“Do you think we should have kept a better eye on Melia?” Jessica asked.

  It was early afternoon and the boat they’d agreed to protect was pulling away from Lakeridge. Only three members of [Sunrise] were venturing out, with Y’cennia heading back to the inn to continue her path to leveling, and Melia…doing something.

  She said she was only going to “cook some food”, and, silly Jessica, nobody thought anything about it. It wasn’t until they were out on the water that they remembered the bacon.

  “It’s just cooking,” Ellesea reasoned. “It’s not dangerous.”

  Ellesea paused as her party gave her pitying looks, likely thinking of her disastrous attempts to make food. She amended her statement.

  “It’s not dangerous if you have levels in [Cooking], which I’m sure she has. She won’t burn down the town.”

  “It’s not her own safety that I’m worried about,” Jessica grumbled. “Maybe we should have dragged her along with us.”

  “And what would she do on a boat?” Alastair asked, placing his hand on Jessica's shoulder. “There’s only so much space to run around and explore. She’d be bored. If everything goes smoothly, she wouldn’t even be necessary.”

  “Maybe not necessary,” Jessica sighed, “But she’d be more useful than me.”

  Jessica was feeling slightly self-conscious. Recently, she had been feeling like all her attacks were weak and underwhelming, and now that she was the lowest-level member of the group, her pride stung. Most of her regular shots with her bow saw the arrows bouncing off their targets’ hides, or worse, shattering on impact. That last one was, of course, understandable, since she tried shooting a creature powerful enough to be the hand of the gods, but that was besides the point.

  Now that the team was on another mission, they’d left Meliastraza’s party. They wanted their experience to actually matter. Without the looming shadow of a level 3700 [Destroyer of Worlds] hanging above their heads, the reminder of her terrifying existence was quickly fading. She wasn’t the imposing mountain casting them into shadow, ready to devour them all. She was simply back to being a gnome who was probably going to get herself into trouble, simply because that’s what gnomes do.

  It did not help Jessica’s ego at all that, when they got settled in the boat and some of the fishermen had taken to sorting their supplies, she had seen some of their more specialized equipment.

  In this case, a rack full of harpoons.

  On a whim, she pulled out her [Whalebane], thinking it might be interesting to compare her new weapon with something actually designed and used routinely for a specific purpose.

  It was a mistake.

  As a rare weapon created by a dungeon, it garnered attention rapidly. The first fisherman to see it gasped in surprise, drawing the interest of those around him, until Jessica had a small crowd of admirers circling her.

  Jessica herself was not incredibly tall, being average at best. The huge, burly fishermen standing so close made her feel slightly insecure, despite the fact that she had over a dozen levels up on the highest level one.

  “Hoh,” said one, peering closely at the harpoon. “That’s something else, that is.”

  “Ain’t that a rarity?” another chuckled, though Jessica was unsure if he was making a joke about the “superior” item quality being called rare. “Don’t often see harpoons of such fine make.”

  “Where’d you get it?” asked a third. “S’got no maker’s mark, which ain’t so uncommon with our normal sticks, I admit.”

  At this point, Jessica was caught completely flat-footed. She glanced through the gap of bodies and saw Alastair chuckling softly to himself. No help was coming. She narrowed her eyes and silently promised retribution.

  “In a dungeon,” she answered honestly, unable to think of a way to get out of this. She winced, thinking that might upset the man. It did not.

  “A damn shame,” he simply said, shaking his head. “But leave it to right, proper adventurers to find a real weapon inside a dungeon.”

  “A man’s weapon,” said another proudly, despite the fact that neither was Jessica a man, nor was it actually her main weapon. She didn’t even consider it a weapon at all, being more of a tool in her eyes, good for boosting her stats or, as a last-ditch effort, chucking it at a fish.

  But she couldn’t tell them that, not with the confusing, awkward situation she suddenly found herself in.

  “Do much fishing, do you?” asked the first. Jessica had to blink; all these middle-aged men looked alarmingly similar and she was having a hard time telling them apart.

  “No-,” she answered, still caught off guard.

  “S’allright,” laughed the third man again. “We’ll make a right [Fisherman] out of you!”

  …and so Jessica found herself, completely out of her depth, holding a harpoon instead of her trusty bow. How she managed to let herself get bullied into this, she didn’t know. But now that she was, she felt she really couldn’t just put the harpoon away and pretend she didn’t have it.

  Not only was she reducing her effectiveness as an adventurer and guard, but she was going to make a fool of herself in front of professional [Fishermen]!

  The worst part was that she didn’t even care for fish! It was okay, fine really, but every time she’d had fish, outside of deep-fried and served with chips, it was mostly river fish. Bland, tasteless, and easily overpowered by other ingredients used to mask the muddy taste.

  Her biggest fear, and she didn’t see a world in which this didn’t happen, was missing her shot.

  Having good aim with a bow and arrow was one thing: hurling a heavy shaft of metal at a target was another.

  She’d held spears before, and she’d used a javelin once or twice, but always for a laugh at the adventurer’s guild training grounds, where her skill never mattered.

  Jessica was going to chuck that harpoon at something, miss entirely, or, at best, get it stuck in some thick hide. Then her shiny new weapon would be lost forever.

  Surely this would be a record for the shortest time owning a blue weapon.

  ?

  Fortunately for Jessica’s pride, this outing was only set to last about 6 hours, or until the hold was full, which the sailors gave good odds of happening first. The normal pools and schools were overflowing due to the storm, and this specific boat wasn’t the only one scrambling to get out into the water.

  Several hours in and the crew had pulled in enough to fill half their hold. The group was interested to see the various ways to fish on a single boat. The main focus was net fishing; throwing giant nets over the side to pull up huge catches of fish. One or two [Fishermen] were also using poles; it was unclear whether they were slacking off and dodging their real work or if their skills made it worth the crew’s time to essentially lose manpower. Judging from how the select fish those men were able to land were much larger and higher quality, Jessica guessed it was the latter.

  Three hours into the voyage was when things started getting interesting.

  The boat had made it out into the deeper waters, where the schools of larger, more valuable fish spawned. It was also where the larger, scarier things lurked. The crew was in the process of pulling up one of their nets as a dark shadow began rising with it.

  “Ahoy, lads!” called a lookout. “[Thresher]!”

  Jessica barely had a chance to wonder what the man was talking about, finally noticing the shadow resolve into something quite obviously larger than a school of fish. The monster that popped out was…not at all what she expected.

  It was large, she couldn’t deny that. All things told, if the [Thresher] pulled itself fully out of the water, it would probably be the size of a small, four-person carriage. Large? Yes. But was it the massive, fang-filled terror of the sea she was expecting? Not even close.

  Especially when she considered its face. It looked…derpy. The whole thing was large and round, distinctly friend-shaped, without a single hard angle. The body was like a tiny island floating in the water, with a long, slender neck tilting like one of those tropical trees, ending in an ear-less head dominated by two, somewhat crossed eyes.

  Then it opened its mouth, focused on one of the men near the railing on the boat…and let out a massive jet of water. It hit the man square in the chest, lifting him off his feet, and carrying him several yards across the boat, over the other side, and dropping him in the drink.

  “Shit!” somebody yelled. “Hank! Get Hank!”

  To their credit, the rest of the [Fishermen] immediately abandoned the net they were struggling with and rushed to the side with ropes and floating rings. Jessica turned to face the monster. Time to get to work.

  ?

  [Young Lake Thresher]

  Level: 278

  ?

  Al already positioned himself in front of Ellesea, shield raised to deflect any attacks sent her way as she readied her spells. Jessica watched as several burly men picked up harpoons of their own, barely taking a moment to aim, and hurled them straight at the monster.

  Her fears were instantly proven true. Of the five harpoons hurled, one missed, one glanced off the slick hide and sank beneath the water, and only three struck true.

  The men didn’t seem to care at all, not even batting an eye after the weapons were out of their hands, returning to the racks to pick up more. Suddenly, it made so much more sense that they had so many harpoons on board…and a little worrying, too.

  Jessica hesitated, and in that moment of indecision, Ellesea’s spell went off, the monster screamed, and it sank back below the water, vanishing nearly instantly. She stood there, somewhat shocked, expecting it to return with a vengeance.

  It did not, and only a heartbeat after the screech faded, the men were already back to their nets, pulling up more fish.

  Jessica sat down, dazed. The whole thing seemed so surreal. And yet, to the [Fishermen], this was business as usual. Some went on to thank [Sunrise], congratulating them for their quick thinking and reflexes, while others praised their own thinking in hiring adventurers. Next time, she would do better.

  “Next time” happened much sooner than the crew would have liked. They finished dragging up their nets and decided they had enough “small fry” to head back if they wanted to…which, of course, they did not. Their cargo was not entirely full, and they still had the service of a group of adventurers while they were out on the lake. They decided to push their luck and go for a deep haul.

  ?

  ?

  Melia walked Y’cennia back to the inn. The catgirl was content to return to work following her leveling plan, especially while the buff was still active. Melia didn’t want to distract her, so she decided to step out for a little while.

  It was definitely time to eat. She had a few decent snacks here and there in the last few days, but now she was hungry, and she wanted to try her hand at cooking. Making bacon and breakfast for the crew really drove home how much better skillfully cooked food tasted (even if she did say so herself), and eating an entire wolf whole simply wasn’t going to cut it anymore.

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  There was something undeniably essential to the raw meat that Melia begrudgingly recognized, but it wasn’t anywhere near as tasty or fulfilling.

  Melia’s first thought was to borrow the kitchen at the inn, but once she saw the busy dining room and the bustling staff, she didn’t bother asking. Lacking a proper kitchen, Melia fell back to one of her old standbys for crafting in the game.

  Find a random alley out of the way and get to work.

  First, Melia did a little bit of cleaning to prepare her setup. Lakeridge wasn’t a dirty town by the standards of her old world’s mega-cities, but an alley was an alley. She moved any debris to the side to give herself a larger base to work with. Since this alley was a dead end with no entrances to any of the buildings, Melia decided to put down an extra layer of stone to act as tiling. She didn’t spend too long and it wasn’t super pretty, but the polished stone she used was definitely an improvement over the old city street.

  Next, she set up a makeshift workspace. Melia had access to several cooking stations, none of which compared to a restaurant’s professional lineup, but varied enough for her purposes. She set up a crude stove, oven, and a makeshift grill. While still nowhere near the same as using a fully professional setup, this was already leagues above cooking over a campfire. Melia still had all her pots, pans, and utensils, and this time she wasn’t going to be shy about using her ingredients.

  Today’s menu was a seafood smorgasbord.

  Flipping through her [Cookbook], Melia had everything she needed for four dishes, which should tide her over for a while. [Pan Seared Trout], [Spicy Seafood Jambalaya], [Simple Crab Boil], and [Catfish Gumbo].

  With the exception of the [Trout], all of these recipes were more complex than anything she had cooked so far. But she had faith in her skills, which hadn’t failed her so far, so she started with the base.

  Rice.

  Despite being a seafood medley, these dishes needed an overwhelming amount of rice.

  Melia had several different types of rice, including the white rice famous in Eastern-style cooking. And while a good slice of ahi on a bed of sticky rice did sound divine, Melia didn’t have any tuna and she wasn’t making salmon sushi.

  No, to fit her impromptu Cajun cookout, Melia needed something closer to Spanish rice or dirty rice. [A’jote Rice], from the beastkin lands to the south. The desert was vast, and parts of the culture-mashup were formed from Spain, Mexico, India, and other parts of Latin America and the Middle East.

  Melia didn’t have a rice cooker, but she had a big pot, and her instincts told her that was fine. She added the seasonings and set the rice to simmer while she got to work on making sausage. She still had plenty of various boar meat. While she found the idea of making sausages by hand (skin included) both fascinating and repulsive, it was a simple recipe that was easy to prepare. She used generous chunks of apples to balance out the spicy flavors, which she didn’t know if she could really handle.

  She was a dragon, of course, so she could handle any level of spice the world could throw at her, but she always had a memory of crying tears of pure misery after trying her first jalape?o when she was really little, and that memory would never leave her.

  Some of the various aspects of the dishes needed different times to prepare, but fortunately, [Cooking] had skills to help cheat in real life. She set the sausages to [Cure] while she got to work on the crabs.

  Melia felt a little bad about tossing the crabs into a giant pot to boil, but then she remembered one that tried to pinch her nose and her sympathy waned. Into the pot they went.

  Next came possibly the most important part: creating the seasoning.

  Melia didn’t have access to any genuine Creole seasoning, or Louisiana for that matter, but she made do with what she had. Onions, garlic, celery, and bell peppers. Thyme, bay leaves, and a little parsley. Plenty of black pepper and a liberal pinch of cayenne.

  ?

  Melia took a deep breath and luxuriated in the way the spices came together to tingle her nostrils. The way it both kicked her right underneath the brain and made them simultaneously clear instantly and start to run made her giddy. And to top it off, they stimulated her taste buds even before the first bite of food went down, making her mouth water. She knew it would be extra delicious. If only she could pace herself when it was finally done so she could really savor it, but that was future Melia’s problem.

  The rice was done, the crabs were boiled, the sausage was thick, plump, and juicy…but most importantly, it was ready. She banged out her frying pan and started heating everything up.

  The pan made a satisfying hiss as the ingredients sizzled, so Melia put that to the side for the moment, making sure to keep an eye out so it wouldn’t burn. Time to tackle the most important part.

  She couldn’t have a seafood gumbo without the seafood.

  …despite all of her fish and crabs coming from freshwater.

  The trout was simple, but that did not detract from its beauty or taste. She plopped a hearty dollop of butter into the pan and got to work. Soon enough, the meat was firm but flaky, while the layer of skin was crispy, crunchy, and just a hint burnt.

  Melia turned her attention to the catfish. She fried it lightly in the pan before adding it to the gumbo mix, stirring it in slowly, gently, to avoid breaking up the chunks.

  She ladled up a small spoonful and took a taste.

  Melia sucked in a deep breath, closed her eyes, and sighed.

  Yes, this was going to be just fine.

  …which, of course, meant something instantly caught her attention.

  Her head swiveled around, facing north, though in front of her, all she could see was a brick wall. Her hoard senses were going off, but not drastically enough to make her lash out instinctively.

  That meant something happened, but nothing too severe, right?

  Her treasure, no, Jessica was in trouble. No, not in trouble. She had a fleeting spike of panic, followed by frustration that was slowly melting into self-pity. Those emotions weren’t as strong as the initial spike, so Melia lost her connection to them.

  That meant her friends were fine, but Melia didn’t want to leave things to chance, so she decided she was going to take a look.

  She paused, glanced at her cooking station, and decided she didn’t want anything messing with her food. She spoke several runes into existence to ward away little critters and discourage thieves, and generally keep her stuff exactly as it was, so it would be waiting for her when she returned. And, maybe, her team would be ready to enjoy it with her!

  ?

  ?

  Golden light filled Jessica’s vision as she lowered her bow. Level 300. She finally did it. While she was still the lowest-level member of her party, for some reason, that didn’t seem to matter as much. She was officially a rank 3 adventurer. No longer could she be called a beginner, an apprentice, or a noob. This was her career, and she was at a place where nobody could deny she had been successful.

  At least, if that measurement of success was in levels alone, which, for many people, it was. Conventional wisdom would have told her she should be in her thirties when she hit rank 3, because, like it or not, she was not a prodigy [Hunter]. She was on track with that goal, and she would have been satisfied capping her career in her fifties as a rank 5 person. Nobody would ever call a record like that a failure.

  And yet, right now, more than anything, she felt her old goals were…lacking. And that frustrated her slightly, because she knew she was being unreasonable. She knew she was being greedy. And she didn’t want that, because greed kills. Jessica wanted to live.

  She listened to the customary congratulations one gave out when somebody else gained a level. Levels were sort of like birthdays, in that they were really exciting when she was young and they happened often, but the novelty eventually wore off as they really didn’t actually do much by themselves. Surely she’d be more excited about them at certain milestones, and 300 was definitely a reason to celebrate when they got back.

  Something that wasn’t looking quite as easy as it was when they first set out.

  After the first [Thresher] ran away, that monster type started showing up more frequently. Most were still of the [Young] variety and did little more than harass the boat and try to steal its fish, but the levels were increasing.

  The most recent encounter was a level 345 adult [Thresher], and it was an elite. The crew fought it to a standstill until it eventually gave up and fled, but unlike the [Young] ones, they couldn’t kill it. They’d done their best to try, enough that the experience pushed Jessica over the edge, but she felt frustrated and useless.

  Her bow simply wasn’t cutting it.

  It was a standard [Recurve Bow] that she bought around a year ago, purchased from the same [Fletcher] she bought all her bows from. They weren’t anything special, always white quality with 3 stars, but they did the trick.

  At least they used to.

  Before Jessica held a true rare item in her hands, designed for her class with stats that complemented her build, she never knew what using an empowered weapon felt like. And thus, how much of an impact those stats could have.

  Yes, she understood the fact that gear could make her much more powerful, as when she saw the suits of armor in Melia’s vault, but….

  …she didn’t realize holding that harpoon in her hands would make her feel like a god.

  Now her trusty bow, which had served her so faithfully in the past, felt like a flimsy children’s toy. With a cheap string, connected to a branch that fell off a tree, flicking small twigs at her enemies.

  The day was getting late, with the sun finally starting to set, and the [Fishermen] were satisfied with their haul. Making their way out to the deeper reaches of the lake was quite the profitable move, hauling in bigger, fatter, and hopefully more valuable fish. Some were even 4 stars.

  The nets in the last catch broke as the men hauled it over the railings, sending a cascade of fish spilling everywhere. Some of it flopped around helplessly on the deck while most of the fish made it back into the water, but one huge lunker remained. It flailed madly in a bid to escape, but one of the burly men threw himself down on top of the thing and wrestled it still. Somebody else quickly came up with a hammer and…that was it for that poor fish. The man who’d pinned the fish stood up triumphantly, holding his prize like a trophy.

  Only for the elite [Thresher] to return, surfacing suddenly right next to the boat, reaching forward with its long neck, and stealing the fish, chomping down hard and swallowing it whole.

  Fortunately, the man holding the fish wasn’t swallowed with it, but it was a narrow thing. He lost his balance and nearly toppled overboard, saved by the quick reactions of his crewmates. If he fell, he might not have been so lucky, but that didn’t matter at the moment now that the [Thresher] was leaning over the side of the boat, staring hungrily at all the fish still scattered around.

  Unlike the first [Young Thresher], which was comparatively small, this one was huge. Easily half the size of the boat itself, maybe more. It rammed its bulky body into the side of the boat, tilting it dangerously, smashing through the railings and gouging part of the hull.

  “Drive it back, drive it back!” Alastair called, rallying everyone.

  Jessica heard Ellesea chanting, but this was her chance. This time, the monster was within melee distance and she was in striking range. She quickly stored her bow and pulled out [Whalebane]. With a fierce cry, Jessica swallowed her nerves and lunged.

  “Hrrraaaaaggghhhh!”

  She planted her feet firmly and felt the spray of hot blood splatter across her arms as the harpoon sank effortlessly into the neck of the giant beast. Its eyes widened in shock, its head reared back and it let out a wail of pain. The thought of an easy meal entirely forgotten, the [Thresher] quickly reversed course, backed away from the boat, and began swimming away.

  With Jessica’s harpoon still lodged firmly in its neck.

  And just like that, Jessica’s fears were realized. Exactly what she knew was going to happen…happened.

  For all of a day, no more than a handful of hours, she was the wielder of a superior weapon. And after her first time using it, it was gone. The finest weapon she ever owned, ever realistically dreamed of using.

  She felt a jolt of panic as the [Thresher] rapidly swam away, its large form quickly shrinking into the distance. Yeah, that weapon was gone and there was no getting it back. It wasn’t like she could demand the [Fishermen] go chase after it so she could get her stick back, not while they were celebrating escaping the encounter with the boat intact.

  She wondered if, when that [Thresher] healed, the harpoon would be reclaimed by the system. If that [Thresher] might evolve into a unique monster, gain a name, and become a rare spawn. If somebody else might someday loot her weapon.

  Hers!

  Her party looted it fair and square from a dungeon; it was hers!

  Never mind the fact that just a few days ago, she thought it was uselessly taking up space inside her inventory!

  Jessica’s emotions roiled inside her and eventually settled into something close to apathy. “Easy come, easy go,” some might say, but those were bitter words to swallow.

  Jessica kept staring at the monster’s retreating form as it shrank to the size of a small rock in the distance, wishing her spite could strike it dead.

  All of a sudden, it did.

  Out of the blue, without warning, a titanic jet of water burst up from the surface of the lake, showering water hundreds of yards into the air. Though the monster was nearly out of sight, Jessica could still see, unbelievably, its body fold in half as something crashed down atop it like a meteor from heaven. For a split second, right before the geyser of water obscured it, she thought she saw a set of massive teeth closing around the bewildered and broken [Thresher].

  No. Not some thing.

  Some one.

  Jessica knew exactly who, not what, just happened to that [Thresher]. In the moment, Jessica only had time to be grateful that she happened far enough away. The geyser of water spread into a massive wave, much like tossing a rock into a pond. Only this was more akin to dropping a mountain into their lake.

  “Hold!” some of the men cried. “Wave incoming!”

  “Steady!” others cried out. “Roll with it!”

  Jessica had no clue how the men positioned the boat so that it rode the towering wave like a bucking bull instead of capsizing instantly. They went up, they went down, and if Jessica had any food in her stomach, she would have lost it.

  The worst of the ripples passed, and everyone sat still in shock. Somebody laughed, and soon a whole chorus of wild, maniacal laughter broke out, most people simply glad to be alive.

  Jessica stared at the water, at a loss for words. Her rage was gone, her earlier frustration nowhere to be found.

  “I had it sorted!” she yelled out into the void. Despite trying her best to pout, she couldn’t help the grin spreading across her face. For some reason she couldn’t explain, she just knew Meliastraza would hear her.

  *Apologies,* the dragon’s sultry voice sounded in her ear, the chatgem coming to life. *Better safe than sorry.*

  “Who’s she yelling at?” Jessica heard one of the men ask behind her. She heard Al’s exasperated voice in reply.

  “Nobody. Don’t worry about it.”

  Jessica decided to take that advice too. She wouldn’t worry about it. Because, in the end, harpoon or not, levels or not, she had a scary new friend who, in her own way, was looking out for them.

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