Jason couldn’t see an undamaged building in the village, but at least the damage was minor. They had suffered an unusual sequence of attacks, starting with hundreds of lesser monsters that the locals had fought off themselves with shovels, pitchforks and even the occasional weapon. Days later, bronze-rank adventurers fought off a second wave of creatures, this time hopping creatures akin to a lizard version of a wallaby.

Jason and his expansive aura senses had detected the third wave coming from kilometres away, giving the team time to rush in and intercept. The monsters were silver-rank yet startlingly weak for that level. Monsters spawned on a scale ranging from few-but-strong to many-but-weak, and this was further down the numerous scale than the team had ever seen.

The silver-rank monsters were fist-sized balls of fur that bounced along the ground, quite adorable up until their teeth clamped onto flesh. Individually, the monsters had strength more in line with iron-rank monsters, which had cost the bronze-rank adventurers. Still in the village after the second wave, they had thought to mow down the tiny creatures and rack up the easiest silver-rank kills they would ever get.

It was a hard and swift lesson in the tyranny of rank. Although weak, the creatures still had the inherent damage reduction that high-rankers enjoyed against those below them. The bronze-rankers discovered why bronze to silver was considered the first true leap in power as their whole team had to stack onto each of the little creatures to take them down. Given that left the remainder of the swarm to overrun them, Jason’s team needed to extract them in short order.

The newly-awakened Colin proved to be the champion of the day. Of his four forms, the original leech swarm state allowed him to expand his collection of leeches more than ever, albeit temporarily, by feeding on life force. The creatures had no rank-based protection from him, allowing his numbers to rapidly swell as he consumed. That left their meagre vitality swiftly drained away by hungry leeches that used it to produce yet more leeches.

The fight was still annoying as the monsters also turned out to be able to rapidly replicate themselves, turning it into a race between the monsters and Colin. The team helped as best they could, but their area-attack potential was limited. Jason tried his affliction butterflies that could also reproduce from monsters, but the afflictions killed the weak monsters before the butterflies could reproduce themselves. The most work, other than by Colin, came from Humphrey and his fire breath.

When the job was done, most of Colin's leeches were shunted into Jason's soul realm. The biomass Colin had stored there over time had all been consuming in his awakening, but this made a solid start to refilling the flesh pit.

Looting the monsters afterwards was also a pain, Shade's bodies doing most of the work of moving from body to body, lightly touching each one. Once he was done, Jason triggered his looting ability and each member of the group saw a lengthy window of collected treasures listed. Those without personal storage spaces had items appear around them, some on the ground but others above, loot raining down on their heads. Mostly it was coins but Sophie deftly avoided a falling dagger while Clive had a slab of meat wrapped in oiled paper slap him in the face.

“Sorry,” Jason said. “I forgot to set the loot mode to master looter.”

While they all set to picking up the loose treasure, Jason glanced over his list and frowned as he looked at one of the items.

[Greatsword of the Makar Veen] has been added to your inventory.

“Who or what is the Makar Veen?” Jason asked.

“It’s an order of warriors,” Humphrey said. “It’s just a legend, I think. I don’t know that they were ever real, and if they were, I doubt the stories are accurate.”

Jason opened his inventory and took out the sword, a two-handed monstrosity so ornately crafted as to become impractical as a weapon.

“Yeah, this is a real JRPG-looking sword,” he observed. “It certainly looks more like a weapon from a story than something someone would actually use.”

He held it vertically, the tip resting on the ground. Even sinking into the dirt a little, it was taller than Jason himself. Neil wandered over and held his hands apart at roughly the size of the monsters from which the weapon had been looted.

“Looting powers are weird,” Jason said and Neil nodded.

“Especially yours,” Neil said. “I know that most looting powers produce containers for things like potions and slabs of meat. But aren’t yours a little elaborate?”

Neil held up a potion produced by his loot power; a semi-transparent red liquid in a small, clear vial. In his other hand was a potion he picked up from Jason’s loot power. The vial was similar but the liquid inside roiled as if boiling and had flecks of what looked like gold glitter. There was also a colourful label on the vial.

Neil held up the plain potion for the group to see.

“Frenzy potion,” he said. “Not something I’d use, but a perfectly ordinary potion.”

Then he held up Jason’s with the fluid that churned in the vial.

“According to Jason’s party interface, the exact same potion,” Neil said. “Yet the label reads…”

He turned the vial to read the label out loud.

“…ACME Calm-B-Gone,” Neil read. “Why doesn't it just say frenzy potion? These do the same thing except one looks weird and is labelled wrong.”

Looting powers varied in both the type of goods primarily produced and the condition in which they were produced. Most loot from monsters was some variety of refined body part, imbued with magic. These were useful for rituals and especially crafting, from meat used in cooking to gallbladders containing bile used to treat metal in smithing.

Both Jason and Neil’s loot power produced spirit coins and could churn out almost any kind of item. Each tended to produce more of certain item types, however. Neil’s power, Spoils of Victory, more frequently produced hard materials like chitin and bone, along with other simple-but-valuable commodities and crafting materials. It made Neil’s power the consistent source of wealth loot powers were famous for.

Jason’s power was a lot more up-and-down in terms of the value of items produced. The monster parts he looted tended to be meat, which was less valuable than other crafting materials. On the other hand, Jason produced more fully crafted items than Neil, with ready-made weapons, armour and other tools fetching high prices.

Both men produced more potions and unguents than other crafted items, usually of the healing variety. Neil produced mostly potions compared to Jason who usually got tins of topical ointment. Even when they produced the same item, though, the results were not the same. Two potions weren’t always equal, something their alchemist friend Jory had built a career on.

“I’m pretty sure my version of the potion tastes better,” Jason said.

“That sounds right,” Sophie agreed. “Jason usually loots those annoying tins with the oily healing cream, but his potions always taste great. Most looted potions work fine but taste like an alchemist filled the vials with residue scraped from the bottom of a vat to get more money out of the batch.”

“That's because it's exactly what they do,” Belinda said. “Jory complains about it all the time. It's not all residue, but they definitely throw it in to bulk out the last few vials. It's why cheap potions often have that gluggy texture.”

“How is Jory doing?” Jason asked.

“Last I heard, the Church of the Healer was sending him to Estercost to lecture on his potion-development methods,” Belinda said. “The Magic Society hasn’t opened the water link chambers to the public since the attack on the Yaresh, so I haven’t talked to him since then.”

“Neil,” Jason asked. “How is Jory doing?”

“I don’t know,” Neil said. “Why ask me?”

“You both work for the Healer.”

“Jason, prayer is a sacred and important practice. It’s not there for me to casually ask how my friends are…”

Neil trailed off as he tilted his head as if listening for a distant sound, then glowered at Jason.

“Jory’s fine,” Neil grumbled. “He’s in Cyrion, lecturing a bunch of Knowledge priests so they can start spreading Jory’s ingredient research techniques.”

Cyrion was the capital of Estercost, the same country that contained Vitesse. It was also the main seat of House Geller, despite the family’s aristocratic title coming from Greenstone.

“Humphrey, bro,” Taika said. “Aren’t all those people from Earth still waiting at your family’s place in Cyrion for Jason to go claim them?”

“Yes,” Humphrey said. “I've been getting increasingly less polite messages from my mother about it.”

“Shouldn’t we go sort that out, then?” Clive asked.

“No,” Humphrey told him. “Mother's too controlled to be genuinely angry. Not when she can just rewrite a message before sending it. She's just faking it to make me feel pressured. I'm utterly certain she's found a way to leverage them to some political end. If we pulled up stakes and got Jason anywhere near there, I promise you she'd find a way to send us in the other direction.”

“No offence, bro, but your mum sounds kind of twisty.”

“Yes,” Humphrey said with a weary sigh.

“Yeah,” Jason said with a wistful sigh, getting a snort of laughter from Neil and a glare from Humphrey.

***

The latest iteration of Jason’s cloud palace was a series of wooden buildings on stilts, rising from a swamp. Wooden walkways connected the buildings, almost enough to make for a small hamlet. Rather than being dismal, the bright summer sun reflected off the water and brought out the colours of the verdant plant life, making for a picturesque, if humid, locale.

The team’s intended short sojourn on an open contract has extended to over a month as delays came in on all fronts. Farrah and Travis had finished up their experiments in Jason’s soul realm and Jason portalled them back to Yaresh. He checked in with the Adventure Society before returning, discovering numerous delays, starting with the official from the Adventure Society’s continental council. The messengers were also dragging their heels in providing the study of Mah Go Schaat, the dead diamond-rank messenger. It had been promised to Jason and he had no doubt the messengers were trying to break in before handing it over.

The team were lounging on an open deck, enjoying the fact that the flying insects avoided the building and its aura.

“Is the trade hall in Yaresh even operating right now?” Neil asked in Jason’s absence. “I know the Adventure Society campus came through the attack better than most places but is the infrastructure for trade even in place? We've got a whole stack of loot to sell off.”

“I asked Jason to check in with the Adventure Society while he’s there,” Humphrey said from the cloud hammock he shared with Sophie. “Last I heard, trade was open but under very strict controls. The Adventure Society is claiming anything useful for the reconstruction and paying in credit.”

“You mean those bonds you only get the money for in a year?” Belinda asked. “Stuff that. We can just hoard everything and sell it at the next city.”

“We’re heading underground soon, with no idea how long that will take. We may not see a new city for a while,” Humphrey said. “And while it may not benefit us as much, it wouldn’t hurt us to contribute. We aren’t exactly hurting for money and there’s a city full of people who lost everything.”

“Fine,” Belinda grumbled. “We can let the stupid people have stupid houses.”

“You know that it's alright to want to help people, right?” Clive asked her. “It's not going to hurt your hard-as-a-rock street-thief reputation to admit you want to help people. We won't think less of you for being nice or showing some basic compassion.”

“We will probably make fun of you though,” Neil admitted. “Just for a bit.”

Humphrey leaned out of the hammock, grabbed the leftover crust from a sandwich and threw it at Neil.

“Hey,” Neil complained. “Don’t waste food. It’s disrespectful.”

“Speaking of food, when is Jason coming back?” Rufus asked.

“He’s already back, bro,” Taika said. “I saw him wandering off with that weird sword he looted. He looked all broody; you know how he gets. I figure we give him an hour to get it out of his system and then kick him in the pants.”

***

Jason was in one of the wooden buildings, sitting in a swinging hammock chair. The room was full of loose objects floating around as he practised his aura control. Only one object was unmoving, the Greatsword of the Makar Veen, hovering in front of him.

“The Makar Veen,” he said. “From what the others described, they sound like the local equivalent of the Knights of the Round Table or the Paladins of Charlemagne.”

“That seems accurate, given my knowledge of the respective legends,” Shade agreed. “Why does that trouble you, Mr Asano?”

“Because it was my loot power, but not my legend.”

“Ah,” Shade said. “The idea of fate senses is still weighing on your mind.”

“I’ve never heard of this legend. The fact that my loot power produced something related to it means that these fate senses are still intertwined with my interface power, right?”

“That is a logical conclusion.”

“I don't like it. I don't want my subconscious to have its own special sense that I can't consciously access. I don't trust it.”

“Nor should you, Mr Asano. Instincts are important, and your fate senses have allowed you to get this far. But without a critical mind to assess them, instincts can also lead you astray. As you know.”

Jason nodded.

“What do I do when I don't know if and when these fate senses are guiding me?”

“Mr Asano, you went to rather extreme efforts to surround yourself with people you value and trust. When you feel lost on your own, let them be your guide. Listen when they tell you that you are wrong. And just perhaps, don’t sit in your room brooding when everyone else is having a relaxing afternoon together.”

“I’m not brooding.”

“Of course not, Mr Asano.”

***

“Bro,” Taika said as Jason joined the others. “I’m not saying the dark and brooding thing won’t help you pick up ladies. You just might want to consider the type of ladies it works on.”

“Jason doesn’t care about that,” Neil said. “He has Humphrey’s mum.”

Another crust bounced off Neil’s head.

“Do you not finish your food?” Neil complained.

“If you will pardon the intrusion,” Shade said, emerging from a shadow. “It would seem that, after much delay, the messengers are preparing to move the study belonging to Mah Go Schaat.”

“The what belonging to who?” Taika asked.

“The study belonging to the diamond-rank messenger,” Jason said. “It was my personal demand for participating in this expedition the messengers will definitely backstab us during. They say they’ll send word when it’s ready but I’ve had Shade watching it directly. It’s in a big metal ball on top of a tower in one of the messenger strongholds, so easy to watch from a distance.”

“It seems they have finally given up on attempting to break in and are preparing to move it,” Shade said.

“That was a brilliant concession to ask for,” Clive said eagerly. “It contains all the personal research of the diamond-rank messenger in his attempts to become an astral king. There’s no telling what kind of trove it is.”

“Won't the messengers just empty out all the good stuff?” Neil asked.

“As far as we can tell, they can’t get in,” Jason said. “The diamond-rank messenger wasn't on the same team as the rest of them. The Adventure Society even thinks that the attack on Yaresh was some kind of elaborate plan to get him killed since it didn't accomplish much else.”

“And what makes you think you can break into this thing when the messengers couldn’t?” Belinda asked.

“Optimism?” Jason told her.