While Valda and I walked over to where I saw the cockatrice, I thought about how far we'd come together. It had only been just over a month, and we saved each other's lives several times. We had never gotten into deep battle plans, which had gotten us into trouble a few times, but now when we rushed into a battle, I felt in sync with her. Like we could adapt to anything.

  It had been at least a mile away, so it wasn't a short jaunt, but it gave me time to supply her with potions and gummies, and to tell her if I threw a bomb, to look away and cover her ears. I had decided I would only use flash bombs in these fights, because I didn't want to blow the monsters' bodies to pieces when I might need to collect things off them.

  We had to be careful to not let the cockatrice look at us though, because their stares and breath were reported to turn people to stone. I wasn't sure how that worked. Did they have to make eye contact with you or could they just look at you when you're turned away? I assumed if it just breathed on you, it would work, so maybe all they had to do was see you, to turn you to stone.

  Either way, we had to be very careful. That was where the flash bombs came in. I figured if I blinded the cockatrice, it couldn't stare at us until it recovered, and hopefully by then it would be dead. It would be safer to just throw a regular bomb at it and blow it up, but then we might not have been able to get anything to identify the kill or any ingredients to gather.

  I warned Valda about its supposed petrification ability through sight and breath. She said she would be careful.

  When we started to come upon the place where I saw the monster, I got down on the ground and signalled for Valda to do the same. We crawled up over the next hill and found our prey. The cockatrice was a cross between a chicken, a lizard, and a bat. It had a rooster's colorful head, but bat wings and a big old lizard tail. Its skin was a patchwork of scales and feathers. It hadn't seen us yet.

  Lighting the fuse on a flash bomb, I threw it at the bird creature, bouncing it off its back. The cockatrice looked at the object that had just landed on the ground next to it. I signaled Valda to close her eyes and cover her ears, and I did the same. I heard the bomb go off, and I opened my eyes.

  The cockatrice roared and thrashed its head around with its eyes closed. Perfect. I nodded to Valda who charged into battle on the left of the monster while I ran to the right to get some of my own shots in. I blasted the cockatrice in the side, while I magically built a v-shaped cradle underneath its midsection. I supported the cradle with vertical poles. This functionally trapped the monster's legs.

  Putting my staff away—I had been holding it to cast Build—I pulled my second flintlock, blasted it in the side again, and reloaded my pistols. Valda smashed the monster in the head, bringing it down to half of its health. It struggled and cried as it tried to get out of the wooden cradle, but it couldn't. Working together with Valda, we whittled its health down to nothing, and the monster fell limp.

  "Are you ok?" I asked.

  "Yeah. That thing just paralyzed me a few times. Every time it breathed on me, I froze and couldn't move." Valda cracked her neck.

  "I told you not to let it breathe on you! You could've been killed!"

  "Yeah, I'm sorry. I thought I had it under control." She rolled her shoulder.

  "I understand. At least we know now it's not as dangerous as we thought. That turning to stone is just a metaphor for paralysis." I put my hand on her shoulder.

  "Yeah. It's the little things that make life worth living." She laughed, and I laughed along with her.

  "Let me collect these ingredients and the proof." I knelt next to the cockatrice to begin the extraction.

  "Sure. Take your time. I'm going to sit down." She plopped down on the ground and closed her eyes.

  I removed the end of the tail for kill proof, then the feathers, eyes, and beak. They all had potential benefit. I'd have to do some alchemy Design work and Advanced Testing before wasting any of materials to experimentation, but I bet I could make an anti paralytic and a paralytic with different parts of the monster. The beak would probably be a good ingredient in an epic health potion. Beak powder from different animals was used a lot in health and vitality potions, so I figured getting it from such a dangerous monster would be extra potent.

  The eyes were probably magical in nature, which allowed its gaze to paralyze its victims, but the breath part had to come from some sort of glands in the throat. I uncomfortably dissected the animal to find the glands and removed two orange sized glands while wearing a pair of leather gloves to not get any of the paralytic on me. That and just general cleanliness. After wrapping everything in separate cloths, I placed them in an infinity bag.

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  The infinity bags really came in handy with everything that we did. The ingredients and the tail were heavy enough and took up enough space that I could've seen them taking up a whole pack for a normal adventuring team.

  I made another tower to check out the landscape and see if I could spy another monster, cockatrice or otherwise. I made this one taller and sturdier. The other one had swayed a bit more than I was comfortable with. There must have been an infestation of cockatrice, because I spotted two more roaming around together off in the distance. There were a lot of various ingredients on the ground on the way there in the form of flowers, herbs, roots, mushrooms, and berries.

  I collected ingredients as we walked. Some sort of ingredient collection ability would be nice. Hopefully, I'd get something like that soon with another level up. I picked up several blueberry bellflowers and buster roots.

  The bellflowers were easy to spot and the buster roots as well, since they were named for the fact that they busted out of the ground when they were ready to be picked. I even caught one midnight moth, but they were a lot harder to catch than flying bugs in video games. Midnight moths were just called that because they were black. Not because you had to catch them at midnight.

  We snuck up to the area where I had seen the monsters. We hid in some bushes to go over strategy, when the two cockatrices came over the rise right by our position. One was larger than the other with more colorful feathers—what little feathers it had.

  It appeared to be a male and female pair. This encounter would be a lot more dangerous than the first one, since there were two of them. As carefully and quietly as I could, I got out a few flash bombs, lit them, and tossed them over near the pair of monsters, which were only about fifty feet away.

  Valda and I covered our ears and closed our eyes until we heard the bombs go off—despite covering our ears—and looked over at the two cockatrices. They made roaring cawing noises as they swung their head back and forth with their eyes closed.

  Valda rushed in, this time from behind, and attacked one of their left legs, applying the Hobbled condition to it. She attacked the same spot again and again, stacking the condition, until the leg collapsed and the monster fell to the ground, kicking and screaming. I ran up to the monster without getting close enough for it to breathe on me and shot it in the head. That didn't end up killing it, only bringing its health down by half, so I shot it again and it stopped moving.

  By then, the other cockatrice had regained its composure and, more importantly, its sight. When it opened its eyes, a sickly green light emanated from them, illuminating me and Valda, stopping us in our tracks. Valda had been frozen with her mace raised over her head, ready to slam it down on the cockatrice's head, and I was holding my staff in one hand and my gun aimed at its side.

  It had us dead to rights, in its paralyzing sight, unable to fight back. I tried to pull the trigger on my gun, hoping getting shot would make it flinch and blink, but try as I might, I couldn't move my finger. A strange feeling hit me or didn't hit me as I reached for my mana to try to distract it somehow with magic. I felt no resistance to gathering mana into the staff to prepare a spell, and my mana refilled within my body as normal.

  The paralysis only affected the movement of muscles. It had no effect on magic or casting spells, which didn't require the use of physical movements to perform. A lot of casters did move when casting spells and some—especially mages—used hand signs and motions to channel their spells, but that wasn't strictly necessary. It reduced the mana cost and allowed for better focusing of magnitude, aiming or location of the spell, and intent, but those could all be brute forced by just using more mana to cast the spell and by using a spell casting focus like a wand or staff.

  So as the cockatrice approached Valda to sniff and examine her, before opening its jaws to bite her head off, it was with great pleasure that I cast Excavate to dig a hole beneath it. Using my entire reserve of mana, the hole knocked the monster off balance and caused it to fall as the hole dug itself deeper and deeper until the monster's head could no longer be seen above the edge of the hole.

  This caused us to be released from the paralyzing effect to which we were both relieved. The bird jumped and attempted to flap its wings to fly out, but the hole was too narrow for it to spread its wings fully. Holding Valda back, I threw another flash bomb into the hole without looking over the edge.

  Once it went off, Valda leaped into the hole, slamming her mace down on the monster's head. I dropped my staff and pulled my second gun, shooting it twice in the back. After reloading, I delivered another two shots, and Valda rolled under the beast and slammed her mace into its underbelly, killing it. I collected the ingredients from the two bodies, depositing them in a bag after wrapping them in cloth.

  "Are you alright?" I wanted to check in with Valda. That had been a more dangerous encounter than I had anticipated.

  She waved me off. "Yeah, I'm fine. I'm starting to get used to the adrenaline and fear that comes from near-death experiences. However, I'd like to take a break doing anything else for the next hour. I'll even pick herbs for you."

  "That's fair. We can make that happen." I looked around for glowing collectibles in the area around us and noticed something I didn't expect.

  There was a large group of people marching over the horizon in the distance. I couldn't tell if they were human or monster because they all wore brown robes with the hoods up over their heads, but that mode of dress led me to believe they were monsters trying to hide their identity. I couldn't tell for sure, from the distance, but they seemed too short to be human.

  The procession kicked up dust from the dirt road they were traveling on, making them noticeable for miles around. I figured it would be something important to check out before anyone else encountered them and were attacked, or before they were attacked unnecessarily. They were likely monsters, but monsters hiding their identity as they traveled didn't scream hostile to me. It screamed vulnerable.

  "Hey, let's check out what that's about." I pointed at the procession in the distance. I started walking toward it.

  "Ok, yeah. That seems like a good idea." Valda walked beside me.