The hand-axe whirled through the air where Honeypot had been a moment earlier, thrown by the on-edge man he was essentially bullying. Tallon’s eyes bugged out as he spun, looking for where Honeypot had gone.

“Tallon!” Fener said in admonishment.

“The little bastard scared the shit out of me! Where is he!”

“Sorry.” Orion raised a hand to rub his temples. “Honeypot, did you really have to?”

“Yes,” Honeypot said, giggling from somewhere indiscernible. “I did.”

“We’re sorry about him.” Arika shook her head. “Think of it as a mental inadequacy he has. He really can’t help it. Though, to be honest, I wish you had hit him with that axe.”

Seren, the tank, barked a laugh. “Who scares people like that? Tallon wouldn’t have killed him, just injured or maimed… probably.”

Tallon was clearly not entertained, eyes darting around the clearing as he sidled closer to Fener.

Honeypot appeared by Orion’s side, a look of mock horror on his face. “Such violence over a mere joke? I’m appalled. Orion, do something to that man. My honor decrees it.”

Arika slapped Honeypot lightly on the back of the head. “He’s sorry, aren’t you, Honeypot?”

Honeypot smiled. “Not even a little.”

“So, what are you all doing here?” Fener asked in an attempt to plow through Honeypot’s successful derailment of the conversation. “Did you follow the sounds of our percussive problem-solving, or are you the reason we can’t get into the dungeon? Whenever we attempt to pass the threshold, it tells us it’s part of a critical quest, whatever that means.”

Orion gave a sheepish smile. “You’re right on the money. We’re on the critical quest. We marked this dungeon on our map yesterday and were heading this way to clear it when we heard your, uh, percussive problem-solving.”

“Bah!” Tallon spat. “Why can’t we do it? That’s bullshit to save all the fun for yourself!”

“Well, I think it’s done to protect us,” Orion said, “because if we die while in any of the dungeons related to the quest—”

“We die.” Honeypot finished. “Like super die. Forever dead. No ressurecto.”

“That just makes it sound more fun!” Tallon said. “How does not letting us attempt it protect you?”

“Because, well, you could kill us,” Orion said. “These corrupted dungeons are hard enough without worrying about being stabbed in the back by other adventurers.”

“Wait, did you say corrupted?” Tallon perked up. “I told you guys I could see a sickly looking set of eyes down there! Corruption! That makes sense! The monsters in there must be corrupted!”

“That was a lucky coincidence.” Vasen idly fingered an object on his belt that looked suspiciously similar to a grenade. “You’ve been smoking too much of that herb.”

“There’s no such thing as too much. All it does is taste good and make you more alert. And I obviously didn’t imagine the green glow. He just said the dungeon is corrupted!”

“You have been taking a lot…” Vale casually reached over and removed Vasen’s hand from the explosive on his belt. “We’re just concerned, Tallon. You started off chewing it sometimes, but the last couple of days it’s been not stop smoking—”

“Of course I’ve been smoking it! It tastes like shite when you chew it!”

Wanting to curtail the conversation before it got even further away from the topic, Orion interrupted, “If that’s one of our dungeons, it probably was glowing green. The original source of the corruption was a green slime. Also, Tallon, would you be interested in trading some of that herb?”

“Why do you want it?” Tallon stared suspicion at Orion.

A playful slap interrupted Tallon’s impressive scowl. Fener leveled her own glare at her teammate. “Don’t be so aggressive. You’re going to leave a poor impression on our new friends here. There was plenty of that herb growing, and we could use more gold. I’m guessing they have gold to spare after defeating a dungeon or two…” Fener raised an eyebrow, shooting Orion a questioning look.

“How much do you have, and how much would you want?” Orion asked.

“You can have a handful for one one gold, any more and I won’t have enough for the rest of the day,” Tallon said after a moment’s thought.

“How about this? I’ll give you ten gold if you tell me where you pick it from.”

“What, so you can pick it all and leave none for me? Only one-in-fifty survive being picked, the rest are ruined. It wouldn’t take much to wipe out the supply…”

“I’ll give you my word that I won’t decimate the herb population, or tell anyone else where I get it from. I’ll double the offer—twenty gold for the location.”

“Fifty gold. No less.”

Slap.

“Twenty gold seems like more than a fair price.” Fener held up her hand, playfully threating to slap Tallon again. “And give Orion at least a few leaves, so he knows what it looks like.”

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“Fine.” Tallon grumbled to himself as he got exactly three leaves from his inventory, then passed them to Orion. “Gold first, then I’ll show you where.”

Orion inspected the leaves.

Stim Leaf

Common

Smoking or eating this herb can have a mild stimulating effect. Users might notice increased cognition and reaction time. Prolonged use may lead to mild hallucinations and paranoia.

At least you’ll have increased cognitive ability and reflexes to defend against, or better yet, attack your friends that are definitely plotting against you.

“You can read this description… right?” Orion asked. “You see the whole hallucinations and paranoia thing? Have you really been taking them that much?”

“He can, and he has.” Vale rolled his eyes. “He claims he spaces the use out enough to remove, or at the very least, reduce the side effects.”

“I do space it out long enough! The only reason I’m on edge is because you narcs are on my case about it every second of the day!”

“You’re on edge because you’re strung out like a crackhead,” Vale said.

“And? So what if I am?” Tallon crossed his arms. “A man without an addiction is just a boy.”

Looking on in amusement, Orion pulled twenty gold out of his inventory and passed it to Tallon. A notification appeared in Orion’s vision, stating that Tallon was attempting to send him a map mark. He promptly accepted.

The mark was called ‘Stims’ and was quite far out from town, between the west and south gates. Orion zoomed the map in and out, trying to see the best possible path to reach the location. He was roused from his thoughts by the voice of Fener.

“So, are you going into the dungeon? We were just about to head off and find somewhere else, anyway. We knew a long time ago we wouldn’t be able to blast our way in, but Tallon was enjoying himself, so we let him waste some time while we rested.”

“Time you enjoyed wasting isn’t wasted,” Tallon said.

She waved his comment away, still looking at Orion. “So, will you go in?”

“That’s why we’re here.” Orion looked at his party members before walking to the dungeon entrance. The other party also followed, curious to see if they would make it over the threshold.

He paused for a moment, looking down into the tunnel. It took him a heartbeat to realize he could see inside as if it were daylight. His new ability must have kicked in. He turned and looked at his party. “After you, Honeypot.”

“Aye, boss!” Honeypot said, cheerfully giving a mock salute and stepping towards the entrance. He stopped mid-step, turning back and glaring at Arika. “I can feel you staring at my butt. Cut it out. I need complete focus right now.”

She sighed and looked toward the other party, as if to say, ‘are you seeing the shit we put up with?’

Honeypot got further down the tunnel. The way Honeypot carefully felt before him in what appeared to Orion as a perfectly lit path was quite comical. He considered throwing something down there, just to see Honeypot jump.

“Woah, beautiful…” Arika said.

“Huh?” Orion turned in confusion.

“Oh god, not Honeypot. I mean you…” Realizing what she had just said, Arika flushed and quickly elaborated. “Your eyes! I mean your eyes! They look beautiful with that ability…”

“Oh. Thank you…” Orion paused for an awkward amount of time as his brain fumbled for anything to say. He turned to the other party, eager to change the subject. “Well, we’d better follow Honeypot. Thanks again for the herb location, and sorry you guys couldn’t get into the dungeon.”

“No worries.” Fener gave him a genuine smile. “It was a pleasure meeting you all. I hope we can help each other in the future. Do you mind if I add you guys as friends? It could be beneficial to both of our parties. A quid pro quo relationship, of sorts…”

“Sure. That sounds good to me. We’ll share helpful things with you if you share them with us as well. I uh… don’t know how to add friends, though.”

Fener let out a musical laugh. “Just will your friend list to open and imagine adding someone as a friend. Like this…”

Fener got the glassy eyed look of someone looking at a screen, and Orion received a notification.

New friend request: Fener

With a minor effort of will, a friend list opened, where Orion could see all of his party members listed with green names. There was an option to message them or remove them under each name. At the bottom, below his party, was Fener. Her name was grayed out, with an option to accept or decline underneath. He accepted and quickly sent mental friend requests out to the remaining members of the friendly party.

Soon, he had five more people listed in his friend list. He used the friend list to send Honeypot a message, and soon enough, the priest had returned to the surface.

“Alright, how the hell did you do that?”

Fener laughed with glee at Honeypot’s expression, and Orion explained the list and the fact that you could message people on it to Honeypot.

“Is there a distance limit? Can you use it when you’re fighting?” Honeypot looked thoughtful.

“There is. From what we can tell, you can travel roughly a kilometer before they get grayed out and you can no longer send messages,” Fener said. “Not sure how useful it would be in battle. You need to have your friend list open the whole time you send or read a message, leaving you effectively incapacitated. You’re honestly just better off talking ninety-nine percent of the time.”

The Malignant Miscreants and The Bomb Squad all added each other to their lists. Honeypot was clearly testing out the messaging system because he was staring into space while smiling to himself with an aggravating amount of delight. Arika was staring back at him balefully, clearly the focus of his harassment.

“See? We’re already helping each other,” Fener said. “Think of us when you learn something neat or helpful.”

“Thank you, we will,” Orion said. “We really should get going, though. Dungeons to kill, bosses to slay—you know how it is. We’ll see you guys around. It was a pleasure.”

They said their goodbyes, and Honeypot led them down into the dungeon’s depths.

***

The Bomb Squad watched the other party disappear down into the dungeon.

“Did anyone inspect him?” Fener asked.

“No,” they all responded at the same time.

“Good.” She watched Orion disappear around a bend in the tunnel.

“Why?” Seren squinted after the retreating party.

“I don’t know how, but he had a title.”

“A title?” Tallon almost yelled.

“Keep it down, Tallon!” She rolled her eyes. “Christ, they’re just down there. Yes, he had a title—the Alchemical, whatever that means.”

“We should have captured him and squeezed the information out of him!” Tallon’s eyes bulged. “That kind of thing could really help us! Why don’t—”

Vale nudged Tallon hard enough in the ribs to cut him off.

“That’s enough out of you, ya drug-addled fool.” Vale turned to Fener. “You didn’t want to pry too much and scare them off, right?”

“Right. We can ask him about it next time we get in messaging range.” She stared down the dungeon entrance. “He really did have beautiful eyes…”

Seren nudged her playfully. “Am I not enough for you?”

“Of course you are.” She put her arm over Seren’s shoulder and pulled her body beside his. “Orion’s eyes are objectively stunning, though. I wouldn’t mind having that ability.”

“Whatever! They’re okay.” Tallon stomped his way out of the clearing with a stimulant-powered stride. “This is boring now that we can’t get in there. Let’s go find something to kill!”

They shook their heads, smiled, and rolled their eyes good-naturedly as they followed him toward their next target.