I spent the next hour with Yunni standing over the table full of contraptions. Up close I saw the table was actually more like a workbench, with a clamp attached to one side and a metal plate covering half the surface to more easily work on hot objects, I assumed. Yunni’s excitement was palpable as she went into great detail describing the various clockwork pieces and how they each fit into the amulet, but after a while I figured out she knew much more about where the pieces came from, and less about what they actually did.

In fact, most of her excitement was based around me trying stuff out and then her documenting it. While we went back and forth over the gadgets, Phee and Devena came to some kind of uneasy truce. Neither woman looked quite happy with the other, but they at least agreed to not to keep hurtling insults at one another.

With Yunni’s help, I figured out that one of the contraptions let me gain finer control over my metal melding ability. After tinkering with it a bit and sliding it into my amulet, I was shocked to find a screen very similar to CAD program pop into my vision.

“No way,” I said, suddenly in my full element again. I played around with it, and sure enough I could basically draw schematics directly from my mind!

“Hot damn,” I said. “If I had this back home I’d put all the drafting firms out of business.”

I could literally go from concept to finished work in a matter of minutes. And once done, I had the option to literally 3D print them with my melding ability—for a hefty amount of mana of course.

“This is unreal,” I said, marveling at the device.

I tried some of the other ‘plug-in’ devices and discovered one was a mathematical calculator that I could use like a spread sheet. Another was something like a word processor, complete with a translation tool that finally allowed me to read the Arabic like script of this world and the last was a cross between a database and accounting software.

“Well, holy crap,” I said with a whistle. “It’s a damn computer system with a full blown office suite.”

Yunni looked up at me with an eager to please smile on her face. “That’s good right?”

“It’s better than good,” I said. “It’s freaking amazing. Who made all this? It’s like it was custom built for me to use.”

“Well they were the tools of the great sage,” Yunni said. “And he came from your world. So maybe he based them off of the magic from your world too.”

That did kind of make sense. “Okay what else you got?”

Yunni showed me the books again. I didn’t have the heart to tell her they weren’t like the kind of magic books that she was probably used to, but I supposed engineering could seem like magic to people who didn’t understand it. But would engineering be able to hold a candle to a place that had actual magic in it?

I looked again through the books. There seemed to be one for nearly every discipline. Luckily I had done a double major for my undergrad degree; Mechanical and civil engineering, but I decided to focus on civil engineering for my masters. Electrical was still black magic to me though. Although I knew the basics of circuit theory, the higher level stuff still eluded my luddite brain. Not that there would be much use for electrical engineering in this place, I figured. This world had yet to undergo an industrial revolution, much less harness electricity.

While I tried to describe the various disciplines to Yunni, Phee wandered downstairs and returned with a platter of food from the tavern. We took a break from and after piling the food atop a smaller second table in the room, we together sat down for a meal.

And what a meal it was. The place didn’t look too fancy downstairs but it had to have one hell of a kitchen. In the center of the table was a plate stacked high with what look like massive beef ribs. On the side was fresh bread, roasted potatoes, a bowl of what looked like wilted greens.

“Oh great Lythandra,” Yunni said raising her hands in the air. “Let us be truly blessed and thankful for this bounty. Sallah!”

“Amen!” I echoed with what I hoped was their version of Amen. I grabbed one of the huge ribs and dug in. It was juicy and tender and while I couldn’t quite place the flavor of the meat, it was greasy and salty and I liked it. More dinosaur meat, I guessed. The women followed suite and in no time we were all eating together and chatting, almost like a family.

Even Devena, who was still giving off an air of being pissed off, seemed to relax a bit and even chuckled when Phee recounted our interaction with her brother Rheghar and the twins. We washed down our food with tall mugs ale, which tasted a lot like beer to me, even if it was a little warm.

For a moment I got caught up in a strong sense of nostalgia. I hadn’t sat down and had a meal like this with other people in ages. And while I had just met these guys, the way they accepted me had me feeling like I was a part of their little group already. Losing my parent, becoming sick and basically living as a bachelor from the last few years had left me with a lonely life, but I didn’t realize just how lonely until now.

Maybe coming here was a good thing in more ways than one.

“So what’s the next step?” I asked after polishing off a final piece of bread that pushed my stomach to the limit. “I have a great set of tools, but how do we go about attacking that jungle?”

“We need to register the guild for the competition first,” Devena said. “We can do that first thing in the morning. After that, you’ll need to put together a strategy for us. Remember…figuring out how we tackle the jungle is your job.”

The way she said your, made it clear it was something she would forever hold over my head.

“Where do we register?” I asked.

“At the Commission headquarters,” Yunni said. “It’s in the stone section of the city.”

“What’s up with that, by the way?” I asked. “One half made of stone the other wooden. Is one section newer than the other?”

“More a class distinction,” Phee said. “The Stone district is reserved for humans only.”

“Whoa, are you serious?” I said.

Phee shrugged. “The Oder of Hierarchy at its finest.”

“Sheesh,” I said. The classism in this place was worse than I thought. “Does this mean I have to go there alone?”

“No,” Devena said. “We can go with you. We simply can’t own property or live in that area.”

I shrugged. “That kind of sucks. But I guess we got places like that back home too. The 1% is everywhere.”

“The what?” Yunni asked.

I chuckled. “Nevermind.”

“Hey!” Yunni’s eyes suddenly went wide. “You forgot to have a look at the most important thing.”

I raised a brow at her. “What’s that?”

Yunni then sprung up from the table to retrieve the sealed metal box from the workbench. She sat it in front of me and then looked at me imploringly. “Well…try to open it.”

I studied the box with some of my newfound tools. I loaded the drafting plug-in and then touched the surface of the box. To my surprise a wireframe image of the box drew itself within my vision.

“Wow,” I said. “This thing isn’t just a 3D printer, it’s a 3D scanner as well.”

Yunni nodded like she knew what I was talking about. “That’s great. So does that mean you can open it?”

“Just a sec,” I said, studying it further.

I spun the 3D image in my vision and tried to find some way to open it, looking for a keyway or seam, but there seemed to be none. I then had an idea. With my mind, I mentally cut my own seam in the box, and created a hinge on the opposite side. The image registered and a new option appeared along-side the option to meld.

Modify Object: 1000 mana

Bingo!

“I think I can do it,” I said with a smile of victory. “But I need 1000 mana, it seems.”

“One thousand?” Devena said in almost a shout. “That’s more than the spell it took to bring you here.”

“So, I’m guessing that’s not in the budget?”

Phee shrugged at me. “You saw how much mana we got from killing that boar. And we’re pretty broke right now. As Devena said, we spent the last of what we had to bring you here.”

“I see…” I did the math in my head. The crystals from those terror birds were only worth around 50 mana; so it would take killing scores of similar sized creatures to accumulate over 1000 mana. “I guess we’re not opening this box anytime soon then.”

“It can wait,” Devena said. “There are far more important things to do with your mana anyway.”

“Like what?” I asked.

“Let getting stronger for one,” she said. “The stronger you are the stronger we all will be. And the stronger we are the larger monsters we can hunt and the more mana we can earn from them; both from their crystals directly and by selling their hides and meat to buy more crystals.”

“Yeah I get it,” I said. “Just like grinding in an MMO.”

“I have absolutely no idea what you are referring to,” Devena said. “But if means anything like sweating your ass off in the jungle killing monsters all day long, then yes… just like…grinding in an MMO.”

She said the last bit with a hint of disdain and a mocking roll of her eyes.

I wasn’t sure what monsters I could even fight. As Devena had so casually pointed out earlier, I nearly had my butt handed to me by a couple of Ninja Turtles, or Bullywogs I think Phee had called then. As I thought about the name of the slimy green creatures, a screen of information popped up in my vision.

BullyWogs/Frogmen/Turtlemen

A lower tear of primitive beastmen who inhabit swamps, lakes and rivers. Short and nasty little bastards. A cross between a turtle and a frog. Their claws and saliva contain a toxin. Not hard to kill individually but can be quite deadly in large numbers.

I blinked at the text. Was there some kind of creature catalog built into my amulet as well? I tried to search and found entries for the Terror Birds as well as the giant worm.

Terror Bird

These things are more dinosaur than bird. Most range upwards of thirty feet in height. Nasty tempers and very territorial. Not too smart though. Best killed with traps. Meat and feathers sell well in the marketplace.

I guessed old Shareef got the trap part right at least. I checked the description for the worms next.

Giant Burrow Worm

These creatures can be over two hundred feet long and are most likely responsible for the vast cave network that lies beneath the jungle. Their stomachs contain strong sulfuric acid which does most of the work breaking down rock and ores into minerals, but their teeth and mandibles have incredible crushing strength as well. If these beasts could ever be tamed, or domesticated, their ability to excavate would be unprecedented.

I was taken slightly aback by the descriptive text. It wasn’t the overly descriptive exposition that I would expect to find in something akin to a monsters compendium in a fantasy world. It instead read like the notes or observations of an individual and one who knew what the hell sulfuric acid was too.

“You said the Great Sage or whoever made these things, right?” I asked, showing the amulet to Yunni.

“Not the amulet itself, but the parts that attach to it, yes.”

I guess I was reading the words of the Great Sage himself, a fellow traveller from earth. And my predecessor, I supposed. That thought made me curious about the box. Whoever he was, he saw it fit to hide something in there that only his successor could open. Whatever it was had to be really important…or valuable, or both! Maybe it would be worth saving up the 1000 mana to see just what was inside there.

“Well, I tire of this,” Devena suddenly announced standing from the table. “We all need to be up early tomorrow, so let’s get some rest.”

My curiosity about the box dissipated as the prospect of sleep was raised. I’d been going nonstop with Yunni and only now did the exertions of the day combine with my full stomach and two mugs of ale, to cause me to yawn the biggest yawn I’d ever yawned.

“Man…I think that’s a good idea. Let’s hit the sack.”

Phee smiled at me from across the table. “Come, I’ll prepare us a bed.”

“The big one is mine,” Devena snapped, giving Phee a glare.

“But Devena,” Yunni said. “Shouldn’t the master decide where he wants to sleep? Besides if he’s going to be sharing a bed with Phee, shouldn’t they have the biggest—?”

“I said the big one is mine!” she shouted again and then stormed off towards the rear of the room.

Yunni opened her mouth to say something else, but I waved for her not to.

“It’s okay,” I said. “Let her be a dragon and claim what she wants. She’s suffered a serious blow to her ego today. Hopefully she’ll feel better about all this in the morning.”

“One can only hope,” Phee said with a shake of her head as the dragon lady plopped herself into the largest of the three beds and threw the covers over her head like a spoiled child. “One can only hope.”

We said out goodnights and Phee and I stuffed ourselves into one of the remaining beds while Yunni took the last. It was barely big enough for Phee, but we snuggled together and the warmth of her body wrapped around mine was a comfort like none other. I had to say, my second night in Grandia was a far better than my first. No terror birds, no biting ants. But I did briefly think of that stupid goat guy and how badly he ripped me off, before quickly falling asleep in Phee’s arms.