“Ninety-six monsters to go,” said Pern.

Then very soon: “Ninety four monsters. Eighty-nine monsters.”

Killing elmens was easy. Pern had her Thunder Sword, Rick had his fists, and they sliced, cut, bashed, and stamped all the elementals to their untimely demise. Rick demolished ten monsters, while Pern vanquished twenty-nine.

Each monster left behind a small “core”, proof that the party had slayed them. Pern transferred them to her “Inventory,” a special skill Adventurers received from the Guild that allowed them to freely store monster loot. She also kept a careful count of how many of each kind that they killed, since what the quest actually demanded was slaying twenty-five each of smork slime crockie and floon.

20/25 fire elmens, 13/25 air elmens, and 14/25 earth. Their rate ticked steadily up.

Yet they soon ran into difficulties. The time between fights grew long, and their feet became heavy and sore. It wasn’t that they were fatigued from fighting, rather, it was because of something entirely unexpected.

“We’ve run out of monsters,” Pern sheathed her sword, and Rick lay down on a bench. They were in a courtyard at Mazevale’s center, a plaza surrounded by small canals and boxed by low-lying homes.

“Rick. What are you doing?”

“Cloud watching.”

“My fault. I asked the wrong question. Why you doing?”

“That’s even wronger.”

“Shut up and answer!”

“We can wait for the monsters to respawn,” Rick stretched. “If we idle around, they might come back at… oh, around three a.m.”

Rick enjoyed the drifting clouds. That one, a cumulous, resembled a curious bear. This one, a cumulonimbus, looked like a beer bong. And that last cloud looked like a frustrated girl with her hair hanging onto his face.

“We don’t have time for this! If we wait that long, then our quest is gonna fail!”

“Ooo, failure,” Rick said. “Spooky, scary. All up on your permanent record. We can’t have that.”

“Exactly, Rick. You get it.” Pern said, as three cirrus clouds and another cumulous drifted by. And the next was a truly beautiful cirrostratus.

Rick did understand. It was important to complete quests as the Guildmistress commanded; he couldn’t stay at the Four-Leaf Inn forever. And while he hated adventuring, he lacked skills in any other kind of work.

But at the same time, cloud watching was incredibly soothing. Allowing one’s mind to be as blank and fluffed as a water vapor cotton ball was to experience true peace.

“You’re an E-Rank, right?” Pern said. “You know something an S-Rank adventurer can do… is that they can promote other Adventurers. If there’s something I can do… something that you really want… then work with me Rick. Please…”

***

“...Work with me!”

The young man held onto his cross peen for dear life.

There was nothing remarkable about the smithy in which he stood. There was a forge, for heating up iron. A quenching basin for cooling it. An anvil, for Card to slap with his peen. And a workbench stacked with hilts and sword accessories, along with various oils.

Oh, and this smithy was inside the crater of an active volcano. There was that aspect too.

FWOOOOMMMMMM!

But this was all an ordinary day for Card. Adventurers were expected to thrive in extreme environments, and the only thing he found extraordinary was Riona, the loudmouthed elf master craftsman.

She was tall, tanned, muscular and had burns along her arms and skin. She was also a prodigy, at one hundred years chronological and nineteen years biological and Card had heard that she specialized in creating swords for those just starting out in the Guild. She had approached the rookie Adventurer at a bar and they soon became fast friends, though now she was more of his drill sergeant.

“Swords are made of two things, Card. Sweat and blood,” Riona said. “If you don’t respect the sweat that goes into making a blade, you can’t expect to have the courage to draw blood with it in the field.”

Card hammered hot metal into a hard long box.

“Am I shaping this right…?” Card muttered.

“Don’t sweat it.”

‘How much do I have to pay for this?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Are those dragon eggs hatching over there?”

“Eyes on the prize!”

“I should’ve got a store-bought sword.”

“If you do a good job, Card…” Riona leaned down, and whispered. “I’ll let you…”

His eyes went wide and then glanced down to the place in question. Then he flushed from ear to ear.

There was a reason that Riona made swords for rookie adventurers after all. She had a particular taste.

“But that’s wrong!” He stammered out. “That’s not at all fair to you.”

“Ha!” Riona said. “You’re right—that is wrong. But it’s only wrong because you said it’s wrong. If we both thought it was right, it would be right, right?”

Riona constructed her sentences much like she forged her swords: in a process that seemed absolutely nonsensical to the layman but made sense to the expert, or to the clinically insane.

“In other words, you should definitely touch ‘em.”

“I don’t know.” The young man folded his arms, as if he were imagining how he’d feel if she touched his moobs.

“Most Adventurers have a harem, you know. Heroes, heroines, in their teens and twenties roving around in groups,” Riona said. “Why not kick off the party now?”

Card was done with his peen hammer. He shoved the sword into the furnace, then into the quenching tank for it to quickly harden and cool.

“Thunder,” he muttered, and a spark flew from his fingertips. Thunder S was a strong skill, but next to impossible to aim. He hoped it’d be more effective with a sword to help guide it.

His spark bounced off the stone and scurried off like a worm, into the dragon egg nest. The eggs themselves were about the size of human heads, azure rocks with cracks that scuttled from base to tip.

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

As he waited for the sword to cool, one of the eggs began to shake. By the time Riona had attached a hilt to his new blade, the egg’s cracks had turned into gaps and then it all fell away.

Standing amidst those remains was a fresh dragon hatchling.

“Cute,” Riona said. This dragon, as she had said, was nothing to worry about. It opened its mouth wide and its fangs had not even come in.

“Scree?”

“Who’s a good dragon pupper, who’s a good boy. Come to Momma.”

“It’s gotten cloudy, Ri.”

Actually, it was a single cloud, and a shadow fell over the pair.

The cloud was not a cumulus or a cirrostratus or a collection of asperitas; this shadow had wings. It was a Mother Dragon.

“EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!” The dragon shrieked, and it bared rows of fully formed, very adult teeth.

“Dragons are incredibly territorial,” Card said. “And most people who run into dragons end up incredibly dead. Why in Andrestia did you set up shop here!?”

“A dragon sighting did happen a moon ago… but I thought it probably wouldn’t happen today.”

“When?”

“What do you mean, when?”

“When when?”

“One moon ago exactly…”

The dragon dived, landed, and swiped its claw at the bickering pair. Riona dodged it easily, but this was just an exploratory strike. It struck again, faster, and it was Card’s turn to jump back, and then faster, then faster… and then this…

“EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”

…was entirely stupid, Card thought. If the dragon eggs all hatched on a cycle, then that meant the Mother Dragon would always return on certain days. Certain days that were better used, say, for kicking back and drinking a warm milk rather than desperately dodging a dragon’s blows.

“It’s okay!” Riona said. “I know my cheerful knight will protect me!”

“Tch.”

“Cause that’s what you are, aren’t cha? My white knight?”

Even as Riona said that, she took a huge hammer and swung it at her foe. The hammer clacked the dragon’s skull; it roared, whined, and took flight, with a clouded rage in its eyes.

“That’s pretty tough! Maybe I should forge from dragon bone instead.”

“My turn,” Card said as he braced. Using his electric powers felt like damming up a wave. He could build up power anywhere in his body, but when he released it he didn’t know how it would flow.

“Thunder!” Five volts launched towards the flying dragon, and all of them missed. The dragon struck back with his own element: a fiery breath that forced Card to jump and roll.

“Hey!” Riona threw two planishing hammers at the lizard’s nose, and it turned its attention to the tall elf. She then hefted a sledgehammer, and remembering its last headache the dragon took to the air.

Card, meanwhile, had rolled into the workbench. He scowled and picked up his newly forged sword, and followed the dragon’s swoops and dives with its point.

He focused, and…

“Thunder!!!”

One large bolt coursed from his sword, right to where he’d imagined it—but the dragon swooped so fast it dodged the attack. Though the monster was two thousand pounds of flesh and scales, its speed and maneuverability made it seem as light as a swallow.

“Damn it!” Card swore. Riona had resorted to throwing various weapons at the dragon; they mostly hit their mark but merely served to enrage it further. Axes, daggers, and the peening hammer sank into the scales and fell.

“An Adventurer can improvise their way out of any situation,” Card muttered. “Think, Card… you have to think…!’

The Mother Dragon was angry because they were too close to its nest. It was too nimble to hit with Thunder, too strong to kill with normal weapons, and far too fast to run from. Card put his finger to an ear and shocked his brain, and whether this exercise in sadistic pseudoscience worked or failed to work is impossible to say. However, Card did come to an idea.

“A spear, Ri! Use a spear!” He called.

Riona threw another slew of objects—a spare metal sword, a pear fruit, a rapeseed jar and a handful of prase. She had raided her snacks.

“Spear!!! S-p-e-a-r!!!”

“I’m getting there! I’m just a little mixed up!” Riona said, and she finally parsed it. It was as if she had needed it spelled out.

She flung a copper spear and it sank into the dragon’s belly. It roared in pain, and opened its maw wider—locked eyes on Riona and began a downward dive.

“No!”

The dragon steered at its nuisances, from bird to bullet with its two thousand pounds. One hundred feet… fifty feet… lower—

At the last moment, Card breathed. He calmly took the sword and said:

“THUNDER!”

Electricity coursed sword into spear. The dragon roared a rushing wind, then it dropped like a stone.

“Aw, shucks Card. You see what a good sword can do?” Riona said cheerfully. The monster had collapsed at her feet. “You’ve put in both the sweat and the blood, and now you’re prepared for a real fight.”

“I suppose I am,” the young man replied as he stared at the corpse. “But what if I had missed?”

Then the dragon’s teeth would have torn Riona in two. It would have spat flames and consumed him, and that would have been the end of Card.

But that hadn’t happened, because of someone’s careful planning… whether it was Riona’s or his own.

***

“...floons, crockies, and smorks are common in the industrial district. Their spawn rates peak in early afternoon, during times of high heat.

From this courtyard, we’ll take a left, go through a long alley, cross two bridges, take a right by the Morning Lark and then pass warehouse row. Then we’re there,” Rick said. “Happy?”

“You keep track of all this town’s monster spawns? That’s amazing!” Pern said, and Rick just shrugged.

Fifty-three. Forty-eight. Thirty-five monsters left to slay, and another eighteen killed, all in the Mazevale Industrial District. The Industrial District was cluttered with wide, looming, buildings made from brick. Half of them were abandoned, but the other half had steam gently floating out, and Rick and Pern heard machines clutter as they walked through the corridor.

“Need a break?” Rick said.

“We can take one.”

Rick peered down a well. He drew up the bucket, sipped the water, and spat it out. “Drink’s not so great here. Only beer’s supposed to be brown. Pern?”

“What?”

“You eat well last night? You drink well last night?”

Pern certainly looked like someone who drank and ate well, since she carried a certain kind of weight. But that wasn’t the reason Rick had asked.

“I ate everything I needed at the Four-Leaf Inn.”

“How about the others?”

“Ale, then steak, and gelato for dessert. But I don’t care about the food I eat; I just care about energy.”

She spun around with her Thunder Sword, launching bolts every which way. The floons crackled and popped, the smorks smoked and exploded, and to the earth elmens her flourish did absolutely nothing.

One crockie got up and crawled, scuttling around with its boulder body and insect-like legs. Pern bludgeoned it til she cracked open its shell.

“Hey. This is easy for us, but….” Pern hesitated. “Do these really spawn every day?”

“Smoke. Bad air. Chemicals in the ground,” Rick said. “All the harbingers of elmens are here.”

Someone walked past, and the sun hung low in the sky.

“If it’s dangerous for people to work here—if this is where they always spawn—why don’t they close the factories? Put them somewhere else?”

“Don’t ask me,” Rick said. “What can I do? Can’t worry ‘bout what we can’t change easily.”

“What can we do…” Pern repeated, then shook her head fast. “We can continue to fight!”

She stamped out the twenty-fifth smork, and she coughed as it sputtered out.

“Look sharp Rick! Have some life! There’s nothing I despise more than someone who has potential and refuses to try.”

Rick stretched and punched out floon twenty-five: “There’s no meaning in why this place is open. If you ask the people running the factories… the people working there… the people who buy from this place… they all might say they wish they were closed. But they still keep going on.

I’m just like one of these factories. I keep going, and there’s no meaning to it, and I just enjoy wallowing in my own kind of filth. Present company excluded, of course. You seem pretty pure.”

“Not that ambitious, huh?”

“I’ll take the D-Rank if you’ll give it to me,” Rick said. “I don’t particularly care; failing up or succeeding down.”

Twenty-five smorks. Twenty-five floons. Twenty-five crockies; Rick and Pern had killed all the elmens they had needed to except for the slimes, which were nowhere to be found. Pern paused.

“I’m serious about wanting to help you. If you don’t consider us friends, you can at least think of this as a kind of networking,” Pern said.

Rick stood and thought for a long time. About his partner. About the slimes.

Pern could be rather uptight, but this was still a very generous offer. Was there some way that he could thank her? Some way he could help Pern? Even if she was an S-Rank and he was an E.

“Wear skimpier armor.” Rick said.

“Huh?”

“If you’re already wearing skimpy, ineffective, armor, why not go all the way? ”

“I understand.” Pern said. “You’re a watchful, lazy, good-for-nothing fighter who’s also a pervert.”

“Guilty as charged,” Rick said. “Follow me Pern and I’ll take you somewhere real nice.”