Chapter 19

The next morning, team Meredith along with Cheryl were travelling by car back to the Dire Woods outpost.

“So Jack,” Cheryl spoke up from the driver's seat. “How are those runes on your arm? They healed up yet?” she asked innocently.

Jack froze. “I er…I don’t know what you’re talking about?” he said hopefully. How did she know? He’d purposefully kept them a secret so that he’d have that particular trick hidden up his sleeve for a rainy day.

“Oh Jack….” Cheryl sounded both amused and sorry for him, like she was watching a kitten trying to crawl its way up onto a sofa. “We saw the CCTV footage of your escape from the blacksite in East Anglia, you were using some sort of shield construct generated from runes you’d carved into your left arm,” she explained to him.

“Dammit! I forgot the cameras again!” Jack cursed.

“Yeah, we also saw you try to trick your way past the security response on the fifth floor. Me and Imogen had a good laugh over that,” she told him with amusement.

Jack sighed despondently.

“Hey, what’s this about runes Jack?” Stacey questioned. The others all listened attentively too.

“Oh, well you know how I’ve been studying runes for the past couple of months?” Jack asked them.

They all nodded.

“Well I’ve had some success with getting them to work. I mean don’t get me wrong, it’s all still very much a work in progress, but I’ve made some small inroads in figuring it all out,” Jack explained.

“Oh I don’t know Jack, I watched footage of you successfully blocking a hail of bullets with that shield of yours before conjuring up a blade of light and cutting someone in half with it. That was a little bit more than ‘small inroads’ as you put it,” Cheryl praised him.

“Whoa! Blocking bullets and cutting people in half! Sounds like you really missed out Nate,” Katie teased Nate.

“Can we see them Jack?” Meredith asked in curiosity.

“Yeah…” Jack took off his jacket and rolled up his left sleeve. The runes had all been stitched up by Gary’s niece the day before which had finally allowed them to start healing properly. Now it looked like he had hundreds of silver patterns stitched into his skin, he’d probably try and run some power through them later on that day to test them out.

“Whoa! They’re kinda pretty actually,” Katie looked at them in fascination.

“They’re not supposed to be pretty! They’re manly! Manly runes!” Jack objected.

“Should’ve chosen another colour then, your arm almost looks like a little girl's diary! Hahaha!” Katie teased him and the others laughed.

Cheryl looked at them briefly from the driver's seat.

“You stitched them up? What did you use to do that?” she asked.

“Well the cuts weren’t healing properly, so I thought I’d use something magically conductive. I had Gary or his niece that is, stitch them up using Glimmer spider silk. It's the same stuff that's in my flak jacket,” he told them.

“Hmm, Glimmer spider silk eh? That's a good idea, think I'll pass that along to R and D when I next get the chance,” Cheryl said thoughtfully.

“Go for it,” Jack shrugged, not concerned.

“Hey Jack? Any chance you could make something like that for me?” Nate asked whilst still staring at Jack’s arm in fascination.

“Me too!” Katie spoke up.

“I may also be interested,” Noah added on.

“Hm? Yeah I think so, but probably not for a long while,” Jack answered them.

“Aww, how come?” Nate asked.

“This stuff I’ve carved into my own arm with my own fingernail? It was improvised and not really what I would’ve chosen had I the time to do things better. Before I got taken by Flamewrought to his personal dungeon, this stuff was really more of an ongoing project, I haven’t worked out all the kinks yet or quite gotten it the way I wanted. But….when I got kidnapped it forced my hand and I had to come up with something or…you know, die. I also don’t know what the long health effects will be from having this stuff carved or stitched into me will be, you never know, I might get cancer from this stuff or my arm might drop off.” Jack shrugged as he explained. It was the truth, he was essentially a test dummy or lab rat for now and he didn’t really want to carve something into his friends flesh that would wind up killing them later on down the road.

“You carved that with your own fingernail?” Katie asked, disgusted.

“Your arm could drop off?” Stacey said in concern at the same time.

“Yes, I did use my own fingernail and it was horrifically uncomfortable. And I don’t know, my arm could drop off or maybe I'll grow a third one, like I said, I don’t know the long term health effects from this stuff. So I’m going to wait and see what happens as well as try to adjust and optimise the design to make it work better,” Jack answered them.

“Hm, that stuff seems to work pretty well already Jack, from what I saw on the footage from the blacksite,” Cheryl said. “In fact, R and D are really interested in getting a hold of the runic sequences you used.”

“Uh huh, I’m not really keen on helping out the guild’s R and D department anymore,” Jack said. He’d seen some of the research and development the guild got up to when it thought no one was looking.

“I understand that but just so you know, the place you were taken to, that's not the norm. We do actually have research facilities where people don’t get vivisected. Places where they do actual good work that help and save a lot of lives through ethical research,” Cheryl told him.

“Uh huh, I’ll believe that when I see it,” he said sceptically. “I hope people are actually going to get prosecuted and then you know, thrown into the abyss for what went on in there. When I was exploring Dr Farley’s floor, there must’ve been over a hundred human elemental core’s that they had stored there,” he said forcefully.

“Oh don’t worry, though some people will unfortunately get off scot free, most of the guilty parties will be going to jail for a very long time,” she told him darkly.

“Good, good…”

The rest of team Meredith watched them both anxiously.

“Anyway, one last little warning Jack. My sister Imogen actually anticipated that you might be less than willing to share what you came up with in regards to those runes. So some of the other guild executives have started discussing legal action to potentially force you into giving it up,” Cheryl told him casually.

“Ha! I’d like to see them try! No ones forcing me to do anything, they can sue me or fire me if they want. In fact, let me sit down with them and I’ll tell to go fuck themselves in person,” Jack laughed as he told her.

Cheryl simply laughed and told him it wouldn’t come to anything anyway. They continued their drive through the Yorkshire Dales towards the Dire Woods.

A couple of hours later……..

The group pulled into the large car park outside the shimmering rift in space at the edge of the copse of impossibly large trees. Once everyone had grabbed their bags of gear and luggage from the boot of Cheryl's car, they strolled through the rift.

Right away, as soon they set foot back in the outpost, team Meredith could tell something was off. The wide open space surrounding the rift within the Woods was empty of traffic as were the various avenues leading off from it. Shouting and the noise of gunfire could be heard in the distance where a section of the perimeter walls were.

Cheryl turned to them.

“Follow me,” she ordered before setting off at a pace that would have Olympic sprinters weeping with envy.

Everyone followed close behind her whilst lugging their gear bags. They ran down one of the main avenues past the canteen building and one of the armouries before reaching the eastern main gate. There they saw a large collection of nearly fifty hunters and various support personnel. As team Meredith and Cheryl ran towards them, one of the massive gun emplacements on top of the walls to the side of the gate opened fire briefly at something they couldn’t see beyond the walls.

The guns were, like everything in the Dire Woods, absolutely huge at about the size of a Challenger battle tank and Jack was confident no military in the world much less the United Kingdom’s had ever actually used them in warfare. The gun turrets were all quad mounted with four enormous barrels, previous iterations of the gun had been used to take down aircraft in past wars, this particular make had been designed to take down titan scaled monsters. It shot armour piercing explosive high calibre rounds with an automatic fire rate at over a thousand a minute, they were all supposed to be controlled by an automatic friend foe targeting system.

Jack remembered, a while back when the gun systems first went live, he and everyone else on the base had needed to stand around for ages in the command building as they allowed the targeting system to scan them and get their biometrics to register them as friendlies. He’d been annoyed at the time but now after seeing just one of those guns fire off a scant few rounds, he was glad of it, if one of those shot him there’d be nothing left of him but red mist, just poof and he’d be gone. And there were more than a hundred of these guns in total lining the walls of the outpost, apparently the government was also in the midst of purchasing a vast amount of them from the weapons contractor responsible for making them to be placed around various UK towns and cities.

The gun let out a colossal booming chatter that Jack felt in his teeth and bones, they continued running to the cluster of people gathered behind the eastern gate. The gate was open, beyond it was obscured by swirling dust as well as multicoloured light and vapour. Cheryl saw the outpost commander, James Harren, and approached him.

“What's the situation James?” she asked grimly.

“The outpost came under assault about twenty minutes ago, we’re just mopping up the rest of the attacking force and I’ve sent a few teams of hunters to counter attack and take prisoners,” he explained calmly, not sounding particularly stressed at all.

Jack frowned, he wasn’t aware of the outpost ever being assaulted before now, he would’ve thought the commander would be at least a little more excited about this.

“Attacking force? Prisoners? Were we not attacked by wild monsters? What were we attacked by?” Cheryl asked in confusion.

“Elves, a couple hundred of ‘em by the looks of it,” he told her as he scratched his neck.

“Elves?! There’s more of them out there? And you turned the wall guns on them?” Cheryl asked with a raised eyebrow, turning a dubious look on him.

“Yep, I have to say they worked spectacularly well, have you ever seen a person explode before? Probably overkill really. Anyway that's what they’re for ain’t it? The elves were belligerent and not open to negotiation, they attacked first.” He shrugged, not looking particularly bothered, either by Cheryl’s vexation or just having potentially massacred two hundred sentient beings.

“Those bullets are expensive James.” Cheryl gave him a pointed look.

“Bah! Don’t worry I’ll fill out the damned paper work for them, don’t get your knickers in a twist Cheryl,” he told her bluntly. Everyone within ear dropped their jaws in literal shock and awe before slowly edging away from the fallout zone.

Cheryl simply glowered angrily for a moment before continuing.

“I don’t understand, why did these elves attack us?” Cheryl asked him.

“I dunno, no one spoke their lingo, we spent about a minute hollering back and forth before the guy in charge of them seemed to lose his temper and then one of them shot a bloody arrow at me. Then a bunch of the buggers came charging out of the tree line all riding some sort of lizard horse thingies and they attacked the walls, flinging all sorts of elemental attacks, spears and arrows at us. After that I assumed we were done conversing so I ordered the wall guns to open fire. Believe it or not, we actually spent more time waiting for the red bloody mist and dust to disperse so we could see than we actually spent firing the guns. Anyway, once everything attacking the walls was dead, I sent out a counter assault of hunters to see if we could maybe take a few captives, the surveyors had told me there were a handful of elves waiting behind within the tree line so I thought I’d grab ‘em.” He scratched at the burn scars on his neck again before fishing out a cigar from the breast pocket on his jacket and lighting it with a small conjured flame.

“Bows and arrows you say? And spears?” Cheryl asked with a frown.

“Mm, Clive! Come over here and show ‘em what you found!” The commander beckoned to a nearby hunter who jogged over bearing a handful of what looked like broken weapons.

The man placed the weapons on the ground at their feet and everyone bent down to look at them. They seemed to be a collection of strange looking weapons, somewhat recognisable as swords, spears, bows and arrows, but clearly of an alien origin. However, almost none of the weapons looked particularly powerful, apart from one, most seemed to be made of simple steel. The one that wasn’t looked to be an elegant slender sword made from monster bone, clearly a cut above the rest of the arrayed weapons, perhaps of similar quality to what guild hunters wielded as standard.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Hm, these weapons seem rather primitive for a group of humanoids supposedly living within the Dire Woods, hmm….” Cheryl looked down at the assortment of weaponry in contemplation.

Meanwhile, the commander slapped Jack on the shoulder. “Errant, get out there and see if you can find an Elf that's still intact and attune them, try and bring back the whole thing would you?” the commander told him.

“Oh, you want me to….attune a….humanoid….corpse?” Jack asked hesitantly.

“That's what I just said isn’t it? What's the problem? Get to it.” The commander impatiently motioned his head towards the open gate. “The rest of you watch his back,” he told the rest of team Meredith.

He turned away and began conversing with Cheryl while team Meredith made its way through the gate. They stepped out onto a quiet, still smoking no-man's land. Dust, smoke and multicoloured vapour shrouded much of it, but Jack could still see bodies and pieces of bodies littered here and there. The ground also had puddles of blood, gore and other fluids spread out here and there. He made his way over to the nearest corpse. There wasn’t much of it left, half of its torso was gone along with an arm, coloured vapour was steadily streaming out of it, rendering the remains less and less tangible. The rest of the body was covered in blood and mud, barely recognisable as having once been human, or humanoid anyway.

“Oh man, this is….” Katie began but stopped.

“Lets er…lets fan out and see if we can find….something,” Meredith said hesitantly.

They did so, while everyone wandered off through the eerily silent dead battlefield. Jack looked up from the body and also walked through no-man's land.

Eventually, Noah found something and called them over. He’d found a more or less intact elven corpse that looked to have died from losing its left arm and then likely blood loss or shock. They decided they’d go with that since the wall guns hadn’t left anything else that was much better, automatic armour piercing explosive high calibre rounds really were overkill for anything less than an A ranked monster.

Jack hesitantly attuned the elf corpse, he’d never attuned something that looked so human before, but he certainly didn’t cultivate from it, that didn’t feel right somehow. Cultivating from humanoid corpses that looked so human seemed like it would validate some fears people had about lightning elements, though he was perfectly fine with cultivating from goblins and orcs, screw those guys. After that the team took it back to the commander and deposited it at his feet.

He looked at them expectantly. “Well? Whaddya want? A cookie? Go find some more,” he ordered them before turning back to continue speaking with Cheryl.

With a collective despondent sigh, the team headed back out the gates.

As team Meredith and various other hunter teams the commander had ordered to join them were combing the battlefield, they witnessed several other hunter teams emerging from the tree line. Amongst them were tall, slender figures with bound wrists. The group passed through the remnants of the battlefield and stepped through the gates.

After half an hour of combing the battlefield, team Meredith and the hunters assigned to help them felt they’d found everything they were going to and handed they grisly haul to a group of excited researchers in the quarantine buildings. Shortly after that, the commander made a base wide announcement that all jobs, hunts and expeditions were on hold until they knew more about the situation.

With nothing else to do, team Meredith joined the large queue of hunters waiting outside the quarantine buildings before eventually making their way to the canteen several hours later. There they were joined by Darren, the hunter whom they’d met on their first day in the Dire Woods and had escorted them to the temporary cave base almost two months ago.

“Hey guys! Long time no see!” he greeted them cheerfully as he sat down at their table.

“Hi Darren, what have you been up to?” Meredith greeted him along with the others.

“Oh you know, peeling potatoes, killing monsters, the usual.” He shrugged cheerfully.

“I thought your punishment ended a month ago?” Noah asked.

“I….may have done something else to piss off the old man,” Darren said sheepishly with a small grin. “Anywho, I’m free now and you’ll never guess what I heard in the command centre.” He leaned forward over the table excitedly and everyone also leaned forward.

“What? What is it?” Katie asked eagerly.

“Were you eavesdropping?” Noah asked suspiciously.

“Meh, not my fault if upper command has conversations where I just so happen to be able to hear them. So do you want to know what I heard or not?” he asked with a grin.

Everyone nodded, even Noah after a moment's hesitation.

“Okay so get this, apparently the UK military is coming to the outpost, they said that this counts as an act of war against the United Kingdom by a sovereign state and that falls under their jurisdiction,” Darran explained excitedly.

“An…act of war? War? Really? What about all those times we get attacked by goblins and orcs and other sentient creatures? Weren’t those acts of war too?” Jack asked in confusion.

“Uh uh, nope. Apparently the army and government think that these guys, the elves, are like, organised and actually have a home base or something. Maybe even a home world!”

Everyone parked up at the mention of another world.

“Didn’t they take prisoners too?” Meredith asked.

“Yup, the guild is bringing in some linguistic experts to help interrogate them,” Darren said smugly.

“Hmm…” Stacey frowned and looked contemplative.

“What's up Stace?” Katie asked.

“Was it really an act of war though? Is that really why the army is coming?” Stacey asked thoughtfully, tapping the table with a finger.

“Well, I did see a couple of banners or flags or something with the elves, and a bunch of them seemed to be wearing the same type of armour or uniform. They definitely looked a hell of a lot more organised than most other stuff we fight,” Darren said.

“That may be true, but this is a pretty good opportunity for the military, it's probably why they were so quick to respond, usually it takes days or weeks for this type of decision to be made,” she said.

“Huh? What are you talking about?” Nate asked in confusion.

“She means that the military wants to make a comeback, and they’re using this as an excuse,” Noah explained.

“OH! So they’re actually coming here for like a war or something?” Nate asked eagerly.

“Erm no, but I did overhear mention of a big joint expedition including hunters, surveyors and soldiers. I kinda got the impression the army bigwigs were really eager to get out there, something about discovering where the elves came from,” Darren explained.

“Still sounds like they’re looking for a fight,” Meredith remarked.

“It certainly does, though I think the official nature of the mission will be something like…find out where the elves come from and open up diplomatic relations or something like that,” Stacey said.

“And if it goes wrong and we have to fight our way out of a bad situation? Well that's just how things go sometimes isn’t it?” Jack cynically added.

Everyone thought on that for a few moments and spoke a little more about the potential expedition, the general consensus however, was that they needed to get on that expedition at all costs. They all shamelessly urged Meredith to convince her aunt or even her mother to get their team assigned to the expedition to which she reluctantly agreed.

“Oh by the way,” Darren said just as he was getting up to leave. “That new pharmaceutical company, Magicae Bio, is setting up shop here in the outpost. They’ve got a bunch of weird stuff on sale in one of the open lots that they’ve rented, it's over on south street,” he told them before bade goodbye and left.

The next day, Jack and the rest of team Meredith visited the store Darren had mentioned. It was one of several different stores that had been opening up for business in various different spots available for rent in the outpost. A few of the other stores sold things that could be found in hunters plaza back in the North Yorkshire branch HQ such as survival gear or weapons and armour.

A couple of other places also sold primers and textbooks which detailed certain cultivation and elemental techniques, which included all manner of uses such as for offence, defence and utility. As knowledge of the elements and their use continued to grow, more and more techniques for their use were discovered and distributed. There were plenty of people and organisations that sought to profit from this knowledge, so they did their research and created techniques before selling them to whoever was willing to pay.

Some of the techniques were fairly basic and could be created by anyone with a bit of trial and error, but the primers that taught those moves were often quite comprehensive and made the process of learning much easier. Other elemental techniques could also be quite nuanced and complicated, based heavily in scientific research. For instance, one particularly expensive primer at three thousand pounds sterling, was one that taught the plasma cannon attack, for use by flame elements. This move centred around creating a hollow funnel of intense flame, which would then pressurise and superheat a core of air within it. When ready, the user could blast the superheated pressurised air at their target for a devastating mid range assault. Nate had already bought that particular primer before the hunt for the Kladican and was in the midst of learning it.

There were all sorts of primers available commercially nowadays, for instance there were ones that taught techniques to wind elements in creating vacuums, or creating enough friction to generate lava for earth elements and even one in forming mobile puppets made from water. That last one had no combat capabilities but it still had Meredith and Stacey interested, from an academic standpoint anyway.

Unfortunately, there was still nothing for Jack with regards to primers for lightning element techniques. Though that was probably his own fault since he was the first guy to even discover lightning cultivation was possible so it was probably him who should be showing the way for the rest of his kind. In fact, he had to admit to himself he’d slacked off a little in researching his own element, he’d been a bit distracted lately.

But the focus of team Meredith wasn’t to learn new elemental techniques today, it was to visit the new pharmaceutical store run by Magicar Bio. A couple of months ago, Cheryl had managed to get her hands on three pills of something called Cryonic homeostasis pills, Jack had jokingly referred to them as chill pills. The pills had somehow managed to cool their bodies and prevent them from overheating or even getting warm when they’d delved into a hellishly hot dungeon. No mere science should be capable of something like that, but the company known as Magicae Bio didn’t base its products simply on science alone. They used many different magical resources derived from slain monsters, harvested magical plant species and different magical minerals. All of it was put through the scientific process and meticulous testing, in order to observe the different harvested components' effects when exposed to different environments such as the human body. In doing so, they discovered a variety of more than mundane effects, things that no normal drugs could do. It was being said that they’d created an entirely new form of science (or old science depending on how you looked at it), alchemy.

Multiple pharmaceutical companies from Europe and Japan had apparently pooled their resources over a year ago and thrown everything they had into research and development, hiring some of the best biochemists in the world along with acquisition of magical products via organisations like the UK hunters guild and testing through the drug development pipeline. When they felt they had a viable selection of products for eventual commercial use, they merged with one another to form the new company, Magicae Bio.

Jack and team Meredith stepped into a small store, as they opened the door a gentle ringing chime sounded from an old fashioned little bell above. The store seemed to be set up much like a normal pharmacy, with shelves and aisles throughout the room, all displaying different merchandise. However, everything on the display shelves were only present on display touchscreens, it seemed all the actual merchandise was stored securely behind the counter. Considering the near exorbitant price tags, that was understandable, you don’t just put a bunch of merchandise that cost thousands of pounds out on display when said merchandise was easy to put in your pocket. Some hunters could be a little unscrupulous.

Everyone spread out to peruse the aisles and shelves, multiple other hunters were also present doing the same with a small queue standing by the front counter. Jack took a look at the nearest to see just what the fuss was all about, if all this hype for some sort of super effective aspirin or the chill pills then he was going to be severely disappointed.

A moment looking at the very first product had him squinting at it in suspicion, to see if he was imagining things or if he’d really just read the product description right. A stone skin cream? One dose and your skin would turn into a durable stone like armour but still enable movement? If that was true then maybe the hype was justified.

He read some of the ingredients used in the making of the product, he didn’t recognise most of them, just a bunch of chemicals and magical ingredients but he did see that they’d apparently used miniscule amounts of earth elemental crystals in the mix.

The touch screen displaying the product even had a silent video playback on loop of a lovely looking female model using the product in a demonstration. As Jack watched, the model smiled a pearly white smile for the camera as she applied the cream to her hands and arms. A few seconds after she’d rubbed a small dollop onto her skin, it turned grey and rough looking. The model continued smiling for the camera as she silently showed her arms off, rotating them so they were clear to see. She then took up a sharp looking knife and slashed the blade across the grey skin, it didn’t even leave a mark. She then took up a small blowtorch and spread the intense blue flame across the grey skin, again there was not a single mark nor even sign of discomfort from the model who continued to smile and demonstrate as if she were showing off a new household appliance on some late night sale show on tv. However, there were numerous warning labels scrawled across the display, getting the stuff on or anywhere near the eyes was strongly discouraged, and getting it anywhere near an orifice would apparently garner the immediate need for a hospital visit.

Jack was still impressed, that stuff looked like it was worth its weight in gold, he then looked at the price tag, it seemed the company that made the stuff agreed with him. A small container holding fifty millilitres was priced at nearly a thousand pounds. Jack let out a sigh, he could certainly afford it, but still, he didn’t want to put all his earnings into buying this sort of stuff. He took a mental note of the stone skin cream and left to browse the store some more.

He came across numerous products that caught his interest and he knew that the pharmaceutical company Magicae Bio was going to become a big deal in the future. They had eye drops that dramatically increased visual acuity as well as other eye drops that enable night vision, some sort of chewing gum that turned someone's saliva into a highly corrosive substance that one could spit, some sort of pill that would massively increase someone’s energy and physical strength up to clearly supernatural levels for a certain period of time and many more products besides.

Jack did notice that all the effects of the products were temporary, it made sense from a profit standpoint since the company probably preferred to keep selling the same stuff over and over again to repeat customers rather than just selling things once. Also Jack didn’t want to walk around with stone skin all the time.

There were even plenty of products on sale that weren’t pharmaceutical in nature, but were still chemical compounds derived from magical ingredients that produced a dramatic effect on the surroundings. For instance, there was a glass bottle containing a substance that when smashed, it rendered whatever solid structure it hit into some sort of viscous goop. The product display video showed a man throwing it at a solid concrete floor upon which stood several mannequins. The bottle smashed and some sort of black brown liquid spread out into a small unimpressive puddle, but then the floor for about twenty square metres around turned into some sort of warped looking swamp or quicksand, the mannequins then began quickly disappearing into the floor like they were sinking. The video demonstration showed the same kind of effect when the bottle was used on different surfaces such as wood and a forest floor. The product itself was known as the ‘Quagmire’.

They also had a product that appeared to be a form of gel that could be spread upon any surface and when it was exposed to water, the gel would just absolutely devour and burn its way through whatever it was attached to; metal, stone, wood, flesh, whatever.

Another set of products derived from elemental crystals, seemed to be a set of grenades, that would all produce dramatic and powerful elemental effects when thrown at a target. Obviously the fire grenade would unleash an intense localised firestorm, the water grenade would create large floating masses of water that stayed in place in defiance of gravity that trap anything caught within, drowning them. The wind grenade seemed to generate multiple, powerful, cascading concussive shockwaves travelling inward that would target the spot the grenade landed, anything caught within its vicinity would find itself in the middle of a storm of sound and intense bone crushing air pressure. The earth grenade would create sudden eruptions of jagged stone protrusions in a large area around the thrown grenade, crushing or skewering anything unlucky enough to be caught in the vicinity. Again, there was nothing based on the lightning element. Each grenade was as expensive as hell, but he was still going to buy each of them at some point just to see each of them work at least once.

Jack was impressed, he was beginning to feel like a kid in a candy store, he’d only looked at a small portion of the products on display and it was clear there was much more to see. Though he did wonder if Magicae Bio was still technically just a pharmaceutical company or also a weapons manufacturer at this point.

In the end, he bought the water grenade (which he was calling a water bomb from now on), the wind grenade, the Quagmire and the strength serum for when he was in a tight spot. In total that set him back almost five thousand pounds, he really hoped prices would come down in the future.

He met up with the rest of the team outside, everyone carried small fancy paper shopping bags filled with their purchases, the scene looked a little inconsistent since the hunters were also wearing their armour too.

“What did ya get Jack?” Nate asked.

“Just a mix of stuff, a couple of those elemental grenades, something called the Quagmire and a strength serum,” Jack told with a shrug.

“You got the strength serum too? So did I! I got like ten of ‘em!” Nate said enthusiastically.

Noah looked over to him with a frown. “You know you can’t imbibe more than one a day right?” he asked with concern.

“I know I know, don’t worry.” Nate waved him off. With everyone finished up, they all headed back to their apartment.