Scrapping around!

John sprung forward; the red footsteps visible through the dust were showing him where to go. Sylvia was throwing a few more of her pollen bombs on the were-rats; sadly, they were less impacted by the pollen on account of not being close to the ground.

John took a fraction of a second to observe the monsters before reaching the enemy line.

Junk were-rat: lvl 9 creature.
This 5ft tall humanoid rat is the evolved form of the common junk rat. Its bones, teeth and claws are laced with metallic compounds, and small, copper-looking ragged spikes are piercing its skin in multiple places. They hunt in packs, assisted by junk rats, but have little group cohesion.
Junk eater: clawing and biting causes extra durability dmg to armors.
Hard skeleton: their bones have a 15% chance of deflecting attacks, reducing dmg to only 10%. - 50% to crushing dmg.
Rat race: were-rats under 20% maximum hp have a 33% chance of fleeing if other rats are engaged in the same fight.
250/250 hp

Parkour and Kriegskraft seemed to have some sort of hidden synergy: by focusing on the fight, the paths and steps proposed to him were weeded out to leave only the ones which were making it easier for him to strike and harder to get hit back.

Just before John reached the pack, an arrow hit the one eyed rat in the chest. Without delay, John dispatched him with two strikes of his sword while casting Restraint on the closest spear bearer.

64 dmg
128 dmg (crit!)

31 xp

Only 31 xp? Wait... That's right, the xp is divided between us all. Still, that would mean that they give what, 120? No, 100 without the necklace! Why is it more than the lizards? They were of a higher lvl! Maybe we don't get all the same share? I'll have to check later, let's focus on the fight!

John was amazed at how he was able to simply think about things like these and do maths while dodging and parrying attacks. He saw the opening after the failed attack of the second spearman and struck at him.

64 dmg

-5 hp
-5 hp
-5 hp

Cali was an amazing support, letting go of arrow after arrow, weakening the were-rats enough for John to easily kill them. John had decided to use as little mana as possible, as the fight might drag on and there was no way to say how many opponents they were facing. His stealth indicator showed 50, but these were only the ones with line of sight on him. Which brought his attention back to the three metal shards stuck in his thigh.

Something was shooting at them from the piles of garbage. John could see that the girls too had been hurt by similar projectiles. John used Move to remove the ones stuck in him and the others, before striking at one were-rat wielding a ragged bit of metal fashioned into a vicious sword.

64dmg

24 xp
24 xp
24 xp
24 xp
24 xp
24 xp

Sylvia's lethal pollen and Vesta's waves of fire had just finished a group of small rats brave enough to continue their **** on the back of John's group. John suddenly had a flashback of his last visit to such a place, and it gave him an idea.

"Vesta, be ready! A little something to help you stir your fire!" he shouted, giving her two charges of Arouse. He remembered how she burned even stronger when excited, and if there was ever a day for it to be useful, it was today.

Sylvia was limited in such a place, as there weren't any plants around to control. She wasn't feeling any life energy to tap on either, and her attempts at making anything grow in this polluted soil were wasted efforts. The pouches of her harness contained stacks of pollen bombs of various kinds that she was throwing around while keeping an eye on the health bars of the group. The small junk rats looked rabid and often threw themselves through walls of fire just to land a bite or a scratch on one of them, and the rain of metal shards from the hidden snipers was a constant concern.

31 xp
31 xp

A combination of sword strikes and arrows had just put down two more were-rats. The horde of junk rats was badly damaged, the large majority of them with barely half of their hp left. They were sending wave after wave of full health rats, letting the hurt ones stay back. Sylvia was making this backline get farther by throwing her bombs in their direction.

24 xp
24 xp
24 xp
24 xp
24 xp
24 xp

Another bunch of them just died, burnt to a crisp by a panting Vesta, beaming of red and golden light, whose flames had just reached a good third farther than they usually did. Cali started to shoot arrows at the mysterious snipers on the ridges of the junk piles, which instantly stopped the barrage of sharp bits of metal. John finished the last were-rats in a few precise strikes, taking some damage in the process.

The battle was winding down; Cali had stored her bow and taken her sword and tomahawk out. She was gleefully hacking at the junk rats, enjoying these new weapons that were impossible to build in her village without metal.

John picked a glimpse of their ranged assailants: a few more were-rats armed with some strange weapons, a mix of slingshots and crossbows. Thankfully, seeing them was all he needed, and he began casting Magic Projectiles on them, the magical missiles homing in on their targets despite the cover.

John was impressed at how well everyone was working together. Sylvia was assuming her role of healer and support perfectly, and she had become quite good at using her pollen bombs in an effective manner. Cali was a great huntress, her arrows rarely missing their targets, and she was fierce in close quarters. She was also very good at picking the right targets to weaken or finish enemies in a way that supported the others the most. Vesta... Vesta was a surprise. She had trained control, how to keep her fire in and how to call upon it, but this was different. Once the fight had started (and with John's little help), she had begun to move around and use her flames in a very fluid manner. Like she was dancing to a tune that only she could hear. The scorched bodies of the many rats around them the testament of her actions.

A few more were-rats appeared, but with the swarm of smaller creatures thinned out so much, they were outmatched.

After nearly half an hour of fierce battle, John's indicator was back to only 3, the members of his group. Sylvia was busy healing a deep cut on Cali's back, the huntress had been backstabbed by an ambusher spearman while pursuing a fleeing were-rat.

John put this respite to good use. They had just killed 13 were-rats and 69 small junk rats. In total he had received 2059 xp. He had taken the time to check the interface of the party, and apparently, he was receiving two shares of xp because he was the party leader, giving him two fifth of the xp of each monster. Picking up all of the loot was the perfect occasion to let his mana regen; the loot had some of what he came here for but no real treasures apart from that.

95 units of junk rat bones (two per were-rat)
725$
8 junk light armors
5 junk spears
4 trash blades
4 shard throwers

All of it pretty much a given, but what he got through his cooking skill from the ones he had killed was a bit strange. It was supposed to give him food matching the creature killed, and what he got was:

6 hamburgers
7 hotdogs
4 boxes of chicken nuggets

John wondered if Gaia was making a pun on junk food or if she was hinting at what those dishes were actually made of. In any case, John would try not to eat them himself, at least not until having them analysed first.

"Good job, everyone, you all played your part, and we were acting as a team here!" he announced. It brought a smile to the face of his three companions.

"For Arcadia!" shouted Cali who had chosen to paint the realms' sigil on her face before the hunt. She seemed to take duty and the cause of the realm very seriously. John realized that after being banished from a clan that was everything to her she needed a sense of purpose and belonging. The growing community of the kingdom, being assigned to the hunting lodge, being in charge of providing meat, gathering useful resources, all of these tasks had fulfilled a need in her. John knew that he could easily please her by granting her a title or function if she was ever feeling down.

"John... What was... What did you do? I was feeling all... The flame! I was... I couldn't hold it in, but it wasn't controlling me! It was... Wonderful! How long will it last?" asked Vesta. The realization that her curse could be put to use, that she could control it, was putting a smile on her bright red face. The way that she was twitching was betraying something else than joy though. John smiled back at her and kissed her using spectral lips, slipping a few ghost fingers under her armor to feel her tits for good measure.

"I remembered that your flame was stronger when you have some fun. I just gave you a little something to stir the coals. Don't worry, it is not permanent. But it's pretty easy to apply again when it wears off. Sorry to keep you on the edge like that, but it's better to wait for it to be finished before we have some more fun. I'll make it up to you..." he explained.

The group, fully healed and with regained energy, continued to explore the junkyard barrier. They found a few stragglers who had fled the first fight and thought themselves safe a few turns away and had to face a few groups of barely two dozen creatures each time. Nothing was posing a threat to their group so far.

John had noted a few things that required his attention. He couldn't use his slingshot without both hands and could achieve nearly the same results with Move, so he gave it to Sylvia. Most of the arrows recovered from the corpses were broken or too damaged to be used again. John kept them, hoping to use the armory to repair them without having to cast Craft on each arrow.

After another turn of the canyon formed between the giant mountains of junk and trash, Cali stopped everyone. She crouched to touch something on the ground.

"We are not alone here!" she declared.

"Yes, I know. There are hundred of rats and rat men! We have been fighting them for more than an hour!" replied John, laughing a bit.

"No. Something else, multiple ones. Heavier, wider feet, wearing boots. They went that way!" she said pointing to a path on their left.

"Interesting... I wonder if... These barriers are manifestations. Gaia making real what was only probable, that is what I was told... But there are also places that are as real as Earth and other strange places. I seem to find myself in pretty weird places more often than I'm supposed to. If this place is more stable than a simple generated barrier, then someone could have accessed it from elsewhere. I can see the tracks, thanks to the ring perk, but I couldn't tell more about it than a direction. Let's go check this out!" he decided. It was a good opportunity to meet with some people from other parts of the Abyss and create links with them. There were only three sets of foot tracks, few enough for John to be confident that he could deal with them if hostile or rescue them in the opposite case.

Keeping an eye out for any possible ambush, the group began to follow the tracks, hoping to find whoever left them.

Loot of the exploration after first fight
1756 xp

63 units of junk rat bones (two per were-rat)
462$
6 junk light armors
3 junk spears
2 trash blades
2 shard throwers