I disliked horses. They had an entirely wrong number of legs.

  Two was a fine number of legs, the number humans everywhere possessed — my dad and other amputees excluded, of course. Eight was fine as well, statistically the most common amount of legs for monsters. The numbers I was using for those statistics may have been a bit biased from growing up in a dungeon populated entirely by spider monsters, but the fact still stood: I was fine with eight-legged creatures. Zero and six legs were rarer, the numbers that fish and bugs possessed, respectively, but even those I was fine with.

  Four legs, however…having four legs was just unnatural. And that was a perfectly valid reason for me to hate horses.

  I may have been purposely ignoring the fact that almost every animal and monster I’d seen since leaving the dungeon possessed four legs as well. But I had to have some reason justifying my hatred of horses, and my lack of skill in riding didn’t feel good enough on its own.

  “Okay, that’s enough for today,” I said as I slipped off the side. CinnamonButter, the horse stolen from the raiders who had attacked our caravan almost two weeks prior — not named by me — looked back at me and gave a quiet whinny. But I ignored the judgmental look in her horsy eyes — I was just happy to be back on my own two feet on solid ground.

  Unfortunately, it was harder to ignore the judgement from other members of our party.

  “Already, Ben? It’s only been like an hour. Didn’t you say you were going to try to ride longer, today?” Susan, runaway daughter of Count Rielan and namer of horses, was perched on her own horse as if she’d been born to the saddle.

  “Eh, let him do what he wants,” another voice chimed in before I got the chance to respond. “He’s not slowing us down any by running.”

  Cameron was the third member of our group, though I would hesitate to call him part of our party. I wasn’t really sure how he’d ended up traveling alongside us. When Susan and I had packed our things to leave Culver, he’d been waiting for us with a bag of his own in the common area of the inn where we’d been staying, his own horse already saddled and ready to ride. He hadn’t asked for permission, just simply…tagged along.

  I could understand his desire for company. Only a few weeks earlier, he’d been taken captive while traveling alone by the same raiders who’d attacked our caravan. There was safety in numbers, and Susan and I had proven ourselves capable. But there were other, safer ways to travel than with two sixteen-year-old teen runaways.

  We weren’t nearly as eager to have him join our group. Almost two months earlier, he’d tried to steal my skill orbs in the market of Montview — successfully stole some of them, though I’d gotten repaid by the guards for the ones lost. He hadn’t demonstrated any signs of repeating his felonious behavior since, but the guards back in Montview had suspected him of being a career thief, so I was leery whenever he stood too close to anything valuable.

  Susan had been even more annoyed by his presence, especially after I’d relayed to her the story of how we’d previously met. And she was much more willing to show her annoyance with the man.

  “Of course you would say that. He’s not slowing you down, because you just want to laze around. Unlike you, though, we have places to be, and we can’t have Ben exhausted by the time we get there.”

  “We, we, we…you keep using that word," Cameron responded. "But it sounds to me like you’re the one who has the opinions on what needs to happen, irrespective of anyone else around you. I hate to break it to you, but in our group, you’re outnumbered two to one. And that’s not even counting the horses — Ben’s horse is happy to have the break. Yours is begging for the same.”

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  “What exactly is that supposed to mean?”

  “I have an automatic translation skill. What do you think those whinnies mean? But it doesn’t take a skill like mine to see your horse looks a little…overburdened.”

  Cameron’s translation skill worked with animals? Part of me wanted to immediately investigate, to question the man on all the intricacies of the skill.

  But as Susan responded with an affronted gasp followed by a pointed barb of her own, I simply sighed and jogged a little faster, CinnamonButter keeping pace beside me. Their voices slowly faded as the space between us grew, neither of the two noticing as we left them behind.

  Finally, blessed silence.

  I thought it unlikely Cameron’s skill actually allowed him to talk to animals. He’d never shown that ability over the last week and a half, and it was entirely within his character to make something like that up if it meant getting a jab in on Susan.

  And I had much more pressing skills to focus on than those of my companions. With a thought, I brought up my status.

  For all that many others would have been thoroughly impressed with my status — particularly my level one hundred [alert] skill — I couldn’t help but feel disappointed in the growth of my skills since leaving the dungeon.

  They’d been stagnating. It was to be expected that the growth would slow now that I wasn’t absorbing the experience of dozens of skill orbs every day. But their progress had slowed even further than what I had predicted.

  Worse, I’d previously noticed how slowly they’d been growing a few weeks earlier and had resolved to train them more deliberately to fix it. Yet there still had been almost no improvement. Despite spending hours each day activating all my skills, training much harder than I’d ever done in the dungeon, I’d only seen a single level-up since arriving in Culver.

  On the positive side, it had been a level-up in [workhorse]. Historically one of my slowest skills to level and worth double the stats of my other one-fold skills. And it had leveled to twenty, the ten-level breakpoint granting it an additional aspect.

  The options for that aspect weren’t as impressive as those given to [alert] when it had leveled to one hundred, but that was to be expected. The choices still presented powerful aspects to add to the skill.

  It hadn’t taken me long to decide, not nearly as long as I’d agonized about the upgrades for [alert]. While Push Through and Energy Surge were undoubtedly useful, I could only imagine using them occasionally in specific situations. Restful Slumber, however, would always be useful. Even if it only amounted to a few extra minutes a day, those were extra minutes I’d get every single day. Minutes I could use to train my skills further, compounding the benefit into future upgrades.

  Or at least that was the idea. My training had yet to produce results when it came to skill improvement, especially not in the extra minutes I’d squeezed in before bed for the last few nights since I’d upgraded the skill.

  But what else could I do? I no longer had extra skill orbs to absorb, which meant the only way to improve was through dedicated, focused, and consistent training. And as long as I didn’t have access to a dungeon, that would remain true.

  Three hours later, I waited for Susan and Cameron to catch up at a fork in the road, staring at a sign with an arrow pointing down the left path.

  ‘Reesewick, 1 mile.’

  And then under that, in slightly smaller writing.

  ‘Home of the Faded Dungeon!’

  here.