Yang was doing better than Max expected. At one point she had two monsters gnawing on her arms. Now she was sitting up and talking with Ebba about something. Her arms were bandaged from shoulders to hands, with blood already seeping through the area around her elbows. Lily and James were standing nearby, nervously watching the conversation.

Ebba held out a thin glass bottle and said, “... of course it’s a risk. But leaving those wounds untreated is a risk too. The only reason you still have your arms is that barkskin potion Feng gave you. You need to take something extra to heal your wounds.”

Yang asked, “How much do you even know about humans? How do you know I’m in that much danger?”

Ebba sat back on her haunches. “Admittedly, not much. But I know you need blood to survive. Your bandages aren’t holding, you are already bleeding through.”

Yang looked down and grimaced.

Max said, “What’s the problem, Yang? Why don’t you want to take her healing potion or whatever?”

“Cus that’s not a healing potion. It’s just a bottle of mana rich water. She wants me to drink it to supercharge my healing. But if I do, I’ll get cancer much quicker,” she said. He could hear a quaver in her voice and see tear streaks down her face.

Ebba said, “I used up my one healing potion already. The best I can offer is to enhance your natural healing with mana water from the fourth layer. That might hasten your timeline, but at least you will be alive. I am going to give Ashley the same offer. Think about it while I administer her dose.”

Max heard Ashley yell ‘Finally!’ and then shut her out of his mind. He turned to Yang and said, “She’s right. You gotta take something. You are thinking you might be able to tough it out, but I know you are hurt bad. And don’t forget that a snake just bit you. It might have been venomous. Your body needs all the help it can get.”

Lily nodded curtly. She must have been saying the same thing before he got there. James looked at Max with a sense of relief, glad he didn’t have to be the one to say it.

Yang sighed. “Fine. But let’s just sprinkle it on the bandages or whatever. Maybe if I keep it out of my bloodstream it will be better. Less chance of super cancer that way.”

When Ebba returned, she agreed with Yang’s idea and poured water over her bandages. The bright blue water soaked in, staining her bandages purple from the mix of blood and water. To Max’s surprise, Yang started softly sobbing.

“What is it? Does it hurt?” Lily said as she hovered her hands over Yang’s bandages.

“No, no. It feels better already. The relief was overwhelming is all. Can you help me up?”

Lily shook her head and gave her a stern look, “No way. You are staying right there until we have to leave. Don’t move.”

Yang looked hurt at the response. She glanced at her arms and more tears started flowing. Max shook his head. She seemed more upset that she had to take it easy than she did about the injury itself.

Gus walked up and held up six small orbs. “This is everything from the monsters. No cards, not even fragments. Ebba took the other orbs, said something about being exactly fair. I think she’s testy about loot now.”

Max nodded. He might have shot himself in the foot with his aggressive negotiating earlier. “Alright, give one each to everyone except Ashley and me.”

“You know, you can’t always put yourself last with loot distribution,” Gus said. “I know you are trying to be fair, but you gotta be strong enough to protect us all too.”

Max shook his head, “I’ve already failed at protecting.” He sighed and continued, “But sure, if we get any new cards, I’ll take one myself if it helps us fight better.”

Gus nodded. “What are we going to do about the bodies? I was going to say we ignore them since these five abandoned us when we needed them. But we can’t do that to Kezhi. He deserves better.”

“He does. Let’s build a pyre like last time. I don’t particularly care about the other five, but as long as we are building a fire we might as well give the others a proper send off as well.”

Ebba turned her head and hustled over from the other side of the clearing. Her long purple legs let her put the speed on without running. As she drew close she said, “We can’t light a fire here.”

“Why not? We did it yesterday,” Max said.

“This situation is different. The titan had already scared off the local predators before you lit the fire yesterday. If we light a fire today, we will have higher tier monsters on us faster than we can get out of the way. You already saw what happens when there are too many high tier monsters for my Disregard card.”

Gus stood tall and said, “We can’t just leave him here, not like that. He died protecting us all.”

“Isn’t there a different funeral rite you can perform? Does it have to be fire?”

“Well, no. We usually bury our dead, but that would take too long,” Gus replied.

Ebba tapped her fingers together. “I might have something that would work. An artifact that quickly digs a deep hole. It’s single use though. You would have to pay me an orb if you want me to waste it.”

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Gus scratched his beard. “I get the feeling you're fleecing us. Still, he deserves a good burial. Here."

Ebba tucked the orb away in her cargo shorts of holding and pulled out a leaf. It was covered in gold filigree. It looked like a fancy decoration that someone with too much money would buy. She walked over to a bare stretch of ground and dropped the leaf.

As soon as the leaf touched the ground it dissolved into motes of light. The light seeped into the ground. A few seconds later, there was a deep thump and an eight foot wide hole appeared. A perfectly round cylinder of dirt had disappeared. Max stepped forward to look down. It was about fifteen feet deep and had sharp spikes on the bottom. He turned to Ebba and rose an eyebrow. That wasn’t what he was expecting when she said she could quickly dig a grave.

She shrugged. “It’s a dungeon artifact, what can I say?”

“What does that mean?” Max asked.

“It’s tough to explain. There are plenty of dungeon towers on the first layer, you will understand what I mean after a few runs.”

Gus walked over and looked in. “Well, it made a good hole, but we aren’t tossing him in on top of the spikes.”

“Yes, I have a plan for that,” Ebba said.

She pulled out a spear and stabbed it into the dirt. A small push and dirt from the side of the pit fell in. She moved to the side and did the same thing again, covering the spikes.

It wasn’t long before they had a ten feet deep grave. Max wrapped up Kezhi in his sleeping bag and Ebba carefully lowered him in. As she filled in the hole, Lily prodded Max to say something.

Max cleared his throat and said, “Goodbye Kezhi. You were a fantastic guy, who’s life was cut short too soon. You deserved better. If there is any justice in the universe, the fact that a feathered serpent, a quetzalcoatl, killed you must mean something. That monster could be your Truck-kun, sending you to the isekai you deserve.”

“Amen,” James said solemnly.

The rest of them joined in with their own ‘amen’. Ebba repeated them after a beat.

All too soon, the body was covered and they were on their way. Feng was still crying, with Fern trying to comfort him. James ended up with Kezhi’s card, the glass shard card. Yang asked to be able to carry her own pack, but no one would let her. Max carried it on his chest since it was the easiest for him. Ashley asked him to take her bag too, but he refused.

They walked through the jungle, mostly in silence. Ashley complained about her arm at first, but stopped talking when no one engaged with her. Over the next few hours the jungle thinned out, more and more clearings appearing. More than once, Ebba diverted them around a group of monsters. She was being extra careful after the second disaster in so many days.

At one point, she had them hide in some bushes while four pterodactyl-snakes circled above. They were flying too high for her magic card to affect them. The monsters were distracted when a flying machine buzzed by. It looked kinda like Starbuck’s viper from Battlestar Galactica. The jet sped across the sky and shot out bolts of lighting at the monsters. They tried to follow the ship, but couldn’t catch up. Ebba motioned for everyone to start walking again.

Red trees started popping up, here and there at first and then with increasing frequency. The bark and the leaves were a particular shade of vibrant red. It reminded Max of that alien world in the new Star Trek. They were bright red in a way that almost made his eyes hurt. He saw Ebba running her hands along their trunks more than once.

“You a fan of the red trees?” Max asked her.

“Not particularly. My elders tell me they are the trees of our home world though. When I am missing my family out here, I often sleep in their embrace. The boughs are tightly woven and often more comfortable than what I can arrange on the ground.”

Max looked up. The canopy was thick here, the red leaves blotting out most of the sun. That meant less undergrowth and a faster travel. Max kept an eye on the two injured ladies, but it was always James’ huffing and puffing that signaled the need for a break.

After one of those breaks, Max found that he couldn’t get back up. His exoskeleton legs had broken. In fact, he could smell burning plastic. He hurriedly took them off and tossed them to the side. Apparently, the internal copper had absorbed enough mana to short out the batteries. Thankfully, they didn’t explode. The thought made him double check his e-reader, but that was still working and not warm to the touch. He put it in an outside pocket, just in case.

Now he had to decide what to do with the rest of the stuff in his pack. Without mechanical assistance, he would be hard pressed to carry his heavy pack a mile, let alone several. At this point, he really should just abandon the nonessentials on the side of the trail and move on.

He found himself unable to be practical.

It was his greed that was getting to him. Ebba said there was a city an hour or two from here. If Max could get his pack all the way there, he could sell the excess weight instead of discarding it. He wasn’t so sure how valuable his stuff would be to the aliens on this world. But still. He had to try.

Max started by tossing the heaviest stuff, an iron cooking swing arm and a small ax. Then he tossed his extra solar charger, some tent stakes, and forty feet of rope. When he couldn’t bear to toss more, he worked with the able bodied people to distribute the weight as much as possible. He still kept the lion’s share of the stuff in his pack, but now it was 180 pounds instead of 240.

He regretted his decision shortly after they started. He was fit from hours of work every day, but evidently not fit enough. His straps dug into his skin, his shoulder started aching and his balance was way off. The trek went from a pleasant walk to a death march with a fat guy hanging off his shoulders.

At first he held on because he felt ashamed to give up so quickly. Then he held on because he wanted to show James some solidarity. His friend hadn’t complained once despite being the most out of shape of the bunch. If Max couldn’t hang on for a few hours, what kind of friend would he be?

That didn’t exactly make sense, but most of his brainpower was devoted to keeping himself moving. He was going to get this pack to the city if it was the first thing he did. Not the last, it wasn’t that important.

A little after dinnertime, they exited the red forest and were suddenly there. One moment they were deep in the jungle, and the next they were in front of the City of Wild Plums. There was a fifteen foot wall surrounding the large town, with buildings poking up above the barrier. Most of the city was bright red with yellow accents. The jungle around them clearly provided most of the building materials. There were some gray stone towers, but not many. There were also more than one tall building seemingly made entirely of metal, shining in the bright sunlight.

There was a large area cleared around the town, probably to make it easier to defend. Their ragged group crossed the barren ground in front of the city. They turned to the side as they drew closer, angling to join up onto the road leading into the front gates.

There was something strange about the walls. Max couldn’t figure out why they seemed off until he got closer. It was made entirely out of shovels. Someone had made hundreds of flat edged shovels with short wooden handles and somehow fused them together to construct the wall. The shimmer across the wall made Max think it was magical.

As they arrived at the front gate, another group was just passing through. Four Lunuk, a human, and a new alien disappeared into the city. The two guards slammed the gates shut again immediately afterwards. A small opening at eye level slid open. A guard peered through.