Ita was cheerful and bright, but she still seemed tired. Serenity frowned; a Path Skill wouldn’t take that much energy out of you; it limited itself to mana, and at low Tiers, you were fine with low mana.

Well, except for Serenity himself; he already knew he wasn’t fine at low mana.

Cast magic also didn’t allow enough control of a spell to deliberately exhaust yourself, though it could happen if the spell was difficult enough. Serenity hadn’t heard Ita cast, though, so it probably wasn’t a cast spell. If it also wasn’t a Path Skill, it was likely to be direct, Affinity-based control of magic. That was the sort of magic Serenity preferred, but it did have its downsides; mental exhaustion was one of them. “Are you all right, Ita? How’s your mana doing?”

“Mana’s fine, almost recovered. I ran myself dry on that spell, but there’s been time. I’m fine, tired but fine.” Ita rose to her feet. “I think I’ll get some sleep. Wake me for dinner?”

“Sure.” Serenity watched her hop towards the bedroom, then turned to Rissa. “Next door?”

Rissa nodded and the two of them quietly went to the next suite, where Raz and Katya were. They weren’t asleep; in fact, it looked like they’d both recently showered, so Rissa was the only one still in the clothes she’d started the day in. She’d somehow managed to avoid getting any blood on them; Serenity didn’t know how that was possible, but she’d done it.

Once the door closed, Serenity started with, “We need another way to deal with groups. We can’t just do one fight a day, and after that, Ita has to rest. I’m amazed she held it as long as she did.”

“We can hit some of the smaller houses, the ones where there can’t be that big a group, while she’s resting,” Katya suggested. “I think we should do that even if we come up with another way to handle groups.”

Serenity nodded; he agreed. No one said anything about the big battles, so Serenity pulled out the map they’d been using to plan and set it on the suite’s table. “There’s a group of houses clustered together here, near the river. As long as we hit them quickly, I think we can get them before they group up. The other possibilities are to take individual houses, moving between them faster than the Sterath can since they want to stay hidden, or there’s this apartment building, but I’m not sure how much of it they’ve taken; I found some Sterath, but there were also some humans who seemed to have no idea the Sterath were there. In some ways I’d like to take out the apartment building; it’s closer to the city center than I like.”

Rissa stared at the map, then tapped the apartment building. “It’s too close to the city center, and it’s also too close to the White House. That’s close enough that they could see it if there weren’t other buildings in the way.”

Katya looked up, puzzled. “What is important about this house?”

“It’s where the President lives - the leader of the country.” Serenity wasn’t confident that the word “President” had come up yet. It was clear that the term “White House” must not have.

Katya looked up from the map and frowned at Serenity. “Do you not have a Royal Guard? They should be handling anything too close to the Lord’s Seat.”

“That’d be the Secret Service.” Serenity paused, then turned to Rissa. “I’m not sure how to reach them; I know the location’s known since I pulled it from the list the police had, but I don’t know if they’ve shared it or not.”

Rissa nodded as she tipped her head to the side a bit. “Probably. I know there’s a site that’s been set up for kangaroo sightings, not sure if there’s one for threats to the President. Seems like there should be, but I’ve never looked. Maybe you could say you saw them?”

“I did. I even took notes on which apartments I saw them in … wait, maybe there’s a better way.” Serenity flipped through his Status menu to Aide’s tab. It was surprisingly useful to have someone who could just take care of things for him, even things he knew how to do. Serenity could handle typing up his notes or taking a picture of them and passing them along, but Aide might be able to do it while Serenity was doing other things.

Request: Can you figure out what the “kangaroo sightings” for the DC area site is and also if there’s a way to pass tips to the secret service, and pass along that apartment building, including which apartments I saw them in? Anonymously.

I was not recording during your search. Please provide the supplementary information.

Serenity grabbed the backpack he was using to carry anything he might want in all of his forms. It was the one he’d gotten in the Tutorial, and it was definitely starting to show its age, both visibly and in the amount he could store in the magical pockets.

Given how many Tutorials he’d taken it to, it’d really held up quite well, but he was going to have to get a new pack soon. He didn’t think the Voice would provide another; maybe he could use an ordinary backpack for a while and get a good one from Katya’s family when they moved.

Or maybe he should just see if someone else who’d been through the Tutorial was trying to sell theirs. There should be a lot of them out there, after all. Yeah, that was a better idea. Serenity sent a quick text to Janice to ask her to follow up on it.

The notebook was in the second pocket Serenity checked. As he dug it out and took pictures, the other three continued discussing options for what they’d do that day.

Notes compiled, images for apartment complex separated and merged. Anonymizing … Complete. Information will be uploaded in the next few minutes.

As Serenity put the notebook back in the pocket, he heard Raz mutter, “Maybe…” No one else seemed to notice.

“What is it, Raz?”

Raz turned towards Serenity and grinned. “I think I may have a solution to the area problem. It’s not repeatable multiple times a day either, but that’s fine, right?”

Raz paused for long enough that Serenity decided he must need a push. “Yeah, one more a day will help. Go on.”

“So, I took my second Tier Two Path a few days ago - it’s another dungeon Path and well, being with Aki, it’s progressed really fast, like my last Path did.” Raz spoke really quickly, almost tripping over his own words as he pushed them out. “So I have a new Skill from the new Path. It’s really limited and I’ve only been using it for simple things and I haven’t used it since I got down here.”

Raz stopped and seemed to wait for a response. Serenity gestured “come on” with his hands; when Raz saw it, he jumped before the words started spilling out again. “Oh, so, yeah. I didn’t say what the skill was. It’s called Temporary Item, and it, well, makes temporary items. They’re pretty limited because they only last for a day at the most. So, yeah, pretty limited. Also they can only be made in a dungeon, and I can only make one item a day. The item’s limited by the dungeon and the person making it; you can’t make something more powerful than you should have and you can’t make something more powerful than should be in the dungeon, plus there’s a limit - I don’t really understand that part but it seems to be that the more magic is in something, the less likely you can get it. It’s, I think it’s intended to help out when going through a dungeon, to take care of that thing you forgot or didn’t know you needed.”

Serenity blinked. That was a utility skill he’d never had, though he suspected he’d known some people who had it. It would explain how Kevrita always seemed to have just the weird thing they needed during a delve. He was a packrat, but even so, the time he’d pulled a boat capable of floating on lava out of his pack was a bit over the top. If he hadn’t needed to plan that far ahead, it made a lot more sense, including why he’d left the boat behind when they left the lava river.

“That’s useful, certainly, but how does it help us? The Sterath aren’t in a dungeon.” Rissa cut to the heart of the problem.

“We just have to enter a dungeon first. I’ll make the item, then we can leave.” Raz frowned. “I think it can leave the dungeon. I haven’t tried.” He seemed to perk back up almost immediately. “I’ll just have to try. So! What do you think I should make? I was thinking maybe an area stun? If I make it a one-use item, I can get something a good bit more powerful than something reusable. I don’t think I can make a reusable spell item that’s worth much, but I think I can make a stun-stone with a pretty good area and effect.”

“A stun-stone?” Katya sounded doubtful. “Good ones are hard to make. Are you sure it’ll work? Can you get a strong enough effect with a large enough area? We have six more heavy concentrations, not even counting the possible portal locations Serenity hasn’t checked yet.”

“I think so.” Raz sounded firm. “That’s why I want to make it a single-use; that matters a lot for the skill. Two uses is a lot less than half as good, I tried that.”

Serenity nodded. “It can’t hurt to try. We’ll visit a dungeon in the morning; I’ll want a speedrun since we have other things we need to do, but it’ll be a good time to talk to the dungeon core.”

Rissa nodded, but the others seemed a little confused. That made sense; he’d shared his visit to Earth’s World Core with Rissa but not the others. There wasn’t anything there that he saw a reason to keep secret from Katya or Raz, so he might as well explain. “I guess I should elaborate; you know how I visited Serenity Settlement recently? Well, there’s something there called a Lord’s Door…”