After a delicious launch Ford made for everyone several times, they all relaxed in the small clearing that Ee pointed out while they digested the meal. After an hour, Ford stood refreshed and ready to go. Then more red blips came onto her radar, and she sighed, “Kii, Mizu, you’re up!”

“Huh,” Mizu said.

“What?” Kii said.

“Monsters incoming!” Ford said, louder this time.

At that moment, several mushrooms slowly meandered out of the forest’s edge. Their bodies and faces looked like human females, and their mushroom caps had white splotches on a red background. With every step, their caps dropped a thin layer of pollen spores; they looked surprisingly cute.

The Twins leveled the barrel of their rifles at the mushroom ladies and fired. The mana bullets tore through their bodies as if they were paper. Then they crumpled to the ground. Kii and Mizu looked proud of themselves; then, the monsters began to rise again. The Twins realized their mistakes and began firing at the monsters erratically; one of the monsters lost its legs and started crawling with their hands toward them.

After several volleys of bullets and only one of the mushrooms dying, the Twins said, “We’re out of mana and need help.”

Ford summoned a volley of fire spears; or tried to. The fire from the spears flickered, sparked, and wouldn’t keep its shape. She looked quizzically at it a moment, then created light spears and used those to shred the mushroom monsters. She turned to Ee and asked, “Why couldn’t I make a fire spear?”

Ee rolled her eyes and said, “Are you an idiot?” Ford refused to answer and waited for Ee to continue.

Several minutes passed in total silence, waiting for a response from Ee, then Lilly groaned exasperatedly, “There’s too much moister in the air! As a result, it’s harder to make fire spells.”

“What do you mean?” Ford asked.

“Let me put it simply, if yer in a desert, do you expect to find wa’er?”

“No?”

“No, ye don’. So, wa’er spells won’ work as well as a fire or ligh’ spell. Ye need the rite conditions to cas’ mos’ spells.”

“So, since there’s too much moisture, I can’t use fire spells, but water spells would be easy.”

“Exactly. Now, let’s go already.”

Ford nodded, then climbed into the front of the wagon, and a thought occurred to her, “Wait, then how come I could use a fire spell in the dungeon?”

Lilly shrugged, “I don’ know. Maybe, the dungeons had been made for optimal skill use.”

“So, you are an idiot,” Ee added unhelpfully.

“I am not an idiot for not knowing something about a world I am not from. Also, I must point out a hole in the magic,” Ford countered, then pointed at Lilly, “How did you use dark essence in broad daylight?”

Lilly rolled her eyes, then accepted the cards Morgan passed to her, “Trees have shadows, ye know.” Ford withdrew her finger and nodded as Max whipped the reins, and they set off down the road again.

***

Benet dashed between trees, his blades making dozens of minor cuts on the body of the Minotaur he fought. With each cut, poison effects were added, then doubled and quadrupled. Benet looked like a blur of motion as he ran around the massive Minotaur, turning it into a mass of bloody muscle, futilely trying to grab the small Halfling. Eventually, the monster fell to the accumulated damage and hit the ground with a resonating boom.

Benet gulped in air and made his way back to the wagon. He climbed in the back and asked, “Well… how did I do?”

“You need to work on your speed,” Ford answered quickly.

“What?” Benet asked, dumbfounded.

“To clarify, you need to work on killing enemies like that and others faster.”

Benet caught his breath and gestured to the corps receding in the distance, “Did you not see how big that thing was?!”

“It was six levels lower than you,” Ford snapped back, turning.

He stopped complaining for a moment and asked, “It was?” Ford, Kii, and Mizu all nodded. Benet blushed a little and said, “Fine. I’ll work on that then.”

“On the bright side,” Ford began, “you did better than the Twins.”

“Hey! How were we supposed to know how to kill those things!” Kii and Mizu defended.

“By aiming for the head,” Max said, “You have perfect aim, right? Just aim for the head.”

Ford smiled at the comment and nudged Max’s elbow with her own, and Max nudged back. “Let’s fight next!” Wrath yelled in Ford’s mind so abruptly that she nearly jumped off the wagon. “Let’s fight next! I’m bored, and I know you are too! Don’t fight it. Just give in to the thrill of the carnage. You know you want to.” Ford shook her head and ignored Wrath’s prodding. Wrath groaned in disappointment and frustration, “Fine. I’ll do it myself!”

Wrath assaulted Ford’s mind with a vengeance that made her feel like someone was scrambling her brain with a hot, iron rod. She grabbed the side of her head, tried to keep her face from betraying the pain, and did her best not to scream. Keeping the excruciating feelings to herself and keeping everything bottled inside, not letting Wrath get any foothold in her mind.

Then Ford’s radar lit up again, showing several red dots. ‘Not now!’ Ford thought as she battled for control. Ford used every ounce of willpower she had to sound normal, not letting anybody know her pain, and said, “Farah, you’re up,” then pointed to her left.

Twenty zombies shuffled out of the woods. Farah merely looked over her shoulder at the zombies, and they all exploded in a fountain of blood. The wagon didn’t even have time to stop; Ford and Wrath were so astonished that their mental struggle for power ended. She then looked over at Farah then to where the zombies died so abruptly a moment before then returning to Farah.

A rare and minuscule smile curled Farah’s lips then she said, “You’re not the only one who can use the Berserker class.”

Ford stared dumbfounded for a moment more, then asked, “Wait, do you have blood essence too?”

“No, but not all the skills require blood essence to use,” Farah answered.

Ford nodded and said, “That’s good to know,” she turned back to face forward, a little uneasy that Farah could do at least some of the same things she could.

“Huh, there’s a good chance we’ll be killed by the skills that we made. Imagine that,” Wrath said unhelpfully.

‘Oh, shut up!’ Ford thought.

“HA! Yeah, keep trying that see if I listen.”

Ford rolled her eyes, and they all rode in silence for a while, free of cursing since Lilly threw the deck of cards she and Morgan had been playing with just before Benet’s fight. Before long, they stumbled upon another monster. A massive four-meter tall and twenty-meter long boa constrictor slithered its way in front of them and eyed their horses hungrily.

Gimble jumped out of the wagon and charged the beast before Ford could say anything. The massive snake hissed at him as he approached. He ignored it, jumped onto the snake’s snout, and held on for dear life as the snake writhed about, trying to shake him off. The snake’s mouth opened wide, showing its toothless maw; Gimble climbed in willingly and banged his shields together before its mouth could close. The shield’s ability created a shock wave that crushed the snake’s skull from inside its mouth. The snake fell and hit the ground with a loud crash and blocked the road they had been following.

Gimble crawled out of the snake’s mouth, a massive smile on his face. Then the snake moved slightly, and his smile disappeared. The snake didn’t attack; however, it moved along the ground and curled itself into a ball, still in the middle of the road. Ford got up from her spot and called over Morgan and Farah. Together, they moved the snake’s massive body, and Ford cut off an enormous chunk of the snake’s body and scales after a comment from Morgan saying that its scales would be suitable for armor. Then she butchered the rest of the snake’s body for the scales since everyone else said they wanted some scale armor.

“How do we make this into armor?” Ford asked Morgan once they got moving again.

“Very slowly,” Morgan answered, “We have to temper it with enchantments and synthesis it with average steel or something better. Then we have to start forging it into the shapes we need and want. The whole process takes months, even years.”

“So, good to have as a hobby when not fighting,” Ford said jokingly.

“Ha! Aye, it’s one tiring hobby if you ask me,” Morgan laughed. Then he went on a tangent about metalworking and metallurgy that Ford blanked out and ignored, letting Benet pretend to be interested.

***