Chapter 4: Fire Juggler

Thomas carefully drove through town. The traffic lights were still working, and no one was Mad Maxing down the street. At least not yet.

It had been a week to the day since the system integration announcement, and things were… weird. Thomas more than half expected everything to immediately fall apart, but it turned out society had a lot of inertia. There were a significant number of people who straight-up disbelieved anything too outlandish. And there was an even larger segment that took comfort in the familiar, thinking that if they just went to work and paid their bills, they’d be shielded from all the nonsense.

Maybe they were wrong. Maybe they weren’t.

From the slightly desperate-toned propaganda that had been put out, the government was working hard to make sure that monster breaks weren’t a thing and wouldn’t be impacting citizens’ lives. (So calm down and continue to pay taxes, pretty please.)

The president himself had come on all public broadcasts and said he was enacting martial law to freeze prices and inflation so there was no price gouging. Thomas didn’t actually think that was legal, but all of Congress went with it, so whatever.

From what had been leaked over the last few weeks, a significant portion of senators and long-running state representatives had been dipping into dungeons on the sly, so it was in their best interest to make sure everything stayed status quo. Apparently, other countries were the same. The rich and well-connected had known this was coming for decades.

All this was to say that as Thomas drove, his mind on the dungeon and his miraculous healing with part of his attention on the roadway, he was taken by surprise by a flash of fire out of the corner of his eye.

Lots of green spaces had been created between the roadway and the lake. The lawns were empty because the tourists were mostly gone. But there, standing in front of a knot of admirers, was a juggler.

A juggler who was juggling live fire.

This was a major tourist town, so it wasn’t rare for people to busk for money until they were hustled out by the police. The fire thing was new, though.

Thomas hit a red light, so he was free to watch for a few moments.

The man, shirtless in his early twenties, seemed to know what he was doing, throwing up flame ball after flame ball and catching them with ease. The thing was, he wasn’t juggling flaming bowling pins or alcohol-soaked balls while wearing gloves. He was juggling fire with his bare hands.

This dude was doing magic.

The second the light turned green, Thomas slapped on the turn signal and glided his car to a stop alongside the road. Normally, this time of year, there’d be no shot of getting a spot, but right now it was locals only.

He grabbed his backpack—leaving the maul in the back seat—and headed over.

As he got closer, he heard the crackling of flames and felt a touch of heat in the lake-cooled air. Yep, definitely not an illusion. It was real fire.

The juggler was having a casual conversation with a pretty lady as he went through his schtick, making her laugh and then pretending to fumble the fire before “recovering” just in time to continue the act. Then, with a wink to show he had everything under control, he added another ball of flame, and another. Now there were five in total. He tossed them up and caught them just as easily as any skilled professional.

Finally, for his last trick, he somehow made them all different colors—blue, red, yellow, regular flame, and one purple—tossing them up in a round kaleidoscope. It was honestly stunning.

Then, one by one, he let them drop into his palm, and they all poofed out of existence.

“And that’s all, folks,” he said. “I’m out of mana for the rest of the day.”

Then he meaningfully looked at the bucket by his feet, which already had a few dollars in it.

He got a few claps, and people dropped in tips. A few lingered to talk to him.

“That’s a skill, right?” one man asked, jutting out his chin.

“I’m all skill,” the juggler replied easily.

The guy asking huffed. “Yeah, but where did you get it from?”

The juggler didn’t blink. He just smiled. Obviously, he wasn’t going to answer.

“C’mon, man. It’s no secret. Drops like that are super rare anyway,” the man wheedled.

Finally, the woman he was with stepped in, grabbing his arm to tug him away. “Don’t hassle him, babe.”

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The man scoffed and shot a poisonous glare at the juggler. “It’s nothing special. I’ve seen skill drops on YouTube. Anyone can do something like this once they get the right skill.” He stomped off.

“Sorry about him,” the woman said sheepishly, then walked away to join her—hopefully boyfriend, not husband.

Unruffled, the juggler looked at Thomas, clearly wondering if he had a question too.

Thomas glanced around to ensure no one was close enough to overhear him. Seeing the crowd had dispersed, he said, “Was that true, that you ran out of mana?”

“Yeah, bro.” The juggler had a stereotypical surfer dude accent. “That’s the drawback to all this. I’m literally burning money when I juggle, at least until I get more from a dungeon.”

Bingo. Thomas practically heard a cash register cha-ching in his mind. But how to do this?

Act casual, he told himself.

“So, uh, are you looking for… y’know, stuff?”

“Nope,” the juggler said. “I got my own green, dude. All my dollars are going into mana.”