Nate was trying to shoot the crossbow faster, while not letting his aim suffer. It was not going well; the problem was it was still an unfamiliar weapon for him. The only way he was going to get faster with it was practice and time.

He was getting lots of practice in at the moment, but time was still lacking.

They were working their way through the second wave of beasts at the moment. The big push of beasts had arrived, and they were finding it considerably more difficult than the first time. Not because they were tougher -no, they were easy to kill- but because of the sheer number involved.

The big push this time hadn’t been from more wolves, boars, or other beasts that would have normally been considered top predators in an area. No, it was a horde of giant, misshapen, ugly rats!

They swarmed out of the trees in a wave of wriggling tails and missing tufts of fur.

Without even needing to be told, Nate activated the sole attack energy skill he possessed. A skill called ‘Point Break’. A dot of energy bound itself to the tip of his crossbow bolt an instant before he squeezed the trigger. The bolt buried itself inside the shoulder of a rat that proceeded to then bulge outward obscenely as the bolt exploded inside the beast when the skill activated.

Nate had asked Mira Moorish for a skill that worked for both his kukris and crossbows. The options she had given him at the time was mediocrity, with a skill that would work with both right away. Or he could take an energy skill that worked great with one but had the potential for growth and work toward evolving it on his own. Obviously, he had chosen the second option.

The skill was supposed to be used against armored foes, where the explosion would be focused right at the tip. However, against soft targets, it was incredibly effective as well, though rather wasteful as it utterly destroyed the bolts.

He had been hoping for a bigger explosion when he used it, and while it had certainly been effective, he couldn’t waste the qi. Nate needed everything he had to keep the crossbow going. His parents had been right before, cocking it constantly during a beast wave was tiring for him at the moment. Not as bad as it once would have been, but he could still feel his qi reserves starting to dip lower.

Down below, his father was in the midst of a dance of death. Blood streamed through the air behind him as he moved, creating arcs of crimson liquid. It was beautiful in an odd sort of way, and he had never known his father to move as gracefully as he was right then.

Beside Nate, his mother was working the bow like it was an extension of herself. There was no hesitation in her movements, only economical strength. Pull, release, smoothly retrieve another arrow, and nock it while pulling the bowstring back, all in one continuous movement.

Shaking his head, he refocused and got back to shooting. There were rats that needed to be killed.

At the back of the swarm, where they were closest to the forest, a forty-foot sheet of green and blue glacial ice appeared. It stayed in position for several seconds, simply standing there as a tall, imposing wall of freezing cold. Then slowly it began to fall, gradually gaining speed as it did so. With a thunderous crash, it hit the ground, squashing all the rats who had been unfortunate enough to be underneath it at the time.

With a calm hop, a four-tailed kitsune appeared on one of the broken pieces of ice and looked toward them.

“I have arrived,” Aura happily sent to Nate.

“Yeah, I noticed.” He replied aloud, startling his mother, who peeked quickly down at him before returning her gaze to the kitsune. “Mom, dad, I would like to introduce you to Aura. She is my companion beast and part of the surprise I mentioned I would tell you about later. Aura, these are my parents, Niall, and Nina.”

Aura dipped her head and projected her thoughts at them as she said hello in the odd manner she had of speaking with people.

The surprise his parents had at the evolving situation only lasted a few moments before the remaining rats required their attention. A handful of seconds later, the last of the rats had been dispatched, and everything was quiet.

“You have a companion beast?” His mother screeched. “How! This is only the second time you have been out beyond the walls of the city.”

“That’s not exactly true,” Nate confided to them as he sat on the edge of the trailer and looked down at the dozens of disgusting rat corpses that now littered the area. “My dreams are connected to the structure in the middle of the dimensional zone. Well, structures; there are two of them now. That’s how I met Aura here. I wanted to meet up with her to make at least partially sure I wasn’t going insane and imagining everything.”

That was certainly a sentiment his parents could understand.

With this revelation, he could finally tell them that they were dungeons, and why he didn’t want them going inside. It still wasn’t perfect, but unless he told them the full truth, it was probably as good as he was going to get. The full truth was out of the question. He had already decided that long ago. Telling anyone that he was the one in control of the dungeons was a big no-no.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

However, he had discovered the week before that there was a certain amount of relief in telling his parents something. Not necessarily a cleansing of his soul, but more like a small weight off his shoulders. They could carry the full weight of what he was doing, nor would he ever ask them to, but small portions were certainly doable.

They talked more as they cleared up the mess that had been made.

The second wave, mainly due to the rats, had ended up filling the trailer a lot more than they originally intended for it to be by this point. They had enough room for another wave, but that would be it. This time around, they would be finishing a little early, it seemed.

Not early enough to drive the rig and trailer back to drop everything off and then make a second run. They weren’t that lucky. Still, the next week, they would probably move to a slightly more difficult area.

The sound of rattling trailers filled the air behind them, as a couple of late expedition teams turned off the main road.

Aura’s head snapped toward Nate. “Should I hide? How common are companion beasts?”

“Err,” He repeated the question to his parents after a moment. It was a hard one for him to answer without knowing more. Nate had seen cultivators walking around with their companion beasts in the city, but he wouldn’t say they were exactly common. He didn’t know how strong those people were, either.

“It’s a little odd, but not terribly so. A lot of parents buy companion beasts for their children, especially if they are long-range fighters. They are rather expensive, so we hadn’t even considered it. However, her tails are rather eye-catching.” Nina informed him after a moment.

Aura’s first tail, a pale, indistinct watery looking color, began to glow. A moment later, all four of her tails had been replaced by a single normal-looking fox tail. She was still larger than normal, and had her own coloring, but appeared more like a regular fox than before.

“Are these rats even worth anything?” Nate asked as he watched his dad cut open yet another one, only to come away with nothing.

“Most rats in these waves won’t have cores. The stronger ones will either lead their own waves, be alone, or move to a stronger area. I won’t say they are worth a lot, but yeah, their bodies are still worth something to the cities. Nothing is wasted, don’t forget that. We might not make as much off of them, but they can still be sold.”

Aura’s ice had vanished, allowing them to get to the flattened rat patties that had been left in its wake. All told from that roughly forty-strong rat wave, they had only managed to score five cores. It was a horrible average and made Nate despise rats even more. They didn’t even make good beast fodder.

They were still carrying the rats to the back of the trailer when the rattling trailers they had heard before started to come closer. They had stopped for a couple of minutes at a different site but were now back on the move again.

Niall rested his hand on the grip of a tonfa, while Nina unslung her bow. It wasn’t often that cultivators actually fought each other while out on an expedition, but it did happen occasionally. After all, what better way was there to make sure a body disappeared than to do it while out in the wild?

So, while they weren’t truly worried about being attacked right then, they knew to be cautious. Besides, their interaction earlier with the cultivators from another city had been… taxing in that regard.

Two trucks stopped at the opening of the street where they were parked. Both were nice-looking trucks, with lift kits, modified exhausts, and large turbos. The trailers being dragged behind them, on the other hand left something to be desired. They were both rusty, old-modified horse trailers.

The driver door opened on the closest one and a slightly pudgy middle-aged man leaned out. “Would it be alright if we joined you here? This is our second required expedition this month, and we got started late. We were going to set up back there, but then we saw your lights and saw you were already set up. We thought, maybe, you wouldn’t mind letting us join in?” He sounded so hopeful they couldn’t help but breathe out the tension they had been unconsciously gathering in their necks and shoulders.

They all shared a glance and then shrugged.

“Sure, come on in, just make sure the street exit is left open in case any of us need to leave in a hurry,” Nina told the man.

He slapped the roof of his truck with a grin and ducked back inside.

The next few minutes were filled with some of the most inelegant trailer maneuvering that Nate had ever seen in both lives.

“Uh, maybe you and mom should teach me how to back up the trailer at some point. I don’t want to be stuck doing ninety-point turns like these two as they keep screwing it up.” Both his parents nodded in agreement wordlessly.

The rats had all been moved to the back of the trailer by the time their new friends had finished parking and began to unload. The only good thing about rats is, despite their initial size, they packed down rather well. That meant they still had a decent amount of room left in the trailer still.

A couple of the new cultivators who had just joined them came over to introduce themselves a minute later.

The driver who had originally asked for permission to join them was named John. He was a water technician at the local plant. His wife was Alice, and she worked for one of the construction companies as a dirt compacter. People like her had built the wall around the city.

The rest of the people in the group worked similarly mundane jobs and were their neighbors for the most part. There was a teacher, a software engineer, a mechanic, and a housewife. Their group had a little bit of everything from the more normal side of life.

These were the people who kept the city running day in and day out.

It wasn’t until that moment that Nate realized just how disconnected he had become from the surrounding people. He had never considered himself a part of the upper crust of society. However, in a way, that was almost how the cultivators who dedicated themselves to expeditions and gaining strength were perceived. He had stopped actively interacting with people like this and instead found himself hanging out with people like Angie and Lindsay instead.

It wasn’t something he had done consciously; it was simply the social divide in action. There was no reason to be around them until there was a reason to, such as right at that moment.

It took a good half hour for them to get situated in their preferred locations. Then Niall opened the windows and shrouds while turning the fans on at full.