Lily levitated the large rock that had squashed the frog back over to her, pausing as she stared at the underside.

  “Ewww it has monster guts on it! Can you rinse it off?”

  Anika blinked at her companion, torn between amazement, judgement, and mirth. Lily had clearly focused on building a collection of rocks while Anika focused on her magical practice. It just might be an obsession. Anika thought they could probably get better weapons for the capybara if they talked to Vok, though Anika wasn’t quite sure she should trust the capybara with sharp objects yet.

  Anika hadn’t yet dismissed the ball of water she had conjured with her magic, and it hung in the air next to her. This made Anika inordinately pleased with herself, as her focus had shifted away from her magic, yet she hadn’t released the power! She had worked on shifting focus away from her magic during her practice with mixed results, but the endeavour had ultimately paid off. She wished she could conjure water with a little more speed, however.

  “Yeah, let me just throw this water at it and it should be clean.” Anika focused her attention on her water ball and slowly maneuvered it the rock Lily held aloft, cleaning it with some back and forth swishing motions, then releasing the excess water to fall to the ground.

  “Okay, put those away and we need to catch up to Leka and Sinaya before we run into any other dangerous critters.”

  The pair hurried through the trees towards the minimap arrow pointing towards their party member, the Capy pack in front of them in an arrow formation once more. This time, they managed to avoid any other encounters, though they continued to see fallen hummingbirds and a few other squished frogs along the way.

  They heard the sound of metal impacting feathered bodies before they saw the pair of women, pushing through some vines to reveal Sinaya swinging her meteor hammer towards a pair of birds, the weighted end of the hammer moving so quickly that Anika barely made out more than the reddish streak of the attached fabric flag as it whistled through the air. The birds exploded in poofs of feathers as Leka turned to face them.

  “About time! What took you so long? If Sinaya hadn’t been able to see your health I would have thought you in danger!” Leka sounded droll, but a tightness in the corners of her eyes revealed tension, and Anika felt bad for making the trainer worry.

  “Well, some of the Capy pack got injured when they fell to the ground, and so I thought it would let me practice healing… it took a little longer than I thought.” Anika tried to sound confident in her decision, but a slight tremor entered her voice, afraid that she would receive a lecture from the trainer for making a poor decision that put them at risk.

  “And I squished a frog with my rock!” Lily said proudly, pulling said rock out of the spatial pocket in her scarf and presenting it to Leka like a cat who caught a bird and brought it home to its humans for praise.

  Anika rubbed at her still aching shoulder, glad that Lily had forgotten to mention Anika’s poorly executed dodge maneuver. She had a feeling that Leka would have some very convenient and very painful exercise for her to complete if she learned of the inept tumble. Not that Anika would blame Leka for making her practice. The more she thought about it, the more focusing on dodge agility sounded like a good idea. Maybe she could focus on that next week.

  “At least you seem to have moved carefully through the unknown terrain and encountered the Spear-headed Frog without harm. They are notoriously difficult to see.” Leka relaxed slightly, clearly satisfied that they had encountered a new monster on their own and handled it adequately.

  “The mini-map made it easy to spot. I saw the red dot moving towards us and we were above to avoid its leap attack. Lily reacted quickly and controlled it with her Aether magic, and then,” Anika gestured towards Lily’s rock, still on display in front of Leka, “smashed it.”

  “I really like the mini-map! You say this is common on your world?” Sinaya asked Anika with more excitement than she normally demonstrated.

  “Well… I wouldn’t necessarily say common. But it’s something we see in games. Though I guess our military also has similar displays in their planes and boats and such.” Anika figured they probably got the idea of mini-maps from radar or sonar detection in the first place, so maybe common was accurate.

  “What’s a plane?” Lily asked, finally returning her rock to her storage now that everyone’s attention had moved elsewhere.

  “Uh, it’s like a big machine that flies like a bird, but people can ride in them.”

  “Oooo if I had a plane I could always get my own food because I could always be high up like you and I wouldn’t have to use my magic for it! I want a plane! Can you make one?” Lily excitedly rambled at Anika until she held up her hand to stop the flood of words.

  “Planes are a lot bigger than just one person, and I definitely don’t know how to make them. They take a lot of school and skill to learn how to make. I wouldn’t know where to begin!”

  “Oh,” Lily collapsed onto the ground sadly, no longer interested in the new vocabulary. Anika reached down to pat her on the head.

  “I agree, Sinaya” Leka reclaimed the conversion, “This new mini-map adds greatly to our tactical readiness in the dungeons. The ability to identify monsters approaching from directions we are unable to see is invaluable. This will increase safety as well as provide new opportunities to our teams. I do not know how this came into being, but it is a welcome addition to the status reporting in dungeons.”

  “Yes, I have already been using it to help aim my strikes and increase efficiency with my weapon!” Sinaya gushed excitedly. “I can’t wait to get into larger battles!”

  “Sinaya, you know better than to seek unsafe situations. We want to avoid large battles whenever possible. The more monsters, the more risk.” Leka gently scolded the young acolyte, who looked appropriately chastised in response.

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  “Now let us move quickly, the next territory is a short distance away.” Leka turned and began walking further into the jungle.

  A few minutes and several hummingbirds later, the group found a group of four large, black bears lounging in the low hanging branches of a tree. The bears had light brown snouts and wickedly long claws curving out of each paw. One bear slept on its side, its long tongue lolling out of its mouth, and Anika could see the hint of light brown on its chest that gave the bears their name.

  Of all creatures from Earth, Sun bears sat near the bottom of the list of creatures she would expect to see on another world. She only knew about them from earth because of video games, and had originally doubted they actually existed when she had first learned about them. Smaller than the other bears on Earth, the ones on Etalan looked larger than Anika expected, closer to a black bear in size. She supposed if this planet had the Degeta, who were basically short humans, they could have plus sized Sun bears.

  “These are one of the monsters that might be good for Lily’s new ability! They have an ability to turn their skin to stone, and we could use a tank when we aren’t leveling with Philip.”

  “They are monsters that can endure a great amount of damage, you are correct. However, they can also deal significant damage with their claws. Facing four at once may be a larger challenge than you are ready for. Sinaya’s magic and weapon will not be as effective against them.” Leka looked at the party with concern, but Anika had prepared for this.

  “I read that Aether and Water magic both are effective attacks. Lily can also use her polymorph on them if…” Anika paused and looked at the squishy Capy pack around them, “er… when they current capybaras, um… fall.”

  Anika wasn’t exactly sure how intelligent the transformed monsters were with Lily’s new level up, though they hadn’t demonstrated any significant intelligence over what they had seen with the transformed zanide the other day. That said, she felt she shouldn’t just callously talk out loud about sending them to their deaths as fodder.

  “We can also use some of our crowd control spells on them, and perhaps defeat one of them before they have time to cast their spell. I read they only do that when they feel threatened, and I don’t think the approach of the Capy pack will trigger that.”

  Leka nodded as Anika explained, “You may proceed, then, to demonstrate your understanding of the monsters.”

  Anika turned to Lily and Sinaya, explaining the plan and having Lily convey the instructions to the Capy pack. Anika conjured a ball of Water for herself, prepared to hurl it at the bear on the right as the rest of the group readied their own weapons and spells.

  “Okay, go!” Anika called and the Capy pack approached the sleeping bears. When the first of the Sun bears saw the pack, it growled at its fellow monsters and clambered down out of the tree, eyes fixed on the six plump rodents arriving like food delivery.

  Anika launched her ball of water at the lead bear, the waking of the trio the signal to attack, at the same time Sinaya lashed out with a Fire attack. Lily cast her Telekinetic Squeeze ability that had no outward effect, other than the roar of pain that escaped the bear’s mouth.

  Anika quickly cast her Water Spray, her attacks hitting the bear as Sinaya lashed out with a fire-imbued and glowing red-hot meteor hammer. The hammer made contact with the bear’s head right after Anika’s water attack hit it, and the bear collapsed.

  The remaining three bears didn’t waste time and, as they arrived on the ground next to their napping tree, their bodies shifted and fur flattened and merged into a surface like rough, pitted granite. They launched themselves at the front line of capybaras, long claws easily ripping into and shredding the bodies of two of the transformed minions, which immediately turned to a the ooze that marked the end of their summoning and dissipated into the ground

  “Focus the one on the right, transform the left ones!” Anika called as she cast her Flash ability, targeting a point behind the bears, as she didn’t quite trust herself to not blind the members of her own party. She knew that eventually she needed to have fine control over her magic, but she had a long way to go to selectively target her spells to not affect allies.

  “Flash out!” She called as the trio of monsters began wildly swinging their claws, the blinding Flash disrupting their sight. The remaining capybaras managed to mostly avoid the deadly claws, though one received a non-lethal slash to its backside. Sinaya launched another fire attack on the bear to the right, and Anika noted the fire fizzled against the hard stone of the bear’s transformed skin. To test her own water attack, she conjured another ball of water above her.

  On the left, two of the remaining bears shrank and morphed into capybaras, Lily replacing the two they lost with the larger monsters. That left only one bear remaining for them to finish off. They could have defeated the monster easily by sacrificing another capybara, but Lily’s spell did have a cooldown, so they couldn’t just constantly replace monsters with capybaras until they achieved victory. Besides, one of the reasons for fighting the bears was to assess them as a possibility for Lily’s new clone ability.

  Anika finished conjuring her ball of water, and swiftly moved it towards the bear, slamming it down onto the rocky backside before her Flash spell wore off. The water attack caused some visible damage to the creature’s stoney hide, eroding away a layer of rock. The spell certainly had more impact than the fire spell, but Anika guessed it would take a few more cannonballs of water to break the creature’s defense.

  The monster shook its head as its vision returned, eyes focused on the closest member of the Capy pack. As it moved towards the capybara, a fog of conjured grey smoke filled the area around the bear, the result of Sinaya casting her Smokescreen spell. Anika could see through the smoke, but the bear roared its indignation at its vision, once again, becoming obscured.

  Anika decided to experiment. She knew her arrows wouldn’t do much damage to the rocky monster, but if she wanted to assess its defensive capabilities, she figured she should at least see how it resisted the arrow. She pulled an arrow out of her quiver and pulled up her bow to attack. At this short range, the arrow would have significant power behind it.

  The monster shuddered, its roar turning into a moan, and Anika assumed that meant Lily had cast her Telekinetic Squeeze again. The bear shook its head back and forth, causing Anika difficulty aiming at the head. Ultimately, she decided to fire anyway, figuring if she missed the head she would at least hit the shoulders or body of the beast.

  The bear managed to dodge into the arrow with its pained and jerky head movements, and it hit below the creature’s eye. It didn’t stick into the creature like it would pierce a creature of regular flesh, and Anika noticed only a minor chip in the rock. That boded well for the bear’s use as a tank against monsters, many of which had natural weapons like claws and teeth that the stone skin would resist easily.

  Relaxing her bow, Anika conjured another ball of water, wondering how many cannonballs of water it would take to break the creature’s skin. Watercannons? Aquaballs? She really should think of a better name for her basic water conjuration attack. She supposed she could just call it Hydro Cannon. It seemed like cheating to use a Pokemon move. Besides, that was like a big stream of water, and she made a distinct ball. Something cool like Aqua Sphere. Maybe Hydrorb!

  Anika shook her head to refocus. Now was not the time to get distracted by coming up with super power attack names. She slammed the ball of water down onto the same spot on the bear’s back, eroding more of the rock away. At the same time, Sinaya lashed out with her meteor hammer, aiming for the same spot Anika targeted with her attacks. After Anika’s attack had eroded away some of the defenses, the heavy-hitting metallic weapon caused a crack to form in the creature’s skin.

  Anika quickly conjured another ball of water to capitalize on the creature’s weakness just as the bear swung its claw successfully at one of the Capy pack. Anika slammed the ball of water into the Sun bear’s back as the transformed capybara dissipated into goo. Sinaya’s meteor hammer slammed down on the creature again with a deafening crack, and it collapsed onto the ground.

  Anika groaned, realizing the bear had fallen just after the capybara, meaning they lost 5% of their experience buff. Sigh. So much for min-maxing.