"What do you mean my healing spell won't work," demanded Jen.

Sam shrugged with resignation, and replied, "It might work, but I think you'll have to cut off all the concrete from my body before casting the healing spell. Basically, you're going to need to tourniquet my arms one at a time, skin me alive, and grow whatever is left of my arms back. You can't tourniquet my butt and hamstring, so your going to need to get good enough with that spell to immediately heal and stop the blood loss when we cut off that concrete."

Jen looked frustrated, and said, "So it will work, but it'll just take time."

Sam shook his head just a little, and said, "I hope so, and I think your spell will heal my skin, muscle, and bone back to normal, but with my elf vision I've noticed a clingy gray aura that covers our entire bodies. The aura around you isn't nearly as bad as mine and Tamako's. I can't imagine how it works, and hopefully it wears off with time, but I think it is this aura that infects the enchantments with a virus, which then turns our enchantments into this concrete looking stuff."

****

Jen was incredibly frustrated, she'd spent the last two week working on the healing spell almost nonstop, and her healing spell would only cover an area of about 2 square inches, and her ability was ridiculously inefficient with mana. She looked at Sam, and asked, "Are you ready?"

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He replied, "Yea, I don't think this is going to be a problem at all after you knock me out with your psych ability."

Tamako groaned with impatience, and Sam replied, "You refused to decide who went first with a flip of a coin, so no complaining."

Tamako snapped back, "That's bull! You would never lose a coin toss with your luck stat."

Jen interrupted, "In five you're going to sleep. One, two, three, four, five, and now you are asleep. You will feel relaxed and will not feel any pain while you are asleep."

As Sam slumped down flat on the table in a deep sleep, Jen looked to Tamako, and replied, "You know why he's going first."

Tamako nodded with uncertainty, and asked, "Do you think he can do it?"

Jen replied, "I hope so, because we are about out of money from the safehouse storage ring."

Tamako watched as Jen took a hammer, chisel, and scalpel and started cutting the concrete off of one of Sam's arms, and she asked, "Why didn't Sam mention this before if he could get money so easily?"

Jen replied, "He and Kelly always said it was a bad habit for him, I thought they meant he was addicted or lost a lot of money. I just don't think we've ever been this desperate for money."

***

Four days later, after a healing marathon from Jen and a wagon load of bloody towels, Sam was heading into Plinko City's largest System-regulated casino with the group's last 100 gold.