As I am finally hauled off the bridge by Shankhe, as Dalyva is too tired, I look around with curiosity. There are heaps of purple cows gathered in the area. I take my backpack off, and look towards where Dalyva is lying on the ground.

“Guys, I think we should set up camp. It’s a safe area, so we’re better off sleeping now than being tired later.” I say, as I approach one of the cows. “Shankhe, want to help me defeat some cows for food?” I ask.

He nods, and slowly gets up from where he was sitting. He turns to Dalyva. “You want to as well?” He asks. she shakes her head as she just lays there, tired. As we walk over to one of the cows, I notice how Shankhes hand is still purple from punching the rat. “How’s your hand?” I unplug my bottle. He grimaces. “It’s alright, maybe the purple just needs to wear off.” He says optimistically.

I send out a stream of sand, fast and sharp towards one of the cows. However luck was on its side, and it managed to dodge. Having been aggravated, it rushes us, head down, horns pointing straight for us. Both of us move out of its way, and it rushes past us. It whirls around, and starts to rush us again.

“You can attack this one.” I say to Shankhe, wanting to observe how he fights. He nods, and pops open his bottle of water. The water flows around him, like a sash, as he faces the cow head on. As it charges towards him, he sends out condensed water bullets, deadly to any with no defenses. The cow moos in anger and pain as the bullets mask intact with its skin, but that doesn’t stop it from still charging forward recklessly. Shankhe carefully aims, and shoots it right in the chest, the cow falling forward from momentum, dead.

I look towards him, grinning. “Nice one!” I compliment.

I get the cow and tie its feet together. With both ends of the rope in my hand, I look around for a decent log to tie them to. Shankhe finds one, and we roll the cow onto its side, tie the rope holding its ankles to the log, and haul the log onto our shoulders so we can transport it back to where Dalyva is, as the cow had made us move quite a way away from where she was.

I got out my fire making materials, as Dalyva had taken some initiative and gathered plenty of sticks while we were gone. “Why didn’t it go into that rainbow smoke?” She asks me as I place some newspaper under the sticks. “Oh, it will, it’s just a passive monster, so a person has to initiate the looting.” I say. “It’s just because many prefer to skin it themselves.”

I look to Shankhe. “So, do you want to carve it, or loot it?” I ask. He thinks, and says. “Loot.” I turn to Dalyva. “You?” She also replies. “Loot.” And so I hold my hand to it, and say. “Loot.” It’s instantly turned into loot. No coins, because it's not a monster, but plenty of meat and the hide as well.

I get out three slabs of stone, two I place on either side of the fire, and the third one on top of those two slabs, making a cooking station. I get out some of my spices, and get my dagger to make light cuts on the surface of the meat, putting the spices and herbs into the cuts.

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I cook them up, and hand everyone a piece of meat. It’s not too hot, and Shankhe washed our hands using his water, so we were fine to eat it barehanded.

As they had set up camp while I was cooking, we could now just tell stories around the campfire. Shankhe started. “I had this boy in my village.” He said, trying desperately not to chuckle. “Whose dad ran a fruit stall at the markets. One day we were eating some of the fruit which he was supposed to sell the next day, and as I went inside to get our drinks, his dad walked past and caught him in the act of eating it.” Dalyva looked at him shocked. “NO!” She said in disbelief and surprise. “Yeah.” Said Shankhe, chuckling. “He has to do fruit dealing after that for a week. Today was only day one.”

Then it’s Dalyva’s turn to tell a story. “Well, when I was younger, and too young to attend at the scholar academy of Dajennuan there was a library that I would read at all the time, except it was only supposed to be for scholars. I’d read books on top of the bookshelf to not be caught by the strict librarian. Anyways, I was reading once, and one of the cats, Aki, decided to be mischievous.”

I look at her in interest, wondering what’s going to happen next. “He was next to me on the bookshelf, and the strict librarian was passing by, except he wanted to be patted, even though he meows really loud and would immediately get me found out, so as he pawed at my hands, he got so annoyed he just launched himself at the book, and it, along with him went toppling down…”

She held it for suspense, as we looked at her like she had done an egregious crime.

“And landed on the librarian’s head.” We all burst out laughing. “Suffice to say she was not happy.” After minutes of laughing and telling minor stories, we eventually settled down to sleep.

The next morning I put my stone slabs away, and all the camping gear, and we started to move on. As we walked through the field, some of us tried to wake up. Dalyva yawned, glaring at me as she walked. She wasn’t happy about getting up early, but the way I figured, this part of the labyrinth would take a while to walk, and it's a way for us to get stronger. “Let’s jog for a bit.” I say, starting to slowly jog. Shankhe was fit, and he went for a jog with me, despite the early wake up and sore muscles from yesterday.

Dalyva however wasn’t used to having sore muscles and doing lots of exercise as a scholar, so that was one thing we would have to change. Being in a labyrinth like this, we had no time for weakness as we journey further into more dangerous parts of the labyrinth.

As we jogged, I slowly noticed Dalyva lagging behind. She was out of breath and puffing, her cheeks red, and as I stopped, she bent over, hands on her knees as she tried to regain her breath. I handed her a water bottle, and she chugged it down.

“We’ll just walk slowly.” I say, motioning for Shankhe to stop. “Everyone should work together. If someone is lagging behind because of where they came from or what they did before, we still help them.” Shankhe pouted, clearly having enjoyed jogging and having plenty of energy to spare.

“You can do push-ups if you want and we can rest in one spot.” I offer. He thinks for a couple seconds, considering it, before eventually deciding it wasn’t worth it. As we walked, the distance became more clear, and what did we see in the distance? Low and behold, a bridge.

Shankhe started to put his foot on the bridge, but I pulled him back, just as a giant hammer came swinging down from the roof, whooshing past, inches from his face. “Idiot.” I say. “Always check before walking onto a bridge.” Dalyva cries. “Whyyy?!” As she sees the giant hammer, which is a cylinder of metal with a huge log of wood sticking out the top hanging from the ceiling, I turn to her and smirk. “Isn’t it great!” I say sarcastically, before saying seriously. “Not a nightmare hag at least.” I shrug.

“The bridge has about…” I count the hammers above the bridge. “10 hammers, each three metres wide and with a one metre gap between them. Not bad.” I say. Shankhe nodded as well, having been observing all of the hammers as they swung down almost synchronised. “All of them swing about in unison, a ten second difference between them as all of them swing every 10 seconds.” He observes. Dalyva shivers. “Do we have to do this?” She asks nervously. “Well, unless you have a secret specialisation in wind that we don’t know about, yes.” Taegan says, looking at her expectingly. She sighs. “Nope, I’m still a blood specialist.” Of course, she had told them this before when they were telling stories by the campfire.

Begrudgingly, she looks across the bridge. “Any takers for first, cause it’s not me.” She hurriedly says.