“Ah, don’t start that pity-the-revenant crap,” Alloha complained to Torra. “Or the next time one wanders up to our camp at night, I’ll let you greet it.”

“There’s really no way to kill them permanently?” I asked.

“A lot of things have been tried,” Alloha said. “They always come back, eventually. I heard in Raith they tried to toss theirs into an active volcano once. Now they have a special variety that is covered in stone. Only made them more dangerous.”

I laughed at that. “That’s actually kind of funny.”

“Wouldn’t be so funny if you saw one,” Torra said.

“Have you heard of the White Forest?” Alloha asked me. I shook my head. “It’s a forest in the Northeast corner of Kalador. It’s overrun with primordial spiders. A long time ago we used to throw revenants into their webbing. They’d wrap them up in cocoons and never let them go. That’s the closest way we used to have to get rid of them permanently.”

“Doesn’t work anymore,” Torra commented. “The spiders got sick of collecting food they couldn’t eat and started attacking anyone that tried to drop more off.”

“Wow, sounds like there are a lot of these things,” I said. “Just how many revenants were created?”

“Nobody really knows,” Torra replied. “I heard it was in the millions.”

“It was half the global population at the time,” Alloha explained. “Fayden was trying to replace everyone. He got kind of close.”

“H-half? Did you say half!?” The deadliest plague known to mankind, the Black Death, had only killed about a fifth of the global population. It suddenly made a ton more sense to me why this Fayden guy was such a big deal. After that, Torra asked about the religions of Earth and I spent a while telling him about God and Satan, then threw in what I knew about other religions like Buddhism and Hinduism. When they thought those were interesting, I explained the older mythologies of the Greek, Egyptians, and Norse. They were very fascinated about how and why humans could have so many wildly different religions. I couldn’t give a satisfying answer why.

I found plenty of crampie berries along the road while we walked and talked. Alloha tried to warn me not to eat more than three if I didn’t want to get cramps. Torra clarified that what she meant by “cramps” was closer to “a geyser of feces exploding out my backside”. I laughed, but still ate several handfuls. They were tasty, and it made for a great chance to test how different human digestion was from rissians.

In the lulls between conversation, I scrolled through the library of Brands my overlay had saved while I was at the Broker’s. I was curious what other options there were for food-based Brands, but found that Gora hadn’t been lying about Conjure Potato being the best option, MP-wise. The next cheapest was one that would create a living fish in your hand for 12 MP, but most that made edible food would grow something from the ground for much more expensive investments. The most expensive, monetarily, was one that needed the light of Heaven’s Bridge to create whole pies that were supposed to be the most delicious thing you’d ever tasted.

Deciding I was probably set on support Brands, I moved on to those with combat potential. A few stood out as being particularly useful. There was a fairly cheap personal force field Brand that blocked a small amount of damage but also, “all magical effects” while active. In the notes the Broker’s had included, it clarified that this meant things like charm, paralysis, poison, stun, or hypnosis effects would not work. I didn’t even realize those were things I needed to worry about! I added that one to a short list of must-purchase Brands when I had some more money.

As for Brands that could attack, which were primarily elemental, I reserved my judgment for now. I didn’t even have a good idea of what combat was going to be like, so I did not know what would actually complement my current abilities. I used a setting to hide all the touch-based Brands. Those made no sense to purchase. If I could touch an enemy, I would just drain them with my Skill. What I needed were ranged options and support Brands that would let me get up close. I already had both of those in Fireball and Static Bolt. Hopefully Static Bolt would be a reliable means of stunning enemies long enough for me to get up close and disable them, though at the moment my bigger concern would be making sure none of my allies caught wind of my Skill’s true nature. During the spider fight, I’d stay back and offer ranged support.

None of the Brands I read came close to competing with human guns, anyway. There were certainly plenty of cheaper options for dealing with single targets, but if I could recreate a mini-gun for 55 MP, I thought I could make Manifest Inspiration the most efficient combat Brand for dealing with multiple enemies. I just needed to be careful nobody at the church caught wind of human instruments of war. There was essentially a zero percent chance they’d be okay with them. The closest option to mimicking a gun was a Brand called Rock Blast, which required you to provide your own rock to launch at enemies. Even if you swapped out the rock for a handful of gravel, I doubted it would be even close to as strong as bullets. It also cost 8 MP per cast. That meant I could only use it six times before it would be cheaper to use Manifest Inspiration. My experience playing shooter video games told me an AK-47 held 40 rounds in a magazine. When I factored in that it was probably possible to rain down fully loaded mags from the sky when I manifested a gun, there was no way any other Brand would ever come close. The only reason to even consider another option would be if I faced an enemy that was somehow immune to mundane attacks.

When we stopped briefly for lunch, I earned a bit of good will by conjuring water for everyone. Using that pouring trick to double the water per cast, I was able to make enough for everyone with only three casts. I also conjured three potatoes while I was at it for later.

MP: 96/96 >>> 78/96

“So what are the lunch-based potato foods?” Alloha asked while we ate. There wasn’t time to cook anything during our brief stop and I wasn’t willing to eat raw potatoes, so we were eating dried rations. Smoked serpent and some nuts.

“Let me think…” I said. “Potato salad, french fries, potato chips, baked potatoes, twice baked—”

“Wait, did you say potato chips?” Torra asked.

I laughed. “Yeah. Most chips are made of potatoes. The ones you tried yesterday were made from corn, which you probably don’t have in Earris. To make potato chip, you slice them really thin and fry them until they’re crunchy. They’re not very filling unless you eat a ton and they take a lot of oil. I’m not sure if you can make enough with your Skill.”

Torra shook his head. “Course I can. I don’t think I’ve ever run out of MP in my life. Here.” He grabbed the serpent jerky I was chewing on and rubbed his hands over it. When he handed it back, it was covered in a fine layer of glowing oil. I took a tentative bite. The oil had added a teriyaki flavor to the meat that made it much more palatable. I also got his buff again.

Buff gained. Marketh’s Mercy. Hunger decreased. Maximum HP +1% HP: 92/100 >>> HP: 93/101

That surprised me, as I’d also received it in the morning, but I saw why that was when I checked the icon in the corner of my vision. It had a countdown timer for when the buff would expire. Looked like it lasted about three hours.

“That’s enough talking. Let’s go,” Grant said.

We were still crossing the open grasslands, but Grant soon led us back into a forest. This one had much larger trees than the one we’d just left. There was no trail to follow, just Grant’s map. He and Jay kept pulling it out to consult it. After a bit, they found a small carving in a tree trunk and decided they were in the right place. An hour later we came to a rotting stump as big as a barn. It seemed to indicate this forest had once contained trees even larger than the ones we traveled through now, which were as massive as the redwood forests I’d once visited in California.

“That stump means we’re on the right track,” Grant said when he saw it.

Soon after the beginnings of sunset showed in the sky, Jay returned from scouting ahead to tell us he’d found the nest of spiders. He led us to a stand of trees within the forest that were covered in white webbing. They stretched from the ground clear to a good fifty feet into the canopy. I could only imagine the effort it had taken the spiders within to claim so large a section of forest. Grant was positively giddy when he saw it. “Look at all that spider silk!” he said. “We’re going to be rich!”

“There is no way four spiders did that,” Victoria said. I had to agree.