Jack, James, and Mo had gone to a shed full of rentable equipment. Well it was usually for rent. But because they were part of the camping program, they were able to use the equipment for free; they had already paid a fee to register in the program. They took some fishing rods, line, and bait, and headed over to the lake.

Things like licenses were already taken care of.

There were already people there. There were some adults watching over the kids swimming or fishing at the lake. All of the activities were under adult supervision. All hikes and the like were group hikes, and lead by an adult.

“Let’s try and find a good spot, shall we?”

Jack ended up leading them; James and Mo had never gone fishing before. They eventually settled in a small nook directly next to the lake. Carefully following Jack’s instruction, James and Mo threaded their line and put the bait on the hook.

“Using fish to catch fish is kind of wack,” James said as he placed the minnow onto his hook.

“It’s called investment. You give up a small fish in return for a bigger one. Unless you fail, and you lose your money.”

“God, I wish it was like that. Trout are like, at least 100 times bigger than minnows? Rough guess. Imagine investing 1 dollar and getting 100 in return.”

“Are you guys done?” Jack looked at their rods. “You gotta cast your line now.”

“Ay James,” Mo said. “From one complete novice to another, do you want to see who’ll catch more fish?”

“Why not?” James narrowly missed cutting off his ear with his hook when trying to cast his line. “I’m going to catch so many fish that you’ll never want to eat fish again after you’ve finished.”

“Weight or number?” asked Jack, the neutral 3rd party, and probably soon to be referee.

“How about number until the size difference is actually noticeable? Then we’ll see,” said Mo.

====================

As it turns out, there was no need to weigh the fish. There was one clear winner in both number and weight. Over the course of two hours, James didn’t catch a single fish, while Mo had landed 3 fat trout. James suffered a massive defeat and had to endure Mo’s taunting.

Eventually, Mo stopped flexing on James, and pulled out his phone.

“How do you have signal here? And how is your phone’s battery alive?” asked Jack.

“Hehe, I don’t have signal, but I did bring a solar battery charger that was laying around in my house.”

“That’s kind of weird that something like that would just be lying around, but okay,” said James. “Anyways, should we be going back now? Do any of you guys want to swim?”

The lake was a very clean freshwater lake, and there wasn’t any danger of bacteria. In fact, some other campers were also swimming.

“No, I think I’m good.” “Yeah, we can go back.”

Having received the response, James stood up in order to go back to the campsite. However, as he was doing so, he again caught sight of the blond siblings. The brother and the sister both turned to look at him at the same time. Their blue eyes pierced him an, another fluctuation of mana pulsed simultaneously. However, this time, the fluctuation was much stronger than before. James’ eyes widened when he felt the flow of mana.

But then, all thoughts were lost. James suddenly felt a massive pain in his head, and became nauseous. Not understanding what was happening to him, he lost his footing and plunged into the lake.

The cold water of the lake seemed to clear his mind, and the pain washed away. He spent a few seconds underwater, then rose upwards and broke the surface. He had fallen from a nook a little bit above the lake’s surface, and thus the lake was actually around 5 feet deep in this area.

But, as soon as he broke the surface, he was carried away by a demonic sound wave. He felt his knees going soft. If he hadn’t been in the water, he would’ve collapsed on the ground. His mind went white, and he prayed to any god that existed for this hell to stop.

Then, as James was about to pass out, the torture ceased. Slowly, reality came back to James. He was in the lake, up to his neck. He was wet. He blinked a few times. He heard two voices howling with laughter. When he looked to his right, he saw Jack and Mo crippled from laughter. Jack was on all fours, banging the ground, while Mo was clutching his stomach and crying. Then, Mo offered a hand to James who was still in the water.

“I accidentally played my music out loud, and then you shrieked and fell into the fucking lake.” Mo said while giving himself cramps from laughter.

James felt a headache coming. So it was Mo’s music in the end. Why wasn’t Jack affected, though?

James got out of the lake with Mo’s help, but his clothes were dripping wet. The breeze blew, and he shivered a bit.

Jack finally put himself back together and said “Let’s go back to the campsite and get you a change of clothes. Then we can go to the amphitheater. I think some people built the fire already. Some people like to play with fire during these types of camps.”

James went back and changed his clothes, and threw his wet ones into the laundry place. Even though this was supposed to be an outdoor trip, it still had commodities, with showers and laundry rooms.

“Well, that’s what happens when someone as rich as Jack comes along.”

James finished changing and headed over to the amphitheater. Jack’s prediction was right; the fire was already burning in the pit. James spent some time warming himself in front of the fire. While he was doing so, he kept on thinking about what had happened. Once again, Mo’s music left him unable to move and incapacitated him. There was definitely something wrong with his music. It contained mana. James had a theory: the mana infused sound waves only affected him because he was the only one whose body had been exposed to mana. He didn’t think Mo was a dungeon explorer.

If it was just this, then the music was the only mystery. But, both times James had looked at the blond siblings, he felt mana. The mana had presumably come from Mo’s music, but James wondered if this could really be a coincidence. James hadn’t seen them before in the shop, but he couldn’t rule the possibility that the siblings were dungeon explorers. If they were then it wasn’t inconceivable that they might have the power to make something like that occur.

But, James couldn’t see a reason for them to do such a thing. If they were dungeon explorers at a level that high, then it was likely that they already knew he was an explorer. Doing something like releasing a mana wave would only make him suspicious of them. They wouldn’t do that if they were trying to hide their identities. But if they didn’t care, they could just tell him.

Another possibility was that they weren’t sure if James was an explorer or not and were probing him out. This one made the most sense, but James had no way to confirm. Likewise, he wasn’t sure if they were explorers either, and wouldn’t risk asking.

The more he thought about it, the more confused he became.