As we sat there, I finally couldn’t take the silence another second.

  “Uncle Galloway?” I murmured, turning my head to look behind me.

  He chuckled. “Yes, Artie?”

  “Why did you stop adventuring with The Reapers? I asked Mom and Dad a few times and they said it was complicated.” I half-turned in my seat to look at him easier. “They retired less than a year after you guys stopped traveling together, are they linked?”

  The [Forest Shaman] turned to match me, hesitated for a moment, then sighed. “It isn’t that they don’t want to tell you, they can’t. On the other hand, I’m not bound by the same System Oath, so I can tell you. Are you sure you want to know?”

  Eyes wide, I spun around to face him fully, sitting back on my knees. “It’s been the mystery of my childhood, trying to figure out why the most powerful adventurers I ever met all retired at one time.”

  He got up and checked the pod containing Raiju’s new body, confirmed she was just sleeping, and then pulled a pair of comfortable club chairs from his spatial ring, popping them down in the middle of the room facing each other.

  He motioned to the other chair. “Take a seat and I’ll explain.”

  I hurried to join him and sat on the edge of the seat, glancing over to check on Raiju before turning my gaze to him. “I’m ready.”

  Uncle Galloway sat back with his hands steepled before him. “When I was traveling with The Reapers, we were at the very peak of the Adventurers’ Guild, Orichalcum. Kingdoms from all over the world would reach out to us through the guild to have us fix problems for them.” He laughed and ran his fingers through his hair. “It was amazing, despite the danger. We visited places I’d only read about more times than I can count, but it was a trip to the Iroan Empire that changed everything.”

  I was barely breathing. This is it, he’s going to tell me what happened!

  “Your grandpa reached out to us on his friend, the Iroan Emperor’s behalf. One of his granddaughters had been kidnapped when she was out leveling with her guards, she had plenty of Rare, and even a few Legendary, pieces of gear dedicated to defense, so they weren’t worried about her being alive. They just wanted her back sooner, rather than later, and to have her guards avenged if possible.” He wove a tale of the days Dad spent tracking the kidnapped girl, fighting random groups of bandits and other unsavory types, until they found a hidden temple deep in the heart of the Iroan Empire, more than a thousand miles from Aurana, their capital.

  “It was the High Temple of Devourer, your mom confirmed it with her dad who asked the [High Priest] of Light.” He wrung his hands. “We argued amongst ourselves if we should even get involved, but in the end, the majority ruled and we went in after the girl. Winding our way through that maze-like place, it was a slaughter. Dozens of [Priest] initiates, they couldn’t have even been level twenty, threw themselves at us like feral beasts, not even using their Spells or Skills. It was like they had no sense of self preservation.”

  He hung his head in his hands. “I didn’t even want to get involved once we realized Devourer was involved, same with Arlo, but he wasn’t going to let his wife go without him and I wouldn’t leave your mom without a magical healer. As good as Megara’s potions are, someone has to administer them, and I couldn’t risk her not leaving because I was a coward.” He spat.

  “You’re no coward, Uncle Galloway.” I pushed with my [Charm] combined with [Lordly Aura] and he seemed to recover a bit.

  “I was, but maybe I can be better as your Court Physician.” He chuckled. “Took that one when I saw it on the list.”

  After briefly debating checking what he got for that, I set it aside in favor of the story at hand.

  “Not going to be able to distract you as easily as I did when you were a kid, am I? Drat.” He smirked for a moment before grimacing. “We found the princess, but she was twisted somehow. Her eyes were black and she was chanting some language even your mom didn’t know. We tried to knock her out so we could take her back but she, a mere level thirty-six, fought the five of us in the mid-nineties back like we were schoolchildren.” He groaned at the memory. “We were under strict orders not to injure her and none of our afflictions would take hold, we were at a loss.”

  A soft hissing came from the pod containing Raiju’s new humanoid form and when we turned to look, she was struggling to slide off of the construct. She glared at Uncle Galloway when he sprang up to help her alongside me. “Artie can help me. You finish the story.” She did nothing to hide her nude form, but the sudden fierceness of her rebuke mitigated that factor and sent him back to his chair.

  “Alright, but be careful with her. Her new body may be in the low-thirties, but she’s not used to it yet.” He looked like he wanted to assist more, but another glare from her stopped him before he could begin.

  Raiju stumbled as she slid free of the pod and it was then that I got my first look at her new body. She was short for an elf, only five feet tall, but still taller than me. Long silver-white hair cascaded around wolf-like ears, past ears strangely similar to my own, and down her shapely form, the exact same color as her old pelt, before ending just above her short wolf-like tail. She crossed her arms under her breasts as she looked at me with those striking sky blue eyes, putting her more than ample bosom on full display as she tapped her foot as my eyes lingered on her form far longer than was normal for me.

  What is going on with me? I should be helping her, not staring like some creep.

  I hurried over and helped her get into her original pod, where the box with her name on it sat. After I opened up the pod, she pushed the lid off the golden box without a hit of sentimentality. Reaching inside, she pulled out a silver and blue longcoat far larger than the box could possibly have held. She laid that to the side as she reached in and pulled out a dark blue, corset-like top with silver metallic plating on the chest and shoulders. It was paired with a white pleated leather skirt and dark stockings with garters. Lastly, she pulled out a functional set of dark blue underclothes.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  She looked over her shoulder at me as her bushy white tail whacked against my side. “Help me put these on. I’ve never worn clothes before.” She glared back at Galloway. “You, back to the story. I want to know about Artie’s parents too.”

  Uncle Galloway looked away as he muttered something under his breath. A moment later, he did as she bade him. “With the emperor’s granddaughter bashing against us over and over again, we had to make a move soon, or we’d have had to put her down. It was Matilda who came up with the plan and put it into motion, but we should have stopped her.” He braced himself and I suddenly saw where it was going.

  “No.” I gasped.

  “I’m sorry to report that you’re probably right.” He let out a loud breath. “Her plan was simple, she was going to use [Total Bodyguard] on the princess, reducing the damage she would take and transferring it over to Matilda so we could hit the damn girl hard enough to shake her out of whatever she had going on. None of our cleanses worked on whatever that debuff was, even Matilda’s goddess granted ones from Weaver failed, and [Essence Reading] couldn’t pick up on what it was. We hit her hard, and I mean we went all out while Matilda downed potion after potion to keep up with our damage output over the course of a few minutes, but nothing worked. Your dad hit her in the back with [Assassinate] and her eyes changed colors. That was the start of the real shit show.

  “She started sending out tiny needles formed out of compressed souls. We had no idea where she was getting them, but we knew we couldn’t take hits like that and keep going. You know how bad soul wounds can be and I only had the most basic soul healing Skill to hand at that point, [Soul Patch].” He chuckled weakly. “Terrible name, but good to have in a pinch, I’ll use it so you can grab it with that busted Unique of yours.”

  “Thanks, but what happened? How did Matilda end up dying?” I’d just managed to help Raiju into her underclothes and she was working on getting her skirt cinched up, but was having issues looping the strap over her tail. I moved to help as I waited for his answer, despite her growl of protest.

  “Maddie was great at a lot of things, but dodging wasn’t one of them. Once that thing realized she couldn’t get the rest of us, she poured all her attacks on Maddie and our [Paladin] wracked up a hell of a soul wound in less than thirty seconds. It was then that I decided we’d had enough and I pulled out my trusty fern, Jessica, from my spatial ring. I tossed it down next to her and the rest of the team knew the assignment, get her to me and I would take her away with [Transport via Plants]. It’s an expensive Spell, but I had plenty of Mana to burn, since no one was really injured besides Maddie, who I hit with a few [Soul Patches] as I moved closer to the monster in princess’ attire.

  “We ended up corralling her and I overwhelmed her resistance to drop her right in her grandfather’s garden as our whole group landed a few seconds later. I lost a two hundred year old [Wandering Fern] that day, and I still miss her. Jessica had been with me since I was a child and I regretted leaving her behind, but it was the only way. I felt it as Jessica was torn to shreds mere minutes after we got away.” He winced, but kept going.

  “Anyway, the girl’s grandfather arrived in a flash as we landed in his garden and he was easily able to contain his granddaughter. I later learned she had been possessed by a [Void Demon], a super high level one, but the old man and his friends were able to cleanse her after a few weeks of trial and error. In the meantime, Maddie got sick. All of The Reapers did our utmost to find something to save her but, in the end, we ran out of time. Maddie died nine days after we left Devourer’s High Temple. We didn’t take it well.

  “Over the next two months, we tore through dozens of temples to Devourer and found more than half of them had a seedy basement not dissimilar to the High Temple. We learned it was a cult within the overall clergy of Devourer we were against, not the whole lot of them. The Cult of the Void, bastards all of them.” He spat away from us.

  Something Dominus told me the last time I leveled came to mind at the mention of the void. “You know, that actually makes a twisted sort of sense.”

  He glared at me. “In what way?”

  “Dominus mentioned how Devourer had wrested control of the void portion of the pantheon from his sister, Darkness, when Dominus was ousted. It would kind of make sense that part of Devourer’s clergy would be unstable, Dominus said he still didn’t have a good handle on the void, even after all of the years he’s had it in his domain.”

  Uncle Galloway’s jaw hung open. “You’re telling me all that heartache came about because some god stole his sister’s toy and couldn’t figure out how it worked?”

  “Seems like that could be the case, yeah.” I motioned for him to continue. “That doesn’t explain why you left the team or why you can talk about all of this though…”

  His eyes were wild with emotion, but he reined it in with a few deep breaths. “It was three months after Matilda died. Your dad was a wreck trying to take care of Anya, though she was a young woman at the time and resented his attempts, and the rest of us weren’t much better. Your mom and dad had started spending more time together to unwind and everyone but Anya was glad to see them finding some joy in the wake of Maddie’s death. One of our information brokers confirmed the largest batch of those Voider bastards we’d ever even caught wind of.”

  He let out a huge sigh. “They were located in the middle of Seraph’s Embrace, a town composed almost entirely of single parents, their children, and orphans who had lost parents and partners in the Grand War of Herlu. Seraph’s Embrace is only ten miles from my mother’s grove and it’s where I found myself after I escaped her tormentor.” Tears welled up in his eyes. “I knew they needed me, but I couldn’t bring myself to put all those people at risk, so in the end, I stayed topside instead of going in with them. In a fit of rage, I denounced them as monsters for risking so many innocents and removed myself from The Reapers’ roster at the guild.

  “That’s the only reason I can tell you this story. My friends went into that hellhole and when they came out? They were shells of their former selves. All of them had lost twenty or more levels and they insisted they couldn’t tell me what went on during the raid, but I pieced it together over the next dozen or so years. They never held what I did against me, in fact they were glad I wasn’t stuck in the same situation they were.”

  I was practically bouncing as I helped Raiju into her longcoat. “Well? What do you think happened?”

  “They fought as hard as they could, but without me and Maddie, they didn’t have what it would have taken to eliminate the Voiders. In the end, they made a deal to stop those crazy assholes from operating, but in return, The Reapers had to stop operating as well. That’s why they trained you so hard, to make sure you would be ready if their past ever caught up to you, which it seems it has. That spike of Chaos Mana on the third floor of the Tower you told me about was one of the Voiders’ favorite tactics to destabilize Towers and Dungeons alike.”

  “It’s likely you’re dealing with the children and disciples of those same people who your parents and I fought over thirty years ago.” He locked eyes with me. “Now it’s up to you and your party to finish them before they start killing innocents en masse again.”