Adam reacted to my warning quickly, drawing his shotgun and moving back to back with me. With two short to medium-range fighters, one of the best strategies we had found against groups was to just watch each other’s blind spots and keep fighting. It wasn’t the most elegant solution, but it worked.

This was the strategy we employed as the lions approached. They were ugly things, with most of their natural majesty destroyed by the odd collection of spikes and growths that covered them. The mutations caused by Psi energy had clearly hit these creatures hard, and I expected it would make them extremely dangerous.

The individual lions we had faced so far had been fast and strong, however, they had fallen quickly to the combined fire of Adam and me. With six of them, they would have a far better chance of doing some damage.

I started shooting as soon as they entered my comfortable range, my shots hitting with far more accuracy after my two days of practice. Beyond that, I found the bonus attributes from the enhancement elixir had provided a small, but noticeable improvement to everything that I did.

I managed five shots before the first lion got within swinging distance, with three of them hitting home. The Beast screeched as the plasma scored deep burns along its side and face, however, the damage only seemed to anger it further. It lunged on approach, its claws coming in to rake at my sides.

“Dodging left,” I called out as I darted to the side. It wasn’t enough to escape cleanly, however, it reduced the devastating swipes to a light scouring down my right side. Behind me I could hear Adam moving in synch, we would stay together for as long as we could.

The loud crack of his shotgun firing in scatter mode was almost enough to distract me, however, I had become used to it over the last few days. Instead, I Attuned my gun and empowered a shot to the maximum I could.

Between Item Attunement reaching level three and my increased Will stat it was significantly more powerful than before. A massive purple blast shot from the barrel of my gun and struck the lion in front of me as it was recovering from its lunge.

The following explosion was enough to blow the Beast off its feet and send it crumpling to the ground. It didn’t get back up, however, I had no time to celebrate as another pair of lions were flanking me.

They must have snuck up while I was focused on the first one, as I hadn’t seen them approach. Now they were coming from both sides, and I didn’t have time to plan anything. Instead, I focused my fire on the one to my left, trusting in my Toughness to help me survive being attacked by the other.

I empowered another shot, wincing at the rapid drain on my energy supplies, and fired it almost point-blank into the lion’s head. It exploded, taking the head with it and leaving a smoking corpse to slump down to the ground.

Then the third lion rose on its hind legs and hit me in the side, barreling me over with its full body weight. I fell backward to the ground with it pinning both my arms down with its paws.

It wasn’t the first Beast to be smart enough to stop me from shooting, and I had used this experience to plan ahead with Adam.

“I’m pinned,” I yelled while trying to edge away from the Beast’s advancing maw.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Adam spin toward me, accepting a strike across his leather-clad back as he did so. His gun barked and a hail of plasma shards flew out.

Most of them hit the lion that had been pinning me with its massive body, doing enough damage to kill it instantly. The rest splattered across my side, causing me to cry out in pain.

While It had been worth it to avoid having my face ripped off, the small plasma burns were still incredibly painful. Still, I couldn’t let myself rest as Adam was still frantically dodging the last lion.

From the large mane, I could tell that it was the male too and while he would be less agile than the females, he was even stronger and tougher than they were.

With a heave, I managed to at least free my dominant arm, allowing me to take a shot at the beast. I fired a few normal shots first to get my aim in from the odd shooting angle.

I missed a few before dialing it in until I was hitting most of them. They splashed over the alpha lion's furred hide, appearing to do almost no damage at my pistol’s normal output.

Adam ducked under a swing and fired his shotgun point-blank into the beast’s chest. It stumbled backward with a roar, shaking its head in pain. Yet despite that, it survived the shot that had killed another lion in a single hit.

I focused on empowering a shot as Adam stumbled backward, fumbling for a plasma cartridge from the bandolier on his chest. The major downside of his shotgun was the ruinous power usage in scatter mode, even in this relatively brief fight he’d already run out.

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The Beast had already recovered from being stuck and was lunging after him. With my empowered shot ready, I took aim and fired, taking it in the middle of its back.

It stumbled forward as the purple plasma blast exploded on its back and interrupted its charge. This gave Adam enough room to swap cartridges with a smooth movement before he took aim and blew the Beast’s head away.

I breathed a shallow sigh of relief as the lion’s corpse hit the ground. It was all I could manage with the weight of the corpse still mostly covering me.

“A little help here,” I groaned at Adam.

He responded with a laugh. “No worries, Boss, and thanks for the save there. I would have been in a bad spot if I couldn’t get my shotgun reloaded, I saw how little your normal pistol blasts were doing.”

Jogging over as he finished speaking, Adam slung his gun away and heaved the corpse off me with a mighty push. I wasn’t sure what class he had, or even if NPCs had classes, but I was sure at this point that he had plenty of points in Brawn.

“You're welcome,” I sighed in relief as the weight was removed. “Thanks for turning when I was pinned, is your side alright?”

He touched the bleeding wound on his side with a momentary wince before his face returned to its usual casual smile. “Not too bad, the armor took most of it.”

I nodded in reply, wincing as I examined my own cut and my plasma burns. With the medicine we had, neither of us was too badly hurt, we should be alright after we got patched up.

We both pulled off our packs and began applying first aid with the skill of long practice. While Adam was still faster than I was, I’d been learning by watching him and copious amounts of practice.

Soon we were as good as we were going to get and we quickly moved to pull the lions’ cores before we moved on. The combat report had shown that we had killed five Dire Lions and one Great lion, providing a solid chunk of XP and a set of cores that would be worth a few credits.

My pack was getting pretty full of cores at this point, easily filling the space that was freed as I used my supplies. Luckily, Adam was happy to carry some as well, allowing me to distribute the weight between us.

Still, it was probably time for a supply run soon, so we could send these cores back and replace them with another round of supplies. While we were still good for several days, I felt it was safer to handle the issue earlier, just in case.

After a quick check on my scanner to ensure that there wasn’t any nearby danger, I began sending the required messages. First, I had to order supplies from the various shops I used and organize for them to be sent to Brian’s landing pad and loaded into the VTOL.

Then I had to schedule a run from Brian to bring the supplies out to us and lastly, I had to organize for the cores to be shipped from his landing pad to the store where I usually sold them.

It was a little complicated, however, I had plenty of time to set it up as we continued our trek north. The supplies would be delivered by evening today, meaning that Brian would be able to do the drop tomorrow.

With that settled, we continued our march, interrupted by several more fights. None of them were as dangerous as the pride of lions and we came through without any major injuries.

Once the night hit, we settled in to set up camp and began our watches. We had been slowed considerably after leaving the lake, as there wasn’t enough fuel on the plains to keep a fire going all night. Instead, we camped for six hours with Adam taking the first six-hour watch and myself taking the second after a logout.

Luckily we hadn’t had a large enough incident overnight that Adam was forced to wake me. I was dreading what would happen in that case, as I would be entirely unresponsive. I’d thought about broaching the subject early for safety reasons, however, I couldn’t think of how to discuss it.

I was still unsure about how much the NPCs knew about the game they lived in and how we differed from them as players. So, despite the risk, I kept quiet, hoping that nothing would go wrong.

This night, at least, we were safe, and I woke after six hours to take the second watch from Adam. The plains seemed to be mostly quiet at night, with only the occasional attack from smaller Beasts looking for an easy meal.

Most of the nocturnal Beasts were various rodent-like creatures I suspected were usually scavengers. Despite this, they seemed happy enough to attack when one of us was on watch alone. Luckily, they were easy to kill, being far weaker than Beasts like the lions.

I dealt with several such attacks until well into the morning, when it was time for Adam to wake. We ate a quick breakfast before Brian was due to arrive with our supplies.

As the VTOL approached, I used the boost option on my scanner to get the best range possible and transmitted the scans to him, showing that there was no nearby danger. I got a confirmation message in response and a few moments later, the VTOL slid to a stop nearby.

We spent a half hour transferring the supplies out of the aircraft and replacing them with our cores before Brian took off and sped back toward the city. With our supplies renewed, we set out to continue our journey.

It took us nearly two weeks to move through the plains and reach the base of the mountains. The numerous fights were enough to move me most of the way through level six, leaving me only a little over five hundred XP from level 7.

At the base of the mountain, we spent a full day scouting out a hidden little hollow that would make for an excellent base camp. With a full twenty-four hours of scans showing that it was relatively safe, Brian should be happy to drop people or items off there without us being present.

That would allow us to have not only supplies dropped there but would also let me return in the event that I died. That was something I was hoping to avoid, not just because of the inconvenience, but because I wasn’t sure what would happen to Adam in that case.

I had grown to be friends with the likable NPC and I didn’t want to see him die. Even if I died and he didn’t, I’d have to avoid the man in the future as I pretended to be dead. Not to mention the difficulties I’d have if he reported it to the Explorers guild.

It would be far better if I could avoid that fate, so I organized for Linnea to be dropped off at base camp as well as keeping Adam on retainer. I hoped that with all three of us, we could survive anything the mountain threw at us.

Luckily, I had been receiving a steady stream of income from the cores that we had been sending back. On top of that, I had been sent twenty-five thousand credits after the guild investigated the mineral deposits that I had submitted.

I had also sold the location of the Psi Rift for another fifteen thousand credits, the price being drastically reduced as the rift was recharging. Still, it was extra money and would help to keep up with the rather extreme expense of having two mercenariness hired at once.

With Linnea arriving in the evening, we prepared to set out the next day.