Chapter 19

Cave 5

When they walked out, the veterans were sitting down, looking downcast and talking quietly. “We should have never let them go in. The risk was too high.”

“It’s Ok Torger, we’re back.”

They all looked up to see the exhausted and drenching wet squad walk out of the cave. “Joe, what happened? We gave you guys up for dead an hour ago.”

Stories were exchanged then the lessons began. “Your points allocation was foolish Gary. That fight would have been much shorter with better weapons. You should have bought some iron swords or maces. We don’t know what we’ll be facing in the next cave. On the other hand, we’ll get there a lot quicker now.”

Gary told them Elora marked his map for cave six, but he couldn’t access his map. They agreed Gary’s squad should go into cave five first, and he needed to ask how to gain access to his Stats. If he couldn’t, Rome’s squad would ask for the location of cave six.

Cave five was south of the desert, well inland. It was almost a hundred miles away and in dense jungle. Their travelling speed had picked up to four miles per hour, but it still took a full day and a half to get there. Their water bottles were empty when Gary’s squad entered.

“Elora, how can I access my stats, specifically my map?”

“A basic ability can be purchased from the shopping kiosk. Just state what you want to buy. The price is always however many points you gain from that cave. Have a good fight.”

Elora disappeared and the back wall slid open, and they were in dense jungle. They walked forward, and a hundred huge ants ran at them. They were the same foot long ants they had seen in the jungle several days earlier.

The billiks had been much larger and stronger but were uncoordinated in their attacks. The ants made a complete circle around them and then marched forward. Thirty yards away was a four foot queen ant watching her soldiers fight.

Gary yelled “Drop the spears, use knives.”

They tried to slash at the ants, but they were too low to the ground. They began biting everyone’s ankles. They wished Gary had bought them greaves. Joe figured out they should kneel on the ground. That helped them reach the ants more easily, but they were off balance from leaning forward. Then Gary had them pick up their spears again. The added range let them kill all the ants from a distance, but being on their knees and making wide swings at the ants with crude spears only damaged the ants. By the time they were done they all had dozens of shallow bites on their arms. The queen walked away when the last one died.

Well done hunters. Your score is 82. Total points available to spend: 87

Training cave 5 difficulty: 9.8

Squad strength: 11.7

Time: 21 minutes

Would you like to make a purchase?

Gary walked to the touch screen. Instead of touching it he said “I would like to access my map.”

Add basic ability Maps.

Gary selected yes and all eighty-two points disappeared, leaving him with his original five.

Outside, Brun instructed him to give a verbal command, “Access maps”. Gary did so, and his vision was filled with a map. Most of it was blacked out, but he could see five blue triangles for his squad, and three yellow triangles for Rome’s squad. Everywhere he had walked showed the terrain, and the caves he had been in showed a C while the hidden cave to the north east had a C. A glowing 6 was marked to the south, in the forest.

“Hey it worked. I can see a glowing blue six.”

“I want a UI,” pouted Tyler.

“What’s a UI?” asked Torger.

“User Interface. It’s what icons you see on the screen when playing a game.”

“Tyler, for the last time, this is not a game. Please don’t throw around game terms anymore.”

“Fine. To let you know, the mobs in there are big ants and the boss is an even bigger, but non aggressive queen.”

“Gaaah! Mobs and boss are game terms, and don’t explain what they mean. I don’t care!”

Torger stormed into the cave, with Rome and Brun close behind.

Once inside Rome asked Torger “Aren’t you being a little harsh on him? He’s doing the best he can to cope with a stressful situation.”

Elora responded “I don’t think I’m being harsh on anybody, and I don’t think Torger is either. Have a good fight.”

“Wait Elora. That question wasn’t for you. I wanted to ask about purifying water.”

She had already disappeared.

“That’s not fair. She answered the question I asked before she even appeared.”

“Don’t be harsh on her Rome, she’s just an artificial intelligence,” Torger quipped.

“You mean an AI?” asked Brun, just to get Torger angry.

Inside Rome and Brun cast multiple Fire 1 spells, while Torger cast Shield 2 around the queen. She kept trying to smash through it but Torger strengthened it with mana, bringing the shield strength to 300. He then exhausted his mana with Fire 1 spells. As they were casting Brun complained “This would have been a lot easier if we didn’t have to cast a few cure one spells on the others before coming in here. Now I’m almost out, and have to use a spear.”

“True, but you saw all those bites on their legs and arms. That looked painful. We had to help them out.”

“Hold off on killing the last few, I want to kill the queen to see if there’s a bonus.”

“Ok, it’s time for spears and your sword Torger.”

“This is too easy. I wish we could ditch them and jump to cave eleven or twelve.”

“Yeah that would be nice, but we’ll take the points here and help out the others.”

“Hold on, time to kill the queen.”

Torger killed her and a message appeared.

11 bonus points

“Awesome.”

They killed the last ant and walked back.

Well done hunters. Your score is 108. Total points available to spend: 222

Training cave 5 difficulty: 9.8

Squad strength: 37.9

Time: 8 minutes

Would you like to make a purchase?

“A hundred and eight, plus the eleven from the queen. I wonder how the score works?”

“Ask Elora one of these times.”

“Good idea, should we buy anything?”

“Nah, cave six should be below our level. Let’s go.”

While walking to cave six, clouds rolled in. Everyone became alert for monster activity. After seeing nothing for a while and walking in silence, Rome said “I miss having Jex with us. As we walked she would play a flute or lyre she had bought from the elves, and at nights around a campfire she would sing. She got pretty good after several months.”

They walked on for a while in silence, then Nikko broke out in song. In a clear, nearly perfect tune he began “I heard there was a secret chord, that David played and it pleased the Lord, but you don’t really care for music do ya?”

Next Susan joined in, also a good voice, but not as good as Nikko’s. “It goes like this the fourth the fifth, the minor fall and the major lift, the baffled king composing hallelujah. Hallelujah, hallelujah.”

They sang a few songs, to the surprise and pleasure of everyone else. After a while a light rain started, but no one noticed as Torger and Rome were telling their story. “I circled to the left, and Rome went right. The dragon was green with red stripes, and it kept its eyes on me. We had already seen it was level forty-five, below our levels of seventy-one, so it should be a winnable fight. The thing reared up on hind legs and blew fire at me! Luckily, the old beat to hell dragon scale shield absorbed most of it, but I still lost a hundred and ten health from that one blast!

“Quick as flash Rome ran forward and smashed his diamond staff against its tail. When you smash a wizard’s staff it releases a huge amount of mana. Ristopan had told us to do it, because dragons have a very high magic defense. The smashed staff nullified the magic defense for fifteen seconds, a very expensive way to do battle mind you. That’s three pounds of gold, and fifty diamonds, obliterated. Anyway, the dragon was furious and turned to bite him. I cast poison three on it. That cut its max health to one third of the original, but that was still two hundred thirty-three health points left against the toughest armor there is. We both began casting level one spells as fast as we could, but it bit Rome. Chopped him clean in half. I could hear him still screaming when the dragon opened its mouth to breath fire at me again. But Rome, even being split in two at the waist still had the presence of mind to wedge the remaining upper half of himself into its open throat. The fire charred him to a crisp, but then the dragon choked on what was left of him. I ran forward and jumped as high as I could, thrusting Red Fury into the top of its open mouth. The sword pierced its brain and the five ton beast collapsed on me, crushing me to death. I would have hated to wait until it grew another ten or twenty levels.”

Everyone was in shock at the story, but Gary kept his mouth shut for a while. After minutes of silence he said “You guys have had a lot of terrible deaths and tragedies. You’re going to have to deal with that PTSD when we get back.”

“What, are you some kind of psychologist? We’re fine.” Torger stubbornly refused to show any kind of weakness.

Quietly Joe said “We’ve all heard you three screaming and thrashing in your sleep. Calling out battle formations, casting spells, calling for help. You’re not the same as when you left Earth six years ago.”

They looked at each other and knew it was true. Each of the veterans took shifts on watches while the others slept. Nearly half the time someone would have a nightmare of a previous battle. Not only that, they smiled and joked less than they used to, and deep down they knew they felt superior to everyone else.

Susan said “I mean this in the politest way possible. You’ve become barbarians with all your battles. You won’t fit well into a civilized society again. I don’t say that to be mean, but just a statement of fact.”

Another silence descended then Gary broke it. “They don’t plan on going back Susan.”

“What? Why? We’ll figure it out, I’m sure.”

“When Brun told me he murdered my family, he had already given up on ever getting back to Earth. That crime would have never been solved, and if he thought there was a slight chance of going back, he wouldn’t have told anyone.”

“You’re some mind reader Gary. We have talked it over in some caves,” Said Rome. “We think once we finish the last cave, we’ll be teleported to a tyter society. Torger and I are honorary generals, having defeated Shug’s squad, and they should honor Brun as one too. I don’t know how they’ll react to seeing you, but we have enough clout to protect you, if our theory is correct and you guys get teleported also. We have a lot of questions to ask Elora in the next few caves, but with this rain, maybe we can hold off on the water purification question.”

Rome experimentally held his head back and mouth open. The rain water tasted fine and they continued walking to see if he would get sick. After a few minutes Tyler spoke up. “In your dragon slaying story, you spoke about smashing a diamond wizard staff on the dragon. Explain what that staff was.”

Before Rome could answer, a creature the size of a large dog rushed at them from the brush. Brun cast Shield 2 around it, and Torger casually walked over and stabbed through the shield, shattering it but also sinking his sword into the beast’s front leg. Torger withdrew his sword and stabbed it in the head. The whole fight took about three seconds. Without missing a beat, everyone started setting up camp while Gary and Joe started cutting off chunks of meat.

As they were eating the cooked meat a half hour later, (the beast looked like a hybrid of a panther and boar and it tasted like pork chops), Rome answered the question. “Ristopan taught us how to make them. Wood is a little helpful, silver is one and a half the strength of spells, gold doubles their strength, and gold encrusted with diamonds triples the strength. We hollow out a part of the top of the staff and insert a ruby or emerald, and cast a weapon enchantment spell. It’s a simple spell that we retained when we came here, along with levitation and dirt wall. If we had three pounds of gold, a furnace, and a ruby or emerald we could make a wizard’s staff. That would be awesome, ‘cause I feel incomplete without one.”

“Me too” said Torger and Brun at the same time.

Tyler shook his head. “A lot of the circuitry of the ship is gold, a great conductor and lasts for decades, perfect for a long space mission. I’m sure we could scrape up more than three pounds of it from the debris. I don’t know about an emerald or ruby though, and we saw Nikko’s failed attempt at crafting in a campfire.”

Rome said “Gold melts at a much lower temperature than titanium. Maybe the campfire would work.”

Torger asked Gary “Were there industrial machine operators on board? Do you know about any metal working equipment brought?”

“Oh sure. We had a variety of prisoners who had former careers as welders, HVAC workers, machine repair guys. They had all the tools they might need to repair a breech in the hull or rewire half the ship. What are you thinking?”

“A lot of metal cutting blades are diamond encrusted. We might be able to scrape up some low grade diamond dust. Several specks might equal a decent sized ruby or emerald.”

Susan added “A lot of the women wore their wedding rings. We weren’t supposed to bring any other jewelry, but I’m sure some brought sentimental necklaces and earrings.”

“That settles it,” said Gary. “We’ve got to go back to the ship. The survivors weren’t looking for gold when people were dying, they were looking for food, water and bandages. They probably walked right past a bunch of wedding rings.”

“Isn’t it kind of taboo to loot the dead?” asked Nikko.

“We’re surviving here, superstitions can’t stop us from a massive upgrade to our squad.”

Everyone agreed to finish cave six, then go back to the ship.

Later the rain picked up, and Brun had the second watch. So did Susan, since Joe was the only one of Gary’s squad who wasn’t afraid the others would leave them. Brun thought he saw a shadow in the semi-dark, but wasn’t sure. Years on Nuva taught him to trust his gut. “Torger, Rome, get up,” he whispered.

They sat up quickly, a little disoriented but ready to defend themselves. “I think we may have a visitor soon.”

A minute later the three looked into the jungle and saw two medium sized snakes slithering towards them. Torger took off their heads but Rome and Brun never took their eyes off the jungle, having complete trust in Torger. Then Brun pointed and cast Lighting 1. Torger and Rome turned to see a lesser lich disappearing.

“You to go, I’ll protect the others,” said Torger.

The others woke up in the commotion as Susan stammered “What, what was that thing?”

“A lesser lich. They were only level nine to eighteen on Nuva, but Elora said the creatures in heavy rain are twenty-one to thirty. They rose from mass graves there, but I guess it’s just the rain that will bring them out here. They have low health points, but can only be damaged with magic. Your spear and knives would go right through it without harming it, so you could never win. Not until you get spells. They cast fear spells making you dream your worst fears, and can raise creatures from the underworld. That’s probably where the two snakes came from.”

Tyler asked “Are they undead? Can you cast a holy spell on them? What about zombies and vampires? Did you see any of those?”

“I never saw a zombie, vampire, werewolf, unicorn, or bigfoot. I suppose all but the zombies are possible. Tyters teleport living things, they don’t reanimate the dead. I have no idea where liches come from, or what their nature is. Rome and I tried to fight three Grand Liches at the goblin massacre site near Lake Tahoe, but they were each level eighty and it would have been tough for us to take on just one. We both died because when they drew near terror filled our minds, and just their touch was enough to drive us insane before we died of heart attacks. We had to go back with Ristopan who cast courage spells on us and added a holy element to the shield around us. Even then we barely won. Uh oh, I wonder if that means liches will rise from the wreckage. There’s more than two thousand dead people there.”

Torger thought about that danger for a few minutes until a triumphant Brun and Rome returned. “We should be all clear for a while. Three of them, level twenty-three, and raising those same level nineteen snakes.”

“Do you think they came from the crash site?” asked Nikko.

“Oh, that would be bad. Very bad,” responded Rome. He looked at Brun and Torger. “We do each have a respawn.”

“I don’t like it but a gold staff is worth the risk,” replied Torger.

“Cave six, then the wreckage, just like before.” Gary’s statement had a hint of a command rather than an open topic for discussion. His squad acquiesced easily, but it rubbed the veterans wrong, but they didn’t respond because they agreed with him.

Chapter 20

Cave 6

“Welcome to cave six. What is your question?”

“How do we purify water here?” Rome had been wanting to ask that question all day.

“Water on TZ eighteen from springs and streams has a three percent chance of being contaminated. Boiling it or casting heal one on a liter reduces the chance of contamination to point four percent. Heal two reduces it to point one percent. Collected rain water has a one percent chance of contamination. Have a good fight.”

“That’s a rather obvious answer now that we know it” murmured Torger. It seemed obvious if Heal 1 and Heal 2 removed the common cold, flu, and mild venom, they should work on a canteen of water.

The wall slid back and they stepped into the same kind of dense jungle that was outside, but the plants were different. No monsters attacked them as they walked forward. Going a little further revealed nothing, but Brun jumped as a vine wound its way around his arm. He tried to pull away, but it was too strong. Torger easily cut it off with his sword. As they walked forward most of the plants tried to reach out to them and wrap them up. The sword and fire spells kept them away, but Brun and Rome were burning through mana too quickly.

“We saw nothing like this on Nuva. They’ve got to have a weakness,” said Torger.

“Maybe, maybe not” replied Rome. “The caves get progressively more difficult. These are harder than the ants, but not as bad as the sanglers. A squad of five tyters all equipped with iron swords would hack through this no problem. Our difficulty is that our spears and knives are ineffective. This is a cave for swords, pure and simple.”

Rome and Brun spent the last of their mana, and fell behind Torger who cut every branch and vine he could. Most writhed a little when they hit the ground, but lost strength and could easily be pulled off any boots they wrapped around. Some had thorns that cut shallow cuts, some had a mild poison that would leave welts, some were nearly as strong as Torger and tried to crush him.

At the back of the cave was an oak tree with a face in it who looked angry. It spit pollen at them and they all coughed and their max mana and stamina was cut in half. Then it started shooting thorns at them from its branches which took off four health in poison damage any time one was embedded in a human. Torger tried to hack at the tree with the sword, but did little damage.

“I was wrong. This is a cave for axes. Torger, light it up.”

Torger backed away and cast Fire 1. Instead of doing seven damage, it did fourteen. “Too bad about that mana cap being cut in half, or this would have been easy. The mobs weren’t that bad.”

“Ha! You said mobs.”

Torger blushed then hid it behind anger. “Stupid Tyler teaching us these terms. They’re getting stuck in my head. And don’t either of you tell him I said that word or I’ll cut off your hand. Make you take two days to grow a new one.”

Brun and Rome chuckled but swore to not tell the others.

They spent all their mana on Fire 1 spells, then hacked at the “boss” until it died.

Torger finished off the tree with his sword and fire spells and the walk back out he pated the pommel of his sword, letting Brun and Rome have no doubt they would lose a hand for saying Torger used a gaming term.

Well done hunters. Your score is 71. Total points available to spend: 293

Training cave 6 difficulty: 10.8

Squad strength: 37.9

Time: 19 minutes

Would you like to make a purchase?

“We’ve got a lot of points to spend. Should we buy something?” asked Rome.

“We ran out of mana. We should buy more,” suggested Brun.

Torger added “The others probably won’t make it through here. My sword and their spears and knives will be pretty useless to them.”

They bought five iron axes for 108 points, and gained 10 mana points each for another 60 points, leaving 125 for future spending. They felt a little better at having 90 mana points each, and considered bringing it up to 100 each but ultimately decided against it.

Rome smiled wide as he presented the others with their gifts. “You guys are definitely going to need these. The grips are a bit big, so use them as two handed axes.”

Once they had a good understanding of what they would face, Gary’s squad entered the cave. After Elora’s standard introduction, Gary asked where cave eight was at. She marked his map and he saw it was in the southern tundra.

The first vine wrapped around Nikko and he screamed like a little girl. It kept crushing him until Joe severed the vine with three big swings from the iron axe. “Torger said he cut through these vines with a single slash of his sword. He should have let us bring it along.”

“Maybe, but they were quite generous when they bought us these axes. We would be screwed without them. The tyters are probably a lot stronger than us, and Torger is certainly stronger than you or any of us. They might be able to cut these vines easily with these axes.”

“Maybe we should buy more strength.”

Everyone agreed with Susan and slowly worked their way along the cave. Near the end they had to retreat a little and rest for several minutes. Fully rested they hacked their way through the last vines and arrived at the oak tree, but they all had welts all over their bodies from the poison and crushing vines, and scratches covered them all head to toe from the thorns. The pollen hit them and they had no mana to lose, and their stamina was cut to half of full, which was just a slight drop since they had to kill fourteen vines after their break.

They rushed forward and dug into the tree with all they had, doing their best to ignore the thorns pummeling them. Unfortunately, their skill with axes had only risen to level two, and on a big swing Nikko missed the tree trunk and he let go of the axe, which flew in the air and hit Gary in the arm. The blade didn’t hit him, but it was still strong enough to break his arm. He cussed out Nikko and they both withdrew from the battle. By the time the tree died, Joe, Susan and Tyler had less than a quarter of their health left. They rushed to the entrance to get cure spells from the others.

Well done hunters. Your score is 59. Total points available to spend: 64

Training cave 6 difficulty: 10.8

Squad strength: 14.0

Time: 53 minutes

Would you like to make a purchase?

“Wow our score sucked.” Gary bought three mana points for himself, then spent another eighteen on Cure 1. He cast it on himself, just like he had seen the veterans do by pointing to his own chest and saying “Cure one.”

A tingling ran down his finger for a split second before a gold beam of light smacked him in the chest, restoring ten health. He couldn’t access Stats so he couldn’t quantify it, but most of the bleeding slowed from the multitude of shallow cuts. His arm didn’t heal at all, but his grin made the others jealous. “Forty points left. That’s enough for two strength upgrades for each of us.”

When Gary purchased two strength points then selected himself, a beam of light shone down from the ceiling for several seconds. He could feel and see all the muscles in his arms and legs getting a little bigger. The others looked on with awe, and eventually they were all given two more strength points.

Outside they thanked the veterans for the axes, since it made all the difference. In turn they congratulated them on their strength increase. As they walked, the veterans analyzed them and told them their current health, strength, and stamina. Gary was the strongest with 9, and Susan was the weakest with 4. Torger didn’t tell them he and Rome had 20. Instead he said “Congratulations Gary, you’re now as strong as Brun, and Joe you’re at eight, almost the same.”

As they walked, Tyler was mumbling to himself. Rome asked him “What are you thinking about?”

“Oh, it’s boring. You wouldn’t be interested.”

“Try me.”

“I’m thinking about the speed of light, and cosmic distances.”

Rome laughed and stated “I’ve had that same battle in my head many times. Even if the teleport from Earth sent us to Nuva at the speed of light, it would take years to get there and years to return.”

Tyler’s face lit up. “Exactly! They must be using the Einstein-Rosen bridge somehow.”

“Probably, but I think they didn’t teleport us using physical matter. I think they just teleported the software of our minds, and scanned our faces. I think the local teleports on a planet only transfer the physical material to the larger teleport station in the same solar system as the local planet. The smart phone looking device we saw on that initial hike probably sent us physically to the larger teleport device close to the sun, but that one only forwarded our minds and personalities, not our physical bodies. A large teleport device near Nuva probably received the information, but that theory I had doesn’t make sense anymore because you came here physically…” Rome looked up and saw the entire rest of the group had quickly hurried away to avoid their geeky conversation. An hour later Rome and Tyler were friends.

The sun came out again and after a good sleep at the edge of the jungle and desert, they walked toward the ship. A mile away, the veterans continued without the others in case there were Grand liches. There were none, so they went back to get the others. When they were almost to the wreckage again, Torger, Rome and Brun’s timers hit ten days and flashed red. A message appeared.

Hunters, you are taking a long time to complete this training zone. In four days you will begin losing points from your final score. If you are still here at seventeen days, you will be ejected from the training zone as failures.

“That’s not what Elora told us,” complained Torger.

“Actually, she said after ten days we get no rewards and all monsters respawn.”

Torger didn’t like being corrected, but Rome was right. Brun asked “Does that mean we can do the caves we’ve already done again?”

“I don’t know, but it’s worth finding out. Free points would be great. But we do have to hurry and finish in the next seven days.”

After hours of searching, they had gathered hundreds of wedding rings and twenty-two necklaces, and Tyler and Rome scraped up almost a pound of gold from circuit boards. All together they had a little over six pounds of gold. “Enough for two staffs,” smiled Brun.

Torger said “You guys were the mages, you have them. We’ll need to buy me some good armor, and enchant my sword.”

During the search Susan went on her own secret project, and when they set up camp she presented presents to everyone. “I have a hobby as a seamstress. I’m sorry about the low quality, but I didn’t have fabric and a sewing machine.”

She pulled out of a large duffle bag eight wool tunics. “You said there’s a little increase in magic potency with wool garments. We’re all going to have a spell eventually, and the tundra is cold. These should be useful.”

Everyone took a tunic and thanked her for the garment that was made from mismatched sweaters cut and sewn together. The desert and jungle were too hot to wear them, but they would get a lot of use in the forest and tundra.

As they camped, Nikko and Rome worked on melting the gold and forming it. It didn’t melt completely, but that was just fine because they could hammer it into shape when it was soft. It took them nine hours, but finally Rome cast the enchantment spell on each and they had two diamond wizards staffs. Brun and Rome tried them out by casting Ice 1 at each other. The ice spell was cold, but that was appreciated in the sweltering heat. The staffs worked, then Rome and Nikko slept for eight hours, much longer than the standard five hours. But to be fair they had been awake for twenty-six hours.

Their trip through the jungle was uneventful and they came back to cave six. This time Elora’s greeting was different. “You have been here for more than ten days, and the caves you have already defeated may be defeated again, but you may only pick two. Your new score will replace your old score for that cave. Would you like to retry cave six?”

“Should we do it? I don’t remember our last score,” asked Torger.

“No, better not risk it. Elora, what was our last score?”

“You have already asked a question in this cave. Would you like to retry cave six?”

“No Elora. We’ll need to find out our two worst scores.”

A strong gust of wind blew them out of the cave. Outside, Torger checked his Maps. All the caves they completed now showed their score above the cave, instead of the C. Their worst was cave 2 with a score of 49, and next was cave 4 with a score of 68.

“It would be nice to go fix those scores, but that will take us a couple of days. It’s not worth the risk before we hit seventeen days. We only have six days left before we’re ejected.” They agreed with Brun that the journey would take too long. Instead they kept heading south.

Near the south part of the forest, a swarm of bees flew at them. The others panicked, but Rome and Torger smiled and Torger said “Watch this! Earth wall!”

A wall of dirt rose from the ground a foot high, and Torger poured more and more mana into it until it was eight feet high and ten feet wide and three feet thick. It trapped and crushed more than half the bees, and a few Shield 2 and Fire 1 spells from Brun and Rome finished off the rest.

“That’s cool. That would have come in handy several times on Nuva.”

“Yeah Brun, we’re glad that was a spell that carried over from Ristopan. It can slow a charging bull, but costs a lot of mana and the beast can just go around. But in a cave it can buy us a few minutes of rest.”