A/N: I recently realized that Deshi is an uncomfortably similar name to Zesshi, so I've decided to change Deshi's name to Deshan. I'll go back and update Chapter 3 with the new name soon.

"I messed up, Nana."

Nana the dwarf examined Caramel with kind, wrinkle-framed eyes. The poor centaur had galloped in here with a sleeping elf on her back, begged Nana not to hurt the girl, and then collapsed into tears. It had been two minutes since then. Nana had laid the elf down on the prop straw bed, covered her with blanket and made sure she was comfortable, all while Caramel had sobbed her heart out in the corner.

Now, Caramel had collected herself, at least partially. She stood at the bedside and looked down at the elf girl with eyes full of regret.

"Lady Sybiler wanted me to save the people in that village," Caramel continued, "but I could only save two…" She looked up at Nana with watery eyes. "She was so upset. What if she leaves because I was too weak?"

Nana could tell that Caramel was fishing for comfort and reassurance, but she had no intention of giving her any. Upsetting a Supreme Being was one of the worst things a floor guardian could do. As she imagined what must have transpired down in that destroyed village, rage flared in Nana's heart, and Caramel was the target.

Her gaze turned cold. "I hope that our lady is merciful enough to only punish you, and not all of us."

Caramel winced, and looked like she was on the verge of tears again. Nana felt no empathy for her; in fact, the sight was satisfying. That idiot deserved far more than a bit of passive agression.

Some faint footsteps from outside broke the silence. Caramel jolted in panic, and leaned close to Nana. "That's them!" she whispered rapidly. "Don't call Lady Sybiler by her name, and you have to pretend she's your good friend, not your master. Oh, and you need a fake name. Mine is Toffee now, so use that for me. You need to come up with one too, unless Lady Sybiler gives you one first, then use—"

She clamped her mouth shut and stood up straight as the door creaked open. Two figures entered—Lady Sybiler, who stood tall and regal as ever, and an elvish man in traveling clothes, who seemed more confused and overwhelmed than anything else. He eyed the jars and baskets of dried herbs that covered every shelf and surface in the room, as if impressed by their value. He looked like the type of low-level adventurer that Nana was trained to ambush and harvest. However, she stopped herself when she remembered what Caramel had said about two people being saved; if the girl in the bed was the first, this man must have been the second.

For now, she would play kind old grandmother, like she usually did. "Hello, dearies." She stood up with some feigned difficulty and hobbled over to them. She looked up at the elf. "Who is this fine young man?"

"Hello." The young man bowed deeply, with the respect that would be due to an elder. "My name is Deshan. It is a pleasure to meet you."

Although her warm smile didn't change, inside, Nana was deeply relieved to see he had manners. Most young adventurers who came in here would immediately demand free healing like they were kings bossing around a maid-servant. If Deshan had acted like one of those little brats, playing nice would have been much more difficult. No wonder the Supreme One wanted him to be saved from the fire.

"Oh, the pleasure is all mine, deary," she said. "Can I get you anything? Tea? Crackers?"

"You needn't trouble yourself," Deshan said, "I'm fine. But thank you."

It was good that he said no. She asked the question out of habit, but all of the tea she had on hand was poisonous. She would have needed to make a big show of claiming she was all out. This was much simpler.

"Oh good, you're back," Lady Sybiler said, looking right at Caramel. "Is the girl okay?"

"Yes, she's right here!" Although Caramel had been crying just a moment before, her face now looked fresh, without so much as a hint of red around the eyes. She was probably using illusion magic to mask the signs of her disgraceful show of emotion. "She's still asleep."

Deshan noticed the blanket-covered figure in the bed. He inched a bit in the bed's direction and craned his neck, but a table stopped him from getting close enough to really see without drawing attention to himself.

Sybiler tapped him on the shoulder, recapturing his attention. "She's the, um… she's the other person we rescued. Do you know her?"

Now that he was given permission, Deshan shimmied between the tightly packed tables, nearly knocking some baskets over in the process, and went to the side of the bed. He leaned over the sleeping girl's body and brushed her long red hair out of her face with a gentle touch, so that he could see her features.

"Tachel," he said, his eyes wide and his voice barely louder than a breath. "She's the blacksmith's daughter."

Nana was no expert on love, but she knew young infatuation when she saw it. Considering the girl was unconscious and naked under those covers, her first instinct was to pull Deshan away from the bedside, or even kill him before he could try anything. However, she believed that he could be a gentleman and show some restraint. He stood back and didn't lay another hand on her, confirming Nana's hopes.

"Did you know her?" Sybiler asked.

"Not very well, my lady," he said. "She's always been… shy. Rarely ventures outside." A sympathetic look crossed his face. "I don't know if she'll be able to handle this."

Sybiler nodded solemnly. "About that. She should wake up soon, but I have some business to attend to. Do you think you could stay here and, um…" She breathed a heavy sigh. "Fill her in on what happened? She didn't react well to us before, and she might take the news better from someone she knows."

Deshan nodded. "Of course, my lady."

The longer she was around this elf, the more Nana's anxieties diminished. On top of being polite and respectful, he knew his place around Lady Sybiler. He seemed too weak to become a member of Ars Solanum, but if Lady Sybiler asked for him to be initiated on his character alone, Nana wouldn't object.

"Thank you. Toffee and Na—wait, um." Sybiler scrunched her face up, as if kicking herself for some mistake. The expression worried Nana quite a bit. How badly had Caramel blundered, to knock a Supreme Being so far off balance?

"You two," Sybiler finally said, vaguely gesturing to Caramel and Nana. "Can you meet me in the basement? We need to discuss the situation outside."

Both of them nodded. Nana wasn't keen on leaving the cottage unattended, especially with strangers inside, but disobeying Lady Sybiler was an even less attractive prospect.

Sybiler led the way, opening a trap door in the far corner of the room. "We'll try not to be gone too long," she said to Deshan. "Oh, and make sure Tachel doesn't try to leave." With that, she clambered into the trap door and climbed down the ladder, deeper into the dungeon. Caramel followed, but opted to fall down the hole and let her wings catch herself before hitting the ground, since hoofs and ladders didn't mix well.

Nana paused before following them down, and looked back at Deshan. "There's clean water in there," she said, pointing to a barrel along the wall. She gave him a sly smile. "Oh, and don't you try any funny business in Granny Ethel's bed." She tapped on her temple, drawing attention to the knowing glint in her eye. "I see everything, you know."

Deshan's cheeks turned as red as a poppy flower. "I-I wouldn't dream of such a thing!" He put his hands up defensively, as if trying to prove that they weren't being used for anything salacious.

She let out a good-natured cackle, then climbed down the ladder, double locking the trap door from the inside.

Sybiler sat upon her throne, looking down at the kneeling floor guardians before her, at an utter loss for where she was supposed to go from here.

She closed her eyes and tried to sort out what she knew so far. The world of YGGDRASIL had suddenly become real, from what she could tell. The NPCs were real people, but they were all still loyal to her, at least for now. That could easily change if she didn't live up to the expectations they had, which were absurdly high, based on what she'd heard from them so far.

The entire Verdant Underbelly was in tact, but it had been transported to an unknown location somewhere in "Elf Country," whatever that meant. Her Armageddon Firestorm had destroyed a helpless village full of elf farmers, and the incident would likely be pinned on some country called the Slane Theocracy. The two survivors were upstairs at that very moment. The girl was a total wild card who could very well be scared to death of Sybiler and Caramel; Deshan had sworn a life debt, but Sybiler didn't know how seriously he would take that, and it seemed his ultimate loyalties were with some powerful elven wizard-king. A king who probably had both the know-how to figure out that she had destroyed the village and the attack power to get revenge.

Her head throbbed at the thought. She couldn't bear to think about that problem right now; however, the NPCs before her were something she could try to deal with. They were just as powerful as they had been in YGGDRASIL, and they also seemed to have a much better grasp on how to use their power than she did. Keeping them on her side had to be her number 1 priority. She couldn't do that unless she understood them, both in terms of stats and as people.

She thought she remembered them fairly well, considering most of them had analogs in Furthest Reach, but it had also been three years since she'd dealt with these versions of them. She wanted to make absolutely sure she had her facts straight. Perhaps it was best to start with basic, obvious details.

She took a deep breath and opened her eyes. They were all still kneeling, staring up at her expectantly.

"Citizens of the Verdant Underbelly," she said, trying to sound as leader-like as possible. Her new body's graceful voice helped, but the words her stupid Earthling brain had come up with ruined the effect. Citizens, seriously? She sounded more like a hammy superhero than a queen. She cleared her throat and continued. "It's been a long time since I've been here."

"And we are so thankful that you have returned," Beta said, dipping deeper into a bow. He was positioned at the front of the group, as if they'd chosen him to speak for them all. Maybe it was because they knew Sybiler created him personally.

For a second, she wondered if she should have scolded Beta for speaking up without permission, but she didn't want to sound too bossy. Instead, she nodded. "Now that I'm back, I've realized that I don't know as much about all of you as I would like. I mean, I remember you, of course, but after all that you've done for Ars Solanum I feel like I should know you all more personally."

Tension rippled through the floor guardians. At first Sybiler wondered if she did something wrong, but then she saw the barely contained smiles on their faces.

"We are absolutely honored that you would consider rewarding us so generously, my lady," Beta said. "But please, don't feel obligated to do anything for us unless it pleases you. Being able to call ourselves servants of Ars Solanum is more than rewarding enough."

"Well, it pleases me," she said simply. "I can't learn everything about all of you at once, but we need to start somewhere, so…" She thought back to those silly icebreaker tasks that she was forced to do at work or in school. Although she hated them, she was blanking on what else to do. "How about each of you tells me your name, your job here, your creator, and a fun fact about yourself." She pointed at Beta. "You can start."

Maybe it was because she'd been attending too many work seminars recently, but demanding that the floor guardians participate in this ridiculous icebreaker made her feel more powerful than seeing them kneeling before her. She almost laughed at the rush of embarrassment and excitement it gave her.

Beta stood, and put his fist over his heart in a sort of salute. "I am Beta. My job is to coordinate the operations of the floor guardians. My creator…" He paused, his brow furrowed. "I apologize, my lady. I don't understand what you mean by this."

Sybiler blinked in surprise. Did he not remember being created, or at least remember all of the times the guild members had mentioned that she had made him? Maybe they didn't have as good a grasp on what happened in YGGDRASIL as she thought. Instead of handing him the answer, she decided to prod him more. "What I mean is, who brought you into this world?"

Beta nodded. "I understand now, thank you. My mother was Cenedra Pertyr, and my father was either Nikolas Pertyr or Lord Orrian Rathvaldr Ywangar, I am not certain."

Sybiler didn't recognize a single one of those names. They certainly weren't guild members, and she couldn't recall any public YGGDRASIL NPCs with those names. However, the part about not knowing his exact father seemed familiar.

After a moment of scouring her memory, the connection clicked. Sybiler had only read the backstory that SevenLink had written for Beta once, but she remembered there being some drama in it about his mother having a romantic affair with a lord.

Beta had said it without hesitation or uncertainty, as if it were as plain a fact as the sun rising in the morning and setting in the evening. If he believed that he had real parents, then it followed that he believed everything else in his backstory, right? Did he remember it as if it actually happened, or did he simply accept it as fact because that's what he'd been told?

Did this apply to every NPC? If so, that put her in an awkward position. Beta's backstory was the only one she ever bothered to read. That made the rest of these floor guardians perfect strangers.

While Sybiler's mind turned, Beta kept talking. "And a fun fact about myself. I am able to—"

"Wait." Sybiler held up a finger to silence him, and he immediately shut up. "I'm sorry, but I've decided I want to do this differently. Is that alright with you all?"

Still unsure whether he was allowed to speak again, Beta nodded. The rest of the floor guardians followed his lead.

"I have new set of questions," I said. "I want each of you to tell me your name, your job here, which guild leader you were closest to, and a quick summary of how you ended up in Ars Solanum." She didn't have the time or patience to listen to nearly a dozen life stories right now, so that seemed like a place to start.

"Very well, my lady," Beta said. "May I start again?"

She nodded. "Go ahead."

"I am Beta. My job is to coordinate the operations of the floor guardians. I would say I was always closest to you, Lady Sybiler, as you are the one who initiated me. I arrived here after I was exiled from my village when I became a lycanthrope. I foolishly came to Nana seeking a cure, but you taught me to embrace my power instead and use it to serve something greater than myself." He bowed deeply. "For that I am forever grateful, and you have my eternal loyalty."

His story confirmed her suspicions. All of that was in line with the story SevenLink had written. "Thank you, Beta. Also, a note on the third question," she said, addressing the crowd. "By who you were closest to, I mean which guild member initiated you." That must have been how the NPCs remembered being created.

Beta stepped back into the crowd, which was quickly organizing itself into a line. Now a nervous human girl was at the front. She looked to be about 16 years old, and completely unremarkable by YGGDRASIL standards in every way. Her face and body were attractive, but in a generic way, as if she were just a few tweaks off one of the avatar presets from YGGDRASIL's character creator. Although her long, braided, bright blue hair would have stood out in real life, it was a popular style available free to new players. She wore basic fighter starting equipment and had an unenchanted sword at her hip. The only piece of true customization she wore was a transluscent blue scarf hung loosely around her neck, but even that was a cosmetic item that could be purchased in any starting town for a handful of gold.

"I'm Azurael," the girl said in a soft, unsure voice, fiddling with the ends of her scarf. "I guard the first floor. Captain Gargamon initiated me. I was the first adventurer to survive going on a quest with the Captain, so he took me in as his protege."

Sybiler raised an eyebrow. She knew for a fact that Azurael wasn't as weak as she looked—she was level 100, just like everyone else here—but she hadn't expected her to sound and act so helpless too. Perhaps it was an act? He hoped not. That could mean her loyalty was fake as well.

Azurael shuffled to the back of the line, and two people took her place. They were two demons of some sort, one man and one woman, both with black curled horns and feathered wings sprouting from their lower backs. An incubus and a succubus, Sybiler would guess.

Although their facial features looked nothing alike, they shared a certain energy that reminded Sybiler that the two were supposed to be twins. The succubus was a classic feminine beauty, with large eyes, dewy lips, and the kind of curvy body that most men only see in their dreams. The incubus on the other hand was a pillar of masculinity, with piercing dark eyes, a chiseled jaw, and a toned body as hard and well-proportioned as a Greek statue. Both of them had carefully calculated outfits that showed as much skin as possible without breaking YGGDRASIL community guidelines. The clothes they did have, crafted of silk and dark leather, were arranged in a way that accentuated their most sensuous features, to the point where they would have looked less slutty if they were fully undressed.

The incubus and the succubus held each other's hands as they stepped forward. They seemed to squirm under Sybiler's gaze, to the point where she worried that their meager clothing would slide right off of them if they kept moving like that.

"I hope it's okay for my brother and I to go together, my lady," the succubus said in a low, sensual voice. "We have the same story, and neither of us likes being alone."

Now it was Sybiler's turn to squirm. After playing this game for years she was used to how these two looked, but watching them behave like this was a whole new level of awkwardness. She tried not to look directly at them. "Th-that's fine. Go ahead." If them going together would get them out of her line of sight faster, she was all for it.

The succubus bowed, at just the right angle for her cleavage to be on full display to Sybiler. "I am Cullena."

The incubus bowed as well, with the grace of a gentleman but the smirk of a troublemaker. "And I am Fellior. We are the guardians of the second and third floors. Lady Vulenvina initiated us both."

Of course they were Vulenvina's.

"When we were younger, we were sold into slavery." By the way Cullena handled the word, it was obvious what kind of slavery she meant. "We were bought by a man who was going to do horrible things to us…" She shuddered, and Sybiler genuinely couldn't tell if it was from discomfort or arousal. "We ran away, and Vulenvina found us. Now we're here."

"And we are very glad to be here, Lady Sybiler," Fellior said. Sybiler could have sworn she saw him wink.

These two were entirely too much. Sybiler didn't want to order the NPCs around any more than she had to, but demanding that these two put some more clothes on was quickly rocketing to the top of her priorities.

Next was Skrat. Although trolls were usually twice the height of a human, he had been magically shrunk to human size for convenience. He approached the throne with a swagger somewhere between that of a CEO and a rockstar. He wore a tailored three-piece suit, which sharply contrasted with his rough green skin and his oily strands of hair.

"Skrat at your service, my lady." His tongue, as thick as Sybiler's neck and twice as long, hung out of the side of his mouth and flopped about as he spoke. "My job is to guard the fourth floor, and to keep the rest of these hooligans on their toes!" He cackled. "Lord Eight=Dee brought me on board. I used to be a king, you know. But after I saw what Ars Solanum did with Ahura Mazda, I just had to drop everything and learn from the best!" He laughed again, louder and even more maniacally.

Sybiler couldn't help but grin at the story he mentioned. Ars Solanum had a long history of hunting down World Items, abusing them to pull off some stupid public prank, then releasing them back into the world for more serious players to find. This tradition of theirs was one of the only reasons other players didn't all team up to wipe out her trolling nuisance of a guild. It was always a big event when Ars Solanum got their hands on a World Item, and players would come from all over to see what ridiculous stunt they would pull with it; in fact, it got to the point where some guilds would willingly hand their own World Items over to Ars Solanum so they could watch the chaos.

Ahura Mazda was one of the World Items that the guild held for a short time. It allowed them to amplify an area of effect spell so it would impact every creature in an entire world, as long as the targets had a negative karma value. Most players were worried that it would be used by some hotshot paladin to PK every demon and undead player in Helheim. However, Eight=Dee had bigger plans. Helheim was still the target thanks to its huge population of negative karma players and monsters, but instead of dealing them damage, he cast a cosmetic spell that made all targets avatars change into carbon copies of Shibuya Natsuo, the endlessly memeable CEO of YGGDRASIL's parent company. For three whole days you couldn't go anywhere in Helheim without a pack of Shibuya zombies jumping out at you. It had been marvelous.

She got so caught up in reminiscing, she hadn't noticed the next floor guardian step forward. While Skrat had been shrunk down for convenience, Juggernaut the minotaur had not. He was an impenetrable wall of jet black fur and solid muscle. Even though Sybiler's throne was on a raised platform above all of the floor guardians, he towered over her, and she had to look upward to meet his solid red eyes. He slammed his massive ax down in front of him like a walking stick, so hard that is shook the whole room and made the metal baubles on her throne clatter. If she had been standing, she would have lost her balanced.

"Juggernaut," he grunted. "Guardian of the fifth floor. Sir Engwa's initiate. He got past me, now I serve the guild."

Sybiler wasn't sure what he meant by Engwa getting past him, but she was too intimidated to ask.

After Juggernaut was Kyaar the naga. She had the upper body of a mature woman, reasonably beautiful but not a caricature like Calluna was, and a thick serpentine tail for her lower half. Her entire form was coated with emerald green scales and draped with transluscent purple fabric held in place with bejeweled clasps. Her thin, forked tongue slipped out from between her lips and tasted the air as she thought about what to say.

"I am Kyaar," she said. "Guardian of the sixth floor. Lord Pertooee initiated me." She grinned; her mouth had no teeth except for two skinny, viper-like fangs. "It is embarrassing to admit, but my first impression was robbing him. But he believed my talents could be useful for so much more than petty thievery. Every day I am thankful that he gave me this chance to serve Ars Solanum."

She managed to bow deeply and slither away at the same time without missing a beat. The movement mesmerized Sybiler, but she pulled her eyes away and focused on the next in line.

YGGDRASIL may have been a fantasy-themed game, but there were no words to describe this next floor guardian except "robot." The four-armed mass of servos, wires, and smooth white plastic looked utterly out of place in this ancient-looking guild hall. One could be generous and argue that its design was at least similar to a knight, but its head looked more like a motorcycle helmet than a medieval helm.

"I am KCY-3445-X, codename, Anachronica," it said in a heavily digitized but vaguely feminine voice. "This unit was built, activated, and initiated by Lord F-Alder, for the purpose of guarding the seventh floor." It—she?—activated wheels built into her feet and rolled away.

Sybiler was surprised by the lack of an origin story for Anachronica, but when she thought about it, it made sense. F-Adler was always more of a sci-fi fan—abandoning YGGDRASIL for Furthest Reach had been his idea in the first place—and he never gave a damn about medieval fantasy immersion, especially when creating NPCs. SevenLink, on the other hand, valued that kind of immersion a lot, and had always been openly bothered by Anachronica's design. She probably hadn't put much effort into Anachronica's backstory, assuming she wrote one at all.

Now it was Caramel's turn to trot forward. "I'm Caramel!" she chirped. "Or Toffee, I guess, if you wanted to change my name for real."

Sybiler shook her head. "No, that's just around our guests."

"Okay! Well, I'm the guardian of the eighth floor. Lady SevenLink initiated me." She grew more quiet and thoughtful. "When my herd was dying of sickness, and I didn't have the strength to go on, she gave me wings and angelic powers so I could save them. I dedicated myself to the guild so I could repay her." And then, just as suddenly as it vanished, her loud energy returned. "Technically I've paid it all off already, but I like it here, so I'm going to keep serving the guild!"

Although her peppiness was refreshing, her words brought Sybiler no comfort. Caramel was only here because she enjoyed it, which meant that if Sybiler couldn't keep up an act, this girl would probably be the first to turn on her. She would have to keep an eye on her.

The second to last floor guardian was a red-scaled dragonkin clad in an intricate set of full plate armor. He held a large golden pike in one hand, and saluted with his other as he approached the throne. "I am Avalon, squire of King Kadiresan, who so generously initiated me. I am sworn to be the dutiful guardian of the ninth floor of the Verdant Underbelly." He had a noble British accent, and although he claimed to only be a squire, he spoke with the confidence of a knight. "My father, the Great Red Dragon of Vistethr, was a horrible tyrant, but Ars Solanum slew him and saved my people from him. And so, I have sworn my eternal allegiance."

Sybiler vaguely remembered that boss fight. At least Avalon didn't seem too fond of his dad, considering the guild apparently murdered him. She noted that Kadiresan got to be called King, rather than being a Lord or Lady like every other guild leader. That made sense, considering he was the original founder of Ars Solanum.

Finally, Nana shuffled forward. Although she looked ancient, she moved with the fluidity of a predator in its prime. "And I'm Nana," she said. "I take care of the cottage upstairs, and guard the entrance. None of you in particular initiated me, I don't think. I've lived in the Verdant Underbelly all my long life, and you all decided to keep me around." She gave a gummy smile and a warm laugh, like one from a proper grandmother.

Sybiler knew for a fact that that wasn't accurate. The guild had made Nana just like every other NPC here, she hadn't been in the dungeon when they cleared it. She hoped that misunderstanding was based on her backstory, and not based on lies. She still couldn't remember who exactly designed Nana.

With that, all of the floor guardians arranged themselves horizontally and genuflected one last time. "I hope you found our answers satisfactory, my lady," Beta said.

"Yes, thank you." That wasn't entirely true. She wanted to grill each one of them more about their backstories and capabilities, but what she heard here reminded her that SevenLink had a habit of giving every NPC a tragic, traumatic backstory. She'd already unearthed a few sensitive tidbits, like the death of Beta's parents or Calluna and Fellior's slavery situation, and the last thing she wanted was to cause a scene or make them all uncomfortable on day one.

"It was wonderful to hear from all of you, and I hope to get to know each and every one of you better as we move forward," she said. "Soon I want to discuss the sudden relocation of our guild base, but first…" She stood up from her throne. "Would it be alright with you all if I had some time alone to think?"

Sybiler had hoped they would enthusiastically agree like they always had, but this was the thing that gave the floor guardians pause.

"With all due respect, my lady," Beta said, "is it not improper to leave you alone? Your life is precious and you should always be guarded."

Hearing that made her stomach drop. Were they always going to insist on being around her? She would go insane at this rate. "I have to insist on it. If you're worried about my safety, I swear I won't leave the base on my own. I just need some privacy. So, no watching me from the shadows or anything, understand?"

The floor guardians didn't look satisfied, but they seemed to relent to the compromise. "As you wish, my lady," Beta said.

"Thank you. For now, please go back to your floors and make sure no one raids us." She stepped away from the throne and walked aimlessly towards the exit. "I'll… call you back when I'm ready."

Sybiler screamed.

She'd buried her face in a pillow to muffle the noise, and hoped that the thick stone walls of the bedroom blocked it even more, but her cry still rang out loud and desperate.

She had no idea how she'd managed to keep her cool for so long; the sheer surreality of this mess must have kept her detached from reality. Now that the pressure of the floor guardian's gazes wasn't on her, she was able to notice the crushing weight of everything else on top of her.

She was trapped here. Where "here" was, she wasn't sure, but she had no way of getting home. In a desperate ploy she had tried casting Gate with her apartment as the destination, but the spell had fizzled out. This wasn't California; hell, this wasn't even Earth.

No one would rescue her. Many assumed that someone like her would be valued by society because she was a trained nurse who even had the privilege of working in an acrology. The truth was, her enviable job only meant that there were a million aspiring nurses who would happily see her die so they could take her place. She wasn't truly valuable to anyone. Her family had stopped answering her calls after she "abandoned them" to pursue her education. Her clients may have been wealthy, but none of them actually gave a shit about her. The government certainly wasn't going to help some common worker like herself.

She dropped the pillow and rolled over on the plush bed. It was unnervingly comfortable, so soft and warm that it made her question whether she knew what those words meant before now. She'd never laid on anything close to this extravagant before, not even on that day at work when she snuck a nap on one of the luxury hospital beds reserved for rich patients. It sucked the energy out of her like a syringe extracting blood. She yearned for sleep, but even when she closed her eyes and burrowed into the blankets, she couldn't reach it. That made some sense, considering it had technically been only a few hours since she'd woken up that morning. It already felt like a lifetime.

Her body may not have been tired, but her mind was exhausted. What could be the harm in just lying here for a little while? The NPCs had been cooperative so far, she didn't see why they would object now.

But when she thought about it for a moment, she realized that quite a bit of harm could come from laziness right now. She glanced around the opulent bedroom. Everything was colored in velvety greens and rich browns, and all available surfaces were covered by a neat arrangement of golden vases and baubles. Her guild had never been huge on interior design, so barring necessary new spaces like the throne room, they had left the look of the Verdant Underbelly virtually unchanged. This room had been the Fey King's bedchamber. Being in there, she couldn't help but think about the Elf King that Deshan had mentioned.

If this world was anything like YGGDRASIL, then danger would be everywhere. That Elf King would be furious when he learned about what happened to the village, and it was only a matter of time before he showed up on her doorstep. Or worse, sent an army. What if they were already on their way?

And the threat didn't start and end with that Elf King. The Slane Theocracy sounded just as vicious, especially since Deshan had readily accepted that they could dish out a Super-Tier firestorm. Who could know how many other nations there were out there with the same level of firepower? Then there were the threats that weren't nations. Elder dragons, archfey, demon lords, demigods, any of them could show up out of nowhere like a random event and burn the Verdant Underbelly to the ground. She had a top tier PvP build, sure, but that didn't mean she could defend herself against bosses designed for a whole party to take on.

She gripped her hair and gritted her teeth. "Get it together, June." It felt strange, muttering her real name inside of the guild hall. She'd always made a point of keeping her real life identity a secret, and that included never saying her real name while in YGGDRASIL. She and the rest of Ars Solanum tended to piss off a lot of people in the game, and she'd heard too many horror stories of angry players screwing over trolls in real life as revenge.

The thought made her freeze. Other players. If she was here because she had been online during the server shutdown, did that mean all the other players who'd been logged in at the time were also here? If she had thought of this at another moment she might have been happy about not being alone, but now, all she could think about was her guild's terrible reputation. If she ever ran into another player, chances were they would assume she was just as mean-spirited as she'd always been in the game, and would try to subdue her immediately. Maybe even kill her.

Even with her solid build, she wouldn't stand a chance against them. She was alone. Meanwhile, a guild like 2ch Alliance probably had hundreds of players show up for their Goodbye YGGDRASIL party. If her life depended on it—and it very well might—Sybiler guessed she could maybe survive against two or three other maxed out players, but she wouldn't stand a chance against a full party of them.

On second thought, she had no reason to be so cocky about her abilities. If anyone from a PvP-focused top guild like Trinity was around, their build was probably just as good, plus they had three extra years worth of in-game knowledge and high-tier weapons at their disposal. She wouldn't stand a chance.

She decided that if she ever ran into members of those bigger guilds, she would have no choice but to surrender immediately and hope they'd let her join them. That could be possible with those two, especially if she could prove that she didn't mean any harm now that everything was real, but she couldn't say the same for some guilds. YGGDRASIL some hardcore, tight-knit guilds that tended to take the game very, very seriously; no doubt many of them played until the very end, considering how much time and money they sunk into the game over the years. Those were the same type of guild that tended to take the most personal offense to trolls like Sybiler.

Could players like that ever forgive Sybiler for how she behaved in game, or would they treat her the heartless monster they assumed she was? Maybe she wasn't giving them enough credit—hopefully they were functional adults able to separate a game from reality enough to know she hadn't meant any real harm. Still, she couldn't help but worry that they might try to exact justice. Or, for guilds she had personally pestered, revenge.

She went through her mental catalog of personal enemies. For the most part she was only slightly worried—Ars Solanum knew their place, and didn't often screw with guilds much stronger than themselves—but then she remembered those heteromorph weirdos from Helheim. Ainz-Gool-Something? She couldn't remember the exact name, but she remembered their vitriol. Those guys had always been too busy defending their guild hall from raiders and questing after materials to start a real PvP war with anybody, but after they fell victim to one of Pertooee's scams, they wouldn't stop raving about how Ars Solanum was filled with "bad faith players" who were "ruining the game for everyone."

In the past, she always scoffed at their hypocrisy. As if hoarding every World Item they could get their slimy hands on and then locking them away to never be used was done in the interest of making the game more fun for everyone. They were only a big deal because they wasted so much money at the cash shop, which wasn't exactly fair to the people who weren't lucky enough to have gainful employment. Those pay-to-win bastards were the ones who ruined games, in her opinion. But now, the thought of all those cash shop items and World Items being used on her made her want to curl up and die.

If any of them were here—if anyone like them was here—she was as good as dead.

Shaking with a new rush of panic, she stood up from the bed. She could see her avatar—no, her new body—in one of the large mirrors adorning the walls. Although she had seen this form in a million mirrors over her years of playing, the static expression and stiff movements had made it hard for her to accept her avatar as her own reflection on a philosophical level. Now she had no choice but to confront it.

When she first designed this body it was supposed to be attractive in a mature way, like she always dreamed of growing up to be back when she was a teenager. Almost ten years later, she wished she had aged this well. She had silky, dark brown hair pulled back into a tight ponytail, although it had grown a bit unkempt after rolling about on the bed. Her face, which she had modeled after a dozen different movie stars, didn't have a single mark or blemish across its tanned surface. The only mark of her Changling Fey racial class was her unnaturally blue eyes that shimmered like stained glass.

She wore an intricate set of studded black leather armor with nightshade vine patterns decorating the hems. This was her guild armor, custom designed to mechanically support her stealth-sniper playstyle and visually match her edgy assassin persona. She didn't want to change into something else, considering this was the strongest armor item she owned, but she couldn't deny how much it made her look like a supervillain. No wonder Deshan had tried to attack her on sight.

Right, Deshan and Tachel were still upstairs. Yet another thing she needed to deal with.

Sybiler sighed and examined herself again. She couldn't deny that her avatar had a certain gravitas that the real her lacked. Maybe that was why all of the floor guardians assumed she was some great leader. She straightened her posture and puffed up her chest. When she saw her reflection do the same, nausea bubbled in her gut.

She looked like a pompous evil queen. A tyrant. If she had someone who looked like her right now in YGGDRASIL, she would have sniped them down without a moment's hesitation.

That was the last kind of person she wanted to be.

As attractive as doing nothing sounded, she couldn't live with the person she was right now, which meant she had no choice but to do something about it. Sybiler the cruel, irreverent griefer had been a useful identity to escape into when dealing with work stress, but suddenly that escape had inverted into a prison. Now she just wanted to be June Maris again, the woman who worked her ass off her entire life to get into nursing school for the sake of others. The one who could deal with any patient, no matter how obnoxious or entitled, with a smile on her face. The one that other people like to be around.

Most importantly, the one would would give up everything, from her home to her comfort to her own safety, to protect people. If an elf army showed up on her doorstep today, all of the floor guardians would be in the line of fire too. She had to protect them. It was all she had to live for, at this point.

"Create Lesser Item," Sybiler said. As she cast a spell, a simple notebook and pen appeared in her hands. Taking notes had always helped her sort out her thoughts back in school. She sat down on the bed and began to plan.

A/N: Sorry if this chapter was a bit slower than usual, I've gotten to the awkward part where I need to transition from introductions to things actually happening. Things should start picking up in Chapter 5. Thanks to everyone who left a review!