Just as I promised Nimbus, we did go back down to the village and purchase some more bananas for Nimbus to eat. I could only afford a couple more bunches of bananas for Nimbus, but that seemed to satisfy him. I mean, I could have bought more, but I didn’t want to go entirely broke or have to ask my parents or brothers for more money. Admitting that I had wasted all of my money on bananas for a rabbit would definitely have made my family laugh at me.

  But honestly, I felt it was worth every shekel I spent because I now knew that it was, in fact, possible to convert mana into Words available in my Casting Pool via the spellchain. That also gave me hope that mana potions might work for me, though I had no idea how I would convert mana potions into Word potions or if that was even possible. I wondered if I could research that through the North Forest Node. I’d heard of Codex researchers in other Kingdoms who used Stationary Nodes to perform research, though I didn’t know much about it yet.

  So that discovery was worth celebrating in itself. It was yet another confirmation for me that syncing with Nimbus was the smart move. Any time I needed extra Words for casting—or if I wanted to save my own Words—I could simply initiate a mana transfer with Nimbus and gain however many Words I needed. That meant I could devote more of my Words toward my Banked Progress rather than my Casting Pool, which would help me to grow at about the same pace as an ordinary Codexer.

  All in all, it was a successful experiment, and I looked forward to taking advantage of it in the future to get stronger.

  Strong enough one day to stand up to Herod and others like him.

  And stand as peers with Salome.

  Yet as successful as this experiment was, it also revealed some limitations about the spellchain that I didn’t like.

  For one, it appeared that the conversion rate was 10 mana for every 1 Word. At the moment, Nimbus’s available mana maxed out at 35. That meant that the maximum amount of Words I could borrow from Nimbus without making him experience mana feedback was 3, which was exactly the amount I needed to use for my most powerful spell, Shadow Web. But 3 wasn’t very much, and I would burn through that quickly even with my current spell roster. This would just get worse with stronger spells and at later Chapters, especially if Nimbus’s mana regeneration rate decreased.

  And that was another one of the limitations that Nimbus told me about. Apparently, Nimbus’s current mana regeneration rate was 1 mana every 4 seconds. That meant it would take Nimbus more than a minute and a half to fully regenerate his current mana. That didn’t sound like a long time, but in a fight to the death or while exploring a Node dungeon?

  My last encounter with Herod had taken less time than that. And I hadn’t even been synced with Nimbus yet or cast any spells.

  Fortunately, mana regeneration rates were one of those things that improved as you turned Pages and Chapters in your Codex, so this would not be a problem forever, especially once we were permanently synced. But it did mean that we both needed to keep a careful eye on Nimbus’s regeneration rate and the amount of mana that he currently had. If I asked him for too much mana or he ran out of mana too quickly, then we would both be in trouble.

  Another possible limitation that Nimbus himself brought up after we trained with the spellchain a couple of times was whether there was a limit to how much mana could be converted into Words via the spellchain every day. Despite training the ability a couple of times, including fully draining Nimbus’s mana, we didn’t get any kind of hints or notifications that there were limits. The only problem was that transferring mana via the spellchain tired out Nimbus quicker than normal, which meant that we would have to keep that in mind during battle or puzzles. It seemed like the only limit was how quickly Nimbus could regenerate mana.

  For now, I was pleased with how our experiment went and was looking forward to getting to practice it more over the coming days and weeks, as well as improving it and overcoming its limitations. It seemed like the best way for us to overcome our current limitations was for both of us to get stronger and level up our current Pages and Chapters.

  So that was my main priority. Each day, Nimbus and I would return to the North Forest Codexium to practice in the courtyard. It was nice because, aside from Isaac, we were the only Codexers in the area, so we basically had free rein to use the courtyard as often as we wanted for training. Isaac would sometimes supervise our training and even occasionally give advice when we were struggling with something, but for the most part, he didn’t spend much time watching us. He always claimed to be working, though I wondered how he was supposed to get anything done while having a beer bottle permanently attached to one of his hands at all times.

  But I noticed that Isaac did seem to be drinking a lot less often than he used to. Sure, he always had a bottle around somewhere, but during one of our training sessions over the next week, he went at least two or three hours without drinking, as far as I could see.

  I didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

  Regardless, it was nice to get into the groove of training and studying with Nimbus. We also made sure to take daily Synced Quests from the North Forest Node so we could continue to grow and get stronger that way. The vast majority of these quests were Scribbled, so we never got more than a couple of points of mana here or there, plus one or two Words at a time. Most of the quests were for simple things like monitoring the weather or going into the surrounding forest to search for a particular kind of fungus or animal. Most of these quests took less than an hour to complete, but we took them anyway because we didn’t have any other way of consistently gaining stat points and Words.

  Isaac told us about Node Dungeons, which were full of mobs and often gave out special rewards to Codexers who completed them, but North Forest did not have any known Node Dungeons. The closest Node Dungeon was about 50 miles away, in the larger town of Greenwood. But that was way too far away for me to travel, and Isaac made it sound like that particular Node Dungeon was probably too difficult for me at the moment anyway.

  “Most Node Dungeons require at least a party of three to be survivable,” Isaac told me one day while we were enjoying tea after a training session. This was one of the few times I had seen him drink anything other than hard alcohol. “And that doesn’t include Codex Beasts like Nimbus. You would do better to focus on your training and growing before you even think about trying to take on a Node Dungeon, especially by yourself.”

  I nodded at the time, but secretly I had been wondering how I was going to build a party of three when I was the only Codexer in North Forest other than Isaac, who had made it abundantly clear that he didn’t care about dungeon diving, at least not anymore. Isaac had been more than happy to let Nimbus and me take most of the daily quests from North Forest Node. He claimed it was because most of the quests from the North Forest Node were too easy for him, but I got the impression he was trying to fill a quota for the Shinar Node Authority and saw Nimbus and me as his ticket to filling it.

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  That was fine by me. By the end of that first week, Nimbus and I had both been awarded 7 Words each, along with 3 points each into mana, Intelligence, Insight (or Instinct for Nimbus), and Stamina. I also earned 5 Lines in Stealth because a few of the daily quests had required me to sneak up on wildlife in the forest without being seen. I put 6 of my Words into my Banked Progress and 1 into my Casting Pool. I thought about putting all of them into my Banked Progress, but since the spellchain with Nimbus was still limited, it made sense to put at least a few Words into my Casting Pool so I wasn’t entirely dependent on Nimbus and his limits.

  So we were both making progress, all things considered. Slow, but better than nothing. I hoped that we would grow faster as time went on, but I tried not to complain about it.

  We also, thankfully, avoided running into Herod or the bandits again. While I did occasionally hear rumors in town about the bandits attacking people on the road, we never saw any activity near town or the Codexium, either. I suspected that Salome’s warning to Wolfbrand had convinced the bandits to keep their distance from us for a while. it also seemed likely that if the Obsidian Order was in the area, the bandits had even more reason to lie low for a while. Isaac informed me that he had made sure to improve the Codexium’s security systems in the meantime, though he was vague on exactly what kind of improvements he had added.

  We didn’t see Herod or Salome, either. After that Codex Alert from the Shinar Node Authority, we hadn’t heard any official word at all on what the Obsidian Order was doing or if they were even still in the area. I asked Isaac about it one time, and he told me point-blank that the Obsidian Order did whatever it wanted and they wouldn’t tell him a thing about it unless they directly required his assistance. He did mention that he thought that if Salome was no longer in the area, then Herod probably wasn’t, either.

  In some ways, that was comforting to hear. Although I doubted Herod would be hunting me down any time soon, I also didn’t want to be anywhere near him at the moment. I sometimes still had nightmares about how he forced his way into my mind and replayed my memories over and over again against my will. I felt like I should have been able to do something about that, but if Isaac was right, I suspected no one would care—especially since I wasn’t actually killed or injured.

  In other ways, though, I was worried about Salome not being here. I really wanted to see her again and get some advice from her on my Discipline since we seemed to have similar Disciplines. But any time I looked into my NodeLink contacts, I still couldn’t find her information. It didn’t help that Salome had made it sound like she wasn’t going to stick around North Forest any longer than she absolutely had to, perhaps because of Herod’s presence. I could empathize with that after my encounter with Herod.

  But I had to admit that I was still torn on how I should feel about Salome. Yes, she saved Nimbus and me from the bandits, but if Miriam and the Codex Alert from the SNA were correct, then she was an incredibly dangerous individual who needed to be brought to justice. Knowing that a dangerous Codexer terrorist of her power was still running around freely should have made me feel a lot more scared than I did, but I didn’t. Maybe it was because I didn’t think Salome—even if she was a dangerous terrorist—would try to harm me, Nimbus, or my family. Especially if she was being hunted down by Herod and the Obsidian Order.

  More importantly, however, I was afraid of what might happen once the bandits got over their fear of Salome and realized she wasn’t around to protect me and Nimbus or the Codexium again. I still had my multipart quest from the Codex to defeat the bandits, but I didn’t feel strong or ready enough to take them on just yet. Just like with Node Dungeons, I needed to focus on getting stronger so I would not be a liability in battle. But I made sure to keep track of rumors about the bandits, collecting the information from my fellow villagers and adding it to my portable Node’s notes function for future reference.

  All this time training and exploring meant I spent a lot less time on the farm with my family than I used to. This was not entirely unexpected, now that I was a licensed Codexer, but it did mean that I wasn’t around to help with family chores like before. I felt a little guilty about that, but I told myself that this was my best chance at improving prospects for our family, even though I hadn’t earned much money yet.

  And money was the issue that Dad talked with me about more than anything else any time we got a moment to chat. So did Mom, for that matter, but it was easier to distract her with Nimbus than it was with my dad because she liked Nimbus. She thought he was just the most adorable thing she had ever seen and always had a small treat to give him anytime she saw him. Especially once she learned that he liked bananas. After that, she always seemed to have some bananas for him.

  Not at all coincidentally, Mom became Nimbus’s favorite member of my family. I’m sure you can see why. Though I was worried about what Nimbus’s banana addiction would do for our family finances.

  As for my dad and brothers, they had more mixed reactions to Nimbus. Joshua thought Nimbus was cool and fun and always tried to play with him, but Nimbus seemed very averse to playing with Joshua, even though I was sure that Nimbus could take care of himself against a normal non-Codexer human. Moses, my older brother, basically ignored Nimbus most of the time, other than to occasionally call him a dumb rabbit anytime he accidentally got in his way. You might have guessed that Nimbus didn’t care for that very much.

  Dad, on the other hand, had completely changed his tune since I became a licensed Codexer and brought home Nimbus. Though I could sense that he was a bit skeptical about the whole Codexer thing, he finally told me that he was proud of me for completing my trial and even syncing with a Codex Beast.

  Then came the questions about money—questions I still didn’t exactly have answers to, even though making money as a Codexer was one of my primary motivations for becoming a Codexer in the first place. Dad encouraged me to join a Guild because, apparently, Guild members could earn a lot of money, both from being members of a Guild and also from the opportunities that being a Guild member opened up. But North Forest didn’t have any Guilds or even Guild outposts where I could apply for membership. I recalled Miriam encouraging me to join the Node Makers Guild, but again, the nearest Node Makers Guild outpost was all the way in Hebron, and I didn’t have any reliable way of traveling all the way to the capital of the Kingdom just to apply to become a member. Besides, I was still more interested in joining Adventure Calls, so I hoped to do that at some point.

  Sometimes, Codex Quests gave out money. For example, during one Scribbled Quest, I was given 10 shekels directly from the North Forest Node itself. But this was an extremely unusual and rare reward, and Isaac told me that it wasn’t common to get any amount of money from Quests. He did hint that higher-level Quests sometimes gave out gold and other monetary rewards more frequently than lower-leveled ones, but it still didn’t seem like the most reliable way to make a living.

  But as it turned out, the North Forest Node did have a job board that professional Codexers could access to see what kind of jobs or contracts were available to take. This feature was apparently available even to non-Codexers, who could temporarily access a Stationary Node to put up a job for Codexers to complete.

  I eagerly checked the North Forest Node job board to see if anyone in town had set up a job I could take, but to my dismay, the list was short and there weren’t many jobs available. Most of the jobs were not the sort of tasks one would expect you would need a professional Codexer to solve, such as helping with growing crops, dealing with pests, and the like. They paid pretty terribly, too. Isaac claimed that it was rare for a resident from North Forest to add a listing to the job board at all and that all of the ones listed were old and probably no longer relevant. He suggested I filter for ‘active’ jobs versus ‘expired’ jobs, as that was the best way to find the newest and current listings.

  So I did.

  And that was when I saw it.

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