By the time I caught up to Bee, she had already flown to the wall of the Singing City.

  “Do you even know where you’re going!?” Panda yelled at her.

  “No!” she said, her voice still excited.

  “Hold on,” I told her and pulled the Soul Compass out of my inventory.

  [‘Soul Compass’ x ]

  Item

  “No ledge is powder, France is bacon.”

  - a dyslexic philosopher

  By uttering the True Name of an Enemy, Boss, or Player within your Region, the compass will point in their exact direction.

  Charges: 1/3

  Weight: approximately one

  “I forgot you had that,” Panda said.

  “John Ritter,” I said into the compass and it started spinning.

  The needle locked onto a direction.

  “Alright, I know where to go, follow me!” I said and kicked off with my longboard.

  “I’m pretty sure you made a wrong turn somewhere,” Panda said as he looked around.

  We had entered a strange snow-covered village full of quaint wooden huts after turning down an alleyway between two strange bulbous buildings.

  “It’s like a winter wonderland!” Bee said. “Maybe we can get materials from here as well!”

  “Relax, you little maniac,” Panda said.

  EVENT ANNOUNCEMENT!

  There are now only 6 hours left before the Collection Phase is over!

  To help guide you towards places full of Monstrosity Materials, green beacons are lit up around the Singing City.

  I can’t really tell if they’re meant to be traps or not, but I’m being told to encourage you to seek out these places, so you’ll have to figure that out yourselves.

  And don’t forget that you are more than welcome to steal whatever someone else has found, so long as they haven’t brought it back to their base yet. If I were you, I’d steal their food. Especially from the team that found the restaurant dungeon. It looks quite delicious.

  …

  I’m being told to smile widely and tell you the following:

  “Happy hunting! We can’t wait to see what you end up crafting!”

  …

  This job is tiring…

  We trudged through the snow, trying to figure out where the exit was, but no sooner had we passed by a wooden hut than the door shot open, slamming against the outside wall and knocking a sheet of snow loose from the rooftop.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  A green-skinned gremlin reaching no taller than my hip appeared in the doorway. His eyes were bloodshot and he had droopy ears covered with black hair. He wore a red felt sweater with a black belt over his distended stomach and red-and-white striped pants. His shoes were hand-carved wooden clogs, and he had a pointed red hat with a white puffball at the end.

  “Gambit, it’s a Christmas elf… How are you not seeing that?” Panda remarked.

  Snow covered the gremlin’s upper lip and nose, or perhaps it was powdered sugar. In his right three-fingered and surprisingly-hairy hand was a snowball of the same stuff.

  My Appraising Eye activated on its own and a screen appeared before my face while the gremlin grinded his teeth loudly.

  [Appraisal x ]

  Level 12 — ‘Cracked-out Little Elf’ — Liberated Corporate Slave

  “*Loud teeth gnashing*”

  Are you familiar with S. Claus’s Christmas Company?

  They used to have their headquarters in the North Pole, for tax reasons of course, but they have long since become a cautionary tale about the limits of corporate enslavement.

  It’s kind of a long story, but I’ll spare you the details.

  Basically, S. Claus used to sell merchandise to people all over the world, but in order to cut production costs, he hired a bunch of subterranean gnomes. They were forced to wear ridiculous clothes while working 20-hour days making all of S. Claus’s merchandise, and in order to meet the incredible demand of their work schedules and quotas, they were given daily allowances of any upper you can imagine. Crack, smack, speed, snow, meth, X, molly, and anything else with a stimulating effect, they consumed it in copious amounts every day.

  Anyway, as it always goes, dictators are eventually toppled by an armed rebellion they created through their own actions, and the fall of S. Claus was no different. Armed with the merchandise made by his company, the doped-out elves put an end to his corporate regime and became liberated, eventually founding quaint little villages like this.

  There was just one problem. Addictions, especially in the case where several drugs are mixed together and consumed habitually for years, are near-impossible to shake. And with their overlord and dealer defeated, their supply quickly ran out, leaving them fiending for a fix and fighting amongst themselves for scraps. Fortunately, one of the elves discovered Drug Magic after a pretty serious overdose that made him able to talk to animals. As such, their villages now have weather events that leave behind piles of powdered stimulants. I couldn’t tell you exactly what’s in it, but consuming it is sure to be a wild ride.

  Also, it may be dawning on you, but that’s not a ball of snow in his hand.

  It may also be a good time to mention that these elves naturally carry the rabies disease and are extremely territorial.

  The moment I finished reading, the elf slammed the snowball into his face, his long hook nose piercing right through it. Then he inhaled loudly, consuming the ball with his nostrils in seconds.

  “Uhh,” Panda muttered.

  The elf screamed loudly and leapt right for my face with his claws out.

  Smack!

  Bee slammed her Stinky Fish right into his body, flinging him back inside the hut.

  Then all the other huts popped open and cracked-out elves surged towards us.

  “Oh fuck!” Panda exclaimed.

  Although we were outnumbered fifty to two, Bee and I quickly discovered how brittle and weak the elves were, and with a gentle application of overwhelming force, we crushed, broke, splattered, and brutalized every last elf. To their credit however, they didn’t give up until they were literally unable to fight back.

  Bee pulled out a Sham Poo Nut and cleaned the viscera off herself. No sooner had she finished than Lordie popped out of his transport cage and leapt onto her head, licking her lavender-scented hair.

  She completely ignored the hand-spider purring like a chainsaw atop her head as she rummaged through the mess of dead elves. “There’s so much material here!” she said excitedly.

  I lifted one of the bodies by the wooden clog stuck to its foot.

  “This one seems special,” I noted, since he had green clothes instead of red.

  [‘Crack Wizard’ x ]

  Monstrosity Material

  +8 to Intelligence

  +8 to Wisdom

  +4 to Stimulant Magic

  Weight: approximately seven-and-a-half

  “Ooh,” Bee said as she read the description.

  “We’re not giving Lordie crack magic!” Panda exclaimed.

  “It seems like it would be good for buffing spells,” I remarked.

  Bee nodded and held up a mushroom net for me to throw the body into.

  “You guys aren’t even listening…” Panda said with a sigh.

  Then he looked me up and down.

  “Wait, how many times did you get bit, Gambit?”

  “Uh, like eight or nine,” I replied. “Why?”

  “They have rabies!” he replied. “You’ve gotta get treatment immediately!”

  “How bad can it be?” I asked.

  “Rabies has a mortality rate of 100%,” Bee replied.

  “I’ll be fine,” I said.

  WARNING!

  You have been afflicted with ‘Rabies on Crack’ x9!

  Time remaining:

  N/A

  “Huh,” I muttered.

  Then my brain swelled to four times its normal size and I blacked out.