As we arrived back to town I let Sven know my offer, and was surprised at how quickly he accepted. He had explained that it wouldn’t help refinement a lot, only self healing was that good for it, but it would help him develop his body better along with reducing fatigue which with how hard the hunters were working already would be invaluable.
At his advice I went and let Mircha know I would like him to let the other hunters know at dinner that the offer was open to everyone, it would be helpful to help our town get stronger, but it would also warm them up to how my skills worked to heal.
Looking around the small settlement I could see most tents had small wooden roofs on frames over the top of them, assuming it would help if we got a sudden bit of rain which isn’t unknown to the area, so the builder and logger brothers must have been busy. It was nice to see something so mundane yet worked for and achievement worthy after the fight, it helped put into perspective that even though the fight itself and the exp were amazing rewards, the actual reason to push myself like that and to learn from real world combat was to protect this so we could carve out another safe haven for humanity.
Settling back into my cave I realised beyond making sure I had refilled my bucket of water I used to clean down the used stone bed, there really wasn’t any chores to do. Communal living when you aren’t part of the manual labour force was going to take some adjusting to, particularly when I used to do so many chores to help out around home.
Once I had refilled my bucket and put it in the small open space under the treatment bed I sat back down on my stone spot out the front, and settled into working on starting my next mana gem, slowly as my mana regenerated, excited to eventually finish off my cave and happy to have something simple to focus on while I processed the fight from today.
—---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
After breakfast I was surprised to see a few hunters making their way over to my cave, usually they headed out quickly after eating to get a start of the day's work.
“Healer Styx, Mircha said we could come see you for some general healing? Something about you levelling a skill and needing the practice” As the words left his mouth I realised back during training I had turned off my progress notifications for my skills, because when your getting 0.001% progress every few hours it's just sad seeing the prompts, and that I really needed to adjust these settings.
Quickly diving into my system I set up a morning summary, “Yes that’s right, I had my first hunt yesterday and it came up that most of the hunters weren’t aware I was happy to provide consistent healing for muscle development. If you want I can quickly do that now if you need to be on your way?”
If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
“That would be great, we need to get out, and honestly while the boys have been working on getting some small houses together it just isn’t safe to harvest the wood they need yet. Camping out isn’t helping the fatigue build up, so hopefully some more of the lads come by to take you up on the healing offer rather than just us four. Names Lars by the way, these three are Ben, Sven the younger, and Garnt. Sven was one of the two who went with you yesterday, had plenty good to say” As he spoke Lars followed me into the cave and looked around, seeming to be curious about how the place had been set up.
“Don’t be concerned if any smoke comes out of anywhere, it's harmless, and it won’t hurt. It can just be visually uncomfortable but feel free to stand or grab a seat on one of the stone beds. Don’t have a lot of comfortable seating around here just yet” As I spoke I started preparing to channel my healing through a hand into theirs “When you're ready just hold your hand out and we can get started”.
Except Sven all the men took a seat on one of the beds together, even being lean hunters they barely fit together, and slowly held out their hands. Figuring he was most likely to be comfortable having seen me fight, I started with Sven. Holding my hand just above theirs I slowly channelled my mana through as a healing flame until my skill told me enough was through for a standard basic heal and touch up, quickly I moved through all four men and aside from some soft noises of surprise as the flames appeared and smoke left their skin, along with a few chuckles at themselves, it went quickly.
“Right that should sort you all, you will find muscle aches and pain reduced and even simple things like sunburn will be healed providing nothing more serious is found by the mana. You will leak smoke for a little bit, I don’t know if it has a smell though? Maybe wait until it's cleared up before you go hunting just in case”
As they left with their thanks, already noting small muscular complaints had stopped, I shook my head realising I developed a few to many bad habits training with the guard like having my skill progress turned off. While a skill evolution or rank up would still prompt me I would have no idea on the finer details of my progression day to day, and I wouldn’t have thought to update it until Lars mentioned levelling up skills.
Settling back in for the day I worked at my gems, getting to heal a few scrapes as the hunters came back for the day before dinner, which I rushed through eating excitedly to lay down and get my skill improvement notifications the following morning. Summaries provided by the system usually update from when you last got a prompt, and your status usually doesn’t prompt you with information until you get the prompt, so it's possible if you are really stupid like me to completely miss properly tracking how your skills are advancing. I needed to remember the system required it to be used intelligently, or it could be as hindering as it was helpful.
As I made my bed I pulled out my book on important system uses and practises the guard gave me during training, I hadn’t really read it as well as I maybe should have, but honestly between exercising until I was ready to drop and learning how to use my skills it really seemed low on the list of things to do.
The last thing I remember thinking as I drifted off to sleep is if morning me was going to love seeing my skill updates, or hate the pile of screens I likely am about to get hit with.