Exiting the duke’s bedroom into a dark hallway Sam takes a moment to consider where to go. From what she has heard it sounds like other kingdoms and races have summoned heroes as well. Even better they don’t use mind control devices to control them.
However with no knowledge of this world she has no idea where to head to. She did see a mountain range and knows natural barriers like that are often used as borders. It also has the advantage of allowing her to follow the river upstream so she doesn’t have to worry about finding water.
She’ll still need food and money for travel. Transportation and knowledge about this world would be nice as well. Since the guides brought her by horseback she figures that’s a common way to travel. Sadly Sam has never ridden a horse before today so she decides to ignore them. With no knowledge of how to saddle, take care of or ride she will likely be slower than just walking on her own.
As for knowledge she could try interrogating a servant. But that has problems as well. Her questions could give away what she is planning and torture is notoriously ineffective way to get accurate information. She’s also unwilling to inflict pain and kill an innocent person anyway so it’s best for her to just go. Hopefully along the river she can find a small out of the way village to hold up in and ask the people about this world.
Sam travels back the way she was original brought in. The half-moon light through windows gives her enough light to see by but still blurs the details of most objects. She doesn’t bother to look into the rooms on this floor as she figures they are mostly bedrooms.
Traveling to the stairwell she walks down it and now should be on the ground floor. She starts to open the doors carefully. The first room she looks into she sees several work desks. She’s about to close the door when she notices a small box on one of the desks.
Entering the room she tries to open the box but is unable to as it has a sturdy built in lock. Picking it up she shakes it and is rewarded by the sound of metallic clinking. Perhaps this is a money box she thinks. She stuffs the box into her item bag to open later.
A quest window appears before Sam. ‘Learning on the job (Rogue)’ Uncommon (E rank) Steal from the duke and escape capture. The quest is easy but the penalties for success or failure are severe. Quest failure: Killed or captured. Reward: Gain level 1 in rogue job. Extra: On success the Kingdom of Kalgren will label you as a wanted criminal. Do you accept?
Sam can’t really see a downside so she accepts the quest. She figures she is already going to be a wanted criminal and if she’s captured… Well best to hope she is killed instead she thinks.
She looks into several more rooms. Some are empty and others have medieval tools that she can only guess what their purpose is. The next room she looks into is filled with barrels. The barrels or their contents aren’t useful to her but hopefully she is getting close to the pantry or kitchen.
A room later is the kitchen. A low fire is lit with a pot of something above it. Taking off the lid of the pot she sees a brown stew simmering. Looking around she doesn’t see any food left out.
Seeing a door in the back of the kitchen she finds it leads to the pantry. Success. However she quickly learns about medieval cooking much to her dismay. After looking into several boxes and containers she finds everything is stored as raw ingredients.
Also no meat, fruit or other perishables as those will be bought in the morning and used in meals that day. Everything she finds will take hours to prepare. Since her cooking skills are on the level of hit a few buttons and wait for the food warm up she doubts she can even prepare it if she had the hours anyway.
Heading back to the kitchen she decided to experiment with the stew a bit. Filling a bowl she puts it into her item pouch. She shakes the pouch and then removes the bowl of stew. She’s delighted that the bowl hasn’t spilled. Taking another bowl she fills it and puts it in the item pouch but is disappointed by the fact it doesn’t stack with the first bowl.
Sam is able to put five bowls total into her pouch which should give her a few days of food. Before she leaves she decides to take a small risk and quickly eats two bowls of stew.
The stew is surprisingly tasty. Full of many complex flavors and a variety of different textures. She opens up her menu and takes several pictures of the stew bowls. Perpetual stew – Also known as hunter’s pot. Is a stew into which kitchen left overs or anything edible one can find is place into it. Rarely is the pot completely emptied and more liquid and ingredients are replenished as needed. The flavor is usually complex and improves with age. It’s not uncommon for such stews to be months or even years old. Well that sounds disgusting but she has to admit it’s very delicious.
Before leaving she takes one of the spoons and puts it into her belt. Exiting the kitchen and continuing on her way she makes it outside of the mansion without encounter anyone. She heads to the stables. Although Sam can’t ride she is sure that the people sent after her can. Let’s make that a little more difficult and slow to do.
Sam opens all the internal stable doors and hopes the horses will wander off on their own. She doesn’t hit them or attempt to lead them out as she doesn’t want the noise to wake anyone up. Next she finds the bridles and saddles. Using her dagger quickly cuts through all the leather straps.
Hopefully that will be enough to slow down her pursuers. But the biggest delay will be from how she handled the duke. If she had just killed him she would have the entire kingdom looking for her for killing a high noble. But by leaving him alive in an embarrassing situation she hopes the duke’s priory will be on making sure no one finds out.
If this happens any pursuit will be slow to start and only a few people to keep everything secret. Also as the servants don’t know much about her they won’t do anything until they find the key and get the slave collar off the duke as well. It’s all a gamble but she should have decent odds of it working out.
With nothing else to do she heads to the river. Being a nobles estate the duke’s mansion was built overlooking the water so she doesn’t have far to go. For the first mile she walks upstream in the river to lose her scent. Sam has no idea if they have tracking dogs but it can’t hurt.
After that she walks quickly along the bank as it’s faster than walking in the river. She keeps a good pace that rapidly puts distance between her and the estate. Unlike her old modern body this new one has high physical stats and can easily keep walking for hours she finds.
She walks all night and continues to walk during the day. This would be a pleasant hike in the woods if she wasn’t in so much danger. As it is Sam doesn’t take in the sights and doesn’t do anything except focus on keeping her pace from slowing down.
Even with a fit body and not sweating much she still is taking frequent drinks from the river with the exertion she is making. By midday she stops to eat another bowl of stew. She takes the time to wash the spoon and bowl before putting the bowl back into her pouch. Although Sam has no real use for the bowl she doesn’t want to leave anything that can aid her pursuers in tracking her.
While washing she gets a popup for completing the escape quest and gains lv 1 in rogue.
Rogue
· Active Bonus – +10% per level disarm/set traps, +5% per level dagger damage
· Leveling Bonus – +2 grace, +1 intelligence, 2x learning speed rogue skills
· Passive Bonus – +10% per level to detect traps, ambushes, shady dealings
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Looking at the job selection window this reminds her to change her job back to Swordsman (Kunst des Fetchtens) for the added bonus to sword damage (20%) and dodging (10%). At level 2 the bonuses are small but it’s still better than nothing.
Sam also notices that the error-unknown job has been replaced with two detailed out jobs.
Divinity (Chastity) (disabled - 76%)
· Active Bonus – Divine Empathy - 5km per level of detecting those in distress and the general nature of that distress. Easily resisted if one doesn’t want help but few do so. If used to take advantage of those in need then a large penalty to all skills, spells and actions will be applied for a day and reputation with all known beings permanently reduced.
· Leveling Bonus – +10 charisma, 5x learning speed all healing and aiding another skills and spell types
· Passive Bonus – +20% per level reputation gains even with beings one normally can’t gain reputation with. Followers gain +2% to all skills and stats per level.
Demonic (Lust) (disabled – 46%)
· Active Bonus – Demonic Sirens Call - 5km per level of attracting those that one desires. Can be easily resisted but few do so as following the call increases arousal and feelings of pleasure.
· Leveling Bonus – +10 Appearance, 5x learning speed all seduction and dream skills and spell types
· Passive Bonus – +5% to all skills and stats per level
Both are disabled so she can’t select either one. However the bonuses are very powerful. Befitting the cost of buying, or in her case cheating, to gain the divinity power level. Sam guesses that depending on which path she goes down will determine which one she gets to use.
An hour later her nature hike is interrupted by an unexpected encounter. A fish jumps from the river and tackles her. As it was completely unexpected she doesn’t dodge and takes some hp damage. Turning around to look at the fish she is surprised that it is floating in midair and not on the ground.
The fish tries to tackle her again but this time she dodges its attack. Opening up the menu she takes a picture of it and finds out its call a magic fish. Wonderful naming that. She pulls out her curved one handed kriegsmesser and buckler. Also takes up the plow stance for mid guard. This is just holding the sword out from her about waist height however she gets the feeling her stance is wrong.
Another attack from the magic fish and Sam stumbles as she tries to dodge and swing at it at the same time. Unlike the game there doesn’t seem to be any skill assistance and she is feeling her inexperience as she attempts to swing her sword around.
The magic fish starts another tackle. She’s glad the magic fish seems to have poor aim and its movements are very predictable. It turns awkwardly after an attack, aims in her general direction and attempts to ram in a straight line.
However Sam is fairing no better as she continues to haphazardly dodge and her sword swings are nowhere near hitting the magic fish. She continues to have the feeling that her stance, footwork and swings are all being done wrong.
It’s obvious that she has little idea of what she is doing. But it doesn’t make any sense that she is getting feelings of doing it wrong. Sam has never trained in the German sword school so has no idea what the right form should be.
All she has done is read the fighting book for a few minutes. Well maybe if she tries the one swing she remembers the book describing. Next time the magic fish tackles she doesn’t try to dodge and focuses on just doing the correct sword swing. And misses. The magic fish tackles her and her hp lowers a bit more. However on that swing her feeling of doing it wrong was much less.
Trying again she swings and this time hits the magic fish sending it’s hp to the red. Even better she felt for the first time her swing was done correctly. The next swing Sam badly injures the magic fish and it flops on the ground before she does a final swing to finish it off.
Sam takes another picture of the cut up magic fish and gets a new entry, magic fish (ingredient). Not having room in her item pouch to carry it and not sure if it’s poisonous she tosses the remains back into the river. If she continues to encounter it she should be able to gain more information.
Before she goes on she tries a few more practice sword swings. The first few she intentionally makes them very awkward and receives very strong feelings of doing it wrong. As she gets closer to the correct swing those feelings are reduced and a couple times she even gets a slight feeling of doing it correctly.
The game had a skill assistance system. As a player’s skill raises they gain a bonus to their actions and the system would autocorrect their movements. However this world instead uses a form of hot and cold feelings to give feedback. Just to be sure she switches her job to peasant and tries a few sword swings. Even the worst ones give her no feedback confirming her suspicions.
Switching back to the swordsman job she spends a half hour practicing the plow stance and the one swing she knows. Sam doesn’t want to spend any more time not moving but at least having one somewhat correct sword technique should give her some advantage if she has to fight again.
The rest of the afternoon Sam continues to encounter magic fish. Unlike her first encounter she easily deals with them and completes her monster entry. Magic Fish: A normal fish mutated by an overabundance of mana in the area. They gain the ability to float and breathe air. Only active during the afternoon. Like most magical beasts they are territorial and will attack those they see as threatening. Individually they are very weak but during spawning season can swarm in large numbers and are active all day.
Also the ingredient entry is completed. Magic Fish (ingredient) Can be used to make any fish dish. Like most magical beasts the absorbed mana makes the ingredient both delicious and poisonous. Proper draining of the mana is required before the ingredient can be used. Improper draining will lead to a flavor loss as well. As the mana in a magic fish is very weak the poison and flavor enhancing is also very weak.
In an emergency she will eat magic fish but prefers to avoid if possible. She suspects the very weak poison will just cause cramping and diarrhea. Even a mild ailment can slow her down and increase her chances of being captured.
She stops to eat some stew in the early evening. As there is still sunlight left she continues to walk upstream. Like the magic fish entry detailed she doesn’t encounter any more magic fish during the evening.
Once it starts getting dark she finds a soft patch of ground to make camp. As Sam has no idea how to make a camp fire and not wanting to attract attention anyway this is mostly her just curling up. With the length of the day she is guessing its early summer and shouldn’t become too cold at night. It doesn’t take long for her to fall asleep as she has been walking for many hours. Her final thought is she should’ve stolen a blanket before she left.