As soon as the ordeal was over, almost everyone shuffled off to the side of the road to sleep, exhausted beyond words. Only the chimps stayed up to keep watch.

And Will.

He wanted nothing more than to sleep, but he had work to do. He needed to harvest every scrap of usable material from the troll before it began to spoil. He wouldn’t be able to preserve the reagents for very long without access to proper equipment, but he could distill them into rudimentary potions stable enough to be transported, which he could then combine with others thanks to his Synthesize passive.

So he set to work. Carving away at the ugly, smelly, charred brute until he was up to his elbows in blood. He recovered all he could possibly make use of. Kidneys, liver, heart, testicles, eyes, tongue, hide. The monster even had a few extraneous organs he couldn’t guess the purpose of, but collected anyway. He also bottled a fair amount of blood.

He found himself wishing he could have kept it alive and simply restrain it somehow, which theoretically would have allowed him to harvest infinite reagents from it. Alas, things didn’t always work out perfectly. He’d take what he could get, though—the outcome of this night could have been much worse. If Nix hadn’t been there, Will could only think of one ace in the hole that might have been able to destroy a monster of that magnitude—one he’d rather not use, if at all possible.

The troll’s pieces mostly had bitter and energetic humors. It was an inconvenient combination, but he’d figure out something to mix them with eventually.

He hadn’t brought a field alchemy kit with him, but he didn’t need one. He used Construct to create a set of beakers, flasks, and stands, all in one piece, and snapped them loose from each other so that they could be used.

He chopped the organs up fine, mixed it with water and blood, and brewed it all together in a large cauldron. The stench was so foul he could taste it on his tongue even when he clamped his nose shut to block it out.

By the time he was finished, a line of filled potion bottles next to him, his vision had gone all blurry, and he tasted copper from using Dash of Love. He forced himself to his feet so he could stow away his spoils, then immediately collapsed to the ground next to Bee, and fell asleep to her snoring in what felt like less than a minute.

*****

Confusingly, Will was moving when he woke up. It took him several bleary moments to realize that he was being carried, propped up against Bee’s back. The open road lay ahead under a sunny midday sky, birds twittering in the treetops.

“Well, this is somewhat undignified,” he muttered, his legs dangling in the air.

“Morning, handsome,” Bee cooed, grinning back at him. “I thought you could use a bit more sleep.”

“Thanks. Mind letting me down now?”

“Maybe I wanna keep you a little longer.” She winked, tongue between her teeth.

It took an inordinate and frankly humiliating level of effort to wrestle free of her.

After yesterday’s death march, they kept a slow, meandering pace. The freshies were visibly uncomfortable around Nix after seeing her full potential. He couldn’t blame them for that. On the other end of the spectrum, Bee seemed to be nurturing a newfound admiration for the demon, chatting with her more than she ever had before.

The last leg of their journey to Timbryhall went smoothly. The road rejoined the river, and they spent another two days walking alongside it.. They knew they were finally safe once they reached cultivated land, passing a line of manned watch towers that served to protect the golden farmlands from monster attacks.

As they approached the town, it became clear that it didn’t quite live up to its name. Unlike the wooden palisade of Sheerhome, Timbryhall was surrounded by a stone ring wall, four meters high. They had opened a large quarry a few years back that supplied the town with great quantities of granite, allowing them to replace vulnerable wooden structures with stone.

The gates were open, with a group of armored guards searching travelers and wagons before letting them through.

Most were waved through after only a perfunctory check, but Will’s group proved quite a head-scratcher for the poor guards. Firstly, the corpse they’d brought with them raised some eyebrows. Second, and perhaps most concerning, was the hulking troll smiling down at them.

“He’s a lifer,” Will informed them helpfully, trying to speed along the process. He held up Gug’s arm and pointed at his sheet. “See? Perfectly civilized.”

“Hello,” Gug said. “My name is Gug. I am a civilized genius.”

After sharing a long look between them, the guards came to the conclusion that they had no idea what to do with him, which resulted in them disavowing the responsibility entirely, simply waving them through.

“Just watch your animal, please,” one of the guards said in a tired voice. “We’ve got enough incidents as it is right now.”

“I will be very good,” Gug assured them with a frighteningly toothy grin.

Timbryhall was a fair bit smaller than Sheerhome, but it was also cleaner and less packed. Unlike the disordered mess of the Heap, Timbryhall had decently ordered streets running in a crosswise grid. Many of the newer buildings were made of stone, with the older ones constructed from logs and planks.

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Despite the slightly elevated air, once they got a bit into town they found the streets packed with people and noise. They laughed, they drank, they danced. Entertainers played music and gave acrobatic performances. There were those who imbibed harder substances, with hawkers selling peebs and slam. Ribbons of red and green and blue were hung across the rooftops, giving color to everything.

“Wow!” Bee shouted over the din. “These people know how to party!”

“It’s the Midsummer Festival,” Will explained. “It’ll keep going for the next few days at least.”

“Niiice. Are all your holidays like this?”

“Some of them.”

They put Gug in the lead as a convenient way of parting the crowd for them. They looked for a decent inn and found one named The Radiant Lady that was removed from the worst of the ruckus, a two-story wooden building standing in the shadow of the west wall.

Lauren and Min parted with them there, offering subdued thanks for the help they had been given. Will felt bad, so he gave them a little cash for the road. They were probably fucked either way, but at least it made him feel a bit better about himself.

While Will got them rooms at the inn, Mongrel headed out to sell off their trade goods and have his magic ring identified, and Bee went to hand their bounty mark off to the constabulary.

The inn was spacious and clean. A little crowded due to the festival, but at least they weren’t full up, and the innkeep agreed to give Gug a room if Will paid double, which was better than the torches and pitchforks he’d been half expecting.

They were having a light meal of cheese and smoked ham sandwiches in the common room when Bee returned from her task, followed shortly by Mongrel, who was the proud owner of what had turned out to be a Telekinesis-enchanted ring. They had both gotten their due, and Will pooled that money together with the rough 5 000 they had recovered from the bandit encampment.

It came up to nearly 12 000 graces total. Split six ways, that gave them 2 000 each. Gug didn’t have a solid enough concept of money to put much value on it, but Will insisted that he take it, more to avoid ruffling his brother’s feathers than anything else.

“How does it feel to be getting paid for doing actual work?” Will asked the demon, who was fussing with Mongrel’s tunic under the guise of being annoyed by his disheveled appearance.

“Feels like Tuesday,” Nix said absently.

Will announced that they would only be staying in Timbryhall one night before moving on in the morning. That turned out to be a predictably unpopular notion, but he got them in line with a bit of coaxing.

For tonight, everyone could do as they pleased as long as they didn’t drink themselves silly. It was a new town, but he trusted that they could handle themselves—even Gug—mostly because he couldn’t think of many people who would want to mess with him. The only one he required to have a chaperone was Oatmeal, who didn’t have nearly enough levels to be wandering around on his lonesome.

Gug headed off to shop for books, Oatmeal reluctantly going with him, while Mongrel and Nix went out to drink and watch the shows. That left Will and Bee all by their lonesome.

“Finally, no kids,” he said with a relieved sigh. “Well, Momma, what do you want to do?”

“I wanna go dancing,” Bee said instantly with an impish grin.

Will was not particularly impressed with that suggestion. “You know I don’t dance, Bee. My moves didn’t exactly improve when I became Will the Footless, either.”

“Pish posh. Come on, don’t be a pussy.”

“I’m not being a pussy, I’m stating the obvious. I don’t dance.”

“You do tonight.”

“Bee, I am not going dancing with you. It’s not happening.”

*****

They went dancing.

There was a great bonfire in the square at the center of town, hundreds of festival goers moving like mad. Dancing proficiency varied greatly according to level of inebriation, most simply flailing and stumbling about like idiots. The music of several troubadours weaved in and out. He heard flutes, guitars, drums, accordions.

Will did not at all look forward to joining in. He knew he would just look like an idiot, and then Bee would laugh at him, and then she would laugh at him even more for getting angry over it.

Bee pulled him out into the square. She was wearing her white dress, which he supposed she had brought assuming an opportunity like this would present itself. She was radiant framed against the firelight, the blazing orange matching with the copper of her hair.

Her skirts whirled as she spun to the music, coaxing him to join her. He did his best to keep up with her, but was soon out of breath and tripping over his bad foot. She giggled at him, cheeks dimpling with simple joy.

He did better with the slow stuff. They held each other close while a musician sang a mournful ballad. She enjoyed the warmth of her nearness, only slightly ruined by the Artisan throwing up against a wall in his peripheral vision.

“So, I’ve been thinking,” she said, her arms around his neck. “I still haven’t spent my upgrade point for Level 7.”

“Yeah?”

“Mmhmm. So I was thinking, um…” She looked away, blushing, and lowered her voice so that it was almost inaudible over all the noise. “I wouldn’t mind using it on that bond thing you were talking about. You know, for build efficiency.”

“For build efficiency, right,” Will replied, smiling.

“Unless you’ve changed your mind about it. I know I haven’t been your favorite person lately.”

Will pulled them all the way together so that their bellies touched, their noses only centimeters apart. “I’m stuck with you now, aren’t I? Might as well make the most of it.”

“So, then… you think we should?”

Will nodded.

“Okay, good. Then I’ll save up my point, and when you get one we can both—”

“I already have it.”

Bee frowned at him. “Huh?”

“I picked up True Bond a few levels ago. I didn’t know when I would plateau, so I got it while I had the chance.”

“Really?”

“Yup.”

Her frown deepened. “But why didn’t you just save the point to pick it later?”

“I thought it’d be more romantic this way.”

She grinned at that. “So then, if I’d said no…”

“I would’ve been down an upgrade point, I guess.”

“Mr. Autism did something irrational just for me. Now that is romantic.”

She closed her eyes and kissed him deeply, grabbing his butt to keep him from pulling away.

He could tell by the excessive grip strength that she was about to put him through his paces.