This was now the third time Nathan Lee had fought a gigantic worm. In fact, it was the third time Nathan had fought this worm specifically.

  Nathan blasted through the air, his watery body disintegrated into fine mist that was practically invisible to the naked eye.

  I feel like at this point, Nathan thought. The universe has completely run out of ideas and is just reusing the same creatures shamelessly, the complete hack.

  The worm rolled its body to the side and cut across a row of houses. The flying fishwoman held out her hands and a red glow came from it. This same red glow appeared around the body of the worm and it froze in place.

  She reached up and rubbed the sweat off her forehead. Nathan didn't know fish people could sweat, but that was apparently a thing, now.

  The worm roared and flexed its body and the red glow burst into light, then made a sound like glass shattering. It slithered forward then left the ground, toward the fishwoman.

  The fishwoman let out a startled cry and swam through the air. Yes, swam. She was making a diving motion not dissimilar to something Nathan might have seen in an Olympic swimming event—that is, if he watched the Olympics. He didn't. Nobody watches the Olympics. They just watch the clips, then say that they did.

  Nathan was getting distracted. He needed to keep moving through the air to intercept that thing.

  Oh yeah, the worm's jaw—it didn't have a jaw, more kind of a weird mouthhole thing—opened up and row after row of teeth lined the inside, each one pointed inward and sharpened to the tip of a needle.

  The fishwoman looked back mid-swim and screamed at the top of her lungs. She held out her right hand and it lit up with that same red glow.

  She's about to get treated to a very annoying surprise, Nathan thought.

  The worm lit up red and even froze in mid-air... for about 30 milliseconds. So quick that Nathan was half-convinced he'd hallucinated the event.

  It zipped through the air like a bullet.

  Nathan reassembled his body and smashed into the side of the worm with his fist. With the amount of momentum he'd built up from moving so quickly through the air, he was less of a person and more of a human missile at this point, fueled by enough inertia to destroy a small mountain.

  The force blasted the worm backwards, over a half-dozen trees, a farmhouse, then directly into the side of a hill.

  Nathan remained suspended in mid-air for a brief moment before gravity decided to reassert itself and he started falling rapidly toward the ground.

  Oh yeah, he thought. When I'm in this form, I can't actually fly.

  He slammed into the ground and a cloud of dust went up in every direction.

  "Ouch," he said.

  The stones dug into his ass like daggers.

  Wait, why am I able to feel that? Shouldn't my pants be stopping it?

  A brisk breeze ran over his private parts and he promptly realized that he'd once again forgotten to get his clothes back mid-transformation. He was completely buck naked.

  "I really need to get a handle on that," Nathan said.

  An infernal cry in the distance.

  Nathan pushed himself off of the ground and reached into his inventory. His hand wrapped around a metal handle. His fishing pole, infused with the very essence of the ocean itself.

  The sound of footsteps caused him to tense.

  He turned to the right and faced in the direction of the noise.

  It was the fishwoman.

  She was dressed in long white robes that vaguely gave Nathan the impression of a nun. A simple metal circlet was atop her head, and her bleached yellow hair was done up in a fancy braid. Her eyes were an unnatural amber while fins lined her arms and the side of her head.

  Despite all this, she had relatively human-looking skin... if Nathan didn't look closer and notice that it was actually a bunch of ultra-tiny scales.

  "You..." she said. "You saved me."

  She squinted her eyes and cast a quick look down at Nathan's bare front. "And you're naked, too."

  Nathan sighed. "I'm aware."

  Her vision locked onto Nathan's fishing pole. She traced the engravings slowly, and her pupils dilated in response.

  "A warrior with a fishing pole—one who is clearly a foreigner to these lands. Could you be—?"

  Another infernal screech.

  The sound of air shifting filled up Nathan's ear. Something big and heavy was rapidly heading toward them. Nathan had a pretty good idea of what it was. He turned to the right to see the worm flying through mid-air and racing directly toward him.

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  Nathan thought through his options, then realized that it would be extremely funny if he used a certain technique.

  He held out his hand. [Astral Fishing] activated and the air shimmered in front of him.

  The worm grinded to a stop in front of the portal. Its body twisted unnaturally and went directly overhead, then back down and over the portal.

  Oh yeah, Nathan thought. It probably adapted to the portal or some bullshit like that.

  Nathan whipped his fishing pole into the air and the hook slammed into the worm. It floundered up like a giant flying sunfishuntil it became a distant dot on the horizon.

  The fishwoman stared at Nathan, then at the worm, then at Nathan.

  "So you're some sort of mage?" Nathan asked.

  The woman jolted.

  "I'm a High Priestess, sir!" she shouted. "I can use buffs and debuffs. I have a wide range, from slowing, to weakening, to everything in between."

  Nathan internally noted the fact that she referred to herself as having a class. It looked like these people were aware of the system.

  This was strange, because on the Second Circle, Zayen and his people had no access to the system.

  They were able to unlock skills and magic the old fashioned way, presumably the same way that the elves did, but as for classes and levels—that had all been foreign to them.

  Nathan was about to contemplate this further when he remembered that the worm was racing back toward them at high speeds and he needed a way to get rid of it.

  She said she was a debuffer, right? Nathan thought. And she was powerful enough to slow down that thing, even if it was only for a little bit. There has to be some way we can exploit that.

  "Can you do the opposite?" Nathan asked. "Speed things up, I mean."

  The priestess nodded up and down. "I can. Just say the word and I'll make you faster than light! But not actually, because that would require an obscene amount of magic power that I don't have access to."

  "When I give the word, I want you to use it on the worm. Got it?"

  "On the worm? Are you sure?"

  Nathan nodded. "Trust me."

  As soon as he said those words, all the tension drained out of her. "If you say so, then I'm certain it'll work out for the best."

  Okay.

  That wasn't weird or worrying in the slightest.

  The worm was speeding through the air like a very angry meteor with a personal mission to ruin Nathan's life. He was pretty sure he could see the atmosphere lighting on fire from the sheer speed of the worm's entry.

  Nathan readied [Astral Fishing].

  It got closer.

  Nathan waited.

  Closer.

  "Now!"

  Nathan snapped open the portal. At the same moment, the fishwoman cast whatever spell or skill she was planning to use. Her hands lit up red and the worm sped forward—

  and went directly into the portal before it had a chance to stop itself.

  Nathan snapped the portal shut and breathed a sigh of relief.

  "Done—oh yeah," he muttered. "If it got back to the Nine Circles on its own, from the cold wastes of outer space, it's probably going to be back again."

  Nathan stared at the point where the portal had closed.

  "Oops," he said.

  After taking a minute to find his clothes, Nathan wandered back through the ruins of the town. The priestess was directing groups of people and pointing them in the direction of a building in the far distance.

  One of the men bowed his head and said something that sounded like words of gratitude. The woman shook his hand and the two separated.

  When she turned around, she caught sight of Nathan and sped over in front of him. Nathan grimaced. He supposed that he needed to collect information, so it was probably for the best to have this conversation, no matter how much he wished he could avoid it.

  "You're him, aren't you?" she asked.

  Nathan squinted his eyes.

  As far as he knew, he'd never run across this woman, and presumably she would have no possible way of knowing that he existed.

  Which meant this had to be a case of mistaken identity.

  "I think you have me confused with someone else," he said.

  "No, no! You match his description perfectly! The legendary Fisher King—we've been waiting for you ever since we've been receiving the divine Patch Notes!"

  "Wait, divine Patch Notes?" Nathan held up his hand. "I still don't even have your name, we should probably fix that."

  She looked away and brought her index finger's knuckle to her mouth, then nibbled into it like some sort of gerbil.

  "I forgot to give my name again, I got overly excited," she muttered. "It always seems to happen."

  "Hello?" he asked. "I really just kind of want to do the introduction thing, if that's okay? And then after that hopefully get some information on what the hell you're talking about."

  She shook her head back and forth and tugged her hand out of her mouth. She held out her hand—the same hand she'd just been biting on—toward Nathan.

  "My name is Charity. Just Charity."

  Nathan stared at her hand. There was still a small amount of saliva dribbling down her knuckles.

  He reached out and awkwardly took it, doing his best to avoid the spittle. "I'm Nathan Lee." Nathan paused. It would be bad if people were able to trace where he'd been.

  "On second thought, my name is Nathaniel."

  She tilted her head. "Is Nathan a nickname?"

  "No. In fact, I've never been called Nathan by anybody in my entire life."

  "Then why did you give it as your first name?"

  "I had a sudden brain aneurysm that affected my judgment."

  "What's an aneurysm?"

  Nathan clapped his hands together. "Okay, we're getting off topic. Can you tell me where I am, who the current leadership is, and what you mean by divine Patch Notes?"

  "Of course!" She grinned widely. "Praise be! I have an opportunity to be of service to the Fisher King himself!"

  "Yeah, that, too. Where on earth did you get that title from? And why exactly do you think I fit it?"

  "Oh! You don't know of the divine Patch Notes. That makes sense—they did say that you were an outsider from beyond the Nine Circles."

  Nathan's jaw dropped.

  "You know what the Nine Circles are?" he asked.

  She nodded solemnly.

  "It is a prison. My people—the Lillards—have been trapped in it for our failure to escape when we were given the chance hundreds of years ago. Since then, we've been awaiting the arrival of the second apocalypse, when our chance to escape is given to us."

  Huh. So they were just aware of pretty much everything.

  The information had actually been passed down from generation to generation almost totally accurate... except for the bizarre religious connotations.

  "How exactly would you escape?" Nathan asked.

  "The Delvers of the Apocalypse—the greatest among them are granted Soulbound Towns. It is our destiny to join the Citadel of the Fisher King and escape with his aid."

  Well, that was good. There would be no need to convince the leadership that they had to get on board with the Soulbound Town escape plan. They were all perfectly willing to join up on the spot.

  "You keep on going back to this whole divine Patch Notes thing?"

  She reached into her robes and pulled out a book. She presented it to Nathan in the same way one might present a crown to a king.

  "The scriptures—your scriptures, Fisher King."

  Nathan hesitantly reached out and took it like it was a live grenade. The cover was white and completely blank. No identifying markings to signal it as anything other than a normal book.

  I hope this doesn't wipe my mind or something, he thought.

  He opened it up to the first page.