Three months passes in a blur. I increase my Thaum-share for hunts. Yulia isn’t taking her share, so I’m getting it. That was part of the negotiations with Rick. With monsters being harder, but taking more folks to kill them, we’re going out in parties of six or eight. Also, with the full tom-thaum blast, folks rest less. Going from fifteen hours a day down to five was great. Going from five down to one was even better. Basically it’s an extra two hunting days a week.

That said, the critters are tougher and meaner, and drop more thaums. Ten a day per person is about normal, and I’m getting thirty percent. Over three months, I clear another six yellows.

I go hunting a lot too, mostly because I’m one of the best spotters around. Critters just don’t sneak up on me. Also, because monsters aren’t friendly. Every damn one of them tries to kill you, preemptively. The pacifism that I apply to animals and even to dinosaurs simply doesn’t apply to monsters. Monsters want to eat me, and kill me even if it doesn’t eat me. I’ll happily fight against bloodthirsty beasts that go hunting for me. I'll even clear the area of them. I just don’t want to hunt the ones who want to live peacefully.

Overall, the easiest things to fight for me have been the flying critters. There’s a lot of them: manticores, hippogriffs, gryphons, rocs, wyvverns, and even weird birds with deer heads and scary teeth that someone called perytons. Except for the manticores, none of them can shoot from far away. Things they learned: it’s hella tough to fly when someone hits you with a disorienting wall of sound or a saserface. I’ve knocked a lot of them out of the sky. Then they discover that gravity is a bitch.

I can’t handle a peryton by myself. Can’t hurt the damn thing with my sticks, and can’t kill it with sound. But when I have a team with me, or especially if I have a beautiful and deadly xiphomancer, they’re just fucked. One more stun; one more slice; one less monster.

Hydras are my least favorite. Either bring fire or go home. Preferably, you run home and get fire. Not only are they big, poisonous, and regenerating, but they’re also mean, and will chase anyone who can't thoroughly outrun them.

My favorite critter overall to go up against, though, were the giant spiders. Why? Because Tay is a badass. Entomancy works on spiders. Even very large ones. It takes a little work, but the six-foot arachnids are soon lined up, not too close to town, spinning silk for us. The silk they spin is even better than the stuff that Tay had been able to find from the little ones.

She talks about bugs almost as much as Alec talked about anything. It’s hard to get her to talk about anything else though. She eventually figured out that her spiders could make bulletproof clothes. Something, something gigapascals for earth spiders. Something, something, bigger gigapascals for these giant spiders. I don’t even know what a gigap is. But she knows I’m headed out on the road, and I buy three sets of long-underwear-looking silks from her for a hundred oranges. When she delivers them, she’d already talked with Tanya, and dyed them black with charcoal. Again, there’s some nonsense about what sticks to what, but I have a set of bulletproof black long johns and an under-helmet that are at least as strong as my monkey-leather.

At the end of three months, everyone knows how to fight the monsters and there’s none threatening the town. I’ve fulfilled my part of the deal.

My talk with Rick went pretty well. He has a balanced build; that’s what we’re calling our magic improvements with this world. He’s a little better at everything now than he was. He’s not super-strong or fast, or tough, or balanced or sensing, but he’s a bit better at all of it.

He paid his debt with two things he taught me. Apparently in 2043, one of the semi-legal biohacker crazies down in San Austonio found foolproof audio lie detection. It got even less legal pretty quickly, but apparently not all the criminals were quite so dismissive of lie detection as the justice department, and the entire underworld used it for the last fifteen years or so. Rick says it was only used to encourage loyalty, and I’m pretty sure I don’t want to hear the real story.

Anyhow, it takes somewhat better-than-human auditory ranges, but you can listen to someone and tell if they’re lying. That took an hour a day of practice for two weeks to learn to listen for the combined undertones, but I got it. I can’t be lied to any longer. I can even hear when Rick is shading the truth, and it's not every time his lips are moving. Lie detection via hearing is pretty weird, but I guess it makes sense.

The other thing that Rick teaches me is about intelligence. He used a lot of words. I remember “pattern recognition”, “fluid”, “crystals”, “IQ”, “attention”, "system 2", and “patience”. Apparently all of those have something to do with intelligence. However, apparently one can fake being smart pretty well by just thinking faster. Rick shows me how to use my speed mentally, and not just physically.

That doesn’t let me make better decisions when I have a week to think about it, really. Who thinks hard for eight weeks? But it means that when I have a quarter second to make a decision, and a normal person would have to react instantly, I can treat it like they treat a two second decision. If they had eight seconds before they had to act, I get a full minute of subjective thinking time. That’s huge. It’ll take practice to get good at that. It’s already taken me more time than the three months we spent clearing monsters, and I'm nowhere near good at it.

With his honestly helpful teachings, Rick and I are quits, even though it cost the fucker nothing but shared information. I'd wanted him to feel the pain.

With the monster threat handled, new skills learned, and Rick and I even, there’s little else to keep me here. Leah has something of a liberated approach to sexuality, and we had a few days of good fun on the second month. But it was more physical release than an emotional connection. We stop after a few days, even though it was a lot of fun.

The only thing left at the end of the month is to say goodbye. Rick already knows I’m leaving. Beef gets a final workout in for me. I can barely stand up afterwards. Gemma, Cad, Chaim and I run another concert. Gemma kisses me on the cheek. I tell her to keep the guitar. I get hugs from most of the women, and chest-bump back-pound hugs from the guys. Rick even shakes my hand and tells me quietly that the zone two is supposed to be West into the setting sun.

All that’s left is Yulia. Everyone else goes back to their day. We head into my hut, and I enforce privacy again.

“I wish you’d stay, Snake, but I understand you won’t.”

“I’ve missed you, gorgeous.”

“I never told you. Before the change, I was sixty-three. I thought I’d never be loved again. Thank you for fixing that for me.”

“You look awful good for sixty-five.”

We pause with sad smiles.

“Can I show you a good time, sailor?” she asks.

Instead of answering, I get out my guitar, and play one of my favorites. I made some changes to make it fit.

There’s a town in a western wood

And it holds some people like it should

Lonely Earthers fight the monsters good

And talk about their homes

There’s a girl in this forest town

And she works cuttin’ monsters down

They say, Yuli, ‘nother one came round

She cuts them to their bones

Yeah, that last line needs work. The rhythm on whiskey was tricky

…

He said, “Yuli, you’re a fine girl”

“What a good wife you would be”

“But my life, my lover, my lady is the beat”

Dooo do to do do

She cries. I may have cried a bit too.

“Can I spend the night? Just for us.”

I do a last sad drumming at dawn for the town, then pack up the shower and my kit. I leave Yulia one of my monkey knives, and a final kiss. Then I’m gone, running hard enough I don’t have time to look back.