The initial excitement and anticipation that rose like a tide following the Quest Completion notification died down as the hours went by. There was nothing for the majority of the Raiders to do but get busy waiting for the scouts to find the Guardian.

Everyone had been high-strung with the death of so many other Raiders, waiting around like a pack of hungry hyenas, ready to jump at and murder whatever foe they were pointed at.

Alas, the most exciting things that happened in the next five hours were the occasional ambush attempts by the metallic moles and Helene starting up a campfire barbecue. Someone even packed a massive bag of marshmallows!

"This is nice," Mia murmured, her voice so low she knew only Camie, or a nosy beast-kin nearby might have caught it. Even as she said it, she felt a stab of guilt, not daring to glance towards the few remaining unionists who sat apart with murderous looks on their faces.

It was clear that those who had lost friends and family to the Wendigo found the current lighthearted atmosphere offensive.

Rightly so, too … but Mia was hungry, and she'd rather not brood needlessly when she could help it. It was escapism, but it probably didn't seem like that to people consumed by grief and anger.

It helped that Camie was sticking to her side like she was glued there, always holding her hand or just sitting close enough that her body heat was comfortingly close by. A part of Mia still worried that she was taking advantage of the girl, but it was a tiny little part now.

She was still tired and stressed, what with the Raid being a thing, and she took comfort in her girlfriend instead of needlessly pushing her away and creating undue drama. Plus, she liked to think her being close by also had a similarly calming effect on the pretty vampiress, which she wouldn't want to rob the girl of after she'd been fighting so hard to keep her alive.

"Hi, girls," Mark said, before unceremoniously dropping down on a protruding rock across from them. He held out a pair of shashliks over the fire, wearing an exhausted look on his face. "How's it going?"

Mia opened her mouth to answer something along the lines of 'about as well as it can', but then her ears caught the sound of a screaming match outside.

"You brainless, stupid ANIMALS!" That was Lori's voice, wasn't it? The woman Mia recalled being professional and stoic in the face of the danger the Raid represented. The woman whose little sister died not to a monster, but to a Beastman forced into a berserk rage by one. "You think we are going to trust you to watch our backs after what you'd done?!"

Mia ignored it, fighting against acknowledging what was happening like her life depended on it. The others would handle it — Helene and Brent, most likely. Mia didn't do well with loss, death and grief.

Her form of grief was silent. The type that tried to ignore the loss and go on with life. Pretend it didn't happen, pretend everything was fine, and with enough time, it usually was. Mostly.

She knew it wasn't the healthiest method, but it was the only one that worked for her.

Mia must have made a face because Mark snorted. Not the joking snort he usually did, but a grim, dry sound that made her feel like he empathised with her.

"Well, they say misery loves company, so let's be miserable together," Mark said with mock cheer, reaching into a backpack lying next to his leg. "I brought marshmallows. Everything's better with marshmallows."

Mia gave a small smile at that, taking the sharpened wooden stick and the handful of fluffy sweets being held out for her. Then she flinched as Brent joined the shouting match, trying to keep Konstantin's lot and Lori's from coming to blows.

She hesitated, wondering whether she should get up and head over there to support Brent. She didn't look intimidating, but she supposed the others must have seen her kill enough monsters by now that they would be intimidated nonetheless if she did a good enough job at glowering at them.

Mia knew she should have been there to support her friend, her party leader … but she really didn't want to.

"These long hours of downtime really aren't good for our group cohesion," Mark said dryly. "Too much time to brood and think and stew. If we don't find that Raid Boss to unify the group with, I don't know how long Brent can keep the group from tearing itself apart."

"Hah! I found it!" Sparkle shouted right into Mia's skull, making her flinch even as she watched the small pink sprite flutter down from the canopy. He made little hoops and danced in circles, both visibly and audibly pleased with himself to an absurd level. "I found the thing! Me! Silly mortals never look up, but I do! For it is I, Sparkle, lord of the sky and of finding … things. The title is a world in progress."

He calmed down substantially by the time he was floating before Mia, hands on his hips, nose upturned, and whole body radiating smugness.

"What did you find?" Mia asked, raising an amused eyebrow at her Bond.

"What?" Sparkle asked, his comically large eyes blinking owlishly at her. He looked around, finding looks of confusion, amusement, and annoyance pointed his way for his rowdiness. He huffed, then stomped his feet in the air. "The Guardian's lair, of course. What else? The great Sparkle took pity on you sorry lot, and decided to magnanimously go and look for the sneaky snake. Of course, I found it. You may praise me now!"

"You've done great!" Mia smiled at him and had to stifle a smirk as she saw him preen in response, somehow becoming even more pleased with himself. Gingerly, she reached up and patted him on the head with a shoulder, making the sprite give her a startled look, going cross-eyed as he stared up at the finger touching his head. Mia pulled away. "Sorry, too much?"

"Eh?" Sparkle blinked at her again. "No? It was strangely pleasant. Somewhat enjoyable, though my tactile senses are somewhat dim in this form by default, so I had to tune them up a bit to feel what you were doing! Nice though."

"So, what did you find?" Mia asked, bringing them back to the original topic and the question the growing number of listeners wanted to ask.

"It's quite fancy, actually," Sparkle said. "I mean, we've got more floating islands in the Astral Sea than there are specks of dirt on this planet, but it still looks pretty awesome."

"A floating island?" Mia pressed, glancing up at the canopy with a squint in her eyes. Nope, she couldn't see anything, just leaves and branches.

"Yep!" Sparkle nodded eagerly, zipping around Mia's head with a grin. He pointed up, right at the canopy Mia was staring at. "I squeezed myself through the branches and saw it, an entire island floating there, almost on top of us! It even has long vines hanging down its side that you flightless bipeds could use to climb up! Pretty suspicious, Guardians shouldn't be that welcoming. It's not quite a red carpet rolled out to welcome you, but it's close."

Mia glanced up, sharing a look with Mark and Carmilla. Then she glanced around at the peanut gallery — a gathering of nosy raiders nearby who'd overhead the conversation — who were alternating between looking up at the canopy with a speculative frown on their faces, or gazing at the strange pink faerie-looking creature zipping around in their midst.

An uncomfortable buzz in her ears made Mia flinch, then snapped her gaze around to peer up at a certain spot. That was a lot of very dangerous mana gathering in one spot. It felt chaotic, wild and violent to the limit, and wielding it was the strange 'High Elf' Tristan.

The golden-haired archer was leaning back on a branch, maybe five metres off the ground, a sandwich discarded to the side and arms straining as he pulled taut his glowing golden bow of Light. The arrow, nocked and primed, was the source of the gathering power.

He was aiming vaguely upwards at the canopy, which was the only reason Mia's paranoia was kept in check. Still, she held an Arcane Blast at her fingertips. With the energies in that arrow barely held together by hope and prayer, just nicking it with her own disruptive Blast would send it into a premature explosion.

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Though if she missed, her instincts told her dodging was the only option, since the arrow would go through her Shields and Wards like they were made of wet paper.

I should see about making a barrier with the Chaos Aspect.

Tristan, perhaps noticing the severe look she was giving him, glanced down with a smirk, then let his arrow loose. Mia twitched, feeling all that barely contained power scream through the air and smash into and through the metallic canopy.

Her hands clamped down on her ears as an unholy cacophony of screaming metal and roaring magic assaulted her perhaps overly sensitive hearing.

When Mia next opened her eyes, they held a pained glare. Her vision was blurry and unfocused. Her ears rang, and she felt like her brain was spinning inside her skull like a drunk ballerina.

Literally everyone in the camp screaming and panicking was not helping either, nor was the disturbing scent of melting metal and burning everything. The genius probably didn't think about the molten metal his stunt would make when he fired that blasted arrow into the canopy right above the camp.

A soft growl, and a pair of arms wrapped protectively around her torso, finally gave Mia some calm. She breathed in deeply, smelling the faint scent of roses and the forest underneath the rest, and she relaxed into the hug, leaning her head back on Carmilla's shoulder with a weary sigh.

"See? See! Absolute vandal, utter chaotic idiot! Look at that grin, that Light-spawn thinks he's hot shit! Well, I'm gonna go and shov-"

Mia grabbed the furiously fluttering Sparkle out of the air before he could make good on his promise — which she knew he would from the Bond — and hugged the little sprite to her chest.

He continued huffing and squirming, but Mia felt him calm down and sulk instead, throwing glares towards Tristan instead.

A smirk made its way up her lips, the mental images Sparkle's vivid imagination kept bombarding her with, punching through her own annoyance. She was almost tempted to let him go and make them a reality.

"Am fine," Mia whispered, knowing her vampiric lover would hear her just fine. Her gaze turned up, peering through the gaping hole Tristan had blown through the canopy. Its edges still glowed from the heat, but it was wide enough to see through, and what she saw on the other side made her almost forgive everything.

There it was, floating in the sky, an island of silvery metal. The end of the Raid was in sight. All that was left was to murder the hell out of the Guardian and then … and then Graz would be safe. The largest hurdle would be taken care of, and their victory in the war against the monsters would finally be looking 'likely' instead of the long shot it had been before.

No, it wouldn't just be likely; it would be inevitable.

*******

"Fucking finally!" The man's cry echoed on an empty beach as he collapsed on the muddy ground, dumping the baggage that'd been weighing him down for days right next to himself. The bone-chillingly cold waves of the northern Atlantic crashed over his legs, but he couldn't find it in himself to care. His great wings, once covered in brilliant snow-white plumage, now slumped weakly on his back before disappearing, leaving behind a bone-deep exhaustion and an ache that he could feel in his Spirit. He didn't care about that either as his hands latched onto the mud and his fingers curled into the soggy ground. "I never thought I'd miss land so much."

"You-!" The baggage in question sputtered, her teeth clattering as she jumped away from the water, hackles raised like a drenched cat. "I thought you said you were some magic knight or some shit! Is this how knights treat fair ladies in that fantasy realm of yours?"

"No," the man said, exhaustion weighing him down. He lay there, limbs spread-eagled, with a teasing smirk quivering at the edge of his chapped lips. "Luckily for me, I see no fair maidens around, Sophie."

Sophie just huffed, took a couple of careful steps away from the freezing waves, and likewise collapsed into the mud. Even if she wasn't the one who carried both of their combined weight, the journey must have strained her. The woman was not even level 10 yet, after all. She didn't have his supernatural stamina and endurance.

Which made it all the more of a miracle that she made it out of the gargantuan clusterfuck that was New York mostly unharmed. Maybe a bit traumatised from watching the System potion regrow her arm, hopefully a bit less of a bitch than she'd been growing up, but physically unharmed in the end.

The man had spent the last week crossing the Atlantic Ocean, and he was thoroughly tired of seeing only endless waves and water. Even more so, he was absolutely fed up with finding land, being filled with relief … only to have his hopes dashed when he found a local and found out he ended up in Greenland, Iceland, the Faroe Isles … this had to be fucking England, by way of elimination. He'd be fine even with Norway, really.

Who would have thought that navigating the open waters of the Atlantic would be such a colossal pain in the ass? Even if he was an astrologer — which he wasn't — he would have found it hard to use the stars as guidance when they were still in flux from the arrival of Mana, Magic and the System into the Real- universe. Universe. Normal people called it a universe, and not a Realm. He'd spent far too much time among the 'aliens' of the Mystic Realm if their vocabulary was invading his own.

Fitting. He thought. Just like they are invading my home.

Gritting his teeth as a sudden bout of anger surged in his veins, Gabriel Vexley stumbled to his feet and straightened his aching back. He could fly as fast as a World War I-era aeroplane, so he should have been able to cross the damned Atlantic in less than 20 hours by his calculations, and he knew he had enough stamina to keep that up.

That is, if he knew which direction was the optimal one. The ambient mana sphere of Earth was a mess, and it messed not only with regular compasses but also with all of his handy Divination spells. It was fine for anything short range, but long-range directional Divinations that would have allowed him to pinpoint the direction of Vienna, Austria, Europe or even just the damned North Pole were all thoroughly fucked.

And it wasn't just directions he had trouble with, oh no. The chaotic mana-sphere might have been the source of all his troubles, but it had other effects besides throwing his navigation tools for a loop. Monsters. Once, he had to take a massive detour because a blasted Peak Rank 3 Kraken decided it wanted him as a meal and chased him around for what felt like an entire day, making him dodge massive tentacles that could stretch on and on for kilometres. It was far from the worst offender, too, as the ocean was teeming with monsters, and Gabriel would bet all his money on the seabed being filled with a massive number of newborn Rifts, too. Rifts that were levelling up rapidly with no nearby Users, the System had to 'accommodate'.

Maritime trade was fucked, even if the oceans and tsunamis calmed down from the continents being shifted around. The internet was likely fucked too, what with the undersea cables being used to connect the continents.

"Doesn't matter," he murmured, taking in a deep breath as he stared inland. They had to find a local, figure out where the hell he was exactly, and orient themselves towards his destination. It had taken fucking months — maybe he should have gotten a proper enchanted compass before fleeing Starhaven, maybe then he wouldn't have set off towards Antarctica of all places when he wanted to end up in Europe.

A good enough magical compass should have been able to ignore the magical interference. Divination had never been his speciality, he'd just learned a few handy spells over the years — but they finally had the end of their journey in sight. He'd have to recover his strength, get directions, and then set off towards Austria. He could only hope his family would still be alive by the time he reached them.

He'd seen the devastation wrought across the planet during his journey, society devolving into little more than tribalism in most places as human civilization crumbled under the weight of the System and its Monsters. The odds weren't good, but he couldn't give up hope. This was why he'd spent the last five years of his life like a battle-obsessed maniac, why he worked to harness as much personal power as he could out of his circumstances.

They will be there. He murmured in his mind, the mantra by-now extremely familiar to him. They have to be. Mom, Mia, please be alright … I'm coming.

"Think this is finally the right place?" Sophie asked, coming to stand next to him, and Gabriel gave her a quick glance. His elder sister has … changed. He had too, but that was much less apparent until a mirror shoved evidence of it in his face. Her no-nonsense resting bitch face was the same as ever, though now prettified by her having turned into a half-elf. Her hair, ears and body were all unfamiliar, though. Gone were the raven-black locks, the icy-blue eyes and the petite height. Hell, she was almost as tall as he was. Stupid elven litheness, he could only hope his little sister would still be her same munchkin self. He would never live it down if even Mia towered over him now.

The thought put a smile on his face.

"It has to be," Gabriel said. "By process of elimination, if nothing else. England or Norway, though I'm betting on the former. Probably somewhere in the Scottish highlands, considering we're coming from the Faroe Islands."

Sophie looked hopeful, but also nervous at the idea. As she should be. She'd left them all to go play at being an exchange student in America, while he and Mia had to work part-time jobs just to make sure Mom didn't work herself to death just to pay the bills.

At least she had the grace to say goodbye, unlike their colossal asshole of a father.

Once my Divination works again, I'm tracking him down and giving him a well-deserved kick in the nuts.

"Come on, Soph," Gabriel said, taking a deep breath as he set off inland. They had to find a local and get directions, and hopefully they could do so without flight, so he could rest his poor wings a bit. "Let's go. We are at the finish line. A few more days and we'll be home."

Sophie nodded, but the worried, faraway look was still in her eyes.

Gabriel shook his head. He knew what she was worrying about. 'Will there still be a home by the time we get there? Will we be too late?'

That question haunted both of them. Gabriel felt he was a bit better off than his sister. The last time he had talked with Mom and Mia hadn't been a screaming match, after all. Unlike Sophie.

"They'll be there," Gabriel said, sounding more confident than he felt. Sophie gave a small nod, frown still in place. They will be there. They will. They have to.

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