Hogg didn’t like the idea of hunting monsters on their very first night out of town, but he promised to find a way to make it work sometime during their trip.
“That’s actually how I always planned on getting you your first levels, by fighting isolated monsters under direct supervision. Fighting a war against the undead and assassinating [Witches] wasn’t exactly my first choice for you.”
“Assassinating? That was in self-defense.” Brin looked both directions, checking if anyone was listening. Everyone was finishing up supper and chatting happily, and no one seemed to be interested in him and Hogg. It also wasn’t like Brin killing [Witches] was a secret or something to be ashamed of.
“So how is it going to work? I hadn’t really thought about how I would actually find the monsters. Will you be coming with us?”
“I should stay and protect the caravan. We’re actually traveling for free on account of me being a high level [Warrior].”
Brin snorted. “So we’re back to that?”
Hogg just shrugged.
Brin didn’t have to ask. Hogg told people he was a [Warrior] because he wanted everyone to think that he was a [Rogue] with some kind of shadow magic. He didn’t actually know if that was really necessary any more; after all, knowing that he was a [Conjurer of Hard Light] wouldn’t actually help you defend against it. If he had to guess, he’d say it was just that he’d spent his entire life hiding his Class and old habits die hard. But it was Hogg’s secret to tell.
There was still the question of how he’d find the monsters, and this wasn’t the place to ask about it, not until he knew how much of Hogg’s abilities he wanted to keep secret.
Pio sat down to start eating, one of the very last to get his meal. Brin moved over to sit next to him.
“Hey, I’m really sorry about today. It won’t happen again.”
“Bah!” said Pio, which Brin took as full and complete forgiveness.
“Cool, so I meant to ask. When Kevim got back to town he was talking about a ‘Migratory Disarrangement Chain’. Do you know what he meant by that?”
“[Hunters].” Pio shook his head dismissively. “They need big words for simple things.”
“It’s not simple for everyone. You have a whole Class built around understanding beasts,” said Brin.
“Yes, that’s an excellent point!” said Zerif, who appeared like a friendly ghost from who knows where. “Why don’t you explain it to the lad. And perhaps use your outdoor voice?” He gestured around to the other members of the caravan, many of whom were showing sudden interest.
Pio growled in annoyance, but couldn’t refuse an order from the [Caravan Leader]. He set his stew down on the trunk he was sitting on and stood up. “You’ve heard all this before, but let’s do it again, yes? Something made a large group of monsters and animals move all at once, and now we know what it was. Army of undead. So all the living things of the forest want to leave. Monsters, animals, birds, even bugs all move at the same time. So what happens? Let’s say a troll leaves his burrow. He finds a nice new cave to move into, but this cave is a Spinewolf den. Now Spinewolves must find somewhere new to live! They go live in a forest where Giant Spiders live. The Spiders need to go somewhere new. Now think of that happening a hundred times. A thousand times, in a thousand places. Monsters scurry around everywhere! It used to be, monsters stay away from the roads. Only now, they don’t know where roads are. They don’t know to stay away. So! What do we do? We keep our eyes sharp, always moving. We stay with the caravan. We do not poop alone. You think I like to watch? I don’t. It’s for safety. We do not open food that may attract monsters outside of mealtimes. Yes? You all know this. Oh, and one more. We do not use Skills to lure monsters to attack the wagons!”
At that last sentence, Pio threw a nasty glare at Brin.
He opened his eyes wide in shock. “I thought you’d forgotten all about that!”
Zerif laughed. “Yes, excellent. Thank you, Pio.”
Pio grunted and sat back down to finish his meal.
After dinner, Jeffrey took up his lute. He played a few simple songs, without any of the overwhelming emotional power that normally came along with his music. It was ambience music more than anything. Davi joined him and they sang a duet, though even then the music didn’t have any magic behind it. It was just pleasant music, which had a magic all its own.
They called Brin in to play the bassline of the next song, which he barely managed. He didn’t know the song after that, but Jeffrey took the time to teach it to him. After that they played it several times in a row, so that he’d get it memorized.
On the second play-through a woman started dancing. Brin was surprised when [Inspect] called her Mumeli the [Dancer]. Seemed like dancing wasn’t enough to make a whole Class out of, but if it was half as good as [Bard] he could see the appeal. She swayed her hips slowly to the beat, and while she was distracting enough that he had to look away in order to be able to keep playing, it was also clear that like Jeffrey, she was definitely restraining the bulk of her ability. He couldn’t help but wonder what Mumeli would be capable of if she put her back into it, so to speak.
The others of the caravan chatted happily, sipped on wine, or clapped in time to the beat. It was a laid-back party atmosphere, and he wondered if they did this every night. They reminded him of gypsies, to be honest. Cool Hollywood gypsies, not whatever the real world equivalent was in Europe.
All the practice gave him a notification.
Through training, you have increased the following attribute: Mental Control +1
Hogg gave him a bedroll and a blanket to sleep with, and he found a spot in camp away from the loudest snorers to hunker down. He’d never had trouble with sleeping bags on the ground while camping in his old life, so he didn’t expect to have difficulty here with his much-higher Vitality. If he was still having nightmares that would be one thing, but–
He’d just jinxed himself, hadn’t he? He ignored the thought and quieted his mind, and drifted off to sleep.
When he did, [Know What’s Real] informed him that he had, in fact, jinxed himself. He was in a dream.
This one didn’t seem to be a nightmare, though. There was no terror or pain, but it was a little bizarre.
He found a big puppy in the forest, and when he went to pet him, it bit him. But then, it wasn’t a puppy at all, it was a cherry bear. He’d never seen one before, but his imagination filled in the details. A huge, hulking creature with patchy fur and red growths all over its body. The growths were so round, shiny and cherry-red that he couldn’t help but think of plucking one and tasting it.
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“Oh no, I don’t have the cure,” said Brin, but it was dream-Brin, not his own conscious thoughts.
Lumina arrived and picked him up. “There’s another cure.”
She carried him into a cookpot over an open fire and dumped him inside. She stirred him around with a big wooden spoon.
Through all this, he never felt any kind of worry or fear. “Why aren’t I cooking?”
“Your [Heat Resistance] will protect you,” said Lumina, her face masked by her big red hat.
He didn’t remember anything after that. When he woke up, it was morning when everyone else was waking up, and the details of his dream blurred so much in his mind that he hardly remembered it, and had to use [Memories in Glass] to get the details back. Even after doing so, he didn’t find anything alarming. His long stretch of nightmares might finally be over.
They ate a quick breakfast and he helped pack up camp and get everything ready. Then they were on the road. In his old world, it would’ve felt like a lot of work, but compared to what he usually put himself through, it was all very light. It was sort of disappointing, actually. He didn’t have the time to do his regular workout, and walking while scanning the forest didn’t leave him any opportunities to practice his Skills. The walking wasn’t even enough for [Athleticism].
Was he really going to just write off all this time for gaining any kind of experience? Did the fact that he was thinking along these lines mean that he was too far gone? He’d promised himself that he would take it easy after System Day, and that hadn’t happened yet.
Maybe he should just enjoy the ride? Well, yeah, he would do that. But there had to be something he could do to get levels.
Maybe he could practice his illusion magic? He didn’t think light would be a good choice, but he’d barely touched sound. Outside of making silence or deafening bomb sounds, there wasn’t a lot he could do with it yet.
First, he put a sphere of silence around his head and immediately the sounds of creaking wheels and forest birds disappeared. Next all he had to do was make sound inside the sphere and he could practice his magic in a small area where only he could hear it. Simple.
He cast [Call Sound through Glass] to make a quiet tone inside his sphere, and heard nothing. He wasn’t quite sure why, so he increased the volume, but still nothing. What was going on? Oh. He was summoning the sound through the glass ring on his finger. The second stream of sound magic was getting blocked by the first.
He’d gotten so used to his magic that the “through glass” limitation hardly ever bothered him anymore. He could project light pretty much anywhere nearby that he could see without even thinking about it any more, but he’d had much less practice with sound.
To solve it, he quickly summoned a little glass earplug, and used it to channel the sound magic. First the sphere of silence, and then a little sound inside it.
It made a long beep like a microwave. Ok, that was a start. He practiced various pitches, and then tried to change the sound of the music, and found it was easy to hit the notes he wanted. After a few minutes of practicing, he was able to get all the notes for the Tetris theme. Putting them together into a song was a lot harder.
Making the sound magic while also concentrating on keeping the sphere of silence in place was tricky; he had to concentrate on two things at once. Also, changing the pitch of his beeps on the fly wasn’t intuitive. It was exactly like learning an instrument; he’d need to get better by practice.
He started playing it slowly, maybe ten times slower than the regular speed, concentrating only on getting the right notes in place.
Someone ran past him.
Brin immediately dropped the sound magic, just in time to hear the whistle calling the wagon train to halt. People were shouting. Something was going on, and he’d missed the original noise that had alarmed everyone. There were no monsters or anything out of the ordinary nearby, so he headed towards the sound of shouting.
He found a crowd surrounding Pio. He had one fist covered in blood, and stood over the corpse of a squat ape-like creature. Maybe four and a half feet tall if it were standing. Its nose and mouth jutted forward, with brutal teeth that pointed every direction.
From the looks of things, Pio had killed it with his bare fists. No, just one. He’d broken its head open with one punch.
Brin used [Inspect].
Swamp Goblin (deceased) Level 12
Looking closer, it had short glossy hair, more like an otter or a beaver than a gorilla. Before he could ask about Swamp Goblins or what other kinds of goblins existed, Pio started yelling. “That’s enough looking! Get back to moving!”
“If there’s one of those there’s going to be more!” shouted one brave [Merchant].
“We’ll kill what comes. No problem. Get back and spread out. Eyes on the forest!” Pio picked up the dead goblin with one hand, seemed to consider it for a moment, and then threw it deep into the trees. Apparently there wasn’t any part of that body that they could use.
“Go on!” Pio shouted, and Brin moved away. He didn’t really have an assigned spot, so he went to the front of the wagon train. He found Hogg sitting next to Zerif in the lead wagon.
Zerif seemed completely at ease. His seat reclined back like a modern car, and he laid back with his head resting on his hands. Hogg just looked bored.
“Hey, tell me about goblins!” Brin said.
“Little furry guys. Not that dangerous. You rarely see them hit high levels. It’s a little weird that this one approached the wagon train. Usually they’re cowards,” said Hogg.
“This one [Inspected] as Swamp Goblin. Does that mean there are other kinds?”
“Yes, my young friend!” Zerif said. “The world is vast and there is no end to the variety of creatures that inhabit it. I’ve seen so many wild breeds of goblin that one must wonder if they are really related. I think that any time someone finds a smallish monster that walks on two legs, they call it a goblin regardless of whether or not it’s truly related to all the others.”
“You’ve seen others? Like what?”
“Here in Frenaria, you’ll find Forest Goblins with much coarser fur and shorter snouts. The Plains Goblins of Prinnash are very different. They are spotted yellow with long legs and no fur at all. In Olland, I saw Snow Goblins, which they call Duine. These were white of fur, and had faces much more like men, though all covered in hair.”
Brin realized he had a word for gorilla, so he asked. “What’s the difference between a goblin and a gorilla?”
Hogg answered. “Goblins can use tools and speak a dozen or so words. You’ll usually see them with clubs or spears.”
“So is it weird that this one didn’t have a weapon?” asked Brin.
“Yes. It attacked a caravan alone without a weapon, and that’s two attacks in two days. All of this is really… weird,” said Hogg.
“Oh, it’s not so strange as that,” said Zerif, waving a hand dismissively. “Sometimes a year goes by and nothing happens. Sometimes, many things happen all at once. Such is life.”
Brin wandered back by himself after that and continued his work on illusions. This time, he made his sphere of silence only envelop the ear with the earplug, keeping his other ear free. He hadn’t gotten into trouble this time, but it had been a really stupid idea to block all of his hearing.
He thought about using [Directed Meditation] to help him focus, but that would be just as bad as being deaf. When he used that Skill, he focused on one thing to the complete exclusion of everything else.
He continued to work on the Tetris theme throughout the day. The biggest thing he learned was how much he wanted [Split Focus]. Working on making music while also keeping the silence effect up was extremely taxing. Adding another note to his music so that he could play chords just wasn’t going to happen, not as he was now. He’d also settle for [Persistent Casting], that would let him summon an illusion and then set it in place, with no additional effort to keep it going.
The System didn’t give him a level, so he wasn’t any closer to those Skills, but it also wasn’t stingy.
Through training you have increased the following attribute: Mental Control +1
Call Sound through Glass 21 -> 22
When the sun was near setting, Brin’s head was pounding so he gave himself a break. They would call the caravan to halt and serve dinner any minute now, and he was ready for it.
He heard a noise. “Psst!”
He saw a little black snake on the ground, inching towards him. It was monochrome shadow black.
“Hey, pick me up!” the snake whispered.
Hogg? He’d forgotten that Hogg had only lost his light magic from [Illusionist]. He could still project sound.
Brin hesitated, then picked it up.
Hogg whispered. “I found something for you to kill. You can head out tonight after we set up.”