I followed Victoria out of the building, as she pulled the handles of the glass double doors out of the building and threw them open. She was clearly still mad about something, but whatever it was, I didn't know. Probably something to do with that "Cole" she mentioned earlier. We wandered into the lot, the bitter cold nipping at the nape of my neck. It was freezing out here. 

"This way," Victoria demanded, as she wandered toward a small five-seater compact car that was nearly half the size of the parking space it was parked in. It was painted in bright orange, and stood out even against the darkness - which was probably a good thing, in honesty. It could be hard to see oncoming traffic at the best of times nowadays. She pulled out her keys, opening the driver's side door, and stepped inside. I opened the door to the passenger side, squishing myself inside.

"Geez, it's a tight squeeze in here," I said to her, as I tried to fit my foot into the legroom of the passenger seat. It was a wonder they managed to fit five seats into a car this small, but then again, being able to fit into those seats was a whole different matter.

"It's a Buggler, what do you expect?" Victoria replied. "Fuel's expensive, I'd rather have a small car than big bills."

I closed the door with a thud, finally managing to fit my legs into the vehicle. Victoria quickly flicked on the engine of the car while we sat there, turning on the heater, trying to dispel some of the inescapable frost that dominated the night. 

"So, you're the supermarket boy," Victoria said. "I hope you realise this isn't a job for the faint of heart."

"I'm well aware of that," I replied, as I stared across the parking lot - thinking back to the supermarket incident. I'd probably be going through something like that all over again. Probably not as scarring, perhaps, but damn well close.

"Alright, in that case, I've got some things I need to cover before we get out in the field," Victoria began. "What sort of weapon have you got?"

"Just a baseball bat," I replied.  

"Good, perfect," Victoria said. "See, if you're using melee, you don't have to worry about ammo. That shit can be expensive - take it from me. I've got two subbies that go through bullets like a kid with a pack of candy, and trust me, overheads aren't cheap. When it comes to adventuring, you're covering most of the expenses yourself - save for a few healing and mana pots that the guild might throw your way to keep you on the field longer. I keep most of that stuff in the trunk for emergencies. Got that?"

I nodded. We sat there for a moment, staring out at the darkness as the heater began to kick in, the ever-so-slight breeze of warm air like an ambrosia for our frosted fingers. I put my fingertips against the vents in an effort to warm up my hands a little. Shit, I wish I brought some damn gloves.  

"Right, secondly, never - under any circumstances - should you let yourself get to zero mana," Victoria said. "If you get the shit belted out of you and reach zero HP, we still might have a chance of resurrecting you, and if you've got no stamina left - well just stop running around. However, if you use a spell that takes you to zero mana, you will literally burn through your own soul trying to cast it. You might not die, but some things are worse than death in this world."

I gulped. I'd heard about soul-death before, but I guess I'd never anticipated ever being at risk of it. When you spend the better part of your entire life unawakened with no magic power, soul-death isn't exactly something you have to think about very often. Thinking back, I was pretty reckless with my mana yesterday: that could've been potentially catastrophic.  

"Finally, you know the drill with potions," Victoria replied. "A health potion will save you in a pinch, but three litres will leave you in a ditch. Don't drink too much." 

I reached into my inventory, and briefly pulled out two of the empty cans of beer.  

Items Retrieved
2 Empty Beer Cans

"Moderate drinking isn't my strong suit," I replied.

"Me neither," she replied. "But when it comes to potions, they're too costly to waste. If you end up vomiting a healing potion all over the floor because you stupidly drank too much at once, well... I will make you drink it back up. Don't test me on that."

I stowed the cans in my inventory, an eerie silence gripping the cabin as she said that. Victoria started the car's engine, releasing the handbrake and driving cautiously forward as she went to leave the guild's parking lot, driving toward the pothole-filled exit. Every bump in the road felt like a Richter-4 Earthquake in this car, with practically no suspension to save us from each impact. As she got onto the street, the nicely paved roads seemed to assuage the tottering suspension. Victoria reached into her own inventory, pulling out a small scroll and dumping it in my lap.

"Take a look at this before we get there," Victoria said. "That's the quest we've got. There's an SHB on the edge of town, owners want us to clean out the Serpentines in the surrounding area. They're low level too. They've given us a few days to get rid of them; I'm giving us until the end of today. Got it?"

"I guess," I answered, looking at the small scroll that I'd been given. 

Quest Added: Snakes in the Grass
A representative of the Dolor Corporation has requested assistance from the Adventurer's Guild. They have asked you to clear the area around one of their Solarian Hydroponics Bunkers (SHBs), where Serpentines lurk within the grass. As this SHB is the main supplier of wheat and corn produce in Tonnick, it would possibly be in your best interests to aid them in clearing out the Serpentines, as the potential health hazard of the creatures is causing a mild upset in food supply and a rise in local food costs for the citizens of Tonnick. 

Quest Objectives: Eliminate the Serpentines around the Dolor Corporation's Tonnick SHB (0/15)
Bonus Objectives: Cure the Poison Status Ailment with an Antidote (0/1)

Fail Conditions: This quest will automatically fail if it is not completed within 1 day, 15 hours, and 19 minutes. 

Rewards: 300 Gold, 600 EXP, 2 Antidote

The quest system was doing strange things as usual. One had to wonder what the point of receiving antidote was after all the snakes had been killed, or for that matter why the bonus objective required you to cure poison with an antidote to get more antidotes, but the stupid logic of the system was inexplicable. There probably was no reasoning - it was just the whims of the system, I guess.

"I've got some antidotes in the back, so don't worry too much if you get bit," Victoria said. "Frankly, I'd rather you use the antidotes instead of the mana potions, since the antidotes are cheap as chips. Try to bludgeon them with the bat and use magic as a last resort."

As Victoria drove, she turned down a dirt road as she headed to the outskirts of town - the few signs of metropolis fading as we headed into the fields to the south. Most of the fields empty, headless scarecrows were falling to pieces in disrepair as many of the paddocks remained empty and unkempt. Wildgrass slowly reclaimed the tilled soil, and yet even it struggled to survive here - the limited nutrients it could get through the miasmous sky barely enough to survive. It made me wonder how much longer we had before the forests began to fall. Probably not long, I'd imagine. 

Continuing down the dirt road, as we passed over some sort of bump, the car jolted from the impact. I smacked my head against the roof of the vehicle from the impact. 

"What the hell was that?" I exclaimed. 

"You think I know?" Victoria snapped back. "This thing doesn't exactly have superb headlights, kid."

As we stopped the car, Victoria opened the door, and stepped outside. I reluctantly followed her, awkwardly heaving myself from the car seat that I'd spent so long getting into. Popping the trunk, Victoria reached in and pulled out two items, before chucking one of them to me. I barely saw it as it careered toward my face, only narrowly grabbing it in time as the red glow from the tail-light illuminated it. I caught it, mere inches from my nose.

"Switch it on and clip that on to your jacket," Victoria said. "It's a clip-on flashlight, it'll come in a lot of handy."

I flicked on the strange looking device, fitting it to my jacket, and clipping the light on like it was a little badge. It was a lot more convenient than the handheld torch, that was for sure. As Victoria slammed the boot shut, we wandered back across the road, between the old withering gumtrees either side of the path to where we'd felt the bump. The wind felt much colder now. I wasn't sure whether it was because of the open countryside or simply because the wind was picking up, but either way - it wasn't pleasant. As the frost bit at my skin, we stared down at the brown dirt road as it slowly lightened in hue - slowly turning red. I drew my bat instinctively.

Item Retrieved
1 Metal Bat

Victoria adjusted her flashlight, illuminating the "bump" at the centre of the road. A German Shepherd - or what was left of one - lay in the road's centre. Viciously torn to bits, with bites across its face, a tire track ran through the centre of the carcass: a horrid mangled streak dragging the creature's entrails along the road. Bits of the creature's face had been torn off, and patches of fur and whole chunks of flesh were missing from the creature. Across its neck was a deep fang-mark, and legions of flies flitted around the creature as they fed upon what remained of it. However, perhaps the worst part about it was the terrifying stench of decomposing flesh, the putrid effluvium of rot, faeces, and flesh making it nearly unapproachable. I gripped my nose in disgust.

"Holy shit!" I exclaimed. "What the fuck is that!?"

"A dog," Victoria replied, barely fazed by it all. "Probably killed by one of the Serpentines a few days ago, from the looks of it."

"What sort of snake does that to a dog!?" I demanded. 

"A big one," Victoria retorted. "Anyway, we're only about half a kilometre out of town - that's a little too close for these fuckers to start showing up."

I stared at Victoria, still gripping my nostrils with my fingers as we stood near the dog carcass. 

"How the hell are you so calm?" I asked. "Look at what they did to that dog, aren't you the least bit affected by that?"

"I've seen things that are a lot worse than dead dogs," Victoria replied, as she wandered away from the festering remains - back toward the trunk of the car. "Let's get kitted up and get ready to hunt these thing down. We need to stop them - before anybody else ends up looking like that dog does."

I stared back at the corpse for a moment, before reluctantly following Victoria back to the car, the image still seared within my irises as I left the dead dog to lie against the road. Something told me I probably wouldn't be leaving that image behind.