For a cheap and lazy man, a room in reality and a room in fantasy were very much the same, which was to say meagerly furnished. In reality, however, that man needed to make some concessions to accommodate living with his girlfriend, which needed attention, care, and half-decent furniture. Yggdrasil demanded no such requirements. So it was that when he got off a long shift of tending the bar at the back of a busy restaurant, he logged into his DMMO of choice and booted into a dark, squalid chamber with nothing but a private chest for his unneeded belongings in it.

Nut pulled up the player roster first thing. Two names appeared on the virtual dossier as 'online:' Hunk and Blaze. Not bad, but not good. Wasn't that big raid supposed to happen today? They would need a bit more of a concerted effort to plunder the dragon's hoard before the updated rolled out and resigned the ol' lizard to irrelevance possibly forever. Then again, the idea had come together pretty suddenly. Not a lot of people could jump in on short notice for an emergency dungeon run like this. To be honest, Nut wondered why he was bothering. He doubted he would have much use for the rewards in question, and he doubted that the guild's leader or the raid's real beneficiaries would show him much gratitude for it. He guessed he just needed something to do, to work out the piss and vinegar bottled up in him by his lousy shift.

With the use of his guild ring, he began warping around Nazarick to find where everyone was meeting. It took only a few tries to turn up the spot, that being one of the usual meeting places. Nut materialized at the end of the graveyard, spotted a hulking oni and bored-looking kitsune kicking back amid the tombstones, and started floating their way. “Hey, hey,” he greeted them, his voice masked by a distorting filter that suited his character. “What's shaking? We've got more guys coming, right? New dungeons take forever to beat for the first time, and if we're on a time crunch two fire-spitters and I aren't gonna cut it.” Nuttirbuttir's ghastly avatar began its idle animation, moving its arms in rhythmic circles as if channeling some unseen ritual.