As it happened, his parents weren’t so hard to locate. He had a compass with a tiny glass jar in the middle of it, and in the glass jar sat a readout of how far away they were. Presently 85 kilometers. Flying the Wind Runner, they’d have been there in under an hour.

The wingpacks weren’t doing nearly that kind of speed. It would be nearly two hours of continuous flight without stopping for that, and he was betting they’d see another Random Encounter or two before that happened.  In the meantime, combat was over, he was up a bit of XP for his next Journeyman levels, had banked a little bit of Attuned and Wands experience fighting the Stone Hippo-griffs, but surprisingly also got some leadership experience in Tough, Hearts, and somehow, in Charming as well. He had gained Relationship points with Tinniel, only to lose them, but grabbed 200 xp towards his classes he would have to regain before moving that needle any further.

Her Relationship status and the xp gained was less important than keeping her alive, at this point. If he had to order her around during combat, that’s just what he’d have to do.

He needed to bank some more of that nice bonus sexperience if he was going to have a chance to combine the Not a Fighter copy Tinniel had just provided him, and .

 

Congratulations! Using your crew to initiate another of your new crew members into her possible future as an Ash harem member? Gutsy move! Let’s see if it pays off. You’ve received the following rewards:

*Sex: 1,000 xp + 1 uncommon reward card

*Repeated sex with this partner: 1,000 xp +1 uncommon reward card

*Partner’s orgasm: 2,000 xp + 1 uncommon reward card

*Indulging two partners’ kinks kinks at once: 5,000 xp +1 rare reward card

*Performative sex: 1,000 xp + 1 uncommon reward card

Total: 10,000 xp, 1 rare and 4 uncommon reward cards

 

The rewards were both intriguing and disappointing. He received two Cut Diamonds, which he immediately combined into a Polished Diamond. These still didn’t make any sense, but they did reignite his curiosity over whether or not they could be used in some way he still couldn’t imagine. Aside from that he got a Cut Opal, and an uncommon item, a Hand Crossbow he promised he would give over to Tinniel. Although it seemed good at first, it still required an entire action to reload, or multiple actions if you were under a certain level of Fierce and failed the check. The last one he got was called Mistform, a rare Sorcerer spell for turning into a cloud of vapor. During that time you were more difficult to see, impossible to damage with normal blunt, slashing or piercing attacks, and you could float or phase through near solid matter. It was something he didn’t see using much in combat, especially since he was supposed to be the tank of this little team, but he would hand it off to Zirennia to add to her spell list in her spellbook. He wasn’t sure how much xp she’d get for doing so, but anything was better than zero. Overall, a perplexing haul.

The terrain grew more heavily wooded, and rolling hills gave way to the first of many jagged toothy mountains. It was like something straight out of those paintings of ancient China here, with mist wreathing the bottoms of some mountains, and the stone more often sandy brown than the gray of the Rockies he was familiar with. A lot more trees too, and less permanent snow capping. That soft rain had intensified into a downpour, obscuring most of the landscape, but he simply followed the compass until he hit the first of the death rays.

One second he was flying straight, and the next he heard a blaring klaxon announcing he had better turn the hell around and vacate the area or face obliteration. The glowing, floating devices filled with humming magic convinced him it was wiser to halt and do as instructed, so the four of them headed down to the ground and discovered a well-used cart track leading towards several sodden, surly guards just outside a nice, dry guardhouse.

The rain began to slacken by the time they touched down and approached on foot.

Now, to Beaver. While Tinniel continued to lavish praise on Waffles and lightly chastise him for not introducing her sooner, they neared the town. Still 35 km away from where they needed to be, it was sodden going, so they all agreed to stay the night here, freshen up, make sure they had means to heal without Ashley, and get moving late the next morning.

Beaver was little more than a handful of buildings in a misty valley, surprisingly not on the nearby floating islands. Those all sported odd devices, some of these large vats of glowing liquid, others with glowing crystals set into things that looked to have been invented by Nikola Tesla, and two with no visible means of power, but were just catapults or ballistae somehow balanced on rocks only slightly bigger than themselves.

Due to the defense systems in place, they were hailed a good kilometer outside the town limits and let through by guards questioning their intentions, credentials, and character. No, they had no intention of belittling the good name of Beaver, Utah. No, the confused guards had no idea why they were calling it Beaver, because the town’s name was Bevandria.

Ash suppressed a smile and thanked the spork both for the name of the town, and the commotion it was causing. He wondered how long it had taken for people to lose themselves to their new lives in Bevandria, and to leave Beaver, Utah behind.

Yes, the travelers knew that violence would end them up in a lock up, or targeted by the defense systems. Yes, they had money to pay for any accommodations and food whilst inside the town. Yes, they could pay a ten coin fee to enter the city to help bolster the defenses and keep the guards fed. Each.

They moved on, though Tinniel frowned and looked back at the guards. “Isn’t that the literal definition of highway robbery? I mean that’s what it is, isn’t it?”

She had an amazing way of saying a lot of words without actually saying much. The chatter didn’t annoy him as it might have the old Ash. It was sort of like the near-constant touch of Rachel on his left or Waffles on his right gave him a sort of social force field, and his capacity for this kind of thing was heightened greatly.

“We’ll be okay,” he told her, and was silently thankful he could pocket money after all this time, after the Wind Runner saga had ended. He had no wish to find himself on the wrong side of those bounty hunters again, that was for sure. Monsters like the hippo-griffs usually only had a few abilities to use, and didn’t work well in teams. He doubted very much the orren and the other bounty hunters would be so unprepared against him if they ever showed back up. They wouldn’t be sitting idly at Journeyman 1 or 2 either.

Fingers crossed that their jobs were more important than their sense of vengeance.

Tinniel dropped her line of questioning, but then gushed about every sight available to behold. She marveled at the defense systems, she talked about the cute kitty cats and the adorable doggy woggies in the streets.

A tavern room secured and a quick bit of drying off later, they were ready to explore Beaver. Or Bevandria rather.

Bevandria seemed quite idyllic, which was a refreshing change. Ash caught the scents of freshly baking bread, rich and savory stews, and the rich, heavenly aroma of coffee.

“Coffee,” Rachel said, with appropriate reverence. “Coffee.”

Following their noses, they found themselves in the first ever cafe in the world so far. A few coins lighter, they all had a seat at a booth, with Waffles curling up between their feet. Tinniel soon had her shoes off and was petting him with her feet, then soon after that ducking down beneath the table to snuggle him.

Rachel arched an eyebrow at Ash, smirking, and he just shrugged. He didn’t need to bed the fey girl. They could survive this just as they were.

The first sip of coffee was so strange and so refreshing he nearly forgot all about the issues, drama, the quests. No still-missing parents, no future abandonment of his best friends, and no still-missing blue mage. The only things he needed to worry about were right here in front of him.

Eventually Tinniel joined them again. “I leveled up to Beginner 3 already.”

“Excellent,” he said.

“I mean I’m not thrilled about going around killing poor little hippo thingies and their babies, but it was really easy to level up.”

It was already getting slower for Ash, but he didn’t mention it. No need to bring her down. “Have you placed your attribute and skill levels?”

She shook her head. “I wanted to ask about it because you basically, you know, you guys gave me all the cards to use and you’ve been doing this over the last two months, so you know more about what you’re doing, so I’ll take your advice.” She stopped and stared. “Okay I’ll shut up and let you tell me what to do.”

They had a chuckle over this and sipped at their coffee in between bites of flaky bread.

“You’re headed toward being a Ranger,” he said. “You’re going to need perception and accuracy, so I’d put your skill levels into Quick, Sly, and maybe Clever. You’ll want Staves for identifying problems and knowing more, and I looked up the bow skill once upon a time. It was Staves again for short bows and Spades for the longbow.”

“I’ve got a short bow,” she said.

“Correct. You might be able to manage a longbow while flying… up to you. That will give you range and accuracy. Short bow for speed and mobility.”

“You can fly,” Rachel said. “You want the short bow. Just fly out of range of anything menacing and pepper it with arrows. Get behind Ash.”

“Or just away from enemies,” Zirennia added.

“My hit points went way up,” she said.

He nodded. “You’re going to get pretty tanky, hopefully more than me, which is good. You’ll be number two hit taker behind me soon. And if you want to enhance that, I’d go with Tough after Quick and Sly.”

She nodded. “All right. Do I want to enhance that?”

“I’m a Rogue, and Ash is a Sorcerer and Bard, so yeah you do. You want to be able to take more punishment than us.”

Tinniel looked down at her tiny body, with her moth wings and her creamy skin, then back up at them, then down at herself again. “Uh… okay? Sure, I guess.”

They burst out laughing.

“How do we grab more levels and experience then?” she asked.

“It’s either fight and adventure, or…”

“Or you sex your way to becoming a superhuman,” Rachel said, grinning behind her coffee.

“I was going to say Zirennia has jer learning card from you,” he protested, rolling his eyes at his sex slave. Tinniel did not need further reasons to make disgusted faces at him. “Maybe there’s something for Rangers.”

After some small talk, which consisted mostly of anecdotes about coffee shops and cafes from the old world, they returned their mugs and gave the gnomish proprietor smiles and plenty of thanks. They then left the coffee shop with the intent of finding their new Ranger something like what Zirennia had, which would give her experience for doing non-combat actions. Although Tinniel was low level and she wouldn’t likely be able to equip such a card without much improved stats, it was a worthy investment anyhow. Random reward cards came for classes they didn’t have, items underpowered or unneeded, and seemingly useless gems.

They headed to the local card shop, which was also different from what they’d experienced in other towns. The shop itself wasn’t anything remarkable, but each table area had a menu of sorts, constantly updating with magic ink. It was a lot like the old tablet computers, where you could tap on the name of a class and pull up all the cards they had available, or tap on a specific card and get its details. He was able to get a list of Sorcerer restricted spells, along with base Caster spells, Wizard spells, Warlock spells, and even weirder sub-classes, like Necromancer, Illusionist, Abjurer, Evoker, and so on.

“I need one of these,” he said. “It’s like a Pokedex. Or a card catalog anyway.”

He did a deeper dive into Warlock, to figure out how they differed from Wizard or Sorcerer, and found they were pretty similar to Sorcerer both in cards they employed and method of casting. Wizards had a vastly larger array of spells they could go through, but Warlocks and Sorcerers both went off a mana pool. The difference was something called Patron’s Favor, which he didn’t understand just from this menu. Warlocks back in Spellcraft had a patron, but it had only been ornamental to the game; you could go anywhere and do anything. That said, the patron gave you certain storyline quests that sorcerers didn’t have. You were trying to save the world from bad guys while doing weird tasks for your patron. Patron’s Favor probably had to do with performing quests for your patron in order to get either mana, access to reward cards, or better xp. It didn’t matter, yet, and hopefully they wouldn’t be getting another Caster added to the team.

They weren’t here for this, but it was good information to have. It was nice having Tinniel here like this, able to fill a role in the team, though for now she was far from ready. With that in mind, he went over the Ranger abilities.

Rangers had had something called Exploit Weakness, which wasn’t for sale. Rangers automatically generated these as they fought more and more types of creatures.

Exploit Weakness came in a whole lot of different types: giants, orcs, goblinoids, dragons, insect swarms, infernals, oozes, beasts, and the list went on. Still, although it wasn’t for sale, it was easy enough to bring up the description of the card.

 

Exploit Weakness: Giants

Special Ability (common)

Passive: this card provides a +1 bonus to hit and damage against Giants, even after its Active ability has been used. Note: This bonus stacks with other Exploit Weakness opponent types.

Active: Use this card to mimic a previously used Ranger Special Ability that costs stamina. It costs 1.5x the listed stamina cost.

You must do combat successfully with 3 different types of Giants to increase this card’s rarity.

 

It turned out Tinniel now had a copy of Exploit Weakness: Elementals and another for Beasts. She seemed surprised to find it in her deck, which gave him a chuckle. He then instructed her on how to manage the UI in order to get the notifications she wanted, ignore the ones she didn’t want, and look at her action deck in detail.

“That’s… good,” she said.

“Very,” he said. “You’d be able to use your Exploding Arrow again, and you’d be doing extra damage if we ran into more hippo-griffs. Double extra damage.” When she showed him the card, it had all four elements on it, in symbols he recognized from a children’s television show from the before times, and he noted that the increased rarity trigger read: You must gain xp successfully with 2 different types of elementals to increase this card’s rarity. It didn’t read ‘do combat with’, meaning she might be able to gain xp off them just by intimidating or making social checks against them, like trying to charm them for purposes of befriending them. 

“You think there’s a good chance of fighting more of the stone hippo babies?”

He shrugged. “This says elementals, so we could come up against water, air, or fire creatures too, and it would work just the same on them.” Hell, it might work against Netsu and Mizu. It didn’t specify monsters, but said ‘opponents’ and that was telling.

“Cool!”

They did find her a Ranger specific xp card, though it looked far less impressive than either his or Zirennia’s bonus xp cards. This one was called Way of the Wilds, and granted bonus xp for tracking, setting traps, being vigilant, spotting ambushes, befriending animals or fighting against creatures with which she already had an Exploit Weakness card available. There were a lot of xp triggers, but they were all pretty niche. Still, they traded in basically all the cards she’d gotten off the hippo-griffs and got her a decent amount of in-store credit with the local nellwyn dealer. Ash paid the rest in coin and a couple of gems. 

“Do you have items here?” he asked, but was informed that the item card shop was at the other end of the market square, in another of the town’s dozen buildings.

“I can’t believe this,” Tinniel said, reading over the card again. “I won’t be able to equip this for ages. I have to be at least Amateur level 5 before I can even put it in, but Staves and Clever both have to be Journeyman 3. Lame.”

He shrugged. “Stick with us and we’ll get you leveled up,” he told her.

“Outside the town,” she said. “Rangers only level up well in the wilderness.”

While that was true, Ash leveled up well just about everywhere.

Tinniel regarded him soberly. “You’re not going to, you know… are you?”