“Quiet, you,” Jason admonished. “I’d just like to express how grateful I am to all of you. I’ve built a better life here in months than I did in my old world in years, and I have all of you to thank for that. I couldn’t ask for better people to be stuck down a hole with, which is lucky, because I recently was.”

He raised his glass.

“Here’s to all of you.”

“That’s right!” Gary yelled out, hoisting a goblet the size of Jason’s head. “We’re pretty great.”

“You haven’t regaled us with the story of fighting the marsh hydra yet,” Farrah said. “By the time we got back from our own contract, Cassandra had already whisked you away.”

“Fair enough,” Jason said. “Clive, Humphrey, get over here; we have a tale to tell.”

They left out the part about the skill books. Jason suspected it intersected with the confidential mission that brought Rufus, Gary and Farrah to Greenstone, and after some consideration, asked Humphrey and Clive to stay quiet. He decided not to put the adventurers in a position where they had to ask Jason to stop investigating, although it was Clive doing the actual investigating.

At the end of the tale, Jason pulled out the item they had looted from the hydra. It was a bronze-rank, five-tailed whip with biting mouths at the end of each tail. The whip tails seemed to have a life of their own, waving madly and snapping at people as Gary waved it around. Jason had handed it over to demonstrate, as he couldn’t use bronze-rank items himself.

Humphrey had his own news—he had been promoted to two-star, which drew another round of toasting. By this point people were starting to get woozy, especially with Gary trying to get people to toast to day-drinking. Even Jason was in his cups, sharing the same bronze-rank liquor as his friends to get past his resistances.

“Why didn’t we all get awakening stones?” Jason asked Vincent, the only Adventure Society official present. “Killing that hydra was super-hard. It almost ate my boy Hump!”

“As a rule,” Vincent said, “we don’t give out awakening stones to people for killing monsters above their rank. It would just incentivise people getting themselves killed trying to jump ranks.”

“That’s right,” Rufus said. “Jumping ranks isn’t something to take lightly. A good adventurer should be able to jump ranks, but only against the right monster.”

“Don’t tell them that,” Vincent scolded.

“I think I should give it a try,” Rick said.

“This is exactly what I’m talking about,” Vincent said. “Iron-rankers rushing off to their deaths.”

“I’ll do it in the mirage chamber,” Rick said, getting unsteadily to his feet. “Come on, Jason, you can come too.”

“Sit back down,” Danielle told him. “How many times do I have to tell you children about using the mirage chamber while drunk?”