Matthew nearly slept for seven hours before the noises woke him up.

  The fountain had begun flowing again, water flowing softly from the statue's six arms.

  The sound of water flowing filled the massive temple, and people surrounded it, collecting water and chatting.

  Most importantly, they talked about the wishes that would be made.

  He was a bit far from it, closer to the second exit, surrounded by people. Leaning against his bag, he listened to the conversation on the edge of the group.

  His leg burned with a relentless, blistering pain.

  Sleep tugged at him, but instead, he pulled out his commonplace book and began reading through his collected quotes.

  The rhetoric he used in arguments, the way he viewed ideas—it all stemmed from a simple belief: any idea was reasonable in the absence of something better.

  So he borrowed logic from different places. Most of the time, the method didn't matter to him—only the results.

  Parker, Jamie, and Colin became the center of attention, bombarded with questions from all directions. Their group had grown diverse, drawing in all kinds of people.

  Parker, towering over most, had brown wavy hair that fell over his forehead unkept and calm blue eyes.

  Despite his size, there was a softness to his face—boyish, unassuming. He was dressed very plainly and had only an old watch on his thick forearm

  Jamie was dark-skinned with tight twists, had sharp, charming eyes and a confident smile.

  A faint goatee framed his strong jaw, and a bandana covered a bump on his head—a souvenir from the Central Cavern battle. He was dressed a lot less stylishly than before, his green cargo pants stained with mud.

  His black windbreaker was now zipped up as his white tee was beyond dirty.

  Colin was smaller than them but carried himself with an easy charisma. His skin was pale, almost pasty, and his playful brown eyes and round face contrasted with the deep, rough edge in his voice.

  He was wearing all black when he first arrived but had to switch to a pair of shorts which were pulled up around one leg revealing a white wrap of gauze

  Everyone sat around, talking languidly about their situation. No one spoke of the real world anymore—only the here and now mattered.

  "Do you think we only get weapons from the wishing?"

  "Jamie, let's make a bet that you'll get a magical hairbrush."

  Jamie rolled his eyes at the joke. "If it helps us, I don't mind."

  Kirk turned to Matthew. "This would be a lot cooler if you were wishing too."

  Matthew silently nodded, he wondered how things would go from here,he couldn't predict the future, the only thing he could try was make guesses at how people would behave.

  He had realised after the whole Vasilis fiasco that he needed more eyes, the problem now was how he could do that without entangling himself too deeply with other people.

  The skills he had cultivated all these years—while useful in normal life,were useless in situations with such high stakes.

  The only reason I invested so much time into observational skills was to make up for my lack of social skills.

  He could tell a very convincing lie and was well read in many fields but a lot of that he had never practised till here.

  He had to be careful not to be too forward with his methods or affect the group's overall mindset as long as it didn't affect him.

  Jamie and Brian entertained the crowd with stories of their hunts.

  Jamie talked about the Red seeker and the Dark forest— he talked of the psychedelic and random lights, the sudden sounds and deadly monsters.

  Before long he noticed and changed the way he told the story making it more nightmarish.

  Matthew found the change in tone halfway interesting, how Jamie had noticed the demeanor of the crowd and switched to telling a horror story.

  He even weaved in the scouts reports of the jungle, he talked about Joey and Matthew screaming in abject horror because of the Yellow dragon—what they had named it—smiling tauntingly at Joey and Matthew.

  He described how the scouts from his group had been chased by a horned horse and almost mauled describing the terrible muscles and deranged eyes of the black beast.

  "We walked into the cave kind of carefree but something felt wrong inside, there was this smell of rot and the darkness seemed to hide something sinister." he paused looking around.

  "When I first walked in, it was so cold and I could hear something gurgling… like someone choking on their own blood. When we got close enough it jumped out trying to bite us, a pale mutilated body with a white flower with a bloody stem coming out from one of it's eyes!"

  Everyone jumped some becoming very pale while the people who had actually seen the parasite looked more disgusted remembering the flower and the body being torn apart by those dogs

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  Brian, ever the dramatist, took center stage afterward, waving a piece of bone armor from the rolling bug as he recounted their first kill.

  Matthew found it odd—how the usually serious and diligent Brian could slip so easily into playfulness.

  As Brian reached the climax of the story, he slowed his tempo, his voice lowering for effect.

  "We all distracted it while Matthew charged forward, leaping and grabbing the sword," he said, his eyes wide with excitement.

  Then, breaking into a laugh, he ran around the small circle, mimicking the motion. "He ran the sword across the beast's belly, yanked it free, and watched as it collapsed—defeated!"

  Many girls turned to Matthew, their hands over their mouths in exaggerated awe. "wasn't it scary?"

  "You don't seem like the fearless type."

  He cringed internally as they tried to stoke his ego.

  Jesse, however, sat beside Brian, glaring at him.

  It made even Matthew wish, just a little, that she would put away her disciplined act and praise him for once.

  Jamie noticed her look and turned to him. "Even with the Red Seeker, you kind of threw yourself out there. I remember how scared you looked when you were screaming for us to help you."

  Matthew's face contorted at the memory. "Yeah, I rather like being here than out there."

  Asha immediately contradicted his fear. "I don't really believe that. Y'all should have seen this guy running between the legs of those ants. Climbing the ant! Like, he deadass just got on one and climbed. He even put his sword between his teeth."

  Everyone, even Jamie—who had been trying to downplay Matthew—was now looking at him, concerned for his sanity.

  Matthew stumbled over his words. "Hey, at that time, Kinslayer was… driving me crazy, so it felt like a reasonable idea."

  "How? What could you gain from climbing it?" someone asked, stupefied.

  Matthew explained how he had stabbed the ant in a gap between its armor, disabling its mandibles.

  He also reminisced about almost losing his fingers while climbing.

  This didn't help his case, as Jesse was now trying to slap him. He held her back, hurriedly explaining himself.

  After a few moments, Joey grinned. "At least we can take a break now. We have an idea of what time the ants hunt."

  "The teams going out will also be more experienced," a girl added.

  Parker nodded. "Our methods will be more refined now. We'll have teams hunting in the dunes and Dark Forest while others shuttle the kills back to the safe point for butchering and harvesting the meat and essence."

  Everyone was now much more confident. They had slept in batches, as Jesse and the others who had stayed behind had already rested.

  When they woke up, more people volunteered to join the hunts.

  The number of people was becoming too hard to manage. Eventually, they began to divide into different units—or legions, as they were now called.

  There were seven hunting legions, two in charge of the safe point and material processing, and one in charge of moving supplies.

  Parker and Jamie oversaw the hunting groups, each managing either the dunes or the Dark Forest.

  Colin was in charge of the safe point, while Casey, shockingly enough, was put in charge of the wandering teams.

  Matthew looked at Casey with a mocking doubtful expression.

  Casey flipped him off. "I know it's hard to understand that I'm above you now, but if you keep looking at me like that, I'll poke your eyes out."

  Matthew smirked. "Keep your hair on, mate. No need for that."

  Casey had a weird look on his face. He asked, "Do you gain anything from downplaying yourself like that, or are you actually crazy?"

  Matthew shrugged and flexed his burnt leg. "Probably just crazy. Everything I did with Vasilis was pretty instinctual."

  Casey raised an eyebrow before turning away from him. He whispered as he watched the fountain, "Instinct, huh?"

  It was time to make a wish.

  The three wish-makers walked up to the fountain, which was now mostly empty. P

  arker closed his eyes, visualizing his wish as the others did the same. Almost simultaneously, they cast their coins.

  A warm glow of reds, oranges, and blues filled the white temple.

  The warmth chased away the temple's usual dreary cold, and Matthew could smell various things—salt water, the dry and earthy scent of a beach.

  He could feel the sun, hear the waves.

  And then there was another sound—a girl's laugh, followed by a splash of water.

  Matthew could almost see it: a girl with short black hair and freckles, her playful blue eyes blinding under the sun as she ran from a taller boy who splashed water at her.