Level up!

Strength, resistances, and durability of my conductor suit were the three things I wanted to upgrade. I needed to get strong enough to defeat the giant centipedes. I had several advantages over them, including speed and the locomotive, but I seriously lacked in offensive power.

I had left my train in between two dunes, at the edge of a patchy bushland.

Three hours of daylight left, I need to find at least something…

I took a sip from my water bottle while carefully scanning my surroundings.

Tracks!

They looked like they belonged to a dinosaur, which I knew couldn’t be the case because the god had guaranteed that at least. They resembled the foot of a chicken but were larger than my own footprints.

I hastily followed them, delving deeper into the bushland. As I cautiously moved among the spiky dry branches that reached up to my waist, I noticed finger-sized fluffy yellow feathers stuck among the branches.

The possibility of me having to fight giant chickens was becoming more and more likely. I considered turning back. My grandad and my uncle were both farmers, and if they’d taught me anything, it was that animals should only be killed for a purpose. Killing a chicken and not eating it afterwards was disrespectful to the animal, and I had no way of cooking a chicken on my train, even if I wanted to.

“Coo?” A noise came from a few metres ahead.

What from my improvement wishlist could a chicken even give me…

A chicken-like head slowly rose over the bushes. It was larger than my own head, and its neck was thicker than my thigh. Its feathers were a colourful combination of purples and reds, with three larger bright-red feathers growing from its forehead.

“Easy now,” I whispered, taking a step back.

If it doesn't attack, I’ll go find a scorpion or something -

“Coooo!” The giant chicken screeched, and suddenly five more heads popped from among the bushes.

How can there be so many?!

I could have sworn there’d only been one set of tracks.

The chicken suddenly opened its mouth, and sparks started forming around it. They fizzed audibly, and I raised my gauntlets before my face in defence just in time to -

< Faulty equipment detected. >

< Conductor gauntlets upgraded to fire-resistant conductor gauntlets.>

“Huh-”

The faint smell of burnt wood and a rush of hot air hit me in the face. I brought my gauntlets down, noticing the black charred marks on their back.

Looks like the chickens will be useful after all!

“Sorry, Barry-san,” I said, not particularly apologetic, as I rushed towards the chicken that’d spat a fireball at me. “Crap,”

My trousers caught on the bush spikes.

< Faulty equipment detected. >

My hair puffed up, and my mouth felt extremely dry. It took me a second of blinking to get my eyes to see again. By the time that'd happened, another fireball was flying at me.

“I’m really not sorry now!” I bent down, yanking the bush out of the way and freeing myself. Sand flung and around me in a half-circle, but the path to the chicken was clear.

***

< Sturdy conductor jacket upgraded to fire-resistant conductor jacket.>

< Conductor shirt upgraded to fire-resistant conductor shirt.>

< Sturdy conductor trousers upgraded to sturdy conductor shorts.>

I caught my breath, bent over with my hands planted into my knees, my gauntlets black from stopping fireballs and speckled in tiny feathers from the chickens’ necks.

At least the chicken meat wasn’t going to waste. Once I realised how the chicken fireball worked, I used the other chickens as a shield and made chicken jerky!

Well, there’s still a lot of preparation to do …

I took a few steps further into the bush, trying to decide if it was best to summon the train here, and unsummon it later, or carry the chickens to the dunes. The rustling of dry bush came from my left. I snapped around to see two scaly black arcs, two or so meters in length, moving together above the bushes.

“Round 2, Mr. Scorpion,” I smirked. It’d made the decision for me.

<Creature slain: desert scorpion.>

< EXP + 250.>

My locomotive fell right into the bushes.

I whistled, impressed with my own work. That was a good amount of EXP, and this was now the second time that a scorpion had come running to the corpse of a beast.

I didn’t get to rejoice in my victory for long, though. The putrid smell of rotting fish hit my nose, and I had to try not to gag.

“Now the chicken jerky will be stinky,” I whined.

< MP 101/1300.>

There wasn’t really any time to waste, though, as I didn’t have enough MP to summon my train atop a scorpion again. With my current attire of plate armour boots and gloves, green shorts, a red tube top and a silver-coloured plastic-like long jacket, there wasn’t even anything I could pull over my face to protect my poor stomach from the smell.

Why me …

I whined as I dragged the first chicken to the locomotive.

***

More aimless wandering – it was hard to call it anything else when the only real goal I drove towards was hunting monsters and getting stronger, which any reputable school counsellor would have laughed at - had taken me to an oasis, where I was finally able to clean the wheels of my train. I had had to spend two nights outside, on account of the locomotive being filled with chicken jerky, which I still had to de-feather and process, and also being very stinky.

What I did discover in those two days, though, was that I could summon any number of carts I wanted, but that each one cost 1000 MP, and would always reattach itself to my locomotive the next time it was summoned, even if I detached it and left it a long distance apart. I currently had three carts attached to the locomotive with the numbers 2 to 4 written on them in peeling yellow paint.

They were all plain and wooden, with large sliding doors on the sides, like for cattle, and nothing on the inside but the doors linking them together.

I was planning to un-summon them as soon as possible, as they were creating extra drag on my train, but an oasis seemed like a terrible place to do so.

The stink from the scorpion blood had been a double-edged sword. It repelled the centipedes, who’d followed the train closely at times, but who did not attack. It also repelled other scorpions, snakes, mites, and basically all the desert inhabitants.

“Alright, let’s do this in order,” I said to myself.

The cart number 4 vanished.

Then, I moved the chickens to cart number 2 and detached it from the locomotive. I drew the locomotive along the large lake, and left it there, right on the edge of the water, not washing away the stink just yet.

I went back to the cart and started the very slow and tedious task of preparing jerky from the giant chickens with only a butter knife, chopsticks, and the metal gauntlets.

I spat out feathers that always found a way back into my mouth, and managed to extract most of the meat from the first chicken. It was just like the work my uncle made me do on his farm when I visited him during break, except for the obvious differences.

Suddenly, the chopsticks clanged against something sharp inside of the beast. Cautiously, I pulled out a small yellow gem.

“Huh…”

It sat back and examined it closely. It looked exactly like the gem Medina had given me. Pieces started to click in my mind as I went to check the other chickens.

Sure enough, right next to their hearts, each of them had one of these yellow gems. The ones from the chickens weren’t as bright as the ones from the scorpions, but they were definitely the same kind of object.

I lifted a gem up to the sky, examining it closer. That was when I noticed trees on the side of the oasis. I squinted at them, pretty certain that they hadn’t been there before.

At first, I thought the light was playing tricks on me, but the trees were moving towards the locomotive. When they got close enough, one of them raised a branch and slapped my locomotive, as if it itself were some sort of giant monster.

At this point, I will be very surprised if the people in the towns don’t attack me on sight…

“Hey, hey,” I jumped out of the wagon, quickly wiping away chicken blood off my gauntlets, “What are you doing, shoo, go away!”

The trees remained where they were, unspooked and perhaps unable to hear me.

There were six of them, all old and covered in dried moss. They looked identical to trees, the top of which would have been cut, or struck by lightning, with few side branches and no foliage. Except, the one that’d wacked my train pulled its roots out of the ground, rising a good half-meter above it, and started scooching towards me. It extended one of its pointer branches like a spear.

“Why me…” I whined, thinking about how all of this was the result of some god’s underlings’ administrative error. Magic powers and trains were cool, sure, but if the price was to fight monsters several times a day every day, it wasn’t worth it.

Silently, the tree lunged at me, like a knight in a jousting tournament. The crimson afternoon sky backlit its dark silhouette, making it look all too heroic and dramatic for what it was doing.

I blocked its spear-branch with both hands, before pulling on it, to make the tree gain momentum, and land bark-first on my first.

<Creature slain: Ent.>

< EXP +70.>

That was surprisingly easy.

The tree’s roots sank into the sand, and it returned to its inanimate form.

I leaned over it to assess what the other trees were doing. They hadn’t had eyes or any humanoid features, but if they had, they would have been sweating.

“Shoo!” I repeated, gesturing at them.

They all rose on their roots and started scooching away. One of them trailed behind, as if glancing at me to decide if I was worth attacking. But then it turned around and joined the rest of the pack.

“Strange…”

Sentient trees were added to my list of worries, but I only had less than two hours of daylight left, and three more chickens to prepare.