Despite Will vouching for the demon’s motives, Mongrel was proving annoyingly difficult to convince.

Will cornered the man in his room, a trying feat by itself considering the strong animal musk that had soaked into every inch of it.

“Mongrel, come on,” Will said, leaned against the doorframe with his arms crossed. “Think of the power boost this would give you.”

Mongrel, in the process of wrestling his pants on, hopped over to the window when he spotted Number Four improperly handling the chickens. “Hey! You!” he called, tapping on the window. “Gentle with the chickens, you savage! Soft hands, remember?”

Finally getting his pants on and buckling the belt, he turned back to Will. “Yeah, I hear you. Maybe I’d consider it if I had any slots for familiars, but I don’t.”

“There are ways around that problem, you know. We’re gonna need to leave one of the boys behind to take care of the house and the animals anyway.”

“You’re talking like I agreed to come with. I’m not fucking going, Will. Anyway, what’s your point?”

“Since you’d be leaving one of them behind, you could dismiss that one and take on Nix as your new familiar. Then we earn you another upgrade point so you can take him back later.”

Mongrel shook his head. For once, he looked serious. “No, Will. I’m not doing that.”

“Why?”

“I just won’t. It wouldn’t feel right.”

Will gave an incredulous chuckle. “When did you ever care about ‘right’?”

He shrugged. “Even I have things I care about. Besides, in this dream scenario you cooked up where I go and leave one of the boys behind, if I dismiss him and he dies while I’m gone—say more bandits come along or whatever—he’s not coming back.”

Will had to take a deep breath to avoid punching something. “Oh my god, Matt. You are making this so difficult. All three of you, actually. You all avoid common sense like the plague.”

“Nuh-uh.”

“Good. Great. Really got me there.” Will patted gently at the bandaged portion of his head, grimacing with the dull, thumping pain. “How about this, then? I have a proposal for you.”

Mongrel sat down on his bed with a creak of wood, leaning back on his elbows. “A proposal?” His frown was barely visible through his unruly mop.

Will nodded. “I’ve been playing around with this for a while, but with what we’re raking in from this Brimstone gig, I think we’d actually have the funds for it.”

“All right, what is it?”

“A practice dungeon.”

Mongrel’s frown deepened. “What the fuck is a practice dungeon?”

“Just an idea I had. With how many Explorers and other idiots just wander out into the Bushland and get themselves killed, there has to be demand for a somewhat… gentler introductory curve to all of Nifala’s wonders.

“So the gimmick is, you build your very own practice dungeon that aspiring adventurers can go through, letting them learn the skills they need to survive out there in a safe-ish environment. Something like an outdoor section, an underground section, et cetera. You could place various plants around, ones to seek out and ones to avoid, various obstacles requiring teamwork and skill use, and have your boys act as ‘monsters’. Maybe even your very own pet demon as something like a final boss. With all that at your disposal, you’d be uniquely suited to running this kind of place.

“Most importantly, once the place is built, you can just sit back and rake in the dough. You wouldn’t need to do another proper day’s work in your life.”

Mongrel sat up straight, and Will could see the rusted gears in his head slowly turning. “That’s… genius.”

“I know,” Will said, smiling. “And by completing a project of that scope, I think you’d gain the two levels necessary to put another rank in Create Familiar.”

“Right. That makes sense.” He gave his belly a few contemplative claps. “What I don’t get is how this is leading up to me coming with you on your little globetrotting adventure.”

Will shrugged. “You can’t exactly teach people how to survive in the interior if you’ve never been there yourself. See this as a chance to gain some first-hand experience. Of course, you could always just make something up—it’s not like the freshies would know the difference—but I imagine you’re not too keen on dealing with unhappy survivors showing up at your place of employment.

“Now, if you decide to come along, I’ll front you the money to get this started, and of course I’ll give you the elixir to make the contract with Nix.”

“You should have given me the elixir in the first place,” Mongrel muttered. “Do you know how disappointed the boys were when they found out you were keeping it to yourself?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Will replied, holding up his hands in a defensive gesture. “I was keeping it to combine with another elixir to see if it would synthesize into something better. But if it’s going towards this, I’m more than happy to part with it.”

Mongrel sat in thought for a while. Number Two popped out of his chest, landed on the floor, and waddled off past Will to spend his time elsewhere. Mongrel hardly seemed to notice, stifling a yawn against the back of his hand.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

“When are we leaving?” the Builder finally asked.

Will grinned.

There we go.

“Glad to have you on board, brother.”

*****

The second strategy meeting was in session. With Mongrel’s support secured, Will imagined things would progress a lot more smoothly.

Unsurprisingly, Nix agreed to come along even without the promise of being made into a familiar straight away, passing it off by saying that she had nothing better to do anyway, so she might as well make sure the wretcher was properly disposed of. Will had to keep himself from laughing at the sight of her feigned nonchalance.

Number One, as the chimp least suited to prolonged travel, was assigned to stay and guard the house.

Will worked up a travel plan that was accepted by the others. They would travel on the road along the Winewater at least to Timbryhall, and then either continue to Talltop or divert immediately north depending on the wretcher’s pace.

“We’ve got a scout trailing it, so we’ll be getting semi-frequent updates on its location,” Will explained. “Pigeon, a Level 15 Jeweler.”

“Shit, Pigeon?” Mongrel said. “I heard she’s pretty good.”

“Yeah. I think she was the one who caught onto the wretcher in the first place. With any luck, we’ll be able to meet up with her and enlist her help in taking the thing down.”

“What is a wretcher, anyway?” Bee asked, poking at a fading bruise on her arm.

“I’ll try to explain,” Will said. “Keep in mind, we don’t have a lot of information on these things, so a lot of it is guesswork or based on small bits of evidence. Basically, there are two flavors of evil on Nifala—monsters and fellforms. Both of them come from Shalahai, the Mother of Monsters, but fellforms are generally considered more powerful. Demons are one type of fellform.” He motioned to Nix, and she offered a slight bow.

“Wretchers are another. Based on what we know, they are some of Shalahai’s most diligent servants. They travel across the continent and spread her taint by corrupting or splicing animals into monsters. Supposedly, wretchers themselves aren’t too strong, but if they’re left unchecked near a settlement, the monsters they generate will soon prove an issue.”

“Uh-huh. I think I get it.”

“So once we’ve killed it, there’ll probably be all sorts of monsters around that we can harvest for additional reagents.”

“What does it look like?”

Will shrugged. “No clue. I’m guessing we’ll know it when we see it. If not, we’ll get Pigeon to point it out to us.”

The next item of business was filling Bee in on some important bits of information. “Since this will be a team effort and the most dangerous task we’ve undertaken, I think it’s time that Mongrel and I go over our builds properly, so that you’ll be able to cooperate with us as smoothly as possible.”

“Understood,” Bee said with a serious nod. Then, with equal seriousness, she added: “Please use simple words.”

“You got it.” He pointed at Mongrel. “Let’s start with him. I’m sure it hasn’t escaped you that his build is focused around familiars.”

“I might have noticed that, yeah.”

“Basically, Mongrel has put more than half of his upgrade points into a passive called Create Familiar. Each rank in that passive lets him take one extra familiar, and they also gain stacking benefits. For example, they get attributes equal to a portion of his own that grow with the amount of points he puts in. That’s why the boys are smarter than your typical chimp, for example.

“After a certain amount of points, they also get access to one of his passives. For that, Mongrel chose Sun Soaked. This passive makes it so that, while under direct sunlight, he gains double AP regeneration. Extend that to all his familiars, and depending on how many he has out, he’s got up to eight times normal regeneration.

“In order to make use of this AP, or more accurately to fuel his leisurely lifestyle, Mongrel has taken a bit of an unorthodox divine vow. It’s a little similar to yours, actually. He’s given up his ability to use skills, but in return his familiars all get access to his skills, instead.

“That means they all can use skills like Demolish, which destroys inanimate objects, Mend, which fixes inanimate objects, and Nurture, which helps various life forms—but especially plants—to grow. There are a few others that are less relevant right now.

“Lastly, since he is over Level 9, Mongrel has a specialization. For this, he picked Jack of All Trades, which allowed him to gain some of the benefits of another Profession. In this case, he picked Farmer. That allows him to level up not only by building things, but also by tending crops, taking care of animals, et cetera.”

“Hence the chickens,” Mongrel cut in.

Will nodded. “Yes, hence the chickens. His familiars also count towards this. The downside being that he has to delegate a lot of his work to them, which makes his leveling less efficient since he’s not truly gaining that experience himself.”

“Still, that’s pretty smart,” Bee said. “It’s very him. What happens if it’s raining, though?”

Mongrel shrugged. “No one likes working in the rain, anyway.”

Will moved on to himself. “As for me, my build isn’t all that special. I guess you could call it a toolbox build—I’ve got a little bit of everything. Obviously, I make potions and other alchemical products by combining reagents. The effects of the reagents depend on their ‘humors’ along with many other factors, even things like the phase of the moon or the amount of nearby fresh water. I won’t go into it, but basically alchemy is more art than science. There’s a big random element to it, since there’s no way to accurately predict all the shifting factors. The more powerful of a potion you want to create, the harder it will be to get the outcome you want, even if you have all the ingredients you theoretically need.

“That’s one of the reasons why elixirs are so hard to make. There’s no single recipe that will make a specific type of elixir—you just have to brute force it using high-quality reagents while only following loose methods and patterns. You might create a thousand or ten thousand potions without ever getting an elixir.

“The way I help it along is by using the Dash of Love skill, which I’ve already told you about. It increases the likelihood of better potions and ups their quality in return for a portion of my own energy. Since my build is fairly centered around using that, and I can amp it to further increase the effect, I tend to get good results compared to other Alchemists who just invest in the basic Brew skill.

“Normally, potions can only yield positive effects, since it uses the same philosophy as the rest of the Concord. But if you intentionally fuck it up, you can end up with what the Concord considers a ‘failed potion’, and those can come with all sorts of nasty effects. It’s how I make gunpowder, poisons, flammable gases, et cetera. They’re a bit harder to work with since the Concord refuses to classify them, but it’s often worth the effort.

“In addition to that, I have some general use skills. Amplify, Spark, and Construct are the ones with combat applications. On the utility side, I also have Imprint, Identify, Message, and Detect Life.

“My specialization is Brewmaster, which enhances my Brew skill with something called Synthesize, allowing me to mix potions together to create new effects or increase their rarity. Normally, mixing one potion with another just dilutes the effect or ruins it entirely. Brewmaster gives me Whimsy as my advanced attribute, which you could roughly think of as ‘luck’, further increasing my chances of getting good potions the more I invest in it.

“And that’s it, more or less. Were you able to hang in there?”

Bee’s eyes had a slightly glazed-over look. “Uh-huh. Yeah. Potions and stuff.”

Will sighed heavily. “Indeed.”