I figure carving a staff with a snake wrapped around it would make a good [Woodworking] project. The result is terrible and looks like neither the cada-whatsit nor the Staff of Misspelling. (The one-snake and two-snakes-with-wings variants. I do not remember which is which.)

“Is that the symbolic staff the nice ghost lady mentioned?” Rowan says. “It looks… uh… good.”

“You don’t need to try to be polite,” I say. “I have [Empathy]. I can see your mood in your aura.”

“So you see emotions?” Rowan asks. “I always thought [Empathy] involved feeling someone else’s emotions.”

“That would be annoying. I have enough trouble with my own emotions, never mind anyone else.”

“Really?” Rowan raises an eyebrow. “You always seem so composed.”

“That would be the Discipline (Composure).” I hold up my shoddy staff. “Wanna help me with [Staffwork] practice until this breaks?”

Rowan acquiesces, so we head outside to train some skills. Mud squishes beneath my feet, but it’s not currently raining. There might be sun peeking through the clouds, if there were a sun. As it is, there’s patches of azure skies between the clouds that are just slightly the wrong shade of blue.

My latest failed attempt at art takes a few whacks from Rowan’s practice sword before it snaps in two. The essence that had gone into the staff as I’d crafted it starts to bleed out of the broken item and dissipate into aether.

How odd. I hold the two pieces of staff together, wishing I were able to manipulate magic outside of my body yet. A repair spell would be cool and useful. As it is, I go back into the workshop and fetch some wood glue to do it the old fashioned way.

Skills increased: Crafting (Woodworking), Blocking (Staffwork), Athletics (Dodging), Survival (Careful Step) Skill acquired: Maintenance (Repair) Description: The ability to repair and maintain items made of hard materials such as wood and metal.

That’s the thing about skills. You can do something over and over and gain very little, while if you keep doing different things, you might see gains immediately. As a [Psychic Child], the system seems to be most generous with experience while doing things to learn things with Clairvoyance rather than merely keeping [Aura Sight] up at all times.

My repairs have injected more essence back into the staff. It’s not enough to replace the essence that was lost after it was broken, but the bleeding has slowed.

“So, how fascinating is that broken stick?” Rowan asks. “I assume you’re using Clairvoyance on it.”

“I was studying the essence flows of broken items and it’s fascinating,” I reply.

“I’ll take your word on it. Did you want me to break it again?”

“Let’s leave it for now,” I say. “That’s enough [Woodworking] for now. I want to make a different healing symbol.”

I grab some paper and colored pencils and try to sketch out that symbol on the side of ambulances, but as I did not regularly look at ambulances, I only vaguely remember what it looked like. That and my [Sketching] skill is still at “precocious toddler” levels. I set that one aside to be recycled before Rowan can say aloud how he feels about it.

I set aside the colored pencils and get some green paint inside, and paint a plus symbol. That one I can’t mess up too badly. (I more associate green with healing than red, but I doubt the Red Cross would care about me violating the Geneva Convention after the heat death of the universe.)

“Is that a healing symbol?” Rowan asks.

“Yep!” I say. “It’s even got life essence in it. Meadow should be able to use something like this for her Iconography, actually. Well, let’s see if it’s enough for me to absorb it into an enhancement skill.”

I start off trying to unlock Enhanced Heart (Rapid Healing), since I understand how to absorb concepts into my body better than the soul. As I work on that, I try to see if I can spot the moment it generates experience, but I don’t see anything. Either I’m doing something wrong, or this symbol is too poor to generate experience, or at least the amount is too low for me to detect.

Skills increased: Crafting (Sketching), Crafting (Painting) Inspiration 0/37

… or that might be why. The Inspiration cost off trying to use all these skills at once is massive. I guess it was time for a skygazing break anyway.

I suppose I should be in no rush. I have plenty of time to practice. It’s not like there’s a war going on outside or anything. I’ve done what I can do.

The problem is that the hot springs are located in the caves near the place where Milo got killed by hostile goblins.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Great, an adventure!” Anise says once I mention it.

Meadow sighs. “Mom’s not going to let me go out without a Heroic escort for a while either. I’m pregnant.”

“Congratulations,” I say. “Who’s the father?”

“Some hunky Talgarth,” Meadow says with a shrug. “I think his name was Brick?”

Anise laughs. “Brock!”

“Right, that. My mom confirmed the pregnancy last night.”

I try to see if I can sense an additional source of vis inside of her, but can’t see past her own aura and I’m not going to stand here staring at my cousin’s midsection for hours.

“Being grounded and pregnant sucks, but good luck!” Anise says.

“I’ll try the symbolic tree suggestion next, if there’s a suitable tree in the village,” I say.

“Oh, yeah,” Meadow says. “The old ash tree beside the Hearth is where a lot of people get their Enhanced Heart (Rapid Healing) unlocked.”

“Great. Which one is the ash tree?”

Meadow sighs. “Should I make you brush up on your Knowledge (Botany)?”

I grumble. “Yeah, good point. I could have just looked that up in the library.”

Rowan declines to watch me read books and meditate, and returns to his own practicing.

I head into the school library. The small room is densely packed with useful reference books with children’s fiction on the lower shelves. I run my fingers along the spines of the books, absently wondering where they all came from and seeing if I can identify the subject matter with [Psychometry] without reading the titles.

Category Object Type Book Race Human Materials Paper, Leather Durability Good Aspect Knowledge

Not the most useful result, but I don’t care to spend all my Inspiration trying to detect it right now as I do have other things to do. The book I’m looking for is pretty obvious, though. The title is Trees of Tempest: Identification and Symbolism and has a green leather cover. It contains exactly what you would expect. I decide to stick it in my [Mental Library] so I don’t have to carry the book around while identifying all the trees in the village. It’s only 37 pages, so it’s not hard to make room for it.

Skills increased: Knowledge (Botany), Enhanced Mind (Mental Library), Clairvoyance (Psychometry)

It also occurs to me that I could have simply analyzed the vis of every tree in the village to see which one has the highest concept of healing, but I wanted to train [Mental Library] anyway.

I go around the village, examining each tree, before finally coming to the big one by the Hearth. Full of healing vis, flowing through the living tree like blood. I sit down with my back against it and gaze up through its leaves.

Stilling my mind enough to meditate is difficult enough for me, but it’s easier if I have something to focus on, like managing the flow between [Celestial Inspiration] and bursts of [Psychometry]. I breathe and try to track the flow of energy around me and through me.

Juniper approaches and sits down next to me with her back to the tree. “I think you’re trying too hard.”

“I have to,” I say. “The system gives no brownie points for being lazy.”

“You can work hard without trying too hard,” Juniper says.

Far be it from me to dispute the reasoning of a small child. “If I start overthinking it, sis, I would wind up trying hard not to try so hard.”

“Maybe just relax,” Juniper says. “It will come.”

I almost wish I’d chosen [Tranquil Child]. But I don’t think I would have been as good at it. ‘Overthinking’ would be my middle name, if people here had middle names and didn’t just have their full names be their village, country of origin, and home system.

What a world I live in that resting under a tree is one of the most important things I’m doing at the moment, for all the weirdest reasons.

“What are you trying to do?” Juniper asks.

“I’m trying to unlock Enhanced Heart (Rapid Healing),” I explain.

Juniper stands up and looks me over. “What’s hurt?”

“Nothing, really,” I say.

“How can you learn to heal if you don’t need to heal anything?” Juniper asks matter-of-factly. “Want me to help? I can make you bleed.”

I can’t help it. I start laughing. Ah, my little Wednesday Addams. I concede her point.

Which also makes me think, how am I going to learn to heal my soul if my soul isn’t hurt? Sanity damage from intrusion of foreign memories might count.

I’ll have to experiment later. Right now, I’m going to let my little sister calmly injure me in the name of skill training.

Skill increased: Discipline (Pain Tolerance) Skill acquired: Enhanced Heart (Rapid Healing) Description: Increases the body’s natural healing speed. Does not cure injuries or conditions that could not heal on their own.

It takes a lot of Inspiration and doesn’t even produce much in the way of a noticable effect, but I’ve got it unlocked. Something else to grind. Probably more important than a lot of the other things I’m grinding from the perspective of not getting killed. Priorities.

I eventually wind up with a headache no amount of Inspiration will dispel and have to stop for now. The skymotes are turning red, at least the ones I can see from here, and we really should head inside anyway as it’s getting cold.

Uncle Hawk shows up in mid April and settles in to tell us what he’s been up to over a hot meal in the Hearth.

“I was grinding the Stadium of Viscera with my party when I got a quest from Corwen saying some goblins had attacked our children in the Hedge Maze. We’ve been investigating Muckburrow since then.”

“Did you kill all the goblins?” Griffin asks excitedly. “Did you bring back any trophies?”

Uncle Hawk laughs. “No, not yet. But we did learn about Muckburrow and came back to gather resources to deal with it.”

“What did you learn?” Aunt Savannah asks.

“Muckburrow’s a dungeon,” Uncle Hawk says. “We got the exploration notification at a gateway leading into a different section of the caves. As the name might imply, it’s a hole in the ground full of mud and ooze. The upper levels look to be populated mostly by slimes and other low level monsters.”

“Oh, I love slimes,” Willow says. “Can you catch me one?”

“I’ll be sure to stuff one in a bottle for you, kid,” Uncle Hawk says with a grin.

“Did you find the goblins themselves?” Aunt Savannah asks.

“We didn’t go far enough in to find an actual Hearth, but they had some lovely skull totems positioned around the dungeon with mostly Elite-level area of effect curses. We stopped to regroup when we ran across Heroic curse totems. We can probably handle it unless there’s somehow a Legendary goblin or monster down there, but we needed to restock and switch our equipment out from being specialized for the Stadium of Viscera.”