The next morning Max met with Bixby and Dave on the clearing where Dave usually trained. They were already waiting for him there, Bixby still looked a bit weakened, but miles better than yesterday. Sam’s powers were truly miraculous.

Max himself wasn’t feeling too well, after seeing the sight of destruction after Dave’s fight with the golem, he was worried about the strength of future waves. He hadn’t had a chance to talk with Dave yet, but if the golem had really managed to make Dave go all out, he wasn’t sure how they would manage future waves.

Bixby and Dave were so caught up in conversation that they didn’t even see him coming.

“What’s up?” Max asked these two.

He already saw on their slight frowns and conflicting faces that this wouldn’t be a comfortable discussion.

They shared his worry about future waves, and Bixby told him what he knew about boss waves from the spawner. It admittedly stilled Max’s fear of them getting overrun any day now a little. But the problem was still there for the long term.

“So in a few weeks we could still be in over our heads?” Max asked.

“Maybe.” Bixby said, rubbing his chin with his paw. “It’s hard to say precisely. Judging from the increase in strength over the last two months, I’d say we should have at least another month before we couldn’t handle them anymore.”

Dave chimed into the conversation. “And what if we just keep growing stronger?”

“That is provided you keep getting stronger.” Bixby sighed.

Dave flinched a little. Max could share his sentiment. It felt like they were trapped in a hamster wheel with no way of getting out. They had weathered wave after wave to survive, and killed monster after monster to get stronger, yet it seemed to still not be enough in the end. Were they truly doomed?

“However, there might be a way for us.” Bixby said after a long pause. He looked unsure and conflicted, but Max still clung to every word he said.

“What is it?” He asked.

“Well… how much Mana Shards have you amassed by now Max?”

Slightly taken aback, Max opened his Node Menu. “Around 550 Mana Shards.” He said after some mental calculation.

That was actually a surprisingly good number; they had estimated that they would need almost a full year to reach the 2000 Mana Shards needed for a teleportation token. Yet they had amassed a fourth of that in a little over two months. The better mines and Max’s rewards for leveling his Skills were unexpectedly fruitful.

Bixby nodded thoughtfully. “Hmm. I told you that the spawner essentially is converting ambient Mana into monsters, which after being slain get reconverted into full Mana Shards, right?”

“Yes, so we’re pretty much printing money for the Nodefoxes,” Max said sourly. “Thanks for reminding me again.”

“Never thought you’d be getting so serious about money.” Dave chuckled at seeing Max’s expression.

A glare from Max silenced him again, before Bixby continued.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“Well that is one way to put it,” Bixby said. “But what if we could get the Mana Shards?”

“How many Shards would there even be?” Max asked, turning his eyes back towards Bixby.

“It’s hard to say exactly, right now maybe a bit more than a thousand.”

Max’s eyes shined with excitement. “Could we really get them?”

“Wait, I already asked you about that and you said it's essentially impossible.” Dave injected. Which quickly soured Max’s mood again.

“Well it is and it isn’t,” Bixby said. “It is possible, yes. But it is quite difficult. So much so that it might as well be impossible.”

A smile broke out on Max's face as he looked up again. “That’s not a no.”

After all that had expired since their world fundamentally changed, and especially after seeing his best friend do things they had never even dreamed of doing, Max’s definition of impossible was pretty flexible.

“It’s not a no.” Bixby admitted. “But we would have to rush the spawner, destroy it, and make it back here alive with the Mana Shards to buy the teleportation token.”

“So?” Dave asked unimpressed. “What’s the difficult part?” He said sarcastically.

As usual Bixby didn’t catch the sarcasm, so he went on to explain.

Apparently only reaching the spawner was quite difficult, as the monsters it generated were concentrated the thickest around it. Bixby guessed that the Nodefoxes hadn’t only placed the spawner for them, but also as a training ground for their own troops, so it was probably placed somewhere between them, and a Nodefox outpost.

It took a second for Max and Dave to realize what that meant. If the waves from the spawner were split between them, the Nodefox outpost, and the few monsters that strained too far away, that meant that what they saw of the monster waves was only a fraction of their true power.

Max thought back to the massive surge of goblins and shuddered when thinking about how many more of those beasts must’ve been released from the spawner before roaming away. Just what an impact must this spawner have on the whole ecosystem around here?

“Provided we manage to get to the spawner, how would we even be able to access the Mana Shards?” Max asked, trying to grasp the whole range of their problem.

“Well, usually you would just take out the Mana Shards after the spawner has served its purpose. Unfortunately you need to be either the owner of the spawner or have permission to interact with it,” Bixby said wearily. “The only other way would be to destroy it.”

Dave nodded. “And how difficult would that be?”

“It should be feasible,” Bixby shrugged. “I have honestly never heard about it being done though, so I’m not sure. Also remember that I’m no expert on the buildings and upgrades of the Node Menu.”

“Let’s say we break the spawner and get the Mana Shards, won’t the Nodefoxes be alerted by that?” Max asked.

Bixby nodded slowly. “Yeah, that’s what I meant by we would also have to get back here to buy the teleportation token. After destroying the spawner it would pretty much be a race against time, before the Nodefoxes would come after us.”

“As long as we immediately buy the token we should be fine though?” Dave asked.

“Technically yes, but it’s hard to say. For one it depends on how many Mana Shards there really are, and we also have to hope that no rank two Nodefox is at the closest outpost,” Bixby said with a heavy voice. “Sukanst would be able to rush over here way faster than we could, and this time he wouldn’t be in a mood to play around. We’ve probably embarrassed him and he would die to get back to us.”

“So this whole plan doesn’t just hinge upon you guessing we would be able to break the spawner, but we would also have to hope that no powerhouses are nearby?” Dave said skeptically. “What if they have already emptied the spawner?”

“Oh that they couldn’t have done, once emptied, the spawner becomes useless, it’s a single time building in a way.” Bixby said and paused.

“But yes, a lot depends on only my guesses and hopes.”

“So we either face the spawner, fight our way through monster waves stronger than ever before and hope we can outrun a bunch of angry high ranked Nodefoxes, or we wait until the monster waves will overwhelm us slowly anyways?” Dave said, throwing his hands up in an exaggerated way.

“That sums it up nicely,” Bixby said carefully.

Max sighed. “Well it doesn’t look like we have any better options.” He clasped one hand on Dave’s shoulder and one on Bixby’s. “What’s one more hurdle eh?”