Filoria had thought this before, but Rafael was weak. Weaker than her. Helping him to Helare's tent, she realised his strength stat must be lower than typical for a Blacksmith. In spite of how fit he looked, he was very light. She remembered him struggling that day he saved her and Helare, struggling to carry the golem with her.

Maybe he wasn't very weak compared to most, but his strength stat was lower than her own. Of that she was very sure. She did not know what she was going to do with that information.

****

After taking a shower, Helare went to check on Rafe again. He was lying on a bed, his eyes were open and swollen and he still did not react to anything. There was no one in the room with them.

She went and stroked his long hair. His hair had been growing long since he reached the camp. It would soon look feminine.

She caressed his face again, tracing the tattoos. She lowered her head, and their foreheads touched.

It broke her heart to see him like this, but she couldn't tell him yet. It was not time for him to know. If he made so sudden a recovery, Filoria might get suspicious. Of course if this persisted, she was probably going to tell him. She wouldn't endager his life simply to keep a stupid secret.

The next day, Rafael was finally eating. He had slept off sometime in the night, woken up very late by his standards. Eaten and gone straight back to sleep. It was like he was making up for all the days of hard work he had put in over the last few weeks.

It was not until two days later that Rafe showed any more noticeable improvement. Helare went to training that day as usual, after taking care of all her administrative duties of course. When she returned, Rafe was awake again. She had already finished taking her bath on this occasion, so she just went up to his bed.

She checked his body for any bad signs. Then she joined their foreheads again, as had become some kind of ritual. She felt Rafe was stiffer today than ever before, but she figured that was a consequence of being bedridden for days. She kissed his forehead before she stepped away from him.

She made to walk out of the partitioned off section, but she quickly looked back one more time out of habit. And then she looked back again, because, first of all, Rafael was as red as a Burned, and his eyes were following her movements.

She started. She walked back to him on a clip, almost outright running.

"Rafe!" she yelled, her face so very close to his, but she did not care.

"Hel? What…what was that?" he asked.

Suddenly she couldn't stop herself from smiling, the princess. And she could feel the blood rushing to her head, but she would not let that distract her. He was fine!

"Are you alright, Rafe?" she couldn't help but ask.

She regretted her question almost immediately, but it had to be asked.

She saw a shadow fall over his face. He did not retreat into his shell immediately. He was still with her for the time being.

"I don't know," he said.

"You were going to go home, weren't you?" she asked.

This time she had asked something unnecessary, and she would blame herself if he did decide he did not want to talk anymore. He tensed again, just like he had when she put her head close to his. He was quiet for such a long time she thought he was not going to reply. But then he did. He simply said "yes."

And that was that. It was not a secret. Had not been a secret from the beginning. There was something between them, but there were even more differences between them, the biggest of which being their worlds. They were from different worlds, and this would never let them work through it at all. There was a wall so large and unscalable in their way.

"Do you…miss your family?" Helare asked Rafael. "Your world?"

He tensed one more time, but again he did not retreat. There was a visible grimace on his face as he remembered something, some kind of painful memory or other. He had told her about his world at times, but nothing concrete. Just little stories of playing with his sister. Of something called television. Of games he'd played with friends when his father and mother had left, though he hadn't told her why they'd left.

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He still wanted to see them, she had surmised from his stories. But there was a familiar pain in his words. A pain she suspected Rafe was being willfully blind to. She had been blind as well, had she not?

"I don't know how to answer that," he said.

Helare shrugged to indicate it was okay. She sat down on the bed next to him and looked ahead as well. She debated with herself. In the end she thought maybe she'd give him a few hints.

"When you were on this bed the last time, I figured something out about my family," she said.

Rafe looked at her with a frown, inviting her to continue with her story.

She happily took the invitation.

"You'd think that being a princess, I'm happy and all. I mean the stories you told me about princesses from your world were so unrealistically hopeful and happy it kind of made me jealous."

She turned to look at him. Just a day ago, he could not see her, even though he was looking at her.

She didn't want to see that expression on his face ever again.

Now he was paying such rapt attention to her that anyone would mistake her for a priestess with a particularly high charisma stat.

"But in the background…well, I'm the youngest princess, you know. The fifth princess of ten royal children. I've not met even half of my siblings, and the other half walk past me when they see me in the halls at the Blue tower. Like I'm invisible to them. I don't even know who my mother was. And my father…"

She remembered meeting him of course, and even sharing a few words that weren't all business a few times. Still, there was that gulf. That impossible, unbridgeable gap every single person in her life kept from her. Even Filoria.

Rafe hadn't cared she was a princess. He had gone on to declare he'd never follow her around as a slave. Then he'd said they were friends, but in a tender way. In a way that meant a completely different thing than what she knew. And now she was dumping her whole story straight in his lap. And for what? Hoping maybe he'd see her, pity her, like her. Maybe more.

All of a sudden she wanted to breakdown. To let it all out. Just like Rafael had done days before, she thought she should cry a little. Or a lot.

Then two strong, firm hands enveloped her. Pulled her into his chest. His large muscled chest.

With his support, Helare ugly cried for the first time in a long time.

"I can't do it anymore, Rafe. I can't keep trying for their love and getting only disdain."

Her words were unclear. Still, Rafael was with her. And he started stroking her hair at some point. She wanted to fall asleep together. She wanted to be with him like that. Or maybe they could go a little further. If he was up to it, maybe they would.

She stopped sobbing. She needed him to understand this last part as much as was possible.

"So I gave up on them. On all of it. I don't want to live like this anymore," she said.

He kept stroking her hair. Her deep blue hair that was the sign of her royal lineage. It was a purer blue than her father's, some claimed. Dangerous words that she thought sometimes explained her father's hatred toward her. Hatred or indifference? It mattered little to a child hungry for love.

"I have to go back, you know," she continued. "I have to go back to the capital to report my progress. But I've been putting it off for the last few weeks. I'm going back soon. For the last time, maybe. I…I don't want to go back to the palace after that."

Rafael had stopped stroking her hair. She looked up at him. Their eyes met. He was frowning down at her, frowning in confusion. She did not intend to tell him anything more. Not yet. And maybe she'd ruined the mood with her confessions, but she didn't care. She wanted him to know.

She leaned up, slowly. Rafael was frozen, his brain taking its time to digest the new information he'd just received. She pressed her lips onto his. He jerked back like he had been slapped.

She smiled sadly at him. He wore this dumbfounded look on his face, but she was not going to give him time to understand.

Now that he was okay. Now that she'd seen how much going home meant to him, she had made her decision. She would leave the mine as soon as possible. She had the only possible route for him to return to his home planet, and she would help him.

***

Somehow Rafe had managed to snap himself out of it. He had thought everything was such a waste of time there for a moment.

He had all this power and yet his family, his planet might be destroyed during an apocalypse. And he wasn't there. And the system kept on alluding to a grand quest that would allow him to go home if he completed it, but what was the quest about.

He kept on imagining being stuck on this planet until the promotion event. Once he and this planet stepped out of the tutorial sector, Earth would be lost to him for the next few hundreds of years. And even if it were to get promoted, and even if at that time he had power, he might not be able to track it down.

Hundreds of planets entered the multiverse in any given cycle, and hundreds of thousands of planets were called Earth. It was one of the most generic names for a lump of soil on which life could sometimes thrive.

There were lots of notifications during the time Rafe was unresponsive. He ignored the dings. He ignored Helare coming and sitting so close to him. He ignored everything if he could help it.

It was a notification that finally got him out of his little funk though. It was only maybe two or so days since he'd gotten so depressed he was unresponsive, but the insistent notifications finally had him checking his notifications.

'Ding' Barbara Kingsley of the Illuminati guild invites everyone from Earth to the First system auction.

As promised, the most successful organisation was allowed to choose the first system event to commemorate the end of the first stage of the tutorial.

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