Helianthus

It was night by the time Ven ended up waking up. The three of us were still in the middle of cleaning. I guess he thought we were still under attack because he immediately started trying to get up and run. He only calmed down after we told him how Quinn had managed to tame Mangetsu. Ven seemed rather impressed by this.

"Oh! Can I examine Mangetsu? I've only read about it in books…" he trailed off.

"Was Mangetsu always around that shrine?" Quinn asked.

"Well, when I lived here, our Mangetsu was supposed to be slumbering within the shrine," he replied. "It was only supposed to wake up when…" His eyes widened a little bit.

"When what!? When what!? Don't just trail off there!" Liam cried.

"The Demon King awakens," Ven began nibbling on his thumb.

The three of us looked at one another. Liam didn't bother to bring up the random buff he had received earlier.

"So, like, is the demon king on this island?" was Liam's next question.

"H-heavens no!" Ven shook his head. "They say the Demon King resides in a castle on the mountain of death. I read that in a book once."

"...So there is a chance he's on this island," Liam replied.

"Wha? This isn't the mountain of death! Flamel Island was once full of life!" Ven cried.

"Well, it's looking pretty close to a mountain of death right now," Liam retorted.

As Ven started regaling Liam with stories of the island, I decided to go clean up the kitchen. Why this was actually fun in a video game, I wasn't entirely sure. In real life I would probably groan the entire time while cleaning.

I grabbed a pot from the wood burning stove that was still full of stew. From the stench alone it was safe to say that the stew was way past its expiration date. I didn't wanna throw it on the ground outside of our house, but it didn't seem like there was anywhere else to dispose of stuff. Maybe when the town had been active there was a way, but since the population had been reduced to four, I doubted any of us knew of a way to dispose of anything.

I went to a nearby alleyway and disposed of the contents.

When I went back inside, Ven was talking to Liam and Quinn about "Guilds". In short, guilds were cliques. He was asking if the three of us would like to form a guild with him as the guild's representative.

I remembered reading something about this while waiting for my brothers to get home. Unlike other games you couldn't form a guild all willy nilly. You had to have a high enough affection rating with an NPC and ask them to serve as your guild's representative. Even with a high enough rating, most NPC would decline. As a result there weren't very many guilds. Most of the guilds that did exist were run by high level players with fancy titles.

Apparently a lot of them weren't very newbie friendly either, at least that's what I got from what I read. But, that said, the guilds were also very cutthroat when it came to recruiting. As soon as they would see someone without a guild, recruiters would close in immediately.

"So how about it? Would you like to form a guild with me?" Ven said with a wide smile.

Liam and Quinn looked back at me.

"Well, leader?" Liam asked, sarcastically.

I promptly smacked him over the head.

"Sure…but I have a question. Why do you want to form a guild with us? You barely know us," I asked.

Ven pressed his two index fingers together and looked at the ground.

"You guys went the extra mile to protect me from Mangetsu even though you could've died. I feel like I owe you guys my life. Plus, I like you," he paused for a moment glancing over at me before looking at Liam and Quinn too, "three."

"Can we keep him, mom? Please?" Liam said with his hand clasped together.

"Shut up, you," I pushed him over.

"So, uhm, how about it? I'll just be in charge of overall guild duties," Ven said, giving us a pleading look.

[NPC VEN WOULD LIKE TO FORM A GUILD WITH YOU. ACCEPT/DECLINE]

Even though Ven was nothing but pixels, I actually felt kind of bad for him. Imagine coming back home after three years only to find that your island has undergone a drastic change.

I hit accept.

[CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR NEW GUILD. PLEASE ENTER A NAME.]

"Dammit, it's asking for a name now," I rubbed my temple, "I hate naming stuff."

"Is that why you named your character Lucky? You couldn't think of anything else?" Quinn asked.

I nodded.

"How about The Darkness Prevails?" Liam suggested. His wolf ears perked up at this.

"No," Quinn, Ven, and I replied almost immediately.

"Tch, fine. What about Top of the Universe?" Liam asked.

"Do you want people to try and kill us on purpose?" I replied.

"Fine! You guys come up with something!" He snapped, crossing his arms.

I looked at Quinn who just shrugged in response. Ven stared at me expectantly.

"This is a lot of pressure," I said, scratching my cheek with my index finger.

I paced the room back and forth while I tried to think of a name. I thought back to when I used to play a lot of games and the various names I would use.

"How about…Helianthus?" I said turning to the group suddenly.

"Better than The Darkness Prevails," Quinn muttered.

"Shut up."

Ven got to his feet. He clapped his hands together. "I quite like the name Helianthus."

"Then it's settled," I nodded.

I input the name Helianthus and after a few confirmations from the system:

[SERVER ANNOUNCEMENT: HELIANTHUS GUILD HAS BEEN FORMED BY LUCKY.]

I opened the guild window.

There was stuff like Guild House, guild members, guild ranking, etc.

Under [LEADER] was my name, of course.

Under [GUILD REPRESENTATIVE] was Ven's name.

I added my brothers to the guild.

Quinn was given [SECOND IN COMMAND] and Liam was given [THIRD IN COMMAND]. I expected Liam to get a bit uppity about his rank, but he seemed like he was okay with it. Quinn had been our MVP in the battle against Mangetsu so I thought it was only fair.

"Thanks, Ven," I smiled at our NPC buddy.

"O-of course!" He stammered, nodding his head repeatedly.

—

By the time we finished cleaning it was the middle of the night in game. Surprisingly only two hours had passed in real life. Not that I was complaining. I had to work in the morning.

Quinn told Liam and I how if we put our characters to sleep in game it would give us a well rested buff. That meant our stats would go up by 10% as long as we had the well rested buff.

There were enough beds in the house for us all to get one. I was designated to the child's room, since I was the shortest of the group. Liam and Ven slept in the room next to mine, and Quinn was given the biggest room since it also had the longest bed.

Sleeping in the game actually felt like going to sleep. It was really strange. I had to remind myself repeatedly it was a game and not actually real life.

—

I woke up to the sounds of light knocking. I hurriedly got out of bed, grabbing my bag on the way to the door. I opened the door and in it stood Ven. He had a smile on his face. "Hello, Lucky," he said, "The other two have been up for a couple of hours. Did you have a nice rest?"

"Sure did, Ven," I replied. "How about you?"

He put his hand under his chin. "I think I had the best sleep I've had since returning here. It's thanks to you guys, really."

I merely gave him a smile in response.

At that we headed into the kitchen, where Quinn and Liam were sitting at the table.

"Welp, we're all here. Should we finish escorting Ven to the shrine since Mangetsu is out of the way?" Liam said, standing up.

To be honest, I had totally forgotten about our quest to escort Ven to the shrine.

"There's only one Mangetsu in that shrine, right?" I asked Ven.

"That's what the legends say," he replied.

"If we get attacked by another one, Quinn here can just call his Mangetsu out to protect us, right?" Liam said, turning to Quinn.

Quinn nodded.

"See, it'll be easy peasey!"

We noticed something rather odd when we left the town. There were actually monsters such as slimes and the like wandering around now. We could see them scattered about the hill outside of town.

Maybe because Mangetsu had been roaming about all of the monster had gone into hiding. It made perfect sense. If I was a monster I wouldn't want to get caught by a crazy looking wolf 10x my size.

Of course when Ven saw this, he immediately stopped walking beside me and hid behind Quinn. Quinn didn't seem to be bothered by this. I was kind of excited. I wanted to try out the single skill I had on weak mobs.

As soon as we were close to one of the slimes, Quinn held out his stick and said: "Oh, Mangetsu, please aid me."

His stick started to glow purple before emitting a bright purple-blue flash.

When I opened my eyes I expected to be staring at the giant wolf that had nearly eaten all of us. Instead all of us found ourselves looking at a cute super fluffy wolf that looked like a pup version of Mangetsu.