Rico came back to camp like a conquering warlord.
Mostly because he expected to be received like one.
Phong was still half trapped in a quiet moment with Alex when the raccoon arrived. He had been sitting near her under the softer lights of camp, letting her play with his hair again while pretending he was not enjoying it. Alex had one hand in his hair, idly combing through the longer strands with slow fingers, and Phong was caught in that awkward place between annoyance and peace.
Little Fireball, meanwhile, had tolerated Alexei enough to sleep in the chicken coop again. She still went to Phong's lodge to watch K-drama until very late at night, though.
Rico burst into the edge of the firelight.
"Victory!"
Phong looked up with the expression of a man whose rest had just been personally insulted.
Alex's fingers did not leave his hair. "That sounded self-important."
"It was," Phong muttered.
Rico puffed out his chest and kept going anyway. "War successful. Rich bastards humiliated. Rico contribution immense."
The camp gathered around fast after that. Dominic came in from one side, Joanne from another, Jack, Janet, Jake, Emma, even some of the half-awoke elves drifting nearer because Rico's tone promised drama.
And the raccoon delivered.
The first big news came immediately: one of the Wolven had evolved.
The one who stole the Vorpal Sword had crossed whatever threshold his species needed and become an elite variant. Rico described it with great hand motions and even greater exaggeration, but the core of it was clear enough. The battlefield, the risk, the rare weapon, all of it had completed the ritual in one brutal stroke.
Then came the contract results.
The Tortura had the agreement they wanted, the Kamohai got the food payment they had fought for. The trolls were safe, treants were undisturbed and the Greencap Knights had showed up to force a retreat from the human. No issues there. And then, to Phong surprise, the Wolven didn't keep the Vorpal Sword they stole from Olen. They returned it to the Greencap Bunny captain.
That one made more people go quiet.
Phong looked toward the edge of camp where the Wolven and Greencaps did the exchange, and noticed the way both the wolves and the bunnies kept their distance, and how certain glances lingered. It was too sharp to be casual, too old to be fresh offense, and it was not his problem, at least not tonight. But he saw enough in the set of their bodies to know there was history there, the kind that had teeth.
He decided, with the wisdom of a tired farmer, not to touch that problem with a ten-foot pole.
Instead, Phong threw a party.
He was still knee-deep in sleep debt and would probably stay there for another week, but a victory was a victory, and Camp Stymphalian had earned one warm night where thanks to its network of alliances, the rest of the world was kept at bay.
Dominic took over cooking at once, and that was a mistake for everyone's arteries and a blessing for morale.
"Baby back ribs," Dominic announced, like he was revealing a holy vision.
Jake cheered, Joanne raised both hands in immediate approval, Jack just nodded once like he had expected nothing less. Bruno clung to Dominic, effectively begging for the right of first taste. Nyx slept near the Tortura, enjoying the quiet unique to old tortoise people. The Wolven, now high on battle success and young male stupidity, challenged the Greencap knights to a hunting contest before the fires were even fully set. Just enough words, enough pride, and enough history between two warrior species that everyone nearby knew this had become a matter of deeply personal nonsense.
Rico protested about losing his spotlight, just for Phong to find the raccoon snoring inside a crate of moletatoes 15 minutes later.
Two hours after the challenge, the hunting parties came back hauling a boar the size of a school bus.
It belong to neither side.
Both sides, grudgingly, because apparently the competition had escalated beyond reason and then landed on "kill the most absurd thing available."
The camp lost its collective mind.
Phong stood there staring at the carcass for a second, then slowly turned to Alex.
"That is too much ribs."
Alex looked at the boar, then at him. "There's no such thing."
Phong snorted.
At some point during all of it, he ended up standing beside Alex in front of the giant rib rack while someone took a picture. The ribs were taller than Phong, stacked and hung for prep like some prehistoric monument to bad decisions and good eating.
Alex stood straight, one hand on her hip, looking absolutely too pleased with herself for dragging her low-key, socially awkward boyfriend into a selfie.
Phong, meanwhile, still looked like he had not fully recovered from being alive this whole week.
He looked horrid in the picture. Only under camera lenses did Phong realized how big his eye bags were, and how shriveled his hair was from all the playing Alex did to it. He still liked it regardless.
Dominic got to work smoking the ribs with the focus of a man whose religion was barbecue. The smell of smoked rubs alone started changing the whole mood of camp. Phong took the cheek meat for himself, because some things were non-negotiable. He used it for grilled pork cheeks, the kind of drinking food that always vanished too fast in Vietnam because everyone with any sense loved it.
Half the belly he handed to Dominic for bacon, while the other half went to Phong for char siu. The rest were shared among the allies of camp Stymphalian. Trolls took the hind trotters. Wolven wanted the head. Kamohai and Lizardmen bickered about who got to have the stomach and the intestine. The Tortura asked for the tusks. The Greencap bunnies took the shoulder meat and immediately started making a salty brine to preserve it.
Even then, Phong looked at the amount of meat still left and groaned.
"We either need to start paying the lizardmen mages for ice magic," he said, "or we need a bigger fridge."
"Bigger fridge," Jake said immediately.
"Obviously bigger fridge," Joanne agreed.
"That is impractical."
"It's funny."
And that was how Phong lost the debate.
Emma, seated with Rico in her lap again because she had decided raccoon ownership was now a social category, said, "Ice magic sounds more elegant."
Rico murmured while half-asleep. "Imported soda also needs cold storage."
Phong pointed at him without looking. "You are not the priority."
"That is a lie."
Meanwhile the Mushroomires settled into the scorched land in ways that felt more and more right the longer Phong watched.
They took the boar livers, pancreas, and the bones no one wanted, carrying them away in small groups or hauling them together in larger clusters. The bones, the innards then became food for their fungal roots. Whatever exact fungal purpose they served, the Mushroomires seemed visibly calmer when nobody stopped them from taking what the others discarded.
The simple act of letting them belong enough to clean what others left behind seemed to be the factor that calmed them down.
Later, after the meat had been set to smoke, after enough food was underway that nobody would starve while waiting, after the fires settled into a deeper orange and the camp slipped into the easy noise of people temporarily safe, Phong and Alex found a quiet place beneath the lime oak tree.
The elf children gathered there too, because of course they did. They were like sharks when it came to their dad, and almost could sniff out Phong's sense from miles away. Alex had a book in hand, sitting in an almost lady-like posture that people rarely saw from her. Phong had every intention of staying awake. His valiant attempt lasted maybe ten minutes.
He sat beside her, then a little closer, then let his head drift down until it rested on her shoulder.
Alex adjusted without comment.
By the time she started reading aloud to the elf children, Phong was already asleep.
The image would have looked backward to some people.
The woman sitting straight and steady, the man asleep against her shoulder, the children gathered around her feet and knees listening to the story.
Normally, in old stories, it went the other way. The lady leaned on the gentleman, the man held the line while his woman softened against him.
But neither Phong nor Alex cared about that.
She could be stoic and feminine around him without contradiction.
He could be awkward and nerdy and deeply unheroic in the way he rested against her without contradiction too.
That was one of the reasons they worked.
Around them, the camp breathed in warmth and smoke and victory.
The lime oak leaves stirred softly overhead. Mushroomires moved in calmer paths near the healed land. The elves listened to Alex read, interrupting now and then with questions that only half made sense. Rico, somewhere near the fire, was probably being overfed by Emma and loving it while pretending he was oppressed.
And Phong, with his head on Alex's shoulder and his body finally giving in to rest, slept through all of it like a man who had fought too many wars in too many different ways and had, for one night, earned the right to be still.
On the surface, the footage hit like a bomb.
Josh's failed skirmish had not exposed Camp Stymphalian, but it had shown the world two things that mattered far too much.
First, it was the coalition against the advance. Theories about how the high-level monsters of Floor 1 seemed to have formed some kind of alliance against divers flooded the internet like a plague. It was bad for the optics around divers and diving the elites planned to spin after the Holiday in preparation to the national divers' league.
Second, and even more important depending on who you asked, there was a strange treant-looking monster in the middle of it all, one that did not show a status menu when being appraised from afar.
And the internet exploded. News channels ran the clips over and over again, experts and content creators talked over shaky battlefield footage. Theory videos about another floor boss, a juvenile catastrophe tier entities dominate all major platforms. Footage of the Fortress Form even made it into Pornhub and Onlyfans where divers in revealing outfit tried to cash in on the latest trend. Politicians got dragged onto social medias as the public demanded an answer.
Back in Camp Stymphalian, Rico nearly threw himself into the screen.
"That's me!" he screamed, bouncing in place and stabbing a claw at the image. "I'm famous!"
The recovered footage showed Fortress Form from a distance. The rounder armor, the barrage of chilies pods, enoki shots, carrockets, and Ice Lime blasts turning the slope into a living gun line.
Most people in camp were too stunned to answer right away.
Because this was their first time seeing the full thing too.
Jake stared at the screen. "That is disgusting."
Joanne slowly lowered her cup. "You were a whole artillery platform."
Jack rubbed a hand over his face. "How did you even think of this?"
Rico puffed up so hard he nearly became spherical. "Raccoon genius."
Emma tried to use appraisal on the armored Rico, and indeed, nothing come up. She then tried to appraised his armor, and immediately information about the baby treant started filling her status menu.
She tap a finger on the couch she was sitting, and said: "Interesting. Appraisal differentiate its target with intent. Good to know. And I can see why people compare you to a floor boss."
Rico didn't have a status menu full of red ? like a floor boss. He didn't have one at all. But to the panic public, that was close enough to a floor boss to send shiver down people spine.
Phong stood there watching the footage in silence for a moment.
Then he leaned slightly toward Alex and asked in a low voice, "Is this how people see my garden."
Alex smirked immediately.
Then, because she could, she poked him lightly in the ribs.
"Worse."
That got agreement from every direction, and from every species, human and monsters alike.
"Way worse," Jake said.
"Much worse," Emma added.
"Yes. Farmer had been a very bad influence. I'm a victim." Rico nodded his tiny head.
One of the Kamohai snorted, a Wolven laughed into his drink, the Tortura slightly retreated into their shells, even Thassir gave the smallest nod that somehow carried judgment.
Phong accepted this with the tired face of a man who already knew the answer and had only asked out of doomed hope.
On the screen, the public argument had already become political theater.
One live debate had spiraled completely out of control. Two politicians, both too polished and too eager to win the moment, were talking over each other while the footage of the battlefield kept replaying in the corner.
One side wanted to push harder, crush the monster alliance now, before it could grow stronger or move toward the gate. Use more force. More divers. More military pressure. Hit the problem before it became something bigger.
The other side warned that this was exactly how nations got trapped in ugly, draining quagmire while rival powers caught up elsewhere. They kept dragging the comparison back to the Vietnam War, talking about overextension, enemy territory, bad assumptions, and the cost of underestimating locals who knew the ground better than you ever would.
The volume kept rising, but neither side really had a plan beyond winning the argument. In the end, the debate finished the way most surface debates did: with lots of heat and no real answer.
Camp Stymphalian, meanwhile, had much better priorities.
The ribs had been smoking for twelve hours, long enough to make the entire camp smell like victory.
So while the surface shouted about alliances and treants and monster fronts, Camp Stymphalian did what it always did best.
It fed people.
Or fed people and monsters, which at this point was basically the same thing here.
The feast started before sunset and kept growing.
Ribs were cut and passed around by the stack. Char siu glistened under the firelight. Grilled pork cheeks vanished almost as fast as Phong could plate them. Bacon crisped up by the fire side. Broth simmered on the cook top. More food came out than what should have fit into one night, and somehow there was still not enough for how many mouths now counted as allied.
The lizardmen ate with cool dignity at first, right until the second serving made dignity less important than speed.
The trolls devoured whole racks like it was a tribal right. They complimented Dominic for what he did with the best part: the bones. Dominic looked deeply betrayed like he was abandoned by barbejesus.
The Greencap bunnies ate in that fast, effective and discipline manner expected from an ever moving nomadic tribe, that somehow made the sight of sticky sauce on whiskers even funnier.
The Wolven treated the whole thing like proof that joining the war had been the correct life choice.
The Mushroomires took bones and softened scraps and clustered near the edges of the feast, calmer than they had been days ago.
The Tortura joined them, eating slowly, deliberate with every bite they took.
The Kamohai ate like food was going to be stolen in mere seconds if they did not swallow them in on gulp.
And Rico?
Rico had received unofficial Wolven citizenship.
Same as with the treant, same with the trolls, now the raccoon had more nationalities like Phong had ex girlfriends.
Three drunk Wolven had pulled him into the middle of their group, forced a drink into his paws, and declared that any creature crazy enough to turn into living artillery and help steal a legendary sword in battle was close enough to kin for the night. Rico, of course, accepted this, since Rico had never turn down a drink of any kind.
"I am a Kamen Rider," he announced, then immediately spat the wine out.
"This taste like betrayal!" Cried the raccoon.
The Wolven ignored what Rico just did entirely. One slung an arm around him and shouted, "Brother!"
Another corrected, "Tiny brother."
Rico accepted that too, mostly because he was given another soda to clean his palate from wine, and he needed the Wolven as distraction to steal some extra pork cheek.
Phong watched the whole thing from beside Alex, one hand over his face for a second before giving up and letting the chaos happen.
The surface had no answer.
Camp Stymphalian had smoked ribs, too many allies, and one raccoon accidentally becoming an international incident and an honorary wolf in under 24 hours.
In Phong's opinion, that was the better outcome.
For one night, at least, the camp was full.
Not with fear.
Not with politics.
With food, warmth, drunken shouting, and the rough, impossible shape of a community that should never have existed, but had stubbornly sprouted inside the dungeon anyway.