Garth lay in his bedroll, staring up at the ceiling of his tent, chewing on his ideas. He wanted to make a spell technique that would allow him to weave more mana into it at a later date, allowing him to create a creature with the same power level that he’d had when he was in his prime. Kind of a modular spell, for lack of a better word.

His current concept was to introduce strong bracing in the weave, then come back and fill it in when he had rested a bit.

Problem was, his control of mana was a lot weaker and sloppier than it had been, and it frustrated him to no end. He couldn’t make something stronger than his capacity anyway.

Maybe a kind of polarized, magnetic spell that will lump together on its own?

At least once he got those heartstones, he’d start making progress again. Between him and an entire school of supercharged teens working for him, he’d make some good progress this weekend.

He’d even managed to figure out the names of the three bodyguards the Dentons had sent to keep tabs on him. He’d tried to lace their S’mores with tiny seeds that pinged his Mana Sight, but they had refused to take anything from him. It was like they were expecting him to adulterate their food or something. Weird.

Gotta pee.

Garth levered himself up and opened the flap to his tent, revealing Susie standing there with her hand raised.

The black haired, slender girl with a round face was wearing a sheer, loose fitting nightgown, allowing the light of the fire to shine through from the side, illuminating three quarters of her body. Her pale skin glowed from inside the gown, unwittingly revealing her entire body.

She had modest breasts with rather large, outstanding nipples, a slim waist and small rear. As she stood there, blushing at his evaluating look, her inner thighs glistened with a little something extra.

“No.” Garth said, eyeing the knife strapped to her leg.

“What?” She glanced down at herself, realizing her gown was effectively see-through. “No, this was just for protection, I swear.” She made a show of covering up, plastering her arms across herself.

“Be that as it may, I only enjoy women sneaking into my bed when that’s what they want to do, and not because it’s their job.”

“But this is… I…” Susie began to whimper, her eyes brimming with tears.

Ah, damn it. She pulled out the trump card.

“Fine, you can wait in my tent, I’m just going to take a piss.”

“Okay,” she sniffled, ducking into his tent.

Totally faking it. Welp, not going back in there tonight. Garth considered his problem for a moment. He could always steal Susie’s tent while she waited for him to come back.

But first, to walk into the dark woods full of man-eating monsters and power hungry aristocrats, pull down his pants and pee against a tree. What could go wrong?

He could go to the latrine, where it was ten times safer, but it was on the other side of the camp, and Garth wanted to lure out anybody who might mean him harm.

Garth glanced around the camp, looking for traces of the Garthspawn bodyguards, but found nothing.

He closed his eyes and dove into the senses of the plants around him.

One, sitting in the grass by the fire.

Another, leaning against a tree, feet in the root-filled hollows.

And a third sitting in the branches of another tree.

He couldn’t see them, but he could feel their weight.

“Don’t bother following me,” Garth said, eyeing where he knew each of the three to be. “I’ve got a date with a tree, and I can’t go with you guys breathing down my neck.”

If they responded, Garth didn’t catch it.

Geez, you’d think with all the time I spent tweaking my eyes and ears, I’d be able to see those girls, but nooo, I’ve gotta raise my intelligence and senses.

Garth glanced out into the dark woods.

They weren’t dark.

Garth had spent a great deal of time optimizing his eyes before he’d gotten ganked, restructuring them like an octopus to get rid of the blind spot, and vastly increasing the density of photoreceptors. Garth had opted against using eyeshine to boost his nightvision, since it’s patently obvious when your eyes glow in the firelight. Still, he saw just fine in the tiny amount of light leaking through the clouds.

Garth’s M.O. had always been to appear normal at first glance. He didn’t want to grow armor over his skin, or horn-studs on his knuckles, simply because it would make people look twice.

Maybe I should tweak my features a little, though. People are shallow. An extra six inches of height would probably do wonders for my self-esteem.

This is where Wilson would suggest I add the extra six inches to my dick instead.

There’s only so much distance to the cervix, Wilson, you horny, dead bastard. What am I supposed to do with the extra five point eight inches that just won’t go in?

Garth meandered around a bear trap set out for him by the idiots who thought he couldn’t see them hiding in the trees.

To be fair, it was almost pitch black outside. To them.

There were some three young men and two women, dressed in silk clothes, watching him anxiously. Garth heard one of them curse under her breath as he stumbled on a root and hopped over their tripwire, rigged to drop a log on him.

This is kind of amateur hour, isn’t it? Garth thought, keeping his senses open for their Garthspawn bodyguards, if they brought any. He couldn’t feel any telltale shift in the air, so they weren’t breathing down his neck.

Garth undid his trousers and started pissing on their tree, putting a hand on the wood to support himself. He closed his eyes to search for anybody who might be invisible using the senses of the forest around him, while growing tiny branches around their feet to trip them when they decided to move.

Garth didn’t feel a Garthspawn. What he did feel was a Yenner stalking them, waiting for one of them to step out from behind the tree so it could tackle that person.

Garth turned his focus to the giant insect and forced a poisonous branch to grow straight into its eye, all the way to its brain in an instant. The creature died without a sound, twitching in the ambush position.

The kids above him exercised more restraint than Garth had given them credit for. They probably had decided on a plan where if he didn’t set off a trap, they wouldn’t jump down to finish the job.

Maybe not amateur hour, maybe…intermediate hour?

On the other hand, they hadn’t covered their faces, so that was a point against them.

Well, he’d go figure out their names and houses, then report back to Brenda on who wanted Edward dead, as per his side of the deal.

Wonder how the work on the refiner is going? Garth thought, shaking off and re-fastening his pants. His vague memories from the afterlife that he’d written down suggested he needed a condenser and an adamantium pressure cooker, at least. Five million credits would buy enough adamantium to make that. Probably.

Garth assumed he would remember more clearly when he’d had a heaping helping of dirty heartstones.

Come to think of it… Garth turned toward the dead Yenner and began tromping through the woods towards it.

“Where’s he going?” came a faint whisper from the tree behind him.

Yep, definitely amateur hour.

Garth stopped in front of the horse-sized corpse and took a deep breath, stretching the limits of his weakened power to create an extra-large cleaver, about as tall as him.

With a few well-placed hits, the bug was cut in half, and Garth rummaged around in the goop until he came back with a pebbly stone. It was difficult to tell its color in the low light, but it was most likely a shade of brown, a dirty mix of all three mental traits.

Garth rubbed the blood off with his shirt and ate the stone before heading back past the tree where his would-be assassins lurked, making plenty of noise as he tromped through the woods.

There was really no such thing as stealth in a forest when you were just walking through it. Unless you were jumping from giant tree to giant tree like the predator. The forest floor just had too many dead leaves and underbrush to move quietly.

Garth paused to check if anyone was following him again.

Place was clear, just the five dopes sitting in a tree, S-U-C-K-I-N-G

I wonder what I should make myself look like if I do change my looks. The power of appearance is pretty unbelievable. I mean, there was that episode of Mythbusters where Carrie padded her bra and made 36% more in tips.

The moral is, just slap a fake pair of triple D’s on yourself and everything will work out great. Garth rolled his eyes.

Before he fucked with his appearance, he should draft a plan, practice sculpting, and raise his stats. If he just dove in, he might wind up looking like a plastic surgery gone wrong.

One more thing on his checklist.

Garth lightly hopped over the tripwire, ambling back toward the camp, when he felt something displace all the air above him.

Garth glanced up, spotting the edge of an insectile wing the size of a semi-truck illuminated by the faint light of the waning moon. In a blink of his eye, the wing was gone again, making him question if he’d seen it in the first place.

Garth didn’t hear a thing, but a soft breeze pressed down on the entire forest, stirring the branches of the trees as the silent creature passed overhead, about a hundred and twenty miles an hour, judging by how quickly that gentle rustle of branches was fading into the distance.

Jesus.

We’re gonna need a bigger boat. Garth thought, craning his neck to stare at the sky, hoping for another look at the creature.

He stepped in the bear trap.

The hardened steel snapped shut around Garth’s ankle, sharpened steel teeth piercing his skin and warping out of shape against his bones.

“Ow, fuck!” Garth cursed and surveyed the damage as pain on the level of a wicked pinch assaulted him.

Now who’s the amateur?

“Now!”

The five idiots leapt out of the branches, every one of them screaming in surprise as small twigs that hadn’t been there before held their feet beck before snapping, forcing them into an end over end tumble to the ground.

If they hadn’t been fed Endurance heartstones, Garth was sure at least one of them would have broken their neck.

Garth sighed and raised his hand, sending a gust of soporific laden wind their way as they clumsily tried to stand and get their act together.

“Edward Bergstrom, your time has…come.” The leader said, stumbling forward and unsheathing her sword before she pitched into the ground face first.

“Unlikely,” Garth said with a scoff, then looked back down at his dilemma, bending down to pull the trap open. As Garth was forcing the trap open, he heard a crashing through the woods as Alicia ran toward him, blindly running through the dark woods.

“I heard screams. Edward, are you here?”

“Yeah, I’m here. Don’t move, it’s a bit of a minefield in here.” Garth grunted as he used all of his strength to force the trap open. The thing was sized for a bear. A superpowered one. They did not want him to be able to keep his foot.

“Are you okay?” she asked, staring out into the darkness blindly, narrowing in on his voice.

“I’m fine,” Garth said, gingerly sliding his foot out of the trap before letting the teeth go. They clanged shut with a surprising amount of sound.

“What was that?” She asked, her hand on her sword as the Garthspawn bodyguards arrived behind her.

“I’m fine, see?” Garth said, creating a floating point of light above himself. “Now you can see me.” It honestly felt good to not have to hide what he was capable of. Even if it was little more than parlor tricks and knockout gas.

“Was there someone else out here with you?” Alicia asked, squinting against the glare of the light. The Garthspawn seemed to be pretty fascinated by the light, their jaws dropping.

I wonder if they had the inside scoop. Garth was pretty sure they wouldn’t snitch, their boss already knew, and he was just plain tired of not using magic.

Garth glanced over his shoulder to where the five teens were sleeping in the darkness, outside of Alicia’s sight.

“Yeah, but they got scared off.” Garth wasn’t in the mood to ruin his night by dragging them into camp and interrogating them.

Let them take their chances with the night. They’d probably be okay.

“They put out some bear traps, so you’re gonna wanna watch your step on the way back,” Garth said, limping forward as his leg healed.

“You stepped in a bear trap?”

“Help me walk it off?” Garth asked, putting his arm over her shoulder.

“I think they’re designed so that you can’t walk it off. We need to get you back to the fire so we can take a look at it.”

Garth snorted. His leg was starting to scab up already. In a couple minutes, the damage would be gone. It was more just an excuse to get carried along by a pretty girl.

“I’ve got a change of subject for you.” Garth said, eyeing the brush that was displaced as the Garthspawn stalked along beside them. “A riddle.”

“Really? Now?”

“Humor me. I fly at a hundred miles an hour without a sound, my wings are clear, letting the light of the moon shine through, and are as long as an oak is tall, What am I?”

“Pfft,” She scoffed. “That’s Carnifax, obviously. You suck at riddles.”

“Definitely Carnifax.” Came a voice from their left.

“For sure.” Came another.

“And this Carnifax,” Garth said, “Would you describe it as legendary?