won't let him hurt you again."

"Thanks…" A lone tear rolled down Circe's cheek. "I don't know what I'd do without you."

"You'd be fine." Penelope forced a smile to try to cheer the other woman. "You're stronger than you realize."

"I don't know…" Circe wiped the tear off her face. "If I was that strong, I probably wouldn't be crying right now."

"Crying doesn't make you weak." Penelope repeated a quote she'd heard once. "It means you're Human."

"That hits a lot differently now that we know there's not just Humans in the world!" Circe laughed. The laughter built and became contagious, pulling Penelope into it. The two of them laughed until they were both crying.

Once she was able to compose herself, Penelope looked over at her friend. "You feel better?"

"A little." Circe admitted. She picked up the shirt off the bed and looked at it. "It's going to look weird if this is the only thing we wear out of the dresser."

"Maybe we can get some pants from the mainland." Penelope held up the shirt. "I need to keep my pants anyway, since I've got a skill on them."

"Thankfully the system lets us count our shirts as underclothes." Circe picked up her jacket and held it up. "How are the Mebope going to have a full set of gear if they don't wear pants?"

"Cirdor is an enchanter, so maybe he can put skills or stats on regular clothes?" Penelope shrugged. "Or move them off what we have to more comfortable gear."

"The Elf?" Circe wrinkled her nose. "He looked like a desk jockey. You kicked his butt hard."

"I know." Penelope sighed and looked at her menu to check the time. "We've got a couple hours before they're supposed to take us back to the mainland to help process the fish."

"Fish." Circe spat out the word like it was a four-letter expletive. "I hate fish."

"But you need to raise your butchering." Penelope shrugged. "It'll help with your Recovery stat."

"You need Recovery for your mana regen." Circe pouted. "I rarely use mana."

"I'm sure they have a tailoring shop around here somewhere." Penelope teased.

"Please, no!" Circe flopped face down on the bed. "Isn't there a fun job that boosts my Speed?"

"We should get some skinning experience too." Penelope shrugged. "They haven't mentioned anything to do much with gunsmithing, so your only other options would be leatherworking and tinkering."

"Okay, but does it have to be FISH?" Circe rolled over on her back. "Can't we do something like pigs or cows?"

"It's what we have at the moment." Penelope pulled off her old shirt and folded it, then threw it near the head of her bed. She slipped the tight shirt on, then straightened out her red ponytail. "You better get used to the smell, because we're going to be doing this for a while."

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.