“Next question, what is the weirdest monster you’ve ever seen? Follow-up, did you kill it?

  "Oh, that’s a tough one! Let’s see, there was one time down at the beach when I was, shit, I think Tier 3? Yeah, that’s right – it was a party for a teammate of mine who’d just hit Tier 3. We were young and dumb, well, we were definitely dumb (laughs), and we thought we’d go get shitfaced on the beach. So, there we are, all drunk off of our asses – shoutout to my buddies over at BMF! – and this gigantic thing comes ambling up out of the waves.

  "I Identified it, and I shit you not, the System told me it was a toxic hippocephalosaurus. To this day I don’t have a fucking clue what that means, but it was about the size of a saloon, with scales and tentacles all over. When our Mage dropped a Lightning Bolt on it all of them tentacles were shocked stiff for a moment – looked absolutely ridiculous. We started cracking up laughing, and that’s when the fucker unleashed a poison breath attack. My buddy’s Tier 1 girlfriend and a couple others never made it out of the cloud. The rest of us ran like drunken rabbits.

  "Moral of the story is, stay the fuck away from the beach until you’re at least Tier 3!" (both laugh)

  "I’m afraid that’s all the time we have today, Mr. Two-step! Thank you so much for this exclusive interview! Now, back to the tunes – up next, in the spirit of the Guild, we’ve got !"

  - DJ Demophon Kerner, with guest Two-step on K-RAD LA, April 2nd, System Year 453

  What in the Wastes, is he serious?! We are going to eat one of those things?

  “PAST, are those things safe to eat?”

  [Information unavailable, Citizen Ashley! When in doubt, always trust your superior officers!]

  Elin looked like I felt, but Raylan and Zaire seemed resigned to our fates. Shoulders slumped, I trudged off after them back to the cave. I looked at the closet body. Identify.

  Corpse: Spiderwolf

  Level: 2

  I tried another one out of curiosity and got the same result, then the big one.

  Corpse: Alpha Spiderwolf

  Level: 4

  Ugh, I think wolf-spider sounds better. Actually, they both sound awful because they are awful!

  “If you’ve got gloves, put them on. You can use mana to clean your armor afterwards,” Raylan told me.

  I nodded and removed my pack from my Inventory. Embarrassingly, it took several tries – the act of pulling something out of Inventory requiring real concentration. I’d been told about this before, but it was my first time experiencing it.

  It took two of us to remove each of the smaller spiderwolves from the cave. We had to each stand on one side of the body, then grab it around the base of a couple of the long, hairy legs jutting from each side. The long legs dragged on the ground behind us as we moved the corpses. I worked with Zaire, carrying the disgusting bodies one at a time to the spot Mason had indicated.

  Raylan selected one of them, apparently at random, to be cooked, setting that one aside. It took all four of us working together to get the alpha off the ground. We ended up each standing between a pair of the legs, holding one in each hand near the body. I had to keep kicking the dangling legs out of the way so I didn’t trip over them. Once we’d finished, I immediately channeled mana into my armor, sighing in relief as all of the… gunk… on me fell free onto the dirt.

  I walked several long steps away from the pile before taking out one of my canteens and guzzling the remaining water in it. Mason strode up to us as I finished, and I marveled at his agility on his strange, corrupted legs.

  “Az, you’re with me. The rest of you, help Block get the last spiderwolf prepared and on a fire, get the camp set, then training as usual.”

  I was… very glad that I didn’t have to help – or watch – the cleaning and cooking process, but I was also a bit nervous at being singled out by Mason. I’m kind of mad at him, but I’m sure he was right about everything he told us earlier. We really didn’t have a fully developed plan when we attacked… It was my first cave assault, Waste it!

  As I walked behind Mason away from the cave, Vale passed me heading towards the bodies. A moment later, I felt a wave of heat behind me, and when I turned to look, the entire pile of spiderwolves was on fire. I swallowed.

  The gap in power between us is huge, and she’s ‘only’ Tier 2… And Hassan demolished the alpha with one shot. I can’t wait to get some more Levels… Speaking of Levels, I haven’t Identified Mason yet!

  Name: Mason

  Class: Swordmaster

  Tier: 4

  Shiiit, he really is powerful! I’m pretty sure I’ve never even seen a Tier 4 before him. The captain of Sunland’s Guard is barely Tier 3… What in the Wastes is he doing out here recruiting kids into the Delver’s Guild?! And now he’s going to be training me?

  I almost tripped over a non-existent rock. Mason turned around, read the nervousness on my face, and sighed.

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  “Get over it kid, I’m not going to bite your head off.”

  “But… what is a Tier 4 doing out here escorting brats like us around?” I blurted out my question without thinking.

  Mason bared his teeth in a vicious grin.

  “I have a tendency to speak up when something needs to be said. There’s something you should understand about power, Az. Imagine you’re trying to climb the Remnant, and you’ve made it up ten floors. If you looked out of a window you’d probably feel like you’d come a long way. That’s what goes through a person’s mind when they think about how badass they are, just because they’re a few floors up. Those people can only see the view down from the window. They think how far they’ve come is all that matters.

  “If you want to stay alive, imagine looking at yourself from outside the Remnant. Three floors up or thirty, you’re still just at the bottom of that monstrosity. There’s always a bigger badass out there. Keep that in mind and you’ll keep your ego from getting you killed someday. Now, enough rambling, let’s get to work. Stand here.”

  He pointed at the ground, then moved about five yards away. He turned and looked at me, and then spoke in a completely calm voice.

  “Shoot me.”

  “Um, what?!” I asked in confusion.

  “Shoot. Me. I want to know exactly how much damage you’re doing.”

  Hesitantly, I summoned my gun, pausing once it was in my hands. I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to hurt Mason, but it didn’t feel that way. Sure, I was used to sparring with things like a blunted training sword, but my shotgun was way more dangerous.

  I recalled a day when, after school, the guard who’d been stuck training us that week had challenged the kids to see who could break his barrier with the fewest strikes. It had taken the biggest, strongest boy in our class more than a dozen full-on two-handed swings with a training sword to break his barrier. If I remembered right, the guard wasn’t even Tier 2.

  Shit, is Mason so far ahead of me that he can just eat shotgun blasts that easily?

  I gathered myself, aimed at Mason’s chest, and fired. My gun kicked back against my shoulder as the boom from the shot rang out. I saw a shimmer over his chest, but Mason didn’t even grunt. He just nodded and spoke in the same even tone.

  “About what I expected. Now, use Force and try it again.”

  I complied, hoping that this time it would have at least some effect. It did not.

  “Hassan was right. Damage was the same, but there was an added push. Now, let’s try out your new ammo.”

  I’d never refilled my bandolier after the fight, so I had plenty of open spaces. Like when I’d pushed mana into my armor earlier after adding the thermal mod, I now felt two pathways in the bandolier. Trying the new one, I could tell that it was responding faster and using less mana for each shell. I stopped after forming three new shells and took one out to examine it.

  It was the same size and weight as my normal ammunition, but instead of a red plastic, these new shells had a lighter orange color. At least I’d be able to tell them apart if I had both kinds in my bandolier together. I ejected my last normal shell and loaded the three new BB ones. I fired at Mason again. As far as I could tell, the sound and recoil were the same as before.

  Mason grunted, though it wasn’t from being shot. “Damage was definitely a bit lower, though it felt like the Force was the same, maybe a bit more spread out.”

  “Shit, how many shots would it take to get through your barrier?” I asked.

  “Kid, you’d probably run out of mana first.”

  I gaped at him, and he just laughed.

  “There’s no way you have like, a thousand points in Barrier!” I objected, picking a huge number at random.

  “A thousand? I doubt there’s anyone in LA that has that much. You’re forgetting that every point in Endurance makes both your body and your barrier tougher against non-magical damage. Just like points in Barrier make you more resilient to magical damage and effects, even after your barrier goes down. So, the fact that you can barely scratch my barrier means nothing considering the Level and Stats difference.”

  “OK, then now what?”

  “Next, I want you to test out different infusions. So far I’ve heard you mention using Light, Ignite, and Force. What other Cantrips do you know?”

  “I mean, the same ones as everyone else. Just Conjure Water and Create Bread. Why, are there more?”

  “There definitely are, but most of them aren’t very useful. Try infusing your gun with Conjure Water, then shoot that rock over there.”

  BoomBOOM! click-click

  I heard the weird double-shot sound again. This time I realized that it sounded almost like the echo was bouncing off the target, even louder than the actual shot. I Inspected my weapon, concentrating on re-reading the effects of the Level 2 mod.

  Sonic Capacitor – stores a portion of the sound generated by each shot. On the sixth shot, the stored sonic energy is released with impact.

  I think I’ve got this figured out now! On that sixth shot it makes a sound just like my gunshot erupt from wherever I hit. And it’s as loud as my gun was originally, which is why the ‘echo’ now sounds louder than the actual shot. Oh yeah, and the boulder is now wet.

  Curious, I approached my target, which was about ten yards away. There was a splash pattern on it nearly two feet wide, like a bunch of tiny balls of water had hit it in a roughly circular shape. The water was now making rivulets down the dirty surface of the rock. I could also see the places where the shot itself had hit, tiny circles blasted clean of dirt.

  “Interesting,” commented Mason from right behind me. I definitely didn’t jump in surprise. “What was the description on that new ammo of yours?”

  I read it out to him. “Alternate Ammo: BB x 71, 1325 fps. So, 71 small pellets at 1325 feet per second.”

  “Conjure Water makes 8 ounces of water. I’m guessing that each of those pellets popped out about a tenth of an ounce of water on impact.”

  “Is that good for something?” I asked in a hopeful tone.

  “Yeah, it illustrates the way your infusion works with your ammo,” he replied seriously. “Try it again with your original ammo, from the same distance.”

  I loaded a shell and walked back to where I’d fired from, then shot a bit to the side of my first shot. This time, I noticed that the impact covered a smaller area, but the total amount of water seemed to be about the same. Looking closely, I could also see that the bigger pellets had made deeper gouges in the rock. Then I tried two more shots, one of each type, using the choke mod in the ‘full choke’ setting. Each of the new patterns was about half the width of the initial shots using the ‘open choke’.

  “Good,” Mason told me, “how’s your mana?”

  “I’m down to about a third,” I replied.

  “All right. Normally you won’t be training in the wild like this, and even if you did – say, you just found a new mod or got a new Skill that you want to practice with right away – you’d still want to stay over 50% on your mana in case of an attack. Under these circumstances though, it’s safe to go lower. Are you ready to wrap it up for now?”

  A wild thought occurred to me. “But, there’s still one Cantrip I haven’t tried!”