The following day, as we made our way toward the next Dungeon on our hitlist, I reviewed everyone else’s leveling progress using the [Soulfire Monitor]. Most of the results were nothing special, with all of us going up at least three levels, and Mindy and Gabby both actually ending up at level thirty-one. The [Whispering Woods] was a font of XP for Gabby and she took full advantage of it to power level herself, which I rewarded her for by granting her an additional one percent of the take from our eventual sale of anything we didn’t need in Sunhome. On the other hand, Raiju’s results surprised me. She was still level locked with me, meaning she jumped four levels as well.

  When I brought it up to her at lunch that first day, she preened. “Our bond is stronger than ever.” She shot a totally unnecessary glare over at Mindy and Gabby before turning back to smile at me. “We’ll be the same level forever.” Her tail drooped. “Is that OK?”

  Her ears made to match her tail and I just had to pull her in for a hug. “Of course it’s fine, I was just surprised. I’ve never heard of two people being level locked before.”

  From my back, I felt it as Jaegan woke up. Notably, when he spoke it was out loud instead of my head like I expected. “Actually, it’s not uncommon in Miratania, all married pairs there bond their levels once they match up. The downside is if one of them dies, the other loses half their levels, but most people there agree the benefits outweigh that single, admittedly drastic, downside.”

  “Jaegan!” I whirled around with Raiju held in my arms still. “How are you feeling?”

  Sensing a long conversation on its way, Raiju wriggled free and padded over to get another plate of sausage. She shared a look with Ylsa, who nodded and waved her over to sit next to the Goliath.

  Jaegan’s laugh echoed out from the staff. “Just now, actually, though I’ve been aware for the past few weeks after going dark on the top of the Tower.” The staff rumbled in its holder before settling. “I’m not quite strong enough to lift my staff yet, but our lady said that was just a matter of time. I can’t wait to be able to move on my own again.” He softened his tone. “Though you’ve done a great job so far as my wielder, I’m not used to being so…constrained. I’ll leave you to handle that kind of thing in combat though, I’m all yours there.”

  I blinked a few times, letting everything he’d just dumped on me at once sink in. My mouth opened and closed a few times before I was finally able to form halting words, much to everyone’s benefit, as they laughed at my reaction.

  “Don’t worry, lad.” My mentor saved me from horrific embarrassment, though he was just a bit late. “I’ll be with you as long as you’ll have me. It’s not like there’s anyone better suited to bear my staff in that gang of ungrateful assholes in Verdant.” We spent a bit of time catching up, mostly how I felt about everything since the Tower before I pulled his staff around and leaned it against the log I was sitting on.

  Everyone, including Glyph, started asking him questions for the rest of lunch, plus a half hour more that Ylsa, surprisingly, didn’t begrudge us. Then again, Jaegan was her friend long before she met me, so losing him was probably even harder on her than it was on me.

  ***

  Two weeks later, our little band of adventurers finally exited the massive forest no one but Glyph and Gabby knew the actual name of, it was called [The Elderwood] if you’d believe it. Then again, even the shortest trees in there had been larger than the tallest trees I’d seen that weren’t magically augmented, so maybe there was something to the name.

  [The Elderwood] ended abruptly, like a tremendously huge chef had cut a clean line denoting where it was allowed to spread. From my vantage point high in the last tree before the cutoff, I was able to make out gentle hills that led all the way up to a mountain range I could just barely see without enhancing my vision. Next to me, Volta and Raiju confirmed what I was seeing and I tagged our destination on their map so they could gauge the best path from up there as I lowered myself down to the ground.

  “Who feels like cheating a bit?” I laughed when I saw the visceral look of disgust on Ylsa’s face. “I’m not talking about anything gross, I was referring to our plan to ‘walk’ the whole way to Sunhome. I don’t know about you three,” I gestured around at Ylsa, Gabby, and Mindy before pointing at my short legs, “but I’m not exactly built for running up and down hills all day.”

  “What’s the alternative?” Mindy frowned and cocked her head to the side the same way Raiju sometimes did, it was strange to see what affectations would transfer in a group as tight-knit as ours. “Are we going to use your [Elemental Surge] to get there? It’d definitely be faster, but then Galloway wouldn…”

  “Nope, we’d be riding this bad boy.” With a thought, the [Cloud Carpet] appeared in my hands. While it’d been heavy with my pitiful [Might] when I left Wyrm’s Rest, now I could heft it with just a single finger. “It was a gift from Mom and Dad when I left home and no, I can’t tell you where home is even though you’re all my vassals. It’s not exactly fast unless it’s being tugged along, but that’s kind of perfect if you ask me. We get the experience of traveling on foot without the shitty part of having to schlep up and down hills all day. Same with swamps, which I’m sure are on our path somewhere, even if they’re not on the map.”

  From my shoulder, Glyph snorted. “Two swamps, actually, one just a bit north of the next Dungeon and another west of it, both of which we’ll need to cross through to make it to Sunhome before your six month deadline is up.

  I held up a finger and tutted it at him. “Our six month deadline.”

  “Right.” He huffed like the teenager he was. “Our deadline. “He muttered under his breath. “Strange mortals. Can’t even fly under their own power.”

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  Letting that go, I gauged the ladies’ reactions to the idea of using the carpet and was surprised to find both Ylsa and Mindy were on the fence while Gabby was all for it. The former administrator of Chalcedony moved over to join Glyph and I with a nod of solidarity while the other pair whispered back and forth like schoolgirls, not that I’d ever really spent any time with schoolgirls but I heard that was how they acted.

  Nearly ten minutes later, Mindy and Ylsa finished talking and walked over to join Volta, Raiju, Gabby, Glyph, and I where we were sitting around the edge of the [Cloud Carpet] since it wasn’t exactly big enough for all of us to sit in the middle of it.

  “We agree, with three conditions.” Ylsa put her fists on her hips and I knew she meant business, the only times I’d ever seen her like that were when she was disappointed in me so I was suddenly wary of what she was going to say. “Condition number one, which is non-negotiable, is that we fly no more than a hundred feet over the ground and if we see a monster within a thousand feet of the carpet we land and kill it.”

  Looking around at everyone seated with me, who had all already agreed to use the carpet moving forward, I found all of them nodding in agreement. I turned to her and nodded. “That sounds agreeable. What’s next?”

  Mindy strode forward and stroked the carpet. “Our travel pace is limited to the slowest jogging pace of anyone in the party. Right now, that’s me with sixty-three [Agility] and twenty-nine [Might], those add up to a rough jogging speed of twelve miles an hour.”

  Before trying to do the math myself, I looked up to Glyph who messaged me to let me know we’d have more than a month of flex time at that rate of speed, assuming all Dungeons took the same amount of time. I turned back to the pair of dissenters. “That works for us. One more stipulation, what is it?”

  Ylsa walked over and laid a hand on Mindy’s shoulder. “We need to make a detour, over the mountain… to Ironhold.” She smirked when I gasped. “We need to gather allies and what better place is there to do that than the home of your forefathers, Artie?”

  Looking up at Glyph to hide my blushing face, he let me know we’d still have three days left if we took four days in Ironhold to gather support. Surprisingly, he didn’t give me any shit about being embarrassed of my heritage, which I appreciated.

  I sighed and looked back at the pair. “Agreed, now get on the carpet so we can get a move on. Your little detour is going to cost us a week, all tolled, so we don’t have time to dally about.”

  A couple of minutes, and one game of chance later, we were all seated on the carpet with an exultant Gabby sitting next to me on the front edge while Raiju sat at the rear of the carpet with bared teeth as she snarled at the world behind us. They both wanted to sit up front on the carpet, but it wasn’t big enough for three so, trying not to show favoritism to Raiju, I had them draw straws for position and told them we’d all rotate around on the carpet each morning to keep it fair.

  That first day traveling through the hills was awful, with Gabby vamping about how amazing the view was up front, Ylsa and Volta doing their best to cheer Raiju up, and absolutely nothing interesting to look at besides the mountains in the distance. Now, most people would love to check out a mountain vista, but I grew up in the mountains and wasn’t nearly as pleased to be returning to a view of endless fields of stone.

  It wasn’t until our fourth day traveling over the hills that we even saw our first monsters and it was a group of measly [Rushrats] according to [Essence Reading]. As I looked on, more and more of them poured out of their den as they rushed off to the north at a good clip.

  [Rushrat - Rank D Horde Monster

  Level: 25

  Vulnerabilities: Water]

  [Rushrats are small, furry creatures with sharp teeth and claws. They are weak individually, but they are incredibly dangerous in large numbers. Rushrats are highly social, if xenophobic, creatures and live in large colonies. They are known to attack in overwhelming numbers, swarming their prey and overwhelming them with their sheer numbers. Despite their name, not known for their speed, instead it refers to their disregard for their own safety in favor of defending the colony.]

  “Can we at least follow them to see if they’re going after something in a huge group like that?” I cocked an eyebrow at Ylsa and Mindy where they sat behind me and to my right on the carpet. “I promise we’ll wipe them out, but I want to know what would get them all moving at once. It might be something worth our time…”

  With a shared nod between the two of them, Ylsa turned back and nodded to me. “We can chase them for an hour–as it’s technically on our way, just a bit off–but we have to kill them after.”

  “Works for me.”

  I deftly steered the carpet to fly in parallel to the rodents a thousand feet to the south of the veritable swarm of [Rushrats] as they thundered up and down the hills like a flood. There had to have a hundred of them when I first spotted them, but when I asked everyone else with me to count them along with me, I was surprised to find [Spatial Awareness] and the Party Interface had already beat them to it when a window popped up in the corner of everyone’s vision.

  [Current Target: Rushrat Horde

  Remaining: 587/592]

  ‘Is everyone seeing that counter?’ I messaged everyone through the Party chat.

  Looking around, I saw everyone nodding with wide eyes. Reason being, we all knew horde monsters were worth less XP than regular monsters, but even at a three to one ratio, that was still a ton of experience waiting to be gathered in addition to whatever materials they might have on them.

  ‘Are we sure I can’t just hunt them?’ Raiju’s right leg and tail were both hammering against the surface of the carpet to my left. ‘They look like they’re going to be delicious.’ She licked her lips, exposing her enlarged canines.

  I laid a hand on her leg and it froze in place. ‘Just wait, maybe they’re rushing toward something even more delicious.’

  She looked at me hard, as if searching to see if I was bullshitting her, but eventually sighed. ‘One hour, then I hunt.’

  ‘I kind of wanted to see how many of them I can get with [Resonant Bolt] if they stay grouped up like that, to be honest.’

  ‘Be careful with that Skill,’ Jaegan intoned. ‘It is far more destructive than it appears on the surface. From what I can tell, it grows exponentially in strength per target. The fifteen [Imps] you hit before the [Succubus] would be like a bit of static electricity compared to the detonation that would occur if you were to let [Resonant Bolt] loose on that horde and fail to guide it away from hitting each of the [Rushrats].’

  He sent us all an image of a crater dozens of miles in width as seen from thousands of feet up and while I was borderline excited, Mindy was terrified.

  “No!” She yelled as she crawled over from the back of the carpet. “You are not going to let that happen!”

  ‘Why not?’ I shrugged and messaged her back, not wanting to shout above the sound of the rushing wind around us. ‘With my Path and Jaegan’s staff, there’s no risk to any of us. Plus, thi–’

  She slapped me with eyes wide. “What if there’s a village ten miles away?! You’d destroy it and never know it existed!”

  “Oh…”