Never Really Gone

Chapter 48

Nora's POV

As you'd assume, having a woman by your side who hasn't been to the Overworld in eons is a challenging task.

Stella's almost been hit by a car twice now, had the living daylights scared out of her by a CCTV camera, doesn't get why people stare at her bright purple hair, and is currently freaking out over ice cream.

"HOW DID THEY MAKE IT THIS GOOD?!" She gasps, her magenta eyes lighting up like stars. I can't help but smile at the sight of her, beaming from ear to ear with a bit of chocolate smudged on her cheek. It's honestly kind of adorable.

"I don't know, that's just food these days" I tell her with a shrug "But hurry up, we need to get back to the Hub soon"

Not really sure how to go about our plan, we'd mostly been hanging around the Portal Hub, planning out a way to get to Hermitcraft. It was tedious, but Stella's company made it better.

We'd decided to take a bus toward the centre of the city once I realised Stella had never had ice cream before, deeming the lunch break necessary.

Pouting slightly, she quickly finishes her food and gets up. Thankfully, a bus had just pulled up at the stop, and we got on just in time.

"Ok, so when would be the best time to try and execute the plan?" I ask

"I don't know... we're mostly relying on chance and timing, so we won't know the moment until it arrives"

"That's... an issue"

"Yeah"

Most servers have a whitelist, that basically allows only certain players to enter the server. It's basic knowledge. Powerful Watcher magic can temporarily disable a whitelist, just long enough to let a player in.

There's two flaws in that plan. One, a portal leading to that server has to be open. Two, if someone is entering or exiting the world, you have to go through the portal as it's open, and they're more than certainly going to notice you, unless you're invisible.

My guess was that the only reason Xisuma was able to pull Grian through the portal to Hermitcraft, was that my nephew had already been whitelisted there just in case X found him, and was therefore able to go through.

Seeing as neither of us are on Hermitcraft's Whitelist or have invisibility potions, this plan will be hard to execute unless it's Xisuma himself heading through the portal, in which case he might let us through.

And seeing as the young Admin is basically at risk every time he comes to the Main World, that's going to be an extremely rare occasion.

I'm distracted by a sudden weight on my shoulder, and I'm pulled out of the maze I call my thoughts.

Looking over, I see that Stella's fallen asleep, and her head is resting on my shoulder. My cheeks turn slightly pink as she cuddles up close to me, a smile on her face. Smiling too, I wrap an arm around her, making sure she doesn't wake up.

Part of my brain begins to scream at me for this. I've been alone for so long, I've been fine in my own company, I've never needed anyone before... and suddenly here I am, letting a girl I've known for 2 weeks get to my soft side.

Not that I mind of course...

I think I like the company.

Hels's POV

I scrap our 27th plan, throwing the crumpled up piece of paper behind me and into the growing pile on the floor. BadTimes has given up entirely, and has decided to doodle little cats all over the paper instead of helping.

"And you're super sure that you can't teleport us into there?" I ask again, my friend simply rolling his eyes.

"Of course not, Hermitcraft is such a secure server. Unless Xisuma was rewriting their entire whitelist, I doubt they'd-"

His eyes suddenly light up, like he's onto something.

"Unless he was rewriting their entire whitelist... or they moved severs, and he was still setting it up!"

"Move severs?" I repeat.

"Yeah, they always move onto a new place after a year or so, and they're currently on their 6th one! So when they move to Season 7, we take advantage of the temporarily weak security and BOOM, we're in!"

"How long ago did Season 6 start?"

"About 7 months ago, but that's ok! It probably won't last for that much longer."

"But what if they don't move?" I ask. "What if Season 6 never ends and we'll never get to them?"

"Eh, I doubt it." BadTimes shrugs. "They'll move... eventually."