Tamako was looking over the horseshoe-shaped valley hidden in the mountains and commented to Jen, “I still think it would have been better to head East, through the swamps, and out of Domino’s territory.”

Jen replied, “Sam hates swamps. If you think he’s getting a little grumpy and impatient now, you wouldn’t want to see him after travelling a few weeks though swamps. Plus look how beautiful it is up here, with the cabin down on the lake.”

Tamako rolled her eyes, and snorted, “You’re just trying to get me riled up. I’m a city woman, and on top of that, you two crazy paranoid idiots build a decoy cabin on a beautiful lake, while we live in that damp cave over there!”

As they started to jog towards the Town of Crossroads, Jen said, “You know as well as I do that when Sam gets done making those dehumidifier rods, and installing our indoor bathroom with hot and cold water, it will be better than any place in Crossroads.”

As they ran past the cabin, staying far from both it and the lake, Tamako said, “Too bad you couldn’t control the Thousand Tongued Toad.”

Jen laughed, “Yea, maybe someday, but it’s too advanced for me right now. I think it’s actually smarter than those trolls at the pass-wall. Anyway, it’s pissed that we kicked its’ ass, but Sam was right about leaving it alive.”

Tamako grinned, “He does have a few good ideas now and then, even though it was a pain fighting it off every few days while we worked on the cabin. Can you just imagine the look on anyone’s face that tries to get near the cabin, when a 30 -foot toad leaps out of the water ambushing them with all those damn tongues.”

“Well, I’m not sure I would’ve felt comfortable leaving Sam by himself without the toad ambushing any major predators, or people coming into the valley,” replied Jen.

Tamako nodded thoughtfully, and for at least the tenth time, asked, “I know he keeps saying it’s just his expanded perception from cycling through his multi-race senses, but are you sure there is nothing else going on with Sam? I mean, how does he keep spotting things like all the hidden trails on our trip here, or the hidden valley, the cave, and a hundred little things?”

Jen smacked Tamako on the ass as they were running, winked at her and said, “You conveniently forgot to include that his luck stat is over 50! I know you still don’t think that makes much difference, except when he takes specific gambling quests, but I do. Anyway, enough about that. We’ve got a little privacy, let’s take our time getting to Crossroads.”

Tamako slowed down pulling Jen to a stop and bringing her close, grinned, and replied, “I thought you promised to never read my mind.”

=======

Sam had discovered at least one thing his evolved luck stat did, and that was in helping him find things. It didn’t show him anything he couldn’t have found on his own, if he’d spent enough time looking. However, it helped him find things much quicker, or helped him find things he wasn’t consciously looking for. Unfortunately, it was a mana hog, and drained his mana even faster than his mana-charged running. If he focused on a specific goal before activating his evolved luck stat, it really drank the mana.

Sam was placing the finishing touches on the dehumidifier rods he’d carved for the cave as he was thinking about the wilderness teleportation pad they’d found on their way from the pass-wall. The pad was different than the others they’d come across in their travels. This one, and the others in Domino Hill’s territory, contained two obelisks. One was marked for jumping to the Oracle Deck, and the other was for jumping between Decks. Sam had spent a minute focusing intently on the question of getting Kelly back as quickly as possible, before activating his evolved luck stat. He’d expected to see arrows pointing to the Deck jumping obelisk, and was hoping some other additional information might appear. Instead, the arrows that appeared in his vision, were clearly pointing to the Oracle Deck.

He was thinking about the girls heading to Crossroads to buy them all the Oracle Quest and contact Melvin from the merchant’s shop, as he shoved a large boulder in front of the entrance to the cave. He knew the boulder would block anyone or anything from coming in, and if it was something that could move the boulder, it would make enough of a commotion to bring him out of his enchanting trance. Sam trapped the entrance, and also placed sound and smell privacy rods near the entrance to keep any noise or smell from leaving the cave. He only wished he could come up with a way to create a back door to escape out of.

Slim had taken off as soon as they found the valley, Sam recalled how Slim and the girls were excited to go on the Oracle Quest. Jen had said the only reason she hadn’t brought it up was because she thought he’d be upset delaying the jump to the Third Deck. Sam had acknowledged the partial truth of her comment to himself, but explained he hoped the Oracle could tell them the fastest way to get Kelly back. However, Sam was sick as he forced himself to focus on what really scared him, and thought, “What if the Oracle tells me it is impossible to get Kelly back? Well, it probably doesn’t matter anyway. Even though most are taking the quest to mine the precious minerals on the Oracle Deck, there will still be hundreds racing to find the Oracle first.”

With the cave drying out, and a living space, bathroom, and bedrooms all setup, the cave was really feeling comfortable, and the natural lighting rods he placed around his workshop table gave him plenty of light to see by. Sam then ate a good meal, went to the bathroom, and then placed two items on his worktable as he said to himself with a joking grin, “My precious rings, to rule them all!” The first, was the storage ring Slim looted from Domino’s body, and the second was his gnome ring. He knew it wasn’t a ring created by the gnomes, but that was just how he mentally referred to it, since he bought it in a gnome store.

Sam grinned to himself as he remembered Slim’s dismay when Sam demanded payment if he was able to break the encryption lock on Domino’s ring, “Log! I thought we were friends. Tamako is already entitled to half the loot for crushing the woman’s skull! I will have nothing left if I have to pay you too!” When Tamako had immediately jumped into the conversation offering Sam 1/3 of her half, Sam snickered at his memory of Slim sulking for the next few days after agreeing to give Sam 1/4 of his half. However, Sam really wanted to work on the gnome ring.

Reluctantly, Sam picked up Domino’s storage ring first. He hadn’t seen anyone else with a storage ring that was locked or encrypted like the ones he made, so he was still fascinated with the challenge, even though he wanted to work on the gnome ring first. After several hours of decrypting and examining the enchantments on Lady Domino’s ring, he came to the conclusion that the encryption was a separate enchantment placed on the ring at some point in time after the original storage encryption was created. Additionally, the encryption code could have an infinite number of possibilities, so there was no way of breaking the code by using his AI to spin through numbers, letters, words, or symbols to match up an encryption key.

Next, Sam worked at trying to find a way to peel off, or break the encryption lock. Again, he ran into a problem. The enchantment encryption was set to destroy the ring if it was tampered with.

Sam was exhausted from focusing on the enchantment for so many hours, and decided to use the bathroom and get something to eat. As Sam was eating a sandwich, he was looking at the boulder blocking the entrance, and wishing, “If we only had another door to escape out of here… wait… that’s it! I’ll just build an entirely different door into Domino’s storage ring for removing the loot! I can do that…right?”

Almost 12 hours later, Sam finally broke into her storage ring with a second door, and said to himself, “Ha! Fuck you, Lady Domino! You’re shit is all mine now!” As Sam opened the storage device and read the listed items that popped up in his vision, he whispered to himself, “Holy Shittttt!”