The trio left the cave, the strange veil from before allowing them through. As they phased back into the real world, the cave behind them shuttered and the shimmering veil faded, giving them sight of the inside of a small cave. Nothing like what they had fought in. They all three turned and looked, unable to really make sense of what had happened. As they walked back through the woods they threw out their ideas, some of them becoming wildly crazier as they went on. It was a good way to pass the time, but they did come to a group conclusion that whatever that boon had been, it had led them to and opened up that cave. Cade knew they would have to try to take advantage of more of those.

“Think I should record it into the Guidebook? Maybe someone else already has?” He asked his companions.

“Eh, let’s leave that one be. Might be able to find more, and I would hope that anyone entering an ethereal cave would know there could be monsters inside of it.” Brandon countered nonchalantly. Cade could see him slowly darkening, not enough to be worried, but enough that he told himself he would watch his friend a little better. This new world was not kind, and he had to keep telling himself that he needed to toughen up for it. Brandon had it right, but there was a line that he would make sure was never crossed if he could help it.

The trio found their way back to the Interstate. Cade summoned up the G.R.I.P.S. - watching it take up more than a lane of what had been the old world traffic system.

“Anyone want a specific spot? I think we can all drive it from anywhere based on the HUD that displayed when we were checking it out.” Cade saw King jump into the rear facing seat, Brandon also getting into the right most seat in the front. Cade sighed, his companions obviously wanting him to take the “driver’s” seat.

“Good talk. I’ll drive.” Cade said quietly, but heard Brandon snicker next to him. Grabbing onto the crossbar near the open door, Cade easily jumped up, landing in the leftmost front facing seat. As he sat down, an option pinged in his display.

PILOT G.R.I.P.S.?

Cade selected it and a new set up of displays appeared. Cade had to drag several of them to the sides of his vision in order to see, and was pleasantly surprised to find he could also shift the displays outside of his immediate display window. It drove much like the mobile driving games he had played here and there on his phone. A touch display appeared whenever he raised his fingertips off of any surface, and he was able to mentally command it forward or backwards.

“Hold on, I'm going to give it a test.” Cade selected forward and gently pushed forward with his raised hand. The touch display gave him feedback as he did, barely pushing back. The vehicle started moving forward at a steady pace. Cade moved his fingers sideways, his thumb and pinky finding purchase as he turned what felt like a dial. The rear of the vehicle drifted sideways depending on the way he turned the dial. That was going to take some getting used to - it really didn’t turn like a normal car, which shouldn’t have surprised him.

“Crank it up man, let’s see what this thing can do. Looks like no traffic on I5, eh?” King shouted over the low wind moving past them. The vehicle had a good system of coverage, but the canopy above their heads was easy to exit through, likely by design.

Cade smiled and straightened the vehicle with the road before slamming his hand forward, the sudden acceleration slamming him backwards into his seat.

“Holy fuck…” Cade said through clenched teeth. There was nothing to read a speed from, or at least not one Cade could find immediately, but there was no way they were going anything less than 150 mph in what must have been 5 seconds of acceleration. Cade was pretty sure that would have done permanent damage to them before the freeze. Their new stats were enough to keep them together, but he slowed down after a minute or two, coming to almost a complete stop.

“God damn, man. That was absurdly fast. I’ve never been that fast in my life. I could barely make out the foliage flying by! Yeesh.” King was speaking quickly, a massive grin spreading on his face as he stood in his seat and banged on the canopy above them. Cade couldn’t help but also be impressed with their new transport. They had probably just covered the same distance within a matter of 10 seconds that they had with their entire morning walking.

“Just don’t kill us. If you can help it.” Brandon said quietly from his side. Cade started cracking up laughing, the vehicle spinning slowly in place under them. Cade had let his fingers come off of the controls, and the whimsical way they were moving now was extremely silly to Cade, especially after everything they had been through so far. He pushed his hand back down, the feedback activating as he righted the spinning vehicle.

“Where should we head? Anywhere you guys want to go?” Cade asked.

“We probably want to avoid cities, right? And maybe we should head somewhere to train?” King suggested.

“I agree with King, we should head somewhere remote and train up. We need to get stronger.” Brandon replied.

“Why don’t we go sightseeing then? Somewhere very far away from any cities, but cool enough that we can just enjoy being there too? Probably more likely to find animals in the wild anyway. Mt. Hood anyone?” Cade had been once or twice, as had most anyone who had grown up in Northern Oregon. Brandon nodded and sat back in his seat, eyes closing.

“Sounds good. Never been, parents were always either too busy or outside of the country. Let’s find some monsters.” King was obviously hyped up, enthusiastic after their drag race down the interstate.

“Let’s go Cade, follow the signs to the mountain!” King smacked the canopy and pointed south along the interstate. Cade didn’t wait for him to sit down, firmly pushing them forward, getting up to speed a little slower this time. He heard King swearing at him between laughs as they flew down the road. They backtracked north, following the signs as they made their way off of I-5 and down onto the 26 East.

[ Looks like it’s only 60 or so miles out to the mountain. I’m going to speed us up a little and see how this drives around the corners. ] Cade sent out via a message. He heard King shout excitedly in response and Brandon even had a smile as he peered over at his friend. Their drive through the forests and roads east of Portland went quickly enough. Cade was able to make out roadway signs and it didn’t take long before he was confident in maneuvering the craft around the many bends and hills they rode over.

They had been flying a while, probably 20 minutes in by Cade’s guess when a message came through.

[ Cade, stop the car. ] Cade slammed back on the reverse function with his hand. They quickly came to a halt, Brandon jumping from his seat, longbow and arrow at the ready.

“I saw something back there, a fire or some kind of smoke and I think I heard yelling. Human yelling.” King pointed back to where they had come from.

“You want to check it out? I’m not a huge fan of that, but if someone actually does need help, I’m willing.” Cade looked over at Brandon, noting the pained look on his face as he waited for his decision.

“Alright.” He simply responded, sitting back down, bow disappearing again.

“Hold on King, we are going to head back, let me know when to stop.” Cade spun them around and shot off, this time much slower though, back in the direction they had come from. Cade saw what King had been talking about, smoke rising from the trees out past the edge of the roadway. He felt King smacking on the canopy and slowed down, King jumped out and ran towards the trees, Cade and Brandon following soon after. Cade pulled the G.R.I.P.S. back into his inventory and ran after his friends. They had all pulled their weapons out and approached the tree line carefully. Cade could hear yelling as they moved closer.

“Why can we hear fighting? Why would they not be in an instance?” Cade thought aloud, but he had already guessed enough. Brandon only confirmed his thoughts,

“It’s multiple groups fighting each other, or someone fighting another person.” Brandon had the longbow and arrow readied again. Advancing behind King, the three of them walked quickly in the direction of the noises. They could hear it clearer now, the battering of weapons clanging off of metal growing ever louder. The trees began to clear, a clearing coming into sight. Cade ground his teeth in anger at the sight in front of them. A group of men was attacking two women, one of which was on the ground, still and bleeding. The woman left on her feet was massive. At least six feet tall, as muscular as you could ever be, and was wielding a two handed hammer with a massive face on one side, paired with a spike on the other.

They had been fighting for a while, he guessed, the group of four men having been whittled down to three. One of the remaining men was injured, his right arm shattered by what could have only been that massive hammer the woman wielded. Cade felt Brandon rush past him, his bow coming up in front of them. He fired an arrow - Cade watched as it landed true, piercing a sword wielder through his back. The fighter with the crushed arm turned around and pointed at them with his good arm and dagger, but the momentary lapse in attention lost him his head as the hammer swept forward, completely obliterating him and ending his life. Brandon had not been idle, rushing off with his daggers out, under stealth. King moved forward in front of Cade as the larger of the attackers rushed them. He met the swordsman head on, the two handed longsword of the attacker bouncing off of King’s shield. Cade quickly dashed forward and to the left of them both, using King’s shield as cover to take the attacker by surprise. Cade swung upward at the attacker's arm, his sword taking the man just above the elbow, not quite enough to sever it completely, but enough to give King time to punch forward with his gauntlet. The man flew backwards, the crunch of his chest under King’s punch leaving the man wheezing for air.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Cade ran to where he landed, his sword stabbing down into his chest to stop the man’s suffering. He left the corpse for now, looking up as Brandon took the remaining member in the back with his knives. The daggers made the man seize up, Paralyzing Strike taking effect as he fell. Cade saw Brandon mouth something as he struck him, his eyes flashing red. Knowing that he had used Reap again, Cade quickly looked over at King, breathing out a sigh of relief to find that he was paying attention to the two women rather than to Brandon. Cade ran over to them, putting his hands up and his weapons away to show they were not a danger to the women.

King had also put his shield away, a potion coming out in each hand as he offered them up to the hammer woman.

“Please, drink this and give her one.” He motioned to the woman lying still behind her.

“Fine, but stay back.” The woman had a gravelly voice. She approached King slowly, her right hand plucking both potions from his hands before quickly backing up to the injured woman. She drank one of them herself and went to give the other one to her companion, but hesitated.

“She is already gone. She’s not breathing and this is way too much blood.” The woman had an accent Cade hadn’t picked up on before, but was clear now. European - Scandinavian he guessed, but the woman didn’t sound too perturbed at the girls death. She even reached over to loot the girl before standing to face them.

“We need you to explain what happened here.” Cade had brought his shield back out, leaving his sword stashed. He didn’t want to provoke her, and knew the speed she could swing that hammer.

“I was traveling with a group of tourists when it happened. My wife and many of the others were killed the first day. Some kind of Mole-Goblin thing. There were dozens of them, and most of the tourists we were with were over the age of 65. This group was the last of us, we were following the roads back towards the cities, hoping to make it to safety.” The woman looked down at the ground, her face contorting as lines of anger traced every inch of it. “It was just me and the young girl, and these four fuckers. They tried to rape her, thought I’d be into it because I “liked what they liked.” We have been fighting non stop since day one, there are so many monstrous creatures out here. But they were the real monsters. I am glad my wife did not live long enough to see these evil’s.” she spat on the ground and fell to her knees, dropping sideways to sit with her legs in front of her, hands rubbing her temples. Her hammer had been stowed, and Cade felt she was telling them the truth, but he kept his shield out just in case.

“I’m sorry about your wife, and I am sorry you had to deal with such disgusting people. We have had our fair share of people showing us the darker side of humanity, so we understand. My name is Cade. That’s Crow,” he said, pointing at Brandon and then at King. “And that is King.”

“Thank you for helping me. All of you. My name is Frida. The girl was Samantha. I would like to bury her with honor.” Frida stood, a sheet coming loose in her hands as she spread it from her inventory over her fallen friend. Cade reached out, a shovel in his hand as he offered it to Frida. She grunted in thanks as she took it; and walking a few feet over, started digging. Cade and his friends could tell she wanted no help, and they understood. They may as well have not existed to her. They stood watch for about an hour as Frida dug out a grave large enough. Cade was surprised at her speed, but remembered that she said they had been fighting non stop and she was likely stronger physically than they were. The force and speed at which she had swung that hammer definitely supported that theory.

Frida hopped out of the hole, further proving her strength, and picked the body of Samantha. She gently lowered her into the hole and started to fill it back in. She moved quickly and methodically, those muscles were certainly not for show and she knew what she was doing when it came to hard labor, Cade was sure of that. As she stopped digging, she handed the shovel back to Cade with a nod of thanks. Cade was surprised to see a hand reach past him, a bottle of liquor extended.

“Hey, Frida.” Was all Brandon said as she took the bottle from him. She grunted in thanks and unstoppering the bottle, drinking deeply from it. She said something in a language Cade didn’t understand. Sighing loudly, she turned and walked over to where they sat. Sitting down, she raised her bottle into the air. The boys all did the same, mostly out of respect, but it had been a long day for them as well. The sun had begun to set at this point, and they figured that traveling at night is probably a worse idea than just hunkering down.

“We are going to camp out for the night. Let’s clear these bastards up and make something of a camp. Frida, can you get a fire going? We can take care of the rest.” Cade asked kindly, but his intention to have her stay in the center of camp was clear. She nodded and stood, a large stack of firewood dropping in front of her. She used the point of her hammer to dig a small ditch, piled the wood into it, and lit it. Cade was busy collecting the bodies into his inventory, mentally tasking himself to get rid of them whenever he could. Brandon hadn’t moved from his spot near Frida, watching her every move as if she were a coiled snake.

“Why were you in this part of the world, you mentioned you were a tourist?” He jabbed at her, Cade figured it was to get a rise - to test her.

“Yeah. Touring with my wife, rest her soul. She had always wanted to come to America, to see the National Parks and what it has to offer. We had only been here a few days when it hit.” Frida responded evenly, her eyes never leaving the fire.

“Mhmm. I’m sorry about your wife. That is not fair at all. May she rest.” Brandon raised his bottle again, seeming to at least partially believe it. “What are you going to do now? You’ll be solo, and we are 40+ miles from Portland.” Cade had been meaning to bring that up later on, but Brandon seemed intent on being as blunt as he could be. Rolling his eyes, he walked back over to sit near the fire. King also settled in, and they were all jolted with surprise as the blue motes of light of the Home Stoneshot out from Brandon. Even he was staring at his own chest, the origin of the light.

“So… if we are sitting around a campfire as a group, it turns it into a safe zone? What?” King was plenty confused for all of them. Brandon just looked around with a ridiculous look on his face, and Cade just rubbed his face in frustration as he again found himself unable to understand anything going on with the world.

“I’d guess it has something to do with clearing an area and turning it into a safe zone for it to activate. Another in our group found one of those too, and it would activate any time we were localized to a small clearing that we had fully checked out.” Frida laughed a little at their reactions, and after the look they all three gave her, explained what she knew. “It worked in medium to large areas like that, but never worked in extremely cramped clearings, almost like it needs more room and line of sight to activate. We never fully dialed it in. I don’t even think we grabbed the Stone from whichever one of them had it originally.” Frida laughed again and shook her head.

“As to what I’m going to do? I don’t know. I want to get stronger, but I think it’s going to be a long road. Where are you all headed?” She looked up and met their eyes individually, like she was testing their reaction and answers. Two heads turned to look at Cade, and he didn’t have to turn to check, he could feel them leaving this one to him. Leadership feels a whole lot like drawing the short straw. He thought to himself.

“We are headed to Mt. Hood to train. We want to get stronger and stay as far from people like those men as we can. We have had too many negative interactions with other people lately to feel comfortable around strangers.” Cade figured the truth couldn’t hurt. He was also going to judge what she said in return.

“Mhmmm. Same thought process then. It’s tough out there. The bottom of the mountain is some kind of hot spot. I don’t know if that is just because there were so many other animals already, or some other reason, but we fought constantly until we moved out from the shadow.” Frida seemed willing to give them information, which was points for her.

“What are your stats.” Brandon interjected, and Cade agreed; if they could get straightforward answers from her now, it would open up a couple of possibilities. They may even extend an invite to her if she seemed sane enough.

“Huh. What a frontal way of asking that. I appreciate the candid-ness.” She laughed, her gravelly voice giving it a strangely low tone.

“I have rank C Strength. Rank D Durability, and E’s for everything else. For a bonus, I’ll even tell you my ability. I can charge up a massive blow. It takes time, 10 seconds to be precise, but I can also only use it for the following 15.” She crossed her arms in front of her, showcasing her ridiculous muscles. “I expect you are testing me for some reason, but why do we not just get right to the chase, eh?” She grinned and waited for a response.

“Give us a minute, if you would.” Cade waited for her to acknowledge him before he pulled up his display.

[ You guys have any issues seeing if she wants to come with? We have space and she’s tough as nails. ] Cade sent out.

[ None from me. She seems capable and one more of us is one more person to help me keep you two alive. ] King snickered as he responded.

[ I want to keep her at arms length for now. She can come, but I don’t trust her quite yet. Do what you feel is right here, Cade.]

Cade nodded at Brandon and pulled up his Party Interface, sending an invite to Frida.

“If you want to. No harm if not.” Cade said with a smile. He knew she had no reason to accept it, if she wanted to be solo she’d stay that way.

“I think we can come up with some kind of arrangement. Cheers.” She accepted the invite, her information and name populating in the corners of their vision. Cade nodded and pulled out some rations and water, picking at the boring food to pass the time. After a while he jumped into the Void Market, buying several new potions with his newfound wealth. He had all but forgotten about his hand in the day's quick paced set of events that had happened, but he found himself rubbing the space where his fingers used to be. A thought occurred to him; why not see if anyone in the Guidebook has found a way to regrow limbs or fingers. He made his way to it and mentally searched for what he was looking for. Surprisingly, (although he figured it shouldn’t be in this new world), there were a ton of similar entries, many that were significantly worse, and a lot of talk about what to do. Many people had tried higher level potions, but it seemed like nothing worked except for the highest purchasable potion, and something that had been found after a fight called a Perfect Mend Token. Only one person had mentioned using a Mend Token, and it apparently had brought a friend of the users basically back to life. One case out of millions was slim, and that would be too much to use on a couple fingers, so Cade just grunted his frustrations and told himself he’d get enough for that high tier potion. He only had about 5300 Void Coins right now, so it would need to wait.

Cade felt himself drifting towards sleep, the excitement of the day hitting him finally.

“Anyone good with taking the first watch? I’ll take any other one, I’m just having a tough time staying awake right now.” He yawned and broached the topic with the group.

“I got it, get some rest.” King stood up and stretched, probably trying to keep his body awake. Cade nodded and gave his thanks before pulling out a pillow and sleeping bag, quickly finding sleep.