Everyone in here was an acquaintance he grew up with in the orphanage, no one who could turn back time. He had been with them since the mass rift breakout five years ago that destroyed half the city and orphaned so many kids like himself. As his gaze wandered, all the people he knew so well appeared alien to him.They all looked so…happy.A dozen feet away, Roxanne stood at a recruiter’s desk for Victor’s Elementals, a mage-focused guild that was the husband guild to Estor’s Escalators, a physically oriented guild that acted to round out delve compositions so the parties were balanced.Every word that came out of the recruiter’s mouth made Roxanne smile more. The paperwork placed in front of her was quickly signed. She’d dreamed of being a mage since their Introduction to Magic class all those years ago.Matt wanted to feel happy for her, but nausea clawed at his stomach. He looked over to Gavle’s Good Guilders, a respectable Tier 10 guild based on Ilstor, a neighboring Tier 12 planet

2“Matt, I need you to check the staff bathroom. The water is really slow,” Beatrice called out as she passed by.“Is it the hot, the cold, or both, Bee?” Matt shot back from the maintenance room, where he was assembling a table. He got no response. Apparently, Beatrice had already returned to the slow lunch crowd.Matt decided to finish the table first. They needed it more. Last week, a bar fight had destroyed nearly half of the tables in the common room before it was brought under control.The problem was, they had a limited number of spare tables in reserve. It’d been just enough to keep the common room from having too many gaps, but just barely. To make the room feel less empty, they had spread the remaining ones out, which only worked because they hadn't been slammed yet. But with the weekend approaching, they needed the seating. So, Matt had been making tables in all his spare time to refill the common room, and then get their surplus back.If Benny wasn’t such a tight ass with

Surprisingly, Eric preferred an ax but said no melee fighter could rely on just one weapon. You had to be at least proficient with most of them. Monsters came in infinite variations. Some would eventually be resistant to or problematic to fight with your preferred weapon type.Those were probably the best weeks of Matt’s life. Dena and Eric were nice to him, didn’t treat him like spare luggage they were trying to get rid of or as a charity case because his parents were dead.The couple gave him respect, even though they were so much stronger than him. They could have treated him like something you’d scrape off a shoe and no one would have looked askance at them for it. He’d received invitations to eat with them a few times, and even Benny hadn’t said anything during the occasional meal.Matt swore to himself that when he was that strong, he would remember their kindness and strive to show the same to others. So many of the delvers coming through Benny’s treated anyone weaker than them

Lying in the dark, Matt cradled the pad in his hands. He had tried to get some rest, but the anticipation and thrill of getting away with the theft kept sleep away.He looked at his pad again. This was his lifeline. Some part of him kept expecting Benny or the party leader to burst into the room and snatch the pad and skill shard out of his hands. But all was gloriously quiet.Delving without a skill was common at lower levels, but the casualty rate was much higher for those unlucky delvers.Matt already decided he wouldn't let this pad out of his sight for the remainder of the year. This skill was near perfect for him. A channeled skill would allow him to use his full 1 mana per second of mana generation while he was under 0.1 mana.Matt used his PlanetNet voucher time to check on the status of the Glesie public rift. The purchase price for a spot was still ten thousand credits and holding steady. A while back, it had spiked to eleven thousand for a few weeks before dropping to nine

Disregarding defense and leaning to a fully offensive strategy, he no longer conserved his energy and, instead, bet everything on the exchange. He tried to push her into a particular trap without being too obvious. The flurry of blows kept Dena on the defensive until Matt used the rebound of her blocking a side slash to step left and forward, closing in on her. He brought the longsword around with every last drop of power and speed he could muster.Matt was 5'10, and Dena was only 5'8, maybe 5'9. It meant Matt held the slightest reach advantage even before their weapon choice came into play. Dena was more experienced and faster than him, though. As the blade swept in, she danced back from the blow.His desperate plan failed. Matt wanted to curse but couldn't waste the breath. As he surged forward to follow up, Dena just kept retreating, holding her hands up.Matt halted, fear gripping him.I didn't hit her. Is she just calling it now because I wasn't good enough?The next words he hea