"Guns all packed?"

"Check."

"Boots?"

Wade spun, tapping the three pairs dangling off his climbing gear belts. "Check."

"Sponges and water?" Leon asked, going down a small checklist of core items.

"Yeah, in the fanny pack. Still looks completely ridiculous you know."

"Is very practical." Leon countered, "Anyone would be proud to wear a fanny pack."

Wade was half certain Leon was trolling him about this, but also he could strangely see Leon wearing these himself for hikes or other healthy normie behavior that involved sunlight.

"Okey," He said, tapping the overstuffed backpack fondly. "Is ready here. Can you put on with all… that?"

That was a very valid question, given Wade looked more equipped for a circus stunt that involved water and a bank robbery, compared to a deep dive into a hyper-dangerous fantasy deathworld.

For starters, he had water goggles setup, the kind that looked like a giant visor and protected his nose too. His mouth had a full on bandana, covering a medical mask. Perfect for filtering out sand particles in the air. And looking incredibly suspicious.

He also had an orange life-vest that looked a little oversized, a bunch of helium filled balloons attached to his pants on the off chance they might help, and arm floaties. For the same reason.

Wade was mostly certain this was actual trolling on the Russian's part, but the arguments did make some sense.

He actually had four pairs of boots on him: One brand new hiking pair worn on his feet, two other hiking boots - one sized for a giant and the other for the exact opposite - and one pair of yellow rubber boots. All of which were attached on any belt buckle that could fit.

All that would have made him look like a highly eccentric oddity. The part that made him look like a bank robber were the guns. And ammunition.

In addition to water bottles, food rations, first aid kit, and more climbing equipment than Wade knew could exist. Turns out climbing equipment had a looooot of belt buckle loops to carry just about everything. Who knew?

Not Wade. He'd never once stepped foot into a sports store that supplied pure rock climbing gear, and the amount of stuff to buy had triggered some deep seated panic attack that had to be beaten down by sound logic and Leon physically being there to stop the man from running out the door or trying to hide his wallet.

In fact, the sports crossbow had been left in its bag, nicely placed inside his house and safe from being taken to Azdrial. He had plans for that crossbow. Big plans. Mainly to add more dangerous stuff to the arrows, and then bring it with him when he had the Skyviper Archer equipped again. Bullets would be great for stacking debuffs, but if he needed something with utility or explosives, a crossbow bolt was the answer. He'd get to that when he got to it,

Clothing on the other hand had been stuffed into the backpack and handed off to Wade so that the group could actually wear something decent the next round.

Not to mention the most deadly thing on Wade's body: A bandolier of grenades.

Wade was now officially the world's most dangerous hawaiian tourist.

Three had the short fuze he'd requested, and another three were standard. The experts had told Wade up and down how to use all of them, how to not use them, and some tips to being smart along with how to minimize damage in case one landed too close.

It turned out trying to kick it back or throw it back was generally a bad idea, the best he could do was dive straight down to the ground, feet pointing at the grenade so that shrapnel would have to go through those and up his leg before they'd do any damage to his internal organs.

They also recommended keeping his mouth slightly open to prevent his ear drums from rupturing.

There were some edge case situations in which he could kick or try to toss the grenade back, but with healing being a thing in Azdrial, the bomb experts all agreed there was no no longer any situation where just sprinting and diving for cover or flat on the ground wasn't the optimal choice.

With the trade of his language blessing (Subscription, premium launch backer's plan) and their only mana crystal, Zin had offered back the guns, a promise to look into getting anti-tank sniper or stuff built for real punching power. Which could include anything between a small set of C4 gift wrapped for christmas, to a full on tank, assuming Wade had enough mana crystals to trade for it.

Everything was on the table according to Zin.

And of course, a full on multi-hour session of training on how to use guns: Proper handling, how to aim correctly, general gun safety, better ways to give the gun pep talks, effective couples therapy tips for more stubborn guns, and the official way to tuck in and give goodnight kisses to glocks.

Which all three swore up and down were completely different from an M249, as it was a complete diva that needed to be properly pampered like the princess it was.

Of which oddly long time was spent teaching Wade the sound of a gun firing in his hand, and how to not get startled by it.

As for gun safety, they'd told him murphy's law loves to nest inside the barrel, so always assume things are loaded and would explode somehow even when mathematically impossible.

Especially when mathematically impossible.

The moment anyone thought a gun was completely safe, the universe itself had a non-zero chance of unlocking the safety and chambering a bullet.

They made it back to Wade's apartment right around 7pm at night, mostly because shooting guns when the sun was down was an easy way to get the cops to come by and check what's going on.

They'd planned to go out and look for Market next, out into the city. But after some consideration, they decided it would be better to just stay home and get prepared. Nobody was certain when the witching hours happened, and last few times Wade had gone to sleep at seven or eight in the night. Early enough. Leon had equally gone to sleep early, but for completely different reasons: He liked to wake up early and get things done in the AM.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

So all they could tell was that witching hours had to happen somewhere between 8pm all the way to the morning.

Which meant they were running real close to the clock at this point and had to get back home.

That was a good call, as it took just about an hour to dress up and prepare everything correctly.

And after that, they'd gone all in with healing Wade's limp using Eri to power the ring.

His health had gone down from ninety five to eighty five before Wade's mana bar had increased from the mid forties it had lowered down to over those few hours, all the way up to seventy three. At which point he'd ended the session.

The holy magic healing had been excellent in reducing the pain in his limp. He was almost certain one more session of healing would remove that debuff completely. So long as he didn't sprint around for too long and do jumping jacks or something, his limp was almost non-existent. Excellent.

Eri should, theoretically, heal back to 100%. But Wade hadn't been completely certain, and that had been one other reason they'd ended the healing at exactly 85% of Eri's health.

By the time 8PM was about to hit, Wade waddled over to his bed, then slowly sat down and laid.

"You sure you can move once on other side?" Leon asked from across the room. He'd laid down a sleeping bag and had slipped inside snug.

Wade felt just a tad bit envious, given the giant actually looked comfortable.

He looked more like the marshmallow man, and it was damn uncomfortable to sleep in.

"Uh, depends on if I can swim or float up in the mithril sea. If I sink instead, I'm going to need to dodge the landing, and then strip all of this off as fast as I can."

There would be things down there looking for a Wade-shaped meal. And if he could get all his unneeded gear off and put on just what he did need, then he'd turn into a Wade-shaped meal-on-the-go. Better chances of making it.

"On the other hand, if all these balloons and floatation tech works, I should start bobbing on the surface of the sea like a giant orange colored buey. You guys will hook and fish me out of the sea, and it won't be a problem."

That's what they expected to happen. Assuming fluid dynamics, Wade had made himself as floatable as possible.

"Maybe better if I hold ankle? Can carry more gear on me then, if transportation blessing works as it does."

"Sure, that'd offset the sword, clothing, and some of the gun munitions off me. But then we'd need to deck you out with flotation gear too." That had been the earlier argument. "But really you know why you can't risk jumping with me. You can't dodge fall damage like I can. If this flotation plan does sink, pun intended, then I'm the only one that can survive the fall."

Wade had done some planning for this possibility, including tying rope between his right hand and a plastic wrapped glock. That way as he fell through the mithril sea, he'd be able to get a weapon in hand immediately, and the wrapping would let it remain gunk-free, once he ripped it off. The rope was in case he let go by accident at anytime during the freefall. Which was very likely to happen if murphy's law knocked on the window.

The other two glocks were in his backpack, deep under a bunch of other stuff. By the time he needed to get those two out, he figured he'd be in a situation where it wouldn't be dangerous anymore. But he still wrapped both in plastic wrapping anyhow, just to be safe.

Leon gave a tut. "Da, is bad situation. Also run risk that boat may have left. Then we all falling through."

"Maybe the System isn't that sadistic." Wade shrugged. "It did transport Eri here with his greatsword. It could have not done that at all. And you get boxers every time you jump on the other side. Maybe if the boat moved around a bit, the System's smart enough to move your start location there too?"

"Okey, I will light the expensive black candles next time."

"You think you can bribe God?"

Leon laughed, "Of course. Is very old human tradition, almost all religions attempt bribing divinity. Only have very nice sounding names for it."

"… Guess you have a point." Wade cleared his throat, and looked up at the ceiling above him. "Oh great System in the sky, or wherever you are, could you please send Leon and Illy on top of the boat they left? Safely, I mean."

They laid there in silence.

"Well, I feeling much more certain about this." Leon happily said.

"Wait, really? Why?"

"If we fall through sea, then we know your prayers are terrible and not to ask you again."

"Oh fuck off." Wade said, grabbing a plastic cup off his nightstand and chucking it at the chortling Russian. And he would have thrown a second one at a certain skeleton on the other side of the room, equally clicking his teeth together.

Eri shifted in his pilfered kitchen seat. He'd wanted to take a spot right by the window where he could continue watching the world till the last second. That skeleton was all too happy just waiting around.

He looked like he was waiting for his turn to go snowboarding, except instead of a snowboard, he had that giant greatsword. That had been Wade's idea when they were checking out the different sports shop earlier. Snow gear was highly insulating, and built to keep snow out. It'd be perfect for insulating the skeleton from all that mithril.

And Eri didn't have to worry about overheating.

Plus the skeleton liked bright colors and got to add another hat to his collection. Win win.

"If he gets summoned without any of his clothing, I'm going to be a little annoyed." Wade said. It had cost a lot, and this time it was on his dime since Eri was technically under his employment.

"You still keep clothing here, da?" Leon said, "Think of positives. No fear of losing them on other side." Wade complained a little more until Leon had an idea: "Why not testing Market's blessing?"

"What do you mean?"

"You say it transports people too, da? How exactly?"

"Uh, probably everything in touching range? Or actually touching?"

Leon nodded, "Maybe get Eri to hold your ankle until time? Make complete sure he bring his mithril-sea protection gear with him."

"… not a bad idea actually." He looked over to the skeleton. Eri rolled his skull, clearly sad about having to leave the window.

"Eh, come on. We had a really long day of running around getting ready for this. A few more hours just holding my ankle isn't going to kill you." He shot the skeleton a few finger guns at the pun.

Wade could hear the jaw clicking, and then skeleton returned a few finger guns back. Then grabbed his greatsword and headed over to grab Wade's ankle, and sit down on the mattress.

It was quiet for a moment now, in the dim darkness of the room as the three waited for anything to happen. Wade thought he'd need to go to sleep to make it work, which made it a pain since ten minutes had crawled by and he didn't feel even the slightest bit tired. He could tell Leon also wasn't asleep, just arms crossed to cradle his head while he stared up at the ceiling.

"You think we could have gotten more from the mana crystal?" Wade finally asked, breaking the silence.

"Eh. Cannot train magic with those. Too dangerous on this side. Maybe in Azdrial, after I collect five coins, da? But here? Not at all, I get killed. So, only use is to trade for things. We getting good enough deal. Good training, gear, weapons, promise for more later."

"Think we can do trading with the demons for more of them?"

"Easier than steamed turnip." Leon said in Russian which Wade completely understood, before the Russian swapped back to english. "Problem is quality my friend. Fishing demons didn't have much, only enough to power things around ship. I thinking Mister Butler will start asking for more expensive things."

Wade remembered the mana crystal he'd shown him. How proud the archdemon had been about it. "Yeah, without a doubt. Think maybe we'd be able to mine some from the source, or craft them? However they're made."

Leon hummed. "Why not? Certain it will make very good trading item for your friend there."

New Personal Quest: The Search for more Money - Mine a mana crystal in the Arcane Realm, then sell it on Earth. Rewards: 7 coins.

"Wade." Leon said slowly. "You getting quest just now?"

"Yeah. You?"

"Da. And seven coins too."

"Get a feeling that's going to make it real da-" He wasn't even mid eyeblink when it did happen. One moment he was shuffling around in his bed trying to get comfortable while chatting with Leon, and the next instant there was nothing but shimmering sand blasting against his goggles. "-ngerou-oh WHATTHEFUCK?!"

Limbo - First Circle of Hell Extreme Difficulty

Round three, start.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.