Riez had woken up to quite an interesting message from the system.

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  You released a lich from its eternal prison and tore a hole in the world

  For changing the world beyond all comprehension, and converting a tribe of orks to believe in you, you have gained 19 Worship.

  Worship was that thing that could be spent to make permanent effects, or at least that was what Jasper had told her before he up and vanished. She wondered how she should spend them.

  Riez slowly got up and dusted herself off. In front of her was a twirling maelstrom of chaotic energy that seemed to be barely contained. She had been staring at it for hours while drifting off to sleep.

  She dismissed the message and was about to head out when she heard a loud scream from the massive hole.

  It was a scream of torture and pure hatred. One of madness and instability.

  A giant hand the size of a small town tried to push up through the hole, clearly wanting to get out. It was the hand of a drow. Glowing red markings were highlighted all around her skin, as if she wasn't dark due to her pigment, but rather due to incredibly dense writing all over her body.

  The barrier around the swirling mass of chaos glowed, and from the boundaries thick shackles appeared, made from some kind of light, wrapping around the hand, before pulling it away and deep into the space between worlds.

  The howling scream sent a shiver down Riez's spine.

  It seemed like something else was happening that she wasn't quite aware of, and she didn't have Jasper to ask what was happening.

  With a sigh, she slowly took everything in around her.

  Old Mr Bones had taken the map and his army and headed towards the agreed-upon area. It seemed like the world was slowly trying to recover from the battle happening.

  Riez needed to figure out what she wanted to do.

  She could get a new crew, but the chance of them surviving for hundreds of years would be almost impossible. A tribe like the one she had taken over would have had much more of a chance, though none of them were left.

  Raising them from the dead wasn't really something that she was capable of, so there was nothing she could do, at least for now.

  Walking over, she picked up one of the banners that the clan had used. It was a large red piece of cloth with the face of a boar. It seemed rather aesthetic, and Riez promised that if nothing else, she would remember this clan.

  Ripping the banner from its standard, Riez put it on as a cape. She already felt much more powerful. Almost like a superhero.

  With that done, she started to walk. She wasn't sure where, but she knew that she would get nothing from staying here.

  Each step she took felt heavy, and the joyful nature that she could usually muster seemed further away than it had many other times.

  She didn't even know what direction she was wandering. She had just picked a direction and started to walk. It felt nice to let the world slowly pass her by for once. She wasn't focused, she wasn't scheming, and the mental break was sorely needed.

  Riez hadn't realised it, but being the leader of a faction, even if just for a short while, was exhausting. The number of things that she had to take into consideration was overwhelming, and the fact that everyone wanted her to look at things they considered important, but in the grand scheme of things didn't matter, had made the job even more stressful.

  She knew that she probably couldn't avoid being a leader, after all, she had the Loyalty Domain, but she wasn't going to make it a group of people that someone could just join. She would need people to run her group, second in commands that could make choices on her behalf, people that she could trust.

  The Goddess of Trickery was walking in her own thoughts, not really paying attention to much. She only really stopped because she was thirsty, hungry and tired.

  She winced. She hadn't considered that it was something she needed to think about in the game. She knew that practically all the other players had powers that allowed them to ignore these more mortal aspects of the game. Martin had the Wealth Domain that provided him with sustenance whenever he desired it, while Celeste had her Journeying Domain, which would fill her with food, water and sleep, as long as she was travelling. Jasper had the Endurance Domain, though he had let that go for Contracts, and he had passed out the first time she had seen him after they parted in the beginning.

  Riez sighed and looked around for something to eat. In the distance, she could see the beginnings of a forest, which was probably the best sign she had of something edible close by.

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  With a grunt, she moved out, doing her best to keep up a steady pace. She realised that she had been moving quite fast before. Her normal walking speed was effectively what most people would consider a full sprint. Was the due to her Alacrity Domain? She would assume so.

  Her run was even faster, even though she couldn't keep it up for long, she was still faster than any car that she had driven. She wasn't leaning on her Alacrity Domain like she had done when running away from Jasper. She had learned that the hard way, but she allowed her body to follow what it would naturally do, and the game seemed to reinforce her abilities.

  She wasn't just instantly gone, like before, but more akin to a streak across the landscape, as she moved from world cell to world cell and the game tried to render her in every cell, at least once. It was quite the trippy effect.

  Riez noted the effect as a bug, but she set it as low priority. It was unlikely that anything would be moving as fast as she was.

  The forest was fairly sparse, with young trees all around them, but the intern knew how to forage for food, thanks to quite a few years in the scouts, and before she knew it, she had found a flowing stream of water and foraged enough plants that she could at least get something to eat.

  It wasn't a culinary masterpiece. In fact, she preferred the cup noodles that she usually bought, but it was still better than nothing.

  Having drunk her fill and having eaten her meal, she considered drifting off to sleep, though the sound of something moving caught Riez's attention.

  She couldn't put it into words what she heard, because there was no sound. It was like something pulled on her attention, and she realised that it was her Deception Domain. Something, or someone, was trying to hide, and as the goddess of Deception, her Domain was more than happy to alert her of this fact.

  Riez leveled her eyes at the spot between some shrubbery and young trees. There was nobody there, and yet the goddess knew that something was hiding in the spot that she was looking at.

  "Wanna come out, or should I just leave?" She asked loudly, her lips curling into a smile now that she had finally gotten something in her belly and something to eat.

  Seemingly from nothing, a figure appeared. Long gangly limbs and an elongated skull, barely hiding a degrading hairline, and yet the hair was still long and flowing. In the sparse light from the evening sun, the figure looked like something out of a horror movie, and yet, Riez recognised it as an elf.

  "Have you come to invade our lands?" The figure asked, though Riez was fairly unsure of its identity or even gender. The voice seemed feminine and yet, that could just be how elves sounded.

  "I mean, not directly, no." She answered. "Though what are these lands?"

  The figure looked down its nose at her, disdain clear on its androgenous face. "You are in a forest, and under the claim of the High Council, all forests belong to Mek." The ice in the voice seemed to roll off each syllable, as if it suspected Riez to be clearly just playing dumb.

  It gave Riez an idea. A devious idea for an amazing prank, and she smiled widely.

  "Why, yes! I am here to invade your lands then. Just needed to make sure I was in the right place." She said with confidence.

  "What is she doing?" Celeste asked, snuggling up to her husband.

  "I mean, she just declared an invasion of Mek..." Jasper said, pointing at the screen that showed a slowed-down version of the stream that was happening.

  The setup was quite smart, skipping areas of low action in favour of places with high action or dialogue.

  "I think she means why she would declare an invasion on the entire country despite only being one person," Martin said, the massive man cuddling with a bowl of popcorn that was already half empty, despite them sitting down less than ten minutes ago.

  Jasper smiled. "Oh... how could I know? I can't know everything."

  Celeste tried to smack his face, but ended up giving her husband a quick kiss.

  "No idea, though. But it seems like something she has decided on a whim." Martin answered for Jasper, seeing as the man was a bit occupied.

  The figure had put a pair of manacles on Riez's wrists and was currently leading her towards the centre of Mek as a prisoner of war.

  She was happily skipping next to the guard who seemed to almost exude an aura of meloncoly, as if walking through this forest brought them back to a time long forgotten. Riez was skipping because she could feel how much it annoyed the elf, and she absolutely lived for the side-eye the gloomy git was constantly giving her.

  "I am Riez, by the way." She said happily, trying to stir up some conversation.

  The elf gave her another side-eye, and she beamed with friendliness, and she could almost feel her Deception Domain working overtime, to make her look as friendly as possible.

  "I do not care for your name, mortal. You have offended the sacred land of the elves, and for that, you must repent. Me knowing your name is not important, and for you to try and pronounce my sacred title and name... well... you would only be making matters worse for yourself."

  Riez acted outraged. "Excuse me? I am really good at tongue twisters. Since I am working with Danes, I even learned a Danish one! Hear: the bishop's ship dentures. Not sure why they consider that one hard." She said proudly.

  The elf looked like it had been hit in the head with a frying pan before a confetti cannon had blown its hair back. The look of utter confusion on its face.

  "I... what?"

  Riez nodded confidently. "I know, I think that you could say it too if you wanted, but then again, it might be hard with your head up your own butt."

  The trickster god might as well have dropped a flashbang, the way the elf wasn't sure if they were supposed to be furious, pitiful, or take what she said as a joke. The guard decided to simply nod and not be provoked by the taunting, much to Riez's annoyance.

  She didn't have much time to be annoyed as they reached a fairly large tree that seemed older than any other tree around it. The elf started to sing. Its voice filled with nostalgia for a time long forgotten and for a world that was crumbling. The song invoked the feelings of loss, and that the world would end before ever seeing its peak.

  Martin and Jasper both sat up with a quick movement. Jasper moved so fast that Celeste tumbled down off the couch, and her yelp of surprise and indignation was cut short as the blanket they had been cuddling under hit her in the face.

  "No", Martin's words hung in the air.

  "You can't be serious," Jasper added.

  "That is..."

  "Yeah... that is the Old School Runescape Login theme"

  "HOW MUCH DID THEY GRAB TO TRAIN THIS AI?!?!"

  Both of them rushed to their devices, trying to isolate how much they would have to fix.

  Celeste pushed the blanket from her head and was about to throw an empty bottle at her husband for dumping her on the floor, only for her attention to get caught by the TV, seeing the elf plunge its hand into the tree, only to get pulled into the tree along with Riez. Seconds later, they both appeared from another ancient tree, this one halfway up a massive mountain.

  "While you are at it, can you figure out how they are able to teleport?" She called out, only for both Martin and Jasper to groan loudly in exasperation.