The new companion staved off the boredom of routine, which had started to creep up on Luna. The excitement of the new location, training and Skills had kept her focus sharp for a while, but with Joan around to challenge and guide her Luna went at it with renewed vigor.
Joan had been going through the obstacle courses with Luna and taught how to implement her theoretical knowledge learned from books. Luna also stopped checking her status every day, as the Experience required for Level Ups was starting to pile on, even if it was nothing compared to later levels.
Joan also took Luna out into the city, severely underestimating how new everything would be for her trainee. Luna had been used to a small community or solitude while outside her village and the number of people in the city was overwhelming. Joan telling her that the crowds during winter were nothing compared to summer did not help with Luna’s anxiety either. Because Luna stopped at every intersection Joan had to plan several such trips to explore the city, instead of just two days going through it and showing Luna where the best crafters were and the different routes through the city without going into unsavory neighborhoods.
The city layout was rather simple. It had started out with a small wall around the first settlement and after it had outgrown the original walls, a new wall had cordoned off more land to build houses on. The old village then changed into a big marketplace at first and then buildings for administration were added around it.
Around the initial settlement and the wall a new and bigger city had grown and at some point some city official had decided to build one final wall around an area so large it had plenty of room for more people and houses. Building outside the city walls was strictly prohibited. Halingstead, the hamlet she had traveled past when coming here, was the closest any new buildings were allowed to be built.
The outer wall formed a big half circle around the city, ending at the river where the wall protruded into the river proper. The harbor was the major trading hub in the area and the city relied on it heavily.
Joan showed Luna the whole city. The Pathfinder Guild owned a large portion of the outer merchant district, which was now causing friction with rich merchants and nobles who questioned the Guild’s right to own such a large fraction of land inside the city. Many other districts were packed with houses, only small and scarce parks or marketplaces interrupting them. The closer the districts were to the inner area, the richer they got. Seeing the noble’s district Luna finally understood why they wanted more land. The houses were surrounded by large flower gardens, elaborate hedges, immaculate lawns and pathways leading up to the palace like buildings.
Luna had never imagined a city could reach this size and the architecture and beauty of the manors and gardens took her breath away. Sadly it did not last long, as Joan then led Luna all across the city to show her the other side of it. Where streets were well cared for and sanitation was excellent in the higher class areas of the city, the lower class areas lacked all of it. Filth was simply dumped on the street and what was originally intended as a ditch for rainwater was simply used as an open air sewer system. The houses were ramshackle, often hardly more than a shack with a door. Every house in Creek Springs had been built more solidly and better materials than what she saw here.
Joan explained that the area had been planned as a warehouse district adjacent to the harbor and only a simple system to drain away rain water had been built. But after the kingdom split up 25 years ago many people flooded into the city and this area quickly turned into a wildly grown slum. Luna was to avoid the area at all cost, especially at night.
That day Luna walked back with Joan with a contemplative look on her face. She had learned much about herself, but during their trips all over the city she had seen many things that had taught her something about the world. While she might have lost her parents and grown up far away from the big city, it had been a good life. Hard work was rewarded when working and living off the land. Around here, life was very different, less simple.
Joan had even dragged her away when they spotted a fight starting in some alley, telling her that it was none of her business. Sticking her nose into something near the docks was a sure way to find trouble, she had told her. In Creek Springs fights had been rare and when they happened, mostly during festivals when large quantities of ale were served, many people had intervened and ended the fight before it got out of hand. A village could not afford people getting hurt, a father with a bum leg could mean death for the family if the village did not step in. That way everybody had a stake in the wellbeing of their neighbor.
Here in the city it seemed a life was cheap. Workers could get replaced and if you got yourself hurt trying to help someone then it was your own problem. Nobody was helping each other like they did in a tightly knit community.
That realization helped Luna grow up more than she realized at first. The idea that her village was not the human standard had been alien to her and only seeing it over and over with her own eyes had convinced her. It did not mean she had to like it, but it demonstrated to her in no uncertain terms that humans were egoistical beings and that they would take something for themselves if they could get away with it.
Joan had also helped with that, giving Luna a simplified example of how society worked. In the example Luna was to imagine her village with not enough land and wild game around to feed everyone. Too many people for not enough jobs, too many mouths to feed through winter. It painted a picture for her that was hard to comprehend, but she could not come up with a solution in which the organized community would still work. It only did because the work the village did was enough for everyone to live. It was a simple life, but it was enough for everyone. In the city every family was fending for themselves.
A few days later during dinner Luna brought up the topic of poverty and children in the city. She wondered why it was allowed to happen and if the Pathfinder Guild could do something about it. It could help children and at the same time solve their problem with finding recruits. Apparently she had not been the first one to come up with the idea. The problem was, the Pathfinder Guild was not allowed to recruit anyone before their Rite of Ascendancy. While they were an independent guild providing a service, they were not allowed to run a school the way some merchant families did. It had been argued that the guild could use their knowledge about Combat Classes to train an army by recruiting orphans and poor children and the potential threat to the kingdom was deemed too severe.
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That idea squashed Luna gave up on the topic. There was nothing she could do to influence the world right now, even if Joan, Michelle and Peter all agreed with her sentiment. The kingdom should be handling those issues and had been doing a poor job ever since Laven had become independent.
Training occupied most of her day and after her visits to the city Joan had kept Luna busy to keep her mind off the heavy topics. As winter slowly turned to spring Luna felt she had learned more about Classes and the world in general than she had in total during her childhood. As much as it pained her to admit, leaving the village had been the best decision she had ever made. She would not trade her new knowledge for anything else.
Her Skills had progressed steadily and she had even managed to reach level 5 for both her classes, which had earned her a new active Skill in both, one point Dexterity and one free stat point each. The free points went into Strength and and Dexterity, but the biggest choice had been the Skills.
The following skills were offered.
Sylvan Pathfinder
[Waterwalk]
You may spend mana to walk on water as if it was solid ground.
[Windwalk]
You may use mana and stamina to increase your movement speed significantly.
[Glide]
When falling from great height you may spend mana to slow your fall.
It does not decrease your weight and will not allow you to fly.
[Mana Vision]
Allows you to see Mana when in use by a person or monster. Does not show ambient mana. This is a passive Skill.
[Grow Claws]
Grow temporary claws from your fingers and toes which help you scale trees, but also work as a weapon of last resort.
[Draft Map]
A flat surface and a stick are enough for you to sketch the most rudimentary of maps. Also works with charcoal and paper or similar tools.
[Commit to Memory]
Capture and memorize a single moment. You will never forget it, unless you choose to.
[Mark Path]
You are the trailblazer, but often others follow behind you. With this skill a path you make is easy to find for up to 4 weeks (can vary depending on factors like region, climate, season)
[Scenic Overview]
When you perch on a high location you may use this skill to locate points of interest in the surrounding area.
Sylvan Stalker
[Penetrating Shot]
Imbue your next shot with Mana and increase it’s penetration.
[Stunning Shot]
Imbue your next shot with mana and blunt its impact, increases the chance of stunning or knocking out a target.
[Leaping Shot]
Perform a backwards Double Jump with increased height. Fires the next shot while at the highest point of the jump.
[Sneak Attack]
When striking an unaware target in a weak spot your damage is significantly increased.
[Backstab]
Stab a knife into an enemy's back with deadly precision.
[Dash]
Quickly cover ground.
[Mark]
You may place a Mark on anyone you can see for 24 hours. You will sense the direction the Mark is in, as well as their general health when close by.
[Feint]
Make the enemy think they know where you will attack next and then change the target of your strike.
[Slam]
You love using a shield and bashing people in the head. The next enemy you hit with your shield will be stunned and dazed for a short time.
Luna had been prepared for the option of picking a new Skill and Joan told her that she would be able to cancel the selection and resume it later. Her possible Skill selection then became a contested topic over dinner.
Joan and Michelle were heavily in favor of Skills that increased her damage potential. They argued that her Stalker class was a combat class made for high damage single target attacks and that she should build on that. Luna was still uncomfortable with the idea of using her Skills to hurt humans, but in the end she relented and picked Sneak Attack.
The Pathfinder Skills posed another problem altogether, they had no idea which Skill would be most useful. Windwalk sounded good, but looking up the Skill in one of the many books showed that the stamina use of it was too much for human Pathfinder to keep the skill going for long. It was a useful skill for short bursts of speed, but useless over longer distances.
Waterwalk was way too situational and Mana Vision, according to an explanation in one of the books, only useful for predicting mana based, which could also be seen in other ways. In the end Luna overruled the complaints about the Skill and picked Windwalk. It seemed to her the best supplementary Skill on the list. Even short bursts of speed would help a lot when she needed to keep her distance.
With spring at the gates Joan also started planning for their tour as a team and which missions they might be able to handle. As the roads cleared up messengers from all over the kingdom started to arrive and new requests were sent to the Pathfinder Guild. It was up to Joan and Michelle to sort through them and toss out the frivolous and useless ones.
One village on the southern side of Everwood was requesting Pathfinder help with cutting down the forest to clear land for a new mine. The request was sent back to the kingdom officials with a stern reply telling them to keep the village in check, as messing with sacred forests was not going to end well. They just hoped they would listen to the warning.
Other requests came from noble families requesting Pathfinder to escort their families around the kingdom, provide special training to their children or even stand guard duty at a summer mansion in the countryside. At first Luna was confused about those, but Michelle told her they would come in every year and he was not sure if they were even genuine or people messing with them. They were of course all denied, most not even receiving a reply. But every once in a while there would be an important one in there, like the village messing with a sacred forest. At some point a Pathfinder would have to go visit and find out the situation. If it was likely for the humans to keep messing with the forest, the kingdom would have to take action, going as far as putting someone new in charge of the village.
Other Pathfinder teams had also sent in messages, letting Michelle know where they currently were and how to reach them. The messages included status reports on their activities and the missions they had undertaken before snow had closed the roads. Many of them had wintered with family somewhere around the kingdom. As Michelle had mentioned before, most of them preferred a simple life outside of the grand city and did not stay here for long.
Joan was planning short trips with Luna to different locations closer to the capital. That way Luna could learn, but also retain some access to the training facilities between missions. Doing a full round trip through the kingdom would help her get to know more of the country, but Luna was not high enough level for such a serious and long trip.