“You sure you don’t want to take any more with you? I’ve got some veggie pockets ready to go in the oven right now. Just give me fifteen minutes and they’ll be hot and crisp!”

  Vin could only hold his stomach as Agne tried to force another full course meal onto him before they left. He was afraid if he said yes, he’d be so stuffed he’d have to wait an entire extra day just to digest.

  “I appreciate it Agne, but we do have a job to take care of,” he smiled, turning to see if his friends were done with their own goodbyes.

  Malzar was crouched down, whispering back and forth with Scule as the two of them glanced around furtively, making sure nobody was eavesdropping. Shia was finishing up her round of hugs and friendly nods with what looked like half the village. Alka was already echoing him, not in the mood to talk to anyone right now. And Reginald…

  Reginald looked like he was trying to break up a fight between a half dozen other rats.

  Eventually, the poor rat seemed to give up, choosing instead to let all the other rats hash it out as he ran back to Vin and clamored into his pocket of safety. The rat let out a warning squeak, indicating that it was time to go. Rolling his eyes, Vin finished his goodbyes with Agne, promising he’d bring her some unique vegetables from a different fragment next time he stopped by.

  As Shia and Scule finally joined him, the group took off, leaving the village behind them as they ventured into the surrounding forest. As much as Vin did enjoy chatting with Agne and catching his breath in the village, entering the forest once more and putting the invisible constraints of civilization behind him was like a breath of fresh air.

  “Man, nothing like the great outdoors,” he grinned, finally able to take the time to enjoy the sights of the fragment now that they weren’t at risk of sudden death. While he wasn’t a huge insect guy, the forest still contained its own fair share of small critters.

  Vin’s personal favorite so far was a small rabbit-looking animal with tiny wing-like protrusions on its back that seemed to be the natural predator for many of the flying insects. Its powerful hind legs allowed it to launch itself up at the insects like a missile, and the tiny wanna-be wings on its back were perfect for reorienting itself in midair, ensuring it would land on its feet with its lunch secured.

  Without hesitation he dubbed it a rabbird, and jotted down a small description of the creature in his journal as they walked. It was a testament to just how much he’d practiced that he only struggled a little bit to balance the journal on what remained of his left arm as he wrote.

  At this point, his journal was actually starting to fill up a little. Vin had done his best to go back and add to it details and descriptions from all the previous fragments he’d explored before picking it up in the hopes that it would be useful information one day, and he was pleased to see he now had dozens of pages of notes and poorly drawn pictures.

  You know what… To hell with it.

  Seeing as he still had two skill points just sitting around collecting dust, and he didn’t currently have any skills even remotely close to level 20 at the moment, Vin summoned his interface. Navigating to the general skill list, Vin purchased his first ever general skill since arriving on Edregon.

  Picking up Drawing at level 1, Vin grinned as he immediately gained the knowledge of how to properly hold his pencil and all the tiny things he’d been doing wrong suddenly became obvious to him.

  Putting his new skills to the test, Vin updated a few of his more pathetic pictures, instantly pleased with his decision and already raising the skill to level 2. Jotting down his observations about the infernals and their interesting Witch/Warlock led society, he closed the journal and carefully put it away, taking in another deep breath of the fresh forest air.

  ‘You keep huffing the air like that and one of those bees is going to fly right up your nose.’

  Glancing behind him, Vin spotted Scule riding on Shia’s shoulder, the two of them seemingly engrossed in some conversation about wild herbs. Lowering his voice, he whispered back.

  “Glad to hear your voice,” he muttered, carefully making his way around a giant cobweb strung between a few trees. He didn’t see any sort of spider on it, but that just made him even more nervous about touching the web. “We were all a bit worried after your unexpected declaration yesterday before you went into hiding. Still don’t want to talk about it?”

  ‘Not particularly.’

  The two of them walked in silence, broken only by the occasional gentle whistle of Reginald’s snores.

  Last night, after informing them of her surprise decision, Alka had shot into Vin’s form and refused to come out. It hadn’t taken them long to realize the ghost didn’t want to talk to anyone, and they’d all headed off to bed, trying to respect Alka’s wishes.

  Vin thought on what he should do as they walked, briefly taking note of a frog looking critter with a pointed head attempting to break its way into one of the large hives of the big bees.

  On the one hand, he felt like Alka might be making a huge mistake. But on the other hand, she didn’t really have much autonomy in her current situation as a ghostly ride along. Respecting her decisions was one of the few ways he could still help her feel like a living person, and as her first friend, he wasn’t about to stop doing that now.

  “So… Think you can actually take that divine warrior guy in a fight?” Vin asked, returning his voice to a normal level. “I know you’re good, but it sounds like the guy’s got some skills.”

  “Are you kidding?” Alka asked, finally drifting out of his body and falling into step beside him. “That poser needs divine might in order to win his battles. I bet he’s a terrible swordsman.”

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  “Or, he’s a really good swordsman, and he has a divine boon backing him up to boot,” Vin pointed out, earning a scoff from the Slayer.

  “Or he’s a master swordsman, and has multiple divine boons backing him up!” Scule added unhelpfully from behind. Rolling her eyes, Shia flicked him from her shoulder, and the petian fell to the ground with a curse.

  “Regardless, I’m confident we can take him down if we work together,” Shia said, giving Alka an encouraging smile. “He’s only one man, and let’s not forget the fact that he’s currently suffering at least one curse as well.”

  “I’ll give you some curses,” Scule muttered angrily, running ahead of the elf and scampering up a nearby tree before jumping over to Vin’s shoulder. “But speaking of fighting the guy, shouldn’t we come up with a plan or something? So far we’ve all kinda just done our thing whenever we’ve been attacked. If we’re going to be working together as a party, we should probably be a bit more organized.”

  “That’s actually a good point,” Vin admitted, wondering where to even start. Lost in thought as he imagined holding a clipboard and yelling out orders to the team as though he were some kind of sports coach, he was entirely unprepared for Shia’s shout.

  “Monsters!”

  Snapping back to reality, Vin turned around just in time to see the latest addition to his collection of nightmares.

  Rushing toward them from three different directions in almost total silence was a swarm of giant spiders. Nearly coming up to his knees, each one was as large as a medium sized dog and just about as furry. And while he couldn’t see any sort of venom dripping from their jagged fangs, that didn’t mean he wanted to be anywhere near the business end of them.

  New monster discovered! 200 exp gained.

  Naturally, the first to react was the trained monster killer. Before anyone could even move, Alka already had her sword in hand and was sprinting straight into the closest group of spiders that was attacking from their left. She might as well have been a farmer scything through wheat for all the effort it was taking her to shred her way through the swarm.

  The closest group taken care of, Shia angled her staff to the right, not wanting to get boxed in between the two groups. “Tangle Thorns!”

  The barbed wire-like plants she’d prepared all around the Earther’s camp during the last battle suddenly sprung out of the ground like they’d always been there, forming a natural barricade between them and the monsters. The spiders were forced to slow down their charge or tear themselves to shreds against the jagged thorns of Shia’s spell. And while a few did just that, most began making their way carefully over or around the thorns.

  Which made them easy pickings for Vin.

  “Stone Shot! Stone Shot!” He shouted, firing off one bullet of rock after another. The spiders were close enough now that every spell hit its mark, popping the bulbous monsters like they were overripe tomatoes and spilling foul smelling monster guts all over the place. As Shia shifted Blossom back to cat form and unleashed her on the swarm behind them, Vin felt Scule doing something on his shoulder.

  “Perfect time to test this bad boy out!” Before Vin could turn and see what Scule was up to, he heard a soft puff of air, and one of the closer spiders suddenly crumpled in place, its legs twitching erratically as it failed to move.

  “Hells yeah, just like I practiced!”

  Vin wanted nothing more than to turn and see what the hell Scule was doing, but the fight was far from over.

  Thankfully, after surviving the initial surprise attack, finishing the rest of the monsters up was only a matter of time. Alka of course was completely untouchable and made short work of her section of the swarm. Blossom proved to be rather effective as well; the spiders' fangs not being able to pierce the hard wooden form of the cat, and their bodies weak enough that a single swipe of her paw was normally enough to kill any one monster. And with Shia’s Tangle Thorns slowing down the rest, Scule and Vin had been able to pick off the slow moving spiders one by one. As soon as the final spider fell to a well placed Stone Shot, Vin lowered his hand, breathing heavily.

  “That… Was a lot of spiders…”

  “No kidding… Much worse when they’re… five times your size…” Scule replied, sounding even more winded than Vin was. Finally looking over at the petian on his shoulder, Vin’s eyebrows raised as he took in Scule’s newest weapon.

  The petian held in his hands what looked like a blowgun crafted from a bright white twig. Of course, while the weapon was only a few inches long, it looked enormous in the petian’s hands.

  “Woah, where’d that come from?” Vin asked.

  “You like it?” Scule grinned, turning the blowgun this way and that to show it off. “I realized after Reginald and I nearly got pulped saving you from that giant snake that I needed some method of poisoning targets from range. I may or may not have helped myself to just a tiny bit of Madam Trebella’s supply of winter twigs. I doubt she was planning on using all of them anyway.”

  Vin distinctly remembered winter twigs being on the list of materials the Witch had in fact mentioned as valuable, but decided against saying anything. Not like they could return the twig now anyway, seeing as Scule had already hollowed it out.

  “What are you even firing?” He asked, glancing back at all the spiders still twitching on the ground. It seemed whatever Scule was currently using wasn’t actually lethal.

  “Check it out!” Vin looked back at him, blinking at the large stinger now in Scule’s hand as the petian continued excitedly. “I had Malzar help me collect a literal ton of these bad boys. The big bees were already venomous, so all I had to do was clean out the stingers, let them dry, and replace the bee toxin with any of my own selection. Three quick steps, and now I have my own homemade poison darts I can grab from my cape on the fly!”

  “Honestly that’s ingenious,” Vin admitted, watching as Reginald ran around, finishing off the twitching spiders with his tail blade and collecting the stinger-darts. “Glad you don’t have to get into the thick of things when fighting now.”

  “Eh, I’m not sure how effective the blowgun will be against anything with a thicker hide, but we’ll have to wait to find out I suppose,” Scule shrugged, jumping down to help Reginald.

  Vin turned to Shia, who was currently petting Blossom like an actual cat. Seeing the wooden-cat lean slightly into her hand, he narrowed his eyes.

  “Is that thing sentient or not? When I took it with me into the dungeon, I swore it acted like an unthinking construct.”

  “Maybe she just doesn’t like you,” Shia grinned, scratching the cat behind its wooden ears.

  Rolling his eyes, Vin walked over to Alka who was looking around at all the dead spiders with a frown. The ghost had to have killed at least a couple dozen all on her own, and if she weren’t ethereal, Vin had no doubt she would have been absolutely covered in spider guts from head to toe.

  “Nice reaction time,” he offered, nudging aside one of the monster corpses with his foot. “I suppose-”

  “Scule was right,” she said, cutting him off. Turning, she planted her sword in the ground, her frown deepening as she took in the aftermath of the battle. “You guys aren’t ready to take on even a swarm of monsters on your own, let alone a divine swordsman that we know is capable of far worse than this.”

  “I thought we did-”

  Alka cut him off with a raised hand, her face serious. Vin could practically see the gears turning in her head as she looked between the three of them, deep in thought. After a few seconds, she nodded, ripping her sword back out of the ground and using it to point at them.

  “You all better be ready,” she said, looking at Vin with fire in her eyes.

  “I think it’s time I whipped you lot into shape.”

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