Josh didn't have any choice, didn't have any time to think. He rushed forward with a yell, hand raised over his head, and activated both [Chop Wood] and [Hands-Free Crafting] at the same time.

He didn't expect it to work. A Viridian was a monster, not a plant. Many techniques and spells simply wouldn't work on one or the other, no matter how many similarities they seemed to have. And even if [Chop Wood] could theoretically work on it, he wasn't sure that [Hands-Free Crafting] would really let him get away with it.

But it did.

A deep divot appeared in the tree, sending up splinters of bark, exactly as if he had swung his ax. The tree recoiled, fleeing instinctively from the blow. At the same moment, Josh received a notification.

CONGRATULATIONS! New art learned: Empty Chop. Cut with your willpower, combining magic and skill to shape the power as you see fit. Does not require a weapon. Certain bonuses can be applied by channeling this art through a weapon. Damage of attack is influenced by Strength and Power, speed of attack is influenced by Dexterity and Flexibility, size of attack is influenced by Constitution and Capacity, and cost of attack is influenced by Perception and Sensitivity.

He blinked. An art? He had earned an art, this early? He was only level 31!

Arts were basically combinations of techniques and spells, and required both stamina and mana to use. They were expensive and often hard to learn. On the upside, they also received all the benefits of both physical and magical stat scores. Josh hadn't used his Strength or Power to put any extra force into the art, but it had still done real damage to the tree. The monster was leaking sap like blood, and still wouldn't get close to him.

He glanced at his mana. His absurd Perception and Sensitivity scores meant that the art only cost 1 point of stamina and mana. But his mana was still low, and he didn't have the time to properly meditate to recover it. Still, with his talisman runestone and Ruth's addition to the citystone, his mana was currently at 5, out of 6 maximum.

Five more times, he thought. Just got to finish off the baddies with five more hits.

He wasn't even sure he could finish off this first one in five more hits. There would be more behind it.

Before he could come up with anything like a plan, Ruth ran up and shoved something into the wound in the tree's side. She then ran back, grabbing his hand and pulling him along behind her. “Come on!”

He glanced over his shoulder. “What did you—”

The grenade exploded.

Josh and Ruth had learned early on how to use a steam explosion to make grenades. At the time, they hadn't been able to figure out how to make pure fire grenades, at least not cheaply. He had told Ruth it was better this way, because it reduced the chance of them setting themselves on fire.

As it turned out, being too close to a steam explosion with plenty of shrapnel was only slightly better.

Sharp shards of wood from the bottle cut through the back of Josh's legs as they ran. He cried out and covered his head as he stumbled. Ruth pulled him up again. She was fine, probably because she had been shielded by his body. At least he had enough armor to cover the rest of his body. Good thing, too. The attack had cut right through their shrouds.

Still, his legs were screaming at him, and he swore he could feel ragged shreds of flesh flapping in the wind. There was too much warm, sticky wetness; he was bleeding, and bad. They needed a healer. Ruth never had found a Life rune, meaning she couldn't make healing items.

Ironic, considering she had advanced to Enchanter with a Mender bloodstone. Or at least he thought that was ironic. Was this one of those things that looked ironic but actually wasn't? Like an oxymoron?

His head was foggy. He needed to focus. Pain and shock were making his head swim, and the blood loss probably wasn't helping. Drawing on a lifetime's experience with [Combat] classes, he forced the feeling aside for a brief moment. He slowed to a stop, leaning against a tree—not another Viridian, thankfully—and quaffed one of those disgusting recovery potion concoctions.

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Ruth had stopped with him, and clutched her hammer as she looked around, eyes wide. The hammer's rune-chain was glowing, so she had it activated, and it didn't weigh much. Still, he was surprised she could lift it. How many points had she put into Strength?

“I hope Mayor Vashti figures out how to get Alchemists soon,” he said. His throat felt and sounded raw. “I really want potions that don't taste like they were buried in a swamp for three months.”

“She's working on it,” Ruth said, sounding distracted. “Most magic classes combined with the Woodcrafter bloodstone just make Enchanters.”

Josh was pretty sure that Alchemists were actually a non-magical class, but he didn't have time for that discussion now. Besides, bloodstone combinations didn't always make sense. He knew for a fact that combining the Samurai class with a Swordsman bloodstone created the Steelsinger class, which focused on levitating blades to attack your enemies.

A distant scream forced his attention back on what was important. “There's a bugger full of fights out there,” he hissed. “This is too big to be random. Sounds like someone is having a run at the town.” The stupid tree had just been their bad luck to run into. This was something else.

“Bandits?” Ruth asked.

Josh shrugged. “Could be. Could even just be monsters.” Monsters raided towns sometimes. Gathered in hordes and attacked in waves. It was why towns had walls.

Ruth furrowed her brow. “They're after the citystone?”

“Or the people.” Monsters gained power from killing humans, from eating bloodstones, and most of all from eating citystones. Villages always had to deal with attacks, because they were basically filled with everything monsters wanted to eat.

“Do...” She paused, before starting again. “Do you think this is my fault?”

Josh stared at her. “Wot?”

“Because of the citystone, I mean,” she said in a rush. “I upgraded the citystone, and poof, there are monsters! What if they sensed what I did and came and it's all my fault just like everything—”

Josh chopped down on her head with his hand.

She fell silent, too shocked to do anything but stare.

“Monsters attack villages,” he said, tone solemn. “It's that simple. I don't care if they did or didn't notice what you did, it's still not your fault.” He gave her a stern look. “You understand?”

She looked like she was about to cry. “But—”

He raised his hand to chop her again. “I said, understand?”

“Ack!” She cringed back, covering her head. “Yes, yes, I understand!”

“Good.” He patted her gently on the head. She was so much smaller than him. She felt fragile in a way that he didn't like. “Come on. Let's find the others, see if we can help the town fight off this horde. How many more grenades—”

A bat monster came swooping down from the sky. It screeched at them both, then started glowing with a dangerous orange light. Ruth shrieked and swung with her hammer. It might be supernaturally light right now, but the chiropterean was still lighter. She knocked it off into the trees like she was scoring a home run.

There was a distant explosion of light and fire. Ruth looked surprised. “Did I do that?” She looked down at her hammer.

“That was a Bomber-type monster,” Josh said. He looked around, trying to keep his eyes open for any threat. “They aren't natural.”

She frowned at him. “Huh?”

“Monsters don't evolve into Bomber-types on their own.” Or, if they did, they exploded five minutes later and humans never found out about them. “That bat was sent by a Tamer who trained and evolved it that way on purpose.”

Ruth blinked her wide, innocent eyes. “But... this is a monster raid. You're saying there's a Tamer working with the monsters?”

“Maybe.” There were a thousand possibilities. Could be that a Tamer was just trying to take advantage of the situation, or they had started this whole thing. He didn't think the details mattered. “The point is there's an enemy Tamer out there somewhere.”

“Okay.” Ruth gripped her hammer tighter. “Okay, okay. Let's—”

Josh never had a chance to hear what she was planning to do, because he was caught up in the charge of a Jungle-touched horse the size of a small tank.

He had been hit by charging monsters before. Usually when he had a Combat class and more than four points in Constitution, but he knew how to handle getting bowled over. You went limp for the impact and hoped nothing was broken too bad when the Menders arrived. Any flailing around was likely to just get you injured worse.

Unfortunately, this turned out to be the exact wrong thing to do when a Jungle-touched horse reached down with its mouth, grabbed you by the collar, and picked you up like a misbehaving kitten.

Josh had just a second to see Ruth's horrified face before he was carried out of sight, out past the edges of the village while monsters howled and people screamed.