I teleported straight to my bedroom from the dungeon and headed to the shower. I hadn’t worked up much of a sweat, but still. Looking as good as I did now, I had high hopes for meeting someone tonight. I’d been single for a while, so I was raring to go.

While I was in the shower, I pulled up a notification that had appeared during my practice in the dungeon. I’d left it alone at the time to avoid getting distracted. I was happy to see another ability was ready to be evolved.

Congratulations!

You have gained a sufficient amount of insight into your [Create] ability to reach Rank 2.

Apply your insights to evolve your ability in one of the following ways:

1) You will be able to manifest the creation anywhere within 10 meters from yourself.

2) There is a small chance a random effect will be applied to the creation. This is in addition to any other effects.

3) The increased mana cost for materials related to unknown magical affinities will be reduced from 200% to 100%.

The gambler in me was tempted by the second option, but after a bit of thought, I chose the last one. It would drop the cost of rank 1 items like the void blockers from 75mp to 50mp. With my current mana pool of 140mp, that would mean I could make three items with basically no waiting for my energy to regenerate. Getting more done was better than a small chance at a random effect.

When I was done getting cleaned up, I rooted around in my wardrobe for a pair of jeans I’d gotten as a gift. They were too baggy, so I never wore them. As I’d hoped, they were a perfect fit now. A simple white T-shirt that fit snugly completed the look and I was ready to go.

I only had to kill a little bit of time before the boys messaged me from outside. When I got out there, I was surprised to see Jared driving. Jumping in the back seat next to Tony, I clapped Josh on the shoulders in front of me.

“What’s going on?” I asked. “Why no taxi tonight?” We usually just used the app to call a car whenever we went out so nobody had to be the designated driver.

“Mate, it’s Sunday,” Jared told me. “I’ve got work tomorrow and need to be in top form for the morning meeting.”

“Me too, but you don’t see me wimping out,” Tony declared. “I’ll pull up alright.”

Josh laughed. “How was fishing the other morning, Tony?”

“Oh, yeah,” he started before trailing off, unable to come up with a good lie. “Stuff it! I’ll just call in sick if I have to.”

Probably trying to draw attention away from himself, Tony mentioned my changed appearance, and everyone focused on me. Josh turned around and stared at me intently as I gave the others the same story that I’d told him last night.

Worried he might start grilling me now about his dad in front of the others, I quickly asked the other two a question when I was done. “Anyway, where are the girls? We’re celebrating! And Josh is paying! How could they miss out on that?”

Jared smiled. “Ellen said she has enough common sense not to go out on a Sunday night.”

Tony nodded. “Yep, Natalie too. But that’s alright. She said I could drink her share, Joshy.”

“We’ll see if you can handle yours first, lightweight,” Josh fired back. He turned around without asking me any questions. I breathed a sigh of relief. I was really not looking forward to when he got me alone later.

We got under way and pulled onto the main road a short time later. As we came up on the park’s entrance on the left, I asked Jared to slow down. I wanted to check out what the police had done to block the area off. It would help me come up with ways to sneak in later.

Everyone had seen the news, and the guys started discussing their theories on the black spot and the earthquakes. My attention stayed focused out the window. When we were close enough, I could see a simple movable barrier placed at the entrance to the carpark, and a single police car. I relaxed a little. Just a couple of officers. They would be easy to avoid.

Suddenly, I thought I heard screaming. I quickly shushed my friends and put my head out the window. There it was again! Definitely a scream, and coming from the park. I couldn’t see who was making the noise from here since we were a little past the entrance now. I knew it was someone in trouble, though. That hadn’t been a playful yell.

“Did you hear that?” Josh asked, looking out the window too.

“Stop the car!” I told Jared urgently.

“What?” he asked, looking at me in the rearview mirror, confused.

“Stop the bloody car!” I exclaimed, louder.

He slammed on the brakes. Luckily, there was no car behind us. The one in the next lane sailed on by. He put on the hazard lights and turned around to look at me. “What the hell, Dean?!” he demanded.

My seatbelt was already off and I had the door half open. “I need you all to stay here. There’s something dangerous in the forest. You should be safe in the car. Better yet, get out of here. Go to the pub.” I took a deep breath. I didn’t think I was going to be able to bullshit my way out of this one. They were my friends, though. I wanted to believe I could trust them even with something this monumental. “Josh, this has to do with that talk you wanted to have. I promise I’ll explain everything later.”

Not wasting anymore time, I jumped out of the car and was running back towards the park before the door had finished closing. So much for keeping all this a secret, I thought.

I ran right up to the police car in the parking lot. It was empty, and the front doors were both open. The screams were coming from in front of the car. When I got there, I saw a young woman, probably around my age, lying a short distance away on the grass at the edge of the carpark. The car’s headlights were shining right on her. Her entire right side was covered in blood, and she was clutching at her stomach and screaming out in obvious pain. I felt squeamish at the sight. I’d never seen anything like it in real life. I took some deep breaths to try and settle my stomach as I ran up to her.

I scanned around quickly before dropping to the ground next to her head, keeping my body facing towards the forest. As far as I could tell, there wasn’t anyone else in the area. Where were the police officers? Why had they left her here like this?

“It’s alright,” I said in a soothing voice. Her eyes focused on me and her face lit up with hope.

“Please help me,” she said desperately. She tried to reach up to grab me, but the movement must have pulled at her wound because she dropped her hand and screamed again. I wasn’t an expert, but with the amount of blood I could see, I didn’t like her chances unless she received immediate help. I didn’t have a choice. Cax sent me a feeling of support while remaining silent. I sensed he didn’t want to distract me.

I put my hand on her head and cast Heal. The golden glow surrounded her wound and faded away at the same time her screams did. She sat up slowly and turned to face me. She had a shocked look on her face as she touched her stomach where the injury had been and found nothing there.

I stayed on the ground to appear less threatening and held my hands up. Before I could ask her what was going on, a voice from behind made me jump a little in surprise.

“Holy shit!” Tony exclaimed slowly. I turned around quickly. All three of them were standing there next to the police car, looking at me. They seemed more shocked than the girl did.

Oh well, I thought resignedly. I was planning on telling them later anyway.

“You should have stayed in the car,” I told them.

Josh was the first one to snap out of his shock. “You seemed to think there was something dangerous out here. We weren’t going to let you deal with that by yourself.”

“You chose good friends,” Cax told me approvingly. I completely agreed. I gave all of them a small smile and a grateful nod.

Not giving them a chance to give voice to the questions they surely had, I turned back to the young woman and asked, “What’s going on here?”

“You…you…what did you…,” she stammered, apparently unable to get over her shock at being suddenly healed. She kept touching her side where the injury had been.

Rather than try to explain what I’d done, I tried again. “Where are the police?”

That got her attention. Her eyes widened even further, and she tried to stand up, but slumped back down to the ground.

“She lost a lot of blood,” Cax pointed out. “The healing spell can’t do anything about that. She will need to eat and rest to get her strength back.”

She looked towards the forest. “My friends!” she said, fresh tears falling. “We were attacked by something. I ran and made it to the edge of the forest. The police brought me up here. One of them went in to look for my friends while the other called for help and stayed to look after me. Then he lost contact with his partner and went in to find him.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Why haven’t they come back?” She sobbed. “Are they dead?”

The despair in her voice left a lump in my throat. I stood up, scared at having to go back into the infected forest in the dark but not seeing any other choice.

“How many people were you with, and how long ago did the officer with you leave?” I asked her.

She looked at me tiredly. “I was with two of my friends. I don’t know how long ago it was. The pain…”

“It’s ok,” I reassured her. It couldn’t have been that long. She said the officers called for help and their backup hadn’t arrived yet.

I looked at my friends. “I’m going to look for them. Stay here until help arrives. Tell them what’s going on. If anything comes out of the woods, get her and yourselves into the car and keep the doors closed.”

They stepped forward, talking over each other to tell me that they weren’t going to let me go in there alone. Instead of arguing, I summoned my staff from my inventory into my hands and made a glowing orb appear over my head.

They immediately stopped. “He’s a bloody wizard,” Jared muttered in awe.

“I can look after myself,” I told them. “Stay here.” I projected more confidence than I was actually feeling, hoping it would make them less likely to insist on joining me.

All three of them just nodded, not daring to argue after witnessing what I’d just done. To be honest, I really didn’t want to go in there alone. I would have loved to have someone go with me, but I didn’t want to put them in danger.

I took off at a run towards the forest, not bothering to ask the girl where exactly she had exited from or what had attacked them. With the state she’d been in when it all happened, I didn’t expect she was capable of answering.

I slowed down once I got in amongst the trees but kept moving quickly to cover as much ground as possible. It was easy to see when I crossed into the infected section of the forest. The black lines running through the diseased trees and ground made a stark contrast to the greenery at the outskirts of the woods. Even the air seemed different, lacking the fresh scents the rest of the forest had while taking on an oppressive quality.

I called out constantly in the hopes of hearing a reply, even though I knew it would draw in whatever had attacked the girl and her friends. Actually, I was counting on it. I was pretty sure it was just some infected wildlife that had gone after their group. I wanted to pull the dangerous animals away from those less capable of dealing with them. After fighting against magical skeletons, I had some confidence I could deal with crazy animals. Yes, the possum had done a fair bit of damage to me, but it had gotten the jump on me. Literally. I now knew what to expect and made sure to keep looking up.

It was for that reason I saw the small, gray shape appear on a sickly branch in front of me just before it leapt down towards me. Is that a koala? I thought, heart racing at its sudden appearance even as my body reacted to the danger. I swung my staff in one of the simple moves I’d practiced and committed to memory earlier in the day. My left hand brought one end of the staff down while my right hand snapped the staff out to strike the attacking creature. My form was spot on thanks to the magical training, but magic couldn’t help my timing.

In my haste, I had swung early. Instead of cracking the falling koala on the head, my strike clipped its lower body. It was enough to stop its forward momentum and send it to the ground at least. I kept my head and shuffled backwards carefully, which allowed my Staves skill to guide my steps to keep them even and balanced. I quickly analyzed the koala to get its health bar to appear.

I was surprised to see it was called an Infected Koala. I thought for sure it would have been listed as a dropbear. With its health bar now visible, I saw my initial hit had done a decent amount of damage despite my poor aim. Or maybe it was because of the impact with the ground. The crazy animal didn’t let the pain stop it. It snarled at me, blood-stained mouth letting me know I’d found what had attacked everyone. It rushed at me, much faster than I thought possible. Can all koalas move that fast, or is the void energy somehow enhancing it? I wondered.

This time, I snapped the left end of the staff out horizontally. It whacked into the koala’s side and knocked it away. I followed up by bringing the right end down onto its skull, finishing it off and gaining 5xp.

It was only my second time fighting an infected animal, but both of them had shown a complete disregard for self-preservation. It made them dangerous, but the blind desire to rush in also made them fairly easy to dispatch. There was no strategy at play at all. It was over so quickly that I hadn’t even gotten to use my new dart spell. I was a little disappointed, but then I told myself it was a good thing. Considering the state the girl in the park had been in, I should conserve my mana for healing her friends. I tried to ignore the thought that popped into my head. If they’re still alive.

While I felt sorry for the dead koala, the sight of its dead body didn’t affect me as much as I expected. I’d given it a lot of thought since killing the possum and come to realize that putting the infected animals out of their misery was a kindness. That, and the fact that there were people I needed to find, helped me not dwell on having killed my second animal in as many days. I looted it and looked at what I got.

Shirt of Pain Relief

This shirt doesn’t block any damage, but it does reduce pain by a small amount.

It was a dark green T-shirt with extremely faint outlines of leaves all over it. I sent it to my inventory, and then swapped it with my current T-shirt. A quick bit of mana had it resized just right. Not exactly my style, but I’d take anything that would help me hurt less. I was much better prepared than the first time I’d come in here, but I wasn’t arrogant enough to think my basic skills were enough to keep me unscathed.

“Generally, gear like this links into your aura, meaning the effect will apply all over your body,” Cax told me. “There are some special cases where it is restricted to the specific part of the body covered, but it will state if that’s the case.”

Just then, I heard someone call out. I left the koala, not wanting to take the time required to absorb it, and ran towards the voice.

“Hello!” I shouted. “I’m coming!”

I followed the voice until I came across a police officer sitting up against a tree. He was clutching his leg and I could see some blood staining his pants. He was holding a torch in his right hand like he was ready to swing it. It wasn’t turned on for some reason. He lowered it when I appeared, a look of relief passing across his face that quickly changed to confusion when he noticed my unnatural light source.

I crouched down beside him and got a better look. He wasn’t one of the officers that had found me in the park yesterday. I wasn’t an expert, but after checking his leg I thought his wound didn’t look life threatening. I would have loved to have just left it alone rather than let another person know that I could do magic. However, the koala would have passed on the void infection when it injured him, so I had no choice but to heal him. I sighed. “Don’t freak out, ok,” I told him.

Putting my hand on his leg, I cast my healing spell. To his credit, he didn’t start panicking when his leg glowed, but he was definitely at a loss for words. When it was done, he stood up a little gingerly, testing the leg as though he expected it to give out. When he realized it was completely recovered, he looked at me warily.

“What did you do to me?” he asked cautiously, keeping his distance.

“Let’s just say it’s really advanced medicine and leave it at that,” I said.

He narrowed his eyes before saying, “Let’s not.” His hand moved subtly towards the gun on his belt.

I didn’t appreciate the threat after just healing him, but there wasn’t time for this. I also wasn’t going to lay all my cards on the table for a complete stranger.

“You know about chakras?” I asked. Not waiting for a reply, I continued. “I can harness the energy in my body to do some things, like healing someone. I can’t do it often, though, because my energy runs out.” That was close enough to the truth that it should be believable, especially with my Persuasion skill adding its weight to my words. Also, it was important he knew that I had limits so he wasn’t expecting too much from me in here.

He kept looking at me for a little bit, weighing over my words, before moving his gaze to the light hovering over me.

“So, I suppose that’s not some kind of advanced drone?” he asked.

“Nope,” I replied simply. “Comes from my energy.”

He was silent for a bit before sighing. “Lucky for you, there’s some weird shit going down tonight,” he said. “Makes me inclined to believe what you say.” He looked me in the eyes. “I know there’s more to it, and I’ve got a million questions, but they’ll keep. My partner is lost in here somewhere along with a couple of kids. You’re not one of them, are you?”

I shook my head, glad we’d moved on for the moment. “No. I found the girl by your car and she told me what was going on. I came to help. She’s ok, by the way.”

I saw him look at my hand and knew he wanted to ask if I’d done the same thing to her that I’d done to him, but to his credit, he pushed down his curiosity. “Glad to hear it,” was all he said. “I hated to leave her like that, but I thought I could do more good in here. So far, I haven’t had much luck with that.”

“Were you attacked by a koala?” I wanted to make sure there wasn’t another infected animal running around this part of the woods.

“I’m not sure,” he replied. “It was too dark to see clearly. It might have been. I think it was about the right size.”

Too dark? I looked at his torch questioningly. “That’s part of the weirdness,” he let me know, seeing where my eyes were focused. “There’s something messing with my gear in here. The flashlight suddenly died when I got into the black part of the forest and my radio cut out. There’s something wrong with my gun and taser, too. I tried to shoot the damn thing that attacked me, but they wouldn’t fire. Nothing is working!” He sounded more frustrated than scared. “If that thing hadn’t been drawn away by your light and shouting, I don’t think I would have been able to hold it off for much longer. It was fierce!”

I was relieved his move to the gun had been an empty threat, but I still felt a pit open in my stomach. The only thing that would explain all his gear failing was the void energy. There was nothing else in this area that could be responsible. My hope that our technology would be able to find a solution to this problem was out the window if the void energy rendered it inoperable.

I pulled my cellphone out of my pocket and pushed the home button, hoping it was an isolated incident. Nothing. I swore softly and then put the matter to the back of my mind. It was a problem for another day. For now, we had to find the people lost in here and do what we could for them. Turning around so he couldn’t see, I put my phone into my inventory. I was a little worried about what the dimensional space would do to the technology, but I thought it might be safer than what would happen to it if I left it in my pocket. I put my wallet in there too for safekeeping, leaving me with just one empty slot.

“Are you good to go?” I asked the officer, turning back around.

He nodded. “Your, ahh…whatever,” he said, waving his hand around a little, “fixed me right up. Let’s keep looking.”

I lifted my staff and held it at the ready while he took a few practice swings with his torch, loosening up. Then we set off together.