Rafe returned to the others very many hours later. It was hard to tell time, especially as he did not have any skill or auxiliary system service that dealt in that kind of thing, and also because of the dungeon's perpetual day cycle, but he could tell he was very late.

Immediately after the auction, which took much longer than twelve hours, ended, Rafe sat back in his cave, lost in thought. A lot of things he'd seen during the auction didn't make sense. He honestly wanted to repress most of the memories, but he struggled to try and run through what might be causing him such a sense of foreboding.

He ignored the fact that he was peeved at his sister for how she treated him when he was younger. He was now so much older than his elder sister; he could afford to be the bigger person and forgive her the childish slights. He decided to ignore the fact his family seemed happy. He tried to convince himself it was a good thing they were alive and happy, but he didn't do such a good job of it.

In the end he spent hours doing nothing. It was almost like he was meditating.

By the time he arrived the others had settled down to camp, and some of them were already sleeping. Filoria was seated with the shift guards around a fire, but she was not paying attention to their conversation and was instead looking towards where Rafe had disappeared to earlier. Consequently, she was the first to see him when he arrived.

She stood up from her makeshift seat and watched as Rafe walked slowly back to camp. There was this intense stare off between them, her face expressionless, his frowny, the distance shrinking between them incrementally with each step Rafe took. She said nothing when he reached within half a metre of her.

He stopped moving and their stare off continued. Then, without saying anything, she turned and stalked back into the camp.

Rafe wondered why she was behaving the way she was. Why was she being so clingy? Was she that opposed to him leaving the dungeon? Maybe she couldn't imagine the loss to her father.

But there were only a handful of credits. Would they really make that much of a difference? Now that Rafe thought about it, people from newly integrated planets had massive advantages compared to the rest of the multiverse, especially the generation of progenitors who took part in the tutorial.

If the only way to get credits organically was through the quest system and tutorial system, then it was a self explanatory advantage. If Rafe did not have the quest system yet, and if he was on Earth, and if he had to, he would have farmed so many tutorial points he would have become rich enough to potentially buy the quest system when the right grade arrived. Definitely there would be some who would do it.

Rafe knew he had the grit and drive to succeed, even had he not been lucky enough to run into Skyholm. He would probably have been one of the strongest on Earth, even as a teenager. After all, whatever time the system integration would have happened, it would have found him living alone in a ghost house.

He imagined it. A single boy in an isolated house, all alone. He would have had to fight and either die, or survive and advance.

And with technology and everything failing, he would have no reason to go to school. So he would probably leave his house in favour of trying to locate his family or something. And in the midst of all that adventure, he would end up where he was now. Maybe not as a sword warrior, but as a potentially strong physical warrior of some kind.

"What does it matter anyway?" he asked himself.

For some reason, he had ended up on Primus, and it was about time he got to figuring out why. They still had a few weeks of hunting left, and so Rafe planned to explore and map as much of the dungeon as he could. He had already mapped out a… not very significant potion before he'd run into Filoria and Helare before.

Could he really find these indifferent gods if they were determined to hide? Well, he would figure that out, wouldn't he?

Trees everywhere. Trees with grey barked stems was all he saw. And uneven, endless land. There weren't many sources of water, but there were the occasional springs only big enough to be feeding points for wild life.

From what he'd heard of, and seen, of the surface of the planet Primus, it was like the dungeon was working hard to be the opposite of it.

Filoria mostly followed him around on whatever missions he happened to be taking at any point in time, but she always kept her distance.

It was like she was sulking. Not that it bothered Rafe one bit. If they didn't have to talk, then he was a happy man.

Eventually, the scouting trip reached its end, and Rafe hadn't seen any notorious gods or dungeon cores.

It was a frustrating end to a trip that had started well. And now his distraction from thoughts on his family and everything else was over. Now he had to think about Helare and Filoria and how the hell he could get home. If the system was impotent on this matter, then what was he?

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He supposed all he could do for now was make the most of the time until he returned to Earth. He had gained half a level's worth of experience from this hunting trip. That put him very close to level fifteen. If he was right, then his first class evolution was likely coming up at level sixteen. At least he hoped it was.

If he had to wait up to level twenty or even something beyond that, while he would be flattered, he would be devastated.

Over the past weeks of training with an E grade user, even though Collab's stats were being lowered, Rafe had grown quite a few of his skills. Mostly because he was training in new fighting techniques as well. The hunting, with his skills sharing the experience almost equally with his class, ended up pushing many of them further.

'Ding' Your skill Skyholm's fighting has grown to level 56.

Your skill ambidextrous has grown to level 133.

Your skill Puppeteer's Rubber Body has grown to level 75.

Your skill dodge has grown to level 28.

Your skill Dash has grown to level 60.

Your skill Acrobat has grown to level 25.

Your skill Unarmed combat has grown to level 50.

Your skill physical fitness has grown to level 97.

His physical fitness grew the most, for almost obvious reasons. A technique that required quite a bit of body reinforcement was a good excuse to exercise regularly. And now he had lost almost all traces of visible fat from his body. He was starting to tend towards a more masculine than athletic body of late.

A lithe body had its uses, but a true warrior would have to bulk up as they grew. Only his face now looked somewhat childish about him. He was yet to even start bearding.

"You're not going to try and escape again?" Filoria said to him from out of nowhere, the first words she said to him in almost a week.

He stared towards her and saw she wasn't staring his way, but he noticed a hint of red on her cheeks that reminded him of Helare. And from a certain angle, the lighting made her hair seem as blue as the princess's.

There was a brief moment of panic as the last conversation they'd had - more of Helare speaking and never giving Rafe a chance to respond, if Rafe was honest - played through his mind. He forced the thoughts away though. There was no use worrying about it until he met the princess again. She was not here, he had to remind himself. Filoria was.

He didn't answer her. He did not know what to tell her. He didn't want to be here, but his only escape route was blocked.

Filoria stared back at him with a self conscious chuckle.

"I always forget you despise me. How quick you forgave the princess though? How about that, huh?"

Rafe was a little thrown by the shift in the conversation, and his walk stuttered a bit. He had to marshal his thoughts to remember it wasn't really his fault he couldn't stand her.

As for the princess, her mistake was kind of a cultural thing as Rafe had already said, and she had been in an emotional state, and she had seemed sorry enough after the fact. Filoria had not shown too much remorse, though there had been a moment when they first met, the moment when she somehow remembered him. But then she'd closed herself off and everything had ended.

Rafe did not owe her anything. He sighed, trying to signal to her he'd rather they just forget about that messy part of their past.

"So when is the next hunt?" he asked.

He didn't look her way. She took her time in answering him. It was like she had to try and compose herself before accepting the switch in topics.

"There will be a rotation. I doubt you will have another chance to hunt again until we change the dungeon instance though."

Up ahead, the camp came into clear view, alive and bustling, and as full of activity as ever it had been. There was something a little different, but he couldn't put his eye on it from this far out.

He had remembered to increase his level, as displayed by his unfathomably strong Skyholm's veil skill, before coming back from seeing his family. He was now a level seventy blacksmith if anyone tried to use identify on him.

He had just thought about his level when he felt a poke on his veil skill. Someone was trying to glean information about him, and they were very insistent, and they were using a skill that was much stronger than the normal identify. A warning went off on his status screen.

He opened it, trying to glean anything about what was happening. There was nothing. Only a small message on a red flashing blue screen.

'Scanning skill automatically blocked! Scanning skill automatically blocked! Scanning skill automatically blocked!'

Display information: [Human - Blacksmith - lvl.70]

But the person kept on trying. And Rafe wasn't sure what kind of skill the person was using or what information they were trying to glean, or even who they were, really.

The rest of the party kept moving, so Rafe did too.

When they were closer to the camp, Rafe finally realised what had felt off from the beginning. Helare had a large tent. It towered over everything in the camp so that you could see it from any part of the camp. It was the most prominent feature of the camp. Was being the key word. There was a bigger, more ostentatious tent right next to Helare's.

The first thing Rafe felt was that unsettledness in his belly whenever he thought of Helare these days. They had been gone for more than two weeks. Had that been enough time for her to return? Rafe sure hoped so. Or maybe not?

He shook his head, the blaring of his status screen returning his head to the present.

He had to ask himself an important question: who could have enough clout to have a tent larger than that of the princess of a whole world? Could it be another, more important royal? How even was the importance of royals measured? No one had been named heir to anything, as far as Rafe knew. Maybe the emperor himself? Or…

"I've been eagerly waiting for your return, daughter," a handsome man who looked like the spitting image of Filoria said with a smile.

Rafe wondered how old he was. If he'd told him he was in his mid-twenties, Rafe would have believed it. And the hair? He and Filoria had the same colour and shade of hair. And speaking of Filoria…

She was not next to him anymore. Rafe wondered when that happened. She had remained behind, standing frozen like a deer in front of headlights. And for the briefest of moments when Rafe looked back, she looked trepidous instead of excited to be receiving her father.

That was when it him. This was probably the person who was trying to forcefully use that scanning skill on him or whatever, wasn't it?

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