Veeran's [Frostblade] swished through the air, the sound of its motion audible against the background sounds of not only the jungle but of its magic as well. It struck home, cleaving through reeds with ease and felling another clump of the bamboo-like plant.

  Thus far, Veeran’s expectations for this Expedition were not meshing with reality. Nearly all of these involved substantial amounts of combat, yet here he was, collecting sticks in a forest so peaceful it may as well have been laughable. He’d already undergone decades of peace, and the discrepancy that came with utilizing his sword for farming was a palpable disappointment.

  Veeran stayed alert as nudged his harvest towards the edge of the creek it was growing in. Simply because he had yet to encounter any danger was no excuse for slacking, and he would remain vigilant. Anything less was how you died.

  There was something of a rustling in the foliage behind him, and Veeran spun with his sword at the ready, eyes scanning the thick wall of greenery for assailants. A moment later, the culprit revealed itself – a gazelle-like creature with a pair of spiraling horns, a brownish coat of feathers that shimmered in the shadows of the forest to turn invisible in some places, and two younger creatures around its feet.

  It didn’t look hostile, but Veeran and the deer stared at one another for a few moments before each deciding to go their respective ways. Veeran kept his eyes on it longer than it kept looking at him, though. He’d learned long ago not to trust even innocuous-looking animals, though without a hostile external force driving them to suicidal aggression, it was unlikely he’d be attacked. But out here, there was no way to predict what an unknown animal might do, and they certainly didn’t have the leeway to get comfortable.

  This was, after all, still unsecured territory, and until the territory was secured, it ought to be assumed hostile.

  Eventually, Veeran was confident enough that the gazelle wasn’t about to turn around and attack him, and he carried on with his work. In retrospect, it should have been obvious to him that the glamorized life of heroism and constant action, instead of slow drudgery and highly mundane tasks, was merely a recruitment tactic. That he'd fallen prey to it was a mark against him, for all that it would have made no difference to his actual inclusion. He was no wide-eyed kid eager for excitement, and should therefore have expected less than what he'd been promised.

  He cut down one more clump of reeds, nudged it into the rest of his harvest, and carefully knelt down to pull it all onto his shoulder. Water splashed onto him from the creek as he did so, but he refused to look down any more than was needed in his task.

  He hoisted a large bundle of reeds onto his shoulder, adjusted it to prevent overbalancing from the twenty-foot-long plants, and started making his way back to Shelter.

  There were several times on his way that Veeran heard movement around him, whether from the omnipresent foliage or his own mana senses, and half the time it was just some creature, a bird or animal, apparently unbothered by Veeran’s presence and obviously magical blade.

  The other half of the time, though… He didn’t know. It was probably still a creature, but he didn’t know for certain.

  Above him, a branch groaned, creaked, and snapped.

  Veeran danced back the moment the wood began making odd noises, and was justified as a greenish slime dropped onto the forest floor just a few feet from where he’d been standing. The blob splashed out then reconstituted itself, gathering up an excessive amount of leaf litter in its gelatinous body, but Veeran simply ignored it. It was no threat to him.

  As he approached Shelter, a premonition of danger swept over him, and he tossed his burden to the side and grasped [Frostblade] in both hands. He slashed through some vines obstructing his way and crashed into the somewhat-expanded clearing. His sudden arrival seemed to startle Clark, who was weaving reeds into a basket, but the area was otherwise peaceful.

  That only served to set him more on-edge, and he was vindicated a moment later when something dark charged out of the wilds, and Veeran had nearly sliced into it when he realized that it was merely Ranger Ride, arms empty and feet pounding. He hastily diverted the attack into the ground, and Ride easily leaped over the aborted attack, lending on the pebbled ground and panting out a choked cry, "Incoming!"

  “I’ve got to…” she gasped a moment later, “Get some better attack skills. I hate running away.”

  “What’s coming?” Veeran asked.

  “Some kind of elemental?” she didn’t sound very sure. “It’s… whoop!”

  ‘Some kind of elemental’ certainly seemed an apt description, as an ambulant figure made out of wood and vines leaped from the treeline. It was almost tiger-like, except for the dozens of thick vines attached to its back and swaying back and forth like so many snakes, and had a pair of very long fangs made out of thorns glistening with some kind of electric blue liquid.

  “Get inside!” Veeran heard Inq command Smith and Haleford, but Veeran was too occupied facing down the vine tiger to see if or how quickly they were complying.

  Its charge came quickly, and Veeran was yet to fully assume a proper stance when he was forced to strike. The creature yielded nonetheless to Veeran’s cold blade, the sharpened ice slicing into its maw. Were it a biological creature, or Veeran had all of his normal skills, its end would have come right then and there. But instead, the creature instead bowled him over, striking as it did in an instant where he was unbalanced.

  Veeran found himself knocked to the ground and with the wind driven out of him, but the elemental was atop him, and he kicked out, flipping it headlong over itself and throwing it to the ground.

  Ride, armed with a sturdy reed from the appropriate pile, clubbed its throat, only to have the staff gripped by some of the coiling vines that made up its body.

  Veeran got to his feet, utilizing a standard Duelist Stance without a better option apparent to strike, slicing through the vines entrapping the staff, but before he could move to decapitate the elemental – mostly to see if that would have any effect – it inverted its body, rising from the ground without turning over at all. It lunged at the only person in front of it, but Inq swung her ink-flail to knock its head to the side, then sidestepped the pounce before it could land.

  Veeran darted forward, [Frostblade] glinting in the light as he severed the thing’s back leg. The vines that had made it up fell into pieces on the ground, and while the tiger regrew the lost limb, it fairly obviously needed to draw on other mass to accomplish that.

  “Focus on severing!” Veeran called out, ignoring Ride’s pointed glare. Understandable, it was difficult to sever vines with only a staff.

  He, Inq, and Ride had the thing surrounded at this point, and it seemed uncertain how to proceed, a weakness that Veeran sought to exploit utterly. This time, his attack took off the thing’s entire hindquarters, aborting its attempt to lunge at Ride before it could get airborne.

  Instead, the creature just flopped forward as it overbalanced, landing at Ride’s feet. The Ranger didn’t freeze, and delivered a solid kick to the thing’s shoulder. Right where she contacted it, fire bloomed and charred several of the vines holding it together.

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  But before it could regrow any more, Inq brought her flail down on the creature’s head, breaking its thornlike fangs and rendering it impotent enough for Jacob to bisect the creature entirely.

  It fell to the ground, its animation spent, and the shimmering blue liquid vanished altogether from the long fangs.

  Idly, Veeran wondered if that had been sufficient to level [Frostblade] up. He’d have to resummon it to tell if there was any difference in its performance.

  “You two can come out now!” Inq called out, then turned to Ride, “What happened?”

  “I’m not entirely sure,” she admitted, “I was out gathering food, but I broke a branch off a tree I was passing, and I guess that thing must have been connected to it in some way? Because pretty much right afterwards, that attacked me. It got my spear away from me, again, and I needed to run.”

  “What did the tree look like?” Inq inquired.

  Ride shrugged, “Old. Big. It was a bit magical too… but I suppose that describes most of the trees around here. It looked pretty treelike? Not really typical bark, it was fairly light in color and looked almost woven from a distance, but it was growing over a riverbank, and most of its branches were really gnarled. Leaves… sort of heart-shaped, and green with a splash of blue, I’d say.”

  “Would you be capable of finding it again?” Veeran inquired.

  “Sure. We want to see if it’s reflexive?”

  “It is good to know the shape of our enemy. Reality is not so kind as to leave us unassaulted, yet we have received little resistance for our current state.”

  “I’m not sure how true that is,” Ride shrugged, “If this is truly untouched wilderness, most things wouldn’t even know what it is that we are, and animals like to leave well enough alone when provided the opportunity.”

  “Be that as it may, we were still summoned as part of the Jump. That means there’s an enemy to fight, and I intend to fight it.”

  "Before you do..." Smith wandered in to the conversation. "Jacob, could I get your assistance for a few minutes? I need a sample of Metal to compare to."

  Veeran hesitated. He didn't wish to leave a potential enemy uninvestigated. If the tree was responsible for sending that vine-elemental at them, he would prefer to see it chopped down soon. He sent a quick glance at the Commander, looking for her decision.

  "Help Smith," she said without hesitation, "The sooner we can get the Shelter wards working, the better off we'll be. Ride, you and I can investigate the tree and determine whether it's a threat."

  Veeran gave an informal salute of acknowledgement, then followed their Artificer as he led the way into the shelter. He had to give it to the kid, even in this 'not working' state, there was a marked difference in the sounds of magic inside and outside the wards. He wasn't good enough to tell how it was different, but it seemed much... calmer. Safer.

  "Do you have any active skill uses?" Oliver asked.

  "Simply reconjuring my blade," Veeran replied.

  Though [Frost Knight] wasn't the class Veeran usually utilized, an honor that typically befell [Blade of Forms] thanks to its capabilities with Stances, [Frostblade] had been a skill he'd often utilized before as a weapon. The ability to never truly be disarmed had been of immense use to him many times before, and it proved to be useful yet again.

  Overall, he knew quite a bit about its function, and without a subskill such as ?Piercing Strike? or ?Recall?, the magic of it was solely constrained to when he conjured the weapon.

  Incidentally, leveling the skill lay almost entirely within its use as a sword, rather than utilizing the magic time and time again to conjure it over and over. Instead, it was important to use and master the blade it conjured. It needed to become a true extension of Veeran, an indelible part of him in all things, and in doing so it would improve and level.

  "Would you be able to conjure it now, or is that going to be an annoyance?"

  "It will take me several minutes," he replied. Without the ?Instant Draw? subskill, that was something that wouldn't even improve with level or increased Power. And ?Instant Draw? had fairly little appeal to him, all considered. He was not one of the mage-pretenders who attempted to utilize [Frostblade] as a makeshift attack spell, with ?Sword Rain? and the half-dozen accompanying subskills required to make summoning a literal hail of blades useful against truly dangerous or heavily-armored foes.

  Those which could fall to a sword from the sky would just as surely fall to a well-placed sword in the hand. A hundred swords falling upon such an enemy meant you either missed ninety-nine times or wasted ninety-nine swords.

  "Okay. Could I hold the sword for a minute, then?" Veeran complied, and prompted a sudden gasp of surprise as Smith took hold of it. "That's cold. You can hold this thing bare-handed forever?"

  "It is my blade," he replied, "It does not easily turn its bite against me."

  Oliver frowned, "Okay, wait. Tangent. It doesn't hurt you? Does it just pass through you, does it act as though you have infinite Resistance, how does that work?"

  "The blade itself will still cut me," Veeran clarified, "Though less than it ought to, and it will not grow stronger against me as it levels. It is the cold which does not bite me save for rare exceptions."

  "That's neat. Okay, things are looking good so far. Could you... I don't know, start to use your skill but not push all the way through?"

  "Not without causing my current blade to melt," he replied, causing Smith to frown.

  There was a subskill, one which Veeran did not know the name of, which enabled multiple [Frostblade]s conjured at once, but he had never earned it and never utilized it. He had always preferred to focus upon the capabilities of a single blade, utilizing it and empowering it for that point alone. He was hesitant to truly attempt to circumvent the limit, either, as he still had two open skill slots and no desire to spend one of them on something as foolish as dual-wielding.

  He at least assumed he retained two skill slots. [Frost Knight] had two points in Skill as part of its base stats, but one of those points was dedicated to sword skills. That roughly doubled its efficacy, though no substats were wholly straightforward and Skill was no exception, but meant it could only occupy itself with skills pertaining to sword usage.

  [Frostblade] itself was one of those skills, meaning Veeran currently had the capacity for one more sword-based skill, and one more skill that could be anything. Or, he could keep the skill slot it provided ‘unassigned’ to slightly improve his other skills’ leveling speed. That state of affairs wouldn’t last long without a [Status] to allow for rejection of unlocked skills, but it was a bonus he hoped to maintain as long as possible.

  His experience with the blade, and operating away from a System node, had taught him that skill slots were often quite eager to fill themselves if left empty, and he did not yet wish to commit one of his two remaining skill slots to an accidentally completed spell, cast solely for demonstration.

  "I can, however, do something similar."

  "Could you? Just for a few seconds, I think."

  Veeran provided his assistance again, working with his mana to encourage it to act through his body and focus it into his blade. He would, after all, have been a quite incompetent warrior were he incapable of utilizing the magical depths of his weapon. He found the action less effective than he was accustomed to, and assumed a Stance - Archmage Stance, as it were - that encouraged the flow of magic into and through his body, but particularly his sword. As he did so, Smith nodded, eyes darting around the area.

  He kept that up for a little while, across multiple distinct showings, long enough for Ride and Inq to return from their excursion.

  Eventually, Smith came to a close, before Veeran could grow impatient. "Okay. Okay. I think it's ready, then. I'll just need some metal to actually get it working... where's that going to come from..."

  "What kind of metal will you need?" Henrietta asked, "Do you need something specific, or will anything metallic work for you?"

  "Iron is frequently best for Metal magic, but basically any kind of metal should work?"

  "If that's the case," Ride cut in, "Then I actually know exactly where we can get something."

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