Goodie left the inn in silence.

It was late. Not yet night, but getting there. The village, appearing abandoned, had been emptied of the small crowds that would normally be moving about the street that he was on. Clouds of chimney smoke ascending into the sky from many of the roofs of the surrounding buildings and those beyond his sight, gave testament to where those people had vanished to.

Goodie watched the smoke rising into the sky, his mood unchanged. A cold numbness still occupied his mind. A void which had masked his worries and prevented his usual instincts from taking over. He wanted to use it to get ahead of what he had to do before the boon of his current inability to feel concern lifted and he was left the usual paranoid, angst-riddled, idiot that he usually was.

He had retrieved his book before leaving, but before doing so, Eric had written down a list of names for him to seek out. It felt more like a way for the man to fob off responsibility onto someone else. But so long as it helped him, Goodie did not care.

In keeping with his plan, he would first head for the waggon train’s equivalent of an engineering corps. A group of elementalists whose purpose Eric refrained from explaining to him beyond ‘they build shit’.

Before that, however, he had more pressing business to deal with.

Goodie ducked into a small alleyway, more a gap between two buildings than a rout of travel, but he had more pressing concerns. While his emotions had been suppressed by a wave of numbness that had yet to recede, his body still felt the stress that had built up during his conversation within the Inn. He proceeded to vomit.

Unfortunately, the numbness that had spared him from his insecurities also deprived him of the strange relief that would follow regurgitation.

He used his [SUMMON SHADOW STUFF] to both cover and scatter the former contents of his stomach; then summoning the same latex-like substance that he used to clean himself each morning around his teeth, taking a good minute to peel it off afterwards. It would probably not help in any way, but if he could prevent even a little wear and tear on his enamel, it would be worth it. He could not afford to get cavities in these rustic settings, and he did not want to waste one of his heal spells on something so trivial.

He headed back towards the road, but before he reached the alley’s exit, he sensed something from Her Majesty, her emotions coming through their link too fast for him to translate what she was feeling. She squeezed his neck; no, she was being pulled!

He felt her lash out at whoever had grabbed her. Their scream disturbing the early evening silence that had settled upon the village as its inhabitants had long since gone home for supper. Her fangs sinking deep into the flesh of their arm, deep enough that her venom would have been delivered straight into their bloodstream. With the average person possessing five and a half litres of blood and being capable of circulating that amount at 4 miles per hour, it would pass round the body roughly three times every minute. Her Majesty’s venom would reach their brain within seconds.

Utterly pointless as her venom could barely harm a fly, let alone a fully grown human. Hell, a new born baby would not even have to worry about her bite. The effect of her [TITLE] however…

He could hear the pounding of feet as he turned round, multiple sets running away from him; a good thing as he was ill-prepared to deal lone opponent let alone with multiple assailants. Kids, three of the filthy sods; thin, most likely from being malnourished. One of them took a nose dive into the dirt as the trio scarpered down the end of the alley. The one her Majesty had bitten? Probably. He was not sure if he should check or not. It was probably not the case, but if whoever lay there had somehow died, he did not want to get his fingerprints or D.N.A. on them and be blamed for any mishap. It was unlikely that the locals would know about such things, but better to be safe than sorry.

For a moment he just stared at the body on the ground. Then reminded himself that he didn’t have time to waste on idiots and turned back to the exit.

The first name on his list was a Germain Gail. He paused a moment as he read it, unsure if he was reading correctly. He considered whether or not it had been written surname first; Gail Germain sounded better, but he could not be sure.

He did not know who Germain was. But the elementalists liked to hang around just outside the campground that the waggon train had set up a few minutes’ walk from the town’s edge.

A ten-minute walk had him within sight of them. Their group lazing about on self-made furniture. Made of earth and stone, of course. They had laid claim to a pleasant spot, as the area was still bathed in warmth and sunlight despite the late hour. It was odd that the area had not been occupied by more people from the waggon train.

As he came closer, Goodie discovered why as he felt his foot sink into the ground beneath his feet. The earth had been altered into some type of…’ not liquid’ were the first words to cross his mind. That would explain why the area had been vacant of everyone, but the group before him.

As one, the lot of them began to laugh. Goodie would have been offended, but he felt that their mirth had less to do with his expense and more to do with what they were smoking. Judging from the vacant look on some of their faces, they probably would have laughed at anything at that moment, funny or not.

He pulled his foot free of the mire, at least that was what it felt like, more swampy than quicksand. Not that he really knew what either felt like. A neat way to keep people at a distance. He would have to remember it.

He was not overly concerned with how to cross it, however. You do not spend a year in a sewer without learning how to cross sludge-like terrain. At least the stuff he had to cross this time was identifiable…and did not reek to high heaven.

He used [SUMMON SHADOW STUFF], covering everything below his knees; forming two cone-like boots, the base of which flaring out in order to create as much surface area as possible, not unlike snowshoes. It was unfortunate that he was not dealing with snow, but a type of semi-liquid.

When he had stepped into the sand swamp, his foot had hit ground after sinking in, so it was not too deep. Assuming that the depth was even all over, even without his shadow boots he would be able to walk across it. Still, he had added on a bit more shadow stuff, just enough to increase his height by an inch. He would have preferred to add on more, but he had to balance it with the rate at which his mana regenerated.

He needed to keep a constant flow of magical energies circulating through his shadow stuff to prevent it from degrading too quickly. He could, of course, dip into his reserves, but he feared what would happen if he used up his measly fifty points doing so. He did not know if mana was like blood or not, going on the assumption that running out of it would be a bad thing if not outright terminal.

He looked over the area to see if he had missed anything and swore to himself that if one of those glassy-eyed pricks lowered the terrain while he was walking, he would kill the lot of them. He did not know how, but he would.

He walked forward.

The group just sat and watched as he traversed their man-made mire.