“You did good, little guy,” Jason said, moving the leech to the back of his hand where it disappeared into the cut. “You just gather yourself back together while I deal with the mean tortoise.”

Jason looked over at the tortoise, which only had one remaining rune lit up. Confident he could handle one ability, he started closing in on the sluggish monster. The tortoise, for its part, made a very optimistic dash for freedom as Jason strolled in its direction. When Jason reached it, it ducked its head and limbs into its shell. The last rune dimmed as the tortoise’s body took on a metallic sheen.

Jason crouched down to peer into the openings where the tortoise had disappeared into its shell. Some kind of plate had moved into place at each of them.

“I’ve seen this ability,” Vincent said.

He had startled Jason, who was sure he’d seen Vincent back with the others just moments earlier, and hadn’t felt the approach of his aura.

“This is probably the strongest ability a rune tortoise has,” Vincent said.

“How so?”

“It massively increases its defence,” Vincent said. “It’ll take a bronze-rank attack to break in, and a strong one at that. Even worse for you, it makes it immune to afflictions.”

“How long can it keep it up?”

“Not sure,” Vincent said. “Certainly long enough for its powers to come back. I’ll deal with it now.”

“Hold on,” Jason said. “You’re the one who asked for a volunteer, so let me sort it out.”

“You think you can get around this ability?”

“Easily,” Jason said. “There’s a bunch of ways. It still needs to breathe, right? I don’t know if it’s aquatic, or burrowing, but we could bury it, or drown it. We could throw it off a great big cliff; I bet that’d crack it.”

“I don’t think there’s a lot of cliffs in the delta.”

“I’m just saying there’s options,” Jason said. “The one I’m going to go for is testing out a gift a friend gave me.”

Jason drew a sword from his inventory. It was simple but elegant in design, not overly long, with a straight, double-edged blade. The hilt was red gold, the grip a dark, soft fabric. A short, simple tassel, of the same black fabric, dangled from the red gold pommel.

Other than knives, straight swords were the weapons Rufus had drilled Jason on the most, knowing Gary was already working on such a weapon for Jason. Taking it out, Jason smiled as he thought of the day Gary had presented it.

“We all wanted to give you something,” Gary had told him when handing over the sword. “Farrah gave you that awakening stone, and Rufus the skill book. I made you this and it turned out pretty well, I thought. It’s not a big deal, or anything.”