Ben opened a Utility Pocket above his hand, playing with it and forcing it to open as slowly and as showily as possible. A swirling purple vortex of frothing space-time gently formed, then reached some kind of critical mass, opening a gateway to the space he kept all his stuff.

"Well ain't that something," the alien [Used Spaceship Salesman] said, some skill of his no doubt making him either seem to be, or actually be more charming. "I can't say I've had a human customer yet, let alone see any of those plus perks people have been talking about. Is that the uh, pocket dimension one?"

"Utility Pocket," Ben said, and then uncerimoniously began dumping dead bodies on the pre-arranged slabs used primarily for bartering with adventurers paying for things with corpses. "Now, we've been going back and forth on this whole VIP Card issue for weeks now, and my team needs a fucking ship."

"Yeah," Vivi said, voice sounding tough, slugging his way forward intimidatingly, looming towards the salesperson, "we need a fucking ship. Don't make me start showing off my new skill. [Summon: Living Fireball]-"

"Vivi," Ben said, giving the Aeon Slug a sideways glance, "thank you, but I've got this." Vivi gave the salesperson a scowl, then launched a spark sized screaming, hateful, kamikaze entity made of explosive fire straight into the sky. It said the most horrible, nihilistic, disturbing things as it streaked through the air, looking for something to kill. Finding no real target, it screamed its way back towards Vivi, who with wide eyes, began slugging away from it as fast as he possibly could, while attempting to banish his own out of control summon.

"Now, everybody cool off here," the [Used Spaceship Salesman] said, eying both the now on fire Vivi, and the large pile of strange monster bodies, "everybody just cool off. Why don't you tell me what these things are first so I can get some idea of what they're worth. And I'm mighty curious as to why you've got six fingers. I distinctly remember reading in that there newsletter I borrowed from the owner of this here vehicle lot that you humans only had five fingers."

"Oh man," Short Bus said, butting his way into the conversation, "that happened last week, and Ben was so pissed. There was this little dude made all out of like wood spikes," he exclaimed with a bit of an up at his sentences, "and they really blended in, and-"

"[Wood Imp]," Ben said simply, and the [Used Spaceship Salesman] winced.

"That'n be a [Curse Bolt] then. Surprised you're still alive and not a twisted mass of uh, biology."

"It wasn't a direct hit," Ben said, unconsciously flexing the sixth finger as he remembered what'd happened.

Despite Short Bus and Ghost Ear's scouting ahead, despite Vivi constantly scanning for magical threats, despite Red's near omniscient levels of awareness. . . they were ambushed. One moment they'd been carefully creeping through the forest, just about ready to turn around and finish their trip, and the next, a single high level [Wood Imp] launched a dizzyingly deadly bolt of black, sizzling energy directly at him.

It had been casually sitting on a branch, perfectly still, perfectly blending in. Ben remembered how it had cackled, how his head had turned just in time to see the [Curse Bolt] coming straight at him and the thrown back head of the [Wood Imp]. The high level skill ate through all the defensive spells Vivi had cast on him, just barely hitting him, the barest brush of a glancing blow.

It had hurt in ways Ben couldn't comprehend, and when he'd become sensible again, he had a sixth finger and a very relieved Vivi telling him how lucky he was to still be alive.

"Wood Imps are extremely dangerous," Vivi, no longer on fire and pretending it hadn't happened, explained to the [Used Spaceship Salesman], "Because they only have one skill. [Curse Bolt] is deadly, but they can only use it once per day. Once they fire, they run. They are an absolute bane of adventuring parties in the Overcavern Forest, who just love to swoop in after a fight is done and kill the survivors."

"We're lucky to be alive," Ben said simply, "and we're doubly lucky we didn't have to go back to that Violet Core dungeon."

"Elder Gremlins seem to lurk in very dangerous places," Ghost Ears said aloud, "we should know that and keep it in mind for our Quest."

"Enough about that, you wanted to know about these, right?" Ben said, indicating the huge, wooden, wyrm-like monsters he'd brought for payment.

"Yeah. I've got a couple of skills telling me they're worth something, but the skills work better when I actually know what I'm looking at."

"Yeah, we picked these up yesterday," Ben said, looking over at Red and Ghost Ears, who were both touching and examining the new spaceship with barely concealed excitement. Everybody was wounded to some extent or another, and every single health potion the group had once possessed was gone, badly needing to be restocked. Ben started to tell the story.

See, Vivi had figured out a new loophole to get Team Ben out of going into the Shifting Woods every week. Namely, if they were undertaking meaningful and significant action to make themselves stronger and thus increase their odds of completing their Quest, they could buy another week of life. Vivi had interpreted that to mean that they needed to raid a nest of [Wood Fire Brambles], to find a bunch of Fire Cysts which were apparently an extremely potent form of currency for negotiating with fire beings in The Beyond. Vivi kept mumbling about forbidden summoning techniques and the word 'fireball'.

The [Wood Fire Bramble] nest was in a little patch of burned up woods about a two hour flight from Solas. They'd rented a vehicle, which rankled Ben to no end because they should have their own transportation by now, and landed it some distance away. The monster was weird looking and defied Ben's ability to describe, except to say that they were spikey, viney, burny and fast. It snaked across the ground and up and down the branches and trunks of trees, hunting for prey it could clamp down on and burn alive, consuming the ashes and smoke. Ghost Ears commented that it was a terrible way to go, because the monster produced a natural potion of [Lesser Fire Resistance], which it injected into prey to make them last longer.

The fight had been. . . ok. Ben, following some broken prompts from his broken class, had taken to altering the terrain around the party to give them an advantage in a fight. People could say whatever they wanted about his imagination, but it was fucking useful to be able to just deploy giant cubes of dirt at will. The bramble had been a slippery and tough opponent, and in a feat of sheer testicular bravery that still sent a thrill of fear through his heart, Ben had won them the fight by luring the monster into a charge, and then placing a huge block of stone from The Mines directly in it's path at the last moment.

"Ben totally kicked it's ass!" Short Bus shouted, punching the air in excitement. Ben felt an involuntary rush of joy at the praise, because it had be the very first time he'd managed to kill a significant monster and feel like he knew what he was doing. Like it hadn't been an accident. The [Wood Fire Bramble] had crashed into the stone, rendering it both injured, and stunned. It now laid dead and still, resting on the table in front of him. Ben grinned at it, then scowled as he remembered the next part, when things had started flying off the handle.

"Yeah, I had kicked it's ass," Ben said, and Short Bus blanched, "then you had to go and start stomping on the larva."

"You don't leave a baby orca alive Ben, we've already talked about this," Short Bus grumbled.

"You told me you almost died doing that too!"

After the fight, Short Bus had been delighted to find a huge rotten tree packed full of, weirdly enough, [Wood Fire Bramble Larva], which Ben felt made them more insect than plant. Their bodies were valuable, Vivi had assured Ben while Short Bus gleefully stomped the screeching, burning things. After the vicious fight with the mature bramble, Ben conceded that killing the larva was probably prudent. Plus, after they were dead, they were loot. Ben loved loot.

That had been going great until the keening cry of the larva had called two more [Wood Fire Brambles] from deeper in the Overcavern Forest.

Ben wasn't sure if it was that there were two of them, or if they were higher level, or more mature, or just pissed that they were killing their babies, but the two new [Wood Fire Brambles] fought with a particularly deadly viciousness. Ben got the feeling that these monsters weren't trying to eat them, they were trying to kill them. Team Ben bunkered down the way they had when fighting an army of gremlins, backs to backs, weathering attacks of burning blasts and living wood that slashed and slithered fluidly by the sounds of deceptive creaks and pops and cracks. Vivi summoned a group of red-skinned demons watched them slaughter then summoned another pack, carefully conserving his mana and passionlessly sacrificing his troops.

Short Bus aimed with a bow, growling under his breath about the completely thoughtless, mindless monsters they were fighting. He finally managed to get ahold of one of them and [Paralyze] it with a psychic flex, and the tide of the fight shifted after that. Ghost Ears buffed Ben, who charged armed with a simple metal spear Frankie had handed him like an obedient squire, while Red landed an impressive critical hit on the second monster with a pinpoint application of a firehose blast of green and yellow acid.

"So that's these two," Ben said, indicating the two brambles laying next to the first.

"So what's that big scary looking one," the salesman asked, not even wanting to get close to the final body.

"Well. . . "

Ben managed to finish off the [Paralyzed] [Wood Fire Bramble], and managed to feel really good about the fight until the [*Female Wood Fire Bramble*] showed up.

It walked somewhat slowly on four legs, swiveling about freely, it's entire body radiating heat and flame. It was less made of wood, and more of a kind of crystalline, shining charcoal. Ben noted with dismay the stars next to it's name, indicating that it was not a normal monster.

"Oh no, an Elite!" Vivi shouted, and Ben had resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Then, under it's name, another ID tag appeared. It now read;

[*Female Wood Fire Bramble*]

[Apocalypse Event Monster. Bounty Available!]

What had followed was one of the worst fights Ben had been involved with, including with the Ax Beetle or the Citadel Boss. The Elite Monster was slow, but it didn't need to be fast when it was so fucking tough. Nothing they did to it could do more than stagger the damn thing, and every one of it's attacks managed to land a minor injury on some member of the group. They would have died, everybody knew it, they all would have died out there if not for Red, who had extremely grudgingly pulled out a glowing bottle of flashing light.

"Y'all've gotta be kidding me, she had a Bottle of Lightning?" the salesman looked at a sulky Red, who refused to say anything. "That thing was worth more than the damn spaceship you want, I'll tell you h'wat."

"Well, our lives are worth more," Ben said with a reassuring glance at Red, who seemed mollified.

Once she opened it, the fight was effectively over. The bolt conducted through the monster's crystal body and caused large portions of it to explode, leaving whatever was left exposed and vulnerable. In the post-mortem, Ben had grilled Red about why she hadn't used the item sooner, and she explained that it was her first 'Rare' drop she'd ever received from [System Looting]. She only had the one, and felt prudent to save it until a life or death situation. It was an acceptable answer, and the team thanked her for saving all their lives.

Once the remnants of the monster's body had been collected, the group was free to collect the real spoils. According to Vivi. Scattered throughout the now vacant monster nest, burning flowers of fire grew along long vines that grew along and up the massive trunks of the massive trees of the Overcavern Forest. Some were flowers, freshly blooming and jetting fire. Growing along the same vine, pollinated flowers had withered away and transformed into hard, glowing nuggets of raw magical power. The Fire Cysts Vivi so desperately prized. They were covered in sharp thorns, highly poisonous, and were considered extremely difficult to harvest, due to the abnormal toughness of the vines they grew along.

"[Bzzzz]," Ben lazily pretended to use a skill, opening tiny utility pockets and cutting through the vine with a long reciprocating sawblade he'd had Mice Labs fabricate for him. It was some kind of futuristic space age magical alloy stronger than anything Earth had ever produced, apparently, but it wasn't really getting the job done. Ben switched to a blade with smaller teeth, more suitable for metal, and was pleased to see the Fire Cyst easily cut free. They picked the nest clean, Ben's Utility Pocket ensuring there was no good reason to leave anything behind.

"And now I have one of the most feared, dangerous, forbidden spells only avaliable to [Royal Summoners]," Vivi chuckled darkly, "[Summon: Living Fireball], which calls forth a spirit of pure hatred from the elemental plane of fire. A living fireball who will viciously hunt down it's target and attack it where it is weakest. An intelligent spell, [Forbidden] by System Law for all but-"

"It's a really nasty attack spell," Ben cut Vivi off before he could give away more information about the party. "and I've had these appraised, they are more than worth what that spaceship is, after we apply our VIP Discount," Ben said, his voice and face suddenly hard.

"Kid, we've got profit margins! We can't just honor some aeons old promotional bullshit The System came up with to piss off the Signatory Races! It's not right!"

"Do I need to go to a suggestion box?" Ben said, knowing he'd just triggered the nuclear option for all negotiations in The World. He smirked, both at how the salesman seemed to shrink back from Ben in horror at the suggestion of getting the motherfucking System involved, and at the memory of the last message he'd gotten from Mice Labs.

His bombs would be ready soon.

"Now, now now now now," the salesman stuttered, "don't do that."

"He'll take my side. It's his fucking promotion dude, come on, how are you still trying to save money here? Take the bodies, and give us our spaceship, now."

"Ah, oh, eeh. . . boy you humans don't hesitate to esclate things, do you? I'll write it off as a pecularity of your short, mortal lifespans. Come on inside, come on into the office here and we'll get you all sorted out. Say now, say!" he said, suddenly brightening, "now we've got some dealership add-ons, that I just know you'll be wishing you had out there in that terrible dark forest you seem to like tromping around in! We've got protection plans and warrenties and guarantees, and I guarantee you'll be able to afford em!" the alien chuckled and started to use his skills on the group, trying to recoup every bit of the loss he'd just suffered.

And at the end of the day. . .

Team Ben had a new ride.