Teddy was tanking it across the desert, he’d opened the throttle fully and the vehicle was a blur across the desert, the wide windscreen shielded him from the sandy wind as he raced forward. They had all had a turn at driving but it turned out that Teddy was the best suited with his racial ability of the personal tactical map to navigate from. He had just taken over from Kyra after explaining that she had managed to get completely turned around in the desert dunes and was pretty much headed straight back to the desert workshop. The others were still on the top deck with him.
“Honey, if you said I was going the wrong way then why are we still headed that way full speed?”
“Well I just wanted to see what would happen when I did… this!”
He turned the steering wheel as fast as he could, the land yacht was fairly large, two decks high and wide with it. The others panicked and grabbed onto whatever was nearest, Teddy was fine in the captain’s chair that had wide arms and a bucket seat. What the others hadn’t thought of was the fact that Teddy had helped build the vehicle and had pioneered the idea of putting wheels on with Mr Efkycharkzshyn, as it was a brand new idea to Charlie Teddy had been heavily involved. As he spun the wheel the vehicle turned rapidly on its huge rugged rubber wheels, each almost the size of James standing and four on each side; the whole vehicle tilted. The wheels weren’t attached to an axle like a normal wheeled vehicle, if you walked underneath you could put your arm completely between the wheel and the hull, they were held in place like a magnetic magic, giving unparalleled suspension and manoeuvrability as demonstrated now. Even though the others gripped the walls and chairs with a death grip they didn’t need to, as the vehicle turned through the desert instead of throwing them all sideways with great force the whole vehicle rolled into the turn like a motorbike, they felt pinned to the floor by centripetal force but they could easily manage that. From the outside looking at the turn the wheels shifted around the vehicle, the inside of the turns wheels were now level with the windows on the top deck and the outside wheels level with what would be the keel on a seagoing ship.
“If we had champagne, which we really should, it wouldn’t have spilled a drop.” Teddy said, smiling at the others getting over the manoeuvre. Kyra punched him lightly in the arm.
“That worked out better than we thought it would.” Lucy said. “Let’s put it through its paces.”
Teddy was more than happy to oblige, still at full power he put the craft into a series of S-bends causing the vehicle to lean over completely one way and then the other. He aimed at a huge sand dune and boosted straight over the lip, the team all felt themselves go light on their feet as the vehicle went airbourne. As it did, what they couldn’t see was all the wheels shifting slightly down and forward, they cushioned the blow onto the floor and like a mother catching a thrown newborn; it smoothed the landing as if it was trying to keep the babe asleep. The vehicle lost almost no speed and carried on straight up the next lip, Teddy couldn’t see over the hill but when he did he put a message as quick as thought onto the interface.
[Brace, this might hurt.]
The gap between the next dune was too small and the vehicle was going to crash straight into the middle of the slope. The team all braced properly having now found loops and poles designed for hard manoeuvring. The bow of the craft smashed into the dune and plowed straight through, the speed it was going and the shape of the front cut through the sand like a wave on the ocean with only minimal speed loss, if they had been standing they may have struggled to stay upright but braced as they were it wasn’t even uncomfortable. After this Teddy slowed and turned to cruise on.
“That was awesome.” James said, obviously impressed. “We’re going to have a lot of fun with this. The only thing missing is how empty it is, we need to get some food in the cupboards and some personal touches.”
“Boko should only be a few hours in this direction at this speed.”
“I noticed you slowed down? Why is that? I’m hungry you know.”
“And I’m sure you have food in your storage, you just want to play with the new kitchen.”
“True, but why did you slow?”
“Well we made the running of this much cheaper by adding some new ideas that Charlie hadn’t had to think of before but it’s still magic intensive, the operating limit of it is dictated by the ambient magic, in this low magic area we can’t keep it at full speed without it being resource heavy, little bursts are fine but if you want to cruise at top speed it’s going to be expensive.”
“Point taken, onwards at best speed driver!”
Teddy tried to brake check James to cause him to stumble for being cheeky but the vehicle was too smart for him and the hull shifted upwards between the wheels to cushion the deceleration and achieve nothing. Teddy snarled a little bit at his brother and carried on, accelerating away.
A little ways into their drive a large shadow descended on them, they all felt a little uncontrolled aura spike of concern from James but it quickly went away when he realised it was Lechuza. She swept down behind the vehicle that hadn’t slowed and she curved her approach to intercept, reaching out with her talons to grip the silvery crystal handrails of the stairs at the back. She quickly tucked her wings in and was standing on the drop deck at the back.
[Greetings Ms Lucy, your new conveyance is deceptively hard to see from a distance for such a large and shiny craft. As I was closing in it looks splendid.]
“Thankyou Lechuza, you’ll be glad to know we will not be in the desert much longer, this is us returning to Greenstone for a short while.”
[Very well mistress, I have enjoyed the open terrain for hunting but prey is sparse. I have come to inform you that nearby has a large enough pack of Sand dogs to hunt as a team.]
“Very nice, thankyou.” Lucy turned to her husband. “Will your empty stomach manage a small detour?”
“Oh yeh, it’ll be good to have a go with the whole band again.”
Teddy turned to speak to Lechuza.
“Show me the way and we’ll follow.”
Lechuza blinked her huge eyes at him and reached up with one taloned foot grabbing the top of the handrail of the stairs that flanked either side of the back of the vehicle. She spread her wings that extended past the sides and the wind rushing past lifted her up and she let go, soaring above them. She banked to the right and Teddy followed.
They all extended their auras, ready for battle. James’ let them all increase their visual acuity and zoom their vision, Teddy’s aura made enemies directly attacking them to slow by a small margin, Kyra’s aura wasn’t too useful when fighting monsters but let them protect their auras against suppression from higher ranks. Lucy’s aura wasn’t directly a combat powering ability but led to a better performance from everyone, it enabled thinking speed and clarity of thought to be improved in allies. The team had sat many evenings making combat plays that they can enact at short notice, with the interface giving instant communication and Lucy’s aura giving higher quality patterns of thinking along with highly adaptable ready-made team moves meant that the team were well on their way to being four fingers on the same hand. Unfortunately a band of sand dogs was not the best opportunity to show this off as a basic iron rank monster they didn’t pose enough of a challenge to stretch the team.
This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.
They saw the pack walking along the side of one of the dunes ahead, James’ aura let them see much further than their normal iron rank sight, which already was enhanced from normal sight. The pack was travelling in two loose rows, travelling diagonally up the slope. Without having to check with the others Teddy angled his approach to come up behind the dogs. He played with some of the levers and controls on the board in front of him, most of the functions of the vehicle were automatic, adjusting to the speed and the terrain. Teddy had the vehicle almost bottom out by spreading the wheels out and up, the shallow hull was just cutting a line in the sand with the wheels moved out.
The vehicle made almost no sound, much less than you would expect of something so large and their prey hadn’t noticed them yet. A few lengths between them and the dogs Teddy rammed the power lever full forward and the craft lunged up before ramming down into the three at the back. They manage to run down the back row and two more before the pack noticed, the next dog managed to turn and snarl before it too was run down. The pack split, running to the sides and Teddy chased the monsters that had chosen to try and run up the dune, struggling in the loose shifting sand. The land yacht powered up the slope with ease, only part of its weight being supported by the wheels and in high power setting it was mostly being supported by magic, Teddy managed to take out another monster by running it over and Lucy sent a vanilla unaltered magic missile at another.
Teddy had to take it out of the high power setting and slowed it down to wheel around and chase the rest. The highly predatory monsters had already started to give chase and were hunting the vessel. There were only six left surrounding them and Teddy slowed down so as not to lose them. Kyra took one of the straps for holding onto and gave it a twist and it started to extend, she ran towards to front and launched herself off the top deck, the line pulled tight and she swung out, her long blonde hair blowing out behind her, in her right hand her diamond sword materialised from her palm, her left hand gripped the line with casual strength as she gracefully swept into the pack. Her impossibly sharp sword cut one of the monsters completely in half before the swing took her out and back onto the rear of the deck.
On the other side James eyed up the two monsters and simply jumped off the side. He landed straight onto the top of the lead monster, digging its head into the sand easily breaking its neck, his legs had transformed into powerful kangaroo-like legs and he bounced back onto the drop deck at the back of the vehicle. The monster from the same side chased him to the back and seemingly coordinated with another from the other side and leapt at him as he landed. James hit him with a vambrace fist in mid leap, the armoured arm had spiralled lightning stemming from the engraving on the back of his upper arm, the monster crackled with lightning giving off a smell of burning hair and charred flesh, it collided with the other monster passing on the lightning and they both fell to the sand twitching.
On the side Kyra had done her Jane-of-the-jungle impression Lechuza dived in at the remaining two monsters, one dodged out of the way but unfortunately towards the massive wheels of the vehicle and Teddy twitched the wheel to neatly run it over. Lechuza took off with the other and eviscerated it in mid air, letting go of the almost two halves barely held together by an exposed section of spine.
They slowed down and Teddy put it into a crawl in a circle, he set the controls to hold the circle at a constant speed then got up to stand with the others at the back of the top deck. Part of Lechuza’s power set was that she could use some of Lucy’s powers at range, they watched as she went around activating the looting ability on each kill. James watched the rainbow smoke disappear from the kill that Lechuza had made, looking distantly at it. Lucy noticed and came and took his massive hand in hers. He looked down and gave her a small smile, they both knew that he was thinking that was how he might’ve looked on the ground had his nightmare run back to the desert gone differently.
[Driving gloves] has been added to (Theodore Mitchells) Inventory.
14 [Monster core (iron)] have been added to each of your Inventories.
140 [Iron] spirit coins have been added to each of your Inventories.
140 [Dog] quintessence have been shared between your Inventories.
Teddy winced as the others looked to him.
“Dude, what is that you’ve just got?” James asked.
“Look the loot is random, don’t pin this on me.”
“Aww you’re going to look so cool in your new whip with your oh-so-cool driving gloves.” Lucy teased.
“Please tell me they’re leather and have the knuckles cut out, so very cliché.” Kyra joined it.
Teddy cut a long rift horizontally in front of him and reached both hands in, when they came out they were covered in leather gloves, they were short only just covering the palms and made of a soft brown leather, the knuckles were indeed cut out and they had vented holes on the backs of the fingers, a small button clasp was on the back to hold them tight. Teddy took a look, turned his hands over then dropped them to his sides and bowed his head.
“Eurgh, no one is going to listen to me that these are random generated and nothing to do with me are they?”
“Do they at least give you anything good?”
Item: [Driving gloves] (iron rank, common)
Gloves that increase the performance of the driver
Effect: When worn and driving a magical vehicle will give a boost to wearers agility.
“So they only give you an agility boost when your sat in a vehicle?”
“Yeh, I guess that means I can… move the wheel better?”
The gang all had a laugh at the ridiculous item.
“Well then driver, how about getting us back to some sort of civilisation then?”
Teddy popped his knuckles in the leather gloves and got behind the wheel and spun out towards the desert town beyond the horizon.
………
The group sat around a table outside a bar on the outskirts of town, they sat having a drink watching the setting sun with a few locals that had seen them come in and wanted to talk about the new vehicle, they’d placed the miniature model on the table in the middle.
“So yeh, it’s pretty nice, just needs food and booze loaded on.”
“Aww well ain’t that a shame.” One of the more drunk locals said, “you won’t even get to eat a meal in it.”
He put a hand on the model to take it away, there was an incredulous moment when the other locals realised what he was trying to do. Everyone shared a look and a nervous smile broke out. An explosion of weapons and powers made themselves known. Teddy’s dimension blade was underneath his wrist, Kyra’s diamond sword was behind his neck, Lucy had a wand pointing at his face and James’ right arm had a snake emerge from the top of the vambrace and curl around the wrist to his hand, it flung to the other end of the model and curled around it and reared at the man hissing.
Surprisingly the other two locals also reacted favourably, one conjured ropes that went around the man’s chair, the last to react was the local who was probably the second most drunk at the table, he picked up his war hammer from behind his chair and almost gently bumped the man on the back of his head, he was knocked out and slumped unconscious straight away.
An hour or so later they shook hands with the guys before they carried their still unconscious friend home for the night.
The next morning the team left the inn they were staying in and headed to the markets to stock the vehicle.
“So we must be doing ok on the money side at the moment right?” James asked. “After all those contracts and the rewards from the adventure society.”
“Weeeelll, fourth stage crystal ain’t cheap.” Lucy replied.
“Yes, but that was part of the reward from the adventure society and from saving Charlie’s life?.”
“The vehicle was, the extra raw material and some of the modules we bought off Charlie wasn’t cheap.” Seeing the look on his face she quickly went on. “Well he gave us mates rates for it! Practically sold it for cost.”
“How much did you spend on it?”
“Most.”
“Most what?”
“Well, we have enough to stock it with essentials and enough to run it until we can get some more contracts.”
James wiped his face with his hand.
“K, I thought you’d have more to say about this.”
Kyra was already checking out the market stalls. “Hmm? No not really, like Lu said, we just go make more money, there’s no rush, plus the really luxury stuff we wouldn’t get here anyway.”
Teddy looked at her suspiciously. “What sort of luxury are you thinking of babe?”
“Oh I don’t know, there was a magical cocktail maker in Mr Randulph’s room at the mirage chamber, or someone was telling me about a crystal wash jacuzzi type thing that would be nice.”
Teddy reflected on the fact that in their old life there would have been so much pressure to scrimp and save. But Kyra was right, in this new world they could take the opportunity to spend freely, they were always sure to get lodging and always sure to get adventurer work and there was a pleasant freedom in that.
They bought a lot of food, spices, a selection of booze and the essentials likes plates, glasses, cups and bedding. They headed out the main gates of the town and watched as an armadillo wandered out behind a bush with the model of the vehicle on its back waddling towards them.
“Ok, I vote James doesn’t store the ship anymore, thats just too weird.”