“James, you have the Sonic Bolt card and the Listen card. I think that’s enough for you.” Max said. He glanced up to see James’ hurt face. Max shook his head sadly and turned away. “Bisrat. Do you think you know card values well enough to split these six cards into four equal value groups?”

She said, “I would consider myself primarily an expert on dungeon artifacts, but I have absorbed plenty of card knowledge in my many trips to magic stores. Let me see what I can do.”

She read each card shuffled them around. “The two lowest value cards are these two Bell cards. We talked about how humans and Paj don’t particularly care for them. The Memory card is very limited at common rank. It helps you remember a handful of events perfectly, but that’s it. The Peace card is advanced, but no one will want it. It creates a sense of peace and wellbeing, but it’s addictive. People that add it to their deck never remove it.

“This common Distract card is decent. It does exactly what you think it does, and I would say it’s worth the same as these first two put together. It would be worth more if it wasn’t a Bell card.

“This Clover card could be valuable, but you gotta find the right buyer. The Encase card creates a layer of bark all around the target monster. Against small and weak monsters, that stops them cold and leaves them open for the kill shot. But stronger monsters can break through the wood with ease, and Encase doesn’t scale well.

“Pressure Wave is worth more. It’s a Cups card that lowers or raises internal body pressure when you splash the potion on them. Knock monsters out with low blood pressure, or make them quickly bleed out with high blood pressure. It works on everything, even titans. But of course, the effect is reduced on them.

“Focus is worth even more. Even though it’s a Bell card, most people recognize how useful it is to have supernatural focus on a task. Fighting, farming, or crafting; people want focus.”

Max nodded along as she listed everything out. There wasn’t an easy way to split the six cards between four people. He tsked and decided to include James after all.

“Gus, you were our MVP as our tank yesterday, you’ll get the best one, Focus. Then I’ll take Pressure Wave. Yang, Encase. Lily, you take Distract and Memory. James, I’m giving you Peace. Use it well.” Max said.

“Oh come on. Do you really still hate me? I’m your friend,” James said.

Max shook his head. “You were my friend. I don’t know you anymore.”

James screwed his mouth shut and turned away. Lily put her hand around him and squeezed his shoulder. She turned to Max and gave him a hurt look.

Max shook his head. He really didn’t understand what the short Filipino girl saw in his chubby friend. Although that description was changing. James had started to lose weight and he wasn’t Max’s friend anymore.

An armored human walked past their door and said, “We are leaving in ten minutes. Meetup on the north side.”

“Thanks Marcus. See you there.” Bisrat said cheerily.

Max reached for his camp stove and moved to put it in his belt. He swore under his breath when he realized he hadn’t done the daily belt task. He couldn't use it until he did. Instead, he threw everything into his backpack. It was large enough to easily fit everything, but it was heavy. He had stocked up on food and made several metal weapons.

He walked over to the group of people assembling and reached into his belt pouch. Hopefully he could get this task out of the way quickly, otherwise he would be huffing and puffing before the day was half over.

There was a group of about twenty people milling about. Mostly human with a few Paj and Lunuk. No Igra, sadly. Max had grown to really enjoy their game focused mindset. A tall man in plate armor stood at the head of the group.

He cleared his throat to get their attention and said, “My name is Karl and I will be leading this caravan. We are going to head straight north, and turn west when we reach the foothills. We’ll take the Donner pass over the mountains. Everyone contributes to the defense of the caravan. The killing blow gets any white orb that drops. Since I’m the highest leveled, I get any greater orb that appears. If you don’t like that rule, tough. You can make your way home on your own. If you keep walking with us, you are agreeing to those rules. Let’s head out.”

They set out at a moderately fast pace. They walked two or three abreast, stretching out into a line about fifty feet long. James and Lily were near the front, so Max hung back until he was in the back.

While they walked, Max turned his attention back to his belt. The first thing he pulled out of the pocket was a pen. Simple enough. He wrote a smiley face on the back of his hand. The pen dissolved into nothing as the ink faded away. On to the next random object. Using a tomato was easy, he just took a bite. A postage stamp didn’t require much imagination to use. Then the belt threw him a curveball. A Swiffer mop.

He had no idea how to use a mop designed for hardwood floors when he was walking through a monster infested pine forest. Would spraying the dirt and mopping away pine needles work?

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Max paused for a bit to try it out. The rest of the caravan kept going. He kept an eye on them as he worked. He wasn’t going to let himself get left behind. Bisrat stopped with him.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“It’s the curse of my belt. I have to use five items for their intended purpose. Otherwise I can’t access my belt for the day. This is a cleaning tool, so I’m trying to clean with it. I don’t think it’s working though.”

“I think you’re making mud.”

“Yeah. This isn’t working. Let’s catch up.”

They hurried to join the line of people walking through the forest. To his surprise, Bisrat was easily able to keep up with his jog. He had assumed that her tiny tentacles on her centipede tail would slow her down. As they neared the group, he found himself fascinated by how she moved.

Her tail flowed over any obstruction, never pausing. Thousands of small tentacles gripped the landscape and propelled her forward. Max thought actual centipedes were gross, but this didn’t trigger his revulsion. It was smooth and somehow gentile.

“Is my tail really that fascinating?” Bisrat said with a laugh. She gave it a little wiggle.

Max shrugged. “I guess. It’s new is all. I bet you were interested in legs when you first saw them.”

“Not really. We have animals with legs on our world. It wasn’t much of a stretch to imagine a person with legs. The pink skin took some time to get used to. But what really surprised me about humans was the hair.”

“Hair?” Max put a hand to his head. “Why is hair interesting?”

She giggled. “Because we don’t have any! Haven’t you noticed Paj have quills, not hair?”

“I guess. I never really thought about it much.”

“Our heads have natural armor. I find it fascinating that other species have a soft rug instead. How do any of you survive to adulthood?”

Max laughed, “We try our best not to get hit on the head. Do Paj get hit on the head often?”

“No, of course not! We protect our young.” She lowered her voice. “Unlike the Lunuk, we have one child at a time and we cherish our young.”

Max hadn’t really thought about alien procreation. Now he was wondering if Paj gave live birth or if they laid eggs. Looking at Bisrat, he didn’t really have any indication one way or another.

“I can tell you are trying to figure out Paj procreation. I can tell you that Paj and Humans are similar in that arena, but you don’t need to know more than that.”

Max’s face reddened as he realized the implication. “I wasn’t trying to... I mean, I wasn’t thinking about that.”

“Sure, sure. I’ll pretend to believe you.”

“Really, I was just thinking about how different we all are.”

She smiled to let him know she was just messing with him. They reached the group shortly afterwards. Max decided he wasn’t going to find a floor he could mop right now, so he debated what to do with the Swiffer.

Part of dealing with his belt’s curse was mindset. He just needed to convince himself that this was how you were supposed to use the random object. Some items were more flexible than others. For some reason, he was drawing a blank with the mop. It cleaned floors, that was it.

Although, it didn’t have to be a floor. Any flat surface would do. Sadly, he didn’t see any flat surfaces around here.

They were heading north, getting closer to the mountains in the distance. The landscape was changing from a thick forest to sparse trees. There were groves of pine trees, but in general there was a lot more room around them. They could see farther into the landscape than ever before. That was probably why everyone seemed so relaxed.

There were twenty-four people walking in a line. They had naturally broken up into different groups. James and Lily were up front with the tall armored guy and four others. A tall Lunuk was gesturing widely as he talked.

The next group held two Paj and three humans. They all wore the same type of armor, segmented lorica armor with silver greaves. Max guessed that they were a sponsored dungeoneering team.

The six people after that clearly weren't sponsored. They each wore a hodgepodge of armor. Two Lunuk didn’t even wear full armor, only wearing greaves and an armored skirt.

Gus had joined the trailing group, four burly men. Max could hear them talking about where they were from. They had gone through the portal together, three years ago. Their group had been bigger, but the dangers of the second floor had whittled them down until only six remained. The following years brought them down to four.

Max almost joined their conversation, but then he saw something that derailed that thought. There was a boulder in their way. Not unusual, there were often rock formations or boulders strewn about. He assumed the builders put them there to make this world seem more natural.

But this boulder was somewhat flat on one side. Maybe he could clean it. It was too rough right now to move the cleaning pad across it. But he could do something about that.

He took out the drill he had used Augment on yesterday. His Insight showed him it had recharged in the night. Time to see if the lightsaber spell was still active, or if the Augment was a one time thing.

With a bit of trepidation, he activated the drill. A yellow light flashed out, and then disappeared. Damn. He could only supercharge a spell once, not in perpetuity.

His mana was full though, so he might as well make himself a lightsaber. He used Augment and pushed all forty-two points of mana into the drill. He felt briefly lightheaded and weak. When the feeling passed, he activated the drill again and this time the yellow magic thrummed in place.

A few test swings showed that he sadly couldn’t get the same sound effect as in the movies. He quickly moved to the boulder and sliced off a large section of the boulder. The top layer slid off, revealing a perfectly flat surface.

Max grabbed the Swiffer and picked out the pine needles from the pad. Then he pressed the button and sprayed the surface with cleaner. He happily slid the mop around the flat surface. He didn’t do a great job, but he knew he was using it for its intended purpose.

The mop agreed with him and dissolved into nothingness a short while later. He excitedly reached into his belt to pull out the final item. He was looking forward to getting this weight off his shoulders.

The belt pouch bent space to accommodate a larger than normal object. It was a parachute.