Current Quests

Justice For Courbefy: Find justice for the victims of the corrupt mayor of Courbefy. Use…

Chosen Of Knowledge: Escort Hugh on his journey to becoming a fully awakened iron…

Healer’s Materials: Gain Healer’s favour by donating alchemy ingredients to the church…

Wine tour: Vineyard wants you to try the different wines in the Megève area.

Acquire Follower: Dominion wants you to gain another follower.

Chosen Of Hero: Travel north to Lake Auvernier, find the chosen of Hero and recruit…

“Here, I did Sam’s abilities.”

Hugh and Sam took their hands out from beneath their cloaks to take the paper that Dave handed them as they walked their heidels around, searching for the targets of the current contract. They read the text as they rode. Tzu always saw the targets first anyway.

Summoner

Biogenesis - bugs everywhere

Grove Guardian - healthy-smacky-thumpy tree

Create Flesh Golem - self expl.

Reanimate spirits - semi-random undead. Low power.

All Eating Slime - self expl.

Mist Walker - self expl.

Summon Skeletons - self expl.

Return To The Grave - super-kills the animated. Really hurts summons.

Blightwood Walker - trappy-hitty-poison tree

Gardener

Growth

Aura of Life - self expl.

Health Blossom - heal slowly until explodey heal

Regrowth - solid heal over time

Decomposition

Corpse explosion - self expl.

Death Aura - self expl.

Combined

Death Sight - self expl.

Transpose Composition - switch relative HeMaSt

Dance Of Life And Death - HeMaSt conversion cycle shields

Life Recirculation - convert damage to health

Other

Cruel Puppeteer - magic strings control enemies

Dragged To The Grave - skeleton arms grab ankles

“What’d you think?” asked Dave.

Hugh and Sam were silent for a while as they read.

“It’s good!” said Hugh. “Definitely one way to model her abilities. I still feel like there’s merit in a summoner-necromancer model for Sam’s abilities.”

“Necromancer!?”

“Sorry,” said Hugh, quickly.

“Necromancer does work,” said Dave, “Sorry, Sam, I know you don’t like it but you do raise the dead. The fact that you do it ethically is important, though, we both appreciate that. You got approval from the church of Death and everything, right?”

Sam glared like an angry kitten but relented after a few moments into her usual smile. They discussed the merits of classifying each other’s abilities with certain methods, Sam covered her mouth and opined that Dave’s abilities should be classified as ‘smart boy’ and ‘paper boy’, but immediately stopped when Tzu spotted their quarry.

=Contact! Lesser ogres, two count, three hundred metres, north-west.=

Sam and Dave put helmets on and came together while Tome manifested in front of them. Hugh left his heidel for the sky in wind form. He’d discovered by accident that very morning that he could use project elements while in wind form and use the blowback to effectively sail around the sky. The mana cost was too much for regular use but it was good for temporary mobility. Hugh gained several metres of height quickly be able to get eyes on their quarry and hand signalled down some details. He was hard to see in wind form but Tzu’s vision was perfect.

=Hugh confirms three enemies and that we remain stealthed.=

Yesterday had been a bit of a mess in a goblin encounter. Dave had called a team meeting and rectified the issue. He was pleased that the encounter protocol was working so well.

“Thanks Tzu, what do you think? Three ogres? The lure will work?”

=If your information is right and ogres are dumb, they will not sense a trap. The only problem is they may be so dumb that they are not curious.=

“You reckon open with burst damage?”

=One is napping. It is ideal.=

Sam smiled at Dave in approval.

“Alright,” said Dave. “Kill one, ambush one, fight one. Tzu, take the plan to Hugh then come back to me.”

Sam led the way around the hills to get a good angle on the ogres. Tzu returned with updates. One was napping, one was stripping a branch, one was playing in the shallows of the river. Dave eventually got a good angle on the encounter, selected the napping ogre in his UI and opened the battle.

“Manifest me a bibliomantic meteor,” intoned Dave.

All of team Executive Services looked to the skies where three finned, teardrop-shaped blocks of solid paper got printed into existence about three hundred metres up and the team watched them fall. The fall took about ten seconds. The impact was sudden and violent. A line of simultaneous, ground-shaking thumps caused both of the other ogres to look up in alarm and trot over to the impact site where they stood, stupefied, inspecting the kinetic weapons and the body of their friend.

“Alright, let’s do this. Kill the closest,” said Dave, opening Tome to a page with a ritual circle for enhancing weapon damage and fired his wand. An icicle flew from it into the ogre’s back and battle commenced.

It took the ogres a moment to realise the direction they were under attack and Dave used the time to shoot a second icicle into the same ogre. With a hoot and a roar, the ogres began charging at Dave up the slope. They moved quickly. Despite their pudgy appearance the two-and-a-half metre tall ogres had a long stride that ate up distance quickly.

On que, Hugh’s wind form dropped from the sky on an intercept course with the trailing ogre. He switched to earth form and tackled the ogre’s leg, tripping it. The lead ogre didn’t notice, blind with rage at the icicles impacting upon its thick skin, it kept charging at Dave. With a quick phrase in Siamese, Sam cast Dragged To The Grave on the trailing ogre and skeletal hands burst from the ground to hold the fallen ogre down.

Dave retreated over the lip of the hill as the lone, charging ogre began to close with him. The ogre crested the hill and ran straight into Sam’s summoned treants. The blightwood walker reached out its thorny, dead branches to wrap the ogre in its toxic embrace and the grove guardian smashed a heavy, gnarled branch into the ogre’s leg. Sam herself joined in, stabbing her billhook into the ogre’s same leg and releasing her beetle swarm to crawl and fly down the haft of her weapon, across the ogre’s body and begin crawling over its eyes. The rest of Sam’s army joined the battle as well; Slimy engulfed the ogre’s feet and the skeletons jumped in with abandon, stabbing wildly.

Dave waved Tzu into adding its damage to the ogre that was being piled on and turned his attention to Hugh’s ogre. It was not going as ideally as the ambush. The ogre had crawled out of the zone of Sam’s Dragged To The Grave spell. As Dave watched, it bellowed at Hugh who cried in alarm and began running away down the river bank. In earth form. His slowest form.

“Fuck, don’t run. And, don’t run that way,” groaned Dave, using Stop And Think. With time paused, it was easy to see Hugh was pulling the ogre to the water where, if they were lucky, it might decide to abandon the fight. Then the team would have to cross the river and spend an unknown amount of time hunting it down. If they were unlucky, it’d fish Hugh out of the water and start chewing on his head.

Dave let time return. “Hey, you!” he shouted, switching targets to the ogre that was glaring at Hugh’s retreating form. He flicked his fingers towards it without thinking. “Tzu, help! Over here, you great lout!” Dave shouted again, waving his arms to get the ogre’s attention and shooting icicles, sharp pens and, via Tzu, a beam of resonating force into the ogre’s face and chest. The damage annoyed it and got its attention but the deciding factor for the ogre changing direction away from Hugh was Tzu who, scintillating with aggressive colours, made a distorted, static scream which grated upon the ears like nails on glass amplified by a broken PA system.

The ogre made for the source of the horrid noise. Tzu hovered backwards, pulling the ogre to the existing melee with Sam’s minions. The ogre stumbled into the fight, swatting away attacking pens and swung its huge, wooden club into Sam’s grove guardian. The guardian almost snapped under the blow, an entire limb breaking off and the small tree’s body was compromised. The ogre swung its club back to finish the job but Sam incanted in Siamese and cast Cruel Puppeteer. Magical lines extended from her hands to the ogre. With Eldritch Eyes Dave could see she was focusing entirely on controlling the hand and arm with the club, keeping every muscle tense to render the arm immobile and useless.

Good, thought Dave, that’s brought us some time now we can -

Still in a panic, Hugh began pumping transcendent damage into the ogre from behind with Project Elements. Dave’s eyes flicked to Hugh’s stat bar in his UI and watched the high mana and stamina cost drain Hugh’s reserves.

Thankfully, Sam had stuck to her job and was killing the ogre that had fallen into her ambush. Dave called an origami heidel and swung himself into the built-in saddle just as Hugh keeled over from mana drain. The ogre that Sam was controlling with Cruel Puppeteer broke free and turned to see what had caused it such searing pain from behind. Its beady eyes focused on Dave who was trotting the heidel in front of Hugh’s prone form. The slavering, angry ogre roared and began lumbering after Dave.

“Finish your enemy. Care for Hugh,” Dave cantrip-messaged to Sam as he began kiting the ogre from heidelback. He knew she’d got the message and would follow it, even though she gave no indication in the melee.

Kiting ogres was actually the recommended way to fight them if overwhelming damage from stealth wasn’t an option. They were a massive bundle of hitpoints and damage, really. Pretty dumb, none of their physical senses were particularly sharp and no evidence of any mystical senses. They just came into existence in the hills and wandered around eating anything that moved and a lot of things that didn’t.

Unfortunately, they did have hands which meant that after the first couple of run-pause-shoot kiting sequences with the ogre, it moaned wordlessly and started throwing rocks at Dave. This meant that the pause-phase would get interrupted often because the ogre would take the opportunity to throw another rock at the now stationary target forcing Dave to move.

Dave used Stop And Think occasionally to check on his teammates and double check his bearings while kiting the ogre. His leg hurt where a thrown rock had hit him but he grit his teeth through it. It had taken less than a quarter of his health and Sam could fix that right up with a fast and cheap Health Blossom. As Sam’s ogre ran out of health, Dave began kiting his ogre back but the encounter was effectively over.

The last ogre, sensing that something was wrong, tried to run away, gave up running away when Dave followed while shooting, it threw and missed with two more rocks and lastly tried to make a desperate charge at Sam before an icicle finally hit at the right angle to punch through the tough skin and sinews of its torso.

Sam was already cradling Hugh’s head and carefully feeding him a mana potion one drop at a time. Hugh reflexively swallowed a few of the drops as Dave walked his heidel up to Sam at a sedate pace.

“Okay, he’s progressed from freaking out and hiding to freaking out, using all his mana and passing out.” Dave sighed heavily.

Sam smiled up at Dave.

“New battle plan,” said Dave. “You and I do it all and Hugh does what he can where we can supervise him.”

Sam’s smile retreated to one that was merely upturned lips only.

“Sorry, I don’t mean to insult him but you have to admit he’s a danger to himself. He’d have got fully clubbed into the ground if I didn’t take his agro.”

Sam looked away and guilty-grinned.

“Thank you. He’s a top bloke but he can’t fight worth a damn.”

“He has no dog!”

Dave paused for a moment.

“Oh, it’s ‘dog in him’. Think like, the spirit of a fighting dog that’s hanging on and just keeps shaking its head, not giving up.”

“Yes! Hugh does not have that dog in him at all.”

Dave just nodded, dismounted and sat down next to Sam.

“How do we put dog in him?” she asked.

Dave sighed and stared off into the distance.

“Dunno. Never had to make someone fight who didn’t want to before.”

“Me too,” said Sam, rummaging in her pack. “Can you make tea? Hugh will want some when he wakes up.”

“Oh, yeah. Sorry. I should have thought of that,” said Dave, waving his hand and starting a fire before suddenly remembering. “Shit, Hugh has the good kettle in his inventory.”

Sam grinned.

Team Executive Services had spent the last three days trekking back and forth across the road between Sauvabelin and Auvernier, slowly heading north, completing contracts as they went. They’d already be in Auvernier by now if travelling had been their goal but since their goal was not being found, staying in the wilderness was ideal.

Wilderness was the word, though. This third day the team had struck out to the east hard, away from the road to Auvernier, which curved westward around the lake of the same name. They figured it was safe. The ambient magic of the area they were in was mostly iron over a twenty kilometre square stretch that ran from the shores of Lake Auvernier to the alps, both geological structures running from south-west to north-east on the map in a great line.

It wasn’t all iron ranked, though. Especially Lake Auvernier which spiked up to gold rank at a place in the middle but petered out quickly to a bronze zone for half of the lake’s area. In fact, at many places on the shore were unranked zones. From there, that large iron rank zone persisted until the alps where it quickly became bronze and even silver in some places in the mountains and forests.

Dave had used The Stationary Scry Of Farseeing to view the notice board in Sauvabelin and found several contracts in this open, iron rank land south-east of Lake Auvervier in addition to the several contracts they already had there. When Dave had wondered aloud why there were so many contracts building up in that area, Sam had answered.

“Is middle of nowhere and you are only adventurer with warm cabin and motivation to be there!”

He’d handed her the bigger slice of cake for dessert that night and thanked goodness for happy little Sam keeping him level headed. Actually, thank Goodness. Dave was pretty sure that Goodness was actually a real entity here and preferred their name with capitalisation.

As a team, Executive Services had struggled with communication and coordination but they’d had team meetings and come up with solutions and drilled it as best they could in practice. They were all rather feeling quite good about their scouting and target identification protocol: Make a shout of ‘contact’ upon seeing monsters or something worthy of note then, in the following order: monster type, number, distance and direction. They’d even made an addition of Hugh going wind form and gaining some height to keep eyes on the target. Once Tzu saw the enemy, they appeared on Dave’s map and minimap so they could be tracked but with Hugh watching them, he could make judgements about whether the monsters knew that the team was coming.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Tzu could also watch and make those judgments but Hugh’s wind form was reminiscent of a humanoid whirlwind and difficult to see if you didn’t know what you were looking for whereas Tzu’s natural state was fluorescent.

Also, it gave Hugh something to succeed at which he needed right now. Or, didn’t. It was hard to tell. There was no hiding it from him, he was objectively bad at fighting and he berated himself for it while travelling between contracts but hyped himself up before every battle into a manic energy. They’d hunted a malignity of twelve goblins yesterday. Hugh insisted, in the name of his Goddess, to be the battle opener. After all, goblins were detestable, even for the gentle Hugh. They were literally the kind of monsters to steal and eat babies.

Even then, when he’d opened the battle by shifting from wind form to earth form to land on two goblins and crush them, a high risk, high reward strategy Hugh had insisted on, he’d squealed, chickened out and twisted in the air to land harmlessly beside the goblins who began attacking him without hesitation. The rest of the malignity of goblins quickly joined in.

Hugh had curled up into the foetal position and yelled. Strangely, It’d worked out well since Hugh’s role in the battle plan was to attract their attention with his entrance and draw them together. He’d just done it by curling up into a ball instead of superhero landing on two of them. In the spirit of going with it, Sam had stuck to the battleplan. She used Cruel Puppeteer on one and held it still for the mere moment Dave had needed to get a headshot with his icicle wand and then Sam had cast Corpse Explosion to take most of the health out of most of the goblins. Finishing the rest of that fight was a mere formality after that.

Dave had watched Hugh’s health bar the whole time. The corpse explosion had been the most damaging thing to happen to him. His natural armour repelled the goblin attacks he’d been taking with ease and Sam’s heal over time spells easily healed through the small amount of damage that made it through his skin. Hugh wasn’t reacting to being hurt, he was just frightened of attacking other things and frightened of being attacked.

“You’ve got to find a way to want to hit them,” said Dave after the skirmish.

“But… I just don’t,” said Hugh, coming down, all manic energy gone and thoroughly depressed.

“They were trying to eat your flesh while you were still using it. That deserves feeling a bit miffed, come on,” said Dave, trying to summon even a sense of self preservation in his friend.

“I know but I just… don’t,” said Hugh lamely and clearly frustrated with himself.

“You know you don’t have to force yourself -”

“I do!” insisted Hugh, interrupting Dave’s attempt at tact. “I do! I must, I have to do it. I have to fight! I have faith! She picked me. Me! I was picked. By Her. No, no, no, I just have to keep going, Dave! Onwards and upwards, hey?”

He smiled and clapped Dave on the shoulder, energetic again.

“Hugh, you’re not -”

“I’m doing fine! I live in the Words of Knowledge and She will lead me to revelation!”

Dave was still composing his thoughts when Hugh started pacing and singing Hymns in his baritone. Gesturing for Dave to join in.

Dave politely declined, walked away, covered his face with his hands and screamed internally. Hugh had been doing this since Sauvabelin. Hurling himself into situations beyond his capabilities and, when questioned, declared it a matter of faith. As though he expected some revelation to just come to him and suddenly he’d be slugging it out with the monsters. Sam, always looking out for her friends, patted Dave on the back and offered him a cupcake.

“She’s not that much of an idiot to choose him as Her chosen when he’s utterly in hopeless denial, is she? In fact, I think it’s blasphemy to even suggest that, right?”

Dave bit into the cupcake.

“Yesssss,” Sam sung as she smiled, nodded and handed Dave some tea.

“Soon as we get into town, I’m asking Her for guidance,” grumbled Dave.

Three days later, here they were, riding origami heidels away from the ogre encounter and trying to find a way to tell Hugh, without sounding like they were blasphemously accusing Knowledge of making a mistake, that they were reducing his expected battle contribution to ‘join in if it’s safe’.

Hugh sat silently on his heidel radiating disappointment and shame into the world and his friends didn’t know what to say because there was no way to comfort him. Deep down he knew it. He genuinely didn’t know how to fight but any suggestion that he take a step back was met with denial, deflection and soft statements that suggested his friends were rudely questioning his faith.

“And where do you run?” Hugh was muttering to himself. “Towards friends, you know that’s the correct answer. But, where did you run, Hugh? Down the damnable river! Ran. While in earth form! Did you earthwalk into the ground? No. Did you switch into water or air forms and use them as viable escape routes? No. You certainly didn’t change to fire form and use any of those wrestling techniques Dave has been teaching, did you Hugh? No. You ran away from the people who were trying to keep you safe towards a boggy river.”

“Hugh, we don’t need you to do combat anymore if you don’t want, ka?” said Sam softly with her most tentative smile.

“Like I have a choice,” said Hugh bitterly into the ground still on his emotional downswing from his manic energy.

“You do,” said Dave, “but you’ve chosen faith rather than learning.” Hugh glared at Dave and opened his mouth but Dave spoke first. “Yeah, yeah, your faith is learning. I heard it yesterday.”

“Don’t you roll your eyes at me, David Bauer!” thundered Hugh. You’ve been in this world all of a month and you think you know the intricate ways of the Gods? Even in your world you’ve confessed to having no faith. Don’t you correct me!”

“Faith? Hugh, I don’t need faith to figure out that a goddess that personifies Knowledge has zero problem with me correcting you and pointing out that you’re being a self important ass who’s trying to get his friends killed,” said Dave, frustration coming out. “In fact, I’ll even bring a little faith into it. My first prayer since I was nine.” Dave rudely snatched the symbol of Knowledge from around Hugh’s neck and held it reverently in his raised hand. “Knowledge on high, bring me truth and lore. I attest to you that your servant Hugh Abberton is endangering his friends in these last three days, more than he would have had he taken their counsel, and he is using his faith in you as an excuse to continue doing so. This I say and may you strike me down if I attest wrongly.”

Dave pushed the pendant back onto Hugh who looked stunned. Dave glared at Hugh, raised his eyes to the sky as though waiting and then glared at Hugh again.

“Dave!” said Hugh aghast and hurt. “How dare you? That’s not fair at all!”

“Fuck fairness,” said Dave, more harshly than he meant to. “You’re in training! We each have different abilities! Both magical or otherwise. Of course it’s not fair. Both you and Sam have done zero of the scrying. That’s unfair. I have done zero of the healing. Also unfair. Essences and adventuring are fundamentally unfair! Fuck fairness, just do what you’re able to do.”

“Calm down, Dave -” began Hugh.

“No! I won’t fucking calm down!” shouted Dave. “This is serious business! People get killed doing this all the time, don’t they? And I’ve got you wildly overestimating what you’re capable of! Do you know what happens when you do that? You get put in a critical position you’re not ready for and you get people killed. Why? Because you couldn’t deflate your sense of religious pride or manliness or self importance or whatever for long enough to have an honest reflection about your own limits!”

“But... I can -”

“Hugh,” interrupted Dave again, hand over his face. “You’re going to say something that you could theoretically do, I know it. I need you to stop expecting a miracle to arrive and just be honest about what you’re capable of. Just.. stop. Right now. If we were ambushed by glade spinners, what would you do?”

“Umm, glade spinners use webs to restrain so I’d take fire form and -”

“Hugh, this isn’t an exam question. I’m not asking for the most correct answer. I’m asking you for an honest assessment of your own mental and physical reactions. What would you really, actually do?”

Sam had somehow been throwing Dave a variety of dirty looks via smiles but after that question, she sadly pursed her lips at Hugh in acknowledgement that Dave had a point.

“I would keep the faith,” said Hugh haughtily. “She is Knowledge and I am her chosen. She will ensure I am wise when it is time for me to know.”

“She already give you Dave,” said Sam tentatively.

Hugh suddenly looked troubled. Tamping down his anger at Hugh’s bloody-mindedness, Dave used the opening.

“Hugh, I came from another world and have been charged by the Lady to teach you. Whatever blasphemy I casually engage in, I think we can both agree that Knowledge is powerful enough to be utterly unaffected by that so can we focus on being a good team? I am not powerful enough to harm a god, am I?”

“No, no. Of course not. You’re right, yes. I’d prefer you not blaspheme all the same.”

“He won’t blaspheme!” interjected Sam, giving Dave a significant look.

“No, I won’t. And if I do, you let me know so that I can apologise and stop. How about that?”

“Well, you should already -” began Hugh irritably but stopped. “No, of course you shouldn’t.” He said, suddenly merry again. “Your whole world is unranked. Of course! Can you even blaspheme in a world that has no gods to blaspheme against? I’ve never thought of it like that before.”

“A highly debatable topic. Believe me,” said Dave, quickly moving on. “Look, what Sam and I need from this conversation is a change in strategy from you and we don’t know how to bring up the topic without you thinking we’re doubting the power of Knowledge.”

“You do doubt the power -”

“Can you just pretend I don’t and listen to our idea anyway? Please?” said Dave, quickly trying to prevent Hugh from emotionally walling himself off again.

“Well, I can listen. What change in strategy would you like?”

“Well, in the last few days you’ve insisted on opening the attacks and… Well, let’s just admit that a complete revelation is yet to come. Not to doubt it’s coming eventually,” said Dave quickly. “But your semi-suicidal behaviour is alarming for us who are watching. So we hoped you could lower our distress and try a different tactic with us. One where Sam and I open the battle, receive the enemy’s attack and you righteously tear them down as a second wave of attack? Yeah? It’ll give Sam and I an opportunity to use our ranged attacks too? Is the Lady’s plan open to that?”

Hugh smiled and clapped Dave on the shoulder with a wide eyed look of reverent revelation.

“Truth and Lore behold! This is why she brought you to me, Dave. Yes, yes. Of course, it makes so much sense now.” Hugh's eyes glazed over and he gathered more energy as he talked. “Knowledge is patient. Fighting with knowledge. I’ve been going at it all backwards! Ha! Don’t you see? I’ve been fighting to get knowledge when I should have been getting knowledge and then fighting!”

Dave grit his teeth and nodded. Dave had spent much of the previous day trying to convince Hugh that scouting was useful and they shouldn’t rely on divine revelations to which Hugh has responded with a long version of ‘ye of little faith’.

“Praise be to Knowledge who knows all and will set my feet upon the path to truth and lore. She is the teacher and I am the student. All of life is but a lesson from the Goddess and I need but listen to her teachings.”

“Student’s wearing fuckin’ headphones in class,” growled Dave under his breath.

Hugh smiled with glazed eyes and began singing hymns again.

Sam and Dave woke up the next day, as usual, to a warm breakfast. Not needing to sleep, Hugh was always available to put the kettle on, heat up a magic pan and start a fry-up. Team Executive Services started by checking out an astral space that Hugh felt as they rode past. It was a portal to a place of rock and sand dunes only a several kilometres across each way but for its small size, was filled to overflowing with desert monsters. As soon as they saw one, Hugh floated the idea of clearing the space out when Dave got a quest for exactly that.

“Hugh, did you also get -?”

“Indeed, I did. How’s the reward?”

“Pretty good, actually,” admitted Dave. “Sam? You’re in?

“Free money!” Sam’s face shined like a beacon.

“Remember,” said Dave to Hugh. “Stay behind, used ranged attacks, wait for the engagement and then pick a flank.”

Hugh nodded, hyping himself up and talking religious themed positive reinforcement to himself. Dave shook his head and hoped it wouldn’t go badly.

Dave had memorised his six spells for the day over breakfast; three counts of Origami Mount, Comfortable Country Cabin, Thunderous Lightning Of Accuracy and Bibliomancer’s Gravitropic Meteor. The last two spells being the new ones that he wanted to try out: the spell-slot charged lighting spell he’d reverse engineered and the drop-temporary-paper-from-the-sky spell he’d used on the sleeping ogre recently. He actually really liked the spell even though he’d made it mostly as an exercise in learning temporary summoning magic and directional magic.

With familiars manifested and all of Sam’s summons complete, they began clearing out the astral space and it didn’t go anywhere near as badly as it could have. With his manic energy, Hugh chafed at being the rearguard and constantly over-spent mana out of over enthusiasm for ranged attacks and fear of melee combat. Not that he didn’t try. Hugh had apparently entered the human cannonball phase of his fighting career. When he wasn’t standing at maximum effective range for his Project Elements and shooting while yelling aggressively, he would gather up his courage, run at whatever monster Sam was fighting, and bodily crash into it while flailing his arms. It didn’t matter what they were fighting, Hugh would either be wasting mana as far away from combat as he could be or holding his breath, closing his eyes and becoming a human wrecking ball.

It was, Dave had to admit, an improvement on his previous work. No longer did Sam or Dave have to scramble to get Hugh out of danger because, most of the time, he was never in any. He fainted once due to mana exhaustion but he was so far from the enormous sand shabs they were fighting he wasn’t in any danger. The shab probably hadn’t even noticed him amongst all of Sam’s minions. Sam idly directed two of her damaged skeletons to drag him behind a dune.

It was actually against those sand shabs that Dave used his two new spells. Shabs, shark and crab hybrids, took their size from the shark half, not the crab and sand shabs, Dave discovered, were thrice as big again – for no reason – and they were ambush predators. Two had burst out of the sand from nowhere and ambushed Sam. They were powerful monsters, of high iron rank. Very dangerous to the low iron ranked team Executive Services.

Dave did a Stop And Think to confirm the sand shabs had the same vulnerable underbelly as regular shabs. They did. So he dropped to the ground, aimed at its belly and fired. The lightning bolt blew open the underbelly, taking the majority of the monster’s health. It was loud, it was surprising and it’d worked very, very well. Dave was pleased with the spell. Dave had the team focus on killing the injured sand shab before focusing on the second.

The second shab had picked up Sam’s flesh golem in its claws and was trying to rip it in half. Sam’s army was trying to get underneath the shab but it had dropped onto the sand, hiding its underbelly while it continued ripping Sam’s golem into pieces.

Dave had cast Bibliomancer’s Gravitropic Meteor as soon as the shab’s belly touched the sand and four-and-a-half seconds later, three tonnes of paper impacted on the shab’s back, splitting it open. The entire battlefield shuddered with the impact as sand and shab bits were blasted away. Yet another instance of everyone being glad for Dave’s being able to cast Grand Mage’s Gravitas. Especially Hugh who’d long since passed out by that part of the battle and almost got buried in the thrown sand.

Aside from that one difficult encounter, Executive Services tore through the monsters in the astral space. Most of them were clustered around what Dave had at first mistaken for an oasis but realised eventually that it was just a lake that was seasonally fed from the real world when the springtime snow melting would flood the area outside.

The monsters were mostly shabs, margols and girtablullû. The latter were large monsters with the head, torso, and arms of a humanoid and the body of a scorpion. Like a scorpion version of a trap weaver. Those three monsters were aggressive, non-complex encounters. There were a few elementals that could have been complex encounters but Dave just decided to kite them to death. Why take risks? Fortunately, Hugh was too low on mana at the time and too exhausted to answer that question.

They’d finished in good time but Sam was spent. While Hugh hadn’t made things difficult, Dave’s contribution to actual battle was not equal to a non-booker adventurer. Dave had acquitted himself as best he could but his damage output was, outside of the sand shab encounter, perhaps half that of any other adventurer. An even smaller ratio for a damage-focused adventurer. While his information abilities were of great help, Sam was but one woman doing the work of an entire team.

“You alright?” asked when they’d exited the astral space. He’d turned his quest in at the exit aperture.

“I just tired,” said Sam, fanning herself. “So hot!”

“We need that chosen of Hero, don’t we?” Dave asked rhetorically.

“Right now? I’m happy to take anybody, ka?”

Dave chuckled.

“Tell you what? Today’s been pretty hard. There’s a small town closeby called Forel. How about we regroup there, train a bit and have a lake day tomorrow?”

Sam grinned happily in response.

Having passed out twice in as many hours from mana loss, Hugh was in no condition to object so, the Executive Services found themselves at the only inn in Forel sipping on cool beer.

“We really do need more firepower, don’t we?” said Dave to Sam.

She looked at him funny.

“Sorry, more sword-arms. More damage.”

She nodded wearily.

=Or better training= opined Tzu.

“Can’t risk the Builder cult getting the opportunity to question Hugh and them learning about me,” said Dave.

“What’s with you and Hugh and the Builder cult again?” asked Sam.

“They attacked Chateau Chamois to prevent me from being summoned and were unsuccessful. While looking for me and you in the area around the Chateau they got scattered and we killed a few of them. From what Hugh told me, a bunch of other adventuring groups killed the rest. That means either there are no survivors of the assassins sent to stop my summoning or that they’re so lost in the mountains they may as well be dead. Either way, all the Builder cult leadership know for sure is what’s public knowledge; that a single monk from the monastery survived, ran back to Megève and warned everyone about the cult. The Purity church was found hiding the cult and that completely screwed up their attack plans on Megève.”

“So, they are looking for Hugh?”

“Yes, except we can’t be sure they know his name is Hugh. Even if they do, they don’t know if it’s this Hugh. All they know for sure is that they’re looking for the only survivor of Chateau Chamois so we need to disassociate Hugh from Chamois and Megève.”

“Shouldn’t we call Hugh a different name then? To keep him safe?”

Dave shook his head and took a sip of beer while the barkeeper momentarily passed by close enough to overhear their quiet conversation.

“No point calling him another name. He can’t lie. If someone asks him for his name, he only has one answer. Even If we call him ‘Harold’ it might be strange if we do that and then he has to introduce himself as Hugh.”

“I see,” said Sam. “If someone called Hugh is hiding from you and you don’t know which one it is, you will suspect the most if one is trying to have a secret identity.”

They both looked at Hugh who appeared to be catatonic, completely spaced out. He sipped occasionally at his beer and just generally behaved like someone who had recently been given something for major surgery.

“Well, at least nobody will suspect him of being the guy who ran from Chamois to Megève to give a warning message,” said Dave.

Sam giggled.

“Why can’t Knowledge Church help him?”

“Dunno,” said Dave. “My guess is that it’d bring attention to him as the guy the cult’s looking for. Could also be that Knowledge has decided that this is the best way to level him up? She clearly wants him as an adventurer. Fact is, I like the bugger. Even though he’s been a fanatic prick recently.” Dave sighed deeply. “I think it has something to do with his trauma. Now that all the frantic activity has stopped, his mind is processing what’s happened and he’s not dealing with it well.”

“I think so too,” said Sam in a small voice, looking at Hugh who was just staring blankly into the distance.

=Can you explain more?=

“A profound negative experience, like having a bunch of cultists kill everyone in your monastery, can make a person lose control of their emotions.”

Dave’s familiars conferred together away from Sam and Dave.

“Anyway,” said Dave. “We need to either recruit more team members or team up with other teams. Possibly both. I got Tome to check earlier and from what it could tell from Megève police records, most adventuring teams around here have four or five members.”

“Megève police records?”

“Yeah, remember how they gave me permission to use their records to solve some crimes?”

Sam nodded.

“They didn’t put a time limit on my access,” said Dave with a shrug.

“Dave!” Sam scolded while giggling.

“It’ll be fine,” said Dave. “So, what do you think about skipping the closest quests and just doing Hero’s chosen next? I think we need it.”

“We do. I can’t be four people,” said Sam with her cheeky smile.

“I’ll try to avoid asking that of you again,” smirked Dave

“So, how do we make that quest?” asked Sam, sipping beer.

“I was rather hoping it’d become more clear as we got closer but I’ve given you all the information I have,” said Dave, going into his UI to quote from the text. “It says ‘travel north to Lake Auvernier, find the chosen of Hero and recruit them to a life of adventure.” When I asked, Hero said ‘real story book stuff’ and that I’d know them when I saw them.”

“We are at Lake Auvernier, yes? Is just over there, right?” Sam pointed in the direction of the lake they’d seen on the way into town.

“I suppose so,” said Dave with a shrug.

“Maybe chosen of Hero is in here!” said Sam, covering her mouth and laughing.

Dave smirked at her cheekiness.

“Let’s find out, hey?” He turned to the barkeep and hollered. “Hey, barkeep!? Do you know of any heroic lad or lass in the area?”

“Excuse me?” said the barkeeper politely, bustling over.

“Sorry,” said Dave offering his hand. “Dave Booker.”

“Ueli Studer.”

“Just a random question from a quest ability I have, Studer. There aren’t any young folk around town who’d make a good heroic type are there? You know? Brave, pure of heart, defends the weak, loves his mum and all that?”

Studer furrowed his brows for a second before answering.

“Well, strike me down if you’re not talking about the Schmidt boy!”

“What?” said Dave flatly.

Sam covered her mouth and giggled at Dave.