“Kyle? Are we leaving, or what?”

Kyle looked up and saw Mason at the door to his cabin.

“Yeah, sure,” Kyle said, peering out from behind his spell creation screen. “I’ll just finish this spell real quick.” Out of time, he gave up on finding a better spot and put the fire rune back where it was. He probably wouldn’t be able to squeeze any more power out of it anyway. He typed in a new name, “Kylefire Ray,” and hit invent spell.

“Hurry up,” Mason said. “We’re waiting.” And then Mason disappeared behind the door frame, waiting outside once more.

“Okay, yeah,” Kyle said, swapping out the fire rune for a “resist pain” rune. A buff effect on a ray would give it a much longer range; the extra flexibility would be worth the MP cost. He hit “invent spell” as he stood, then hastily closed out of the spell window, leapt from his seat, and jogged outside.

Mason, Braden, and Dvorak were standing outside waiting. Avina too, for some reason. “Sorry for the delay,” Kyle said. “I really should have done that sooner.”

“So what spell do you have now? Anything useful?”

“A fire ray. No more having my flame spheres bounce off things! And a ranged spell that helps people resist pain. It seemed… useful, given that Aubrey’s busy and we won’t have a healer.”

“Bet it’s nice having a whole research team matching pages for you,” Braden said, rolling his eyes.

“Actually, ah…” Kyle felt sheepish. But it was eating away at him. He had to tell someone. “I’ve been stealing RP. Kinda.”

“How do you do that?” Asked Dvorak. “RP seems more like a concept than something you can stick in your pocket and sneak away with.”

“The RP Aubrey gives me is supposed to be for her own research. I don’t even know what half the spells she makes do; they just move some rocks around and Aubrey’s team gets all excited and scribble down notes. But… I mean, I need some RP to spend on my own spells, right? So… whenever Aubrey gives me a spell diagram to learn and asks how much RP it’ll cost, I sort of… inflate the cost by five points. So I can keep the extra.”

“Wait, you’re lying to Aubrey?” Avina asked in disbelief.

Mason chuckled. “She’s gonna be so pissed when she finds out. And she will find out. She’s hell-bent on learning the formulas for everything.”

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“Yeah, I, uh… found that out,” Kyle said, rubbing his neck. “I thought at first she was just acting like a control freak and trying to track my RP expenditures. But then she comes up one day and tells me that she’s found the formula to calculate how much RP a spell would cost.”

“Oh god,” Mason said, chuckling.

“I know, right?” Kyle said. “She says it’s some bizarre formula based on the number of runes, the highest tier rune, the total area of all runes, the path length of the connections between runes, and get this: some constant based on the inventor.”

“Some… constant?” Avina said, holding a fist in front of a smile.

“Yeah. For Insagrim, it’s 10. For me, it’s 15. Imagine that.” Kyle laughed nervously. “She said it threw them for a while. They think it’s because I ranked resilience instead of attunement.”

“You’re toast,” Mason said. “Not even the King can stay the wrath of the court programmer.”

“No, it’s cool. I just need to make sure that I always add five to my research cost, and they won’t find out. As long as none of you tell them.”

“Don’t worry,” Dvorak said. “Your secret is safe with us. And my tens of thousands of viewers. I promise none of them would betray your confidence.”

“You’re lucky you’re the one feeding me spells,” Braden said, rolling his eyes with a smirk. “If I turn you in, who would I get my scrolls from?”

“But you wouldn’t, right?” Kyle said, smiling.

“Who knows?” Braden said. “Maybe when she’s done with all her ‘research’, she’d give me some of those earth-shattering spells she’s been promising.

“If she ever comes through,” Kyle said, chuckling. “Right now being in her good graces would just get you a bunch of spells to move and recolor pebbles.”

“Anyway,” Mason said, “Were we going to Wight’s Hold? Or to that place to the northwest?”

“Wight’s Hold,” Kyle clarified. “It’ll take a few hours on foot. We’ve got to figure out how to tame Chokka beasts one of these days so we can travel faster.”

“Still, it shouldn’t be a problem,” said Mason. “I bet we’ll be back Dvorak’s curfew.”

“See you later, Avina,” Kyle said. He started to turn, but Avina shook her head.

“She wants to come with us,” said Dvorak.

“Wait, what?” Kyle said. “We’re going to a dungeon, Avina. It’s not safe. You’re not seriously thinking of…” He trailed off when she shook her head again.

“You’ve only got four people going, so there’s room in your party,” Avina said. “And I’m not needed here. There’s no use for farmers right now; all the crops are in the ground and we only need a few people to weed them.”

“You wouldn’t even come to the training exercise at the mines,” Kyle said. “You really want to go in the dungeon, Avina?”

“No,” Avina blurted, then looked down nervously. “I mean… not in the dungeon. Shield of Faith and Holy Armor last for up to ten minutes, and I’ve got enough mana to cast them a few times each. I could just… stand at the entrance. And help.”

“I think we should take her with us,” said Dvorak. “My mana potions regenerate mana really slowly, but if she drinks one every time we come out to get our buffs renewed, she’d last for a few hours, I think.”

Kyle hesitated, but realized it might actually be good for the girl. It made sense to try and let people be as involved in adventuring as possible. And if there was a crystal in Wight’s Hold, she could even level up after they cleared it out. “Yeah, okay. Come on, let’s do this.”

Avina smiled and nodded slightly, and they started off.