Chapter 415: Shadows on the New Continent

Luke reached Evangeline in the middle of the crowd. She stood out instantly, perched on the roof of a wooden house and still dressed like a ninja. Two crows circled above her, which meant Jerry was already searching for the others.

Among the cheering, relieved faces, there were plenty of confused ones too. Luke learned that everyone had arrived at the exact same moment, even though they’d entered the portal minutes apart. He didn’t know much about physics, but he knew enough to guess the teleportation had dropped them all into the same point in time.

And apparently all of them had experienced the same strange dream. Each had been visited by a figure calling itself a Guide.

“So there I was, and suddenly this scarecrow appears,” Evangeline said, mid-story. “He told me he volunteered to be my Guide and even tried to recruit me into his order.”

Guides could recruit people?

Sigil didn’t feel like someone trying to recruit Luke into any kind of divine order.

“Wait, you idiot. You’re not supposed to tell me about your Guide,” Luke muttered, then dismissed it. “Evangeline, I need you focused on finding Allison and the others, got it?”

“I am focused, Snow White. Why don’t you use your rank skill on my crow?” she shot back.

She scanned the area through her binocular skill while the two Jerrys flew overhead. Luke stayed beside her with knives in hand, half-expecting Jonathan to pop out of nowhere and fire a crossbow bolt at her while she was distracted.

“So that Jonathan guy really was alive the whole time and actually Quinn,” she murmured as she searched.

“I’m going to kill that bastard,” Luke said under his breath.

Jonathan might have been angry about what happened with Angelica, maybe he’d misunderstood everything or been manipulated by Bartholomew. None of it mattered anymore. Luke would kill him. If Jonathan had only come after Luke, maybe he’d have offered a chance to talk. But Jonathan had hurt Allison. He had actually tried to kill her. And Luke would never forgive anything done to the people he considered family.

“I found the short healer,” Evangeline said, meaning Jack. “Eleanor too.”

The village around them was total chaos. The locals were running everywhere, trying to contain and explain the situation. From what Luke gathered, the residents were actually employees from various modern governments. This place was some kind of military settlement.

One of the crows swooped in from afar, guiding someone through the crowd. Luke kept scanning for any sign of Jonathan—or Allison.

“Luke.” A man’s voice called out.

He turned immediately, throwing knives raised, ready to strike. But the moment he saw who it was, he froze. He recognized the figure standing there. Someone he hadn’t seen in… a very long time.

“Allison?” he asked.

It was Allison’s male form. The same young man he’d traveled with across the frozen lands during the early tutorial. And now he was back.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

“I… used my necklace,” the male Allison said quietly. “To, you know… get out of there and come here with you.”

Right. I invited her to come live with me in Maine.

Luke had been moving on pure instinct when the weight of the moment finally hit him. Allison wasn’t back in her family’s estate in the New World, trapped and powerless. She was here. With him. Free. And for the first time since the portal opened, he felt the brief, dizzy spark of something close to hope.

He jumped off the rooftop and sprinted toward her… or toward him, technically, since Allison was still in a male body.

“You’re really okay?” Luke asked, hands running over the man’s shoulders, checking for injuries. “Really okay?”