“Alright. First off, you never asked about my weapons. I told you I had the runic domain, I figured you knew that meant I would be creative with my weapons and armor,” Hugo said.

The lieutenant stared at him for a few moments before saying, “Alright, lesson learned. I should have asked. Now that I am asking though...”

“Alright, I have four different crossbow bolts. Exploding, piercing, freezing, and...” Hugo trailed off. He wanted to say normal ones, but the mithril bolts didn’t behave normally, even in flesh and blood monsters, “Draining bolts. I also have a small collection of very sharp knives. I have a light on this bracer, flames on these two bracers, and a gust rune over here. The rest of my armor is very tough, but not runed. I have mana rings and two health potions. That’s everything.”

“Alright then. I suppose we are getting the full noble experience. That must have cost a fortune,” the lieutenant said.

Hugo shrugged, “Not really. None of this is really worth that much. I created everything runed myself, using aluminum. It is much cheaper that way, but also means that it won’t last long.” That was a lie of course. It was easier for him to produce mithril than buy aluminum, so everything he had would last a while. He just didn’t want any of his protectors tempted to steal his armor.

The lieutenant nodded, satisfied with the information.

“What rune do you have on the draining arrow?” the runic sentinel said.

“Am I really expected to give away all of my secrets?” Hugo said.

“Private! Be polite to the noble,” the lieutenant said.

The runic sentinel nodded and said, “Right, I am sorry for prying. What I meant to say was does your arrow drain mana from the monsters? If so, I would ask that you refrain from using that one often, because it will reduce the amount of mana stones and shards we are able to recover.”

Hugo nodded, happy for the perfect cover, “Yes, it does drain mana. I will switch my bolts out.”

As he was switching his pure mithril bolts out for his exploding bolts, the sentinels got to work. They started by piling all of the bodies together in a mound. It was grisly work and Hugo was glad that he wasn’t expected to participate.

Then the lieutenant had them gather on the other side of the clearing. He nodded to the alchemist and that sentinel threw a large potion bottle towards the bodies. As soon as the potion was away, a pair of barrier domes appeared around them.

The potion hit the bodies and created a cloud of red dust. The dust settled on the bodies and started eating away at the corpses. Within a few minutes, the bodies were reduced to a pile of bones, with mana stones glittering inside. Hugo shivered. He was glad for the barriers. If the wind had shifted, that could have eaten through his skin.

The alchemist donned thick rubber gloves that went past his elbows and walked over to the pile of bones. He plucked out the mana stones and happily showed off a single mana shard.

“There will be time to celebrate later, private. Let’s get moving,” the lieutenant said.

They walked on, back to their vigilant formation. After an hour, they entered a section of forest that must have had a fire recently. The trees were blackened and all the underbrush was gone. It was strange, walking through the burnt section, the only sounds their feet stepping on charcoal.

“Contact. Phoenix. Just over one click away to the west,” the light sentinel whispered.

“Can we avoid it?”

“No, it is already heading this way.”

The barrier mage spoke up, “I can bubble it, starve out its fires. It will probably take the rest of my mana pool.”

The lieutenant nodded and said, “That’s our backup plan. Xhosa, do you think you can hit it with your ice arrows?”

Hugo nodded and switched out his crossbow bolts for the ones with the cold rune on them. He only had six of them because they were harder to make. Unlike the exploding ones, these bolts needed more than a point of mana to be effective. He had combined the cold rune with the pool rune and pumped each one full of mana. He brought the crossbow to his shoulder just as the phoenix soared into view.

It was lazily gliding towards them, huge gouts of flame trailing behind it. Despite the myths, this monster had a physical body and wouldn’t return from the dead if killed. It was large and covered in flames though.

Hugo shot as soon as the monster was in range, but the phoenix twisted out of the way. Luckily, his new crossbow design was quick to reload and his second shot was already heading towards the monster. This shot hit its wing and pumped out enough cold mana to extinguish that section of the wing. This messed with its lift and the monster spiraled to the ground.

Three more shots followed, Hugo walking forward to make sure each one hit. By the time they got close, the monster was mostly extinguished. Only its tail still burned. Two sentinels jumped forward, using their spears to pin it in place. The barrier mage created a long lance to stab it through its head. Hugo would have been very impressed if it didn’t take the sentinel three tries to succeed.

With the phoenix dead, its tail extinguished and the body fell limp. The light sentinel directed a formation sentinel on where to stab to extract a mana shard. They jogged out of the burnt section of the forest, not wanting to stay exposed for long. Before they left, Hugo was able to recover his first missed shot.

From that point, encounters happened more and more frequently. A small family of owlbears were easy pickings for Hugo, three shots created three kills. They were tough monsters but an explosion to the face will take out even a monster with metal feathers.

Hugo let the sentinels take care of the strix. They would just be a waste of his ammunition. The tier one monsters wouldn’t give him any experience now that he was over rank eight. A glance at his screen showed that he was close to hitting rank sixteen. He smiled. At this rate, he might rank up to twenty soon and they could cut their trip short.

An hour before sunset, the lieutenant had them start looking for a good spot to camp. Once they found a rocky clearing near a cave, the lieutenant said, “Alright Luzuko, you are up. Time to earn your keep.”

The sentinel in question nodded and took out several large plates from his bag. He placed them around the clearing. It took Hugo a moment, but then he realized that the plates made a very large ritual circle. Once the runist had set everything up to his liking and placed the reagents on the plates, he said, “Alright everyone get in the center.”

As soon as they were all assembled, the runist poured mana into his ritual. Slowly, thick stone walls grew around them in a very large circle. The walls grew up and up, five feet, ten, fifteen. They curved inward until they met above them. It was a huge dome.

Once the stone covered them, they were plunged into darkness. Hugo pressed the correct bracer and a small orb of light appeared above his head.

The light mage scoffed at his meger light and said, “Everyone, close your eyes.” Several bright flashes followed.

When he opened his eyes again, eight holes were drilled into the rock. They provided ventilation and some light. Hugo stopped feeding mana into his light and let it go out.

Later that night the one runic sentinel came over to talk, “Hello little noble.”

Hugo smiled good naturedly and said, “Hello little sentinel.”

“I wanted to ask you about your arrows, particularly the exploding ones. I don’t know how you got such an impressive effect in such a small package,” he said.

“Yeah, they are pretty neat, aren’t they? I actually got the idea from a sentinel on the wall in Tallinn. Have you met the guy that throws big bombs at the monsters?” Hugo said. It hurt, not taking credit, but he didn’t need the extra scrutiny right now.

“No actually. We are all fairly new.”

“I am pretty sure all of the sentinels work together, even different cities. Ask the lieutenant about him. He is a brilliant runist, I bet you can learn a lot from him,” Hugo said and pointed back to his leader. The runist walked back to the other side of the dome and started talking to the lieutenant.

Hugo lay back on his bedroll, glad that he had sprung for the higher quality one. His tent had turned out to be useless, but this bedroll was more comfortable than the one he slept in at home.

The next morning, Hugo woke to a blue tinged sunrise. The morning light was filtering in through their ventilation holes, but it was blue tinged because barriers were covering them.

Hugo got up and walked over to the assembled sentinels. He was the last one up and they were all eating breakfast. The campfire had been extinguished, but there was still a pot of warm porridge hanging from a tripod above it.

Once he got his portion he walked over to the group and said, “What’s up with the blue morning?”

“Acid cobras, hundreds of them according to bright eyes over there. I haven’t seen one myself,” the barrier mage said.

“Oh come on, you have to be able to hear them slithering around out there,” the light sentinel said.

They were all quiet for a moment, and sure enough, there was a noise just on the edge of their perception. It sounded like someone was rubbing sandpaper together outside.

Hugo shrugged and said, “Well, what’s the plan for dealing with them? Should we pop the top and play target practice?”

Just then snakes slithered over the vents, plunging them into darkness. The light mage created a trio of light orbs and pushed them up to the ceiling. Everyone was able to see the snakes constantly slithering over the holes in the stone dome.

The sentinels discussed the problem and how to efficiently deal with it. Acid cobras weren’t that difficult to deal with individually, they were only five feet long. But there were hundreds of them slithering around outside their dome. After their discussion, the lieutenant decided to preserve everyone’s resources and just wait them out. The monsters knew that humans were in here, but they couldn’t get inside.

Hugo hoped that they would move on soon, but the acid cobras kept them inside for hours. As antsy as he was, he had to admit that he had already gained more than three ranks. They weren’t really in a hurry. Plus, the colonel was already willing to send him on a second harvesting trip. He would just have to be patient.

They couldn’t spend the time chatting because they wanted the monsters to forget that they were here, so everyone sat down and worked on their own projects. Most cleaned and maintained their weapons. Hugo’s crossbow didn’t need much, so he spent his time on his ammunition.

He couldn’t create new bolts since he didn’t want to give away the fact that he had three domains. So he just took his existing mithril bolts and started carving runes into them. It was a total failure. Mithril was too mana conductive for the runes to work correctly. He tossed the failure back into his bag and tried to be patient.

Just after lunchtime, the light mage gave them an all clear. The ritualist deactivated their protections and they broke out of the stone dome.

The afternoon was filled with monster encounters. They killed lightning beetles, strix, horned frogs, ankheg, tribbles, and dire wolves. To Hugo’s growing frustration, all of these monsters were tier one. It felt like the whole day was wasted since he didn’t gain a single point. The lieutenant just told him to be patient, they were heading towards a good hunting spot.

They set up their stone dome again, this time checking for snakes in the surrounding countryside. The area was clear, and they had a quiet night.

Hugo was woken by the whole dome shaking. He leapt up, ready to take on the attackers, but there was nothing there. He was just starting to remember where he was when the dome started shaking again. Their base was being attacked.