Chapter 46:

  Alice lost herself in the shovel. She traced lines all throughout the edge, making it sharp, and then up and down the handle, increasing the strength of the wood. She wanted to replicate the return-to-hand effect that the pilum had, but she messed it up halfway through. Rather than flying back as soon as it was thrown, it simply remained stationary. Frustrated, she scratched off that part of the enchantment, rendering it inoperable. It took up a decent amount of space, and the shovel was effectively ruined as a weapon, but she had other ideas.

  She didn't notice when Titus went to his second class. Only when he sat a plate of food down in front of her did she look up from the finishing touches of her first real enchantment.

  "What?" she said, rubbing her eyes, the strain of focusing on such minute detail giving her a headache.

  "You seemed lost in your work," Titus said, pushing the plate and holding a loosely wrapped burrito closer toward her. "You need to eat."

  She looked down at the food in surprise. "Huh?" she said. "What is it? I don't think anyone's ever pulled me out of my flow state with food before."

  "Uh, sorry?" Titus said as if it was a question.

  "No, it's okay, I was done."

  "No, I meant sorry no one's pulled you out for food before. I know what it's like to be focused on something, but you need to remember to eat."

  Alice grimaced, remembering many missed meals throughout college and her childhood. "Yeah, I suppose I do."

  It had taken a long time for her to develop a somewhat reasonable relationship with food when she had a steady supply at college. The first couple of years had seen some unhealthy habits, and it was only when she had to continually clear out a stuffed mini fridge that she started to realize there might be a problem. Even now, she probably still had several nonperishable foods squirreled away in the dorm room she'd left behind several days ago.

  She pushed the shovel towards him as she picked up the burrito and took a bite, finding it decent but lacking salsa. Titus read the look on her face and shrugged.

  "Sorry, forgot to pick it up."

  "How'd you know?" she said.

  "Something was missing with it, and I didn't put any salsa on it."

  "Yeah, it's hard to call it Mexican food," she said.

  "Well, it's what you get," he said with a smile. He picked up the shovel, popping it back into inventory. He closed his eyes for a second and then shot her a glare. "Really? It could have been useful."

  Alice chuckled, keeping the rice from spraying out of her mouth as she laughed. "Yeah, I kind of messed up the first enchantment. And, well, bonuses to digging."

  "It doesn't even have a real blade anymore. Good luck digging with it."

  "If you start digging, it will have a full shovel blade."

  "Really? I got to see this," Titus said, striding to the door. Alice picked up her burrito and followed, her pen tucked behind her ear again. Right outside, he found a planter and plunged the tip of the leaf-bladed shovel spear into the dirt. A shimmering arc of force appeared and flickered as he lifted a shovel scoop full of dirt. After a couple of seconds, the enchantment drained away and disappeared, causing most of the earth to pile back into the pot.

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  "I hope it was worth it," he said, giving Alice a mock glare.

  "Yeah. See this part?" Alice tapped the handle. "I was trying to get the return-to-hand enchantment going so you could throw it like the pilum. It's a simple enough enchantment, so I should be able to do it. But here," she said, pointing to a specific area, "I messed up the timing. I would need to take apart the pilum to get a complete look, but I have a few other ideas on how to do it, so it just doesn't work. Well, not exactly how it's supposed to. Here and here," She indicated. "I intentionally broke the enchantment. Otherwise, it might be returning to you faster than you'd like."

  "Yeah, that doesn't sound good at all."

  "No, it wouldn't have been. It's a good thing I recognized my mistakes and checked them before I had you test them," Alice said.

  Titus laughed. "Yeah, I suppose it is. Did you learn enough to try again?"

  Alice nodded, though she didn't feel nearly as secure as she was trying to appear. "Ready to try with just a better version of the spear."

  Alice nodded again but made a wavering motion with her hand. "Sure. I already have one thing that returns to my hand. What about you? What progress did you make?"

  "Yeah, I made some progress," Titus said. "I think I can figure out how to make monster repellent for a specific kind of monster, but it's going to take some ingredients that I don't have. I have plenty of ant corpses, but there are likely many things I haven't thought of that may be required to actually get it to work."

  Alice tilted her head at him. "So what you're saying is we need to go monster hunting."

  "That's exactly what I'm saying," Titus said with a smile.

  Minutes later, they were walking down the street. Alice had her wand ready to apply the Curse of Sloth to anything nearby. But she wasn't hogging all the experience this time. Sure, she was only one level from her next skill. Still, Titus said there was something about getting ingredients himself that might make a difference. He wasn't 100% sure, but she wasn't going to contradict him now.

  When she tried to pin him down on exactly what they were looking for, he was rather vague, saying simply that he would know it when he saw it. This left Alice feeling deeply unsatisfied but more than happy to explore the edges of the city with him while taking down anything that got in their way.

  They stayed far away from the ants' hunting grounds, not wanting to be swarmed and chased off again. Most of the things they found were solitary creatures, ones that either had a way of escaping the ants or simply hadn't been found yet. Lots of plant monsters that the ants seemed to ignore waited in ambush. Things that looked like any other tree along the line of decorative planters would suddenly snake down, attempting to snare them. Pollen would spread spores that left Alice hacking and coughing until she drank a health potion. Leaves would shoot out like razor blades and tear through her clothes and skin. Somehow, she seemed to be getting the worst of it.

  Titus was quick enough that almost nothing was able to touch him, at least not around their level. It was good, though, because Alice's power was doing a decent job of making sure her wounds weren't too terrible. The stat was really pulling its weight, even though she suffered serious penalties for physical activity compared to magical ones.

  She was really interested in seeing if she could change those stats eventually. Not that she wanted more physical stats; she was all in on magic. But it would be nice if she could move an extra point over. She needed a lot more data to figure out exactly what the difference was. Did everyone have different magic and physical distributions? Did it always add up to seven? Was it based on gender lines, or was it more flexible?

  She had no idea. She wished she had been able to press Elaine more on her stats, but the woman had been relatively tight-lipped about the actual details of her character sheet, something Titus had been as well. Alice wasn't too surprised. She wouldn't mind sharing her numbers, and maybe next time when they would trust each other more.

  "That's it," Titus said, interrupting her train of thought. Pointing to something Alice couldn't see, he said, "There, right there, third tree down, up in the branches."

  Alice squinted. "I don't see anything. But what is it?"

  "It's the monster we need. Or technically, its tail. Come on," he said and dashed forward. Alice pumped her legs hard to keep up as she watched a gray blur hop from the tree he pointed to the next one further away.

  "The fuck?" Alice said as she read the label. [Killer squirrel - lvl 24] was all she could make out besides a flash of gray.