Junkyard 2: electric boogaloo.

John was thinking real hard about what he could say if he was found out. Sylvia and Cali could easily be LARPers, but Vesta with her glowing skin and fiery hair would be hard to explain.

Thankfully, the place he had picked to enter was one of the most distant from the entrance that he could find. He had given Parkour to Cali, she did not have enough mana to use any active skill reliably.

Rusting carcasses of cars and broken appliances were littering the place, with some bags of garbage lost in the mix. John could see the disgust on the face of his three companions. All three of them had lived in savage nature, far from civilization, and the sight of such an opposite to it was distressing to them. All around them, there was only lifeless pollution and decay, nothing for them to remind them of home.

"John! This place is... So much filth, no life..." Sylvia had trouble telling what she thought about this place obviously.

"I know, it is not a nice place. The good news is that the instant dungeon was not as stinky as the real place last time. But this place has a lot of resources that we can gather and that no one will miss. I don't like having to spend time here, but it is the best course of action. Let's gather as much as we can and quickly enter a barrier. Cali, try to tear out as many car seat covers and bits of carpet as you can find. Sylvia, look for broken electronics and wires. Vesta, follow me!" he explained. The two girls began to do as he said while he was taking Vesta away, going to a pile of destroyed cars.

"What are we going to do? Why do you need me, my king?" she asked him.

"Vesta... Please call me John, you really don't have to be so formal. I want to see how much you improved your control over your flame, especially how hot you can make it. I cannot use my skills to disassemble items over a certain size. See this piece of the car? Melt the bits holding it so that we can pick it apart."

Vesta was looking at John in disbelief. She had never had much contact with metal outside of the kitchen when learning with Anna. For her, metal was some magical substance and seemed to be total unfazed by fire; she had never considered the possibility of melting it herself.

"But... That can't be! I wouldn't even know how!" she lamented. Her training had yielded four techniques, not real spells but things that she could do with fire. The first one was to emit some cone of flames from the palm of her hands, like a flamethrower. The second one was to throw a fireball at medium range and without exceedingly good accuracy. The third was some sort of wall of fire, more useful to keep enemies at bay than actually damaging them. The last one was to create an explosion in her hand, projecting a dozen of small fire projectiles. Nothing was strong enough, in her mind, to melt some metal.

John was levitating pieces and blocks of metal and floating them in front of him, where he disassembled them with Craft before pocketing the components.

"Look, I saw you train! I know that you can do it! Put your hand on it. Now focus! You don't want to burst in flames. You control the flame, it does not control you!" he was telling her, standing behind her, his hand on her hips, his face next to her left ear; "Gather the strength, focus the fire! Not a projectile, not an explosion! Just heat, the smallest, strongest, hottest flame that you can manage! I believe in you!"

Vesta was a new person; Ferulia had died in that cave, long before getting a new name. She had died when her body was defiled by the corrupt magic of her enemy. She had died when her saviors had to perish because they wanted her dead. Ferulia was a moon priestess, heir of a long line of mystics. She was now a pariah, she had **** her own sister into exile, never to return to the village, never to see her tribe again.

Vesta, fire touched, living flame, had found a new place. When her own goddess had forsaken her, when her own people had wanted her dead, he fought to help her and accepted her with open arms. A king, one willing to risk his own life to save one of his own people. He had given her a new name when she could no longer bear her old one. He was treating them well... He believed in her... Emotions... He had said that emotions would be the tide of her powers. This feeling she knew... She had been a priestess for many years after all...

Devotion. Dedication. Obedience. Faith.

The gifts of the goddess were gone, replaced by the the foul fire of Tarkos, but her spirit was not gone. She came back to her senses, startled by a loud noise. The car door on which she had rested her hand had just fallen to the ground. She could see the glowing metal on the piece that fell and the one left on the car. She had done it!

"I knew that you could do it. As soon as you understand this, you will do wonders. Keep this feeling in mind, anger and rage can be useful in the heat of battle, but your powers will bring much more than random destruction. Let's see you do it again!" he cheered, pointing at another car door while harvesting this one.

John remembered that he needed glass too and began picking up pieces of broken glass on the ground around him and breaking the few bits of glass left on the cars.

His Craft skill was a lot cheaper than the first time he had come here, and he had a lot more mana. Last time, he had focused on appliances and not touched the cars; he was harvesting a lot of metal, but not of high quality. He would have to refine it to use it, which would require some sort of furnace and a forge.

Scraps of fabric: crafting material
This fabric of inferior quality is stiff and unsuitable in its current form to the crafting of clothing.
86 units.

Scrap metal: crafting material.
Rusted and jagged pieces of metal.
Effect on crafted items:
-50% durability
-50% armor rating
-50% dmg
Can be refined into heavy metal units.
487 units

Glass shards: crafting material.
Assortment of broken bits of glass. The multiple origins and current conditions make it a low quality material.
-20% visibility
-30% durability
76 units

Electronic parts: crafting materials
Assortment of broken bits of electronic devices and wires. Necessitate technological knowledge to craft or repair.
64 units

Taking a few minutes to regain his mana, John decided that it was time for the next phase of the plan.

"Alright, we have a bunch of stuff, and it will take time to turn it into something that we can use. Let's continue with the main event, and we will see if we can grab a few more things once we get out. Everyone stay close to me!" he announced.

The girls gathered around him, keeping very close to be sure to be included in the spell that he was about to cast.

John opened up the interface for the Instant dungeon skill; a bit of shuffling showed that the junk rat instance could be formed. What had changed was that it was now described as Rank 2 and lvl 11. John was lvl 10, Sylvia lvl 11, Cali lvl 14 and Vesta lvl 9, the dungeon was of the average level of the group members. Still, John was confident. He had been able to survive hazardous situations alone, so fighting with a balanced group should be a lot easier (he still lacked someone able to act as a tank and would have to be the one going to fight up close, but he would have two supports and a healer this time).

He used the spell, and the whole group shifted in the barrier that he had just created. Cali had an arrow at the ready and was looking around them. The place looked a lot like the real one, but John knew that a small army of giant rats were lurking around.

Achievement Unlocked: Looking for Group!
You entered an enemy filled instant dungeon as a party of four people of different classes and roles. That's the basics of adventuring.
Rewards:
Dungeoneer amulet
800xp (shared between the members of your party.)

Dungeoneer amulet: rare necklace
This is a copper medallion on a chain. The medallion shows a dungeon on one face and five people wearing different styles of clothing and armor on the other.
+5% xp per party member for each party member (caped at 5 members)
+3% money looted per party member (capped at 5 members)

"Hey, that's awesome. I got an achievement for having entered a dungeon as a group... And a nice amulet," he exclaimed.

"This is dumbfounding. The mother gives you rewards just for doing things? Not because of prayers or sacrifices?" asked Vesta.

"This ring is like no magic that I ever seen at the village, sister. Truly a gift from the goddess above all others," confirmed Cali.

Sylvia remained silent, bathing the group in a haze of relaxing green light. John noticed his health regeneration ticking up. It reminded John that he lacked buffing skills, except for his Mana Shield that he activated immediately (more a defense skill than a buff and only applicable to himself).

The overall look was the same, but some things didn't match. John could no longer recognize cars or known items in the piles of broken scrap around him; what he could see was unrecognizable and from experience couldn't be picked up and taken out of the barrier or acted upon in an useful way.

"What do we do now, John?" asked Sylvia. John had explained to her the role of a healer like her in a group during the disastrous foray into the jungle world where he had picked the two elves up. He knew it had been an horrible experience for her and not really representative of this kind of adventure (considering the fact that during the previous one, she was the final encounter that John had to defeat).

"Last time, waves of small rats attacked me. They like to just attack you from behind and run away. Be on your guard, protect each other and protect Sylvia especially. She's the healer: if we get hurt, she can fix it, but if she gets hurt too much, it puts the whole group in danger. I survived alone and without even a healing spell, we have a balanced group, we can do this. You know what to do!" he explained, the three girls seemed more relaxed now, their trust in him and his various modifiers for charisma and female interactions had helped to alleviate their fears.

"I pick off any rat I can take and watch your back!" said Cali, readying her bow and notching an arrow.

"I try to keep them at bay and weaken as many as I can!" replied Vesta, sounding proud of her powers for the first time that John could remember.

"I keep everyone in one piece and try to poison or paralyze them!" added Sylvia.

"Excellent, and I will engage them at close range. I'll also be using skills and spells to try to protect all of you. Let's hunt!" he cheered.

Walking around a big pile of junk metal, the group entered an open place surrounded by huge mounds of the stuff and littered by small piles. A perfect place for a trap. He was happy to see that he was not the only one who had noticed that; the three girls were alert and scanning all around them for targets.

Vesta erected a wall of fire behind them just in time. Rats were coming out from every corner, in an obvious distraction for the real attack behind them. Sylvia was already tossing around some green pods that exploded in a green mist on contact; those were not the kind sleeping bombs that she had given him on his mission Monday; this pollen was designed to make things suffocate.

The mass of the **** opposing them was made of a few dozen of the junk rats, the size of small dogs; they were numerous but only lvl 8 with hp varying between 140 and 180. They looked the same as the last time: big rats with metal teeth and pieces of jagged metal coming out of their skin from different places.

The main threat was something else. A group of five were-rats with similar characteristics was approaching them, holding weapons made of the same junk metal visible everywhere.

With barely the time to analyze the situation, John was running back, ready to face the larger creatures. One of them fell backward, an arrow protruding from its left orbit. John looked with horror at the creature which got back on its feet with an arrow lodged in its brain, but at least a good third of its health bar was gone.

John nodded to Vesta and Sylvia who turned their attention to the swarm of smaller creatures. Cali was letting go of another arrow which bounced off a piece of metal on the skull of another one of the were-rats.

"For Arcadia!" shouted John, regretting not to have a loudspeaker in his gas mask (he had not found the time to upgrade it in any way or to make a new one, but it would be one of his priorities once home with this batch of crafting material).