Slimo and Lidia walked out of the bar carrying large barrels of liquid, tied to their backs with some rope.

"Well, that fixes our water situation for some time. We can worry about food as we travel. Do any of you want to stay here and rest before the long journey? I’m afraid there may be only one place left in the town that will let us stay since we got kicked out of the first one."

Lidia seemed to hesitate.

"I want to hit the road as soon as possible. I’ll leave it up to my kids or Doc to decide."

Doc looked at them with a light smile.

"I don’t mind travelling for a long while."

Maria nodded her head in agreement. However, Jacob seemed to be against the idea of travelling. He didn’t tell anyone, but exerting himself so much with his power had taken a toll on his energy. He was running very low on brain power and needed to rest.

"I’m sorry, but is it okay if we rest for just a little while? I think I overexerted myself with my power earlier and I believe it would be better for all of us to be at our best if there really is something dangerous in the territories ahead."

Even though Lidia looked like she was about to retort, she sighed and walked over to Jacob.

"Fine. But you’re going to pay for our stay at the next place."

Jacob paled.

"Miss Lidia, I don’t have any money right now."

"Oh... that’s right. Just have Doc pay for you then. And stop calling me Miss Lidia and start calling me mom for crying out loud!"

Jacob ignored that last comment and lead the group to a small hut towards the northern end of the village. The very moment he opened the door, he was met with an extremely cramped lobby area. Jacob walked up to the lady at the counter.

"Pardon me, but do you have any rooms available?"

The lady seemed to be hard of hearing but still pointed to one, nonetheless. The moment Slimo opened the door, the room was revealed to all of them.

"What the hell?"

In the room, there was only a single bed. That was all. There wasn’t even a bathroom for any of them. The group looked at each other for a few moments. With almost no hesitation, Maria simply lifted Jacob in her arms and carried him back outside while the group followed. Slimo stretched his arms a bit as he led the group north.

"Welp... That ended up being a bust. Sorry, Jacob."

"It’s okay. I’m glad Maria is willing to carry me while I rest a bit."

"Isn’t my daughter just so great! When are you finally going to put a ring on her finger Jacob?! It feels like I’ve been waiting years!"

"Mom, we’ve only been dating for a day."

"Well, it feels like longer."

"What do you think the man meant about covering our ears as we cross? What kind of monster requires you to be deaf to avoid?"

Slimo narrowed his eyes.

"I don’t mean to scare you all, but that’s normally a kind of trait a spirit would possess. They normally take advantage of certain things that people tend to rely on like sight, smell, hearing, things like that."

"Well, if closing our ears is all that is takes, we should be able to avoid it with no problem. Do we have anything to cover our ears?"

"We may need to simply tear off some clothes from our clothing and stuff them in there. Besides, I don’t think we need to worry too much about it for a while. There’s no telling how far away this desert is."

Lidia nudged Slimo slightly.

"By the way, what is a desert?"

Slimo rubbed his forehead.

"It’s a landscape of yellow or white sand. It normally harbors little to no life because of the lack of water."

"I see. What’s sand?"

"Tiny rocks."

"We’re going to another land of rocks?! Our luck must be horrible!"

"Well, technically yes. But not the same kind of landscape as we had before."

The group continued walking the rest of the day. When night fell, they all stopped atop the crevice of a hill to take turns drinking water. Jacob was sleeping soundly in Maria’s arms with his head pressed against her shoulder. He seemed to be extremely comfortable while Maria guarded him from anyone trying to wake up. Her hand was holding his head in place while her other arm was holding him up.

After pouring himself water from the barrel, Doc handed it back to Slimo.

"Hey, Slimo. That dragon that you stalemated before. What would you say its rank and class were?"

Slimo narrowed his eyes and thought hard to himself.

"If I were to guess, I would say the specific dragon I fought was an elder monster. Even though it may seem impressive that I managed a stalemate against it, I studied it for months before attacking it and that was all I could do. Not only that, but I also learned that it was the weakest of its kind."

"Why did you try and fight it in the first place? What was there to gain?"

"By killing creatures, you’re able to scavenge almost anything from them. I was planning on using its hide for a set of armor and its teeth for a strong dagger. As for all the meat, I planned to eat it all! I don’t like wasting food, even if it may seem gross sometimes."

Lidia smiled brightly.

"Man, I want to know what a dragon tastes like! We have to go back and finish what you started one day."

"If you’re all by my side, I have no doubt that we can take it down. Especially with its eyesight damaged from our last fight."

"How did you manage to escape it? How does a stalemate work exactly when fighting creatures?"

"To be honest with you, I got lucky. After I damaged its eye, I hid in its blind spot desperately trying to find another opening. However, I discovered that no matter how hard I tried, there was no way for me to break through its tough hide. Even if I managed to injure both its eyes and tear both its wings, it would be similar to me trying to break through a massive boulder with a small twig."

"You still haven’t answered my question. How did you escape?"

Slimo smiled to himself.

"I ran."

Lidia was left in disbelief.

"You ran? That’s all?"

"That’s what I mean by I got lucky. It didn’t find me worthy enough to chase after me, or perhaps it knew that I had a backup plan waiting for it, if it did decide to follow."

"A backup plan?"

"Indeed. I set up a contraption that prepared two thick stone spikes to slam into each other if something as large as a dragon were to chase me down. When fighting beings like monsters, it’s never a bad idea to have a backup plan."

"So, what’s our backup plan for fighting a spirit then?"

Slimo chuckled to himself.

"Hope that we can outrun it."