The cracked palm tree branch burned wildly as it separated from the rest of the tree and plummeted towards the truck. The world seemed to slow down around me.

Panda, Reggie, and Jamie looked up in awe. Jamie was shooting water from his hands and it seemed to be helping slightly, but the overall inferno was simply too much for him to handle alone.

Reggie and Panda stood nearby, looking skyward towards the falling branch and their doom. Sally, however, still leant against the truck with her arms crossed and a flat expression.

I resummoned my bow and aimed at the falling branch. Though my stamina was so low, I doubted I could fire off a single shot. To make matters worse, at my best guess, I’d need a Soul Shot to do the job. Anything less than that and the branch wouldn’t break into small enough pieces to mitigate the damage.

I felt something brush my shoulder and I turned just in time to see Bell. She walked calmly past me, there was no sign of her battle mode on her face. She looked… calm.

She raised her hand towards the falling branch and I felt all the blood rush from my face as I realised what she was about to do.

“No, don’t!” I shouted.

But it was already happening. She shot a magnificent fireball spell from her palm which rocketed towards the branch. The heat seared my cheek as it rushed past me.

The fireball was a cacophony of swirling reds and oranges, and death, lots of death.

It felt… powerful.

I wasn’t sure why. I had no mana of my own, which left me blind to magic in almost all cases. But for some reason, in that moment, I could feel the raw power of her spell.

I saw Panda’s eyes go wide with horror as he realised what she’d done. He must have had the same thought as me. Her fireballs were much more dangerous than the branch was

In all likelihood, all it would do was burn the others to a crisp and wreck the truck.

The fireball whizzed through the air, rotating, and burning with more intensity as it went. Then it hit the branch.

To my amazement, the branch exploded into tiny splinters of burning wood and the fireball blasted into the sky before dissipating.

Panda and I sighed in relief at almost the exact same time. Reggie and Jamie had never even known how close they were to death by fireball.

Time sped back up again as Bell turned to me with a smile and her hands clasped behind her back.

“Haven’t you ever heard the phrase: fight fire with fire?” She asked.

“I don’t think that’s what it means…” I began but changed my tone halfway. “Thank you.”

She smiled and walked back towards the truck, her pristine white robe flapping in the wind.

I looked back around the clearing and the fire was raging wildly. More and more loconuts dropped from trees in a flaming harmony of death screams and splattered organs. It was super gross.

We needed to quell the flames somehow before the entire jungle was engulfed. I looked to Jamie but his paltry water magic was barely better than a child’s water pistol.

Seriously. How is the guy an adventurer? I thought as Jamie determinedly shot flaccid spurts of water onto the tree closest to him.

I couldn’t fault him for his effort, but honestly, the guy was weak as shit.

I needed to think of another way to quell the flames. None of my skills were useful in this situation, but there had to be another way. I desperately searched through my inventory and found something.

If my life were a cartoon, a little lightbulb would have appeared over the top of my head.

I pulled out a vial of slime condensate and rushed to the nearest tree. I threw the condensate as high up the tree as I could and it shattered against the top branches, putting a serious dent into the flames on the leaves up there.

Perfect.

I had over 10,000 vials of slime condensate from my quest in the sewers. Every slime I’d killed had dropped one, and I’d gone full murder hobo on those little fuckers.

I quickly ejected all 10,000 of the vials and in less than a second the entire clearing was filled with them. The pile was so tall it dwarfed me and honestly, I was lucky they didn’t crush me when I took them all out of my inventory at once.

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“I don’t think it’s the right time to be reorganising your inventory, kid,” Panda called from behind me.

I turned around to see both Panda and Reggie staring at me with furrowed brows.

“Reggie, by any chance can you use wind magic?” I asked hopefully.

“No… I’m a healer.” He replied half-heartedly.

He’s a healer? I thought. So the girl in the white robe is a fire mage and the stocky, stout dude is a healer. Talk about refusing to conform to stereotypes.

Reggie’s lack of wind mana put a slight dampener on my plan, but I still had one more option.

With a sigh, I looked towards Bell who was zealously cheering on Jamie and his flaccid water pistol-like magic.

“Bell, I need a fireball,” I called reluctantly, cupping my hands around my mouth.

She turned suddenly with a huge, creepy grin on her face.

“Can you shoot it at the base of these vials? I need them to explode outwards towards the trees.” I said, moving towards her as Panda and Reggie retreated past me with wide eyes.

She answered with a simple nod and held out her hands before her. It was the same thing she did when she first attacked the boulder and I really hoped that it wouldn’t be overkill.

I only needed her to blast the slime condensate at the trees. I didn’t need her to incinerate them before they could do their work.

After a moment she fired a tiny, pinprick of a fireball which disappeared into the ground near the slime condensate.

“Well that was anticlimat-” Panda began.

He was immediately interrupted as the earth below the vials exploded upward like an erupting volcano. The ground shook violently as earth and vials alike shot into the air.

I looked up in awe, which was a huge mistake.

Earth, gravel, and slime rained down on us like a tropical storm and I was drenched from head to toe in the nasty goop that was created by the three things mixing together.

Also, it hurt because gravel is nasty… and I got some in my mouth.

I rubbed the slime condensate out of my eyes and spat out the gravel dirt. It tasted gross, like Frenching a vegan.

After a few moments of rubbing, I could finally see again. I looked up and saw the carnage.

The fires were put out so yay us, we stopped the forest fire from decimating the local ecosystem. However, in place of the clearing now sat a deep crater surrounded by blackened trees and loconut corpses.

It was definitely a win though… kinda.

I looked towards Sally who was still leaning against the truck with her arms folded. There wasn’t a spec of dirt, slime, or gravel on her. I had no idea how she’d avoided the sudden rainstorm but I’d have to put it down to silver-rank fuckery for now.

I had more important things to think about: like how we were going to get the truck past the new crater and how long it would be until I could take a shower.

“…And boom goes the dynamite!” Bell said, spinning towards us with a happy smile on her face.

She was covered in slime and dirt, just like I was. Her teal hair now looked more like the underside of a layer of teal icing on a chocolate cake. She didn’t seem bothered though.

Panda on the other hand looked mortified as he desperately tried to ring slime condensate out of his fur.

“At least it’s not water, this time,” I said, casually patting him on the head.

“How many times do I have to tell you that pandas are not aquatic mammals, kid?” He replied sourly. “You’re quickly becoming my least favourite human.”

“You sound like my parents,” I replied, moving past him to Jamie, who was still shooting little spurts of water from his hands.

I clapped my hand on his shoulder and he looked at me with stoner eyes and an uncomprehending face.

“You can stop now mate, it’s over,” I said gently.

“Did I do it?” He asked dazedly. “Did I put out the fire?”

I looked at him for a moment. He looked exhausted and possibly in shock.

“Yeah, you sure did buddy. You can go rest up in the truck now if you want to.” I replied, squeezing his shoulder slightly as I gestured with my free hand towards the back of the vehicle.

He staggered away from me with a slight smile.

“He used up nearly all of his mana trying to put out that tree,” Sally said.

I turned to the sound of her voice to see her step towards us, arms still folded. Reggie and Bell winced at her words, I, however, had no idea why that was wince-worthy. I’d used up literally all of my stamina before and I was ok after a bit of meditation.

“Is that bad?” I asked dumbly.

Reggie and Bell both looked at me with raised eyebrows like I was an idiot or something.

“Yes, Gonads,” Sally replied in a condescending tone which I absolutely did not appreciate. “If a person uses up most or all of their mana they suffer from something called mana brain.

“As I’m sure you know, mana is governed by the intelligence stat. So if you use it all up then the processing power in your brain stops working properly. Nobody really knows why, but it is a constant problem for mages.”

I nodded at her as she spoke. I guess it explained why he seemed so brain-dead. I’d put it down to shock, but apparently not.

“Have you seriously never used up most of your mana before dude?” Reggie asked, clapping me on the shoulder and chuckling.

When did he get so friendly?

“I don’t have any mana,” I replied frankly.

“Yeah, I know you’re not a mage or anything.” He replied. “I watched you fight, but don’t you use mana to make your arrows glow?”

“No, I mean I literally don’t have any mana. Zero, nada, none,” I said. “As for how I make my arrows glow… it’s a trade secret.” I winked and ducked out from under his hand which was still on my shoulder.

He looked at me for a moment with uncomprehending eyes, and then it hit him.

“What!? You don’t have any mana, like at all, like as in it’s not even a stat for you?”

“Yup.”

“I didn’t even know that was possible.” He yelled.

“Neither did I.” Sally butted in. “But Gonads here is a bit of a special case. Anyway, how are you bozos going to get my truck past this giant hole you’ve made?”

I looked towards the huge crater in the ground. It really was something, impressive even. Though I had no clue how to get the truck past it.

Maybe if we cut down some of the trees around it we could circumvent the crater entirely. With no wind magic among us, it was all I could think of. Well, that or building a bridge with the palm tree wood but that would probably take a while and I was no structural engineer.

“I could shoot it across with a fireball?” Bell said innocently.

In unison, Sally, Reggie, Panda, and I all yelled: “no!”