“I do not have unlimited blank contracts,” Hou Zheng said, a wry smile on his face. “I will need several more for his companions.” He turned to Josh. “I am willing to include a clause that requires I make Hawkins leave the area. I will not agree to attack him, however.”

  Josh raised an eyebrow. That might actually be worth signing. Especially if Hou Zheng drove Hawkins out before Mary and the others had to sign.

  Hawkins scoffed. “Fine. You can both do whatever you like. I have my price already. I'll survive anywhere in the world.”

  Josh was careful not to react to those words. You can both do whatever you like. He felt bonds loosening on him. Not entirely. He still couldn't attack Hawkins or actively try to remove the Slaver's Collar. But it had wiped out all of the standing orders. That gave him many more options.

  He struggled to keep his face passive, and willed his heart to slow. “Let's circle back. What happens if I say no? You just kill me on the spot?” He jerked a thumb at Jael. “Maybe have her do it?”

  “By all the spirits, I should,” Hou Zheng admitted, which actually made Josh respect him a bit more. At least he was honest. “And I will admit that I am tempted. However, that will make it impossible to negotiate with your friends, which in turn will require a more violent solution. No, I would be forced to utilize my backup plan.”

  “The dungeons.” Josh still didn't have the full details. He was pretty sure that he knew it wasn't monsters, though, so he used that. “It's something to do with the monsters, right? Or the rift crystals.” Pretending to be confident in false knowledge was a decent way of getting people to talk. Everyone loved correcting people.

  Hou Zheng shook his head sadly. “I was hoping you would figure it out... but, no. That is not fair. You have only seen one dungeon even slightly like the one I am trying to find. It is understandable that you would not think of it.”

  The broken dungeon. So his plan did involve manipulating them somehow. Josh carefully didn't react to that, either. “I don't suppose there's any way that I can get out of this without signing anything? You let me go, continue on your little plan, and we try to kill each other like right honorable folks?”

  The orc smirked. “I'm afraid not. As much as I would love to finish this all with a simple, honorable duel, I think we are well past that. If nothing else, I suspect Mayor Hawkins will be upset if he doesn't get something else out of this.”

  Josh glanced over to see the little man scowling. Michael, the Tough Thug, loomed behind him like a mountain, ready for violence. He needed to finish this before he gave another order. “All right, then,” he said with a shrug. “Give me a pen, and let's get to signing.”

  Hou Zheng pulled a fancy quill out of thin air. It had a foot-long brilliant rainbow feather attached to it, and Josh had no idea what sort of bird it could have come from. He didn't think it was magical, just weird and fancy. Hou Zheng even pulled out an attendant ink pot, when every magical quill that Josh had ever seen never ran out of ink.

  He couldn't help but bark out a laugh. “Okay, yeah, that's brilliant, I love it.”

  “It's important we both sign with the same quill and ink.”

  “Hey, no complaints on my end.” He made a show of thinking for a moment. “Does it have to be that ink, though?”

  Hou Zheng paused. “No. Why?”

  “No reason,” Josh said with a shrug. “Just seeing that quill, I figured maybe the ink was some super expensive thing that needs six hours in direct sunlight to dry or something.”

  A somewhat awkward silence fell.

  Josh gave him an incredulous look that he didn't have to fake in the slightest. “Really?”

  “It only takes ten minutes to dry,” Hou Zheng said stiffly. “And it is absolutely beautiful once it does. It has this prismatic sheen that catches the light—”

  Josh made a noise to stop him. “Look, I'm happy you like your ink. But this is basically a couple steps up from a slave contract. Let's go with something quick and dirty, yeah?”

  Another awkward silence fell, tripped over the previous silence, and lay there.

  “Oh my God,” Josh said. “That's the only ink you have, isn't it?” As a distraction, this actually was working out even better than he could have hoped, but really.

  “My storage ring is far from infinite,” he muttered. “Ink is a specialty item at the best of times, I can't just—”

  “Look, look, it's fine,” Josh said, patting the air to calm him down. “I've got something that should work.” He activated his storage ring and pulled out a container full of liquid.

  The casual tone of the conversation had everyone off their guard. They were joking around, laughing, and he wasn't making any trouble. He was willing to sign, wasn't he? He was being helpful, wasn't he? There was nothing wrong with him pulling something out of his storage ring.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  Hawkins had already ordered him not to hurt anyone, after all.

  Biodiesel was normally stored in special containers, usually either metal or plastic. Both had their advantages and disadvantages, and Josh could make the metal containers now. He had gained a decent amount of experience making increasingly more complex cans for Abraham.

  However, when you had a storage ring, you didn't need to bother with anything fancy like that. Plastic could be expensive this far out from the City, after all. Clay and ceramic, on the other hand, were literally as cheap as dirt. Many mages learned Earth spells that could crudely help the shaping process, and kilns were easy.

  Normally, you didn't want to store anything volatile in ceramic unless you had to, for obvious reasons. The advantage of a storage ring was that you didn't have to worry about anything breaking during transport. You just had to be a little careful when you took it out, and everything would be fine.

  Josh lobbed a ceramic tank of biodiesel at Hou Zheng. The tank was about the size of a man's head, with a screw cap on the top. As it flew in the orc's direction, Josh hit it with an [Empty Chop]. The tank shattered, showering everything in front of Josh in flammable liquid.

  One of the fun things about storage rings was that time didn't pass inside them. Objects would come out exactly as they went in. Josh kept a few lit matches just for this sort of occasion.

  Hou Zheng went up with a very satisfying wave of heat.

  People started screaming, and Josh immediately threw himself to the ground. A gun went off. He hadn't realized anyone had a firearm. He ignored it for now. He still had his shroud, and he still had work to do.

  Hou Zheng wasn't screaming. He still had his shroud as well, so the fire didn't hurt him. Not yet, at least. The fire clung to him, and would eat through his shroud in moments. Josh wished he'd had enough foresight to bring some napalm, which would have done even better. Well, live and learn.

  Still, there were a few things he could do to push that along.

  He threw another [Empty Chop] at the burning figure in front of him. He wanted to aim for his wrist, maybe cut off his hand and get the storage ring, but that wasn't an option. Josh had enough experience to know better than to try for an impossible shot. He threw out another art, cutting deeper into the shroud.

  It popped like a soap bubble.

  All of a sudden, the small chamber was filled with the scent of burning hair and flesh. To Hou Zheng's credit, he didn't scream. He fell away and rolled on the ground, trying to put it out. Josh steeled his heart and focused on finishing him off.

  “STOP!”

  Josh felt the word deep in his bones. Hawkins, it appeared, had gotten over his shock. He ground his teeth, but he couldn't move. The collar on his neck burned cold, and his body wasn't his own.

  His only respite was that, apparently, all of Hawk's men thought the order was for them. No one attacked.

  Josh focused on himself, and on the collar. He had never broken a Slaver's Collar before, but he was literally twice the level of the idiot who had put it on him. He would never get a better chance than this.

  It was like trying to break through a steel collar with his neck. The harder he pushed, the harder it grew, the colder it grew. He swore he could see his breath misting out in front of his face. He couldn't hear anything beyond the roaring in his ears. Surely Hawkins was screaming more orders, but they didn't affect him, so focused as he was on the pain. Or maybe time had stopped, and he was frozen in this eternal moment of torment.

  He forced his way through it. Forced his way through the pain and the cold with raw, hot fury. A little brat of a man had tried to collar him. A greedy little shit who had manipulated his way into power, who everyone hated so much that no one even cared when he was overthrown in a coup. That small-minded creature thought he could control him.

  Just when Josh thought it would be too much, just when he thought that the collar would kill him before he broke it...

  The collar fell off. As easy as that. It hit the ground with a dull sound.

  Josh shook his head and took in his surroundings. Hawkins and his guards were staring, open-mouthed, as if they hadn't had any idea that it was even possible to break free of a Slaver's Collar. Clearly, no one had told them how the things worked. They weren't the ones Josh was worried about, though.

  Jael crouched over Hou Zheng, helping him put out the fire. Josh knew that he only had seconds before she realized he was free and decided to turn her attention to him. He was tempted to attack her. She was a specialized ambush [Attacker], he might actually be able to do real damage.

  Instead, he ran. He was surrounded by seven enemies, most of whom were about even with his level, if not far higher. This wasn't the time to take unnecessary risks. Thankfully, no one was guarding the exit.

  Oh, there was a big Thug at the door. Clearly, no one wanted Josh to run away. But they hadn't thought this through, because that was the slowest way to exit a dungeon. Instead, Josh reached over and touched the rift. The rift that was in the middle of a dungeon that had already been completely cleared of monsters.

  Josh didn't hesitate. He clicked on the exit option. There was a flash of white light, and then he was outside, standing on the hatch into the dungeon.

  He ran.

  He had been tempted to close the rift entirely, but that would have dumped all of them on the ground outside as the dungeon faded. It would have confused them, certainly, but once they realized what was happening, Josh would have been in arm's reach of seven angry mercenaries.

  Josh ran out of the cave, past the startled guards. He pointed back towards the dungeon. “Monsters!” he cried. “Monsters are escaping!”

  Just as he hoped, the guards turned their attention back to the dungeon, too confused to do anything else. Sounding authoritative, or at least clear, was an important skill in an emergency. It was better than most [Tamer] magic at getting people to do what you wanted.

  Josh didn't wait for anyone else to come out of the dungeon and explain what he had done. He just ran straight back to town, through the Jungle. Of course, that almost got him killed four times. Alone and unarmed, more than a few monsters thought he would be easy prey. He was barely able to fend them off long enough to escape.

  The Jungle was always hungry.