Robin took a deep breath before speaking.

“I know you think that I am not going to be prepared to deal with the things that are in the woods, but the other options are more problematic than some mystery threat.”

He took another deep breath, speaking rapidly. May watched him silently, chewing the last remnants of her protein bar.

“The swamp is going to be full of large animals that are very adept at hiding and performing ambushes. There will be bugs, which would be beneficial to me, but there will also be things that eat bugs - giant frogs, giant snakes, giant birds… the list is endless. There is also a risk of getting a magical disease, which I would prefer to avoid entirely.”

May nodded, gesturing for him to continue speaking.

“The rift is also problematic. By contrast to the swamp, there won’t be enough bugs for me to use, being bird-infested and all. We also don’t know how far the rift goes. It could go on for a thousand kilometers, and I doubt that birds are the worst things in there.”

“Or even Pirds,” Robin added as an afterthought.

To his surprise, that comment seemed to make May flush slightly.

“Yeah… Sorry about just now telling you this, but that thing followed me here from the bottom of the rift. There are definitely more down there, but they don’t seem to be aggressive to things… you know, up here.”

She gestured around her aimlessly.

“That is all the more reason not to follow the rift. That was just a drakeling, right?”

May nodded. Robin continued, “-the ‘-ling’ suffix implies that they get bigger, and presumably, more dangerous. I do not want to encounter an actual dragon right now. I think we need more levels before that kind of encounter would even be survivable, much less winnable.”

May kept nodding. She wasn’t looking at him, but staring at the dirt as she wheedled the toe of her boot, leaving crude patterns. Robin wasn’t sure she was actually paying attention, so he stopped talking.

She sighed and kicked her patterns away, standing on the pile of debris.

“Alright, Robin. Those were some well-considered, eloquently-spoken reasons to go over the rift and through the woods. I just hope you still have the same boldness when you feel the bugs start crawling under your skin.”

Robin stared at her, waiting for the punchline.

When no joke came and the silence stretched on, he stammered “...what?”

“Tweaker Mages. When you start feeling bugs crawling under your skin, you know they’re close.”

May slung her backpack over her shoulders and began stepping to the west, directly towards the setting sun.

“Come on, no reason to stay here. Might as well get moving. This spot won’t give us much cover for the night.”

Robin stood up to follow her, stowing his items and donning the Aliquam Pack. He drew the Anytool (Journeyman), still in sword form, and willed it to change, tossing it in the air as he did so.

It burst into fire in the air, changing into a much smaller form, shrinking until it was a piece of purple titanium ten centimeters long, with a rounded knob on one end. It had fully transformed into the pestle before it reached the top of the toss, and the fire had dissipated before he caught it.

Yesyesyes! It worked!

He glanced hopefully at May, ahead of him.

She was still walking ahead of him, her dark brown hair swishing behind her. She hadn’t noticed.

Opal? Come on, SOMEONE had to have seen that!

Opal’s presence was even farther ahead of May.

Robin trudged after them, mildly disappointed.

🀂 ¤ 🀇 ¤ 🀣 ¤ 🀈 ¤ 🀅

They had been hiking for what felt like hours and still hadn't even reached the rift, even with their increased RUN scores. “They” might not have been the operative word, as May had disappeared into the bush about an hour into the trek, saying something about her class abilities not working as well in close proximity to… well, him.

Robin’s feet weren’t aching and he wasn’t actually physically tired at all, but he felt like he should be, and it was affecting his mood. The constant paranoia every time he felt a bug crawl on his skin was beginning to grate. His MENSTAM was going down, but it recovered quickly every time he rested for a moment, often leaning against a tree or a log.

While walking by himself, Robin took the time to refill the Δ-Revenant with MANA bullets, and also began pumping MANA into the Clockwork Horror of the Blue Entomage. He managed to fill it up entirely in the first couple of hours, despite that he was trickling the MANA into the object, going conservatively in case he was attacked while low.

It had gotten dark shortly after they began moving, the trees helping to occlude the light faster, but Robin found that his Resplendent Ommatidium gave his vision a kind of intense clarity that he did not have in the daylight, casting the world around him into strange, stark colors that offered far too much detail.

Robin reached out for the familiar presence of Opal in his mind, finding her to be somewhere ahead of him, in the upper boughs of the tree cover. Typical. Gotta be at the highest spot…

He froze, his foot half-crushing a plant that was already struggling in the dim light.

Opal had just triggered cautious alarm, her presence becoming vague and hard to sense.

She was radiating annoyance and concern now, the emotions invisibly wafting out of the trees.

I knew the forest wouldn’t be peaceful forever.

Robin drew the anytool, currently in the shape of a curved, one-sided sword (after many rounds of experimentation), and with his other hand, gripped the Clockwork Horror tightly, commanding it to go to the treetops and begin discretely spinning webs. He didn’t let go, though, keeping a tight grip on the tiny construct, focusing his willpower.

Infuse Madness mote.

The Horror skittered in his hand, twitching, and Robin released it, restating his previous command in a hurried mental burst. The spider hopped off his hand and onto a tree, quickly and silently vanishing into the darkness above.

Robin had to admit to himself that it was a little unnerving to watch - the eight legs skittering in perfect mechanical motion. Robin hadn’t realized before just how much spiders fumbled as they moved, but his new item made them seem graceless. It made his skin crawl to watch it, and he found the Spider Uncanny Valley crossing through his thoughts briefly before dismissing it.

Robin realized right as he heard the chirruping howl erupt from what felt like only a few meters away beyond the trees that the spider was gone, but his skin was still crawling. He had just lifted his sword and turned towards the noise when an elongated hand struck him open-palmed on the side of the head, the wretched yellow talons of fingernails cutting into the skin above his ear.

“Yalookmightytastyboy,” it shrieked at him, the words spilling over each other in a rush of brown spit.

Robin pointed the sword at it warningly, and -

Robin stumbled to the side, his ear ringing. His left eye was not focusing, and everything seemed wobbly.

“Donchuresshandstume,” it screamed in his face.

This thing is too fast. I can’t focus with my skin itching, and it keeps hitting me when I try to attack it. Tweaker Mage… Where is May!? She had to have heard that! And she said they weren’t on this side of the rift yet!

“Suuuuuuuuuuuue-wheeeee!”

As if on cue, Robin heard a call similar to the crowing that his new cannibalistic friend had let loose a moment before, coming from near where Opal had been. Two more calls came from the side, closer to the Rift.

“Suuuuuuuue-wheee!”

“Suuuuuuuuuue-wheeee!”