[Sig – 13 years]

"I've got it!" I yell when someone knocks on the door.

When I reach the door and open it, I find Xander standing on the other side. He's dressed in jeans, a regular, green long-sleeved shirt, and sneakers, with Trenton in his arms and his glasses on his face. As usual, he's wearing his bravery necklace.

I can't tell if he's just proud of earning it and that's why he doesn't take it off or if it's because an older part of the tradition was that it never came off. Not that it's a problem, though, since it's not like it's causing problems.

He's as cute as always in his outfit and I really want to give him a hug, though something in the back of my mind is telling me that he's not in the mood for touching right now. I'm not sure why I feel that way but I guess I've just gotten to know him that well.

Does he think I look good right now? I'm not dressed for the athletics session yet since we can change there so I'm wearing a pair of comfortable lounge shorts and my sneakers, along with the friendship bracelet I received from him. Like his necklace (and his bracelets and anklet), I don't take it off. Maybe I should've put on a shirt?

"Morning, Xander!" I say.

"Morning, Sig," he says, then looks past me. "Morning, Ms. Rachel."

"Morning, Xander," she says. "You ready to go, Sig?"

"Yeah," I grab my backpack, which I had waiting by the door. "See you later, Aunt Rachel!"

"Behave for the coach, okay?" Aunt Rachel asks.

"Yes, ma'am!" I give her a quick hug. "See ya!"

I step outside and we walk down to the curb of the street before suddenly appearing outside of the gate to his house.

He even teleports outside to his own home? Why?

We pass through the gate and head up to the front door. Mr. Caldwell greets us on the way in and lets Xander know he'll be back in the afternoon, then leaves. Xander himself doesn't say much, but he does give his dad a hug and a goodbye.

Then he leads me to the fitness complex, where his PE coach is waiting. The guy looks to be maybe twenty years old, and possibly related to Xander.

"Are you guys related?" I ask Xander, who nods.

"I'm one of his cousins," the coach tells me. "The name's Adam, and I'm a professional martial arts instructor, though I do also assist with fitness and sports stuff sometimes."

"By cousins, you mean…"

"Our dads were triplets," Adam informs me. "Though we didn't know this until recently. And before you ask, my parents passed away a few years ago, and I've been raising my little brother since."

"And he's gonna be raising triplets next year," Xander adds.

"He is?" I ask.

"Yeah," Xander nods. "His girlfriend's pregnant with them. We can all hope they take after their dad and not their uncle."

"You're referring to his little brother, right?" I ask.

"Yeah," Xander answers. "Matt King. He's semi-famous."

Isaac does go to school with Matt. Well, he did until this year and will again next year. Matt's in the grade above us. I've heard plenty of stories about Matt's little adventures from last year. He began attending Lakeview then and quickly became friends with a few of the popular kids in his grade even while shy.

Then proceeded to be a little bit of a goofball, like me, but not a menace like some would be. But he was a far more hyper goofball who also knew how to do subliminal messaging which actually stuck and somehow managed to get the entire school to show up wearing something blue on the same day. He's also known online for his music, martial arts talents, and artwork.

He's honestly insanely skilled and has even been featured in news articles and stuff.

Now that I think about it, most Kings don't really hit the news too often, do they? It's almost always Adrian King himself in the news. The others might be in an article here and there, but we don't hear much about individual Kings.

The two more famous ones I know of are both around my age and their birth dads were triplets. There's got to be something interesting going on there and I'm not even sure how to begin to look into it. But I really want to know if there's something special about their grandpa or if it's just coincidence.

"You two go get changed," Adam tells us. "And Xander? Your dad said you're not in a comfortable mood right now, so it'll be mostly drills rather than actual playing, okay?"

"Okay," Xander nods, then we head to the changing rooms.

"Not in a happy mood?" I ask. "Did something happen?"

"There's a monster under my bed and I don't know how to get rid of it."

That would explain why he's giving off the "I don't want to be touched at all, other than by my dad" feeling. His dad is tall and muscular and gives off "I'll whup ass for you" vibes. Just being around Mr. Caldwell makes me feel safer.

While what he said sounds like something a little kid would say… Xander honestly believes everything he says. And he can see things we can't.

In other words, there's a monster under his bed and it's making him uncomfortable.

"A monster?" I ask. "What kind? Can't you just kill it?"

"It's a not-touchable kind."

"Not-touchable?" I ask. "You mean intangible?"

"I dunno what that means," Xander tells me. "But the monster doesn't have a physical form. It's made up of… well, mostly mind magics. And Frank apparently doesn't have bullets which can shoot things that aren't touchable and are mostly made up of mind magics."

"Intangible is basically that," I tell him. "It's something which cannot be touched or grasped as it doesn't have a physical form or presence. Aren't you a mind mage?"

I'm fairly certain there's not a mind beast in the world which can affect Xander's mind. If this one can, then it must be really powerful.

"But I don't know how to kill not-touchable, um… intangible things," Xander says. "Frank said he's going to see if he can find out how to take care of it. He's former Magic Special Forces so he's got connections which might be able to help. If not, then I'm gonna ask Grandpa Adrian for help tomorrow. Until then, Dad's letting me sleep in his room."

"That's cool," I say. "Come on, let's get changed. It's basketball today, right?"

"Unless Adam changed it."

We change into athletic clothes. Xander puts on MountainStorm Gear pants and a long-sleeved athletic shirt from them, as well as new socks, underwear, and sneakers, and he even changes his glasses to athletic ones.

I just change into athletic shorts and put my sneakers back on because there's no reason to change stuff that I only just put on a little bit ago, apart from the shorts. That's just so I'm wearing separate shorts for the exercise. I'll change my socks and underwear after, but not before.

Once the five-minute warmup session ends and athletics session begins, I realize that it's vastly different from what I was expecting. Rather than being something light or casual, it's just straight-up drills on dribbling, passing, shooting, and more. There's almost constant movement with only short rests here and there. This is way more intense than anything we did at school.

And a lot more intense than his fitness sessions were when I was here for them for a few days during summer break.

By the end of it, I'm exhausted and soaked in sweat, and Xander's breathing just as hard as I am, his shirt soaked through and stuck to him.

"Good job, boys," Adam says. "That's it for the session, so go ahead and shower up now."

Xander nods and drags himself to the showers, and I follow after him. Once we've washed and dried and are getting dressed, I decide to ask Xander something.

"Hey, Xander?" I ask as I pull my backpack back on.

"I only asked about you coming for the fitness sessions," Xander says. "Because you're already too smart for the other lessons. And Dad's in a meeting right now so he probably wouldn't answer for awhile."

He assumed I was going to ask about staying for that. As much as I'd like to hang out with him more right now, I kind of don't want to be in classes anymore since I don't have to be. Agreeing to the fitness thing is because he had a point – I'd basically be playing and exploring by myself and I know Aunt Rachel would not be happy with me going to the woods by myself. So unless I took up some sort of physical activity, and I know she'll reject sports, this is the next-best thing.

And it means I get to hang out with Xander, so there's not even a negative to it!

Other than being so utterly exhausted.

"That'd be cool, but no," I say. "It's just, we've all noticed that whenever you change you change everything. And if you do something like change for swimming, you even put on fresh underwear and socks even if you didn't wear the ones from before for very long. And you definitely wouldn't have had what you were wearing on for very long. You're even wearing a different shirt and jeans from earlier."

"Y'all might be okay with wearing dirty clothes," Xander says. "But I am not. So I change everything so that I'm not changing into dirty clothes. The dirty ones get put with the laundry, which I do on Saturday mornings after breakfast if I'm home or on Sunday evenings if I'm not home on Saturday mornings."

"Does that take a lot of time?" I ask. "You change outfits for streams and naps, too, so I'm sure you're going through a lot of clothes. Like, several loads' worth."

"I just use cleaning magic to clean them all," he says. "It only takes me a few minutes. And telekinesis lets me fold them quickly but neatly, and even hang the stuff which gets hung up."

Oh, to be that capable with magic.

I'm about to ask why he thinks they're dirty enough to be counted as dirty after a short use when stuff Mr. Richardson has told us comes back to me. Xander's mind follows associations very closely. He probably associates something being worn with it being dirty, and he doesn't wear dirty clothes. There's no "clean enough" for him because it's been worn since the last time it was cleaned.

I really don't understand that, but I guess it's just a part of him. And it's not like it causes problems for others or anything. It's just something else that's weird about him, and being weird isn't necessarily bad.

I do wish I could understand him a bit more, though.

"That seems really cool," I say. "I haaaaaaate having to fold all of my laundry. It takes so much time!"

"That's why I use magic for mine," Xander nods. "It's so much faster and takes a lot less effort. Um. Are you ready to go?"

"Yup!" I answer.

Xander leads me out of the fitness center, to the front door, back to the gate, and to the street before telling me goodbye and teleporting me to my house – without teleporting himself with me. He also teleported me to the base of the driveway, at the street.

No wonder Carter told him he didn't need to leave the ranch. This is just another thing I don't understand about Xander. Once we leave the house, we've left it. We don't have to go to the street to be considered as having left.

It's not a problem, though, just confusing, so I head into the house.

"How'd it go?" Aunt Rachel asks when I poke my head into her office so she knows I'm home.

"Exhaaaaaaaaausting," I answer. "I don't think his coach knows what 'rest' means. I'm gonna be sore for a few days for sure. Other than that, though, it was fun! It was basketball today but mostly drills rather than playing."

"Since Xander doesn't like being touched?" She asks.

"Yeah," I answer. "And it was even worse today as apparently, there's a monster under his bed and it's making him uneasy."

"A monster under the bed?"

"Yeah," I shrug. "I think you need his magical perspicacity to see it. I'm gonna go downstairs and finish making my cloud monster! I forgot to do that yesterday 'cause of meeting up with everyone."

"Alright," she chuckles. "Have fun, Sig."

I head downstairs and check under my bed. There aren't any monsters down here that I can tell, so it probably is something I would need Xander's perspicacity to see. That, and they probably don't go under everyone's bed. It's honestly odd that one would go under Xander's, too, considering how powerful he is.

Even if he doesn't know how to take out a mind beast, it's strange that the mind beast wouldn't be able to tell that he's powerful enough he might be able to just erase it from existence.

That's not something I know I'll be able to figure out so I return to the rec room and continue working on the cloud monster. Once I finish it, I put together a second, then a third, then a fourth, then a fifth. That takes up a decent amount of time, but it's worth having a little cloud monster army.

As I clean up the stuff from the craft project, I spot the gift Xander gave me yesterday. There's not much left for me to do right now other than play games, but he wasn't wrong about how I'd fall behind others if I don't practice. My now-former classmates will have teachers at school while I'll just have the Monday sessions, when I can afford them.

Just because I can right now, that doesn't mean I'll continue being able to. The most I'm looking at with streaming and uploads is probably enough to cover those. Maybe all of them, maybe only some.

"Oh! Right!"

I jump to my feet and hurry to my computer in my room, where I check on my uploads channel. The flips video was finished yesterday and I posted it before leaving this morning and I want to see how it's done. It's my first video that's not from gaming, the tests, my magic training progress logs, or a little bit of freerunning with Carter. It's also a video rather than the VOD from a stream. In addition to that, I posted it to Xander's site, which literally came into existence yesterday.

I'm not sure how well my video will have done over the last couple of hours because of all of that. It would definitely do better on the other site, but I'm going exclusive with Xander's just because it sounds better.

My new video's had about one thousand impressions already, which is worse than on the other site. Since this site's still new and doesn't have too many users yet, I think that's still impressive. Three of those impressions resulted in views, two of which clicked out within the first thirty seconds.

"Oh, neat!"

Their site gives stats that I've had to wait for on the other one. I couldn't see the total watch time for a few hours, and a bunch of stats like how long different views watched for until it reached a certain amount of views. Xanson TV just gives it all from the start. It even seems to be updating in real time rather than making me refresh the page.

Well, I can't see the demographics information yet, which might be to protect users' locations if someone comments. I can't see that stuff by account name but if someone's commented and they're the only viewer, that would mean I'd know which country they're from. It kind of lets me know the same about a viewer's watch time on a video in the same circumstances, but I guess that's fine.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

"Hm…"

I'll have to wait until this afternoon to see how well it does, but probably a few months for the site to really grow and figure out who to recommend things to.

I close out of the site and return to the rec room, then grab the ball for practicing raw mana shaping. The magic instructors at school were teaching us to take the practice slowly. Don't rush the control and try to skip steps or do more than we can manage. Practice one small thing at a time and if we get bored, practice a different small thing.

As much as I want to try and go to the middle section of this, I know I won't be able to do any of the stuff on the inside. I practice raising one of the circles on the outer shell and making it dome up. Getting to that part is easy, but maintaining it for more than a few seconds isn't.

Because I'm not in class, I don't switch to practicing a different thing on this orb or on one of the others once I get bored. Instead, I decide to try and learn a little bit more English to make talking with Lexi easier when we're playing Duty of Loyalty together. If we can take down a wyvern using grenades with just the two of us while unable to communicate effectively, what we'll be like when we can actually communicate effectively will probably be even more unstoppable.

First, though, I need to find a good site for learning to speak another language.

[Sig – 13 years]

"Hey, Aunt Rachel?" I ask when she comes into the kitchen as I fix myself some sandwiches for lunch.

"What's up?"

"Xanson TV has some really robust moderation," I tell her. "Just from its own AI. I was looking at it a bit and I'm even able to set how strict I want it to be on the rules – and it's designed to enforce not just the site's policies but even the channel's rules."

"You're wanting to stream after lunch," she says.

"Yeah," I answer. "And with the improved moderation stuff, you won't even have to watch it that much since the system would keep an eye on things."

"It also needs to learn more of the nuances still," she says. "And having me moderating will help it do that. If it misses things that need it, you'll need someone to moderate that so the system learns."

"Aww…"

"But I can delay my afternoon work until later if you really want to," she says. "You just need to be the one to make dinner tonight and do the dishes."

"Deal!" I give her a hug. "Thanks so much!"

Having an aunt who sets her own hours is nice! I doubt she'd readjust her schedule if it would cause a problem so I'm happy that not only was she able to, she was willing to as well!

I finish preparing my sandwiches, then head downstairs and eat them while I set up stuff for streaming. Xander seems to be streaming World of Myst on the days he's streaming and not doing his baking streams. That means he'll probably be streaming it today as well – and talking with Lexi while he does.

Which means joining him in a voice chat probably isn't possible. It won't hurt to check if he wants to talk with me today instead, though.

My phone pings as I reach for it and I find a text from Xander.

[Xander]: Do you have plans for the afternoon?

Does that mean he's skipping afternoon classes again and isn't streaming? That's odd, he seems to really like playing World of Myst. Well, mostly farming in the game, but close enough.

[Sig]: Was thinking of streaming

[Sig]: You?

[Xander]: Lexi and I were gonna test something with World of Myst and streaming and we both wanted to invite you to join us.

They're testing something with the game? That doesn't seem like something Xander would do so this must be good.

[Sig]: Sure!

[Xander]: Can I call you on XansonTV?

[Sig]: YOU CAN DO THAT???

Xander sends me a link to a help page, and I use that to find the calls feature. Since I'm a minor, it does need Aunt Rachel to grant me permission to use it, and she lets it get set up for people approved as friends on the site. The feature exists so that streamers who are talking with each other don't need an external service to talk with each other, they can just do it through the app. This also makes it easier for them to include another streamer's call in their stream, too.

Once it's on, I find myself in a call with Xander and Lexi, the latter of whom I can't understand much beyond the greeting, which I return.

"So what's the plan?" I ask. "What're we testing?"

"So you and Lexi," he says. "Like playing games with each other, but your chats can't understand the other right? That's actually what gave me the idea 'bout having the transcriptions with translates in chat. It doesn't really help in-game, though. It also apparently ain't easy to get that set up for various games. But World of Myst is a game which allows for modding. And you really like playing it with your aunt. And I was thinking that maybe you'd want to play it with Lexi, but don't ask 'cause it's hard to do so and y'all wouldn't be able to communicate. Duty of Loyalty is easier since you just need some more basic words and that's fine."

I do actually want to play with Lexi in other games, but wasn't sure if Aunt Rachel would be willing to add her to the server we're on.

"So Grandpa Adrian made a mod for it," Xander says. "Which does live transcriptions. It pops up speech bubbles above a user's head. It also allows for having a box or boxes the streamer sets up in the game on the side. The first one provides a live transcription of what the player is saying, straight into the language selected by the player viewing it. The second shows the transcriptions of everything being said within hearing range of the player, into whatever languages the player chooses. It even shows which player is saying it. So you can set it to transcribe players into Zrebzialan for the bubbles, and then have a box transcribing everything said into Zrebzialan and another transcribing it into English."

So a chat bubble translating what she's saying, and then a transcription box for our viewers. That's pretty neat.

"You and your great-grandfather made it together?" I ask.

"No," Xander answers. "But Grandpa Adrian says it counts. He did all of the real work since it's scientech programming and I don't know that. It's not magic so it's hard to understand. But he had me help pick out the design so he says it counts."

"Oh, cool," I say. "Wait! So you're wanting to test this out on a server with us?"

"Yeah," Xander answers.

"I'll need to ask Aunt Rachel about that," I tell him. "Lemme go ask!"

Aunt Rachel gives permission, mostly because it's Xander and I've played with Lexi plenty enough. Once that's approved, we all get ready to start our streams. Xander says he's going to set up the world itself on the stream, but the server's ready for it and the transcriptions mod. I pull up his stream while we're all in our starting-soon screens and discover what the "Watch Party" feature I saw yesterday is.

If a streamer has it enabled, another streamer can have their stream displayed on their stream, either fully or partially. If both streamers have ads enabled, it prioritizes the ads of the one being streamed rather than the one doing the watch party.

By doing a watch party on Xander's stream, I'll still get my preroll ads, but any other ads which pop up will only be on Xander's ad schedule. Even the ads on my channel will follow his schedule – and he'll be the one earning the revenue from them, not me. I'll still earn the revenue from other things like subscriptions and donations, but the ad revenue goes to the streamer I'm watching.

Which is pretty neat, especially since this works with VODs as well. This means a channel can't just earn money off of streaming someone else's content without the original streamer earning as well. It also means the one being hosted can choose whether or not someone can do that in the first place.

With the entire site being done in magitech, it's also apparently impossible to get around by using another site. There's an entire information page explaining this. The site's designed with magitech in a way which prevents even scientech devices from taking screenshots or recording a stream or clip unless the streamer's set it up so others can.

Meaning people can't just take someone's content and post it elsewhere. And the in-depth, extremely detailed explanation on how they're able to manage this even for scientech devices is "magic doesn't have to obey logic or science".

I can't figure out if it was Xander or Adrian King who decided that was the way they were going to explain it.

"Both," Xander answers when I ask. "People who don't understand magic keep wanting it to make sense, but magic is its own force which only obeys its rules most of the time. That's why you can get a puppy when you try to create a fireball. And its rules are pretty flexible, too. If I wanted to, I could just completely ignore proper spell structure and make stuff happen anyway. It's actually how my first shapeshifting happened, but that's not a story for right now."

I think you're the exception here, Xander.

Though that's a fair point – casting spells involves a little bit of spell structure, but it's not necessarily required. Spell formulas just help people to shape magic. Inherent magics like Xander's and Tate's empathy isn't a spell they're actually casting, it's just something they have.

"So I told Grandpa Adrain that should be the explanation," Xander says. "And he said he agreed, but people would still want a better one, and that's why he usually comes up with something which makes sense, even if he agrees with me. And I told him that if people can't accept that magic is what magic is and it can defy other shit, then they're idiots who ain't worth explaining things to. The world is changing and people need to accept that magic is its own thing that does its own thing whenever it wants to and obeys no rules except its own, and even then, only when it wants to."

He seems to be getting heated on this topic, so I should probably switch us off of it.

"Okay," I say. "Back to the Watch Party thing – is that something we're testing, too?"

"No," Xander says. "I mean, I guess we could? But we're also testing a no-metagaming feature for chat automod. And no backseating, and no chathopping. Well, my chat's doing all three. For metagaming, it's a feature where a server can be set to 'no metagaming allowed', and then the only metagaming allowed will be if permission is granted by the server admins. What this means if that if someone on a server tries to look at the stream or videos of someone else on that server, it'll be censored. This only works if the server is hosted through Xanson Technologies and only if the server admin has it on."

That sounds like a cool feature, though it doesn't seem like something either Xander or Adrian King would have thought of. Does that mean it was a suggestion from Lexi? Or I suppose it could be something she mentioned while talking with Xander during a previous stream and Xander came up with it. But is metagaming really a problem?

"Wait," I realize something. "You said a server hosted through Xanson Tech? Does that mean it's hosting World of Myst servers?"

"Just this one right now," he answers. "It might be awhile before we host servers for others. The anti-metagame automod should also work if someone tries talking about something from a video they saw if it relates to the server. Once we test this out a bit, we'll make it so it works even for ones not hosted by Xanson Technologies. Just setting it to only work on those hosted by this one was easier than trying to make it specifically only work on this server."

"Ah," I snort. "That makes sense, I guess."

Xander continues doing whatever is he's doing as the stream timers tick down, then I exit the call so I can greet the viewers who showed up. There's an in-game voice chat on servers so we'll be talking there instead once we're playing.

"Hello, everyone!" I wave. "If you're wondering why I'm not in school, well, the reason I didn't do anything on Monday or Tuesday was because I actually went to test into a higher grade at the recommendation of a few teachers, and ended up graduating high school. Weird, right?

"Anyway!" I say. "Today's a special stream! I'm helping Xander test something out, so we're doing an SMP for World of Myst!"

I take a deep breath and am about to explain what the SMP is when I realize something.

"And he's told me basically nothing about it!" I laugh. "I forgot to ask! Aunt Rachel told me a lot of SMPs are lore but this is Xander, so it's probably not. What we're testing is a live, in-game transcription service which also translates! It's not just me and Xander who are on it, Lexi is as well! She seems to plays it a lot, maybe even more than she plays Duty of Loyalty! So we'll be testing that out! Also, don't chathop or backseat – no telling me how to play, and no talking about what's happening in other streams in here. Oh! Xander's pulling up the server settings. Let's watch that."

Xander sets up the server's settings and shows the addition of the mod which adds in the transcriptions and translations, then creates the world for the server and loads it up. He does all of that on stream, and it seems he's going with a random world seed for it.

Once the world loads up… the in-game view from his stream goes grey for me.

"Whoa," I say. "So that's the censoring for metagaming? It was instant! Gonna unmute in-game now, he set it so we start muted. Hey, Xander!"

"Hi," Xander says. "I've sent you the server thing, you can join it now," he then says something in English, which is probably him telling Lexi the same thing. "Once you're in, we can start."

I join the server and when we load in, we're in a plains biome with a lot of cows in view. Xander explains to me how to turn on the transcriptions, and I set it to translating into Zrebzialan, then I set up the in-game transcriptions boxes, one for Zrebzialan and one for English. I can resize them and set them where I want, so I move them into the lower-right part of the game window, large enough to still read but small enough they're not going to be intrusive.

"I didn't ask," Lexi says, which I know because of the speech bubble floating above her head. "But is there lore for this server, or are we just testing things out?"

Lexi's in-game avatar has her in shorts, boots, and a short-sleeved shirt, and it looks kind of neat. My in-game avatar's the same as for when I play with Aunt Rachel, and Xander's matches his real looks – a green long-sleeved shirt, black pants, and even black-and-green "shoes" (as best as he can make them in a blocky game).

"Just testing things out," Xander says. "Oh. I forgot the rules. No messing with each other's stuff, okay? Not without permission. No stealing. No attacking others. No getting around the no-PVP setting. Be nice to each other, okay?"

"Will do!" I say as Lexi apparently says the same thing.

"By the way," I say. "I like your avatar, Xander."

Xander's quiet for a few moments.

"Katie helped me make it."

"It still looks nice!" I tell him

"So, um," Xander hesitates again. "I dunno what we should do. Or if we should do separate things."

Is he being shy about his avatar? Why?

"Since we're also checking the anti-metagame automod," Lexi says. "We should do separate things, but joining up at times for things."

"Alright," Xander says. "Please don't break the waystone."

"What waystone?" I ask.

"The spawn one," Xander answers. "I turned on the setting that has one appear at spawn."

"You did?" I turn my character and find myself standing almost right on the spawn waystone. "Oh, cool!"

I must've been talking with my chat when he messed with the waystone settings.

"This will let us have a spot we can all go to," Xander says. "For if we want to meet up for stuff. Also, I set it so that they won't spawn more than thirteen chunks apart. This should make sure we've got plenty of them. Um. If y'all don't mind, can I set up a farm here?"

"I don't mind," Lexi says. "It's your server, and a farm for food is a good idea. Having one by spawn makes sense."

"Okay."

"I see water over that way," I attack the air in the direction I'm seeing. "So I'm gonna go see if I can find some shipwrecks to loot!"

"I'll see if I can find a village to get some supplies from," Lexi says. "Oh, but you'll need water for the farm if you're planting crops."

"Oh, right," Xander looks around. "Um… I'll just start working on it, then… then go find some iron."

"I'll get you a bucket!" I say. "You just do your thing!"

"Okay."

I activate the waystone (Xander's renamed it "Spawn"; they spawn with randomized names), then head off to the water and confirm it's an ocean, and I break down a tree so I can get a boat. From there, it takes me a few minutes, but I manage to find two shipwrecks, and they're both full ones! That gives me enough stuff for Xander to really start on his farm, so I return to Xander and find him herding cows into a pen without wheat. He's just gently bumping them with his body.

"Come on," Xander softly says. "Into the pen. Look, it's big. I made it spacious."

"Don't you do the normal thing and just breed them until it's really full, then take out the adults?" I ask.

One of the normal methods, since it ensures there are a lot of cows leftover after the harvest to breed bigger numbers back up more quickly.

"Yeah," Xander says. "But it's spacious right now, isn't it? And it'll be a bit before there's enough wheat to make it crowded."

"This might help you," I throw him the wheat I found. "They'll follow you while you're holding that."

"Oh, thanks," Xander says.

"Give me a sec and I'll get you a bucket and some hoes," I tell him. "I just need to craft 'em real quick."

"Okay."

Once I give those to Xander, I give myself some armor, then return to the ocean and upgrade my boat to have a chest in it so that I can look for more shipwrecks and maybe even find some buried treasure.

"Oh, neat!" I say when I find a scroll in a chest.

It's a scroll for a passive ability which causes nearby crops to grow faster. The effect is slight and the affected area is small, but it'll get stronger and bigger as it gets upgraded. Xander seems to like farming so this will be really useful for him.

My inventory's just about full and I need more food as I don't want to use up all of the food I found from the wrecks. Keeping at least one or two of each makes it easier to start a farm with them.

As I make my way back to spawn, Xander posts something in chat which is in English. Did he switch his keyboard for that?

"The transcriptions only works for when someone talks," I say after hovering over the messages between him and Lexi. "Not in the chat, so I don't know what's going on. So sorry chat, but I can't tell you what they're saying."

When I reach spawn, I find Lexi there but no Xander. Lexi's put up signs around a spiral staircase in the ground not far form the farms. There are two signs on each side, one in English and one in Zrebzialan.

WARNING!!!

LATE-GAME

BOSS BELOW!!!

"I had to use a translator to get the Zrebzialan text," Lexi says. "But don't go down there. Seriously."

"Why?" I ask.

"Soooo," she says. "Xander apparently decided to go down to get stone to make walls for the farm. And just kept going deeper and deeper until he came across a cavern with some stuff in it. Some maps, some waystones, a globe, and he went into it to look at the stuff in there. Aaaaand met the Warp Lord."

"The what now?"

"A late-game boss," she explains. "If you go in with late-game gear, it's a fight which yields a lot of resources. If you don't… it's a teleport to the highest block at a random distance between two and three hundred thousand blocks, in a random direction. This is only for the first under-geared user, though. Everyone else gets a shorter warp, the lore explanation being that the Warp Lord 'used up' most of his power doing the first warp to get rid of the intruder."

The transcriptions seem to be doing pretty well, since I'm not seeing any issues in this. At least, as long as everything she's saying is being translated correctly.

"Wait," I say. "Xander's been teleported?"

"Yup!" She laughs. "That first message in chat was 'Lexi, didn't you say Fairy Villages were the rarest location in the game?' Apparently, the highest block at the point he got teleported to in a random direction at a random distance in that range was right beside the Bounty Board in a Fairy Village. That kid has the most absurd luck ever. First world he spawns in – on a random seed – plops him into a Fairy Village. The second world he's on, also a random seed, he gets randomly warped into a Fairy Village."

That really is some insane luck.

"He doesn't believe you anymore, does he?"

"I'm trying to tell him he can look it up," she tells me.

I quickly type into the in-game chat.

[TheUltimateBastion]: Xander I looked it up the first time you got one it's super rare

Xander stops messaging in chat and Lexi and I switch to taking care of Xander's farm for a few minutes.

"Did you find a village?" I ask as I open up the nearby chest and pull some wheat out of it to breed cows with.

"I did," she says. "It's right over that way," she punches the air in the direction she'd gone earlier. "There's not much to it, but I'm working on setting up a temporary breeding ground, then work on getting us a trading hall. I'm not sure what Xander's doing, but he might be changing to farming there."

"I'll keep seeing 'bout looting ships," I tell her. "Then I'll head down and do some mining. How do I avoid things like the Warp Lord?"

"Just don't go into their areas," she says. "When it comes to bosses like that one, as long as you stay outside of the area with their stuff, they won't mess with you unless you get their aggro from entering or attacking."

"So I can go down into the cavern," I say. "But as long as I don't enter the space that's got stuff set up in it, I'm fine?"

"Right," she says. "Late-game gear will grant you immunity to his warping, too, but it'll be awhile before any of us get that."

"Alright!" I say. "So I'll just make the mine over there, then! But I do need to get some food before I get back to that."

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