The months leading up to the six-year-olds’ class changes are full of anticipation. Since they haven’t received any quests to unlock hidden classes, their available choices will be obvious.
“Drake picked a class to get bonuses all the time,” Willow says. “We should do that too. Pick something we can keep doing as much as possible.”
“I can be sneaky all the time,” Griffin says.
“Can you really?” Willow says. “What if we’re doing something really, really unsneaky?”
“I dunno,” Griffin says. “I don’t have enough levels in Survival to be an [Adventurous Child]. What are you gonna be, June?”
“[Tranquil Child],” Juniper replies tranquilly.
“I guess it’s easy for you to be calm all the time,” Griffin says. “But I don’t have much Discipline either and I’m way too untranquil.”
I still find the vocabulary of these children to be baffling even with the translator. The system helps a lot when it comes to understanding classes and skills.
“You don’t have to share your skills with the class if you don’t want to, Griffin,” Aunt Rosemary says. “But it would help in giving advice.”
“I don’t wanna,” Griffin says.
Anise puts in, “If you want to be an [Adventurous Child], we can head down to the Spooky Grove right now and try and grind you up some skills.”
Griffin shakes his head. “I wanna be a [Sneaky Child].”
“What about you, Willow?” Aunt Rosemary asks.
“I’m… not sure yet,” Willow says. “I wanna be a Wizard or fun stuff like that, but I don’t wanna be a [Scholarly Child] and just read all the time. I want to do stuff.”
“There’s more to being a [Scholarly Child] than reading books,” Aunt Rosemary says. “I was one, once. I went on adventures, too. The key point was both in bringing books along and having someone lecturing and teaching along the way.”
Aunt Rosemary pauses and glances at Anise, who is sitting in the corner of the classroom waving her hands around in what I assume is an attempt at Thaumaturgy practice, but she hasn’t gotten anything to happen yet.
“And if that were the path you want to take, it might be best if I were to go with you,” Aunt Rosemary says with a sigh.
“I wish I could do magic already,” Willow whines.
“Well, soon you will be able to learn enhancement skills,” Aunt Rosemary says. “Those are just a different sort of magic.”
“I want to wave my hands and make storms and lightning and thunder!” Willow says.
“Any path you choose will get you there if that is where you want to go,” Aunt Rosemary says. “May I ask what your skill levels are?”
Willow looks about the room and leans over to whisper them in her ear.
Meanwhile, I’m over here trying to plan out my future party. I suppose I won’t need to walk into a tavern somewhere and recruit three to five strangers if my sister and cousins are eager to go delving. I’m thinking about trying to make some equipment for us, too. Or really, I’m thinking about trying to get good enough at crafting to make some equipment for us that isn’t worse than something laying around collecting dust in our storerooms.
A skyship arrives mid-January, dropping off an uncle I’ve rarely seen and don’t recall the name of off the top of my head. His eyes are completely milky white and his dark brown hair touched with gray.
“Yew!” says Aunt Rosemary, going up to hug him as he turns toward the voice. “What happened?”
(Fortunately, the name ‘Yew’ sounds nothing like the Common word for ‘you’, and I’m still using subtitles anyway.)
“Hi Mom,” Yew says, shifting his staff so he can hug her back. “I got hit with a blindness curse in a dungeon in Hush. We couldn’t find a way to reverse it so I decided to come home and retire from adventuring. I’m about to turn 42 and haven’t even reached Heroic.”
“Oh, my sweet son, you are always welcome in the Hearth,” Aunt Rosemary says. “We can help prepare you for whatever sort of class you want to get when you turn 42 and try to find a way to lift that curse.”
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I spend the interim period working hard on practicing my skills. For the most part, this entails crafting while using various Clairvoyance skills and taking breaks to look out a window or go outside if it’s not raining. I manage to get in a level or two in several skills from sewing a bunch of napkins and helping out in the kitchen.
Skills increased: Discipline (Long-Term Planning), Crafting (Tailoring), Crafting (Cooking), Crafting (Brewing), Maintenance (Cleaning), Clairvoyance (Empathy), Enhanced Hands (Mass Production) Enhanced Soul (Fractal Consciousness), Enhanced Senses (Celestial Inspiration), Language (Common)
Ah, the sweet sound of numbers going up. (There is no sound. There’s an option to have skill gains make an audible ‘ding!’ in your head but I do not feel the need to enable it.)
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Soon enough, the 3rd of March arrives, and with it comes the twins’ naming day. As a major milestone for two of the Hearth’s members, there’s a bigger party than usual with twice the normal amount of cake.
A couple of uncles have hung up a banner Juniper drew that reads in colorful letters, ‘SNEAKY CHILD!’ She’s busily working on another one that reads ‘PERCEPTIVE CHILD!’
“It’s not very sneaky if you make a big sign!” Griffin protests.
“You can just hide it from everyone outside the Hearth,” I say with a chuckle.
“I didn’t know what class Willow was going to be so I didn’t have her banner ready yet,” Juniper says.
“That’s okay,” Willow says. “I didn’t know what class I was going to be either.”
“[Perceptive Child], huh?” I say. “You’re going to find all sorts of things!”
Willow grins. “I hope so!”
Gifts abound, and soon the twins are the proud owners of a host of new clothes, toys, and adventuring equipment. Corwens are the sort of people who think seven years old is the appropriate age to give a boy a knife.
“Novice adventurers need to be sharp!” Uncle Falcon says with a grin.
“And have someone around capable of healing cuts…” Aunt Hazel says, sighing. “I suppose it was too much to hope for that even one of my children would stay in the village where it’s safe and help take care of the Hearth.”
“Adventurers are important too,” Uncle Falcon says. “The village wouldn’t be safe if we weren’t going out and culling monsters and gathering resources.”
“I know, but that doesn’t mean I have to be happy about my precious babies having to go out and take risks,” Aunt Hazel says.
“Oh, live a little, sis!” Anise says, stumbling by with a glass of cider. She looks like she should be falling over but is very obviously using [Uncanny Balance] to stay upright.
“Are you drunk already, Anise?” Aunt Hazel says, sighing even more heavily.
“Live a liiiitle!” Anise repeats, sloshing her glass in front of her twin. “Go on!”
“It’s not even yellow yet. Go on yourself.”
The party peters out after a while as people do still have work to do, but the banners stay up the rest of the day and there’s fresh apple cakes after dinner. We don’t blow out candles here (or indeed have much use for them outside of Invocation), but the cakes have been decorated with the childrens’ names and the number 7. I hope one of the Hearthkeepers leveled up making these because they’re amazing.
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For Juniper’s naming day, I make the banner this time because it seems silly for the name day girl to have to make her own party decorations. My little sister is now a [Tranquil Child] just as she’d hoped.
Juniper could not be more different from the sister I had in my first life. Annie was an ball of energy and charisma who could make friends just by walking in a room. Juniper isn’t really a wallflower in that she doesn’t cling to the walls and avoid conversation, but she’s quiet and doesn’t try to be the center of attention even when it’s her own naming day. She’s not averse to the attention or uncomfortable with it. (I can tell, I have psychic powers.) She just doesn’t seem to feel the need to seek it out or go out of her way to draw attention to herself.
After breakfast, we drag a bunch of spare mattresses, blankets, and pillows into a room and are using it as a training room. And by “spare” I mean people are now annoyed at us for doing so but willing to let us use their bedding for the purposes of skill training so long as we make sure they’re clean and back on their beds before red.
“Who would have thought that the best way to train Enhanced Feet (Soft Landing) is to jump on a feather bed over and over?” Anise comments in between jumps.
“ ‘Who’ would be one Verbena Corwen, who left the note in the book recommending feather beds,” I say bouncily. “And it’s not just jumping. It’s jumping while absorbing the concept of softness.”
“Oh, whatever,” Anise says, flopping down onto the soft pile. “Well, in that case… Pillow fight!”
Griffin squeals as a fluffy melee ensues. Willow laughs and grabs a blanket to use as a shield. Juniper stoically ambushes Griffin with a pillow. For my part, I continue trying to make softness a part of myself.
Skills increased: Enhanced Feet (Soft Landing), Athletics (Jumping) Skill acquired: Enhanced Muscles (Soften Blow) Description: You may choose to do nonlethal damage with any weapon to disable rather than harm. The amount of damage that can be negated depends upon level.
I’d been intending on putting softness into my feet and not my muscles, but that skill could be useful too.
Griffin tumbles over and smacks into a wall with a snap. The battle royale of softness immediately halts. I look over in concern as a dark liquid seeps onto a pillow under him, but it’s black rather than red.
“Oh, man,” Griffin says, fishing the pieces of a leaking broken pen out of his pocket. “I totally forgot that was in there.”
“You are in so much trouble,” Willow says.
“Isn’t that Lily’s?” Anise asks, examining the ex-pen.
Griffin nods dejectedly. “I was trying to practice being a [Sneaky Child] and was borrowing stuff and putting it back. I guess I forgot the putting it back part.”
“Let’s try and clean up and tell Lily we broke her pen,” I say.
“What do you mean ‘we’?” Willow says. “It’s Griffin’s fault!”
“We should’ve double-checked that no one had anything breakable in their pockets before roughhousing like that,” I say.
“Right, let’s listen to our adult chaperone,” my mom says with a grin.
We clean up as best as we can and locate Lily in the guest house with Basil, Burdock, and a man and woman I don’t recognize dressed in brown traveling clothes. A quick scan of their auras identifies them as Elite ranked adventurers, a Paladin and a Bard. I’m guessing they left whatever equipment they have in their rooms.
“Um…” Griffin says awkwardly, approaching them. He puts the remains of the pen on the table and says in a rush, “Aunt Lily, I’m sorry I broke your pen!”
Lily sighs as she looks at the shards. “I was wondering where that went. I liked that pen, too.”
“I can… get you another one?” Griffin offers hesitantly.
“I found that in the Great Library dungeon on Crux,” Lily says. “No one’s going to let you visit Crux yet, but there’s other dungeons that drop pens sometimes.”
“Or you can just buy one,” says the Paladin. “It’s just a pen, after all.”
“But that wouldn’t be much of a Deed,” says the Bard.
“He’s entirely too young to be chasing Deeds,” says the Paladin. “But Corwens are a strange lot. I can’t believe the ancient Corwens subjugated multiple dungeons just to entertain children.”
“Early training does have its benefits,” Lily says. “I’ll have to look up which dungeons in Tempest both might drop pens and are low Basic rank suitable for small children, if you’re game to try.”
Griffin nods eagerly. “I’ll try!” He pauses and looks back toward me and Anise hopefully. “I can try, right?”
“Of course,” Anise says. “We’ll have to go pick up Rowan from Talgarth first but it’s high time we got adventuring.”