He had already formed a fireball by the time he turned to meet the other Wild Boar. Unlike with his attempt at a fire whip, the familiar spell came as easy as the snap of a finger despite the increase in power it received.

The pig looked wary as the fire came to his hand, no doubt still feeling the effects of Alex’s previous spell on its body. It hesitated for only a heartbeat before it grunted and charged again, but it was enough.

Alex hurled the fireball like he’d done a dozen times since he’d awakened in this new world, the air around the spell spitting with sparks. And then he witnessed the reason why the fireball could not be the only spell in his arsenal anymore.

The level one boar was swift enough to avoid being hit head on, easily sidestepping the spell.

It was only luck that the flames burst as they touched the ground by its back hooves, flinging dirt and monster into the air. The boar howled like the devil as it tumbled head over heels, before another quick fireball to the head did the last of the pigs in. The boar broke into black glass as soon as its burnt out carcass fell sprawled on the clearing with a thud, wisps of dark smoke drifting above it.

With his heart still hammering on his chest, Alex finally snapped out of it and turned to look around the clearing, silently admonishing himself for not doing so earlier. Aside from a glimpse of Cedric, he had completely zoned out into what was in front of him.

Closest to him, the crew leader had a booted foot over the unconscious boar’s neck, standing above it with both hands on his spear like a conqueror of old. On the other side of the clearing, Valerian likewise stood in front of Daven—his large tower shield strapped to his left forearm—as he inspected the two fallen boars in front of him. One of them was slumped over with a nasty lump on the side of its head while the other trashed about on the ground with its four hooves tied together with twine.

The archer was in much the same situation as Alex, sat on the ground with a grass garland covering his feet. He cut at it with a small pocket knife, muttering under his breath.

“What was that!?” Diana snapped, sounding distinctly rattled. She looked down right disheveled compared with a few moments before, with dirt smeared over the left side of her face and several strands of her fiery hair poking out of her braid. A thick spike of earth jutted out of the ground by her feet, and a few yards away, where she once knelt with her hands on the ground, a large clump of grass was missing.

Using his spear, Cedric poked at the grassy turf beside the boar’s head with narrowed eyes. “I don’t quite know,” he admitted. “It never happened with me and my group when we pruned this place.” He gave the ground one last nudge before shrugging. “But it’s not uncommon for dungeons to produce effects like that. Sometimes it’s some kind of poisonous gas, others might spawn illusions that’ll mess with a chaser's senses. If I were to guess, it probably happened because you stood still for too long on the same spot.”

Frowning, Alex looked down at the monsters still clutching at his feet.

[Grasping Grass lvl 1]

[Grasping Grass lvl 1]

Cedric either really couldn’t see the tags like the others or he was an expert liar. And despite his own apprehensions toward the crew leader, he would bet on the former being true. It was just a feature of his own powers, more than likely. Another point to the theory that this Second thing might have some veracity to it, even if his earlier excitement had died down after his poor performance controlling his magic.

Alex still had nearly half of his MP, so he brought forth the fire again and got to the business of burning away the grass monsters. In its raw form the fire was more powerful than before, more wild, and it was a tricky thing to ignite the long grass blades while avoiding burning his shoes.

When he was finally free and looked back up, Daven was strutting across the clearing toward his sister. “Well, it seems like I won then.” He had a giant grin on his pock-marked face. “I took one down without killing it!”

Diana scoffed. “Only because Valerian helped you, otherwise the other two would’ve run you over.”

“A bet is a bet,” Daven said, laughing. Even the close call hadn’t been enough to shift the archer’s mood, it seemed. “And I’m tired of sleeping on the ground. The floorboards on this inn are too bumpy.”

“You either needed help or didn’t get the boar,” Cedric cut in, “so in my book all of you lost the bet. That means you get to tie off the pigs and carry them to the wagon.” He stepped off the Wild Boar and rubbed his nose in disgust. “I’m sure you’ll come to enjoy the smell in due time. Now chop-chop and get to it, I’m already looking forward to a good cup of ale by the fire tonight.”

Diana sighed, but Daven didn’t seem to mind. “Looking forward to that cute barmaid, you mean?” he said, wagging his eyebrows suggestively at the leader.

Cedric shook his head. “What ever happened to respecting your seniors?” He sounded unruffled, but Alex could see the dusting of red that rose on the crew leader’s cheeks.

Shrugging, Alex followed Diana to get some rope in Lady’s saddlebags. Alex had just found out another intricacy of how his skills worked, the subtle play between power and control, and he didn’t mind doing some menial work as he thought things through.

xx

The road wound around familiar low forested hills before it turned west to roughly parallel the Dunnser river that led to the village of Riverbend. From that point, it was another hour’s walk listening to the boar-burdened wagon groaning at the joints before they came across the first farms with thatched, timber houses, sitting stoutly surrounded by fields looking recently sowed.

They were mostly solitary homesteads, though a few were clumped together in groups of two and three houses. Here and there men and women in coarse coats walked the fields checking for weeds and pests among their crops; and a few children were out as well, herding sheep atop donkeys or playing about with wooden sticks and pebbles.

When the crew was spotted coming up on the road, the children would run up to the edge of the fields, leaning against fences or peeking above hedges to call out eagerly at them. Their eyes would shine with awe when they saw the monsters tied up on the wagon. The adults were less excitable but no less polite, and would offer nods and waves in their direction.

Cedric looked completely in his element as he soaked in the children’s adulation, smiling brightly as he twirled his spear above his head and behind his back like a staff-master, while Daven didn’t miss the opportunity to goof around making funny faces or poking at the unconscious boars. Diana and Valerian took it all in stride, though neither had the charisma of the crew leader or the humor of the archer.

On his part, Alex stayed off to the side as much as he could, all the while hardly believing that people with access to game-like powers—if they indeed could all use it like the rest of the crew—would spend their days hoeing fields and raising cattle when they could bend the very elements of the world. It was all about perspective, he knew, as they had no doubt grown up thinking that having these amazing powers was a normal part of life, but it was still baffling.

His own excitement for his power had settled into something less sensationalist and more sensible after a bit of reflection. No doubt there was still much he didn’t know and understand about it, and it did him no good to create expectations on his first day on the job. He decided to take on his power as it came and not make a fuss of what he didn’t get like a spoiled child. After all, the potential was all there, he would simply have to work for it like always.

“Doing alright there, Alex?” Daven’s voice suddenly pulled Alex out of his own mind. Quickly looking around, he saw they’d just moved past the most recent farmhouse with a few children running about, and the archer was sidling up beside him. “You’ve been dead quiet for a while now.”

Alex shrugged. “I’m just thinking back on the dungeon, that’s all,” he said. “It wasn’t how I expected, even if there was a close call there at the end.”

“That was something for a first time, eh?” Daven nudged him on the arm, chuckling. He was a nudger on top of being a shoulder-slapper, apparently. “It would have been fine anyway. I would have sniped them all before they got a scratch on any of us. Val jumped in too soon, I’m telling you.”

It was Alex’s turn to chuckle. “I’m sure you would have, buddy,” he said lightly.

As Daven proceeded to expound on precisely how he would have taken down all the boars with a single arrow shot, the crew rounded a bend on the road that let out on open country once again; and, in the distance, Alex saw smoke staining the blue sky, a dozen fingers of it lazily rising up into the air from somewhere hidden behind a few hillocks still on their way.

Riverbend laid beyond, even if he couldn’t yet see it. It was, however, his first view of the Dunnser north of the road, just a vaguely green-brown line in the northern horizon running from the east to the west until it hid behind the hills like the village they would find soon enough.

“So, Alex.” Cedric came around the wagon nearer to him and Daven, temporarily shutting up the archer. “Have you decided what you’ll do from now on?”

“Finding a place to spend the night before anything,” Alex told him.

Cedric nodded. “That’s a good start. We’re staying at the Bedstone Inn—there’s really only the one, that’s all the options you’ll have in a place like Riverbend—so we’ll all go there after dropping the boars off. You can figure out if you want to stick with us tomorrow.”

Alex thought for a moment, then shrugged. “Sounds good to me.” Getting some more information about the world at large while in Riverbend was at the top of his to-do list, but he also wouldn’t mind being carried by Cedric and his crew while he was still so weak.

“Isn’t Master Orson the one who issued the job?” Diana asked, looking back from where she walked beside Lady.

A genial smile lit up Cedric’s face. He seemed to love having answers to people’s questions. “As the mayor, yes, but we can’t put the monsters on his inn’s stables. It would spook the horses too much. Orson asked me to leave them in with the town’s blacksmith, a fellow named Bryon. He’ll have a space ready to take them.”

Diana simply hummed in response, one hand lazily stroking the pony’s mane. The road climbed up the gentle slope of the hill easily enough that Lady had no trouble pulling on the heavy wagon, and soon enough they crested its peak.

Below, perhaps a mile away, the village of Riverbend spread on both sides of the river like a perfect mockup of a medieval village, half a hundred houses surrounding a single wooden bridge that spanned the river where it curved southward. The village was bordered by a vast wood on its western side, while in front the crew, on the eastern side, fields and pastures were interspersed by stands of trees or tall hedges delineating the different properties. And to the far northwest, past the village and the woods, so far it looked more mirage than reality, a chain of snow-capped mountains jutted out into the sky like the spine of some great dead beast.

Cedric didn’t give Alex a chance to appreciate the view for long. With the village in sight, they pressed on quicker, and soon enough they were among the first houses this side of the Dunnser—half-timbered, whitewashed homes that reminded Alex of old German buildings. They were mostly single or two-storey affairs, and since there was plenty of space to be had, every house seemed to have its own small garden or chicken coop or pigpen at the back.

More importantly, the village looked like it was being dressed up for prom. Vines stretched across the road like green streamers hung with wildflowers and colorful wreaths along their length, the air rich with their spices. The shutters of every house were open as if to soak in the sunlight, and beautifully sewn rugs and banners hung from the windows like portraits into different worlds. Doors too were swung wide; next to each of them, small tables sat topped by all sorts of bite-sized cakes and pies and quiches, with every house seeming to have their own specialty.

Daven was the first to break out toward a cake-brimmed table, but the rest of the crew was quick to follow, hungry as they all were, and even Valerian allowed himself one or five of the pastries. Lady was a smart enough animal to keep moving forward as they taste-tested every house with a table out.

Alex took a particular liking to the pork sausage quiche of a one-storey home and stuffed his pockets with a handful of the treats. A penniless man had to eat where and when he could, he thought to himself, even as the little toddler watching from inside the house gave him a scowl.

They weren’t alone in the streets, either. Riverbend seemed alive with activity. Instead of simply watching them pass by, a handful of village children had come to greet them like returning heroes when they were first spotted at the edge of town, and were dodging around the wagon as they tried to peek at the tied up monsters inside ever since.

Beyond the children, a few women wearing a strange combination of pants under knee-high skirts came to meet them at the doorstep at some of the houses, to ask their opinion on their baking or commend them over their day’s catches. And further ahead, despite the chill in the air, lines of bare-chested men hauled ale kegs and wine barrels and stacks of well-cut timber over to the village green by the bridge.

To these people, interdimensional kidnapping during a grocery run was the least of their worries, and preparations for this so-called the Selection Festival were in full swing.