Floating on my [Cloud Carpet] below the massive boughs of the [Celestial Oak], I finally had some space to myself. While I loved hanging out with my new friends–I’d grown up with a lot of time to myself outside of training and vacation–an hour or so floating far above their heads in the evening was just what the healer ordered for me to organize my thoughts.

  As I lay there, just enjoying the sound of birds and insects, I was reminded of the calm of Bhoomi the [Dao], which further reminded me of the final gift he’d given me. A few minutes of digging through my–admittedly messy–spatial ring later, I found the only thing I didn’t recognize was a small brown leather bag. Pulling it out, I felt a few gems clinking around inside. [Essence Reading] decided to activate at that moment and my eyes widened at the kingly gift I’d been given.

  “Bhoomi, this is too much…”

  [Bag of Earth Elementals - Legendary

  Uses - 7

  Description - This small Veinripper leather bag was once owned by Bhoomi, lieutenant in the Earth Monarch’s guard. Objects placed within it are immune to damage as long as the drawstring is pulled. Currently, it contains the heart gems of seven level 100+ Earth Elementals who will serve the Elemental Pactmaster loyally for one week each once they’ve been invoked. This service can be extended, but will require a discussion with the Earth Monarch directly to do so.]

  Peeking into the bag, I found the seven heart gems and all of them looked like they were different precious stones. The flawless gems all rattled around together, ruby, emerald, sapphire, diamond, opal, alexandrite, and onyx all reflected a core light I found absolutely entrancing. I think I sat there for nearly ten minutes, just looking at the gemstones before I realized what I was doing and cinched the bag up once more.

  “Part of me thinks these are excessive and another part worries I’m going to end up needing their firepower sooner rather than later.”

  I laid back with the bag on my chest for another hour before I felt someone land behind me on the carpet. Since [Spatial Awareness] wasn’t freaking out, I knew it was one of my Party members or Uncle Galloway.

  “Am I needed below?” I muttered as I scrunched my eyes shut. “I was really enjoying–”

  Something warm pressed against my side, silencing me, but the person didn’t say anything as they got comfortable next to me. We lay there for hours and I didn’t open my eyes once, but at a certain point my nose finally clued me in. Raiju had flown up to join me and we were lying next to each other on the carpet. I considered lowering the carpet down to the trunk below so we could rest indoors for the night, but decided against it in the end as I enjoyed the companionable silence.

  ***

  We drifted off to sleep at some point and when I woke up, I found us curled up together with me as the little spoon. My initial reaction was to panic, but I fought it down after a few seconds.

  That was long enough to wake her up though and she sprang off the carpet like I’d bitten her. She bowed low as she hovered next to me. “I’m so sorr–”

  “Don’t worry about it.” I shot her a soft smile. “I always sleep better when someone else is around anyway.” I stood up and started stretching as she watched me curiously. “It’s about time for us to go down and finish our preparations to leave. Are you ready?”

  “I guess?” She shrugged. “I don’t really know what kind of preparations I should have in this body. I’m used to just going when the time was right.”

  With a thought, the [Cloud Carpet] began to lower down slowly toward the residence and Raiju padded through the air alongside it.

  “I’d recommend talking to Gabby about what you need to pack.” I passed her a spatial ring from the bag of them I had at my hip. “Put anything you need in there, Gabby will teach you how to use it.”

  She slipped it on with a small smile before quickly quashing it. “OK, I will. She’s down in the orchard with Galloway.” Her lupine ears twitched. “They’re talking about how her family could modify the plant food they’re using to help deal with the drought around Sunhome right now.”

  The corner of my mouth twitched up. “Sounds like him. I bet she told him how her family’s struggling and how they’ve had trees withering up the past few years. There’s no way he could let that stand, he looks at trees like most people would their favorite kind of animal. I guess it goes with him being a Dryad, but still, he’s a bit of a tree health zealot.”

  She brushed her radiant silver hair behind her elvish ears and I was momentarily entranced as it fluttered in the wind as we neared the balcony attached to Ylsa’s room.

  “What’s your favorite kind of animal?”

  I almost immediately blurted out ‘wolf’ but caught myself at the last second. Instead of answering right away, I thought about it until we landed on Ylsa’s balcony. Inside, she was going through some sort of boxing routine as she darted around the room, punching the air like it owed her money. When she eventually spotted us through the windows in the door, she nodded for us to come in as she finished up her routine.

  “[Celestial Tigers] probably, given recent events.” I reached for the handle and pulled the door open with a quick glance at her. Her ears and tail were both drooping and I kind of felt bad for a moment before delivering the cheesiest line I’d ever even thought of to that point. “My favorite species of magical beast went extinct yesterday, so I had to pick a new favorite and I met one of those when I was a kid and it was pretty cool. Not as amazing as my old favorite, but pretty cool.”

  She didn’t seem to get it at first and it wasn’t until I saw Ylsa whispering in her ear later that I saw her blush all the way to the tip of her elvish ears. She made to storm toward me where I stood counting barrels of trail rations, but the goliath stopped her with a hand. Another moment of whispering later, she started grinning and walked away with her tail wagging like crazy.

  If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  Ylsa shook her head as she walked over and jabbed me in the shoulder. She might have thought it was playful, but my arm went dead and it hurt like hell.

  Before I could even get mad at her, she leveled a glare at me so intense that I forgot about my arm entirely. “If you break her heart, I’ll make sure you regret it.” She spun around her on her heel and went back to picking through the supplies left behind by the cultists.

  The System was great at identifying the condition of magic items, but it wasn’t nearly as good at the same with mundane goods. It could identify if something was totally ruined, but not if it was just smelly as hell and almost unusable due to being riddled with bug carcasses. Gabby had dumped the entire lot out in a storehouse at the foot of the [Celestial Oak] and Ylsa and I were tasked with going through it before we could leave while Volta checked out the weapons and armor. We were getting close to finishing, with only a few barrels of food left to check and the bedding on Ylsa’s side.

  My bet was that most, if not all, of the bedding was trash, but the food was surprisingly not terrible. Flavorless? Yes. Spoiled? No. I had a few tricks I could use to liven up what we had, but I would definitely be making time to hunt and forage as we traveled because the thought of having to cook bricks of dehydrated bean and chicken paste made my stomach turn.

  Just before noon, I stood next to a cooling stone patio, where I’d incinerated the entire pile of bedding and a couple small bags of meat [Essence Reading] informed me I wouldn’t enjoy eating as I wasn’t a cannibal. Flicking my hands to get the proverbial ick off them, I walked around to find Gabby with a checklist pulled up in front of her.

  She glanced up from the list when she heard me approaching. “Done burning the trash?”

  I nodded. “I gathered the ash into a small pile in case Uncle Galloway has a use for it.”

  The man appeared behind me, making me jump. He grinned. “I’ll put it to good use. The area over by those [Consuming Colossi] is in need of some fertilizer and I can use that as part of it.” He waved over at that area. “Are you sure you want to take those things with you? They’ll eat up most of your dimensional storage…”

  “That won’t be a problem.” I waved over to where Ylsa was hefting a four foot trunk onto her shoulders. “[Dimensional Trunk]. It’s big enough to hold everything in this grove that isn’t alive and then some. It was inside one of the damn Colossi, if you believe that. Tons of armor plates in there too, in case we wanted to use them for some reason. We put the [Holy Forge] and [Arcforge] from that area in there too. If we manage to recruit a smith of some kind along the way they’ll have everything they need to get started.”

  He put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “While I would have had them destroyed before joining you and The Dominion, I understand why you didn’t. I just hope you can find a good use for those infernal things.” His face was a mask of horror as he remembered the carnage one of the [Consuming Colossi] had wrought to the tree population a few miles north of the grove. He’d utterly demolished that unit, but we still had the others from the depot in storage.

  Gabby coughed and I turned around to find her ticking off ‘burn the refuse’ on her checklist. She motioned to the last thing on her list as she locked eyes with me. “Just one thing to do, boss.”

  I groaned. “Call me Artie, or I’ll go back to calling you Gabrielle.”

  She fluttered her eyelashes at me before sighing. “Fine, Arrrrrtie.” She dragged the word out. “The last thing to do is finalize our planned path of travel. Have you reviewed the map with Galloway?” She looked up at him with a gaze I suspected was supposed to be seductive, but I ignored it in favor of pulling up the map.

  I traced a finger from the newly renamed Dominus’ Grove toward the nearest Dungeon, nearly three hundred miles away to the west. “First up is the [Whispering Woods] Dungeon in the heart of this forest.” I trailed a finger even farther west and a bit to the south. “[Ironheart Caverns] is next, it’s in the foothills of the Verdant Peaks and supposedly themed around magnetism.” Even farther to the west, in the vast plains unclaimed by any nation referred to only as ‘The Wastes’ I stopped my finger. “[Raleigh’s Sunken Temple] is in the ruins of the capital that once controlled the area around it. Uncle Galloway,” I looked over at him and he nodded, “said that he hasn’t heard of anyone even going into it for some reason in the last few hundred years, so we’ll be investigating why it hasn’t unleashed a Dungeon Break in that time at the same time.”

  Everyone around me nodded, so I moved on to the last and, to me, most interesting Dungeon only a few days outside Sunhome. “Finally, we have [Skyborn Citadel]. It’s on top of a mountain peak in the Sunrise Mountains and, supposedly, it’s never been cleared.” I scoffed. “Not sure how that’s possible with how close it is to Sunhome, but whatever. I want to check it out.”

  Raiju padded up on my left wearing her fur coat over her shoulders like a cape, ignoring the arms entirely. I felt a few butterflies in my stomach, but did my best to hide it.

  How do people deal with these feelings all the time? I’ve only had them for a day and I’m already getting tired of hiding them. Am I weird, or does it just take practice?

  Something told me it was the latter, so I didn’t let it bother me too much.

  “If that’s it,” I glanced around and found everyone was present. “It’s time we set off.”

  I turned around and hugged Uncle Galloway. “We’ll see you in six months, OK?”

  He patted my back before ruffling my hair…like he always did. “It won’t feel so long with those Dungeons to occupy you.” He stepped back and nodded as he looked my party over. “Lacking a real healer, but otherwise…”

  “Um, where am I?” From the doorway to Uncle Galloway’s home Mindy walked out holding her head. “I just woke up inside a tree and I’m looking for my…” Her eyes locked on me and she fell to her knees, clutching her head. “Artie, what’s wrong with me? Where’s Marie?”

  Ylsa, Gabby, and Uncle Galloway looked at me with wide eyes. They were leaving it up to me. Volta just looked between the two of us with a spark of interest in her eyes.

  “Your sister left me a letter…” I began as I started walking over to her.

  I guess we have a healer after all. I chuckled as [Essence Reading] told me she’d adapted to her new Class.

  [Name: Melinda “Mindy” Emberstone

  Race: Tiefling

  Class: Oceanus - Legendary - Rank A

  Level: 27

  Emotional Status: Confused/Excited]

  [Oceanus are Legendary healers who draw upon the primordial power of the ocean. They wield water magic not merely to manipulate the element, but to harness its life-giving force. They can summon healing waters from the depths, cleanse the body of impurities, and guide the flow of life energy within a patient to mend even the most grievous wounds.

  Beyond healing individuals, Oceanus possess a deep reverence for the ocean and all its creatures. They strive to protect the delicate balance of the marine ecosystem, using their powers to heal wounded creatures, cleanse polluted waters, and restore harmony to the underwater world. Their unique abilities include potent healing waves, soothing embraces of water, and the power to revive those on the brink of death.]