- Chapter Ten -

A few hours later we were grinding in a forest. Ronin, Parks and I just made it to level 4 but somehow Cherry and Firefly were already level 5. And honestly, I could tell why. They fought almost in unison. Like they were one player with four arms. We just stayed back and watched them take on a giant bear and what looked like its 3 cubs. By themselves. It was pretty hot, not gonna lie.

Parks spoke up when they were done. "So are we a guild or something now?" The question caught us off guard. We all joined the same party but I completely forgot you could join guilds.

Cherry replied first, "Ohhh! We can be the Cherryflies!"

I'm pretty sure you could hear virtual crickets because of how quiet everyone was.

"Or not…" she frowned.

"It takes 10,000 col to make a guild." Ronin said. "Anyone here have that?"

I was just hitting 3,000. Pretty sure Ronin had a little more than that. No telling how much Parks had.

"We kinda spent all our money on armor and these…" Firefly replied, touching her katana.

"I have 3,000." I said. Then Ronin replied, "I have 4,500." The twins both had just over 2,000 each. Then everyone looked at Parks. "I have 8,200..." he said, grinning with his chest out.

"If everyone pitches in half of their col, we should almost have enough." I mentioned. "Anyone have a problem with that?"

No one objected, so we started our walk back to the Town of Beginnings.

We each racked up about another 1,000 col on the way back, so no one was really hurting for cash when we got to the guild building.

On the walk back, we started trying to come up with a guild name. Literally nothing that we came up with was worth a shit, so we were sitting outside the building arguing about it.

"I still like Cherryflies!" Cherry yelled.

"Not happening!" We all yelled back.

"The Twin Gryphons?" I asked.

Everyone went silent and stared at me. "What?" I asked.

Ronin chimed in, "That's not too bad. But saying 'the twin somethings' implies there are only two of us."

We all nodded in agreement.

"The Twin Gryphon Alliance." Firefly timidly said, and I suddenly felt all fuzzy inside.

Parks yelled, "FUCK YEAH!" along with smiles and nods from the rest of us.

10 minutes and 10,000 col later, we were now known as: The Twin Gryphon Alliance. And for an extra 100 col, we made banners for the group and got an added option to make our own custom armor. The armor design can wait until I raise my blacksmithing skill, but the banner was easy. It was a black banner with a gold outline. Two gold gryphon's faced right and left just above center, each with red eyes. The guild name stitched under them in gold.

I felt somewhat complete. We may only be on the first floor, but for the first time since I found out we were trapped here, I felt like we might make it.

We went to a restaurant to celebrate, and I got caught up watching everyone having fun. Parks had two bottles of ale, drinking out of both of them at the same time. Ronin had Cherry in his arms, passionately making out with her. Firefly was trying to take one of the bottles out of Park's hands. Failing, of course, because she had already reached her limit.

I walked outside to message my wife and update her. I told her about how we found Carey, and about Sampson. I told her how we met the twins and how Ronin was starting to fall for Cherry. He won't admit it, but I know him better than he knows himself.

She sent me an extremely long, heartfelt message back. It almost broke me to realize that I'm basically laying next to her in a hospital bed IRL, but I couldn't feel further away. It was probably the ale in my virtual system, but I was very emotional that night.

We all wobbled out of the restaurant a few hours later, slowly making our way to an Inn and falling in our respective beds.