When we reached the closest we were probably going to get via van, we parked on the side of the road like last time and all hopped out. Mara pulled everyone’s bags from the back of the van and tossed them out for us to grab.

  John took the lead, Oliver was placed firmly in the middle, and we all headed out. We dove directly into the forest on the side of the road after hopping a short barb wired fence. Soon we were swallowed up by the shadows of the forest and lost sight of the road and van.

  It was quiet and peaceful under the canopy. It was so weird to be away from the sounds of even a small city or town. I had never been much of an outdoors person. Hiking, camping, kayaking? No. I didn’t move to where I had been to be closer to nature. I moved to be further from the crowds of people in the bigger cities.

  It didn’t have to be New York to be overwhelming for me. Anything large enough to have a mall was probably too many people for me. Some people thought that an aversion to people meant I must have a love of nature or something. Which could not be further from the truth. I disliked people and nature pretty equally.

  The amount of time I’d spent outside in the last week was more than I’d spent outside in the last year probably. It was also a little sobering to think that it had been less than a week since this all started. Only six days ago things had been perfectly normal. Now look at me. Marching through the forest, spear in hand, toward danger. Surrounded by…people.

  It sounded absurd to me that I would be voluntarily doing something like this, let alone be even a little happy or proud of what we were doing. But, I was. I actually liked, for the most part, the people I was surrounded by. I really liked one in particular. I glanced over my shoulder to catch her eye, only to catch her staring at my bum.

  She must have felt my look because she slowly dragged her gaze up my body and met my eyes. Ashley looked anything but sorry for being caught. She gave me a cheeky grin and a wink. I felt my cheeks flush and turned back around before she noticed.

  I was also proud of what we were doing. I never thought I’d want to ‘give back’ to my community, yet here I was stepping up and making sure people I didn’t even know were safe. Damn Mara had corrupted me.

  The quiet conversation around us was cut off with the cracking of a tree. It wasn’t just a twig that had been stepped on. There was a thunder crack of exploding wood. Everyone’s eyes darted to the right, where the sound had come from. Sprinting at us at full tilt was a large green person. I swear I thought it was the Hulk for a split second. Large, green, muscled, tusks…maybe not the Hulk after all.

  In his hand, because his nudity made very clear that he was all dude, was the top half of a tree. He seemed to have ripped it off a tree on his way toward us. Not like one of the giant old growth trees, but his impromptu club was still over six feet long.

  “Spread out!” Mara yelled at us. We all dove away from each other, spreading out as quickly as possible. “Big gun, Ash! Big Gun!” Mara yelled as we scattered.

  Ashley seemed to understand what she meant. She dropped her military gun and it fell to her side, still attached by some kind of harness across her chest. So it never touched the ground, but was now out of her way. With a practiced shrug she yanked her hunting gun over her head and flipped it so the wooden end was pressed against her shoulder and her face was lined up behind the scope. A second later a boom louder than her normal gunshots thundered through the air.

  Her shot hit him in the shoulder of the arm holding the tree club. It didn’t spin him around or anything, but it did make his arm kind of spasm a little bit. He nearly dropped his club, but grabbed it at the last second. Then he let out a deafening roar from a hundred feet away.

  My ears were already ringing from the gunshot nearby, and his roar only exacerbated my problem. I couldn’t hear much of anything right then. I came back to myself and slammed the head of my spear into the earth. I kind of reached out around and gathered up the surrounding spirit energy and shoved it into the spear.

  All this happened nearly instantaneously. Turns out when the info has been imprinted in your brain by the System ahead of time that you can cast magic at the speed of thought. Even new spells or skills. Unfortunately the skeleton growing out of the spear and spirit energy was less instantaneous. The spear shuddered and sank into the ground. It was happening fairly quickly, but not quickly enough!

  I watched in panic as the monster broke through the final trees separating us from him. His eyes were pinned on Ashley and his body followed. He raised his club up into the air and Ashley dove out of the way. The club snapped downward and crashed into the ground like a bolt of lightning. If she hadn’t moved when she did, she never would have made it in time.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  “Chains, Grace!” Ashley yelled at me.

  Oh yeah, I forgot I got another new ability. I was so focused on getting to finally summon some minions to fight for me that I forgot everything else. I gathered the darkness under the trees into my [abyssal chains] and focused on stopping the monster in his tracks.

  Chains of pure blackness erupted from the shadows of the nearby trees. The links were so dark that they almost appeared to eat the light surrounding them. Each one was the size of my fist. They shot from the shadows and wrapped around the large troll or ogre or whatever the fuck he was. Three chains shot around the monster. One wrapped around his shoulders and then snapped back to the shadows. One tangled around his left leg before jerking him to a halt. The final one grabbed his unarmed wrist and wrapped around several times before burying itself in more shadows.

  I let out a relieved breath until her raised the arm that wasn’t chained down. The one with the club in his hand and started swinging it at me. I froze. The whole fight, flight, freeze, or fawn response…I froze.

  I watched the branches coming at me faster than I could reliably track. At the last second something slammed into the branch, stopping it for a moment before shearing off the top part of the club along with most of the branches that had been still attached.

  The club seemed to explode around me as the momentum had the top half still moving in my general direction. They were also moving to the side and would miss me, though not by much. But leaves and sticks flew through the air, some of them smacking me and leaving long scratches on me as they flew past.

  When the air cleared, there in front of me stood John, coated in mithril, nearly his entire body turned into a giant blade. He had saved my life. I honestly barely knew the man. He was more Mara’s friend than mine before all this started. But he had without hesitation put his body in front of a speeding club for me.

  Now that the monster was still and in place, it was child’s play for Mara to melt a giant hole through his torso. She let out her ridiculous anime shout and cut loose. My chains snapped and fell away in the blinding light from her power, but they were no longer needed as he fell over onto his face. Smoke rose from his corpse and the entire forest was silent.

  [Your party has killed: Lesser Troll x 1]

  [Monster kill total: 14/100]

  Huh. Guess I had been right. It was a troll. Go me. I took a shaky step to the side and fell to my knees. Ashley rushed over and slid in front of me. She looked me over carefully before calling for Oliver to come heal me.

  It was about then that the ground near me began to shake a little and almost boiled out of the ground. From the disturbed earth crawled a lone skeleton ready for battle. I couldn’t help it. I fell over laughing hysterically. My newest ability, the one I’d been shooting for the entire time we’d been seeking essences, was too slow to use during combat.

  Ashley looked at me funny before Oliver jogged over. I was still laughing as the warm sensation of his healing power swept over me. I let out an involuntary moan as all the little aches and pains quickly disappeared. Then my ears stopped ringing and I could hear clearly again.

  I waved Ashley off as I sat up. “I’m fine. I promise. It’s just,” I waved vaguely at my newly risen warrior. She smiled at me, but it seemed more like she was placating me than she thought it was funny. With a final giggle I pulled myself together and rose to my feet.

  I summoned two spears and handed one of them to my skeleton minion. Together with Ashley we headed over to the troll corpse to see if Mara had once again ruined the core or essence that had been there.

  There was unsurprisingly nothing left of the chest cavity. Her beam had only been about basketball wide according to her, but the flesh had continued to burn and melt until Oliver sprayed some water across the corpse. Nothing salvageable from the inside.

  However, there was an additional use he could be for us. With a little concentration, I drew in as much spiritual energy from the area as I could ‘hold’ and shoved it into the corpse while commanding it to rise once again.

  The fingers twitched a few times, then the twitching spread up the arms and down the legs. After a few moments the troll sat up. Mara screamed and shot a laser focused beam of heated something over my shoulder, setting my zombie’s head on fire and melting a huge hole in his face. The whole body gave a final twitch and then slumped back down to the ground. I felt the spiritual energy flood out of the body and return to the environment.

  I turned angrily to Mara, “What the fuck?”

  “How was I supposed to know?!” she yelled back. “Next time warn people you’re going to do that. Damn. Gave me a fucking heart attack, Grace.”

  My head lolled back as I realized that maybe I had been a little…focused. But, I was raising corpse minions. How could I not get a little excited. “Sorry,” I muttered in her direction.

  “Let’s just keep going,” Mara raised her voice for the rest of the group. “We’ve still got a ways to go.”

  With only a little grumbling, I moved back into our formation, and we set off through the forest again. The sounds slowly came back as we left behind the smoldering corpse of the troll. This time I had my trusty skeleton companion with me though, so I felt a little better about everything.

  It had taken way too long to raise both undead. Though the troll had risen quite a bit faster than the skeleton. Maybe because it already had a body to use whereas the skeleton had to construct their body out of the spiritual energy I pumped into it. Either way, they were not going to be effective to raise during combat unless there was an extended battle. So I needed to be prepared and raise them ahead of time.

  We marched through the forest for another thirty minutes before we came upon the black obelisk marking the dungeon’s entrance. John once again charged forward to press his palm against the surface and report back what we already knew. This was the jungle dungeon.

  “There is a notification that one of the instances is still in use,” his voice trailed off as we realized what that must mean. Someone was still alive in there…and there was nothing we could do to save them.