Broken

Chapter 42

Knowing why I needed to enter constant three-star instances, didn't make the grind any easier to take. Over the last month I'd been in more instances than bathrooms... that wasn't even an exaggeration. Each instance dive lasted anywhere from half a day, all the way up to five days! So I had been in instances more than my fancy new apartment at the guild.

This had brought about one good thing; if you could even call it that. The press had caught on to the fact that Chaos had started to send out their lower-tiered members at an unprecedented rate, speculating correctly that the newest 'big guild' in Titan-Fall had started to fast track their way into the tower.

That didn't mean that the press had given up on me, it was just that the attention had been spread out a bit, focusing on Eric, Greyson, and Alex now as well. When I was home, I often heard news blurbs about many of the Chaos guild members. Most of the reporters were just as confused and intrigued at the exponential growth of the guild, and what it was their goals could be. The general consensus was that they wanted to climb the tower as soon as possible.

Having now spent a great deal of time with the three other men, I'd gotten to know them all a little better. At least on the surface... they were still pretty tight lipped about their pasts or families. But, then again, so was I.

I had come to realize that Alex clearly had much less classes at the university than Yejun. There was no other way that the young mage could enter so many instances otherwise. There were still times that I, and the twins, went into one without Alex, but more often then not he was there. According to Alex, his attendance at Titan-Fall University was mostly a formality. Apparently his father had insisted on him attending and graduating, but Alex explained that he had already outgrown the in-class studies. The practical classes were still useful, but he was acting more like a professors assistant in the rest of his classes.

At this exact moment, we were in what had to of been my tenth or eleventh instance in the last month, and it was the strangest one so far; structurally speaking. It was a biome best described as a jungle. It was hot and muggy, and I was constantly surrounded by dark, waxy plant life, strange flora, vines, and everything was just damp. What was strange about it was the fact that it was also structured as a type of maze. All this greenery was growing on very tall stone walls that rose high up above me. On top of all that, we'd been in here for nearly two days now yet it had remained night the entire time.

Currently we were taking a long break, half of us sleeping while the other half kept watch. I was supposed to be sleeping as well, but found myself still awake, contemplating life and my role in it. Deep thinking wasn't really my style, but I had to admit that I was beginning to stress.

By now Greyson and Eric had actually reached four-stars. Both were asleep either side of me, not a care in the world, having spent the day cutting through various monsters like it was a competition... I was fairly certain that they were treating it as one, actually.

Carson kept sending them into instances with Alex and I, even though they had reached their goal of four-star. He explained that it was just more efficient to keep the twins with us till we all get to four-star. We had gotten used to one another's fighting habits, and it wasn't like the twins couldn't do with even more experience- especially working with other people. And, apparently, they work better with others while I'm with them.

Along with us, the other guild members take turns 'supervising' our training. For this instance, Bryce was the one following us around. He was currently keeping watch with Alex and the other random members of another guild that had been sent to clear this instance.

Why were we here with another guild? Easy, because it was against the law to enter an instance without at least ten raiders. With me added to the mix, Chaos finally had ten members for their main strike team, but it was also true that it was rare that all ten of us were free at the same time. Meaning that we had to group up with other guilds to clear instances and train.