Sam was not looking forward to resuming the nightly combat training now that they were finally away from the merchants. The possibilities were endless, and he just wanted to work on his enchantments, but he knew it was important for them to train together.

Jen explained it in gaming terms, “Tamako was the tank, Jen was the rogue, and Sam was the fragile and weak support healer/mage.”

Sam had learned weeks ago, not to rise to her bait calling him weak. You couldn’t show any emotional weakness around those two, or they would be relentless with the ridicule – “why don’t they just grow up!” he thought with a wicked smile on his face.

Without the Merchants and former slaves, the mood lightened up tremendously and they were able to move much faster, and it only took them a few days to return to where Jen noticed the strange mana at the edge of the mountains.

Team Kelly, as Jen decided to call them, spent the next day gathering lots of logs into the enchanted space discs. Sam pulled out a “surprise” that he had partially finished before stopping everything to work on the mana enchantment tattoos. Over the last few weeks of travel, he finished carving the last piece that he needed. Sam grinned as he pulled out what looked like a carved wooden rifle with a mana-infused steel revolver and trigger mechanism built into it, and said, “feast your eyes on this!”

Jen deadpanned, “wow, you have a toy wooden rifle, how amazing.”

Sam grumbled, “Alright smartass, we’ll see who will be begging me for one of these in just a few minutes,” as he demonstrated with every pull of the trigger a crossbow bolt shot out, and holding the trigger caused the bolts to shoot out full auto like a machine gun. Then Sam showed that by turning the revolver mechanism, he could choose between bolts with fire, ice, or poison enchantments, or enchanted fire and ice grenades.

Sam laughed as he pin-cushioned a tree, and said, “accuracy of fire and projectile selection is so much better and faster than using rings on your fingers.”

Tamako was quite impressed and said, “with such enchantments, have you already reached the master enchantment rank?”

Sam shook his head sadly, “Unfortunately, I’m not even close. When it comes to making enchantments, I’m really just a one-trick pony. Almost everything I do of any complex nature involves interdimensional storage spaces. The only other powerful enchantments I’ve created are the lightning and healing enchantment tattoos, and there is still quite a bit about the enchantments that I don’t understand. I can control them for the most part, but I don’t yet fully understand how they work.”

Jen groaned in response to Sam’s explanation, “in summary, bla, bla, bla, he has not reached master enchantment rank. Moving on, how many bolts and grenades do you have for that thing?”

Sam replied, “not enough. I only have 30 of each type of bolt, and 5 of each of the grenades. That includes the ones I just shot, so I need to go and collect and reload them tonight.”

The next day, the dungeon was about a 4-hour detour into the mountains. They were forced to go single file through a slot canyon that they never would have found if Jen wasn’t following the mana trail. Once through the small crevice, the area opened up slightly, and they spent about an hour inspecting the area surrounding the dungeon, and it appeared to be relatively safe considering their levels.

As Tamako approached the dungeon, Jen and Sam provided overwatch, and Slim stayed back at their rally point not wanting to go anywhere near dungeons again. When Tamako was only about 15 yards from the entrance to the dungeon, she noticed some strange looking vines growing out of the rock-covered ground. She messaged Sam and Jen, “Somethings strange. I’m going to back up and take cover. Sam, can you shoot a bolt into one of those vines?”

Sam replied, “No problem, let me know when you’re ready?”

A few minutes later, Tamako had backed up behind a boulder near the base of the gorge they were in and said, “Go for it.”

Sam took careful aim and sent a bolt into one of the strange vines near the dungeon entrance.

Tamako was just about to comment that it must have been nothing, when a three-headed hydra came roaring to the entrance breathing a stream of fire jetting almost 20 yards out of the dungeon entrance.

Jen messaged, “Tamako, pull back!”

“It hasn’t spotted me; I’m going to hang tight.”

Just then one of the hydra heads raised up sniffing the air like a dog. Jen could feel the emotions the hydra was giving off and knew it had located Tamako’s location and hollered, “It’s spotted you. Sam, distract it while Tamako pulls back.”

Sam started firing bolts at the hydra. They either bounced off or exploded doing some damage, but mostly just pissing it off, and he said, “Shit! That thing is tuff.”

The hydra was only slightly distracted by the bolts. Unfortunately, the head that caught Tamako’s scent wasn’t losing focus, and the hydra started charging in Tamako’s direction. Tamako fired a ring log at the hydra and it snatched the log out of the air with one of its heads and threw it to the side. Tamako didn’t hesitate and fired a small forest of logs at the hydra. This did slow it down, but didn’t appear to cause it any significant injury.

Sam targeted the scenting head and used his lightning tattoo to drop a bolt of lightning straight into its forehead. The hydra’s scenting head was disintegrated by the lightning bolt, and the impact almost knocked the hydra off its feet. The hydra and its other heads were dazed just long enough to allow Tamako to sprint out of danger. The hydra was pissed off, and it looked like its scenting head was growing back, but instead, there were two heads growing back instead of one!

As Team Kelly re-grouped far back at their rally point. Tamako asked, “Any ideas on how to kill that thing?”

Jen laughed, “Yeah, I have one idea. Let someone else do it. We’re out of here. Next stop, back to Rolling Dice City.”

Sam winked at Tamako, “Gotta know when to hold’em and know when to fold’em.”