Broken

Chapter 9

Not surprisingly, the news made a huge deal over the sealed instance incident. For nearly two weeks it was just about the only thing they wanted to talk about. Though this was mainly due to the anti-instance movement types.

These wackos came out of the word work every time there was a tragedy, or controversy, around instances, the towers, or the raiders themselves. Mostly they wanted the world to go back to how it was before magic and monsters were real, and some of these groups would stoop to just about anything to make their points heard. Yet not a single one of them seemed to want to propose how in the world we were supposed to turn back time and prevent it all from happening.

I really did not understand them at all. Like, were we supposed to just ignore the instances and hope they just vanished? So stupid.

Still, they were making a stink once again; not that much of anyone was listening.

Most people were focused on Andrew Parker and the Northern Paladins guild. He was the real hero after all. The rest of us decided to stay anonymous.

For me, the reason was obvious: I was still doing my best to be sure no one learned about Broken and all the trouble it causes. Hell, I was sure that the tabloids would be full of people accusing me of causing the incident if it ever came out! I wanted nothing to do with that.

As for the twins... Well, I was pretty sure that they just didn't care. Fame or no fame, they just wanted to fight monsters.

It was nearly a week after the sealed-dungeon that Yejun had burst into my room, looking stressed. I had sequestered myself in there for everyone's safety till my karma backlash had settled, and normally Yejun knew better than to come in lest I freak out that he would accidentally have a lamp fall on his head or something.

But he came in looking annoyed, shoving his cell phone in my face.

"Would you please message them!" He had snapped, shaking the phone about three inches from my nose as I sat up in my bed. "They are driving me crazy, and I need to focus!"

Glancing at the name plastered on the screen, I saw that my poor brother had about thirty messages from both Greyson and Eric, no doubt all of them nagging him to get me to contact them.

That was how I was now part of a group chat I had labeled 'Morons'. I had thought that the pair would have put me out of their minds after a few days; they were scatter brained like that, after all. But I had assumed wrongly. Apparently they had been nagging my brother every day to make sure I got their numbers.

To my surprise, I found myself talking with the pair quite often, and had even given up on insisting that they were not my brothers- mostly. 

Now, nearly two months later, my life looked surprisingly different.

First of all, I was jobless once again. Work places might be more lenient with raiders these days, but me being trapped in a sealed- instance, then spending a week trapped in my home, was just a little too much for the coffee shop to put up with. They had to let me go.

Thankfully, the mana stones that we had brought back from the Cryst-Canis cave sold well, and we didn't suffer too bad. Yejun kept the ones he wanted, of course, but we pawned off the rest. It covered our expenses for a time, as well as made up for the rest of Yejun's tuition.

Another change was just how much I wasn't holed up at home anymore. The sealed-instance actually saw me leveling up quite a bit! Shocking what being aloud to actively participate in monster fights could do for a girl's leveling efforts. 

Under the twin's encouragement, I decided to start funneling stat points into other areas, such as my strength and intelligence. It vastly improved my effectiveness in a fight. That wasn't surprising... It was just, before now, I had a rather negative mind set, and let others walk all over me in instances.