It took quite a while for the three to get the required items, there being six items they’d needed from the snow dungeon. Yondol was a bit quieter than normal, though Amy quickly talked with him to lighten his mood several times. Jade was so excited to see what Amy could do with her inventory, but he held off to ask until all three had inventories of their own.

They knew leaving the dungeon was not wise before they got all the needed items, and it took them nearly the whole rest of the day to get everything they needed. Once they found the last snowstorm flask, they grouped up at the pillar that would teleport them out, though Amy was clearly uncomfortable now having no boots on, having long ago gotten rid of her previous pair. One quick inventory crafting later, however, Amy and Yondol received their Hellrine boots, Amy clearly liking the dark blue boots better, as it worked well with the red accents. He also traded her the balloon trio item as well, which she could hide with a flick of a switch in her inventory. After seeing Yondol put on the balloons and agreeing with Amy that they looked a bit too cumbersome, he decided to keep it in his storage space, once again bringing back the slight blank calmness he took on when he was sad.

Once all of the items were crafted, Jade looked at the pillar with a frown, distracting himself with the snow brickwork as he thought. “Do you think it’d be better if we used the mirror, instead of teleporting to the entrance?” he asked, both siblings looking at him confused. “When used by itself, it’s designed to teleport you back to your latest sleeping point.”

“I… that might actually work better,” Yondol commented, his voice still a bit blank. “You sure it can work that way with us?”

“Well I did end up picking up these,” Jade stated, pulling two mirrors from his inventory that had icy frames instead of the usual silver of his personal one. “Ice mirrors should work the same, and we all used the same inn back in Ormand.” With a nod, the siblings agreed, taking the new mirrors, putting them in their inventory/personal space, and linked hand in hand. Jade was a little worried they’d be left behind, but he shouldn’t have as, with a flash, all three soon stood in the exact inn room he expected in the forested city.

“Whoa… why didn’t we use this before?” Amy asked, earning her a frown from Jade. “Oh yeah. Secrecy and all that.” Yondol lowly chuckled at that, Jade moving over to the window and looking out at the skyline.

“So. Do we need to get a map or something?” he asked, Yondol shaking his head and grabbing a roll of parchment from his personal space.

“Already taken care of. We’ll need to plan a bit more with moving out from Ormand, but it should be fine.” As Amy and Yondol discussed what their route would be, Jade looked at his inventory, making sure he had all of the items needed. He had bought a ton of stone and mud the past few weeks in preparation, planning on first crafting stone bricks to use as a buffer between the evil biomes’ grass and the mud, hoping that the building magic he’d used before didn’t exhaust him as much. Even if it did, however, Amy and Yondol had told him that the dungeon had a safe space right at the top, the main doors to the dungeon making it so no monsters could barge in.

He lastly made sure he still had his mushroom seeds and the bunches of glowing mushrooms as well. He had already checked and found out that he could make all kinds of furniture items with it, especially when he’d added a loom to his crafting menu. With a bunch of fabric taking up another slot, he could completely furnish any rooms he made, Jade hoping that it was just as easy to make as it was in Errant.

Once all of the preparations were done, the party left the somewhat confused innkeeper as they made their way towards the edge of town, only to be stopped midway there by a large group of adventurers, including the ones he gifted the armor and weapons too. Oh not now…

#

“Ah. Jade, Amy and Yondol. I’d hoped you’d still be here,” the guild master called out as he stepped out from behind the group of adventurers blocking the party’s way. The silver man gave them all a huge smile, though Amy frowned at it, which made the guild master’s next words not at all surprising to Jade. “We brought up the next few requests for you. Hope you all don’t mind!” He then brought out a stack of papers, Jade frowning at, what was presumably, another long list of items.

“We only agreed to the one set,” Amy called out, the chestling on her shoulder growling at the guild master. “Nothing more. Now if you’ll excuse us, we’re leaving.”

“I’m afraid I can’t let you go,” Janice said with a frown. “The King has taken a special interest in you Jade. Started saying things like you being a ‘transworlder’. Gave a royal missive and everything to get your story and for you to supply more equipment.” Jade’s eyes immediately went to the guild master’s hands, seeing a heavy looking parchment at the top of the stack.

The three looked at each other, Jade pointing up with a raised eyebrow. The siblings nodded as their wings sprouted from their backs, the guild master’s face going grim at that. As he opened his mouth, most likely to order the capture of the party, the three rocketed into the sky, their improved Hellrine boots giving their wings more lift as they were soon flying far above the town and into the clouds. Thankfully, Jade immediately noticed a nearby sky island, the mage shouting for his party members to land on it with him.

“What a sleazeball! When I get my hands on him I’m going to…” Amy’s rant quickly deteriorated into cursing, her shoes throwing up cloud material as she paced around.

“Do you think it was smart to run?” Jade asked Yondol, the elf giving a complicated expression. “I mean… he already told us about the missive. Won’t that mean we disobeyed it?”

Yondol shook his head at that. “Missives are very specific. They have to be handed to the person before they can come into effect. It's why it wasn’t too bad that we were late to receive the one in Candor.” Jade let out a relived sigh at that, though his mood quickly soured once again.

“We’re not going to be able to visit Ormand for a while, are we?” Jade asked, Yondol giving a sigh as he looked to Amy, who had been joined by her chestling in kicking around the clouds.

“Depending on how far things spread, we may have to stay completely out of the kingdom. The merchant’s guild can send missives using object teleportation, so most likely news of us will soon reach all over the place.”

Jade gave out a groan at that, walking angrily over to the edge of the cloud and looking down at the ground. He noticed they’d drifted pretty far from the forested city, thank goodness, though it did nothing to clear his mood. After everyone calmed down a little, the three grouped up to finalize on where to go next. Conveniently, the cloud was going in the general direction they’d needed to travel, so they could sit tight for a few hours. They also decided to loot the sky chest in the nearby building, finding some random potions, which they didn’t take, and a sky refinery. Even with all of the sky chests they’d opened, Jade hadn’t found one before, the mage smiling at the bit of loot. With the starstone chunks, found in the chest when looted normally, he could craft various furniture using the refinery. Yondol seemed excited by the prospect, especially when Jade mentioned making a starstone bed.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

After the siblings nagged him for a bit, he finally crafted one and set it down, finding even himself a bit surprised. Usually he hadn’t paid attention to the bed textures in the game, but the star motif on the bedspread was amazing to look at and even shimmered in the slight darkness of the sky building. Amy put the bed in her own inventory, promising it would be Yondol’s when they got him an inventory of his own. At the time, it would have filled up almost half of his personal space, so it made more sense to put it in hers.

#

After a few hours of coasting on the cloud, the party lifted off to glide in the direction of the evil biomes’ boundaries. During the trip, Yondol remarked that the only reason it no longer spread like it did in their parents’ days was due to a large project that had walled off the forests. Normally the green grass would get infected with either the pink color of the Scarlet Forest or the sickly green color of the Daemon Desert. They only called it a desert, of course, due to the propensity for the ground to corrode into a lime green sand, but it was also heavily populated with the various demonwood trees, which were hard as rocks and very hard to cut down. Yondol didn’t say it, but Jade assumed after their dad’s passing, with no powerful fire mage to take his place, the spread of the biomes was too much for the country to handle.

The project to combat that was to build a very thick stone brick wall surrounding the biomes and dungeon areas. Monsters could climb over it, of course, but it was far easier to manage them when you weren’t also trying to stem the spread of the biomes. Forts were also built all along the boundaries, attracting the various monsters where they could be led into kill boxes, mages easily dispatching them. They'd have to fly over the wall of course, and Amy and Yondol were not too happy about it. Having the option to fly out, though, made the prospect easier to swallow, however, making the siblings at least willing to try everything out. If they handled the monsters easily enough, they were willing to make the trek to the dungeon and use it as their base of operations while Jade converted the surroundings.

Their flight was barely interrupted at all, though the three had to flee the various slimes that spawned all across the world. Jade once again asked about how that worked, though Yondol only gave him a shrug as an answer.

“The slimes just always appear in the wilderness. Campfires are essential, as they seem to lower the spawn rate of the monsters, but otherwise no one knows where the monsters come from. Only that they regularly appear almost everywhere.” Jade grumbled at that explanation, not liking that no one seemed to be curious about it, but from Yondol’s explanation, he gathered that it was like asking why the sky was blue. Sure, there was an answer to it if you went looking, but most people wouldn’t even have the thought to wonder. Of course, Jade was not the person to find those answers, having never gone to college himself and only having a rudimentary knowledge of the scientific method.

The party quickly came up to the boundary of the scarlet forest, Jade frankly disgusted by the fleshy appearance of not only the trees, but the grass as well. Due to the tree coverage on both sides, he hadn’t seen the wall until they were right up above it, Yondol having navigated them to a part of the wall in between two of the forts. He could see them a little ways off, the structures mostly flat rectangular boxes, sprawling out all along the wall. Smiling at the stone bricks, he reminisced about how he’d do something similar in Errant when he didn’t want the biomes to spread, the stone bricks impervious to the evil biomes’ spread.

As soon as they landed, Yondol gave Jade a dubious look, the party already hearing rustling from monsters in the trees. “You sure we’ll be fine?” he asked one last time, the mage giving his party members a thumbs up and a smile.

“It’ll be okay. The scarlet forest only has the flying brains right? They’re around the same strength as the mushroom creatures.” He didn’t get a chance to reassure them more after two such creatures flew out of the trees, shrieking mouths pointed at the party. They were even more disgusting in person, looking like normal, if not larger than normal, brains that flew through the air. If they had tentacles, Jade would have noped out of there immediately. The chestling and grinning eye immediately climbed off of Amy and Jade, cuddling up together on the wall as the three jumped down into the more open space on the ground.

Once again, their tactics worked wonders, the screeching creatures not smart enough to go after the defensively weaker duo that was Jade and Amy, who flew around and took pot shots at the creatures. Yondol moved around with more care and precision than normal, making sure the mouths on the brains got no where near him. Within minutes, the brains lay dead on the ground, Jade smiling at the easy fight while Yondol and Amy looked on in shock.

“That’s… it?” Amy asked, poking gently at the corpses. To the party’s shock, the monsters, in a flash of light, were looted by the woman, the items presumably ending up in her inventory.

“That was easy…” Yondol huffed out, only looking the tiniest bit winded.

“Told you. You think we’re good to head towards the dungeon?” Amy and Yondol spent a bit more time being shocked at the fight, though no one dared sit or lay down on the fleshy looking and feeling grass. Once their shock was over, however, Yondol and Amy looked a lot happier with exploring the forests to find the dungeon. Amy even flew high up into the air to scout the area, coming back down without having seen the grand dungeon entrance. It seemed it was covered too much in the foliage, so they’d need to try and navigate to it from the old map Yondol had purchased. It showed the general location of the grand dungeon, though with the new landscape, they had no land markers to work off of to find it.

“Well we need to search the forest anyway,” Jade commented, getting confused looks as he picked up a pink mushroom from the base of one of the fleshy trees. “These mushrooms, plus the flesh I assume Amy picked up, are used to make the boss summoning item. We may need to fight it multiple times in order to get the pet item from the sacks, and getting the materials before we get to the dungeon will make it easier on us.” Yondol and Amy conceded the point, though Amy stated she would only harvest the loot from the monsters, not liking the texture of the mushrooms at all.

#

Hellrine Boots

Walk on water and lava

Move normally on icy surfaces

Ability to ignore lava damage for 10 minutes

Flight

Immune to the effects of temperature

Increased movement speed

Boots made to combat the fires of hell and the coldness of space.

#

Balloon Trio

Increased jump height

Quadruple Jump

These balloons make you feel lighter than air!

* * *