Ruby shook me awake. “Lucas, come on. It’s time to join the expedition.”

  “Huh?” I sat up, rubbing sleep from my eyes, fuzzy thoughts barely moving. “But that’s not till morning.”

  “It is morning.”

  The words were like a jolt of caffeine straight into my brain. “I slept all night?”

  “Imagine that,” Steve said from the other room. “Even you still need sleep. This world doesn’t make any sense at all.”

  “Not funny.” I jumped up, fighting to hide my frustration. Between getting knocked out yesterday, then sleeping all night, I’d lost half of the last 2 days. At that pace, I’d never finish leveling up.

  Yeah, I was still only human, but shouldn’t I be able to ignore sleep longer? I took a deep breath and ran hands through my hair. They snagged on something sticky. I grimaced, but fought down my worry. The stress of how much I had to do was like a weight in the back of my mind, but I still had time. I could do this.

  The shower turned out to be amazing. The water pressure would have scoured my skin raw back on Earth, but felt incredible as it swept all the grime and dirt away. The controls allowed me to make it so hot even my toughened skin reddened. I could have enjoyed that shower for half an hour, but only allowed myself a luxurious 10 minutes. A hot blast of air dried me in seconds and I found my battered clothes clean, pressed, and folded on the shelf next to the sink.

  When I emerged, Steve was lounging on one of the overstuffed chairs, munching on a huge chocolate eclair. I wasn’t the only one leveraging my connection with Sam. I produced 2 bottles of tequila and one more of whiskey, dropping them on the side table next to his chair.

  “Wow!” Steve shoved the rest of the eclair into his mouth to examine the bottles and mumbled through the huge mouthful. “Ruby said you got some liquor from that log cabin, but I had no idea.”

  “When we get back from our hunting trip, I expect some world-class margaritas.”

  “Prepare to be amazed.”

  Ruby joined us and nodded toward the bathroom, raising one fine eyebrow. “What do you think? Worth the upgrade price?”

  “Absolutely. That’s probably the best upgrade you could have done.”

  “After the menu upgrade,” Steve piped in, producing a small round pastry topped with fruit and shoving the entire thing into his mouth.

  Ruby grinned and added, “Wait till you try the massage feature in my room.”

  Steve coughed, choking on his pastry, eyes bulging as he fought to clear his airways. Had I heard Ruby right? I pounded Steve hard enough to crack a regular human’s ribs.

  He managed to swallow and grinned at Ruby. “Massage feature? Since when do you invite guys into your bedroom for massages?”

  Ruby’s face reddened, her eyes widening as she realized how that must have sounded. “That’s not what I meant.”

  I couldn’t help grinning. “It did sound like quite the offer.”

  “You know, I can wait outside for a few minutes,” Steve offered, grin widening at Ruby’s growing embarrassment. The liquor bottles disappeared into his inventory and he looked ready to dodge a pillow.

  She stamped one foot. “That’s not what I meant, and you know it!”

  Steve only nodded slowly, glancing from Ruby to me and asked, “So, Lucas, how does it feel to have our lovely teammate tease you with massages, then pretend she never did?”

  “Just drop it. I think we’ve squeezed all the fun out of this one that we can.”

  “Oh, don’t underestimate me,” Steve said before heading out of the tent, whistling softly to himself.

  Ruby stepped closer, her face still red. “Lucas, I just meant . . .”

  “I know, and I appreciate it. Made for a good joke, though. Come on, let’s go.”

  She gave me a grateful smile and we headed out side by side. Moments later, we joined a group of about a dozen other men and women gathering just outside of town. The makeshift log barricade that walled off open space between the stone spires around town had been replaced by solid stone walls.

  “When did that happen?”

  “A couple of the crafters who hit level 25 got classes related to building fortifications. They can raise entire sections of walls in moments, as long as they have mana potions to top themselves off,” Ruby explained.

  “They’re planning a full castle for the second stage,” Steve added. “Hopefully they’ll add a princess in the tallest tower so I can practice more rescues.”

  I pulled out Switchblade and reviewed the part of the description about armaments.

  “Weapons Battery. 3 slots for defense, 2 slots for offense. Upgradable. Can absorb spell scrolls, weapons, or items with magical effects. Note: spells or effects may be altered to fit Switchblade’s systems.”

  I was under-utilizing the bike’s potential. Why not trigger spells from the bike if I’d likely be riding it when I ran into monsters? Too bad I didn’t have other good defensive options. Shield Dome was already similar to Energy Ward. I needed to find more. In the meantime, I could add offensive capabilities.

  I opened the bike’s menu, mentally clicked on the open slot for offensive spells, and moved one of my temporary spells over.

  “You have added one offensive spell to Switchblade: Corrosive Cloud. This spell is no longer available to use as a temporary spell. Corrosive Cloud altered to fit Switchblade delivery method.”

  “Corrosive Cloud: Deliver a cloud of gas from the rear of the bike for 5 seconds. Area of effect spell that corrodes metal and flesh on contact. Cloud remains active for 2 minutes. Uses remaining: 1.”

  Hopefully I’d made the right choice. I’d seriously considered Frostfire Nova, but decided to hold that one in reserve. I’d hoped to get more uses out of the spell when I applied it to Switchblade, but no luck this time.

  All the bike’s systems were in the green, power at 100%. Ruby and Steve walked around it as I updated the spell, and Steve whistled softly. “I don’t know how you get all the luck, Lucas, but this thing is a one-of-a-kind beauty.”

  “I can take a passenger. Want to ride shotgun while I scout today?”

  He grinned. “Best offer I’ve had all morning.” Then his smile widened and a crafty sparkle flickered in his eyes. “I’ll take you up on it later, but I think Ruby was in line before me.” Steve made an elaborate bow to her as he took a smooth step back.

  “How about it?” I asked her.

  “Of course! Steve, are you sick today? You’re passing up a grand chance to ride in style to trudge through miles of grass?”

  He chuckled. “Hiking through a beautiful valley with breathtaking mountains in every direction is still so much better than the views I enjoyed most days working as a plumber, believe me.”

  I stepped onto Switchblade and Ruby jumped on behind, wrapping her arms around my waist and leaning against my back. She smelled faintly of flowers somehow.

  Steve gave me a thumb’s up and a wink, and as he turned away, he whispered to himself, “My work is done here.”

  I still picked up the words. He was such a goofball. It wasn’t like I was asking Ruby on a date, or anything. She was my teammate. Of course I’d invite her to ride with me. He seemed to like having something to tease people about. It didn’t really bother me as long as he didn’t annoy Ruby too much.

  The councilwoman Crystal Bennett arrived with a few other people. Surprisingly, she was the excursion leader. I had honestly expected her to remain in town mostly, focusing on administrative duties. She apparently didn’t want to let the other council members get all the glory leading raiding parties.

  Tony and Burns together would lead a large contingent of many of the strongest fighters up to the second stage after our group cleared a path up the slope. Their interdiction team would scout for a spot to set up the next town.

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  It was a good plan. Even though the interdiction team could fight up the slope unaided, this way experience for killing the weaker monsters on the slopes got shared with folks who needed it. No doubt the interdiction team would encounter far stronger monsters, so would get plenty of experience too.

  As soon as Crystal added me to the excursion group chat, I waved and accelerated away. I didn’t have time for pep talks or to wait for the team to figure out their chain of command and start marching.

  Ruby clutched my waist tightly as we shot across the grasses and her laugh trailed behind. “This is grand! What else can it do?”

  I showed her, using the open grasses to bank and turn Switchblade, dropping into the grasses, then popping into the air again. Ruby laughed and cheered and for a moment I was able to forget about leveling and monsters and killing and just enjoy a good ride.

  As we neared the long slope up to the second stage, I spotted movement. A single creature was running toward the hills.

  “Soilrunner Bull. Level 24. Far more aggressive than the Soilstrider cows, the bulls of the herd live to fight. They will challenge any foe, even if outmatched, trusting to their momentum-based attacks and overwhelming numbers for victory.”

  “Hey, there’s one of the stragglers from the herd.” I pointed to it as I adjusted course and accelerated to attack.

  As I focused on it, a green image overlay appeared in my goggles, with the running bull highlighted. In the top corner of my vision, an icon of an arrow appeared. I received a message.

  “Your goggles’ targeting interface is enabled and will activate automatically when potential targets enter maximum effective range of offensive spells. Interface will assist with fine-tuning target acquisition and improve accuracy. Current spell selected: Shattercore Ballista.”

  Sweet. Targeting with the ballista was already pretty simple, but as I added more complex offensive spells to Switchblade’s arsenal, the targeting interface would no doubt become a lot more useful.

  “Are you going to hit it with the magic bolt?”

  I shook my head, even though I really wanted to test out the new interface. “That’s overkill. I need to practice hitting from the saddle anyway.”

  We closed on the bull in seconds and I dropped Soulrend into my left hand. The tall bovine, running erect on its two hind legs like a man, heard us at the last moment and spun, large poleax rising to strike.

  It reacted too slow, though, and we flashed past close beside it while its weapon was still rising. I struck, and Soulrend cut through the monster’s huge skull.

  As we passed, the targeting interface changed, the arrow icon switching to one of a cloud, and text scrolled past the left side of my vision. “Offensive spell changed to Corrosive Cloud.”

  So it recognized that I couldn’t use the ballista when my target was no longer straight ahead and shifted to the next best spell? That was a lot more advanced than I’d expected, but exactly what I needed. I wouldn’t have time to manually switch the goggles between spells in the middle of a battle.

  A mini window appeared in my display showing the view from behind, giving me a great angle to watch the bull falling to the ground. A faint, billowing green haze flowed from the back of the bike, like a tutorial demonstrating the dispersion area for Corrosive Cloud. Nice. It looked like the cloud would spread pretty widely pretty fast.

  I filed that bit of information away as I stopped long enough to loot the body. I only got basic items, then we took off again. A moment later, we spotted a second bull.

  I slowed. “Do you want to take this one?”

  “Yes,” she responded immediately. “Do a drive-by about 10 yards to the right.”

  She’d never used a ranged attack before, other than her poisoned blowgun. I sensed she had something else in mind, though as I accelerated toward the bull. This one heard us approach sooner and spun, long spear at the ready. As soon as it locked eyes on us, it started charging.

  I hadn’t noticed specific momentum-based attacks when we fought them last time, but I’d been using Phase Walk. Now it was easy to spot the air shimmering just in front of the bull, as if it was compressing space.

  On foot, it would have posed a lot more risk, but on Switchblade, it just wasn’t fast enough. I shot past at a safe distance and Ruby let go with one hand, then her entire torso twisted against mine, as she threw something.

  A small black object sailed through the air and landed a short distance in front of the charging bull. One big hoof came down on the object and it detonated into a column of white-hot flame that billowed up around the bull, completely enveloping its huge form.

  The monster twisted and writhed in the flames, but within seconds, it collapsed dead to the ground, little more than a blackened husk.

  “What was that?” I asked as I circled back around.

  Ruby jumped off to loot the body. She grimaced at the sight, then again at the stench. “Immolation grenade. I traded one of the other crafters for a bunch.”

  “They needed that many healing potions?”

  “Not exactly. I shared around a lot of healing potions initially to make sure people had enough to survive, but after the battle I realized people had ways to pay or to trade for them. There’s a growing network of crafters in town, a lot more than you probably realize. I’ve been trading potions with most of them and getting a lot of great stuff in return. Gives me a lot of haggling power.”

  “Good thinking.” She’d leveled up to 15, so was doing okay. I guess I didn’t have to worry about her struggling to defend herself.

  We didn’t see any more bulls and started exploring up the long slope toward the second stage. The hillside was wide and open, but dotted with dense thickets of trees and bushes and with more gullies than I’d noticed in my dash down with William and Joey.

  The ground was harder than the soft earth of the plain and was covered in tough, short grass and scratchy ground cover. Piles of rock and bare patches of hard ground pocked the area too. I kept a sharp eye out for monsters. The seemingly empty slope could be hiding a lot of danger.

  Except it wasn’t. We crisscrossed the lower reaches of the slope and spotted nothing threatening.

  “Where are the monsters?” Ruby asked.

  I shrugged. “Let’s try higher.”

  I set a curving course angling higher, sweeping past clumps of trees and slowing to study the shadowed gullies. 10 minutes later as we crossed a low hill, I hit the brakes. Now it made sense why we hadn’t seen other monsters.

  A group of a dozen zombie slavers was marching uphill toward the second stage about a quarter mile away. Like the other zombies, these were dressed like pirates and conquistadores. In the middle of the group, they carried two planks with prisoners chained to each one.

  I zoomed my vision on the distant figures. One man and one woman, both lying on the rough planks, looking battered and unconscious. Those stun guns were brutal.

  Ruby gasped when she caught sight of them. “Those are zombies?”

  “Yeah. They’re nasty.”

  “We need to go get help.”

  It would be nice to hit the zombies with the expedition’s full might, but I shook my head. “There’s not enough time. The team’s still a couple hours away on foot. The zombies will reach the second stage in 10 minutes, then we’ll never catch them.”

  “We can’t just let them take two people away as slaves.”

  “No, we can’t. Hop off.”

  Her grip tightened around my waist. “Don’t be a muppet, Lucas. What are you planning?”

  “I’m going to stop them and free those slaves.”

  “Then I should help.”

  “Not this time. Their energy rifles are dangerous.”

  She thumped me on the back of the head. “Which is why you need help.”

  I resisted the urge to explain I wanted her to get off because I worried she’d get killed, and wasting energy worrying for her could get me killed, but I did, and it could. Instead I scanned the slope and got an idea.

  “Okay, then. Hold on.”

  I accelerated hard and slewed Switchblade back around to one of the narrow, steep gullies cutting the slope. I aimed right at it and we plunged inside.

  “What are you doing?” Ruby exclaimed, her grip tightening.

  “We need to slip past them without getting noticed. This gully cuts pretty high up the slope. Just hang tight. This is going to get fun.”

  Then I focused all my attention on riding. The gully cut a nearly straight line up the slope, but it was clogged with bushes and piles of boulders. I threw us into a series of twisting turns, slaloming between obstacles, even riding up along the steep sides of the gully a few times to avoid the densest tangles.

  Ruby’s initial iron grip relaxed and she surprised me by moving with me. Together we leaned and shifted to best counterbalance the bike. We didn’t need to move as much as we would have on an Earth bike, but some movement still helped. If she’d gripped me too tight, it would have hampered us.

  “You never said you had experience riding,” I said as we shot up a rare flat patch.

  “Not nearly as much as you or Jane, but we lived in Spain for a while and rode some wonderful mountain trails.”

  That sounded fun, but a new series of obstacles made speaking impossible as we threw ourselves into more turns. I’d been holding back earlier, but now that I knew her skill level, I pushed the bike harder, tearing through some truly awesome maneuvers.

  Ruby managed it well, although her grip did tighten on my waist a couple times, and she muttered soft curses between laughs, especially when we tipped nearly horizontal while zooming up stretches of gully walls. I thoroughly enjoyed the ride as Ruby and I moved as one and I pushed the bike, testing how much it could do.

  It could do a lot. Even back on Earth, most motorcycles could perform at a much higher level than their riders. Switchblade took on every challenge and excelled, thrusters whining, engine purring, warm air rushing past.

  The gully smelled faintly of sagebrush, but occasionally I caught whiffs of rot. Maybe something had died behind some of the rocks, but I didn’t slow to check.

  Way too soon, we reached the top where the gully faded away to barely a crack that ran into the middle of a thick copse of trees and bushes. There I slowed and ghosted toward the edge of our cover to scan the slope again.

  Ruby hugged me tight, then thumped my shoulder. “That craic was incredible! A couple times I did think we were dead, though.”

  “Just enough danger to get the blood pumping.”

  We stopped at the edge of the trees with a panoramic vista out over the grassy plain and a good view of the slope and the zombies marching uphill. We’d gotten ahead of them by several hundred yards, although we were still a bit too far south.

  I pointed to a big pile of sandstone boulders directly in the path of the zombies. “If they keep going, they’ll pass that pile. I’m going to drop you there. On my signal, lob 4 of those grenades from cover. They’re weak against fire, so that’ll create a distraction and draw their attention so I can hit them from behind.”

  “Do you think we can take them? Didn’t you say all the zombies were level 35?”

  She couldn’t hide a tremor of worry. She wasn’t dumb enough to blindly rush in against a dozen monsters so much stronger.

  “Yeah, they’re tough and they work together well, but we can take them. Fighting them hand-to-hand would be brutal. They’re nearly unstoppable unless you take off their heads, but their heads aren’t armored, so it’s a good weakness. If something goes wrong, you should retreat back to here and down the gully.”

  “Make sure nothing goes wrong. I don’t want to leave you behind.”

  “That makes two of us. Do you want an energy rifle?”

  I’d given her one of the stun guns before, but they didn’t have as much range as the rifles.

  She hesitated, then said, “Yes. I don’t think I’ll need it, but better to be safe than dead.”

  I handed over the rifle. “Hold on.”

  She gripped my waist hard and I gunned the throttle. We shot out of the trees and tore across the slope. The zombies spotted us immediately, but we reached the pile of rocks before they could shoot.

  I skidded to a halt and Ruby jumped off. She grabbed my arm and held my gaze with her big, brown eyes. “Be careful, Lucas.”

  It almost looked for a second like she planned to lean in and give me a good luck kiss. I was glad she didn’t. This was not the time to get distracted.

  “You too. Don’t take any unnecessary chances.”

  She tilted her head, one eyebrow raised. I grinned back. “I’ll try to do the same.”

  Then I gunned Switchblade and tore away across the slope.