Jen finished slipping on the mana gathering bracelets and necklace that Sam made for them and yelled to him in the other room, “Are you ready yet?”

“Almost!” Sam said, as he pulled the trigger and fired another crossbow bolt into one of his space rings.

“Gimme!!!” Jen demanded from Sam as she came into his room and pointed at some of the storage rings. Sam gathered up five of the rings on his worktable and handed them over to her and said, “These three each have 50 crossbow bolts. The bolts in this one have armor piercing enchantments. This one has bolts with fire enchantments, and this one has bolts with poison enchantments, but FYI, the poison is kind of weak.”

Jen felt it looked a little gaudy, but she equipped all three rings and asked, “What about these other two rings?”

Sam gave Jen a Dr. Evil grin and said, “That my dear is going to be a surprise!”

Jen knew better than to try and dig it out of Sam, because he would just gloat about his secret the more she asked.

A week earlier when Jen had returned from Robert’s farm and said she wanted to explore the abandoned dungeon, Sam had been excited about trying out some of his new enchantments and weapons. While working on storage rings, he learned through some testing that if you threw something into a storage ring, when it came out, it lost almost all its kinetic force, and it would come out facing the same direction as when it went in.

Understanding of the complete code behind the storage rings was still beyond Sam’s skill, but he had figured out quite a few modifications he could make to the storage enchantments. He learned that the storage rings would absorb the kinetic energy from any item placed into them, and would release the kinetic energy out of the ring so slowly that it was unnoticeable. Through a lot of trial and error he discovered a way to modify the enchantment so that items placed in the ring would come out of the ring facing the opposite direction. He also learned how to switch off the part of the enchantment that killed the kinetic force and slowly drained it out of the ring. This actually cut down the mana consumption of the storage rings dramatically.

Additionally, he modified the ring’s enchantments with a passcode that could lock and unlock the rings. Even if you died or someone stole the ring, if it was locked, without the passcode, it could not be opened.

Finally, while it wasn’t an enchantment modification that Sam made, Jen had shown Sam how to extend his mana out to the rings to allow items to be placed into and removed from the rings without having to be in physical contact.

“This is the place!” Sam said as he was looking up at some very tall trees a few miles into the forest outside of Casino City.

Jen looked perturbed at Sam as she said, “So, are you finally going to tell me what you plan to do with the rings?”

Sam walked around the trees looking at the terrain as he said, “I have eight rings, three with crossbow bolts like yours, two with different types of enchantment grenades, and three empties.”

Jen looked at Sam as though he had cheated her, but she knew he must have a reason for not giving her the enchantment grenades, “What’s wrong with the enchantment grenades?”

Sam looked a little guilty and said, “I’m not planning on using them because I haven’t had a chance to test them yet. I just wanted to make sure you knew what I had on me. As for the empty rings, well in just a second, you’re going to see what will be going inside them.”

Sam walked over to the tallest tree at the edge of the clearing, pulled out some climbing equipment he’d purchased in the market when he came up with his plan, and said, “Hold my beer,” as he gave Jen his empty rings.

Jen choked back a laugh as she looked up and rolled her eyes “hold my beer!” she just wasn’t expecting to hear that.

As he started to climb the tree, Sam hollered down to her, “Stand back and throw the ring where the log looks like it is going to fall, and then open the ring and catch the log.”

“TIMBERRRRRR!!!!!” Sam hollered as he cut about a six-foot length log off the very top of the tree about 150 feet up. With Jen’s speed and agility, she was not worried about getting hit by the log, but the weight and force of that log as she caught it inside the ring was impressive. “Holy Shit, Sam is an evil genius.”