The bomb detonated in mid-air and much to Ben's terror, he realized they were way too close. "Shit!" he bit out the word as he bodily leaned into the controls and started pressing panic buttons, while simultaneously pumping a different kind of fuel into the vehicle via his Utility Pocket, boosting it's speed immensely, but practically guaranteeing that they would need to buy yet another new used ship after this outing. Ben was flying the HMS Frankie v8, because versions one through seven were all totaled. Either the monsters of the Overcavern Forest got them, or the natural wear and tear that came from being a nuclear bomber.

The massive alien jungle was a blur of green and orange, and Ben realized in this moment that he was an excellent driver. He dodged between the trees and branches, using a combination of his eyes and his [True Map] to avoid the malevolent monsters of the Overcavern Forest, who even in the face of nuclear fire, were determined to commit one last murder.

Ben continued pumping different mixes of chemicals and solid fuels, swapping out energy cells meant to last for months that were being depleted in seconds, and generally overclocking the living shit out of his ride, all in real time. His skill at integrating himself inside the vehicle with his Utility Pocket had been growing by leaps and bounds, partly because of Frankie, partly because of hard work, but mostly because that was what the Utility Pocket was designed to do by The System. It could be trained, and it was a solid learner.

A shockwave hit the ship, and Ben swore again, redoubling his efforts to make his ship move faster than a nuclear explosion and riding the razors edge between success and failure.

[Congratulations! You have killed yet another Quest Target, and proven once and for all that human tactics have remained completely unchanged from the last time your species was here!]

[Six Elder Gremlins remain.]

"Go a-way!" Ben shouted outrage as the ship rattled, not daring to even look behind him at the atomic blast. He felt the ship starting to heat up, then shook his head in disgust. "Oh fuck it," he said, then started juicing the ship via Utility Pocket way beyond what it was ever even remotely designed to handle. The g-force pulled him back in his seat, overpowering the cheap inertial dampeners installed on the used fighter ship. Everything was rattling around him, all the dials and sensors were maxed out, every emergency warning light was flashing and only a continual firehose blast of post-space age magical coolant delivered via Utility Pocket on nearly every component of the ship was keeping it from exploding.

Ben dared to take a moment to look behind him and saw, to his relief, that he'd outpaced the blast. The endless green of the Overcavern forest had sprouted a new growth, a mushroom of radioactive fire growing upward, casting a shadow of orange and burning dust on the ground from which it rose.

His heart was pounding in his chest and the thrill of it made him want to double over, like there was a livewire of pure excitement stretching from his stomach all the way up to his throat. He was sweating and his hands were shaking and his pupils were totally dilated and-

"It's just such a crude weapon," Vivi lounge-fully said, cutting through the mood with a single sentence. He was lounging on a large Aeon Slug couch he'd expertly secured to the floor with magic, and smoking from a replica of the hooka-esque contraption he'd had when Ben had first met the damn slug. The rest of the crew was sitting comfortably inside the 'Emergency Escape Pod-ket", which was just an open Utility Pocket portal Ben could jump inside if the ship exploded. The entrance would then close to a pinhole in size, and Vivi would block whatever came through the pinhole with a magical barrier.

It wasn't just theory either, they'd unfortunately made use of the tactic multiple times.

"Ben broke the spaceship again," Short Bus said like he was in a trance, calling out to Red, who had a somewhat disturbing tendency to wander out into the seemingly infinite darkness of the Utility Pocket and just. . . be in the darkness. He was staring at a lava lamp.

"Prince Ben, I know you are enamored with these nuclear missiles of yours, but they leave nothing behind in terms of . . . shall I say, loot. And you have a financially liberal tendency to utterly destroy every vehicle you pilot, vehicles which are very expensive."

"Oh come on," Ben said, nosing the ship down and following a path set out by his [True Map] to a safe clearing he could land in, "We'll just go back to the Citadel of Horrors and [Whap] a few more of those depressed bug monsters that are always moping about after we killed their king."

"I still say we sell the location," Vivi commented through another cloud of smoke, "a practically untouched, already pacified Citadel is pretty much the ultimate loot farm."

"Shut up ya dumb slug," Ben said good naturedly, landing in a clearing and getting out of the ship, "I've got nukes, and they aren't good enough for you. I don't see you with spells this strong."

"Pff," Vivi scoffed, "give it time stupid."

"How much time?"

"Couple thousand years."

"Well I can bang some glowing rocks together and do it in like three weeks."

"It's primitive."

"It's effective."

"Can we please get out of here?" Ghost Ears said, sounding exasperated, "Short Bus cannot take his eyes off that lava lamp you had Mice Labs make, and Red is muttering in some infernal tongue out in the darkness. I've had quite enough of this, thank you."

"Yeah yeah," Ben said, letting the Emergency Escape Pod-ket's entrance open wide enough for everyone to get out. "Out you all go, out out out!" Ghost Ears flew out with an audible sound of relief, followed shortly after by Vivi, who was slugging fast and doing Aeon Slug zoomies around the safe clearing. Ben noted with some degree of amusement pockets of magical fire around him that had nothing to do with his overpowered assault on the Gremlins. "Hey! Bus, come on, get out of there!"

No response. Ben peeked through the be-tentacled portal and saw Short Bus hunched over a small table with an orange lava lamp on it. It had been the only thing the party had found thus far that helped the Manshark with his motion sickness, if only because it mesmerized him so much he didn't notice how sick he felt.

"[Whap]," Ben said, shaking his head and removing the lava lamp from a distance. Short Bus snapped out of it instantly, nearly jumping to his feet and looking around.

"Oh man, that was crazy," he said, and Ben felt him reliving Ben's memories of recent events, "Oh man, that was close! You were like a human surfer, except instead of waves, you were surfing a nuclear blast. Did I ever tell you about the time I started scaring surfers whenever they caught a big wave? I'd just swim right next to them and make sure they saw me inside the wave- oh man, they didn't like that!"

"Oh shit," Ben said in genuine astonishment, "you ever eat any of them?"

"No," Short Bus said.

"Oh good."

"Comment," Short Bus finished, then gave Ben a shark toothed grin and slapped him on the back as he walked out of the Pod-ket. "Good luck in there," he said, pointing a thumb at the darkness, where Red was obscured. "You're gonna need it." Then he walked off, leaving Ben to do the job alone.

"That fucking guy," Ben muttered to himself about his best friend, then cautiously went into his Utility Pocket, a place he should never feel unsafe. But he did feel unsafe, because if Red got weird if she stayed in his Utility Pocket for too long. And by weird, Ben meant violent. He was honestly getting sick of it.

"Red!" he yelled, "stop being fucking weird and get out of here already! Come on, I know you can see AHH!" Ben yelled, realizing Red had somehow snuck up behind him and was really, really close to his back. She was like something from an unfortunately erotic nightmare, her lithe body, her green skin and eyeless face paired with her enormous horn-antlers with those fucking enormous eyes made of pure energy inside them. He felt that his fear of her was somewhat fueled by the fact that the first time he'd met her, he had been an [Extremely Tiny] naked fairy man, and she had been a titanic naked demon woman. "My life is so fucking weird now," Ben muttered to himself, already over his statement. "Red, come on, let's go."

"This place reminds me of home," Red said, obediently walking behind him as he led her out.

"Of Hell?" Ben probed.

"No, of The Beyond. Not of any particular part, but of it's. . . substance, such as it was. I wonder if these Utility Pockets are related to the edgelands at all. No, I suppose not."

"Edgelands? The fuck are those?" Ben asked as they exited the Utility Pocket. Vivi, as though summoned by the opportunity to explain something, was suddenly right there next to them.

"Edgelands! Ha! Those aren't real-"

"They're real," Red said.

"is what all the fools at the Summoners Tower believe!" Vivi pivoted his entire belief system on a dime without even missing a sluggy stride. "All the true pursuers of forbidden knowledge know about the Edgelands. Red, I won't bore you with all our petty legends, go ahead and tell us what you know about the Edgelands?" Vivi's bluster ran out right around the end of his statement, causing his question to come out as something of a desperate whine.

"There's nothing much to say, they're the place where The Beyond and reality meet. Everything summoned must by definition pass through the Edgelands. They are a place where even those summoners call 'Impossible' can freely exist, a place which blends The Beyond and reality freely."

Vivi had a magical notebook floating in front of him and was taking furiously annotated notes as Red spoke. They were filled with arcane and convoluted symbols, the only one of which Ben recognized was a golden triangle.

"Ok, you two go that way, I need to calm down," Ben said, realizing that he still hadn't quite purged the adrenaline from his system. Red and Vivi went away, Vivi excitedly asking questions, and Red blandly answering them. Short Bus and Ghost Ears were together, chatting, and it made Ben happy to see his entire group getting along well. He walked away from them, not so far as to be out of sight, but far enough to be somewhat alone.

"[Summon Spaceship]," Ben said aloud, pretending he'd used a skill as he pulled another used spaceship from his Utility Pocket. There was nothing quite like being able to carry a spare. . . everything.

This one was, to Ben, one of the more astetically pleasing ships he'd purchased. It resembled pearl in some ways, being bright white and somewhat spherical, but with pale bands of blue light running across the surface, illuminated from the inside. It floated high in the air and gave off a bright light, causing Ben to cast a long shadow behind him. For a little while, he just stood there and stared up at it. Then, when he was calm, he reviewed the System Notification he'd gotten while fleeing the premature detonation of his bomb.

"Only six left," Ben said, summoning a bit of tough, flavorless plant material from his Utility Pocket directly into his mouth so he had something to chew on with his incisors. "Huh." He pulled up his [True Map] and searched for them, and felt a mild sense of alarm when they didn't show up. "The fuck?" he looked harder, then noticed a flashing exclamation point. He selected it, and a notification appeared.

[Quest Update!]

[Your Quest Targets are obscured by an extremely powerful [Reality Distortion Field]. In order to find them, you will need to activate your own [Reality Distortion Field]

[Quest Update!]

[In order to complete your quest in the most efficient manner, you must [Evolve] from a Leap-rechaun into a Human. You are no longer obligated to search for the Elder Gremlins until such time as you are able to track them on your [True Map] once again.]

Ben let out a long sigh of relief, sagging to the ground. "Fucking finally. Guys!" Ben shouted, "Guys get over here, group huddle. I've got a Quest Update."