Having exchanged Grubwick’s surplus mushrooms for wool, we return to Corwen to give them a chance to figure out how to unlock skills for textiles and agriculture themselves. Milo has explained to them the basics, but it’s up to them now to take the next steps themselves.

In the meantime, I take the opportunity for some downtime to read every book in the village and attend a few lectures. Even if they’re only covering topics I should already “know”, I can’t guarantee everything is the same as what I think I know, and it will be helpful to unlock Knowledge skills to influence my later class choices.

Skill acquired: Knowledge (Agriculture)

Corwen, being a rural village, is involved in a lot of farming, although in our case it’s primarily apple orchards. Other nearby villages have their own specialties and trade regularly. Knowing a little about farming myself may prove helpful in getting the goblins up to speed.

The school is also full of maps and even an orrery of the Tiganna system comprised of round discs on curved struts around a magitech lightbulb representing the skymote. These I pore over and familiarize myself with at least the region of Tempest I’m in.

Skill acquired: Knowledge (Geography)

I always loved maps, and if I’m going to be doing much traveling in the future, having a better grasp on geography will be invaluable. And the floating islands, called “domains”, are fascinating. One or another of the books in here, or somewhere at least, must have an explanation as to how the physics of it works. I mean, magic, I assume, but “magic” is as lazy of an answer as “science” is. If a kid back on Earth were to ask me why the sky is blue and I replied “science”, that would be technically correct and also completely useless.

Anise spends some time away from the village, and the other adults won’t let me play with sharp objects, reincarnator or no. Fine, no more woodworking practice for me for a while. I already unlocked the skill, at least. They’re perfectly happy to encourage me to take up finger painting, though, and sit my adopted sister and twin baby cousins along with me.

The babies produce some fine examples of abstract art. Finger painting winds up being pretty fun and I make a few crude pictures of things from Earth that make no sense to them.

Skill acquired: Crafting (Painting)

“Why is the sky all azure, with only one yellow skymote?” wonders the resident nosy busybody. “You painted it wrong.”

“Oh, give him a break, Bell,” Aunt Rosemary says. “He has an excellent imagination! Why don’t you go back to your own Hearth if you don’t like how we raise our children here?”

Bell grumbles unhappily and shuts up before she says anything that will convince the Corwens to throw her and her brat of an 8-year-old out.

I do some charcoal sketches as well. I wish I’d come here sooner. There’s plenty of arts and crafts supplies I could have been playing around with. Ah, well, I don’t think exploring the Hearth was a waste of time. Thinking back on another life in a peaceful time, I draw a sketch of a woman whose face is ingrained in my memories.

“Your wife?” Milo asks.

“My sister,” I say. “I never married. She did, though. I had a gaggle of grand-nieces and nephews.”

“She’s pretty. Or at least I assume she would be if you had actually unlocked Crafting (Sketching) yet. I don’t think her nose was actually that long and pointed unless you invented mutants in the future, too.”

I snicker. “No, I’m just bad at this. Just gotta keep at it until the system acknowledges my efforts, I suppose.”

“Pretty sure you’re actually supposed to learn how to do it properly and not just do it wrong over and over,” Milo says with a smirk.

I wind up having to do seventeen bad sketches before getting the notification after one that you might just be able to pick out of a police lineup. I think I really captured Annie’s coy smirk that time. The sort of smirk that says, “Yeah, I totally did it, but you have no evidence and I know it.”

Skill acquired: Crafting (Sketching)

Next, I find a pencil and start drawing a diagram of a bridge. I love bridges and wish I’d ever gotten to actually design one. It only takes lovingly-detailed drawings of three different types of bridges for this skill to pop up in my third eye.

Skill acquired: Crafting (Drafting)

There’s a few considerations I’m unable to account for yet, such as the gravity of the domains and the properties of available materials. Gravity feels normal to me, but I’ve never felt anything different for the entirety of this life, so if it’s different from Earth it’s probably by a negligible amount. As for materials, that will require more research. Corwen is a family of adventurers, not builders. A bit of a secondary consideration when you live next to a crystalline alien that can reshape matter at will.

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

I also make sure to learn some more adventuring skills. Just because I don’t want to make a life through violence doesn’t mean I don’t want to go exploring. There will be dangerous creatures, that much is inevitable with the way this world works. However, I need to be able to avoid being instantly killed by them long enough for someone else to deal with them, preferably. Every level of a combat skill means I’m more likely to get funneled into combat classes.

I’ll see about unlocking some important exploration skills. I’ve already got Athletics (Climbing), Athletics (Jumping), and Survival (Hiking), which is an excellent start. Next up, I feel that it’s important to learn to swim. The village has an artificial pond inside the walls, and a small lake outside. The pond is more of a swimming pool that’s pretending to be a natural feature than anything I’d be afraid of getting diseases or parasites from, and is an excellent place to learn to swim.

Burdock (and Mipsy), Meadow, and Daisy join me for the occasion. Daisy brings along a pocket spellbook to test simple spells outdoors.

“As I’m still a [Scholarly Child] until I turn 14 next January, I get bonuses to using a spellbook rather than a staff, talisman, or whatever,” Daisy explains. “Don’t worry. It’s waterproof.”

“Did you make that yourself?” I ask.

Daisy shakes her head. “No, it’s one of the standard training books. I’ll make myself a proper customized spellbook later at school.”

“Alright, don’t be scared now,” Meadow tells me encouragingly as I approach the water. “I’ll pull you right out if you mess up.”

“I am mentally an adult, you know,” I say.

Meadow grins. “Even adults can panic and do stupid things under unfamiliar conditions. You wouldn’t believe how I’ve had to babysit aunts and uncles twice to three times my age when traveling in the wilds.”

I dip a toe in the water, finding it to be just as cold as I’d imagined. There’s a Survival (Cold Resistance) skill, but I imagine I will need to do more to unlock it than take a dip in a pool in May, sadly. From the notes I read, resistance skills are very useful but a nightmare to train without high Willpower, and my Willpower is… below average. The average adult has 20 in all attributes, if they’ve done a moderate amount of training in each area. Mine is 16 and has not changed since I was named.

I settle in to become comfortable in the chilly water before starting trying to lift my legs and tread water. While my other stats have not changed, my Strength and Endurance have each gone up a point and are now 3. I’ve been doing a good deal more exercise than the average toddler.

“Did you get it yet?” Meadow asks.

“No,” I say.

“Aw, I was so sure you’d get it in five minutes!” Meadow says. “You’re the super reincarnator who learns things after only doing them once, aren’t you?”

“I recall learning how to swim and then proceeding to avoid any reason why I should ever be in water deeper than my waist,” I say.

I flail about a little in the water, slowly gaining more confidence with Meadow’s support and despite Daisy’s distractions. With the help of her little magic book, she causes ripples in the pond.

“Daisy, I’m not sure if this is helping,” I say, laughing and splashing water in her general direction, but she is safely out of reach on dry land and my arms are very short.

I don’t actually get the skill unlocked until I manage to swim across the little pool unaided. Meadow watches me like a hawk (or maybe an osprey) the whole way, ready to dive in and heroically rescue me.

Skill acquired: Athletics (Swimming)

I let out a whoop as my hands touch the fake-natural rocks at the far side of the pond and receive the message. “Got it!” I cry. “Now I’m going to get out of this water and dry off and go read.”

Meadow laughs. “If your Stamina meter is low, go ahead and take a short rest.”

Daisy’s book glows, and a tiny splash of water splashes on me. “At least stay until I get my skill too! I’d like to get back inside, myself, but I can’t practice [Water Manipulation] indoors. Aunt Myrtle already kicked me out of the hearth and said to go play in the sun with my friends.”

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Milo has been spending the time I’ve been training making contact with a couple more goblin villages in the area. One of them runs his party out of the area and refuses to have anything to do with humans or “goblin traitors”. I suppose it would have been too much to ask for every contact to go smoothly. At least no one is hurt.

The third village goes a little better. They aren’t interested in trade but agree not to raid humans, as they aren’t very interested in raiding anyway. Having more people being neutral instead of enemies is still a good thing.

It takes a few weeks for Milo to get that first point in Common. (Not that I’ve gotten any additional points in Common, myself, and I don’t seem to have any trouble understanding it regardless. I have no idea how this works.)

“Finally!” Milo says. “Language (Common) is now mine! I’ve only attempted to hold a conversation with literally everyone in the village! And you’re right. Now it sounds like everyone is just speaking English to me. Before it was as though they were speaking, I don’t know, Welsh or something. So peculiar.”

“I’m probably going to need to talk to more goblins for mine to unlock,” I say. “When’s the next trip?”

“Next week! You coming along this time?”

“Sure,” I say. “I’ve unlocked some very important skills in the meantime.”

“You mean the finger painting?” Milo asks.

“I mean I can now draw technical diagrams,” I say. “And hopefully teach your goblins how to read them.” I pull out the bridge drawings I did. “We’re going to build a bridge.”

“And they’ll be able to access the resources on the other side of the river more easily!” Milo’s face figuratively lights up. “Brilliant! That river is full of deadly carp. You can’t swim across it.”

“Deadly carp, of course,” I say flatly. “I would feel better about this if we could build a stone or wooden bridge, but we haven’t unlocked [Masonry] or [Carpentry] yet. I was hoping making that board game would count, but I got [Woodworking] instead. Not quite the same thing. Wool, even devil-goat wool, probably isn’t the best choice for rope but will likely work. Then we just need some planks of some sort that will hopefully not break and dump you into dangerous, carp-infested waters.”

“I am suddenly less enthusiastic about building this bridge. I think teaching my goblins masonry would be a much better idea. Especially if they’re going to use this bridge to gather resources.”

“Fair point,” I say. “Time enough to read some books on the topic, I suppose. And you should be able to read now, too!”