By the time Faye and Maggie had worked up the nerve to move forward, the God forsaken monster that had padded through on insect-like feet had disappeared. The fronds of strange grass that had risen in its wake had rapidly decayed, so a strange, blackened carpet of dead grass showed them where it had gone.

“We should stay far away from that thing,” Maggie said, fear shaking her voice.

“It could have taken a prisoner…” Faye said.

“I know, but there’s no point giving it two more.”

Faye grimaced at the logic. Cold, harsh truth that made her sick to her stomach.

“That direction isn’t where you heard Taveon last, was it?” she asked, without really wanting to hear the answer.

“No, thank the gods. It was still a few streets north of here.”

“Then let’s start looking there.”

The streets here closed in on them oppressively. The shadows grew longer, and the lack of direct sunlight was drawing a chill into the air. Faye shook herself and took the route Maggie pointed out.

“Mags, you know anything about imbuement?” Faye asked in a quiet voice.

“I’ve heard of it. I can’t say I’ve tried it.”

“Mmm. Well, whenever I put mana into my strikes, the mana dissipates before it does what I want.”

“Oh, that’s not the spell, then.”

Faye nodded, but did not look back at Maggie, she kept her eyes peeled on their route. They were not exactly sneaking, but they were not rushing blindly forward, either. She activated [Swordfighter’s Sense] in the small pause in conversation.

“Exactly. I’m trying the pure mana manipulation route. I’ve been able to wrap my sword in mana, and even hit a monster with the mana. One time, I activated the mana a split second before striking, but the backdraught hurt.”

Faye paused.

“New question, why do my fire spells not feel hot?”

Maggie chuckled, quietly. “Oh, they do feel hot, believe me. But the system protects the caster from the environmental effects of a spell. To a certain degree, anyway.”

“Oh, okay…”

“So, if you ever cast that beam of fire near an ally? Make sure it doesn’t get too close, ‘cause it will burn them, too.”

Faye grimaced. “Good to know. God, I really need a constant reminder of the basics, don’t I?”

“Most people wouldn’t really know that to be honest,” Maggie said, “you’re less knowledgeable than people trained in magic, but that’s completely understandable.”

Her Sense warned her that something was coming from her right, her current blind side. Throwing herself forward into a roll, Faye avoided the attack.

As she threw herself up to her feet, she heard the impact of something on Maggie’s shield.

Before she could turn to help her friend, a few briars rushed toward her. They dropped down from the top of a building, flailing their thorny vines as they came.

Cutting one out of the air, Faye just shrugged off one of the vines as it landed on her. It was unable to penetrate her gambeson, but it did find purchase. Swinging itself by her shoulder like a trapeze artist, the briar slammed into her right thigh and latched on.

She cursed. The thick material of her trousers was not armour, and her previous run ins with the briars had left it thin and holey, despite the rapid mends she had been able to make on their infrequent rest stops. Those small patches tore easily, now, as the briar tried to worm its vine into her vulnerable flesh.

Using her off-hand, she drew her dagger and slammed it down into the briar, straight to its core.

A notification pinged, so she sheathed the dagger and turned to the final briar. It seemed to be dithering over coming for Faye or for Maggie, as it floated between the two of them.

Faye made its decision for it and quickly strode forward, swinging the sword down to cut it as she drew close enough.

Congratulations! You have defeated multiple enemies.

Experience awarded.

Maggie was still fighting off the first assailant. It was not just a simple briar. This was another forest hound, but it was bigger, bulkier. The flora that spawned across its back were more reminiscent of the briars’ thorny vines. This hound looked riddled with them.

Whatever had made the monster that way, it was still incapable of battering through Maggie’s shield. Faye noted with displeasure that the wooden sword was effectively useless against the hound.

She stepped up. These monsters were terrorising her new home, her new friends. They were mindless minions, but that just made it worse. They were a plague.

The cutting edge of this sword was keen, and its sharp blade sheared clean through some of the thorny outcroppings on the hound’s back.

It flinched away from Faye, turning its snarling maw toward her.

She saw it bunching up for a lunge at her face, and in response she brought the sword in close to her chest. As it jumped, Faye stepped back into a reverse thrust, dropping her back leg straight out, lowering her centre of mass and extending the sword so that the leaping hound impaled itself.

It was at the last moment that she remembered the borrowed sword was a cutting blade, not a thrusting one.

The thrust was not a clean attack. It glanced off some hardened vines that covered the hound’s chest, but in deflecting off those it scraped along the monster’s side, this time using the cutting edge.

The hound got its teeth into Faye’s main-hand arm, chomping down with incredible force that almost immediately punched through her gambeson sleeve.

In a panic, she thrust her palm against its snout, and she let out a stream of mana.

When she felt that the mana had surrounded enough of the monster’s face, she ignited it.

A Fire Dart delivered a blast of force at the site of an impact as well as fire damage. That much she had already witnessed. What Faye had not thought of was what happened if the object struck was latched onto her body.

The empowered dart exploded in the monster’s face, which did get it to drop Faye’s arm, but some of the attack bled through to her own body.

The shock of force caused her to drop the sword, and the hound was only wounded. It circled for a moment before flipping around to charge for Faye.

Maggie stepped between it and Faye, shouting, and bashing its snout with the shield. In that moment of redirected motion, she cast her own spell, a Force Bolt, which threw the hound metres away.

Faye’s arm had gone numb, but she was still able to wiggle her fingers. Tears pricked her eyes when she realised, she had not lost the use of the limb.

The hound was getting back to its feet, once again.

Faye stepped up next to her friend and held out her uninjured arm.

She let off three Fire Darts in quick succession. Each one blasting out in their overpowered versions that travelled less curved paths. Maggie added her own spells to the attack.

A few seconds later, the notification sound pinged in Faye’s ear.

She stopped casting, but she did not lower her arm. She was breathing hard, staring at the hound’s battered and burnt corpse.

“Fuck,” she whispered. Only after gathering her breath did, she look at the notification in her mind’s eye.

Congratulations! Your group has defeated a level 11 [Forest Hound].

Experience awarded.

“It was only a forest hound?” she muttered. “It looked different to the last one.”

“Monsters do that,” Maggie responded. She was breathing almost as hard as Faye, but she was staring at Faye’s arm, rather than her own. “This was different because it was a different tier… are you okay?”

Faye looked down. Her sleeve had ripped, her trouser leg similarly open to the elements, and rivulets of blood were running down both her arm and leg, she could tell.

“Just peachy.”

“How bad is it?”

Faye grimaced. “Bad. The arm’s a little numb, and I’m worried I’m going to go into shock, or contract rabies, from the bite.”

Maggie shook her head. “I doubt that, but we should take a closer look. Let’s rest up for a little while.”

“Where? What about Taveon?”

Maggie looked up and down the street. It was deserted.

“We’re a street off from where I saw him last, and down that way there are some bigger houses that should be occupied. If we’re lucky, we’ll find some guards holed up inside and can heal up your arm and leg properly.”

Faye bent over to snatch up the fallen sword. She wiped it carefully on the ruined arm of her gambeson before sheathing it, with some minor difficulty.

“I don’t believe the universe is that kind, Mags, but let’s try anyway.”

Sure enough, what Maggie had remembered about the houses in the area was true. There were some of the larger homes in this neighbourhood. Faye had been thinking of them as manor houses, but they were not big enough for that in truth.

The first one they had stumbled upon had a short wall, nothing that would protect against monsters but that clearly delineated the private space of the house to the public space of the street. It was stone and the top foot sported a metal railing with spear-head tops.

“This looks fancy.”

“Yeah, it belongs to one of the noble families. I’m not sure if they’re in town this season.”

“Oh, a summer home, is it?”

Maggie thought about it for a moment. “I guess that’s exactly what it is, huh. Are there a lot of summer homes where you’re from, then?”

Faye shook her head. “Not really. People would buy second homes on the coast more often than in the cities.”

Maggie nodded, encouraging Faye to speak. Faye looked around, and even activated her skill, but there was no danger — for now.

“It’s a little complicated,” she said, “and there are different opinions about it all. But, no, people would not buy a second home in a city… uh, usually. I’m sure there were odd ones that did. But holiday homes are common on the coast, where you can go and enjoy the sun, the beaches, and waves, in the hotter months.”

Maggie thought about it for a moment. “It sounds quite luxurious. I can’t really imagine living in a world like the one you’ve described.”

Faye smiled, sadly. “Well, I’m sure there are leisure resorts here… and if there aren’t, I’ll open one and become a millionaire.”

The wall led them around to a side gate, which was much easier to break into than the main gates. Maggie attacked the lock with her Force Bolt, breaking it cleanly.

“I feel bad, but the Guild will reimburse them… I think,” Maggie said.

Faye shrugged. The pain in her leg and arm had faded, but it was still there. If breaking and entering was all it took to get a place of security to recuperate, she was not going to say no.

The manor grounds were perfectly manicured lawns, which stopped Faye short. It was so completely ordinary that she was for a moment disoriented. It wasn’t until Maggie turned around and Faye took in her shield and sword that she blinked, and the sensation disappeared.

“That was odd. The grass looks exactly like hundreds of gardens from home. Strange sense of déjà vu.”

“Honestly, úl todád fiar always creeps me out a little,” Maggie replied.

Faye shook her head, hearing the Cróian words overlaying the English was strange and to make things worse there were times, like now, where the Cróian was emphasised somehow. She assumed it was a learning feature.

The garden, or lawn, of the manor house stretched around the entire building. Maggie led the way to the back entrance. She explained that it was more likely that even the family would use the smaller, less grand entrance daily. It kept the prestigious front access cleaner.

The door was easily opened with another liberal application of a Force Bolt.

“It’s a good thing you’ve already crested, Mags.”

The other woman looked back over her shoulder at Faye in confusion. “Why?”

“All this breaking and entering, you’d have gotten the Thief class in no time.”

To Faye’s delight, it had elicited a deep blush on Maggie’s face. “Stop it, I feel bad enough as it is.”

“You should learn not to,” Faye said, trying her hardest to keep a straight face. “It will make levelling a rather awkward experience.”

Faye burst into laughter as Maggie hit her on the shoulder. But after a second or two, her friend joined in.

Something creaked upstairs.

Their laughter cut off, immediately.

Faye activated [Swordfighter’s Sense]. Where before it had not indicated that anything hostile was close, she realised that she had grown too complacent. It was clearly highlighting something in the manor house with them now.

“Damn,” she whispered, “Sense is picking something up. Above us, somewhere.”

Maggie nodded, leading the way, with the shield held in front of her. The creaking floorboards of the upstairs had stopped.

Does that mean it is no longer moving, or has it stepped onto a part of the floor that doesn’t squeak?

Both women were paying attention to the sounds of the hostile upstairs that neither of them saw the broken remains of glasses on the floor.

Maggie’s boot crunched into the glass, smashing a large piece.

They paused.

Sudden scrambling sounds of claws on wood upstairs were followed closely by the rumbling growl of a monster.

“Shit!” Maggie cursed. They braced themselves, looking down the corridor from the kitchen area they were standing into the rest of the house. The scrambling reached stairs, because it stopped booming with the familiar sound of something above them and descended to their own level.

As whatever it was came for them, Faye flip-flopped between her two offensive options: a weak left-hand sword attack, or a rapidly vanishing mana reserve for her magical attack.

Neither option put her in the best position to assist Maggie.

The scrabbling sounds of claws on the wood floors of the house had reached the ground floor, and they got their first look at the monster.

It was a large forest hound.

Larger than the one that had ambushed them in the last street.

Without much of a second thought, Faye jumped forward, thrust her good hand past the line of Maggie’s shield and called on Scorching Lance.

The mana furnace that fluttered and guttered inside of her bottomed out. The rush of escaping energy drained her, and she felt her legs buckle, but with sheer grit she held on long enough to force something more into the spell.

The bar of fire that heralded Scorching Lance burst forth from her hand like a charging bull, streaking forward in the confined space and lighting everything in its bright glow. The backdraught was oven-like, but the lance struck true, hitting the monster straight on.

It screamed in pain and defiance, ducking back out of sight. The thick lance of fire guttered out, and Faye felt her strength leave her. She fell to a knee beside Maggie.

“Sword, Mags, take it!” she gasped.

Maggie dropped the wooden blade, crouched, and took hold of her sword’s grip on Faye’s belt and drew it as she stood again. She had not taken her eyes from the corridor the hound would come down.

Which meant that she was ready when it barrelled down the corridor in a fury, its vine-like protrusions on its back charred to charcoal, parts of its thick, heavy skin burning still. She lashed out with the shield to stop its headlong charge, and then chopped down harshly, drawing a yelp and whine from the hound.

Faye dragged herself backward, putting a heavy table and a cabinet between her and the hound, pulling her wooden training sword along with her. If she had to, she wanted something other than an arm to put in the hound’s mouth when it came for her.