Camilla sighed in exasperation as she walked into the ditch in the bark and wood of the fallen spire they had claimed as their home. It had been three weeks since Oliver found her in the fallen sea, a stupid name, but the only one they had. All logic would dictate that she was prepared for his fooling around by now, even if she was surprised by it initially due to the two of them being strangers in a dangerous mushroom forest. Common sense would say that they would be wary of each other at the beginning of their journey, before she could earn his trust and establish herself as the leader of their group. Of course, Oliver was anything but common, and with his instant trust in her came both complications and opportunities.
On one hand, it was more difficult to establish herself as the leader of their group due to him seeing her as a friend and nothing less or more than that. On the other hand, it let her control the situation they found themselves in so long as her goals never came into conflict with his need to do good when the opportunity presented itself.
One other positive she had to admit was that it was quite fun to be around him, even in the apocalypse.
Such occasions where she could not help but appreciate his charismatic personality were quite common, as he was often delegated to foraging and staying still due to his injuries. He of course spent said time either practising his mana skills or coming up with bits and other ways to entertain himself.
One such bit was clearly moments from commencing if his position at the mushroom which grew from the side of their chasms wall into a table was any indication. The ditch had been filled with such shrooms when they initially found this rift in the bark, and Oliver had immediately suggested that they hollow it out to make a home for themselves. She had then realized that maybe it would be prudent to leave most of the mushrooms at the top of the trench be, so they would be hidden and with a roof, and soon they had a hole to call home. Well, they did not actually call it home, as Oliver had named it ‘shroom end’ instead.
“Ah, Miss...” Oliver halted for a moment, clearly realising that he never asked for her last name over the last three weeks “Miss Camilla, what a wonderful surprise to see you here in our humble establishment, what would you like this fine... unknown point in the day-cycle, the regular? Or are you in the mood for something more... interesting” Oliver slung the cloth he had been using to polish the Pétanque ball they had found over his shoulder in an imitation of a bartender. A cloth she quickly deduced to be the gym shorts she had given him, meaning that he was quite naked behind their diner table. With both his hands now free, he gestured behind him to the grooves in the wood, grooves which were just big enough to fit the different mushrooms he had gathered throughout the day.
Oliver leaned forwards conspiratorially, before asking “So, Miss, are you ready to pick your poison?”
“Oliver, I understand that you have some free time to spend around the house since only your arm has healed, but I still need you to wear pants” Camilla said, her voice dry and exasperated as she demonstratively avoided looking away from his face.
“Miss Camilla, I understand your argument to a certain extent, but I want to make it clear that I do wear pants most of the time, but no proper bartender can be seen without a piece of cloth. It would be the equivalent of a knight of old being seen in public without his sword” Oliver said, still committed to the bit as he returned to polishing his balls of steel, the literal ones, that is.
“Now pick your poison, because the bartender of shroom end only clocks out when all guests are satisfied with their poison of choice” He said.
Camilla sighed as she looked over the mushrooms on the wall. Over the course of the three weeks they had spent in the mushroom forest, they had found an assortment of different fungi to eat, all of which were poisonous to some degree. It was strange, really, that so many of the shrooms found in the everfall forest were poisonous, since, by all accounts she had read, only three in every hundred mushroom kinds were poisonous.
They had, of course, only tried four kinds, since if the rate at which they found poisonous ones were any indication, then there was a fairly good chance that the next sort they tried would also be deadly. So, for now, they settled with the three kinds they did have. The first one they found made them nauseous, caused vomiting, and diarhea, and since the goal was to eat, it was less than ideal when two of the symptoms the violent expulsion of things which had been eaten. the second one caused stomach aches and cramps, which was a problem when moving, and the third caused headaches and hallucinations, which was not great either. All of these facts left them primarily eating the fourth kind, which had the delightful effect of causing constant sweating, leaving them very thirsty, but otherwise fine.
She sighed slightly before deciding that she may as well play along “the usual please, mister bartender” she said with a smile.
Her choice was immediately rewarded when Oliver smiled like the sun, and energetically started to arrange the mushrooms on a bark plate as he did his very best to play the part of a bartender.
Camilla smiled as she looked at the show he was putting on and chatted idly with him, before she pulled up her status.
Name: Camilla Lund Species: Human
Class: Unpredictable Craft: Servicer
Mana: 679 / 850 Stamina: 704 / 805
Class level: 7 Craft level: 4 Constitution: 21 Strength: 35 Dexterity: 36 Perception: 30 Charisma: 40 Intelligence: 30 Wisdom: 25 Attribute points: 0
Skills Abilities Status effects
Servicer
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
The servicer is unlike the other two initial crafts, for where the gatherer and the artisan of rope and sap both offer materials as the end goal, the servicer offers only deeds. What those deeds may be is a question only the individual servicer can answer, but they could be anything from a dance to a speech.
The likelihood of anyone doing anything for the sake of seeing you dance is, of course, negligible. But maybe if you try for long enough, some poor fool will hire you as a waitress. With your current skills, that is the best you can hope for.
Each level in Servicer grants 1 attribute point, 1 to all stats, 1 to charisma, 1 to dexterity and 1 to intelligence.
She knew the effects of the mushroom poisoning would only show themselves after an hour, and at that time she hoped to be asleep to ignore the worst part, namely the initial onslaught. But before she could sleep, she knew she should share her newest piece of information with Oliver so he could stew on it until the morning, in order to maximise the usefulness she could draw from him.
“Oh, and Oliver, I thought you would like to know that while I didn’t find any traditional game worth hunting today, I did find the most dangerous game of all, man” she said with a sly smirk. “From what I observed after I followed the group I stumbled across to their base, I would hazard to guess that there may be around thirty to forty of them. Now, I will answer one question before going to bed, to think before you ask to utilise it as best as possible”
Oliver grinned at the news, and without wasting so much as a second he asked “Were you able to see any indication whatsoever that would lead you to believe that they might have a good amount, or even a surplus, of socks? And if so, could you possibly glean any additional information on their willingness to part with their socks based on what you saw?”
Camilla paused for a moment as she attempted to understand what he could possibly need the socks for to a degree where he was willing to spend his only question asking about it. And yet even after thinking for a not insignificant period, she found nothing even remotely plausible in the furthest reaches of her imagination. She could, of course, extrapolate from their interactions that it was either moronic and unnecessary, if funny, such as his earlier bit, or absolutely brilliant, such as his hypothesis surrounding giant fauna.
“Okay, I don’t have anywhere near the energy to ask about this right now, but I need to know, is this a ‘colonies of giant insects won’t be a problem, because even if the system could let them survive square-cube law, then doing so on the scale of a colony would be impossible. But singular large insects are a risk’ kind of idea, or is it more of an ‘I'll take a leap of faith over a giant fall and hope magic activates to save me at the last moment’ idea? Because if it is more of the latter than the former, then I will visit the other group alone, so you won’t ruin our first meeting” Camilla asked. She was, of course, fully willing to listen to his idea right away, but she also knew that if there was a threat associated with failure, he would find the flaws in his idea faster than they could together. So, for now, she would wait until he assembled a proper functional idea of his own, which she could then examine at a finer layer.
So she went to bed, exhausted, yet eagerly awaiting being presented with whatever Oliver may have thought of in the morning.
Camilla woke up to a strange sight. Not because Oliver was up before her, that was the norm, but instead because of the five wide mushroom caps leaning against the wall, and the three-legged structure standing next to Oliver as he smiled at her behind steepled fingers.
“Ah, Miss Camilla, we are so glad you could join us for our presentation. Us here at magical weapons R Us have prepared a five-slide presentation in the hopes of convincing you that our grand plan is worth your precious time” Oliver said, as he hefted up the first of his mushroom caps and nocked it between where two broken-off branches had been, all while smiling professionally.
“Us here at Magical Weapons R Us honestly and truly believe, based on extensive research performed by everyone in the company, that fun is essential to understanding any weapon. So, when words and phrases such as, ‘Hilarious’ or ‘magnificent’ or ‘come on Camilla, it would be so funny’ crop up in during our presentation, we want you to know that it is purely something positive” Oliver said, while gesturing to what seemed to be a crude graph of fun on one axis and learning on the other with a drastic rise shown on the graph.
Camilla smiled at the fun little show Oliver was putting on for her, yet couldn’t help but interrupt “okay, as the prime investor, I would like to know who this ‘we’ you keep mentioning is, because as far as I know, you’re the only employee”
“Now” Oliver threw his first slide behind him and placed the second instead, breezing through her question like a rock through the fallen sea “as you know, while Magic Weapons R us is the foremost known biological expert on magic, we are yet incapable of... Almost all things, such as compelling mana into any energy form other than kinetic, for now. But more relevantly, we are unable to move our mana through air as of yet, though we are expecting a breakthrough. And even more importantly, with our current method, we can’t actually move metal, at least not in any way which matters, as best put by the foremost non-biological expert, the system. It quite literally said that ‘with your current technique for moving objects with mana, it would honestly be more effective to blow harshly on metals’. Our biological expert hypothesises that it may have something to do with the more labyrinthian structure of the metal molecules, with more dead ends to lose energy in, but that is a discussion for another day”
Camilla could almost feel the solution he was leading too at the tip of her tongue, and she knew that she only needed one last push of explanation to understand. Olivers crude carving of a ball disappearing when a hand let go to symbolise not being able to project through air, and his drawing of a lost particle in a maze did not exactly help either, even if they were fun.
He placed they third cap on the tripod, even as the second broke in two from its collision with the wall behind him “But, the team here at Magical Weapons R Us don’t back down in the face of a challenge, so, without further ado, we would like to present, the solution to half our group’s population’s problem, the extend-o-ball!” He enthusiastically presented the third slide, which was essentially no more than a ball at the end of a wiggly line.
“We have developed the idea for a state-of-the-art magical weapon never seen before. Now, you may be wondering, what is this fantastical contraption, and how might it work? The answer to your question is both more simple and more complicated than you would initially think. The extend-o-ball is made up of a series of tied-together socks, where the final sock in the sequence houses a metal ball. We know, pure genius, but don’t worry, we make sure to regularly thank our scientists. Through application of the cloth manipulation spell, we then move the chain of socks with mana, allowing us to use it as a weapon not unlike the Morningstar of old”
Camilla was... genuinely impressed. It was presumably mana intensive to move so much cloth with such a relatively heavy load at the end, but even if it could only work of short durations, thus making it less than ideal for wars and the like. But it would still be very useful for shorter battles, and especially ambushes.
“Now, I know what you are thinking, you think that ‘yes, that sounds like a magnificently fun weapon to play with, but is it sustainable fun, or simply the same brand of fun fireworks offer, one which burns out seconds after use?’ And you know what I say to that? No. It really isn’t. It's made of socks, and there is a very real limit to the number of times you can use a sock as a Morningstar. You presumably would never strike a sharp object with it, which means that it is still functional for some time, but it is not made of Nokias” Oliver now gestured to his fourth cap, this one depicting a falling graph of the device’s structural integrity.
“But even so, I would still dare say that it would be an invaluable tool until such a time comes when we finally discover how to gather resources beyond the ones we entered with” Oliver smiled, and pulled forth the fifth and final slide, one showing the apparent logo of Magical weapons R Us, namely the ‘company’s’ name written crudely on a alarmingly wobbly glowing sword.
“And remember, you can’t spell high functioning killing accessory without fun” Oliver finished his presentation with a wink.
“Oliver... did you sleep at all last night?” Camilla couldn’t help but ask.
“Not a wink! But how could I when I had such a fantastic trip to think of, one which hung in the balance of my presentation” Oliver asked as he yawned and stretched.
“... You accidentally ate the stomach-ache mushrooms again, didn’t you?” Camilla sighed.
“Well that too, they are alarmingly similar in this dim light we live in, but that in particular has happened so many times by now that I assumed that to be intrinsically understood” Oliver said with a smile, because when didn’t he smile? But, then again, that was most definitely what made him wonderful to be around.