Why do you think travelers are so formidable? It does not really make sense when you think about it. A new traveler who has spent most of their adult life growing up in a mana-starved environment is placed next to a population that has had years to benefit from the mana-rich atmosphere. In almost every case, the traveler rises to be among the top 10% regardless of previous training, the destination world’s mana density, or the adversities they need to overcome.

  We have found there are two main advantages: one is the system quests that have only ever been seen by travelers, and the accelerated growth of stats or abilities. In some cases, there have been testimonies of quests giving hundreds of stat points only days after arriving on a new planet. It is theorized that during the process of moving from one planet to another, the traveler absorbs some kind of potential energy as they break a hole in the mana shells of the planet.

  Another popular theory is that every traveler is born with a potential pool. Advantages given increase the soul burden on a traveler, shortening their potential for growth or exploration of new planets.

  -Traveler’s guild scholar lecturing on soul burden.

  As soon as the first ray of sunlight hits me, I’m wide awake, and my dream from the night evaporates. Thoughts of a woman in a green toga roaming the wilderness, weaving webs of vines, and summoning snakes to send out like bloodhounds fade from my memory.

  Jittery and nervous about what the day will entail, I make the bed, pack up, and double-check my gear. By the time I hear a knock at my door, I’m in my leather armor, ready to go. I’m extra antsy, since I know I need to save my mana for later.

  The practice of utilizing my mana had become something of a stress reliever, like squeezing a stress ball. I force myself not to subconsciously do my new favorite pastime of practicing with the training stones. I head down the stairs to meet Olivia, Kurt, and Benjamin in the common room. I grab my spoon and begin digging into hot porridge.

  “You ok there, wilder?” The question surprisingly comes from Benjamin.

  “Yeah, just eager to get started, not sure what I’ll find down there,” I say back. I look down to see my empty bowl. Around the table, everyone else is still groggily spooning the warm breakfast.

  “Scout work is mostly about watching and waiting. If you aren’t up for it, just say so. I would much rather you sit this out than you get yourself killed…or more importantly, us killed.” Benjamin says.

  Surprise is evident on my face. Benjamin is always a bit of a pain in the way he vocalizes his paranoia. This is the first time he vocalized caring for my well-being, even if only for a moment.

  “-You are our ace in the hole here. If you die, we need to book it.” He explains when he sees the look on my face. I’m less surprised now, but it does remind me that despite my dislike for the man, he is a trained scout and probably knows much more than me.

  “Do you have any suggestions for scouting out the sewer?” I ask, curious what he might suggest.

  “I’m not quite sure the extent of your powers, but if I were you, I would send in the zombie to ferret out any traps. Hunt a few rats or whatever is in the sewers by the entrance, then use those to scout ahead. They’ll blend in better with the environment and be less likely to alert whatever’s the danger in the sewers.”

  I nod along with the conversation. The idea is a solid plan: to search the area incognito. It won’t work, but it’s something I would keep in mind for the future.

  The main issue was that I couldn’t control the undead, not enough for them to scout on their own, and I couldn’t look through their senses to scout. Even if I could get an undead to talk, which I haven’t been able to do, how would I communicate with a rat? Language aside, I’m not a rat, and the way it interprets the sewer will be fundamentally different than mine.

  Morgana herself can take over the body, giving me a reliable scout, but she’ll have a limited range. I plan to send Morgana in to scout before I set foot in the grimy sewage, but I’ll get her to go in her ghost form. To Benjamin’s credit, he doesn’t know that’s an option.

  While his plan won’t work this time, it does reinforce the importance of practicing my magic to expand my capabilities. My undead control is severely lacking, and the spell form to raise undead will only give them about half the attributes they had in life. A stronger raise spell, remote control of an undead rat, or greater range for Morgana will all greatly benefit me in the future.

  After breakfast, I head down to the sewer with Benjamin to meet up with Morgana, while Kurt and Olivia get the city guard to open the grate. Benjamin and I are supposed to check out the area to see if anything has changed overnight. I don’t expect to find anything, which is why I’m surprised when Morgana hands me a note.

  ‘Last night a man in a cloak left a piece of paper just inside the grate. I was able to grab it. I did not see anyone else, but I noticed some dire rats sniffing around.’

  I look at the letter and sigh when I realize I can’t read.

  “Hey, Benjamin, can you read this?” I ask, handing him the letter.

  “Huh?” He looks up from examining the muddy ground for tracks. “What do you have there?”

  “Someone left a letter by the grate last night.”

  His eyes scan the paper. “Good thing you commanded your zombie here to intercept. It sure does take orders well.”

  I can tell he’s digging for information, wondering what the extent of my necromantic powers are. As much as they are my teammates, I know they are keeping some secrets from me. I just ignore his cloak-and-dagger wordplay.

  “So, what does it say?”

  “I don’t know, I can’t read it.” He hands the letter back.

  “Is it coded or something?”

  Benjamin shrugs. “Maybe, but it looks like it’s in a different language. If I had to guess, I would say elven, but I am no linguist.”

  I fold the letter to slip it into a pocket. If the guard left a letter here, it must mean someone or something in the sewer can read it. I’m not sure what it could be, but it points to this being more than an overgrown number of pests.

  My first thought, which is probably due to too many hours of gaming, is that we were treading on a thief’s guild, and the hooded man is an informant. It could be the letter is left for us, but if Benjamin can’t read it, then I doubt it.

  A few minutes later, a guard comes trudging through the mud and unlocks the metal door. He steps back and finds a spot to sit. The group exchanges a look before Olivia turns to the man.

  “Thank you for your service, guardsman. I will send for you when we need your services again.” Olivia says, clearly dismissing the guard.

  “Can’t do that, mam, orders are I stay here while the gate is open. I can leave as soon as I lock the door.” I focus my empathy and feel nothing but bored indifference. There’s an undertone of contentment that he gets to spend all day sitting around, but no malignant feelings from him.

  Just because he doesn’t feel like he’s spying on us doesn’t mean he won’t report every move back to the captain, who would then report everything back to the mayor.

  I never cared for mysteries. I’m awful at escape rooms and card games where you have to guess the killer. I like them in games, but now that I’m in one and the plot is thickening, I can’t tell what the best path forward is. I have too few clues. The only thing to do for now is keep looking.

  ‘Morgana, can you start to scout ahead? Also, don’t let the guard know you are here. We want to keep everything close to the chest for now.’

  I feel a general assent from Morgana as she leaves the body to go into the tunnel as a ghost. Strangely, I feel resistance to her leaving her current body. Not the general reluctance from her, but it’s as if the body clings to her, not wanting to let go of her spirit. Maybe feeding her all that mana is making her ghostly form settle in? Another mystery for another time.

  As I steady Morgana’s body, so it doesn’t topple over as I hear a cheery voice from Benjamin. I look over to see Benjamin sitting beside the guard.

  “My fellow guardsman, most of this morning will be quite boring work. We will be setting up traps to fall back on, should anything vermin sneak past us.”

  “I understand, still, orders are clear. I gotta stay here.” He says in a weary tone.

  “Of course, of course! We would never ask you to disobey an order, but it will be quite boring. Maybe you want some refreshment or food while you wait. We may be here quite a while.”

  “I’m on duty. The captain has made it clear that bringing food or wine while on duty wouldn’t be… appropriate, but he did say to keep alert and inspect everything that went on for trouble.”

  The guardsman replies in a way that makes it clear he’s not willing to leave, but the way he says the last word emphasizes he would be willing to take any food or drink we gave to him.

  “A little food and wine make the hard work easier for all. My friend Kurt has some watered-down wine for us. We would be honored if you would drink with us.”

  Despite being open to taking our food and drink, he looks suspiciously at the waterskin Kurt hands him. Kurt and Benjamin make a show of drinking theirs. Kurt then hands over three waterskins to me. The guard raises an eyebrow.

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  Benjamin wraps an arm around the guard in a conspiratorial manner before saying, “What can I say, some are thirstier than others. Am I right?”

  The guard shrugs him off. “Aye, some are.”

  He then takes to sipping his drink. I check my waterskins to find them thankfully just water. I could use watered-down wine for my magic, but pure water will be easier. Still, I’m not sure what Benjamin is playing at, until an hour later, as the guard’s thoughts grew fuzzy. He slumps over, drifting off to sleep.

  “About time, we are wasting valuable daylight,” Olivia grumbles. Despite tiptoeing around the guard, we have gotten a lot done, more than Olivia knows. Kurt and Olivia have some caltrops and other traps around the entrance, and Morgana has finished her scouting.

  “We can’t make it too strong, or he would know we laced the drink,” Kurt explains.

  “What did you drug him with?” I ask.

  Benjamin locks eyes with me.

  “We did not drug him with a pinch of sleeping powder,” Benjamin says conspiratorially before continuing. “The guard just fell asleep. If anyone were asking, it is probably because he is overworked.”

  Getting the hint, I nod.

  After mentally conferring with Morgana, I learn there are a bunch of dire rats, snakes, and bugs waiting in the tunnels. That and a bunch of mushrooms growing from corpses, mostly rat corpses.

  ‘Wait, why would there be rat corpses with mushrooms? Rats would eat another dead rat, not even mentioning snakes and other predators.’

  Something about the bodies of the rats has to be unappealing, probably poisonous if rats won’t touch it. After pausing a moment to think, I ask her, ‘Are the mushrooms concentrated in a particular room?’

  ‘Not in a room, most of them are in some tunnels. It looks like most of the critters avoid those areas.’

  I decide to go into the tunnels to check things out myself before informing the group. Aside from the benefit of seeing with my own eyes, it will keep Morgana’s cover. Morgana returns to her body, and with the guard out, we enter the tunnel entrance.

  The inside of the sewer is humid, warm, and stinks of mildew, urine, and decay. I haven’t even gone more than two steps in, and I feel like I need a bath. It also grosses me out to walk through the water in sandals, even though I know the magic of the sandals will give me a clear advantage; knowing the gross water is touching my bare feet makes my skin crawl.

  On the sides of the walls, moss and mushrooms grow out of the stone. The tunnels are large enough for me to walk through standing up, and the slow-flowing water only came up to my ankles. The tunnel bends or splits every hundred yards, so I can never see far ahead. My dark vision perk lets me see through the tunnels without needing a torch, but it’s still harder to see than in the sunlight.

  In most of my recent battles, I honed my empathy to detect my enemies as they broadcast their intention to harm me. Animals have a slightly different mindset. While the elves will give significant thought to why and how I should be killed, the rats were much simpler.

  So, about a hundred meters in, when a rat decides to attack me, my empathy doesn’t warn me until it is too late. Cursing, I throw the dire rat on the floor and stab it with a sword. The rat mewls and claws at me, but I coldly finish by turning the blade. I pull water from my waterskin to heal the wound on my back. It bothers me I’m already drawing on it, but that’s what it’s there for.

  With the rat killed, I dismiss the kill notification and put on the mental and shadow stealth spells.

  I think about raising the rat I killed, but in my fervor for revenge, I damaged the rat corpse too badly, severing its spine. With the threat taken care of, I take the lead, wading through the water rising up to my mid-thigh.

  I reflect again on how weird it feels to wear sandals into a sewer, but the magical effect of the sandals is too good to pass up. Even dampening the sounds of the water sloshing around me as I push ahead.

  After knowing what to look for, I find that the rats are easy to spot. Most paddle along, but I have to keep an eye out to make sure they do not scale the walls to some hidden hole, like the one that ambushed me earlier.

  The bugs are similar and far more afraid of me. When I see them, I keep my distance and skewer them with ice shards. The bugs don’t wade through the water like rats. Most of my kills come from killing the oversized bugs clinging to the walls of the tunnel.

  I wade from area to area where Morgana found the mushrooms. The first area has green fluorescent mushrooms that provide a faint illumination to the dim passage. To my dark vision, it’s like a lamp, but to the rest of my party, the little light it generates will be next to useless.

  I move closer, examining the corpse the mushrooms sprout from. I’m concerned about the toxin in the mushroom, not knowing if it spreads through touch or if it’s airborne, so I prod it with tendrils of dark mana. The rats look like they were rolled on their side, cut open, and mushrooms were planted in them. I continue deeper into the sewer, wanting to see if I can find any other clues.

  As I am nearing the second congregation of mushroom corpses, I learn it is the snakes that are the true terror of the sewers. My dark vision helps me see in the dark tunnels of the sewer, but can’t penetrate the murky depths where the snake is hiding. For most of the sewer run so far, we’ve remained ignorant of each other.

  Unfortunately, my stealth spells can’t help me when I step on one. The snake bursts up and sinks its fangs into the meat of my thigh, before wrapping its muscled length around the limb. If this were my old life, I would be dead, but my new vitality and poison resistance combat the venom being injected into my flesh. My strength stats gave me the power to hold off the snake from instantly crushing me.

  Even my water affinity helps me not drown, as I was knocked off my feet. Morgana surges forward, hacking at the snake as I reel in panic. I drop my sword when the snake curls around me, trying to push off its large body before it can wrap around the rest of me.

  My dagger would be useful, but it’s taking all my might just to hold out as long as I have. I will need to let go of the snake trying to strangle the life out of me to grab the dagger. I try to pull on my ice affinity to cut the creature. The thrashing of the snake keeps me from concentrating long enough to create an ice spike, but I can still freeze patches of water.

  Hoping it will distract the snake, I freeze large patches around its scales. The thrashing of the snake pushes the ice away, but each time, it takes a layer of scales and flesh with it. This causes the snake to whip about while hissing, making it more difficult to concentrate, but it does give Morgana an opening.

  The snake is magically enhanced so its scales are tougher than an Earth snake’s scales, but with the scales peeled away, the blade in her hands sinks deep into the snake's flesh. As she repeats this, carving wounds into the predator, the snake turns to Morgana, hissing in warning. It lunges for her, but she catches it with a stoic gaze, then I see her bloody hands.

  Her fingers had morphed into pointed claws; they were coated in blood. She’d been using her hands to injure the snake, not a blade like I thought. Not wanting to waste the opening, I stow that thought for the moment. I concentrate on summoning a stream of water around the snake and freezing as much of its body as I can. The snake panics as the ice forms around its neck, but the ice is thick enough to keep it from shirking it away. Morgan uses the opening to carve one of its eyes out with her claw.

  The snake let out a loud hissing cry, thrashing, and ripping chunks of its skin as it broke the ice encased around it. With shaky hands, I pull its body off me and back away. I continue to freeze large swaths of water around its body before switching to throwing ice shards at it.

  The snake begins to retreat as I impale it in the scaleless sections. As the snake slithers under the water, muck and grime from the bottom of the waterway make the already cloudy water impossible to see through. With its mind in a panic, I have no trouble pinpointing its general location by reaching out with my mind magic. While I prepare an attack, the snake recovers its wits enough to strike out again, slamming its fangs into me.

  I cry out as lancing hot pain pierces my left shoulder. I reach out and grab the snake while funneling my fury into my magic. The mind blast I did in the past was a close-range burst of mind magic. I take inspiration from the snake that is currently sinking its fangs into me. This time, I take my time burrowing into the animal’s mind. I feel more than hear its anguish as its reality frays under the mental attack. Unlike a human who would retreat when an entity begins burrowing into its’ consciousness, it stays with its jaw locked onto my shoulder, hoping I’ll die before I finish it.

  I cut, claw, and slice into its mind with a crazed frenzy. I see flashes of sight and echoes of sound as I flay off memories from the animal’s cognition. I know I could examine the memories if I focus, but I discard them to focus on drilling deeper. I retreat from reality, lost in the focus of mind magic. Distantly, I realize my limbs are cold from all the poison and blood loss. I draw my mind back from recklessly carving into the snake’s mind and feel what little of its mind is weak and pliable.

  “Release me,” I command.

  The snake jerks at the words, committing all its formidable weight towards the single command burning in the remnants of its comprehension. Not wanting to chance its survival instincts or some other base drive kicking in to overcome my mental domination, I move back and freeze its head in a block of ice.

  A minute later, I get the notification of its death. Despite winning, I’m in rough shape and grimace as I look over to see the holes in my leather armor. I reanimate the snake and spend a few minutes healing myself. Aside from the wounds, I can also feel poison pumping in my veins, but I can also feel my blood magic passively removing the poison. It’s not comfortable, but in an hour or two, it will be cleared from my system.

  Ten minutes of exploring later, I don’t find anything significant. We stay near the entrance and away from the mushroom-ridden rat corpses. I take a brief glimpse at the mushrooms from a distance. I don’t see any clues to what would have grown the mushrooms, and I’m not looking forward to trekking deeper into a mushroom-infested dungeon. With nothing of interest near the entrance, except for the mushroomed rat, I turn to Morgana.

  She raises an eyebrow at me before I say, “I need you to scout out the sewer. There’s something in here that’s supposed to kill a noble lady capable of shooting lasers at will.”

  ‘And you think a ghost of a dead farmer girl will be able to kill it?’ She asks through our bond.

  “No, my hope is that you can give me some clues to what’s going on. Just keep looking until you find something dangerous.”

  She purses her lips before turning away. When did she get so much sass? I follow her part of the way into the sewer. I push shadow mana into the pattern for the mana vision, enhancing my dark vision.

  The tunnel lights up to reveal the creeping creatures roaming the halls, and near me are a few dire rats getting too curious for my liking.

  I summon ice shards, then skewer them in the water. After killing them, I raise them and invest some mana to level them up. I instruct the rats to guard Morgana’s unattended vessel. The undead rats aren’t smart enough to understand complex commands, but a simple guard command, borrowing from their mental conception of defending their nest, is easy enough for them to comprehend.

  “I’m going to one of the tunnels to grab one of the dead rats with mushrooms so we can examine it. Don’t touch it, just in case. Order one of the rats to pull it.”

  With Morgana scouting ahead, I stand around for a while so she can wander before backing out to update my teammates. On the way back, I’m fortunate I kept my stealth spell forms up. I thought I cleared the tunnels. On the way back, I kill five of the vermin that cross our path. I raise one more, to run in front as bait for any other bugs or rats that are lying in wait.

  Despite encountering so many rats, the trip back is far smoother. Killing anything I encounter on the way out of the dungeon, my bait rat works like a charm, drawing a dire half a dozen rats and even five of the overgrown bugs. With so many predators, I’m fortunate my control over the reanimated snake is good enough to send it in as a stealthy vanguard, protecting the rate from beneath the water.

  Rats and bugs bravely charged against the rat only to be overtaken by the raised snake and a barrage of ice darts. I have so many corpses that I raise one of the dead rodents that fell for the trap, grab a few more mushrooms from its mouth, so the group could study it. I also found one of the mushroom rats in good enough shape to raise it with the mushrooms still in it, but I’m concerned that all the swimming and scuttling damages some of the mushrooms. Not only spreading spores, but also tainting the sample. Oh well, there was no way I was touching them.

  As I exit the tunnel, I hear Olivia let out a gasp, and a few curses echo from Kurt and Benjamin before they see me. My reanimated snake is once again dead, skewered through the head by a small bundle of arrows.

  “…it was already dead,” I say as I look mournfully at my destroyed snake guard.

  Right as I say the words, I hear a wet splat. I look behind me to see Kurt scratching the back of his head nervously with a smashed mushroom rat at his feet.

  “Sorry,” Kurt mumbles. I sigh as I look down at the puddle of mashed rat and mushroom juice. I’m glad I have another rat carrying a few more mushrooms just in case.