Chapter One Hundred Eleven

Joe’s scream swept into the air and Gwenvair rushed to his side, even as mana began to swirl within her and come into being. Despite Gwenvair’s certain actions, desperation was obvious in her cries.

“Joe! Joe! I… what… Don’t move. It will only fan the flames. There is little I can do, but my wind mana may be of some help.”

Kalia interrupted, both in fascination then quickly followed by dismissal, “Girl! What are you… pah! Your little wind mana will do nothing. This is elemental Fire. Are you capable of elemental Wind?”

Gwenvair grimaced, tears beginning to run down her cheeks as she shook her head, “No. Not elemental Wind.”

Joe, for his part, both heard and could care less of the conversation going on around him, the flames burning through his skin with a crisp crackling of wafting cooking meat that both titillated his tongue and twisted his stomach in disgust at realizing the source of his watering tongue. He ignored it as best he could, but at best could only scream out his question while grunting in pain and leaning over himself.

“What do I do?”

“Don’t let it touch any other part of you! Sit up and away!”

Joe immediately jerked away from the flame and moved his left hand up to the bicep of his right burning arm, his forearm burning in a cheery line across the top of his forearm. He grimaced, grateful that only the top of his arm had been burned.

“Why?!” Joe’s cry climbed to a screech as pain overwhelmed his control.

“It will burn anything it touches. See your spear?”

Joe glanced over and saw his spear, half on land and half in the water, dancing in brilliant red flames, even underwater, and Joe grimaced, looking down at his arm again through boiling bubbling water. The water did nothing, or seemed to do nothing, although the water was essentially boiling and with it, boiling the top of his arm. The water is getting hotter… He saw his skin further and further from the flame visible reddening and immediately behind the red wave, boils began popping up and Joe grimaced! Boiling water… not good…

His mind raised then he removed his left hand from his arm and began sweeping it back and forth within the water, then immediately swapped to a circular motion while also spinning his entire body. The new cooler water… Joe almost sobbed in relief as the parts of his skin that had been resting in boiling water quickly found relief in the new cool water. However, the top of his arm still burned, his top of his forearm long past boils and third degree burns and now becoming darken charcoal as his arm burnt. His thoughts churned and he could only seek one thing. He’d long stopped listening to the other three, with Gwenvair rather desperate in seeking help from Kalia and Xylarnae. Xylarnae was sympathetic, but offered no solutions, and in fact was busy holding Stephliquen back from rushing to Joe’s side. Kalia was flat in her concerns, lips curled in disdain as she spoke curtly with Gwenvair. Joe noticed this only peripherally, the burn so all consuming that it was all he thought of. Gotta get rid…

Joe blinked and quickly held out his left arm before calling for one of his knives in his inventory. He suddenly almost stopped in fear at realizing that in all his tests, all items recalled always came to his right hand, and he stared with worry that the knife might appear in his clenched fist, and he quickly struggled to open his hand. Pain ruptured his concentration, but his focus turned back to his efforts and he sighed in relief when he saw the knife appear in his right hand and fall further into the water.

He moved his efforts of keeping his arm cooled to simple sweeping motions as he turned to his right so he could look down into the increasingly dirtied water. Please, please, please, please… Joe’s mind no longer thought clearly, panting chants the only thing he was capable of to keep his mind focused as he dropped his left hand into the water and swept it looking for the knife. He’d kept his eyes on where he was certain the knife appeared, and while he knew sweeping his hand across the bottom looking for a knife was a good way to chop off some fingers, he held little concern for it, all thoughts on his burning forearm. Knife… knife… knife!

His hand slapped against something hard and metallic and his fingers snapped onto it without concern, sliding along it. The pad of his middle finger sliced open under the sharp edge, but all he felt was relief from the burn on his right arm as the slice distracted him from the burn. The relief, however, was so fleeting that Joe found himself struggling to think, his fingers fumbling for the weapon, more slices riddling his fingers and palm before he was able to get it grasped in his left hand. He was right hand dominant, and while his martial arts masters had regularly trained him to use his off hand, using it while struggling with a burning boiling arm wasn’t something he’d really practiced. Gotta get the flames off… gotta get them off!

He then tilted his arm to the side, turning it over as sharply as he could, allowing the flesh to slip off to the ground without allowing the flame to burn anything else. He pulled his left hand up and placed the dagger blade at his elbow, a few knuckle spans above the flame, then grit his teeth hard. Don’t think, do it… do it… do it… With a growl that quickly shifted to a guttural roar, he sliced into his arm a good centimeter or so and sliced it all the way down to his wrist. As he sliced down through the skin of his forearm, he grimaced in pain and suddenly froze before continuing on through his forearm, but now concerned with worry. Crap! Healing! Status, current job … he then calmed, relieved to find that he had a regen mage job currently equipped. Too slow… He quickly swapped out to a healing mage, having to waste a bit of time looking at his available jobs list to find the name of the latest one he’d leveled. That meant he had to slow the slice of his dagger, wanting to be able to heal his arm before his HP took over. This is… pretty bad… donno if I’ll have the HP to heal my arm…

His job switched over, he finished the swipe with final rapid slice and the flickering flames fell with sliced skin into the water where it began to boil the water. He didn’t even notice, his mind quickly turned inward as he began desperately directing his healing skill towards his arm. The wound ripped at his conscious like claws through soft flesh, pain crushing his ability to think, so all he ended up doing was falling back on the system skill, punching the heal button over and over again while focusing on his right forearm. His mana fled like water into the desert, gone as soon as hit his wound, and soon he was dipping into the mana within his mana points, shoving mana towards the system as it automagically healed his wound.

The wound healed so slowly, the muscle, tendons, and tissue reappearing with slow agony as his mana evaporated before the massive wound. Joe quickly came to realize his system granted mana was a drop in the bucket compared to the mana his mana points offered, but that also was annihilated before the massive wound on his arm. When he was dry of the two mana pools offered him, he hit the wall of his own personal mana which seemed to be outside the system, although Joe wasn’t certain on his mana points either, considering that his mana points appeared to be incredibly unique amongst all people in this cradle. Still, his thoughts were on curing his wound, and he saw some hope for it as it had recovered almost just about half. He was certain he could have done much better with much more finesse, but the pain and the sight of the inside of his arm was certainly something he hadn’t really considered before nor be confront with. A certain amount of disgust welled up within him as he struggled to keep the bile down. Man… guess other animals don’t bother me, but… seeing myself ripped open… He swallowed hard and turned his thoughts to pushing his own personal mana into the wound.

He struggled hard for quite some time, pushing his mana up into where it was yoinked by the system and shoved into whatever mechanism that enacted the healing on his arm. And it was a rather violent ripping of his mana Joe could almost ‘feel’ in some way, as it came out and was forcibly rushed into the work of healing his arm. His arm continued to heal, and passed just over the halfway mark, if Joe was eyeballing it, and Joe found it increasingly hard to push his mana into healing his wound. He was soon back to grunting hard, forcing the mana out into where it could be taken and he increasingly felt like he was squeezing an ever emptier bladder of some kind, the last of his mana coming out in spurts and starts.

By now, the pain had greatly receded and Joe was growing ever more aware of his surroundings as the focus needed to squeeze his mana out was already spent, but that lost to the distraction of pain slowly came back to awareness. He saw Gwenvair at his side, rather dizzy in her worry for him, and dancing ineffectually between touching or holding him and busily occupying herself. Kalia stood in front of him and stared down at him with an amused humor, seeming to be a tiny bit impressed while simultaneously dismissive of him, looking down upon his efforts. Xylarnae seemed most interesting, standing by his side with a calm that belied all the others concern, even Kalia’s which slid under her dismissive humor. Joe glanced up at her and Xylarnae nodded with a smile, and Joe noticed her relief rather quickly, and Joe nodded back at her.

Stephliquen seemed the most unconcerned as she watched on, her amazement obvious in her avid examination of his wound. When he started looking around and glancing at others during his pained grunts, she quickly realized that he was, in some ways, winning the fight so jumped in with excitement.

“How are you doing that?! Is that matter formation? Energy matter transformation? That is incredible! What ar…”

“It… hurts! Is what it is,” Joe gasped out, interrupting her.

She grimaced and withdrew a bit, “Ah… yeah, sorry. That … it’s…”

Joe noticed her struggled then huffed in laughter but sounded more like just one of his many painful grunts as he pushed against the pain and squeezing his mana out, “Pretty cool, though… huh.”

Stephliquen quickly grinned and nodded, laughing, “So cool!”

Happily for Joe, Stephliquen stopped at that but came to his side and began giving almost a mild snake bite on his elbow, just above the wound. She grabbed his upper arm with both her hands, clenched rather tightly, then began twisting the skin of his arms in opposite directions. Her right hand rotated counter clockwise and pulled his skin away from herself towards his body while her left hand rotated clockwise, pulling the skin of his arm towards her. She then did this rapidly by rapidly alternating the rotational directions but always in a way that her two hands rotated opposite of one another. Luckily, she didn’t squeeze too hard, but enough to pull at his skin lightly. She made up for the lightness of her ‘snake bite’ by increasing the speed of her rotation, rapidly alternating back and forth between clockwise and counter clockwise for both her hands and soon his arm was burning under the sting of friction. Joe almost jerked his hand away in surprise but then sighed with almost pleasurable relief when the added distraction of her snake bite pulled his thoughts away from the once burned now scalloped flesh of his right forearm.

“What ar….. oooOH! Thank you!” Joe gasped out in relief even as he turned his thoughts more fully on squeezing out what mana he could, pushing through the now growing pain of mana exhaustion to heal just that little bit more.

“Yeah… I do this all the time. Adding sensations, especially to just above the wound, can help distract from the actual wound. I prefer to use more pleasurable feelings, like a tickle or a light brush, but this one looks bad and sometimes you really need to push it to overwhelm the incoming sensations. Probably all placebo, if I were to guess, but it helps me, so…”

Joe sighed and simply nodded, “Helps me… a lot… never really tried on a massive wound like this, though… more small burns and cuts.”

She nodded, “Then explain what you’re doing … after! Don’t stop. That looks like a nasty wound. Not sure how much help or treatment you’re going to get here.”

Joe huffed again, but this time it was much easier to recognize as laughter, “Ironically, what’s happening now… I don’t think your people or mine would have been able to do this. Magic here is pretty powerful… for this kind of stuff. Instant healing… basically, although … I’m not sure if my HP can handle this… so kind of hoping to burn what MP I have… although my personal mana is still… so out of my skill set. Struggling to understand how that even works… seems like a … bladder control issue… weird to me seeing as I never had mana before… that I have a sphincter holding it tight… and I have to push through it… I would think… if it was so new to me… that I would have to learn… to hold it in, instead of … squeezing it out… but then again… so much of the stuff here… is so weird… like… why are monsters inedi…”

“Focus! Focus!” Stephliquen interrupted.

Joe’s thoughts snapped back to the moment and his eyes back to the wound. He was still pushing out mana in fits and starts, and his heal seemed to be snapping up what little mana was coming out, but it was quite a bit less than what he’d been doing before. He quickly grunted, squeezing hard and a small torrent of mana erupted outwards again, and he watched as the healing of the wound visibly sped up again before quickly slowing as Joe struggled to get the last of his mana out. As he began to run almost completely dry on mana despite his efforts to squeeze out even more, he flipped up his status to look at his mana, and found it essentially zeroed out, each small tick of a single mana point immediately drained away and Joe realized that the healing effort was taking mana from anywhere it could get it, so he pulled his mana points in once again and released the mana from the points. The healing swelled once again, but quickly waned, dying out once again despite the continued help from the mana points as he simply left them ‘open’ somehow and allowed the mana to saturate deep within himself where the healing construct was sucking away his mana and using it to heal his arm.

Now that he was a bit more cognizant, he was able to feel the mana somehow shifting then zipping up his chest towards his right arm and down it before swarming across the wound and doing what it was supposed to. Weird… the mana comes out… changes… in what, quality? Purpose? No… well… maybe a little… somehow… but also… no… something else… something is added… not sure what… and then it just… goes… no more added… it just …

Suddenly, the last of his grunting efforts released nothing, and Joe quickly felt the healing construct grow demanding. Almost… hungry? Can’t really explain it! Joe desperately dug in and tried to squeeze any amount of mana out, but the healing ‘thing’ grew unstable and more demanding even as the small trickle of mana he was getting from his mana points, his system, and his own personal mana points proved incapable of meeting demand. A few moments later, the healing object somehow dispersed, leaving nothing in its wake even as the mana that had made up the construct collapsed inwards then rushed towards his arm and healed his forearm. Huh… pretty efficient… even the mana from the thingy that was creating healing mana is used to heal the wound… although… where di the first healing mana come from? To become healing mana… Is it healing mana? Does mana change aspect… purpose… something?

His thoughts were pulled from his distraction even as the last of his mana hit his wound and Joe grimaced with concern, as the cut still showed unhealed muscle and blood vessels, going deep past the subcutaneous fatty layer of his skin. This is…

Joe’s thoughts snapped as the last of the healing mana hit his wound and sparkled, doing something Joe wasn’t certain he understood beyond what looked remarkably like having his wound healed with a biomatter printer, as it were. When that last bit of mana did its thing, suddenly, the wound was gone, the entire thing replaced by a completely healed forearm. Relief hit Joe even as he closed his eyes and sat back panting, now in an overwhelming relaxation from the pain instead of in effort and harm.

“Wow… what was….”

Joe grunted, “Not me. That was my HP. Told you about it.”

“Right… that was a lot faster… why didn’t you just let it do it?”

Joe grunted and looked over at his status and then whistled, “Hoo… I as lucky there.”

“What?”

Joe waved at his status, “Used up all my HP. Don’t have a single one left. That…”

Joe glanced down at his arm and then squinted, realizing that he hadn’t actually been completely healed. He reached up a hand and touched his skin the grimaced, sucking in a breath and pulling his hand away fast.

“Never mind… didn’t heal up. I didn’t even have enough HP to finish healing.”

“What do you mean? Looks good to me?”

Gwenvair interrupted and began patting Joe down, “Are you OK? You are OK? Right? Things are OK! You’re arm is healed? It is OK?”

Joe looked up, nodding, “Yeah, yeah. Things are OK. Still a bit…” Joe snapped back with a hiss.

Joe had fallen down into the water a bit during his efforts to heal his arm, resting down on his knees. With the relief of being healed, he’d dropped back down into the water, sitting on his heels before finally dropping his arm into the water as well. When his arm hit the water, he hissed and pulled it back out, quickly noticed the pile of boiling water just off his right side.

“Let’s move away from that scary fire.”

The others quickly nodded and stepped carefully around the still burning flesh of his forearm and the spitting burn on his spear still laying half in and out of the water. The heat from the water where his cut off forearm lay was now creating a massive column of heated water and air, steam rising into the air with the bubbles boiling up merrily. That is… really, really hot to boil it so fast, or… somehow just instantaneously heats up all around it… that’s just... HOT!

When his arm had dipped into the water, his wound had reacted rather quickly with the water, his arm somehow incredibly sensitive, and when he pulled it up to look at it carefully, he realized very fast what had happened.

“It didn’t fully heal!”

Stephliquen frowned at that, “Really?”

Joe shook his head, then hissed as he brushed his hand across his arm. A larch portion of the wound had fully healed, all the way to his skin and even including the hair on his arm, which Joe grimaced at when he realized he’d wasted mana and effort on ‘healing back’ his arm hairs. The whole forearm, from just below his elbow all the way to just above his wrist, had been cut off, but the healing had been from the outside inward, and the areas closest to his wrist and elbow had fully healed quickest, leaving the wound he had been left with to be essentially fist sized in diameter directly in the middle of his forearm halfway between his wrist and elbow. It was still very easy to see it, the lack of hair and the bright pink of new baby skin made it apparent. And when he brushed his hand across it, it lit up his senses, overly sensitive to whatever was touching it. It wasn’t quite pain, but it was really overwhelming.

“It’s… really sensitive. I think it barely made it to the top layer of skin. Although…”

Confusion quickly lit up his thoughts as he went to brushing the other ‘fully healed’ sections of his wounded forearm and compared it to his left forearm. Both felt rather identical in how they responded to the sense of touch. However the small patch in the middle that was turning slightly pink, seemed to be incredibly sensitive to touch, even to the point that when he blew across it lightly, his skin puckered up in goose bumps and the sensation, while not painful, bordered on it.

“Wow… so… it seems like it’s brand new skin… but also isn’t layered in old dead skin layers as well, which makes me wonder how the magic ‘healed’ my dead skin cells? That seems… rather terrifying in implication.”

“That does seem overly powerful. But it certainly is nice to know we have that! I was pretty worried about sickness and disease.”

Joe nodded, then snorted, “Get a couple levels in a priest job line, then you’ll be fine.”

“Priest job line?”

Joe nodded, then snorted, “Oh, yeah… I should help you all get something to unlock your priest jobs… you’re going to need to be able to change jobs, as well.”

“Change jobs?”

Joe laughed, “I’ve been doing it for you the last couple days, but you need a priest line of jobs to change jobs. You can’t just… willy-nilly change your jobs. It’s a part of the priest line to change jobs. Although… huh… I guess we could get you euridite first, real quick. That should be easy.”

“Euridite?”

Joe nodded, “Yeah. It’s a title. You can change your job once a day, which is kind of all you need for a while, until you unlock gifted. That… you’re going to want to do as soon as possible, if you can. But…”

“Gifted?” Stephliquen interrupted.

Joe nodded, “It’s a job. Keep an eye out for it. I’m not sure how it works or where or how to get it … got some ideas, but still not sure.”

Stephliquen nodded firmly, “Euridite, gifted, and polyglot.”

Joe glanced up at her then grinned, “Yeah. You’ll get how all this works pretty quick.”

She nodded again and Joe turned his thoughts to his available jobs tab for a bit before nodding, “Yeah. Seems like euridite would be easy to get. It seems like, maybe. I think all we have to do is something about a ‘vast variety’ of jobs and job types. Not sure if that means a lot of jobs, specifically, or groups of jobs. My hunch is the groups… I remember euridite came around after I opened up a bunch of the job groups like grouping, nobility, and crafting. You’ll only get it once a day, but then you can change to the priest line of jobs easy enough.”

“So you still recommend the priest line?”

Joe nodded, “Yeah, but be careful. They get a daily report for every new person in their priesthood, per job. So, if you change to a job in that line of jobs, they see your face again.”

“Every time you change your priest job?”

Joe glanced at her, paused in thought, then shook his head rapidly, “Oh, no! Not that. The priest line of jobs is something like nine or ten jobs long… deep? Long? There are a series of nine or ten jobs. Each time you unlock a NEW job and TAKE it; you have to TAKE it first, not just unlock it, your face gets plastered on some kind of ‘priesthood jobs’ bulletin and shown to every person that worships that god or goddess that morning. Then it’s not shown again until you open the next job in line and take it. Getting a job a day is… unheard of! Getting it per week or month is also insane. Changing jobs is so rare it’s pretty much a once in a lifetime thing here, it seems.”

“Really?”

“Well… a lot of it has to do with them unable to know what job is next, although I’m absolutely certain the wealthy nobility has a record of a line of jobs and how to get them that they jealously guard and save for their people, but yeah. If you are a normal person, it’s pretty much a random shot in the dark if you get what you are aiming for ‘cause it takes pretty much a couple decades to get to the minimum level to unlock the next job in line.”

“What’s the minimum?”

“Seems like twenty… that’s the lowest I’ve seen. I’m guessing here, ‘cause some of them leveled multiple levels, but things in this system seem to work by fives.”

“Huh. But why so long to hit twenty?”

“Can’t use weapons.”

Stephliquen’s lips curled, “Yeah. What is up with that?”

“Not sure. But seems to be something on the people here.”

“But how are you using weapons.”

“Pretty sure that it was something specific to the people. We have a year to acclimate before things nail us and we have to naturalize our stats. I think the weaponry is the same.”

Stephliquen shook her head, “No. Others found themselves eviscerated when they attempted to take a weapon as well.”

“Then they must have naturalized as well.”

Stephliquen frowned at that, then rapidly shook her head, “You’re talking about making your stats from the system become the primarly stats?”

“Hmm… I guess you could say it like that.”

“The stats that make you think and talk slow?”

Joe grimaced, “Yeah. Terrifying, huh?”

Stephliquen grimaced as well, “Yeah, but no. It’s not that.”

Joe focused on Stephliquen, frowning, “What do you mean?”

Stephliquen shook her head slowly, “Many seemed to have been wiser than I, not accepting naturalization immediately, like you. Most of the subj… people were still highly responsive and reactive to the world around them and those within the city also interacted with the people quite well. Yet, as soon as they took a weapon…”

Joe frowned, “Huh… then… how am I?”

Stephliquen nodded, “One of the reasons why I put down near you… not that that helped. I was captured and taken immediately.”

Joe chuckled at that, “And we still met! Huh! Lucky.”

Stephliquen snorted, “Don’t believe in it.”

Joe grinned, saying, ‘The people here do,” before waving to his status and pointing to the last stat on the list of stats.

Throughout all this, Xylarnae and Kalia remained to the side and watched on before walking to the side and whispering to one another, speaking quietly in deep discussion. Gwenvair, however, grew ever more insistent and upset with Joe before finally interrupting him with a firm and angry cry.

“Joe! Are you well?”

Joe looked up at her, then struggled to hold in his blush. OK… that was dumb!

“Yeah. Yeah. I’m OK. I’m sorry for ignoring you. I didn’t mean…”

Gwenvair shook her head, “No. I don’t care about that. Are you well? Is your injury cared for?”

Joe’s concern melted and a soft smile came to his face before he then grinned and nodded, “Yeah. It’s all good. My arm is fine, if a bit sensitive. It’ll be all better in a couple days even if I don’t do anything.” Although… can I heal this, too? That would be… Joe grimaced, halting the distracting thought and focused back on Gwenvair after he made a mental note of it.

Gwenvair, however, seemed to be done and simply hugged him, grateful that he was fine. Joe sighed deeply, his tension at having bothered or ignored Gwenvair drifting away even as he fell into the hug with her in relief as well. Stephliquen smiled and nodded at him before stepping back and away but as she did so, she stepped towards the spear which was still burning merrily and Joe called out in surprised worry.

“Watch out!”

Stephliquen froze then looked down to see her foot almost right up against the spear. She danced away with an odd curse Joe didn’t recognize but could easily understand as a curse. Gwenvair had quickly turned in her hug with him before rising to her feet and staring at his spear.

“We will be here a long time.”

Joe glanced over at her then down at the spear with a grimace. Can I brush it off?

Joe looked around for a stick. Finding one over the top of the small hillock, he came back and straddled his spear before putting his stick on the edge of it and brushing wildly down it. Maybe scrape off the mana… is there some kind of fuel source/ Gotta be, right? A mana gel, or something? But even as he swiped the stick rapidly down it, nothing changed except for his stick to rapidly catch fire and burn. Joe wildly tossed the stick into the water then looked down at his spear still burning. Well… this isn’t good.

The spear was still mostly unaffected by the flames, but Joe didn’t want it to heat up too much, and finally decided the best thing he could do would be to mitigate the damage. Boiled spear it is… hope it’s delicious… with a dash of forearm and a pinch of stick. He found another stick and this time simply pushed the spear into the water until it was immersed. That should keep the temperature down… hope I don’t ruin the tempering. Joe sighed and then turned back to the others. Stephliquen seemed to understand what he was doing, and nodded.

“Smart. The water will keep the temperature down.”

Joe nodded, “Hope it’s still a good weapon after all this.”

Stephliquen nodded and Joe turned to look at the others.

“So. You guys said it was elemental fire. Can you explain?”

Gwenvair shook her head, “Elemental is… very rare.”

Joe frowned, “You have sparks. That’s elemental lightning… on the first floor of you dungeon. The water frog things in your beginner dungeon. Sheesh, even the snows are spitting around snow… that’s a lot of…”

Gwenvair smirked at that, chuckling with some disbelief, “Those aren’t Elem… well, they do use … that’s not…” she ended with a huff and stared at Joe with disbelief and a hint of confusion.

“One’s elemental. And the other is an elemental.”

Joe blinked at that, confusion reigning for a bit. What’s… “Can you say that again?”

“One’s elemental. And the other is an elemental.”

“Just the two words. Nothing else.”

Gwenvair frowned, considered, then nodded, “Elemental. Elemental.”

Joe frowned, focusing, “Again? Please?”

“Elemental. Elemental.”

Joe glanced to Stephliquen, “Is she saying the same words?”

Stephliquen cocked her head, “What?”

“That… please listen. Is she saying the same word?”

Joe looked back to Gwenvair, “One more time please?”

Gwenvair complied quickly enough, but grew more confused and concerned, “Elemental. Elemental.”

Mana pulsed, the very air growing heavy and Joe’s eyes flickered to look at the growing wave of meaning and power, but it fluctuated and compressed before swirling in an odd uncertainty then dissipating weakly after.

Joe focused hard, pushing to hear the sounds but not quite able to grasp them so turned to Stephliquen who quickly shook her head, “That seemed like two different words. Didn’t even sound really alike.”

Joe looked back at Gwenvair, “Please, one more time?”

Joe quickly swapped out common for French and focused, “Nusnarlagan. Lagan.”

“That’s not…”

Joe grimaced and quickly set his skill back to using common and spoke again, “That’s not the same word, but why am I hearing it the same?”

Gwenvair frowned, staring at him with confusion, “I am gal sunugan.”

“Wait. What?” Apply common, replace French.

Joe spoke up again, but Gwenvair still spoke incomprehensibly and Joe’s frown grew. I want common, please. Why? Realization hit Joe and his eyes widened in wonder before he grimaced. OOoh… this… is not good!

He went to his pack and ripped it open, pulling out his notebook and began running through the notes, piecing back through the notebook to find what he needed. It turned out to be pretty easy, his notes for language having petered out rather quickly after he’d gained the magical ability to speak without concern, and he found the name of the language near the end of his notes on the language itself. Galga… Please set the language from French to Galga.

Gwenvair looked at him with growing concern, “Are you OK?”

Joe huffed in relief, “I’m fine. Sorry. Was doing a test.”

Gwenvair nodded, her own relief flooding her face, “What happened?”

Joe laughed, “I was hearing the same word for elemental, but you are actually using two different words.”

“Of course,” Gwenvair stared at him with worry, “They are not the same thing at all.”

“It seems like it. Could you please explain?”

“Between Elemental and elemental?”

Mana swelled again, flickering and then faded in a weary gasp, accomplishing nothing and fading away. Having a hard time with this? Or… missing a concept? That…

Joe chuckled, “Still hearing the same word.”

Gwenvair nodded, “Elemental is easy enough but Elemental is not something I have… nor my clan has much experience with. It is very rare.”

The mana, this time, welled with more certainty, wrapping around both Kalia and Gwenvair with more deliberate motion and effort before washing towards him. It flickered around him in a wash that seemed focused on his brain and head. It swelled and moved with a purpose before it grew unstable and ultimately wobbled and died out in a whimper of nothingness. Joe frowned to see it. Big problem with translate-o-matic here… He turned back to focus on the others.

Kalia grunted, “I can speak on it.”

Gwenvair nodded, “I am grateful.”

“So what Elementals were you speaking of. Do you have Elementals in your dungeons?” Kalia asked with naked greed.

Gwnevair frowned, “He was speaking of elementals, not Elementals. There are sparks, snows, and some mukfrogs that use englobe with their water magic.”

“That has nothing to do with Elementals. Such weak creatures could never Elementalize,”

Gwenvair nodded, “Yes.”

Joe raised an eyebrow, “But they are shooting out lightning and water left and right. The snow’s are spitting out snow. What … I don’t understand.”

Kalia’s grilling of Gwenvair ended with disappointment and she turned to look back at Joe, “You are equating the use of an elemental with Element?”

“The words are identical to my ear as we talk. I hear no difference.”

Gwenvair jumped in with an explanation, “He speaks a different language and is using magic and mana to translate our words and ideas. Some … oddities have been found in understanding.”

Kalia glanced back and forth between Gwenvair and Joe before she looked at Joe, “You do not speak common?”

Joe shook his head, “Nope.”

Kalia’s eyebrows furrowed, “The entire Great Cycle speaks Common. I know of no place in our Great Cycle that does not speak common. Where are you from?”

Joe stared at her, “My planet is called Earth.”

“Planet?”

Joe grimaced, then sighed, “We do not call our world’s planes. We call them planets. My plane is called Earth.”

“I have never heard of the place. What cradle is it on?”

Joe froze, clenching teeth for a time as he stared at them, then blurted out quickly, “Our solar system has two cradles. We call them Jupiter and Saturn.”

* * *

“Our cycle has two cradles. They are known as Jupiter and Saturn.”

“A dual cradle lesser cycle. You are quite blessed. It is unusual, but I have never heard of them. There are not so many dual cradles that you would be so unknown.”

“I am uncertain of how to say more, but such is the case.”

Kalia paused at that, considering carefully, “It is odd you do not know common. It was spread as the common language for all in the Great Cycle by the Emperor. Are you in rebellion?”

* * *

“It’s rather strange your people do not know common. It was declared the lingua franca for galaxy by the emperor. Are you rebel forces against the Empire?”

Joe felt his heart rate spiking and worry twisting through his gut, too much new data with not enough context left him in a sea of uncertainty. He opted for revealing nothing, for he had no other options. And… why is two gas giants rare? I thought there multiples were rather common… but… not important, focus…

“We are not in rebellion against the Empire,” Joe replied, focusing on the truth of that statement as much as he could while chuckling, “If anything, we are simply the backend of nowhere. No one knows of my people or Jupiter and Saturn.”

“Hmm. My memory is not what it once was,” Kalia sighed with obvious frustration, “It is likely lost when I lost my points.”

Joe nodded, offering commiseration but mostly relieved to not have to explain more, “I don’t know if I could remember every sola… cycle or cradle.”

“Doing so with mortal mind would be almost impossible.”

But then that means there is a way to do it … in another way… an immortal mind? Or another tool? Do they have another way to … but she says remembering, so it would be something linked to memory… not an outsid…

“Then your people do not have Elementals or elementals?”

Joe blinked and looked at here, “Elementals as a basic portion of existence, of course, but we seem to have a meaning that I do not understand for I hear the same word and not two words.”

Kalia narrowed her eyes and spoke once again, “Elementals are simply creatures that focus more specifically to a single portion of the dao, a single element, such as the sparks or the attraction elemental on the second floor of this dungeon. Sparks use only lightning magic while the attraction element uses only attraction or repulsion.”

Joe nodded, considering being a bit nitpicky about the ‘attraction’ elemental using ‘two’ elements of attraction and repulsion but focused on understanding the difference between the two. For the most part, this definition of elemental was something he understood, and was something that was common in literature and gaming. Elementals were often a creature made entirely and only of a single element, thus the name. So a spark, being made up of lightning, would be an element. Such a creature would be impossible in the real world, but here, floating snowballs and sparking balls of lightning that had animal like intelligence seemed common. He worried what he would do if he met a ‘water’ or a ‘fire.’ Or… maybe better name would be wisp? Yeah… water of fire wisp… should I call the spark that? Would make more sense? Although sparks are a bit bigger than what I would think of for a ‘wisp.’

“Then how about the other?”

Kalia nodded, “First, you understand this first example?”

Joe nodded, “Our people know of these. Creatures of a single element, usually made up of that element and attack using that element.”

Kalia’s pinched face relaxed at that, nodding with affirmation, “Exactly. The other is not the creature.”

“Yes, but I assumed the attacks of the creature would be considered elemental.”

“No… yes,” she interrupted herself with what seemed to be the universal half yes half no head shake representing a complicated topic rife with a myriad of exceptions, “There attacks are of their element, but they are not Elemental.”

She stared at Joe with focus and Joe simply nodded, accepting the statement for now in hopes that future explanation would add clarity. She nodded in reply and continued.

“Elementals are not elementals, although elementals can be Elemental.”

OK… that… was the most useless sentence ever constructed by an intelligence. Joe grit his teeth and opened his mouth to interject but Kalia grimaced and held up a hand.

“Please. You will see.”

Joe settled and nodded his head, but said nothing.

“So, Elementals. Elementals are the embodiment of an element. An elemental can be made up of Elemental element of its element, but…”

Joe interrupted and shook his head, waving his hand back and forth, “This isn’t helping. The two words are still intermingling and that is only adding to the confusion! Let me try to ask some quick questions for clarity. I’m sorry. I’m not trying to be belligerent, but the description is going very poorly.”

Kalia seemed angry at the interruption, shocked anger fluctuating across her face before she breathed deeply and nodded with a displeased growl.

“I really am sorry, but,” Joe shook his head and continue, “Look… just… OK. I’ll just focus. An elemental is a creature made up its own element and uses it to interact with the world around it, so, for example: a fire ball that is made of fire and somehow is a living creature that then uses fire to manipulate the world. Or sparks, made of lightning, and use lightning to act upon the world.”

Kalia waffled her head before nodding slightly, “A simplistic explanation but seems to catch the majority of the concept.”

Joe nodded with some relief, “OK. Than am I missing something big with it?”

Kalia nodded, “They do not simply interact with the world with the dao. They embody it as an existence upon which they may enact the dao. They bring the dao upon the world but also bring for the dao into the world.”

Joe frowned, nodding slowly, but unable to grasp the differentiation. Sounds a lot like what I already said, but I’ll accept for now.

“OK?”

“Therefore, the dao comes into existence within the elemental, is expressed upon the world, and is then enacted upon it.”

A metaphor clicked in his mind and he blurted it out, “A doorway to the dao upon which the dao can come into this world.”

That seemed to click with Kalia, and she nodded slowly then with a bit more certainly, “A doorway. Yes… it could be seen in such a way. Truly… an interesting viewpoint, but one that encapsulates the idea decently, although it fails in certain other key factors.”

Joe nodded, “A weakness of all metaphors.”

“True. But a decent one none the less.”

“Thank you.”

“Now, for the Elemental. It is more a concept than an expression.”

Joe narrowed his eyebrows at that, “By expression, you mean the animal like representations of the dao?”

Kalia grimaced but nodded, “Yes, but they are not animals nor are they alive.”

Joe crunched his eyebrows even more but nodded in acceptance, “OK.”

“As a concept, the Elemental is the ultimate expression of that element.”

Joe’s eyebrows flinched,” Uh huh.”

“They are the epitome of the natural, the essence, the purity, an ultimate expression, the dao in perfection expressed in the natural.”

Joe stared at her, wondering if he was really hearing what she was saying. She seemed earnest and his face fell ever inward as he attempted to understand what it actually meant. The philosophy was so alien, he struggled to grasp it.

“I… don’t know if I understand.”

Kalia sighed, “It is the element perfected!”

Joe’s eyebrows crunched, “So… elemental fire is… super fire?”

Kalia huffed and rolled her eyes, “What are you, a child?”

Joe nodded, “In this, I am.”

Kalia pulled back, staring at Joe with some wonder, “Truly?”

“I know nothing,” Joe replied flatly.

“Then, your understanding could be expressed as that. Although a better explanation would be purer fire.”

“Purer? Not purest?”

“There is no purest.”

Joe leaned back, “So it can always be more… pure? More super? More elemental than it currently elementally is?”

Kalia frowned a bit before nodding, “Yes, to an extent.”

“So… then… are there Elemental elementals then? Uh… purified element elementals?”

Mana swirled and punched through everything, swamping within and through him before erupting outwards in a wave that slowed and caught before rushing back inwards to slam home into his mind. Joe huffed as concepts seemed to solidify and crush back down within his mind.

“The perfect representation of a concept within a given form… a purified ultimate element. And an elemental, the creature, is the expression of external elemental forces upon this … place to express that element as a force in this world. The creature is a doorway for the element to express itself here, the other is its actual existence here as a perfected, purified example of said element.”

Kalia sat back and nodded with a smile, “Yes. That is an excellent summation, although missing several conceptual formations. To answer your question, yes. There are elementals that are their rarified more pure cousins. These represent a … ‘deeper doorway?’ to use your terminology?... yes… a deeper doorway closer to the truths of that element of the dao. It… is difficult to truly use such an analogy well.”

Joe blinked, “Seems…”

His mind waffled with the idea as his thoughts struggled to grasp all of it in its entirety. Concepts washed through his mind and seemed to come in and out of focus until he finally gave up trying to dig deeper and accepted his weaker and limited understanding, replying with his understanding just to make sure his understanding was clear.

“So… the creature animal things… they are doorways to the ‘dao’ … uh… elemental plane from which that element comes from, and the purified elements are more perfect examples of that element itself.”

Kalia nodded, “You are beginning to understand.”

Alright… so the creatures… they’ll keep their name… elementals. But when I’m thinking about the purified element… huh… should… well… if I name the animal, I usually say fire elemental, or water elemental… but I guess I could use Elemental water to describe the purified or rarified form of that water. Would that work? Or… but when I have to talk about elementals and Elementals in the generic… arg! This isn’t fun… uh… so, yeah… let’s leave the creatures as ‘elementals’ and I’ll use ‘purified element’ for this other form… although if I’m discussing a specific element, I guess I could use purified Elemental water or just Elemental water. A water elemental would be the creature, Elemental water would be the super water… would that work? It’s just… so … Maybe I’ll try to say Purified… or PE? Purified Elemental? Huh…

Joe sighed, “Why are doorways acting like animals with a will?”

Kalia huffed, “Why would a purer flame act like anything but itself? It is just fire. It is nothing more than fire. It has no will nor intelligence. It is a flame.”

“But a door?”

“The door represents the dao of said element, the embodiment of that element, enacting its will upon our plane.”

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“That,” Joe’s brain short circuited again and he sighed and sat back with a huff, “I’m not sure I’m going to understand it much more than that… and I’m already pushing my understanding as is! But… there is some… being? A will? That is moving little doors around the world connecting us to it?”

Kalia’s humor faded, then returned during Joe’s explanation, “I told you your analogy was… flawed.”

Joe sighed and continued, “So the sparks on the second floor were… doorways to the plane of lightning?”

“Essentially.”

“And the magne… attractor elemental?”

“Yes, as well.”

“Didn’t look like a door.”

“What part of the spark looks like a door?”

“Could have been a spatial doorway.”

“And why do you think the attractor elemental was not?”

“The big blob of copper and iron? Can’t really walk through that.”

Kalia huffed in disgust and shook her head, “You think you can use the elementals as a path to their elemental plane?”

“You likened them to doorways.”

“You did. And I specifically told you that the analogy was flawed.”

“You haven’t said no.”

“Kalia sighed, “I’ve never thought of such things or considered it.”

“But…?”

“No buts!” Kalia rejected immediately and Joe sighed.

“Then the purified element … the example we have is this fire here,” Joe asked as he waved down at his still burning forearm flesh and the spear, merrily boiling away the water in the swamp.

“Yes.”

“And water won’t affect purified fire? Elemental fire?”

“Not natural water.”

“But elemental water could?”

“Yes.”

Joe chewed his lips in thought before finally nodding his head, “OK. So… oh… is metal a natural counter to lightning?”

Kalia cocked her head, “I never considered it such, but seeing what you did to the sparks with your metal constructs… I am uncertain. I’m certain other lightning or metal mages likely know. I’m know little of the dao of lightning and even less of metal.”

Joe’s thoughts leapt at that, and he found his eyebrows furrowed, “Are there metal elementals?”

“Yes?” Kalia seemed confused by Joe’s question but certain of the answer.

“And elemental metal?”

“Yes,” she replied more firmly.

“Iron… elementals? And elemental iron?”

“Yes.”

“What isn’t… an elemental? An element?”

Kalia blinked at that, turning to deep thought and then looking at Joe with slight consideration hinting at respect, “A… profound thought. What is not such. There are many I can think of. There are so many daos, to think of what is not… I do not think … I do not know. All is the dao, so could not all be an elemental and Elemental?”

Joe’s certainty on the topic immediately tanked and he stared at Kalia with concern, “I don’t like that response.”

“Why? You offered a powerful insight. It is an excellent observation.”

“But then you are saying that there are tree elementals and such a thing as Elemental tree!”

“Of course. Is that not what dryads are? What a world tree is?”

Joe blinked, concerned, “Elemental armor and armor elementals?”

“Yes.”

“Elemental love and love elementals?”

Kalia chuckled, shaking her head with laughter, “Rarer. I’m unsure what form a love elemental would look like, nor what Elemental love would be, although a lust elemental would likely be a succubus.”

Joe stared at Kalia, aghast at the concept, as everything he tried to understand warred with this new concept, “Elemental hero? You know what? I’m not sure I want to know!”

Kalia nodded, “Hero elementals are terrifying.”

Joe huffed and then shook his head, “There aren’t… but how…”

Kalia’s smile smoothed out as she shrugged, “It simply is.”

Joe wondered, “That seems…”

Kalia remained silent as she allowed Joe to remain in his thoughts and turned thoughtful herself.

* * *

Kalia stared at Joe, pondering. His struggle to understand elemental expressions in contrast with pure Elemental elements concerned her, his mental capacity a concern. However, when he grasp the meaning, he immediately moved beyond comprehending simple elementals and Elementalism, quickly grasping the horror of conceptual elementalism. Often, conceptual elementals were horrifying in their complexity and Elemental concepts outright profound when used correctly. He… is not simple. But how does he know so little? Yet… think so well?

* * *

Joe wasn’t certain he could really comprehend what Kalia was trying to express and he struggled, flipping open his status page and finding things relatively unchanged, including the list of resistances he had. He stared at the resistances and wonder what it could mean and how it actually matched with what she was saying. He grit his teeth and turned to her, showing his status.

“These are my resistances. How are there so few if there are so many elements, as you claim?”

Kalia stared at him, cocking her head in confusion, “What do you mean?”

“These represent magical resistances against certain types of magic. This seems quite… limited in comparison to what you are arguing for, like hero, metal… metal should just be wrapped up in earth… that’s all it is. A specialized earth element, so…”

Kalia knit her eyebrows, “You’re understanding of the dao is quite limited.”

She opened her status and stared at it for a bit before turning to show it to Joe. It was essentially identical to his, except for her list of resistances. Joe balked, all thought stopping for a time before he stared in awe. Its… not… He quickly recognized a scroll bar inset next to her list of elemental resistances, just to the right of the listed value, and Joe despaired.

“Could you… let me read it… and touch it?”

“How…” Kalia asked then simply stopped, nodding, “Certainly.”

And immediately, the twisting ever moving morphing letters and words shifted to English and he reached up to swipe down the scroll bar. He swiped down hard and the names blurred past without end, the almost microscopic scroll thumb hardly moving in its space as the various elemental resistances blurred by continuously. Hundreds easily passed and soon Joe was certain he passed a thousand and still, the scroll bar location icon did not move at all, still at the top of the scroll bar representing a list that was still not even a percent of a way through the list. His eyebrows wavered even as his heart thudded.

He ignored swiping on the list of resistances and moved his hand to the scroll location knob and pressed on it before swiping it down. Resistances passed in a blur so quick he could read nothing, and even then, his moving the knob to half way down the scrollbar caused the bar to hiccup and the knob froze, then jumped back up to the top of the screen, and Joe froze. Did… the list just refresh! This... gotta be millions! Billions?! This…

He stared in horrified awe before grabbing the scrollbar knob and pulled down slightly, the list blurring with mad speed, then pushed it back up to the top of the list, revealing her original list of resistances and Joe turned to looking at what they were. Illusory sound. Illusory sight. Illusory touch. Illusory taste. Illusory smell. Illusory gravity. Illusory breeze. Illu… breezed? That’s just touch! What….. you know… the list went on, and Joe found dozens like this, although that was simply under illusory. There were duplicates of almost all of them, such as light illusions, physical illusions, mental illusions, water illusions, earth illusions, wind illusions, and fire illusions. They then got into the truly bizarre, such as breath illusions, tree illusions, rock illusions, and other stranger and stranger possible illusions. He wasn’t sure if the illusions were made out of the listed item or if the illusion were of such. Is tree illusion making illusions of trees or making illusions out of trees?

He almost asked, but then decided that he’d spiraled down this rabbit hole more than enough and simply backed away, staring at his own status once again. For a moment, his status display shifted, a slow wave of transformation moving across it before settling and remaining essentially unchanged. Joe sighed and glanced back and forth between his and Kalia’s display. Her’s was incredibly granular, but it also seemed to come with its own issues as each of her resistances revealed very little increase for each, the resistances she’d gained seeming to be distributed across a massive variety of possibilities. Joe really wasn’t sure which was better, but looking at the illusory line of magics then looking at his resistances, he was certain that his mental and spirit as well as one other, either sound, light, or shadow, as well as a few other options would offer a significant resistance across all the ones Kalia was differentiating. Joe wasn’t even sure what to think, and was feeling rather too overwhelmed to initiate any kind of change. Some of the things Joe saw on her list seemed bizarre and out of his comprehension, so he sighed and stepped back, turning away from Kalia’s status.

She stared after him for a bit before simply closing her own status and watching him. After a bit, she turned away and began chatting with Xylarnae and Gwenvair since Joe seemed lost in his own thoughts, unwilling to retreat from them. Stephliquen, being alone, kept her eye on Joe before stepping up to his side.

“You OK? You look like you had your brain popped.”

“Maybe.”

“Everything fine?”

Joe nodded, “Yeah, but… it’s so wild and out there I’m not sure I can explain. It’s so alien… it… just bizarre.”

Stephliquen remained silent but nodded her head. Joe also remained silent for a time before glancing at the spear and finding it still burning merrily so he sighed and tried to explain. It was only a few moments later that Stephliquen looked at him with her own stunned expression even as he tried and failed multiple times to answer any questions she had. By the end, both were responding with ‘I don’t know’ and adding in a pile of new questions but neither comprehending enough to know how to answer. Asking Kalia proved useless as she simply shrugged and claimed not to understand or laughed and nodded, agreeing with their consternation. Very few times did she try to explain her knowledge, and if anything, it simply made it worse and increased the confusion that both stopped asking her for any more clarification. Another ten or twenty minutes had Stephliquen move off alone as well, not lost in her own thoughts and so Joe found himself alone once again. A quick glance at his spear showed it still burning and he sighed and sought escape in his status.

He went over his recent gains quickly, noticing he’d leveled quite a few jobs in his fight against the sparks that the magnetic elemental had been spewing out. He didn’t look at the actual numbers, rather exhausted to be writing them down now, but he did glance over the list of them and noticed he’d gotten theorist to forty eight. Why would I do… He blinked and nodded. Seems nice… the others? He started going over the rest quickly: Regen adept and regen shaman to just around forty, as well as healing adept and shaman to forty as well. One each hit thirty nine and one each hit forty. Scout had hit forty and Joe nodded with satisfaction. Rogue hit forty five, and he grimaced, annoyed at the extra five levels wasted to unlock nothing. He sighed and let it go before looking at his ninja line of jobs. Man.. got a lot done! He’d unlocked shadow hunter, shadow warrior, shadow master, shadow blade, genin, chuunin, jonin, and shinobi all to thirty eight, thirty nine, or forty. He’d not been too strict on waiting to hit forty, not wanting to waste too much experience.

Target Barrier: Your current target is bestowed a barrier that protects from damage and harm.

Heal Bank 50%: A single party member can gain a heal bank of up to fifty percent of their current health. Must cast heal upon them at full health to fill bank. Bank automatically heals the target when harmed and is drained doing so.

Single Party Barrier: A single party member is bestowed a barrier that protects from damage and harm.

Target Heal Bank 100%: Your target can gain a heal bank of up to one hundred percent of their current health. Must cast heal upon them at full health to fill bank. Bank automatically heals the target when harmed and is drained doing so.

He turned to look at his skills for his two healing lines and found them rather odd for the first time. The adept in both lines had remained rather the same, with nothing really added for the regen line and the healing adept gaining something called generic heal, which seemed to allow for a general heal over the whole body, but it appeared to be rather weak. Joe frowned reading the description and turned to the two shamans. These proved to add rather interesting utility for both. Regen shaman gained something called overboost HP. One was for the party and there were two for the caster, the second increasing the ability of the first. They appeared to increase the efficiency of each person’s HP, making each HP more effective. It didn’t actually increase the HP from what he could see with his experimenting. But the description described each HP healing a small portion more than the norm. Healing shaman added several new and interesting skills, including another disappointing ‘generic heal’ but the new skills were enticing enough that he dug into them with excitement.

Joe grinned at the list, happy to see the options and already had plans for some of what he could do. Both the barrier and bank seemed amazing. All four did. He dreamed up some possible scenarios before he turned to the skills he’d gained with shadow hunter and rogue.

Rogue proved disappointing, giving him stealth, daggers, pick lock, dual wield daggers, pick window, light armor, and pick pocket. Well… definitely fits the rogue paradigm… but… Joe sighed and turned to the shadow hunter line of jobs and both sighed in satisfaction and grimaced with disappointement. So… some good… some bad… just… not cool is what it is, but… All of them essentially gave him a form of stealth+ and stealth ++ as well as the ability to use daggers. They also all gave use to a bow, although the weaker jobs required leveling quite a bit higher to get a bow, all the way to level thirty five, while jonin and shinobi offered the bow even at level twenty. Like bow, the also offered something called shadow stealth and increasingly lower levels for the higher jobs. Shadow stealth turned out to be rather mundane, offering increased stealth in shadows which almost made Joe upset, considering that hiding in the shadows did exactly that anyway. Joe sighed and found two other interesting skills and one rather boring one: thrown stars. He dismissed thrown stars and turned to the other two.

One was a set of two: basic elements and advanced elements. Searching help revealed nothing useful or fun, simply allowing ‘access to the basic elements’ or allowing ‘access to the advanced elements.’ Further efforts to understand what that would mean proved futile with the system recommending him to seek out a master. He ground his teeth at that and turned to the last skill he held out hope for: shadow meld. When he sought out an explanation of it, he almost raged, but then considered when the description offered increased ability to hide in the shadows and stated that it would take a few moments for it to ‘engage.’ That spoke of some form of ability beyond just squatting in the shadows and Joe nodded with a grin. Test later!

When he sighed and settled back, Gwenvair came to his side and sat with him, “All is well?”

Joe laughed and looked up at her, “Sort of. But basically, yeah.”

Gwenvair nodded, “Good.”

Joe smiled her, the smile softening upon a small wave of satisfaction before he glanced towards the spear and frowned, “When’s that going to stop burning?”

Gwenvair laughed, “It should be soon.”

The two fell into quiet silence, simply enjoying each other’s company. Their silence soothed for a time until Joe finally turned to Gwenvair and restarted their conversation.

“So… I never found out why your brother was… such a di… bad guy.”

Gwenvair looked at him with humor before she turned away and looked out across the marsh with a grimace, “He was taken by our overlord clan, clan Bunarl. He was groomed and trained to be the next leader of our clan… and now he has. We are little more than… a tool for the Bunarls, now.”

Joe frowned at that, “Oh… that… I’m sorry.”

Gwenvair sighed, “Do not be. It is a common practice. We did well to last as long as we did… to maintain our independence and protect against puppet leadership for an overlord clan. We are one of the last to still be… hm… we were one of the last to be still independent.”

“Is that why you were fighting to be the Matriarch?”

Gwenvair nodded, “It is always a struggle to gain leadership against an overlord clan’s favorite. We have done it for generations now.”

“But?”

“We suffered many ‘unexplained’ financial failures and unusual difficulties. This allowed Gunlan to challenge for leadership.”

“But you gave it up for me.”

Gwenvair smiled, “You would have been a great boon… saving us. We were running out of time. Since you accepted me, mother could have had another child. She is still quite young.”

Joe’s eyebrows flickered at that, surprised at the mercenary attitude of birthing children but then simply fell silent and accepted it. They rested in silence for a time without speaking until Joe grew bored once again and looked at spear, finding still burning merrily.

“How long is that going to last?”

“It’s Elemental flame. It’ll be awhile.”

“Is it… half done? More? Less?”

“Maybe half.”

Joe sighed, “Well… then… Let’s at least do some working on reading and writing.”

Gwenvair sat up excitedly and Joe took out his notebook and pencil, then thought for a bit and looked at all the mud and piles of sticks everywhere. Huh… ok, nice.

He grabbed to sticks, handing one to Gwenvair, and began a combination of teaching letters and quizzing her ability to read new words and remembering how to write letters he’d already taught her, quizzing both names of letters and sounds. Xylarnae and Stephliquen both came over and devoted themselves to learning as well, with Stephliquen needing some extra time translating to her language.

Dao of Stamina (Dao Seed): You have increased your Dao beyond mortal limits, developing your Stamina a hundred times beyond average mortals. You have begun your journey in developing a dao of Stamina. Good luck on your journey, mortal.

Dao of Will (Dao Seed): You have increased your Dao beyond mortal limits, developing your Will a hundred times beyond average mortals. You have begun your journey in developing a dao of Will. Good luck on your journey, mortal.

Titular Horror (Title): Acquiring so many unique titles and blessings has turned you into a veritable nightmare for any marshal, herald, butler, or majordomo who might have to announce your presence. In pity, you are now able to hide or reveal any title from those with skills to announce your presence. This title will also automatically hide titles from those deemed enemies for the user’s protection.

Gain three stat points for each stat per title or blessing you acquire.

Synergistic Gain - Title Finder - Enemies titles may be revealed.

Endless Endurance (T): You have used more than ten thousand personal stamina! You now gain the ability to turn system stamina on or off.

The spent the rest of the time teaching many of the letters and numbers, but when they hit a limit, they turned to simply writing and spelling out sounds, names, and simple words, all four quizzing one another for a bit while. Joe soon found himself increasingly in the back without the need to be involved. After awhile, he grew bored and flipped open his status, exploring what was there while answering questions when they had them. He lazily went through his status then blinked when he found several new titles available to him, although the slave titles bothered him and he shied away from them for a bit before forcing himself to look through the list carefully again. Huh… that’s kind of nice! He looked at his titles and found a few new ones, three he was expecting, but one that was rather new and unique. He called up all four just to check them out.

Joe grinned to see the bonus from titular horror, but what really had him excited was what he’d gained with his Endless Endurance title. Wow… ok. Stamina off now… definitely… I’ll turn it on when I need it… although… testing might be a good idea? Yeah… let’s do that today sometime… heh… His gains put him in a good mood, and with a quick look at the still burning spear, he turned back to the others and began teaching them again, helping them go over how to read. With how simple he’d made each symbol and assigning only a singular sound to each or a combination of each letters, especially to vowels for diphthongs and other combination sounds, it made it much easier to actually learn and read. Reading with any speed took quite a bit longer, but all of them, especially Stephliquen with her previous experience, was reading rather simple sentences with ease. If anyone was having any problems, it was Joe attempting to not spell things correctly, but now following the rules he’d taught them for simplicity.

Suddenly, he noticed the boiling water calming and glanced over before grinning, “Finally!”

“What?”

“The fire is done. That thing is annoying.”

Gwenvair smiled at that, “Yes, very much so.”

Joe chuckled and nodded before turning back and walking up to the spear. He was very careful how close he got and quickly saw that the water around the spear was quite hot, and he turned back to teaching a bit more, spending another good chunk of time until he tried once again. The water was cooler and while the spear was hot to the touch, he pulled it out and quickly tossed it into another part of the lake, hoping the cooler water would help. It took a bit more time but soon the spear was cool enough and they packed up everything and moved on to the next floor, stopping at the waiting room only to dry off a bit, the water still annoying. Joe especially wanted his feet dry, so waited in the room another half an hour or so. His sandals, luckily, were already dried because he’d taken them off after the fight.

The spent that time continuing their reading and writing skills as Joe thought on the power of purified Elemental attacks and pursuing mage jobs that might help. He studied the various mage jobs very diligently as he considered his options, much less certain what it all meant and how it would all work once he’d seen Kalia’s insane list of various magics and their associate resistances.

* * *

Zilnek returned from his efforts within the beginner dungeon and shivered with a hint of terror. The ease with which he was able to defeat the goblins seemed to have been wiped away without his master there to teach and train him. He struggled over and over to successfully strike the goblin, his strikes somehow weak and incapable of truly bringing the goblin down. Somehow, the efforts took significantly longer and sometimes he ultimately had to flee when he could no longer to push on without his stamina. He truly believed that he would not have been able to when without his ability to push on past stamina depletion, but even so, he found himself staggering back to the safe rest area just steps in front of an enraged goblin.

He’d ended his day in semi despair despite his success at killing a few of the goblins. But he knew it was too slow. He would never find success alone. Fighting in tandem with another of the apprentices, usually Garnedell, had proven an overwhelming multiplier, and now it was a struggle to commit to attacks when there was none able to defend him.

It was already dark when he exited the dungeon and dragged himself through the streets back to the poorer parts of the city where he would be able to sleep on the streets without being picked up by the guards. He moved in a daze until he reached his normal place of rest and found it already occupied. Zilnek almost growled in an attempt to drive the other out, but the quickly saw two pairs of legs peeping out of the poor construction that poorly kept the warmth in and he stepped back with some worry. He as exhausted and taking on two would be unwise. He grimaced and turned away, seeking another place.

It took him almost an hour to find another place, and almost another after to convince himself he should take it despite how poor it was. He wrapped his meager belongings inside a cloak then pulled it in under his head, wrapped up in his arms to protect it as much as he could. His half staff he kept at the ready, held in a fist resting upon his head with the staff balanced upon and covering his body all the way to his thighs. It wouldn’t be much by way of protection, but it would make it that much more difficult for anyone wishing to strike him while he lay asleep. Exhaustion came quickly and so did sleep, if not rest.

* * *

Joe stood and called the others to attention, there clothing decently dried enough to move on.

“Right. Ready for the next floor?”

Stephliquen jumped up with excitement, immediately agreeing if not actually understanding Joe’s common words. The others nodded and followed after, and they soon rounded the corner to see the large double doors bisecting a massive palm. Joe stepped forward and reached his right hand forward. The massive palm indentation immediately shrank and slid down and to the right onto the right door, perfectly at the height where his hand would press into it. He did so without hesitation and the doors opened. And when they did, Joe frowned with bitterness. That’s… not going to be cool! Pitch black… or…

Details slowly came into view and Joe recognized that he might be in a meadow again by looking up into the night sky dotted with a massive number of stars, but not a single moon or gas giant. The lack of a secondary source of light was troubling, but Joe quickly began to notice that there was a decent amount of light. Even then, he really couldn't see anything at all; just a blackness of what looked like trees stretching up into the sky. Right… I got time.

Joe closed both eyes and spoke up, “Close your eyes. You’ll want your night sight to see well.”

Joe repeated the statement in Qaenar for Stehpliquen, and she seemed to immediately reply, doing the same. The others, however, shifted and seemed unresponsive.

“What’s wrong?” Joe asked.

“Why do you not have some form of light?” Kalia replied with a hint of bitterness.

Joe frowned, “I might be able to create something in the future, although… probably nothing useful. Torch light might be something, but it will be just as … a good night sight is probably better than any torch or such light unless we can build a massive campfire and stand with it to our back. Look. Natural night sight is going to be better and anything I can make now will likely make it worse with lots of shifting shadows and blind spots from being light blinded by the torches or fire.”

“You, an eccentric, do not have any other method.”

“No. No, I really don’t. I apologize for my lack.”

Joe kept from sniping when she sighed, but luckily she said nothing and fell silent, and Joe could only hope that she’d followed his advice. He’d counted slowly to sixty, then doubled it before finally deciding it was enough. He opened his eyes after cupping them with his hands to keep out the light in the hallway and quickly saw he was able to rather easily see into the darkened meadow. The heavy shadow of the trees and tall grasses still made it difficult to see anything meaningful on the ground and Joe frowned. I… really don’t like this… but… wait… Joe looked at the sway grass again then grinned softly. Maybe… don't need to worry about seeing in the dark!

Joe took a look through his back pack and his inventory before pulling out one of his numerous wooden arrows and the parachute chord. He looked through some of the other things he had, but wasn’t really willing to sacrifice much except a spare cloak and another arrow.

The cloak he dropped to the ground. The first arrow, he took and broke in half before burying it into the cloak. And the second arrow, he just turned upside down, fletching down, and buried it into the cloak. He then shifted the whole thing into a crack between two stones in the stone floors that was just almost perfectly wide enough for his arrow shaft. He pressed the arrow surrounded by the cloth into the crack and then held it upright. Well… shoot. Forgot one thing. He went back to his inventory searching for what he could use and ultimately found nothing really matching what he needed. He finally took his spear and separated off one of its four sections.

He put that section aside and looked at the cloak on the ground. Pulling out a dagger, he cut off a small corner of the cloak before stuffing it into the spear shaft to protect the thread. Want my spear to still go together! He then took the knife and worked at the arrow, cutting off the arrowhead and leaving only the shaft facing upwards. He situated the cloth in the shaft of his spear to make sure the cloth surrounded the arrow shaft entirely before pressing the spear shaft firmly down upon the arrow shaft.

“Xylarnae? Do you mind if you hold this so that the arrow does not fall down or out of this shaft?”

Xylarnae quickly came forward and nodded, “Certainly. Is this enough?” she asked as she pressed down upon part of the spear shaft and down on the arrow shaft.

Joe took and spun the arrow easily enough before nodding slightly, “That’s not too bad. Maybe a bit more firmly if you feel it is slipping, but it just must remain perfectly upright. It is better that it never falls out or that I ever stop what I will soon be doing. It must be constant without stop, so please make sure that I can easily continue doing what I am planning.”

She seemed confused, “And that is?”

“I will be spinning the shaft back and forwards. A lot.”

“Why?”

Joe looked up at her and grinned, “Fire.”

Her eyes narrowed but then she nodded and said nothing else. He pulled out his parachute chord and wrapped it around the arrow shaft twice. He considered a third time, but didn’t want to make it too difficult to spin and settled on two. When he prepared to begin pulling the string back and forth, Stephliquen immediately came to his side with a smile and took one side of the parachute chord.

“I get what you are doing. I’ll help.”

Joe grinned and then pulled back on his side of the chord. His pull back slowed as Stephliquen’s hand approached the arrow shaft then relaxed as she pulled back. It took a half a dozen times before the two got a rhythm for each other and soon they were sawing the chord back and forth a good one or two meters of a full pull. Xylarnae began to strain with that, but held the shaft well, and pressed a bit more firmly down upon the arrow shaft, slowing his and Stephliquen’s progress, but Joe accepted the difficulty for the stability. After ten minutes or so, Stephliquen and he were still going strong, but the others were growing confuse or dissatisfied. Kalia spoke up about then.

“What are you doing? This is a waste of time.”

Joe pulled back on the chord with a grunt, then released and replied quickly, “Fire.”

Kalia frowned, “You said that before, but what does that mean?”

Joe spoke in spurts and starts, matching his words with huffs of desperate breath, “We are… making a … fire. This… arrow rotating… creates friction that… heats up the cloak… and hopefully… makes fire.”

Kalia’s frown deepened at that but fell silent as she watched. Another few moments past and just as she was about to question again, a curl of smoke suddenly rose up and twined around the rotating arrow shaft. Joe grinned and called out.

“Gwenvair. Please blow softly on the base of the arrow shaft!”

Gwenvair seemed confused and stared up at Joe with some surprise, “Why?”

Xylarnae started to reply but Kalia grunted with a moan as she knelt and leaned forward and begain breathing with some expertise upon the base. The curling smoke twisted violently then was lost to the breath blasting it apart. Kalia took another couple times blowing carefully and then the bottom of the arrow shaft and the surrounding cloth burst into flame and Joe rested his arms, relaxing as he pulled back the chord until it fell off the arrow shaft. He pulled it quickly not wanting it to hit the flames and he quickly put everything back into storage, trusting Kalia to keep the flames alive and growing.

After all was returned to storage, he quickly bundled up the burning cloak in the three arrow shafts, the two broken and the one burning one, before lifting it and spreading it slightly so the flame could spread across the entire cloak more rapidly. When it was burning in a way Joe thought good enough, he pulled his hand back and heaved the whole thing through the doorway.

The flame lit up the small meadow, and Joe finally saw a good glimpse what the meadow consisted of. The cloak fell down, then flared and slowed in its fall before spreading and draping across the grass. Some parts, still twisted up in a ball, fell between the shafts of tall grass towards the ground. Joe held his breath with some worry then grinned when he saw the flames begin licking up the grass. Joe grinned. OK. That worked great. Nice! He stretched with a moan, throwing out his right arm as he shook it. Man, my arm is so sore, why is i… oh! Ha! Turned off my stamina… uh… oh! Good test! Stamina on!

The sore stiffness in his arm evaporated immediately and Joe grinned with some surprise. He stretched it out, testing it ever more vigorously and quickly found his arm fully returned to its use, exhaustion gone from it. He flipped up his status, then frowned when he found a massive hit to his stamina, with almost a quarter of it gone. Huh… so… not as efficient, then… but… still...

Joe turned his attention back to the flaming meadow and watched on, the massive flames making the meadow quite easy to see, now. There was an odd blankness to what was happening, and Joe quickly realized that he watched the flames erupt, snapping against a pretty decent breeze, but he heard nothing. He watched on for a bit until the grass was well lit and spread. Once it hit the doorway, the brightness had him putting a hand up before him with a flinch but quickly noticed no heat came through the door. He still had to squint, blinded a bit by the brightness of the flames. After a bit more, it dimmed and he was able to look in and see the fire had burned to the door and to the sides, a massive semicircle of dead burnt grass before the door. Brilliant red embers dotted the ground, but as all were essential from quick burning stalks of grass, the embers would not last long and neither would the fire. Guess its time.

Joe took a deep breath and stepped through, holding up his remade spear and shield cautiously as he walked in. He looked both left and right quickly then walked in with cautious steps. As soon as he was inside, sound and heat slammed into him, the wind whistling even as the flames roared in crackling fury. The sound and movement did come rather abruptly, but he had his focus on the world around it, primarily focusing on the ground but not giving up checking the sky every couple of moments.

Time passed, and the roaring flames taking the meadow grass swept back and away from him, burning further down the meadow until suddenly, Joe heard something other than the wild whipping of the wind and the crackling of the flames. An odd roar screeched through the meadow in a rage then fell quiet. That cry quickly had his eyes directed deep into the flames towards the ground on the other side and there was some relief with the decent certainty that it was not something airborne. The flames continued to burn across the meadow and Joe continued marching along after the flames, Stephliquen by his side.

* * *

Kalia stood in the door as Stephliquen marched in immediately after the eccentric had entered the burning flames. She clenched her teeth, grinding them, but finally sighing, acknowledging the girls courage. Xylarnae, wisely, stayed by her side while holding back Gwenvair with a hand.

“Be cautious of the flames, girl,” Kalia grunted, reinforcing Xylarnae’s caution.

Gwenvair glanced up at the two of them before nodding with frustration which only grew as the other two marched behind the flames with incredibly courage until the field was burnt a good dozen paces away from them. Kalia ground her teeth again and finally nodded. It’s time, although I do not know how they so easily advance into the flames… and so closely! Any flame elemental birthed… that would… Kalia shuddered and stepped into the door, keeping a good dozen paces from the wild conflagration. Better caution than loss.

* * *

Joe marched after the flames, peering into them cautiously but never really caught site of the animal, even as the flames pushed up against the meadow’s edge. Suddenly, he heard the screeching roar again, shifted much more towards fear and pain than the frustration of earlier. Another two or three roars followed immediately after until it was firmly cries of pain. Then, suddenly, it was done. The creature died, whatever it was, and Joe felt the rush of experience flush through him. Joe furrowed his eyebrows, frowning. That’s it? Huh… a bit anticlimactic. But… Joe glanced at his status of his current job and grinned. Thirty five levels in ice mage… nice.

He’d waffled between continuing in his stealth line of jobs or moving on to something to counter the magical flame and the pain of the flame had been more than enough to convince him he needed something. He had two options, water or ice mage, and his choice was easy enough, remembering the burning sensation of his forearm blackening under the flame. With something for ice, he considered continuing into ice mage, but resisted, wanting to have as many of the mage lines open as possible and quickly swapped over to water. Might as well have a backup against the fire.

Joe stepped back from the wall of flames burning up against the forest trees now and glanced around until he found the stairwell going down into the ground. When he did find it, he blinked, shrugged, and then decided to head down.

“That was easy!” Joe said with a grin to the others and marched down into the ground.

Stephliquen nodded with her own grin, “It really was.”

They made it to the next waiting room but Joe walked right on passed it to the next door, lifting a hand to bring the imprint down to his level before lining up his hand with the imprint and opening the door. When the brilliant light of a sunny day shone through the crack in the doors, he sighed with some relief, then frowned with annoyed concern to see sandy dunes on the other side. The door opened in the middle of a valley between two sandy dunes. He didn’t stick his head in, but he did look left and right, looking up the massive walls of the sandy dunes on both sides before settling back with a sigh.

“I hate sand.”

Joe stared into the dunes for a time but found nothing that might hint at what was going on, and after five minutes of staring, he decided he really didn’t have much by way of options. Guess I could use ice mage… should be pretty good for the desert, right? If that kind of thing works in the real world. Fire and ice as opposites. He flipped open his current jobs and frowned, finding he had no space for another job. Can’t get rid of transporter… gotta keep the stuff safe… in case it causes issues for the dungeon cores. And theorist… why? Joe blinked, a soft confusion flickering across his face before he remembered and nodded. Right… yeah… important. Gifted to boost exp. So… I’d have to sacrifice water mage if I want to use ice. But… theorist… I should… His eyes flickered down to physicist engineer and his finger went towards it, pressing it to choose the job to replace theorist. Joe blinked, then sighed with a frown. Probably not the right time to choose it. Let’s keep with theorist… Joe pulled his hand back from picking physicist and sighed. Right. Let’s kill this monster.

Joe stepped into the dunes and frowned when his feet sunk into the sand a knuckle or two. This isn’t going to be fun! He took another tentative step forward and glanced around with caution. Behind him, he heard the telltale steps of the others as well as a soft curse from one of them. Kalia… I think… although can’t blame her. Sand’s gonna be all in and through my shoes! He kept his complaints to himself, however and kept searching area. He waited for a bit before taking another cautious step forward. Those behind him did the same, and Joe quickly realized they were all tensing up looking for their enemy. He waited a good half a minute or so before taking another step forward. The other four copied him and then Joe froze, his gaze whipping just to the right.

A good dozen or so paces down the field to their right low up on the right dune, a small shifting had occurred as he noticed sand tumbling from that area down to the valley floor. Something had disturbed the sand there. His eyes remained lasered on it, and he waited another couple dozen seconds before taking another step then grinning when he saw the sand sift once more. Something’s there!

He didn’t wait as long, but turned away from that area and began taking slightly quicker steps around the valley floor, pausing only ten or so seconds while marching across the valley. No other location reacted with any disturbed sand, and he turned back to face it, zeroing in on the location before advancing carefully on it.

Once he’d gotten pretty close, caution drove him and he waved the others back before pulling out his second wooden spear. Let’s get it out of the sand. See what we’re dealing with. He slammed his good steel spear into the ground before hefting the wooden in an overhand throw and flinging it at the sand. For good measure, he also infused it with a mana point, sure it would get the creature hopping.

Surprisingly, the creature didn’t respond to the infused weapon, and Joe pondered on that as he still through the spear, punching into the sand right around where it had been shifting. The spear hit with enough force to remain upright in the sand and Joe was impressed he’d been able to throw hard enough to get it to stick upright.

Dismissing his own satisfaction, he narrowed his eyes and looked around the sand but still found nothing. He waited another few moments then took another step forward, his eyes carefully searching the sand. The sand shifted again, but this time Joe felt like there was something off about it. He remained still, staring at it a bit longer before pursing his lips and moving to his left instead of towards the creature’s location. There was a minor shifting of sand. Joe waited, then moved to the side again. A small shifting of sand in the same location occurred again and Joe found himself growing ever more uncomfortable, but didn’t know why. Hmm…

He lost himself in thought for quite a time, caution sending tingles up his spine as he continued to stare at the location but found really nothing he could do. He finally sighed and made a choice to advance on it. But… least I could do is come from behind.

He began shifting up the sand dune carefully, waving for the others to remain below as he moved. His circling of the beast, for a reason Joe couldn’t really explain, seemed to agitate it, but it continued to shift the sand in the same location. When he’d circled it enough that it was at its side, at the same height up the dune as it was, Joe quickly noticed two locations where the sand shifted. It shifted where it normally did, but also about six feet back further up the hill, another location of sand shifted and Joe frowned. What’s that… is it a snake… basking under the warm sands? That would make sense, mostly shifting its head to focus on me under the sands. But…

Joe committed to his rear attack and redoubled his efforts to move around behind the thing buried in the sand. The sand near the head continued to shift, sand tumbling down into the valley even as the tail began twitching a bit more, sand shifting and moving. When a third location began shifting sand, Joe paused for a bit with pursed lips and pondered, growing quite a bit more concerned. This snake… is huge! Does the body go from the head to the first then the second location? Or from the head to the second then the first tail location? This is…

His first thrown spear still rested where he’d thrown it, offering an easy way to keep his focus on the location, but the head of the snake seemed to be directly behind the spear shaft and once he’d climbed the dune high enough, he readied himself. Right… heads right behind the first spear. Leap down to get the … no… maybe fall forward? Hold up with the spear and then plant foot after the stab… won’t hear or feel me coming, but.. off balanced… however… not as committed. Don’t think I want to be in the air above a striking snake!

Joe pondered his options, even considering taking out an arrow and shooting into the sand but was rather certain that if his spear could not hit heavy enough to get through the sand, then an arrow wasn’t likely to be much better. He turned to looking around once again, considering his options before finally sighing and pulling out his bow and an arrow. He fired a shot right where the head of the snake would be but again, it simply shifted in the sand a bit, this time moving several parts of its body, not just its head. The rear parts of the snake were now further down the hill, mostly behind the head now with the body lined up on him. It shifted to face me… but how did it only… Only three parts shifted from the movement and Joe found himself frowning, struggling to figure out how the snake’s body twisted beneath the sands yet moved so quietly without disturbing the sand. He finally huffed, sighing and dismissing the attempt and decided it was time to commit. He grimaced, grit his teeth, then made his choice.

Joe leapt from the higher location down upon the head of the snake, but jumped to the side, slightly up hill from the snake. He twisted in the air so that he would land sideways with his spear held in two hands straight down, ready to plunge into the sand where he knew the head of the snake was. He’d chosen the jump, certain the snake could hear his movement in the sand and didn’t want to leave any clue where he was going. The jump, however, was enough to disturb it, and the head didn’t move at all, although three spots behind the head shifted, sand tumbling down the side of the dune. Crap, tightening its tail for a strike? Glad I jumped to the side! Should be OK to hi...

Terror slammed into Joe’s chest even as his eyes widened in horror. His eyes, focused on the sand spot where he was certain the snake’s head was, saw a strange tearing in space and time; an odd line rippling down the dune and smearing across his vision in a strange visual cacophony that his mind struggled to process. Simultaneously, he’d already wilding punched his spear into the sand right where he was sure the snake head was.

Time slowed even as mana swelled and erupted from his center, flushing down into his core in a rush even as he began twisting his body and his head, turning to tool at what was somehow there and not there. Sand twisted, the dune flickering in his mind as he struggled to visually process sand that was a good meter or two away then suddenly plunging for his face, in the air floating before him, then again a meter or to away, laying against the ground like all good sand should. He blinked, head still twisting slowly even as his eyes widened in horror. The sand again suddenly became imminent, directly before his face, even closer now. The sand contoured strangely, taking on a shape, then flicker and vanished into the plane of the ground, lining it exactly as it should if it was simply landscape several meters away.

His heart slowed. His heart pounded in rapid overpowering speed. His vision flickered. His head twisted, eyes flickering in a struggle to understand what it was seeing, then suddenly it all clicked. Less than a hand span away from his lower face, going for his throat, he saw a massive fanged cat’s face, somehow nude, without any fur. His mind rebelled at the image, insisting fur and hair but what couldn’t be denied and was easily accepted to his mind was the massively wide jaw with fangs finger length’s long coming for his throat.

His heart pounded once more, only a single rapid heartbeat between the realization and clarity his vision now had and the current moment. He nothing and immediately ripped his spear, buried head first into the sand, over to his left, placing it firmly between the massive jaw and his throat. His right hand leapt from his currently wielded spear and crossed the short distance to his wooden spear still buried upright just next to where this one had stabbed into the ground. It took a few moments, but the creature leapt into a crystal clarity that would have left any TV manufacturer back home jealous.

It was a massive cat, or a lion, covered in scales that seemed to shift in the light, struggling to blur the lines of the creature against the sand. It’s four massive legs clawed the ground and Joe quickly realized that the shifting sand wasn’t from anything other than the cat stepping in the sand. Except the head… that… no leg for the head of the snake. That wasn’t… Clarity rushed in once again and Joe grew deeply concerned, concentration hardening his face. It was using its front paw to bat at the sand… direct my attention there. That… Terror quickly cooled to acceptance as one more data point was added to the creature. Smart. Very, very smart! And invisible. Yeah! One moment, the creature was easily seen, then blended into the sands. Sometimes it was only one side, or some of the legs, other times it was the head. Joe quickly realized the parts of the creature that were able to stay still for even a split second were able to meld and fade into the background. Gotta keep it moving!

In all this time, he was still in the air, his legs pulling in towards the now two spears he held buried into the sands, the metal one firmly between the creatures jaws and his own neck. The creature’s jaw inched closer even as his own feet inched towards the spears, hoping to plant them there and leap backwards away from the snapping jaws of the scaled cat.

The cat proved its intelligence, pulling the snapping attack of its mouth back and away from the spear, ending its strike with the head and suddenly hunched into a crouch. Gonna pounce? This isn’t goo… His thoughts ended as a third unusual data point was added. The creature’s tail, which had remained amazingly stable and unmoving, suddenly spiked forward and Joe grimaced. It was a striking tail, segmented and with some kind of puncturing spike at the rear of it. Well… that… is just…

Joe ended his complaints and immediately shifted to action. He brought the two spears together and grasp them with his left hand even as he released the wooden spear with his right hand and thrust it forward pointing directly at the striking tale. Please. Please. Please! He called for his double edge straight sword to his hand then cursed and dropped it immediately when it appeared in his hand, hilt towards the enemy. Please! Just.. please! His short sword popped out, and he stifled a curse and committed. Better than nothing! He held the sword basically by the blade, but it was still at least pointed directly at the tail. He clamped down on the sword blade, but still tried to be careful of the sharp edge, molding his palm so that the edge didn’t rest against his flesh anywhere. Better than nothing!

The striking tail hit home, but met the point of Joe’s sword and impaled itself along its length. It only really got about a hand span down the blade before the creature shrieked, the pain immediately causing it to reverse course. Joe let the sword go, happy to leave the blade stuck in the tail. His feet hit the spears just about that time and the wooden spear slipped from his grasp, plunging forward towards the scaled cat’s face. The luck proved fortuitous and the spear slapped hard into the creatures face. Joe cursed. Well… there goes plan A. I’ll lose both spears now! Joe grunted and pushed off the metal spear with his leg, leaping away.

The cat snarled and shook its head even as Joe tumbled backwards, back flipping horribly, barely getting his feet under himself as landed more on his hands and knees than back on his feet. He still had his shield but now was missing both his spears and two swords. What can I… His thoughts raced even as his inventory seemed to pop into existence without his awareness off to his right. A long straight weapon caught his eye and he immediately pulled it out into his right hand then chuckled when the spoon spear made its return. Haven’t used this in a while! OK. I can work with this.

With their disengagement, the cat faded from view in a disconcerting fashion, so Joe ran forward and rapidly reengaged the lion.. Right…. Can’t quit. I can do that! He didn’t thrust, opting for a long wide swing to force it to move, and it did so, its camo breaking and revealing almost all of itself for Joe. Joe fell into a rhythm, thrusting and pressing in on the cat, refusing to give it any time to rest as he thrust and closed with the cat.

The scorpion tailed reptile cat, for its part, shook with enraged pain as its tail whipped rapidly back and forth in an attempt to remove the blade shoved point first down it’s stinger. Its wild flailing did fling the sword loose, but not in any way that comforted the cat as it slid, then turned and sliced its way out, leaving the tail bisected and the cat in further pain. The tail flailed, ripping at the tear even worse and the distraction gave Joe enough time to close and thrust his spear hard, up into the cat’s throat.

The reptile cat was massive, its head almost reaching his chin, maybe even his nose, but that still put the thrust of the strike downward towards the cat’s upper chest. The strike was difficult, the head usually in the way of hitting the chest of an animal, but it had whipped its head to the side to swipe at its tail, the pain still crying for its attention. With a grin, he punched forward and the head of the spear smashed into the throat of the cat at the perfect location before it slipped and skittered across the scales and down its chest. He did manage to dislodge or damage a few of the scales, but essentially, it was completely ineffective and he leapt back with concern as the cat howled and turned to face him. Well… this spear sucks!

He started to back up, moving away so he could circle around and pick up his other spears but then Kalia smashed a useless slash into its side before Stephliquen did the same on the other side with a half-staff that proved about as useful. Xylarnae and Gwnevair held back, a bit more concerned and uncertain, but Joe now put effort into poking the cat in the face with his spear, making sure it’s focus remained on him. He kept his thrusts short and controlled, always attempting to keep the cat occupied and batting at his spear head.

Kalia shifted from slashes to thrusts rather quickly, cursing under her breath in frustration. The thrusts proved a bit more effective, but still skittered and slid across the scales, scraping them and knocking a few off. Joe kept moving back slowly, a single step at a time, to maintain distance, as the cat kept snapping at his spear.

“What do you want me to do, Joe?” Gwenvair called out.

“And me?” Xylarnae asked.

Joe frowned, “Just get me my spear, if you can. I don’t want you to get so close to the tail!”

Gwenvair shouted out something Joe couldn’t quite catch but noticed her scrambling towards the spears. She came up then danced a bit when she got close and Joe realized the cat was still a bit too close. He began stepping back and shifting to defensive moves, pulling it away until he saw her grab his wooden sphere. He frowned but let it go and weaved in front of the cat, poking at eyes and face. He’d tried a couple times to get an eye, but the overly large head of the spear point gave the cat plenty of options to dodge the strikes.

“Here!” Gwenvair cried out behind him and he heard a thunk as something hit the sand.

Behind me. OK. Back up carefully! Joe stepped back again, sliding another couple steps before he noticed the spear coming into view on his right. He grinned to see it. Smart. Tossed it off to my right a good couple feet… a bit too far, but… He began sliding to the right until the wooden spear was in range if he took a large lunge to the right. He then danced with the cat for a couple more minutes until he got a lucky opportunity and shoved the spoon spear deep down it’s mouth. Joe dropped it and leapt to the side, grabbing the spear before moving away.

The cat hacked, like it had a hairball, and shook it’s head back and forth a few times until the spear went spinning off to his left, twisted from the mouth of the cat. Joe leapt forward immediately. Got this! He lunged with almost perfect form, his spear tip sliding towards the throat of the cat and the cat twisted its head down and away, blocking his strike to the throat. Joe grinned. With a small twist and flick, the spear redirected and punched right through the eye of the cat, hitched for a second, skittering across the back of the eye socket, before punching straight through into the brain. As soon as he’d managed a hit, he started sending mana points to the spear but stopped when the cat immediately dropped, dead. Joe stopped up with a huff, wiping the sweat from his body with a grin. Nice.

He took two steps back and ground his spear into the sand with a sigh, then glanced up at the others with a smile, “Well. That ones done.”

Kalia stared at him with a bit of consternation but nodded her head, acknowledging his excellent work. Gwenvair shouted with joy.

“You did it!”

Joe grinned, “Kinda had to. But yeah, we did it. Shall we head out?”

Gwenvair cocked her head, “What about the core?”

Joe shrugged, “If you want.”

Gwenvair smiled a bit smugly, “There probably is one.”

Joe nodded, knowing that he hadn’t infused and he wasn’t sure any of the others actually got a strike that broke skin figured there likely was one, “Probably.”

Kalia quirked an eyebrow, “Probably?”

“Yeah. I think so.”

Xylarnae said nothing in all of this, simply staring at Joe with something like consideration, analyzing things, before turning to look at the corpse, “Then lets see.”

Xylarnae stepped forward and Kalia interrupted, waving a hand up with a graceful twist, “Let me.”

Then she paused and grimaced, cursing softly under her breath before walking up next to Xylarnae and joining her in the butchery. Kalia seemed to know exactly where it was and pulled it out rather quickly and she looked up at Joe with a surprise.

“There was one. Double core.”

Joe nodded, “Yup. Didn't know it was double core, though.”

Kalia stared at him for a bit before frowning then mana streamed from her into the core and Kalia dropped the core in shock before fumbling to catch it, “Perfect!”

Joe nodded, “Probably.”

Gwenvair grinned, but hid her smile by turning to the side and Kalia turned to stare at Joe, stunned. But then she turned instead to the monster and then began to smile, joyful tears coming to her cheeks. She quickly pulled the core up to her eyes and began playing with it, testing it in dozens of ways Joe didn’t understand, but after each one, she simply repeated ‘perfect’ to herself and continued. After the last one, she laughed uproariously and turned to the massive cat.

“A feast!”

Joe frowned with some worry and he began to warn her but Gwenvair interrupted her with a cry, “No! It is poisonous!”

Kalia looked at Gwenvair with a grin, “Unless the wild mana from the core does not poison the meat… or if its cleansed from the meat. But only immortals can do that and this cursed plane has none!”

Gwenvair seemed shocked by this and stared at her, dropping her arm slowly, “Truly?”

Kalia smiled, “A perfect core means none of the mana escaped. The meat is pure. I ate powerful monster meat all my life. It is so delicious and perfect, a boon to developing and growing your body and potential, but… I feared I would never taste it again for no immortal is here to cleanse the taint of wild mana.”

Joe listened in with a frown then interjected, “It’s the mana in the core that makes it poisoned?”

Kalia nodded, “If the core is broken.”

Joe nodded, “Well, good to know, but not sure I’d ever want to eat slime.”

Kalia laughed at that and nodded, “Certain monsters may be… acquired tastes.”

Joe grinned at that and rolled his eyes, “Not sure I could ever acquire that.”

Kalia nodded, then grew pensive and pointed at the corpse, “Could you put it into your spatial bag?”

Joe quirked an eyebrow before nodding, then paused, "It's a dungeon beast. They always get sucked back in by the dungeon."

Kalia's eyes widened then dropped with a curse, "I forgot that!"

Joe grinned and nodded, "We'll go try to find something good later."

Kalia looked at him then smiled and nodded, grateful.

After that, all of them turned towards the exit to the next floor and marched on to it, a certain giddy excitement in the air. Sixth floor next… half way through with this, right?

The trip down the stairs and straight through the rest area was quick, Joe too excited to move on, and they came upon the door once again. Joe didn’t even hesitate to put his hand up, the massive imprint shrinking and zooming to his height where he touched it and opened the door. The bright light coming through the crack relieved him, but then he began to frown when he saw that they were offered a massive plains with knee deep to waist deep grasses. He grimaced, not liking what he was seeing until movement above caught is attention and he looked up to see an absolutely massive bird above him. It circled lazily in the sky, piercing eyes scanning the ground. That’s it, isn’t it… that… he stared up at the barn sized bird of prey and shivered slightly. This could be… easy… or really, really bad!

He took out his bow and pulled out his quiver, belting it to his side and sliding a good dozen arrows in. He then took his spear and kept it in his shield hand for now. He turned to look at the others and they spoke a bit, discussing some strategy. No one really offered much of anything meaningful, although Kalia seemed quite experienced, even if her recommendation was to ‘run up into the sky and skewer it.’ There was quite a bit of pessimism and Joe actually was a bit concerned as well, although a small voice in the back of his mind raged to continue on, anger swelling when he thought to retreat. As his rage swelled, his face flattened and he stepped in through the gate. Screw that patriarch prick!

He took two or three steps and immediately stabbed his spear into the ground before dropping his shield next to it. He then shifted his bow to his left hand and pulled out an arrow even as he glanced up. His grin was grim, but still, he loaded up his bow and sighted on the bird. Already coming straight for me… although no cry, so… that’s kind of scary!

It wasn’t directly above him, but the angle of the dive was very steep and Joe was grateful for an enemy that charged straight for him without swerving. He held his place, grinning as the thing dove straight at him. When he noticed the shadow swooping across the ground, he was able to more accurately judge the distance and his grin fell a bit. This thing is HUGE! He needed it close, and so he held his place, and the thing grew bigger and bigger, soon filling his whole vision as the wings spread wide, horizon to horizon.

The shadow popped up over a small hill Joe guessed was about fifty paces away and loosed immediately, keeping mana points both in front of it and behind. He grinned, the arrow perfectly on target. He took a step to his left and when the bird shifted to follow, he froze and ground his teeth. Need to wait for the arrow to hit… then I gotta run! Instinct had him already pulling out another arrow, but he didn’t set it, preparing instead to run. He did pepper it with his remaining mana points, but did not infuse the arrow, leaving them clinging to the skin of the arrow.

His grin and cry of excitement died out as quickly when his arrow struck home, smashing directly into the chest of the bird but nothing happened. He pushed the mana points into he arrow, and the bird twitched a bit, but nothing happened a tall, and it swooped towards him. Joe cursed out and began sprinting to the left, perpendicular to the dive of the bird. It turned to follow, it’s wings swooping once more to guide it and Joe quickly realized what had happened. The flexing of the wings had shifted the breast feathers and the arrow fell out, never even reaching the flesh of the bird. The feathers are too thick! This is… really… not …

Joe shut his thoughts down and sought out the only option he had. Can’t kill… scare? He knocked his arrow on the run then pointed it at the bird before infusing the arrow with all his mana points. The bird squawked wildly at that and hesitated then lunged with even more ferocity. Joe grimaced. Wait… wait… When the bird was about a ten or so paces from him, Joe released his arrow straight at the chest of the bird. Its reaction was even more violent, twisting in place even as it threw itself up and over in a vertical flat twisting spin. The bird lost all speed and fell to the ground with a rather ungraceful thump. Joe grimaced to see his arrow spit off into the distance without even slowing. Well… lost another! Should use the wooden ones? Or….

The bird hopped a few times, ruffling its feathers and wings a bit, spreading the wings wide as it stared at Joe. Joe had tumbled to the dirt, and stood up slowly while facing the bird. The bird seemed uncertain, displaying aggressively but not coming closer to Joe. Joe remained in place and stared back. The faceoff lasted a few moments before the bird leapt into the air and flew away, returning to circling them. Joe nodded. OK. Second chance… what am I going to do?

Gwenvair and the others came to his side and Joe glanced over at them quickly before turning his gaze back up at the bird.

“Scared him away, but he’ll be back.”

Kalia nodded, “You did well.”

“Thanks,” Joe replied a bit curtly, but remained focused on the bird even as his mind wrestled with possibilities.

Everyone fell silent, looking upwards, and tension ratcheted up as the stand off continued. Eyes? That’ll be really tough… feathers everywhere… maybe a wing? But I gotta get lucky and hit flesh. Neck… maybe… almost same problem as eyes… and head… Joe’s thoughts were cut off when the bird screeched and then turned over, streaking straight down at Joe.

“Head to the left. If it follows you, stay behind me.”

All the others nodded in assent and began heading off to the left. They all left, and the bird still seemed to be on him, so Joe sighed with some relief. The dive was duplicated, and Joe waited. The waiting was terrifying, the bird swooping closer and closer with its wings once again covering the entire sky, his vision seeing nothing but shadowed wings. It came in, sleek and deadly, then suddenly flared as its legs snapped forward, claws extended widely to capture him. He breathed. He released.

Then Joe sprinted in wild abandon to the right. His movement proved unimportant, the bird was so close the arrow smashed into the bad of the bird claw almost immediately, and Joe fed mana points into the arrow shaft as fast as possible. He dove, even as he did this, and threw his bow ahead of himself with a careful toss even as he ducked and rolled.

Joe grimaced as a wild track of burning pain sliced across his arm, cutting deep, and then the pain was gone.

* * *

Kalia watched, growing grimmer in concern as the eccentric remained frozen in fear before the awesome might of the massive bird of prey. Hopefully we can flee after a death, or we are all dead! Concern rose but the eccentric did not move at all, until the bird flared its wings and thrust its feet forward to capture its prey.

Suddenly, the eccentric moved, faster than her eye could follow as he flung himself to the side and tossed his ranged weapon aside. What did he...? Kalia looked back at the bird and quickly noticed the small arrow leaping across the sky, aiming for one of the bird’s feet. She watched as the arrow struck home, then infused itself and utterly destroy the bird. So… easily done… done so often… The bird cured up on itself, immediately going catatonic, tumbling wildly over the diving base. One of the legs of the bird sliced open the eccentric but nothing else of concern happened, the eccentric somehow fully healed immediately after. Kalia mused, pursing her lips.

She pondered, watching an eccentric employ skills that even she found startling. She could understand the awe of those trapped here, but concern grew when she felt her own respect welling. So many mysteries... and so man perfect cores... She glanced down at her hand, turning it over to look at the handful of perfect spark cores. How...?

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