The Tradesman's Rest was a nice mix of contained and bustling, and better yet, most everyone around Cerise was healthy. She "stood the round" for Gohren, Miss Sanyel, the Quartermaster, and a handful of the [Wagoneers] that included Tamrin, twice, drinking small beer the first round and cider the next. The cider tasted better, but made her head spin so she used Heal Toxins on herself and sobered up.
Gohren was on his fourth round of hale beer when he turned to Cerise. "Tha' thin' ya di, onna stree'," he said, his slurring taking the form of losing his ending consonants. "Y'ougttah--. Ogtah--. Aught-to. You do tha' till I ge' resis'anz."
Cerise tipped her head to the side, not understanding. "May I?" She asked holding up her hand.
"Yeah! Now!" He agreed.
Cerise used her Heal Toxins skill until her focused Triage on Gohren downgraded him from drunk to inebriated. She used the act of breaking skin contact to help her stop her Heal skill, absently noting the division increase while she asked, "What were you saying?"
"Oi, I'm thirsty! That thing you did that dropped me on the way to Treborant Hall, I want you to do that until I get a Resistance skill for it. Even the unlock would be good. Not now. Now we're celebrating, but tomorrow."
"You want me to hurt you again?" She asked, confused.
"What?" "Storytime!" "What happened?" "How did you piss the Miss off?" Questions came in from those not present at Cerise's faux pas.
Gohren ignored them and said, "You didn't hurt me; the cobblestones did that." His easy expression hardened. "I had something like that happened to me when I was just starting out, and it still burns my cheeks. I want a Resistance. You do that to me enough, and I'll gain it."
"Okay, but away from cobblestones, then," she agreed.
And then she had to sit through her parents, Miss Sanyel, and Gohren describing how she lost her head to her skills.
Mykhal had stuck to small beers and took food over alcohol for the last two rounds. He watched Cerise squirm at the telling and the playful ribbing both she and Gohren got for the event. When he could go without too much notice, he excused himself to head up to their room. Cerise followed soon after.
When she opened the door, she caught him wiping away tears. "What's wrong?"
"I'm not my father!" Mykhal snapped.
"Of course not!" Cerise said.
"I'm not my father! But! I hit you. I don't want to become that man." Mykhal sagged as he gave her that admission.
Young Cerise wanted to gush out assurances and deny the very possibility. The older fragments stopped her. Instead, she heard herself asked, "Why do you fear you will become your father?"
"I hit you," he said, shocked that she didn't understand.
"Why did you hit me?" She kept her tone calm as she asked him that.
"You were out of your mind! You were attacking us so you could go heal everyone and hurt yourself! I panicked, and I was angry, and it hurt that you would attack me, and I just reacted!" He confessed.
She nodded to show she had heard him. "Is that what your father did? Panicked and reacted?"
Mykhal's face twisted up, and he sat on the edge of the bed, hunched into himself. "He got angry and drunk and that's when he started throwing punches. But he hit the people he said he loved, and I never want to be that man."
Cerise sat down next to him and wrapped her arm around her shoulders. "It sounds like we both made a right mess of things today, then. Results speak loudest, true, but reasons separate man from monster."
Mykhal flinched.
Cerise rubbed his back. "Hey, none of that! So you've learned to react to hurt with an active defense. That doesn't mean you can't learn more ways, and train so there's no hesitation. You're a [Hunter], right? This is just part of hunting a better you."
He turned into her and hugged her, crying onto her shoulder. She ignored the whisper of the voice of the world, and hugged her friend back.
[Oration] advances to Practice-8.
After a moment, less than a rush mark of time, he straightened a bit, but still hugged her. "All right. You're right. I have to hunt the better me. Any ideas where to start?"
More of her old-soul fragments dropped ideas in her mind. "Yeah, I think I do. We should get paper, pens, and ink. Then we'll become journal buddies. The first thing we'll do is write out who we want to be. It won't be a contract, not yet. We're going to have to try a lot of stuff out, see what fits us. Then we have to figure out how we get from who we are to who we want to be. That way, we'll have an idea of who we are hunting, and a guide when the path to that better us gets all muddled."
"You're already perfect," Mykhal said.
Cerise laughed at that, saw his confused look, and laughed harder.
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They spent four days in Va'Treborant, and Gohren gained the Clear Mind skill that Mykhal had picked up from his class. Additionally, Cerise recruited a handful of caravan guards to help her try out differences in ways to gain the skills. So far, the fastest way had been when both she and the guard had their profiles open and concentrated on the guard learning the Clear Mind skill to resist Cerise's Slumber skill. Mykhal had a few tricks he had picked up to train the skill, like doing math games when he was tired, which he shared, and he was present for most of her time with the guards.
Cerise was a bit scared to be out in the city, even without the aura of her Triage skill active. There were just so very many people! Her mother, on the other hand, loved it. She went to as many types of ready-made food sellers as she could find, and discovered the small enchanted burners the food stall vendors used. The burners cost a silver leaf and used mana crysts to power the ring schemes.
Small mana crysts were about a nail wide and weighed about twenty seed. Medium crysts were from two to three nails wide and about forty seed in weight. Large ones were from 60 to 100 seed, and huge crysts were around 500 seed. Crysts larger than that were the domain of [Mages] and nobles. Sizes above medium were measured by seed weight and not size because they often grew into interesting and not wholly uniform dimensions.
Cerise's mother bought two such burners, and haggled the inclusion of two nearly depleted crysts. She also got a few more tools for cooking, pans and a griddle, and her father spent a day with their cart to make it easy for her mother to cook from the back of it, like a fold out food stall.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
Despite Mykhal's being bound to his word like a full adult, his age and lack of a second-class still had most people thinking of him as a youth. Certainly no longer a child, but also not yet an adult. It meant that Cerise's family were wary of any caravans that would hire him as a guard.
Cerise, on the other hand, was traveling with her parents, who could be held as a responsible influence upon her. Miss Sanyel was able to recommend the family as travel-alongs with the caravan of a consortium that the Nykimopia Consortium traded with for coastal goods.
They paid no guard fees and were included in the caravan for the purpose of road levies, but brought their own food, covered their own hostel, and agreed to help out in the event of an attack on the caravan.
Miss Sanyel's recommendation of the caravan was good enough for Cerise's family, and they listened well to the pricing advice she gave them, and the general practices they could expect with [Merchants] and mercantile tradesmen. She also emphasized that they needed to value their services higher. "I don't care how many of your class levels are in [Miner] and how many are in [Carpenter]. Your Woodworking appraises at Uncommon when it isn't at Rare, and wagons are mostly made of wood. That means something. And if you think good food isn't worth that much, Bergin, why would you invest so much of your effort to becoming Advanced in Cooking?"
Cerise wasn't sure that Miss Sanyel actually understood the problem for her parents. Parts of her fragmented memories came with words like "economy" and "accruals" and phrases like "supply and demand", "return on investment", and "operating in the black". The things she had learned of [Merchant] ways among the caravan felt like being reminded of what she had learned ages ago.
Her parents, though, had lived their entire lives inside a barter economy. The idea of coinage wasn't beyond them; the idea of valuing goods or services in coin just wasn't intuitive to them. Hours for hours, needs for needs, that they understood. Hours for coins? Well, it was a bit unreal to them.
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On arriving at the staging area, Cerise and her parents spoke with the caravan master, a man by the name of Aldo. This caravan was sponsored by the Ma'deron Consortium, who focused on dungeon goods. They worked with the Free Lancers Consortium and hired Free Lancer sub-guilds that specialized in guard details for their caravan security.
Her parents got the details about where their cart should go in the travel order. Cerise made sure that she understood what Aldo expected of her, and on finding out how little that was, she said, "I'm looking to open a class focused on Animal Handling skills and Healing for my Initiate class. Miss Sanyel had me making circuits of the wagons, watching for developing problems with the cattle, and I gained a lot doing that, both for my current class and toward my animal focused skills. That included some things that meant stopping a wagon for a few minutes, like getting stones out of shoes before they caused bruising, or put a bit of salve on leg bites. If that's something you would like me to do, what I'm in need of is mentoring, for my family and myself. Things that are probably common sense to you, like getting an intuition of what coins are worth, and how to get along outside of a village where barter was the whole mercantile system."
Mister Aldo's eyebrows rose. "Miss Sanyel said you undervalued your services."
Cerise smiled. "I'm not offering to pay for the salves, mind you, but consider this: we have food to see us where we plan to settle and a bit more, tools to practice our skills and crafts when we get there, and plenty of experience with living off the land. What we don't have is information. As a wise man once told me, what you don't know is more of a problem than what you don't have."
"Fair enough," Aldo agreed. "I'll talk it over with my [Wagoneers] and the Quartermaster."
Her father went to go see to their cart, while the next stop for Cerise and her mother was with the Free Lancers sub-guild. The leader there was a [Warrior] by the name of Sorkha. She pasted on an obviously fake smile as she caught sight of them making their way toward her.
Cerise's mother took the lead. "Mister Aldo directed us this way to find the guards leader. My daughter is a [Healer] and we'll be helping out if there are any attacks that injure the guards or [Wagoneers]. We are here to introduce ourselves and see when would be a good time to make sure we know what to expect from each other."
The fake smile turned real. "I'm Sorkha, and I lead the Steady Hammers. We have our own [Healer], but Brower just opened that class set with his Adept class. Come on, and I'll introduce you."
She led them to a trio of guards watching over one of the wagons as it was being loaded. She waved one over to her. "Brower! Come meet Aldo's find!"
The man was equipped like the other guards in reinforced leather plate, with a warhammer sheathed in his belt and a conical chest-sized shield on his back.
"Yes, Captain?"
Sorkha opened her mouth then closed it, blushing. "My apologies. I didn't catch your names."
Cerise's mother laughed it off. "Worry not! I'm Bergin, a [Generalist] and this is my daughter Cerise, a [Healer Novice]. We'll be providing aid after any attacks and wanted to get things figured out before there are any wounded to see to."
Sorkha grinned, clapped Brower on the shoulder, and said, "Go check out what their addition will mean for our formations and figure the rest out. Check-in at the first stop."
"Yes, Captain," Brower said, then turned to Cerise's mother. "Miss, please lead the way. Young Miss? [Healer Novice]? How many of your class slots have you unlocked?"
"All of them, and working toward raising my skill rank cap to Intermediate."
"Good. Rare variant class, [Blessed Healer] type? Cure spells?"
"No, I'm not a dedicate. I don't mean to be cagey about myself, but why are you asking?" Cerise asked.
"I could just say it's for coordination's sake, and be partly honest, but truth is I stumbled into the [Combat Medic] class and most of the [Healers] I've met are more jealous of their secrets than many a [Mage]. The skill manuals that I found have been few and far, and one is all focused on divine healing, the others on cleansing and sewing and anatomy, and not a word of applying it."
"Ah. May I Inspect you?" Cerise asked.
"You haven't already?" He asked, appearing bemused.
Name: Brower of the Steady Hammers
Strata: Freeman, Free Lancer
Class: [Warrior] Uncommon, Initiate; [Combat Medic] Uncommon, Novice
Health: High, Full
Stamina: High, Full
"I'm still a youth, and what you want to talk about are things I want to discuss, too, but I also want to hear what both my parents think before I agree to talk more about specific skills and techniques.
"As for what we can do, Mama has the recipe for Minor Healing Potions, and with those, a needle, Numb Salve I've made, splints, and bandages, we helped a patrol squadron that had just run into a goblin migration go from mostly too wounded to fight to combat effective in a day and a night's rest, though their [Healer] was one of the casualties needing more extensive rest.
"And, from what the Honorable Mister Ethrick said, it should be safe to share this: Triage is supposed to be a basic skill for the core of a [Healer] class. Do you have it?"
Brower look frustrated, but said, "Yes."
"Have you unlocked the aura mutation?" She asked.
He blinked. "No."
"If you can see, you can Triage, whether you realize you can see or not. It took me two or three weeks of triggering Triage just under my Pool regeneration rate to get the mutation. It's an active-passive, and if you're having problems with not healing everyone hurt or sick around you, leave it off around crowds."
"Anything else you can share?" He asked, hopeful.
Cerise shrugged. "We'll be in the caravan together for a few weeks, right? Give my parents some time to consider. I may not be allowed to talk about some of my particulars, but I can see value in talking over some of the learned skills I picked up with someone with actual life experience and a use for the same skills."
That cheered Brower up. He looked over their cart and its position in the caravan, approved of the wooden cover that her father had made for the cargo area, agreed that Cerise would be responsible for caravaneers first while he saw to the guards first, and they would aid the other after time critical wounds were seen to.
Not long after Brower went back to his captain, the order to move out traveled down the caravan, and they were on the road again.
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Cerise
Race: Human
Age: 13, Youth
Total Level: 12
Class(es): [Arcane Healer Novice]
Social Strata: Commoner, Freeman
Pools:
Health: Moderate
Stamina: Good
Mana: Good
Attributes:
Focus: High
[Arcane Healer Novice] (12)
Arcane Healing: P-4
Heal Wounds: P-3
Heal Toxins: B-2
Heal Diseases: B-8
Triage: P-9
Stabilize: P-6
Diagnose: P-5
Pain Block: P-6
Slumber: B-6
Paralyze: B-3
General Skills
Slots: 2, Used: 1
Acting: P-9 (I-9)
Animal Handling: P-3
Appraise: P-2
Blades: P-1
Clear Mind: B-4
Cleanse, Greater *†: P-2
Cooking: P-9 (I-3)
Cyphers: B-7
Dispel *: B-0
Drawing: P-4
General Anatomy *: P-2
General Craft *: P-8
Hunting: B-6
Logic: P-9 (I-3)
Mana Proprioception *: P-4
Mana Sensing *: P-3
Natural Weapon Combat: P-4
Oration: P-8
Potion Brewing *: P-7
Quick Stepping: B-8
Research: P-9 (A-4)
Scribing: P-9 (A-8)
Staves: B-3
Stealth: P-0
Surgery *: B-9
Skill Unlocks
Mana Sight
Mana Scent
Mana Hearing
Tame Monster
Dull Pain *
Lend Vitality *
Sense Life *
Heavy Blow (Staves)
Quick Thrust (Staves)
Sweeping Blow (Staves)
Counter Strike (Staves)