Chapter 9: First Step to Level 2

Thomas woke to the sound of his nephews arguing.

“Dad! Ashton took the last of the milk!”

“Did not, shithead!”

“Dad! Ashton called me a shithead!”

A third voice piped up, just as loud as the other two. “Shut up, you’ll wake Uncle Thomas!”

“Too late.” Thomas sat up on the couch and leveled a glare over the back at the other side of the room. The three hellions, otherwise known as his nephews, were sitting at the kitchen table. Two of them looked slightly abashed at waking him. Meanwhile, Ashton, the oldest, was chowing down on milky cereal like he had been on starvation rations for months.

“Boys,” Derek, Thomas’s brother, said in a perpetually tired tone. He was firmly planted in front of the coffee maker, waiting for the elixir of life.

That set all three boys off again, squabbling with one another.

“It’s not my fault!”

“Ashton started it!”

“Murmph,” Ashton defended through a mouthful of cereal.

Thomas rubbed at his eyes. It was nearly seven o’clock, and he was surprised he had slept this long. The moment the boys were awake, they were noisy. He had probably needed the sleep. The moment he had come home late last evening, he had hidden his loot, then flopped down on the couch and passed out.

“Boys, you’re supposed to be guests here, and guests are polite,” Derek said in a long-suffering voice, though there was no bite behind it.

The boys all soundly ignored him, continuing to snipe at one another. It seemed that Ashton had not, in fact, taken all of the milk, but there was barely enough to get the other two’s Fruit Loops wet.

How long was the Fruit Loops company going to remain in production? Things were still chugging along as best Thomas could see, but what was going to happen after the six-month countdown…?

Firmly shoving that out of his mind, he got up, went to the refrigerator, grabbed a carton, and plonked it down between the other two nephews, Kingston and Braxton. And yes, their mother had come up with those names. Presumably, she was already thinking about splitting. Thomas liked to call them Huey, Dewey, and Louie, but had received blank looks in return. Kids these days.

“What’s this?” Kingston asked, looking at the carton with a wrinkled nose.

“It’s lactose-free milk. It tastes almost the same as the regular stuff, except it’s five bucks a carton. Bon appétit.”

Then, with that, Thomas shuffled off to take a shower. He had, thankfully, washed his hands up to his elbows right before he had passed out last night, so no one had spotted any shark blood, but he was still sweaty and gross.

When he got out, he was feeling slightly human again.

And the small apartment was still in an uproar with arguing. This time, it was Ashton versus his father.

“I don’t need to go to school. This is so stupid,” the fourteen-year-old snarled. “I’m going to be a dungeon diver. Let the little kids go to school. They still need to learn their ABCs.”

Derek sighed. “Ashton, I know it’s a new school and things are hard—”

“This is so stupid. I don’t need an education. No one does. Colleges are all going to be gone by this time next year. I’m not going to graduate high school!”

Ashton was at what Derek liked to call a ‘difficult age.’

Even worse, Thomas wasn’t sure he was wrong, and he did have the right to be ‘difficult.’ As soon as announcement day had come, everybody in the family had decided to circle up back where the family had started, in Tahoe. But it wasn’t like single-family homes in a tourist town were plentiful. So Thomas, being the generous brother he was—and not without a little prodding from his parents—had offered up his two-bedroom apartment.

That meant three boys in one bedroom, Derek taking over the second room which was more like a converted closet, and Thomas sleeping on his own couch.

This is temporary, he told himself, though he wasn’t sure how temporary it was.

He quickly dressed and, on leaving the bathroom, decided to throw fuel on the fire with his own observation. “You still have to be fifteen years old to get your gift, squirt. There’s no point in dungeon diving before that.”

“I could be training for it now,” Ashton shot back. “I could be really good before it’s my time.”

“Enough,” Derek said, with a rare edge to his voice. He cast an exasperated look at Thomas, as if this were his fault, even though Thomas was trying to be on his side.

The boys heeded their father’s warning, and Derek bundled them off to school. They could take the bus, but Derek had left his job behind in Sacramento and had time to drop them off: Ashton at high school, Kingston at middle school, and Braxton at grammar school.

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Thomas loved his nephews (and sometimes even his brother) but still let out a sigh of relief when the door closed and the apartment was quiet again. It was hard when they were smashed together like sardines.

Quickly, he went to make his own breakfast, scarfing down an instant oatmeal without tasting it.

As soon as he was done, he went to the linen closet, which was the one place he was sure the boys would never voluntarily open, and took out his Taco Bell bag full of gems. He had added his loot from the Octopus’s Garden last night. Then he spilled it all out onto the table in front of him. The mana crystals caught the artificial kitchen LED lights and glittered in a way that looked alien.

“What am I going to do with this?” he asked, gazing down.

But the answer was obvious: sell it.

He could also use them. Maybe.

Thomas flashed to Zach juggling fire like it was something that wouldn’t burn him, but he didn’t really have a desire to do any of that. As much as he joked about throwing fireballs, facing the real thing was… intimidating.

Quickly, he grabbed a cup of coffee and his laptop and started rereading the introduction guides. To his immense disappointment, he had misremembered a little bit about the healing mana crystal. It wouldn’t work with his parents until they unlocked their gifts.

He couldn’t imagine his delicate mother willingly bringing a weapon down on a demon chicken or his father completing a dungeon when he got out of breath going upstairs.

At least, he couldn’t imagine them doing these things alone.

I could go with them, he thought.

But his two dungeon runs had been way too much excitement and danger. He would have to get a lot better before he felt comfortable dragging his elderly parents along in there.