Papa P and Josim faded in the sun’s rays, the elder parting with a neighborly salute and the younger absorbing into an hourglass funnel into Farji’s gem-eye. His wraith soul carried a more distinct weight when warded to his sword. Tim’s wisdom increase produced a greater awareness of fine details he didn’t yet know how to best utilize, other than admiration and a willingness to learn. Jo’s spirit evoked welcome slumber, in part from their long night, but also, his inherent regen transferred through familiars while in contact with him, or in Jo’s case, the home base, warded from harm by the greater strength of the c-mana percolating in the spell surrounding him.

  Similar vitality injected Indi with more efficient recovery… stuff.

  I think you’re doing great. Most of that is an accurate assessment of your level up benefits. As an Oil and Water mage Cultivator, your evolution advances through pursuit, struggle and discovery. The level markers are sometimes more an indicator to follow for what aspects of your build to focus on.

  Murphy picked his head up with a fresh snatch of purple grass crushed in his teeth. He ground it to powder while giving Tim a bored look.

  Tim pet his head, ruffing the hair to cover the marker of Free Rides. “I’m gonna pursue some tastier aura chips.”

  Murphy continued chewing with a dead stare as though Tim had said nothing. “Why don’t you reroute my organs to piss out a water slide for you while you’re at it, funny man. You can ride it and have your tasty snack like a good little boy.” He blew a snort upward and rubbed a paw across the tuft of hair to re-expose the tattoo of his shame. “Make it sound like it’s so bad I saved your ass not long ago.”

  Tim smiled. “I do appreciate you, Murph. I’ll be cautious to take good care of you.” He pet his friend and at the sense of tension cast Heal and Analyze. Murphy’s internal organs and mana channels highlighted in a teal network set against blue and red veins and arteries respectively. Pockets of aura storage at his knee joints, ears, behind his eyes with tubes to his mouth and nostrils, and down through his liver and intestines to his rectum. The chips bled off before the aura channeled through the liver and broke down to a less concentrated dose by the time ol’ buddy pooped it out. It was easier to do this as it passed along a passive trait. Chip production held the greatest potential for focusing purified aura production. The head works like ear wax and snot dallops would work in a pinch, but they were more runoff from the internal powerhouse working full go; not meant for mass production… yet. As he’d told Murph dog, he’d be careful. The safest route channeled aura generation and an evolved storage to production center around the knees could combine well with boosting Murphy’s leg strength. His stomp ability wore out the chip manufacturing as aura seeped into tired muscles.

  Tim prayed over his spell and God’s will over Murphy’s growth, then opened his eyes to address Dryfu waiting at ease on his shoulder. “I’m ready for your bad news now.”

  Tonda’s stare from the waist high weeds also waited patiently for Tim to direct her. He clicked his teeth and pointed for the mines. She burst into a sprint on an obedient path.

  Tim felt like a jog. Tell me on the way.

  The good news is I know where to go. The bad news is the how.

  I can handle it, Tim thought back, enjoying some early rewards to the adrenaline of his heart rate rising in the jog’s required pacing. C-mana flickered on a steady flame within him, increasing his fever a bit—he’d handle it—yet the more pronounced new sensation was the thicker course it took to fill the route that stretched head to toe.

  The farm’s prairie grass and dormant field overgrowth cast a colorful backdrop to this new adventure. His first morning with one glory plate of blessings to his mind, his Ranger sight, and the c-mana cultivating with more sauce to the pot.

  Dude, I barely started. Are you done being weird? Yeah, it’s a pretty morning. Gosh…

  Tim chuckled at Dryfu’s teasing. Within the jest, he read his friend’s pride for Tim’s advancements. Dryfu exuded a contentment Tim hadn’t thought he’d had since they met.

  Yeah, yeah. Do you want the bad news, beyond you should take that horizon focus and narrow it to your Protection spell. It’s spread thin in sections after the Venom outburst.

  Tim’s work on Murphy’s aura chips to knees cultivation could progress without much distraction, and Dryfu was right. He’d meant to get to this before getting too far from the house. The way he’d escalated the Protection spell last night distributed higher defensive energy around the twenty feet closest to the house. Now that he was outside that, he adjusted his sight and Analyzed the aura of his spell.

  The confirmation of Dryfu’s concern startled Tim more than he expected. You could drive a caravan through the many holes stretched high and side like torn sheets ripped apart by a horde of banshees.

  Like I said. Ya might wanna look into that.

  Tim repeated his poem from the night before and wove new life into his web of Protection. In his new strength, he was able to keep a good pace while solidifying the surrounding spell. He only spent enough to tie it back together, allowing the spell to stay fluid, in a sense, where he could more easily refortify any areas that would be attacked.

  Once Tim figured that out, Dryfu started in with his royal intellectual voice, Very good.

  A map of the farmstead appeared in Tim’s HUD, centered with the shambles of a woodchip path they planted between fields. Tracking with Tim’s progress on this path, a yellow star inched north—Star because you’re special.

  Thanks.

  At a bird’s eye view, the distance toward the mine appeared shorter on the map’s winding trail. Their course highlighted in blue and a distance calculation read: 2.8 kilometers. 11 minutes.

  Now you’re showing off.

  Maybe a little. Hey, you get bells and whistles, I’m gonna use em.

  The north by northwest trail toward the mine split the north fields in half. A quarter of the fields banking the gorge leading down to the mine lit in orange. Expected growth of eggs and degree of threat to the farmhouse estimates this as the minimum range to set a Tier 4 or higher level Protection; or risk their numbers overwhelming your defenses and we lose the farm.

  Got it. Tim slowed his pace, realizing he’d have to reign in his expectations on how soon he’d reach his friends. In order to cover the distance last night, considering the short amount of time and strength he’d had, he’d only cast a Tier 2 level spell to blanket their territory. Manifesting the dreamland wall of holy might Dryfu put in his map would take a little more time.

  Quit your whining.

  Yes, boss.

  By the way, if you don’t return tonight, you risk losing the spell Ja Seong was writing when the Venom stopped him.

  Good deal, and I sure hope we don’t have to sleep anywhere else tonight. The trees ahead housed birds with bright green beaks long as steak knives, and probably sharper where they curled to a downward tip, centered between their beady, death stalking eyes. Venom glowed in pure pinpricks at their irises, visible only by Tim’s recent enhancements. He stealthed an Analyze out on a Danger Sense ripple, tossing it out with a hand in his jogging motion and glancing out over the field as he had been. Scanning back and forth in a five count on, two count off, turn to the other side and repeat.

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  Raising a tier 2 spell to a 4 required careful stitching lest he tear the weaker fabric meant to serve as an extra base once he could support the latter in enough strength to lay overtop without it smothering the 2 or contorting like a bad bedsheet to expose unwanted bare spots.

  His jogging training with S’Trace included waves of attacks meant to force him to multitask while maintaining his stamina. In this work, he treated it like when he learned how to breathe from both sides while freestyle swimming. Or front stroke. No surplus of coaches here.

  What are you talking about? I’m trying to calculate and discern how many of the lifeforms you just scanned are worth reporting. Can we just call it at a good thousand of oc’yar birds, and half as many snakes of various species, rodents… plenty to overtake us if your spell fails.

  Swim… Tim flattened his lower abs and kept his hips loose as he coordinated his stride into best practice. I was comparing how I used to perfect my breathing technique, and how the times where my unfamiliar side would see me turn poor form into coughing on water.

  The field was still five or so minutes before he reached the end at this pace. A greater concern at this point was his stamina and the way the big picture could suffocate his efforts. Left is the same as right, only with less practice, so like in swimming, I have to have greater focus on the form, the basics.

  For Protection, it wasn’t left and right as much as building it up while jogging. He had to keep the pace or lose his momentum, without which he’d have no chance at covering the distance. That meant increasing the potency of breathing cultivation mana into the spell channel. Acceptance of the cost to cast was half the battle. His arms trembled a shakiness into the control he bestowed through his hands. The strain of exertion drained his mental acuity to the point of suffocation and bewilderment.

  His poem of the boys and the neighborhood of families that mourned their loss regained life in his soul. This was for them, as much if not more than for him, his brother, the people of this world, and Earth. Everything beyond took on importance, but in Protection, he was the one whose name was called to serve, in this place, in this time, for this people. Desperation bled with the desire to succeed. Astonishment to feel the power rush through him and fortify the field with a uniform grid of green lines he could filter in and out of visibility.

  They reached the end of the field with a tier 4 circle of Protection solidified into their perimeter. He hadn’t meant to push 4 all the way to the woods south of the farm, but the spell took on a wave of momentum when he reached the northern pass, and off it went, as eager to meet up with itself as he was with his friends.

  A steep slope drained down past the cliff and into porous stone with holes as wide as swimming pools. Frahnk’s location was another kilometer ahead. Tim planned to take the escalated walkway through the forest of gnarled trees where oc’yar congregated by the hundreds. The river was dammed by a rerouting wall of dirt forming a pond on the east side of the elevated passage. To the west, a porous riverbed had holes with drop offs in deep intervals between the makeshift staircase of pedestals between this surface and the mine’s belly.

  He didn’t have the strength to cast a wider net of Protection, and these birds, by their patient alignment in the trees outside his powered trap indicated an intelligence for battle too heightened to fall for a strike and retreat strategy.

  The only way through was through, and he was itching to try out his new level of Peel.

  You should recover a bit first. We haven’t talked about what I learned yet; I didn’t want to distract you. Impressive work.

  Good idea. He could barely peel a banana the way his hands were buzzing from his spell and the regen at work beneath his skin. I’m listening. Tim took the opportunity to inspect the well spout and metal bucket by the property fence. Its barb wire was mended in his spell, and now he’d enjoy the fruit of his labor by taking a well-earned break.

  Tim poured water into the bucket for Murphy and Tonda to drink, then his canteen cap for Dryfu and his canteen for himself. The water was cool and earthy, but it’d do in a pinch. Given time, he’d research how to clean the filters between the pond and the well.

  Dryfu extended the cap for a refill from Tim. In the background rows of birds glared from the trees on the other side. Peeling would be a shortsighted solution more likely to get him stranded at the bottom of their pecking pile than far enough through to make it worth the spend.

  “Good news is, I know where your brother is,” Dryfu said and took a drink. “Bad news is I only see one way through the mines to get there, and its off limits according to a year ago and their last scouting report. No one returns. I can’t even tell you what is there.”

  A trail lit on the map, replicating Frahnk’s cave ascent through the vertical shafts staircasing to the mine. From there, it wound through Silo 19’s main floor to a Moon Golem portal within the underground city that could have made Grand Central Station look like a bar mitzvah with an inflatable bounce house. Too soon?

  “It’s big,” Dryfu continued. “Our hope of going around through the borderlands would earn a big fat thumbs down as you hairless monkeys like to say.”

  “Can we take Frahnk and Wilqo and not the chief, or maybe we take him with and leave him there? Did you find anything out about him and Hixel?”

  Dryfu shook his head and looked away in disbelief. “I don’t know what we’re gonna do. Your body is overheating from the Protection spell and jog. Eat a little protein and keep hydrating. Stretch out…” Dryfu gave him the what for like they were in boot camp, then said, “FFA was only a footnote in one of the reports. One of the Resistance around here, Niuq, wrote about them, how he was going into 19 to investigate artisan money and reported leveling chambers hidden in the off-limits access of the abandoned Silo. He didn’t come back or submit another report after the one I read said he was leaving.

  “We have notes of his mission, where he suspected of finding their chambers, and from that map I was able to narrow down the prison where your brother and Gantus are being kept. I’m making an assumption, but it was the only prison tied to Niuq’s research on the FFA.”

  “Fair reasoning. Astute observation,” Tim said, cheerfully, pretending not to notice the birds and their death stares holding steady as the noon sun. “Thank you for your research.”

  Tim let his Danger Sense permeate out from their location, carefully lest the eggs coated by webbing hatch and force his Protection into service. The leth huri hatchlings’ instinct—

  Still won’t be dumb enough to charge once they realize the Protection spell limits.

  Of course… Tim spread out his Danger Sense to the woods and below the holes in the stone. Dryfu’s trail descended into the mine a little past where Frahnk’s group were trapped. Tim could see why as his D.S. revealed an uninterrupted bedding of web hidden under the holes, waiting for someone to fall through and become breakfast for the first batch of live ones to break free.

  Tim didn’t want to test the webs’ strength to hold him down if he fell into it, nor the chain reaction of potentially instigating their birth swarm.

  As a Ranger, he could flee through the woods—undetected if the predators’ levels and skill were below his—and skirt this dry riverbed of stone until he reached Frahnk. The predators trying to get in at that end would be a problem. Peel could work there, potentially.

  Evade loses effectiveness when you flaunt it, such as when you own the astronomically low odds of being unsuspected by over a thousand enemies with Venom aura and an arrogance to wait amass at your doorstep.

  Tim swallowed this advice, then pulled up his stat sheet to remind him of his recent advancements. D.S. spread in a creeping moss progression, his lowest speed, but best for the Permeate blend of the spell. He found it longer lasting, especially when combined with Battleground, to increase his awareness of enemies and allies, of setting and changes he might otherwise have missed with his back turned. There isn’t a lot of time. The distance to Frahnk’s group meant a couple hours at this rate of growth. Considering what he’d sensed at their location, the predators would dig through well before then.

  In his new skills, he felt a tug to exorcise some demons but wasn’t sure how yet. These weren’t ghosts, though they did have Venom as a regenerative aura that would be weak to those skills. His highest skill was Danger Sense, which cost less in areas saturated in void aura/Venom. If he could spread it far enough, it would increase his Fleeing and, in that time, he could craft a few antivenom tinctures. His stomach roiled and fizzing numbness washed over his head, reminding him that he was already pushing it and should lie down.

  He scanned the overgrown weeds as thick as small trees spread across the fields. Foraging showed the wood had a strength he could utilize in arrows. The more flowerful weeds populating by a suffocating network of deep-rooted clover offered ingredients he could use for his tincture. “Master Oke, I’m going to Forage, could you dig up a wall…” measuring this highpoint of their land and its relative rolling but not too tall, with the dome ceiling six or seven stories above him, it wasn’t feasible to make a wall between their field and this forest of birds. He aimed a hand about six feet high and pointed past the fence. “What do you think of on the other side of the fence, digging from the softer soil and if there’s enough stacking it high enough to give us a wall of defense from land dwellers and air.”

  “You planning to draw them in?” Oke asked, already walking toward the fence in agreement.

  “I don’t think they’re dumb enough to send all of them, but I’d like a few to try.” His plan of blending Ranger with Exorcist would increase effectiveness to skills like Hunting that he could use to get a few birds off the top. Then Soul Skin to see what they’re made of and make a new garment for his run, one to scare them off a little to increase his odds.