The next morning saw Ben at the head of a whole wagon train of people going back the way we'd come. It was preliminaries, at the moment. Carpenters, engineers, and the like…but also about half a dozen demi-humans with levels in the low thirties, who looked eager to set out, and kept bothering the civilians in the group to get a move on, as they wanted to be done with this yesterday.

I smiled at that, and Ben didn't do more than wave us off as we walked by him, and set out the opposite direction, towards the north, and then slightly to the west. There, along the border between this nation, and the one to the north, was our destination. It was going to be about a week-long trip, according to Strong, maybe a bit less if we cut across the country, or a bit longer if we stopped at every monster den and dungeon along the way.

Needless to say, we did the latter, but it didn't end up slowing us down by as much as expected. Our tactics improved, Ray, Souka, and myself in the back, with the two guarding me, if I'm being honest, while Lucia, Fast, Strong, and Shadow all played offense. Ray even got to show off that Paladins had healing skills a time or two, when she used them to help the others recover from losses.

Eventually, by the middle of the afternoon, with the sun starting to come down from its apex we approached the first of the dungeons we planned on hitting, and it was…underwhelming to say the least. It was a square box of stone, covered in glowing magical script to be fair, but still, it had none of the grandeur or majesty I had expected on hearing the word dungeon. It even had a sleepy guy guarding the only entrance, a Guild worker with a level in the single digits.

As Ray explained to me when I brought it up, Dungeons came in three forms. The most common was this form, a containment unit of sorts, designed to contain monsters, usually boss level ones, that the people simply couldn't deal with at the time. Sometimes they were left inside to die, as some monsters, most especially those born from Wave infection, were still in need of food and water.

That could backfire, of course, as they needed to keep an eye on such to purify them the moment they died, before the infection could turn them into an undead. Worse, some monsters, like the hydra, were from the Wave itself, and were not so constrained to need constant sustenance. They would haunt the hall they were sealed in forever, until someone came around and finally killed them.

The second most common type were monster dens, those natural places where a powerful monster roosted, and stayed put. It wasn't as rare as she'd like, but it still meant that there were places on the planet where even adventurers and armies did not tread, giving those pieces of land up to the monsters, and giving them as wide a berth as possible if they did have to go near them at some point.

The final type, and the ones I was thinking of were made by mad men and bastards, as she put it. Either 'trials' they arranged over caches of goods, with labyrinths filled with monsters and traps to 'test' the would-be champion. Worse, sometimes some idiot wanted their tomb guarded for all time by such beings, and they tended to come back as some kind of powerful undead anyway, defeating the purpose of trying to protect their remains.

This dungeon, being the first type, was known to Ray very well. She'd read reports on it, including several attempts that had previously been made on the boss contained inside. She gave the guard at the front a piece of paper, authorizing us to make an attempt, and then had us enter, finding the first floor a mostly blank room, with a large stairwell leading down, glowing slightly, as the creature beneath us awoke to our presence.

I had been about to request info, to come up with a strategy, but Ray claimed it wouldn't be necessary. She would kill this thing by herself, if I would just give her a boost. Not really wanting to go in blind, I still did as requested, loading a multishot, first with attack, then magic boosts, infusing her with their power, as she then marched to the stairway, and with a skip, descended towards the lower level.

We followed, obviously, keeping our distance as we slowly went down to find Ray was staring at the boss monster, a huge reaper looking creature in a flowing red robe, bony, human looking hands, floating more than three meters off the floor. The fact that it was, itself almost six meters tall meant the thing loomed, and as it turned, the hood of the cloak began to glow with an inner, eerie red light.

The creature jammed one of its too large hands into a ripple in space beside it, like a pond floating sideways in the air. Watching it pull it back, the thing revealed a scythe, one thrice as tall as I was, and it seemed to glint with menace in the red glow of the creature's internal light. This was a boss, a creature that was normally in command of other minions, isolated for years.

Ray scoffed at it, and then drew a single blade. Elsenrail gleamed brightly as she pulled it out, her affinity for light and dark magic running into the blade, making it all the better, as her attack and magic infused it, both stats able to focus through the single weapon. In truth, with my boosts, her weapons, and her own natural power, she was well into the four digits, though not quite over nine-thousand.

She saw the thing move, and the Paladin catwoman did so as well, her tail whipping around her as she leapt into the air, sailing over the slash of the massive blade, and then hopping again in the air somehow, allowing her to gain even more height, soaring up until she neared the ceiling, before she held out her weapon in both her hands, and brought it down in a single cleaving strike, Elsenrail itself glowing like a star plucked from the sky as it tore into the monster.

It was a single stroke, the monster freezing in place as the white tinted glass sliced through it with ease, seemingly leaving not a mark on its form, as Ray landed heavily, and then jumped backwards, staring up at the thing with a sneer, before flourishing her blade out before her, giving it a spin, and then slamming it into the sheath. The echoing sound of it snapping home echoed, and the monster slowly slid, half of it moving down, the other up, before it exploded with glowing white light.

The end result was the remains of the robe falling to the floor, along with…I can only assume it was the 'body' of the creature, a round looking stone, split cleanly in two, and glowing slightly like the core crystals from the bone hydra and others had. It was oddly smooth, compared to those rough hewn things, however, and warm to the touch where those were cold and felt like the dead…oddly enough.

The scythe, much as I thought it would be cool, splashed down onto the floor, turning into some stagnant liquid as it fell to the stone, which glowed briefly around it, before I decided, or rather was compelled by some instinct, to raise my Bow up, and as I'd done with all our foes, I spoke a word, and purified the area, as always, a blast of silvery light exploded from the gem of my weapon, and this instantly evaporated the fetid stuff.

That left the gem and tatters to go still for a moment, before another sound, metallic and heavy echoed over the chamber, and we looked beneath the former robes to find a staff, like Lucia's current one, but with better stats, not fantastically better, but still better, and while the others briefly missed it, my (Void Gaze) caused a ring to shimmer in the darkness, the golden color of loot on it easily picked up from the dark stones.

Souka, picking them up, identified them as masterwork quality stuff. But not made by mortal hands. They lacked the toolmarks to show that origin. Instead they looked like they'd been sculpted from black metal and red metal for staff and ring respectively. The former was a good boost to darkness elemental affinity, as well as an overall damage boost to spells in general, the latter…

I remembered as I looked on it that one of my Bow forms had come with a 'Loot Drop' passive buff. I'd still thought it was joking. But this ring was made for me. It was even called 'Bowman's Ring'. Not like my fake name, but more a ring specifically for a bow user that reduced the overall cost of arrow and bow type abilities. There was no way this thing had just fallen randomly from the enemy we'd killed.

The staff at least had a thematic 'darkness element' connection to a reaper type enemy. This ring was only useful for me, however…well actually there were several classes that used bows, including Assassin, Strider, and a Magic Archer class. Still, this dropped for me, and on having Souka and even Shadow go over it looking for curses or some such, I slipped the thing on, and then absorbed the tattered robe and stone that remained of the enemy.

I got only a few new forms from this. I had so many undead ones thanks to the abundance of zombies and skeletons from the first(second) Wave, as well as the bone hydra, that I'd gotten most of those. I did get some 'Spell Caster' type Bows, including one that boosted the effects of spells I cast, as well as one that sounded positively metal called (Reaper Hellscythe) which was probably the name of a band back home.

The look of it was okay, and the passive ability it came with was nice enough, but the real prizes were the EXP, as I inched ever upwards towards level fifty, and the sealed forms it would unlock, along with the (Stage 4) Bow itself, which was tantalizingly close to opening up so I could read the full description of it. I wouldn't be able to use it for some time afterwards, with that Level Seventy-Five requirement, but still.

Exiting the dungeon, Ray confirmed for the guard that we'd killed the thing contained herein, and he immediately asked about monster remains, and looked a bit disappointed that we'd used the whole of it, but was still relieved that now this duty at least was off the rotation. He quickly informed us of how grateful most of the Guild's staff would be if we'd take care of a few others around the area.

And over the coming days, we did just that. Monster dens like a goblin hideout thing, which looked like an inviting house for travelers to stay in, but had tunnels beneath that were filled to the brim with green skinned monster men wielding rusty cleavers. Or that literal wasps' nest built into the side of a small canyon the size of a building, which required setting fire to it to force the bugs out, and even then it was the work of hours to get them all.

In five days of travel, almost a week and half since the previous wave, and still some time yet before the next, I finally reached the next hurdle, level fifty. My EXP bar ticked over, and I was elated, as I now had all sorts of new toys and abilities to play around with, making me laugh to myself as the monster to give me this ability, a griffon of some kind, but with a horse's rear instead of a lions, fell to the power of a single giant lion's fist.

I, of course, told the others excitedly as we cleaned up the remains of the battle, with me taking in a few bits of the…hippogriff that was it. Anyway, I took a few bits of the hippogriff's body into my bow, gaining a few nice abilities, but still not (Stage 4), which was taunting me now with its ability still hidden behind the unlock. It was a shame too, as I looked at (Stage 3) and was impressed by what it did.

(Stage 1) was the basic Bow. It had a small scale passive buff that made it fire faster than the other stages. (Stage 2) was Multishot enabled, allowing me to 'noc' up to ten attacks at once. They still cost the same as normal, but I could use them all at once, rather than having to use them individually. Sadly, while Stages could mix with any other Bow form, they couldn't mix with each other.

That wasn't a problem for Stages 1 and 2, but (Stage 3) gave me a brand new power that would have paired well with either of the first two. (Dual Wield). In the normal form of the Bow, the short bow form, it was sort of a half and half arrangement between mixed forms, one above the grip, one below. Thanks to the wrist mounted crossbow I'd customized it into, I actually got one on each arm that I could mix with any of the other forms.

I tried a few combinations after that, including seeing what my (Hydra-Line) bow looked like. What it did was it created six 'extending' arms that swung out from the main body of the bow, and each one was tipped with a hollow box that would fire out whatever shot I loaded it with. Mind, unlike (Multishot) it had to be the same kind of shot being fired, so I couldn't mix and match, but it did reduce the cost of firing them, and allowed me to hit multiple targets at once.

The (Portal Bow) was the real prize, as one might expect. I had hoped it would shoot small portals that would allow me to connect two points in space, as I could think of ways to have fun with that. What I got instead was almost as good, as it removed the need to aim from my shots, as the shot would simply 'teleport' to my target through a portal. Not quite the same thing, but for a small rise in cost, I now couldn't miss, allowing me to stand even farther back from the main battle.

Of course, the most important part of all this was my new skill, which I'd already bought, and so we spent the rest of the day gather up the remains of the hippogriff, and otherwise hunting a few minor monsters in the surrounding area, before I marked the spot I was standing on as my destination, and then closed my eyes, focusing on the skill I'd unlocked at the same time as (Portal Bow).

The effect was similar, but slightly different to the teleportation granted by the Hourglass to the Wave's location. This time, the golden glow did not come from beneath us, but instead, from my Bow. Better, I felt I could 'target' anyone with it within a certain radius. As long as they didn't resist, or the object like a barrel I was trying to bring with us was 'mine' in terms of the world, it would come too.

For now, I simply targeted the brothers, the two demi-humans, and the human who made up my party, along with the sacks some of them were carrying, and then, with a pop, we vanished from this random clearing just off the roadside, leaving behind a few confused animals, but nothing of note as we rushed towards our destination, appearing there in a single instant.