Nate and Fuzzball exited the tower and walked toward the well in the center of town. Fuzzball's expression shifted from shock of seeing the ruins to sadness.
“You okay?” Nate asked as he moved the footstool he had previously used away from the ruined well.
“How did I survive in all of this ruin?”
“I don't know. I haven't found any bodies among the ruins yet, so maybe they all just left.”
“Did I cause this?”
“Even if your evil plans were somehow locked away in your amnesia, which I doubt, what happened here was cataclysmic in scale.”
“You think I'm incapable of this?”
“I do. And not just because of the power disparity.”
Fuzzball frowned, “How can you think that? We've known each other for half an hour.”
Nate smiled, “Just wait.”
In the center of Fuzzball's vision, a small window appeared. His hand passed harmlessly through when he swiped at it.
Nate has sent you a Chat request. Accept? Yes No.
“What the-?” Fuzzball swiped at it a few more times.
“It's okay. I sent that to you. And the only way I could was if I knew you to be a friend. That's not to say I'm not sometimes too trusting, but I'm not getting any bad feelings from you.”
Fuzzball accepted the request. Nate stood right in front of him and sent a mental thought to lift his left leg if he got the message. Fuzzball's eyes widened and he lifted his left foot to stand solely on his right.
“I heard you, but your mouth wasn't moving,” Fuzzball said aloud as he set his foot down.
“This will be great for our mid battle tactics. And really just in general. We'll test the range of it later.”
“Mid battle?” Fuzzball shook his head vehemently, “No battle for me, thanks.”
“Given how these things tend to go, I'm not sure you'll be able to avoid combat entirely. Besides, you must have some combat ability, unless you reached Apprentice rank only from crafting or the non-combat skills.”
Fuzzball nodded and continued to look around as Nate closed the chat and stepped up to the well. He touched one of the stones and cast Lore Dump.
This is the Gronwood central well. It is one of four wells spread across Gronwood. Currently too broken to provide water. Repair to restore functionality.
“Thanks, Quilly. Fuzzball, can you help me lift this?”
Working together, Nate and Fuzzball lifted the small frame over the well. The difference between the rank of Novice and Apprentice became very apparent. Fuzzball was having a much easier time that Nate, though he was pleasantly surprised at his ability to hold nearly the entirety of the weight. While holding it up, Nate cast the Mend spell. One full magic bar and a headache later, the protective roof of the well was standing on its own.
“That's what I thought,” Nate puffed as he rested for his magic to regenerate.
“What?”
“If we can get the broken piece as close to its original location as possible, it repairs faster with my spell. Obviously some things we can't do that way like these broken houses, but we're going to be working up a sweat, my friend.”
Fuzzball's expression grew serious, “Before we jump into this, I wanted to thank you for saving me.”
“You're welcome! Honestly, I'm glad you were in there. I've only been in this world for about a day, and it's nice finally having someone to talk to.”
“You look much older than one day old, Nate.”
Nate laughed and patted Fuzzball on the shoulder, “Indeed I do. I think a magic storm pulled me into this place from where I'm originally from.”
“You're from a different world?”
“I think that should be a secret between us, but yes.”
“Do you miss it?”
That question hit Nate harder than he thought it would. “Assuming you aren't a figure of my broken mind, no. I had a low paying, stressful, unappreciated job. I got my degree in civil engineering, but the job market was garbage so I ended up stuck in a dead end call center job barely scraping by.”
“I don't understand a lot of that,” Fuzzball said.
“That's okay. I'm not super close to most of my family members. My parents split up when I was eight years old, and they did okay with what they had. My stepmother was addicted to drugs and abusive, my stepfather tried, but obviously loved his biological children more than us.”
“You have siblings?”
“An older brother, Isaac, and a younger sister, Irene. Our parents had a thing for names beginning with I.”
“But your name is Nate.”
“Short for Ignatius,” he said as he stacked up the well's stones before casting Mend on the well.
Athletics has increased from Novice 1 to Novice 2. Total Health has increased by 1. Progression to Level 1 at 60%.
Alteration has increased from Novice 2 to Novice 3. Total Magic has increased by 1. Progression to Level 1 at 64%.
Quest: Defend Gronwood.
Objective: Steelbeaks are drawing near Gronwood. Don't let them further damage the town.
Reward: Random Novice Rank Magic Item.
Accept? Yes No.
“Yes.” Nate said aloud.
“Yes, what?” Fuzzball asked as he was sifting through a nearby market stall.
“We have incoming monsters,” Nate quickly withdrew the Elemental Bolt spellbook and added it to his character sheet.
“I might be needing that soon.”
Fuzzball looked frightened, so Nate crafted another steelbeak ax and gave it to him. “This will hopefully last until we can get a proper crafting table.”
“Do you have any empty vials?” Fuzzball asked.
Nate withdrew three of them from his inventory. “Is this enough?”
“For now.” Fuzzball drew water from the well and filled the vials, then he pulled some ingredients that he had stashed in his satchel. “I'm going to the tower basement. Can you keep them off me while I work?”
“I can certainly try.” As Fuzzball ran in front of him, Nate's body shook with nervous fear before he followed after.
He'd never faced off against a monster before, luck saving him from that twice so far. He focused on what he needed.
Adaptive Learning has added two new recipes. Bone Shortbow. Ingredients: 3 bones, 5 strips of cloth. Using higher quality materials will increase weapon damage and durability. Bone Arrows. Ingredients: 10 bones, 10 teeth, 10 feathers. Each crafting makes 20 arrows. Using higher quality materials will increase weapon damage and durability.
Using his inventory menu, he crafted both bow and arrows and retrieved them. The scraps of cloth had somehow been interwoven to create the bow string. The bow was the slightly pitted ivory of bone, perhaps ribs based on the curvature. The arrows included a soft leather quiver with a shoulder strap.
He slung the bow on his shoulder, cast Camouflage, and hid right inside the front door of the tower.
Adaptive Learning has increased from Novice 1 to Novice 4. Total Fatigue has increased by 3. Progression to Level 1 at 76%.
Resourceful has increased from Novice 1 to Novice 2. Total Fatigue has increased by 1. Progression to Level 1 at 80%.
Bowcraft has increased from Novice 0 to Novice 1. Total Fatigue has increased by 1. Progression to Level 1 at 84%.
“Almost there,” Nate whispered as he waited. It wasn't long before the clack of talon on cobblestone drew close.
Before the bodies had dissipated into motes of light, Nate hadn't fully realized the size of steelbeaks, as his landing had scattered them in several places. Three steelbeaks walked into view. Each stood as tall as Nate and looked like oversized green feathered chickens with an ax as the top part of their beak.
Nate took up the bow and arrow. He hadn’t fired an arrow since he was a teenager, and the bow felt awkward in his hands. As he nocked an arrow, a loud banging sound began echoing from the tower basement. Six beady eyes locked on the tower as the steelbeaks charged it.
Nate’s arrow hit the first steelbeak in its right wing, drawing a cry of pain that sounded like a whetstone sliding along metal, and it flailed around trying to get the arrow out. The line of his stealth reticle began to shift back into the usual circle as his camouflage faded.
He’d been discovered. Hefting his ax in his right hand, he switched to his newest spell for his left, softly glowing red.
Elemental Bolt.
Rank: Novice Evocation.
Cost: 10 MP.
Effect: Fires a bolt of magical energy of your choice of fire, frost, or lightning damage. The bolt deals 5 damage of the chosen type and moves in a straight line until it either hits a creature or object or reaches the maximum range of 50 feet, at which point it fizzles.
With the sound of crackling flames accompanying the casting, Nate sent lightning out to hit the nearest charging steelbeak. Lightning arced across the beak of the monster as it continued its screaming charge.
Nate triggered his Tenacious power as the arcing steelbeak tried to cut him vertically in two. He raised his ax to block the incoming blow, which shattered the haft and still cut a deep gash across his chest. The seering pain seemed somehow lessened, though it still hurt like hell and left him a bit jittery.
Tenacious has reduced the lightning damage dealt to you.
A quick glance at his health bar showed that the blow only dealt about a quarter of his total health. He needed to give Fuzzball more time. And he had no more ax. So he tried his fists.
He knew he had an unarmed skill in the battle category, and now was as good a time as any to try it out. He tried to punch the steelbeak before him, but it dodged to the right as the other chopped in from the left.
Nate fell backward to avoid the blow, and rolled toward the basement opening as beaks pecked down at him, sparking off the floor. As he was rolling, he moved the bolt to his right hand and healing touch to his left. Shards of ice gouged deeply into the steelbeak he had hit with lightning, finally dropping it to the ground even as his own wounds began to close. He kept backing up and found himself up on the landing between the stairs. The banging noise became subdued as the steelbeaks moved to flank Nate.
His head ached as he had drained his magic bar to heal some of the damage. He needed to buy time. In a desperate move, Nate charged the left monster and triggered the Lucky Sigil Stone.
Power: Lucky. At the cost of Magic and Fatigue per second, you gain a burst of extreme luckiness. The cost depends on how hard you push the luck.
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Exhaustion washed over him as the right steelbeak aimed for Nate’s head.
Fuzzball was swirling the red liquid in one of the vials when Nate and the two steelbeaks rolled in a pile down the stairs. One of the monsters’ had its ax beak buried deep in the neck of the other, and its own neck had been violently twisted in the fall.
----------------------------------------
Nate woke up back in the bed on the upper floor of the tower some time later, pain radiating from all over. A cup of water and a vial of red liquid were set on the bedside table. He drank the water first and picked up the vial. He cast Lore Dump on it.
Potion of Healing (Novice). This potion was created by Fuzbalingralod. Type: Consumable. Effect: Drink this potion to instantly regain 50 health.
“Thank him later, rest now,” Nate said as he pulled out his cloud pillow to rest his head, pulling up his latest messages.
Acrobatics has increased from Novice 0 to Novice 1. Total Fatigue has increased by 1. Progression to Level 1 at 88%.
Archery has increased from Novice 0 to Novice 1. Total Health has increased by 1. Progression to Level 1 at 92%.
Blocking has increased from Novice 0 to Novice 1. Total Health has increased by 1. Progression to Level 1 at 96%.
Evocation has increased from Novice 0 to Novice 3. Total Magic has increased by 3. Progression to Level 1 at 100%. Progression to Level 2 at 8%.
Perception has increased from Novice 1 to Novice 2. Total Health has increased by 1. Progression to Level 2 at 12%.
Sneak has increased from Novice 2 to Novice 3. Total Fatigue has increased by 1. Progression to Level 2 at 16%.
Tenacious has increased from Novice 0 to Novice 1. Total Health has increased by 1. Progression to Level 2 at 20%.
Unarmed has increased from Novice 0 to Novice 1. Total Health has increased by 1. Progression to Level 2 at 24%.
You have leveled up. Choose a primary stat to increase by 10 points.
Current Primary Stats: Health: 58/58. Fatigue: 64/64. Magic: 59/59.
Originally Nate was thinking he'd be pouring his level up increases into his health, but if he put it into his magic he'd be much closer to being able to summon a shortbow. He looked through his other pages and noticed that his carrying capacity had increased to 192 lbs from the original 150 lbs.
“Three pounds per point of Fatigue. Damn.” The loot goblin inside of him now wanted to pour everything into Fatigue, but he pushed that aside. “Carrying more doesn't improve my survivability.”
Ultimately, he watched his health increase to 68. “I have a whole town to fix up. I’ll get to that bow sooner or later.”
Quest: Defend Gronwood complete. Rewards have been added to your inventory.
Nate opened up his inventory and found that a pair of gloves were there. He plucked them out to examine them. They were bright red with white trim, etching thread throughout made it look like musculature.
Gloves of Lifting (Novice). Type: Hands. Weight: 1 lb. Value: 75 gold pieces. Effect: While wearing these gloves, the wearer is able to lift twice as much. These gloves have no effect on any extra-dimensional storage spaces. Only usable by Novice ranked adventurers.
His stomach made an intense noise. He stood with a groan and walked downstairs to the basement. The crumpled bodies of the steelbeaks were still there, and Fuzzball was sitting at a table reading the recipe book he'd found in his satchel.
Nate looted the corpses and they dissolved into motes of light, startling Fuzzball from his reading.
Fuzzball was fast, scooping him up into a strong hug. “You're awake! I wasn't sure if you would wake, nasty fall and all.”
Nate wheezed, “Can't breathe. Let go!”
Fuzzball dropped him back to his feet and Nate coughed a bit before smiling up at him. “I'm starving. Do you by chance have any ingredients that double as spices?”
The fireplace on the ground floor had ashes within it and only a handful of logs left on an adjacent stand. There were hooks set in the brickwork within the fireplace for setting up a hanging pot, which they found dinged up on the backside of the tower. Nate mended it and set it up. He piled the logs under it while Fuzzball went to fetch water.
An elemental bolt later and they had a nice fire going while meat and whatever edible ingredients Fuzzball had were slowly becoming a delightful smelling stew.
“How did you know how to make healing potions? And do they always not take very long to make?” Nate asked.
“I have the Alchemist Sigil Stone, which helps me craft potions faster, and I must have learned the craft somewhere along the way. It was muscle memory.”
“But you still can't remember certain points of your past?”
“No,” Fuzzball's look became frustrated. “As much as I try.”
“It sounds like someone or something locked away certain of your memories. Intentionally.”
“Why would someone do that?”
“No idea,” Nate said. “An alternate possibility is that you did it yourself. It happens where I'm from sometimes as a response to physical or emotional trauma. Maybe the same thing can happen here.”
“Like whatever happened to the town was bad enough that I locked it away myself?”
Nate shrugged, “It's possible.”
“Let's hope not, for both our sakes.”
----------------------------------------
The steelbeak stew tasted better than Nate had expected. The vegetables provided by Fuzzball were tubers that looked like potatoes but were orange like carrots. They added an unexpectedly earthy sweetness to the broth.
Nate's journal updated with the Steelbeak Stew recipe.
Cooking has increased from Novice 0 to Novice 2. Total Fatigue has increased by 2. Progression to Level 2 at 32%.
“That was delightful,” Fuzzball said.
“Thank you. Is there anyway that we can grow more of these potarrot things?”
“Potarrot?”
“We had two different root veggies like this one. Potatoes held the general shape and carrots the color.”
“We call these cotates.”
“That's definitely better,” Nate said.
“And yes, I suppose we could. I know a spell that can grow ingredients faster.”
“Awesome!”
They spent the better part of a week getting the center of town in some semblance of working order. The well had already been completed, but it was tiny in comparison to even the smallest house.
It took hours of casting the Mend spell to fix small sections of destroyed buildings, resting for his magic bar to refill, and casting it again.
They had walked back to the tower for a bite of lunch, warmed up leftover stew.
“Why do you want to rebuild this town?” Fuzzball asked between spoonfuls.
“I have no idea why or how I ended up here. What I do know is that the people of this town may eventually come back. If they don't, then we still have a nice town to call our own. Also, it's a great opportunity for me to train up my skills in relative safety. I've only been here a short time, so I have a lot to learn, and I suspect that gaining power is the best way to ensure I can figure out why I was sent here in the first place. Do you think there's an Adventurer's Guild or something like that in this world?”
“I don't know. Given what we've encountered thus far, I would hope so.”
The first day they had fixed up the tavern northwest of the central well. The lower floor was a bar with a full kitchen in the back. The upper a series of bedrooms.
“This building has everything we need and it's closer to the well than the tower,” Nate said.
They chose rooms near the stairs across the hall from one another.
While Nate worked on rebuilding the store north of the well, Fuzzball worked the soil behind the tavern.
Plant Growth
Rank: Apprentice Alteration
Cost: 300 MP
Effect: Plants on which this spell is cast experience a month of growth in an instant.
Fuzzball was further along in his advancement than Nate, and he had the gardening in a decently functional state by the week's end, growing cotates and several other local fruits and vegetables. His gardening work further showcased the disparity between them, as Fuzzball tirelessly worked the field and had energy to spare when helping Nate with particularly heavy building sections. He seemed energized by days end, compared to Nate's slumped exhaustion.
As time passed, Nate began to implement a training regiment. In the morning, he would run along the rectangular road that wrapped around the town's outskirts. He'd walk when his fatigue bar neared being empty and continue running when refilled. The first day he'd taken 10 walking breaks, which he marked in his journal. Over time this gradually reduced to nearly half by the end of the first month.
After his morning run, he worked on lifting ruined pieces of buildings into place for mending, stacking stones and holding beams in place to reduce the overall magic cost. His Gloves of Lifting were integral to this process, and didn't seem to reduce his Athletics training.
After the tavern, for which they hadn't decided a name just yet, and the store, Nate worked on mending the blacksmith's workshop south of the well, and the small building east of it that led down underground.
He didn't feel ready to go into the mine, so he continued his training with various skills. Despite the town seeming long abandoned, there didn't seem to be a shortage of rat-moles. They would terrorize the garden, coming in groups. Nate and Fuzzball killed them by the dozen the first day the garden was up, and Nate had gathered enough leather strips to finally craft some simple patchwork leather armor. Feeling better about facing off against monsters now that he had armor, he took to clearing out rat-moles with reckless abandon. Repairing his steelbeak axes as needed and blasting them with Elemental Bolt when he could.
Nate was surprised at the fierceness that Fuzzball showed to protect his garden. He could make himself blurry, no doubt a Sasquatch racial ability, and his huge hands crushed rat-moles or flung them far away, often deathly hard against buildings. Once, during a particularly large rat-mole swarm, Fuzzball had called heavy vines to wrap around his feet and fists, the vines striking out as he punched and kicked, extending his range and power.
On the third day after their morning rat-mole clearing session, he climbed up to the top of the tower and looked down.
“It worked in Bravil's stilt houses, so might as well test it here.”
Jumping out of a second story window is scary when doing it on purpose, and it took several minutes of pumping himself up before he did it.
He landed hard, taking less damage than he thought he would. His healing touch washed away the pain in his legs and he jumped in place, his feet reaching just below the first floor window sill, about four feet up.
Nate excitedly ran back up the stairs to jump from the window again. Later, he ran down the street jumping as high as possible. Jumping had a minor fatigue cost, but it was well worth it as jumping trained both his Athletics and Acrobatics skills.
“If other people eventually live here with us, please don't jump every other step,” Fuzzball said as Nate jumped into view of his garden. “And don't do that in my garden.”
“If only we had two barrels under a store sign,” Nate puffed between jumps.
Their evenings were spent reading the numerous books on magic theory they had found in the tower. There weren't many beginner level books, but Nate found that his Adaptive Learning ability was beneficial in distilling the complexity, and Fuzzball filled in some of the gaps pertaining to Alchemy. His deepening understanding of the way that magic worked reflected in his Arcane skills, increasing the progressions of even those in which he knew no spells.
Two weeks into the rebuilding of Gronwood, Nate reached 70 magic points on his character sheet. He grabbed Fuzzball from the garden and took him over to the smithy.
“I want you here to see this!”
“See what?” Fuzzball looked around in confusion.
Nate cast Summon Short Bow, the orange light and sound of stacking bricks accompanying the conjuration magic. Into his left hand appeared a translucent orange bow with wicked looking spikes extending from the grip. On his back appeared a quiver and 20 arrows of the same orange translucence.
“Now training archery will be much easier!”
“Great,” Fuzzball said with less than equal enthusiasm.
“C'mon, man, this is awesome! Magic is awesome!” Nate excitedly yet clumsily drew an arrow and shot it at one of the front porch posts of the tavern. It instead shattered a nearby window.
“I can fix that!”
----------------------------------------
The early skill increases were fast and relatively easy to achieve, but Nate found by the end of his first month that the rate at which the skills increased began to plateau around the 15 point mark.
He laid in his bed in the tavern and pulled up his character sheet.
Ignatius “Nate” Arkwright
Level 7 Human Novice
Health: 139/139
Fatigue: 136/136
Magic: 142/142
Crafting Skills
Alchemy - Novice 5
Bowcraft - Novice 1
Carpentry - Novice 0
Clothier - Novice 2
Cooking - Novice 12
Leatherworking - Novice 3
Smithing - Novice 0
Racial Skills
Adaptive Learning - Novice 14
Indomitable Spirit - Novice 0
Resourceful - Novice 7
Tenacity - Novice 1
Arcane Skills
Alteration - Novice 16
Conjuration - Novice 12
Divination - Novice 3
Enchantment - Novice 2
Evocation - Novice 10
Illusion - Novice 8
Restoration - Novice 11
Battle Skills
Archery - Novice 14
Athletics - Novice 14
Blocking - Novice 6
Heavy Armor - Novice 0
Heavy Melee - Novice 0
Perception - Novice 9
Unarmed - Novice 5
Stealth Skills
Acrobatics - Novice 14
Disguise - Novice 0
Light Armor - Novice 7
Light Melee - Novice 8
Lockpicking - Novice 2
Sleight of Hand - Novice 0
Stealth - Novice 11
He was a few more skill bumps away from level 8. He'd alternated between increasing his health and his magic with his level increases, and as he thought his fatigue bar was keeping pace.
He could now carry over 400 pounds in his inventory, and much of it was filled with rat-mole parts, garden vegetables, and prepared food. He'd found that an amazing feature of his inventory power was that foodstuff was as fresh as when placed within. Similarly, prepared food was still hot when plucked from the inventory. They had a stash of already cooked food ready to go should circumstances suddenly change.
He fell asleep feeling accomplished and awoke refreshed. His morning run was typically before Fuzzball woke up, and this day was much the same. Gronwood was still largely in ruins, Nate only having recently finished all the buildings around the central square. The tavern, smithy, mine entrance, a small house and two stores took every bit of his first month to fix, and he had a long way to go before the town was in more complete working order.
His repair of the town had been slowed after being able to magically summon the shortbow and arrows. He refocused his afternoons to archery practice, and his proficiency had considerably increased. He no longer accidentally shattered windows, able to hit the wooden columns with ease. His real practice was with the rat-moles. They were agile and quick, dodging most of his arrows for the first several days before he got a better grasp of leading his shots and accounting for the natural arrow drop.
“We're getting better at this,” Nate said as he hopped down from the tavern roof to land next to Fuzzball, deftly avoiding the growing plants.
“I told you not to jump in my garden, Nate,” Fuzzball huffed.
“I didn't crush anything.”
“This time.”
“I didn't see that slippery rock!”
Fuzzball shook his head, “Which wouldn't have mattered if you would NOT JUMP IN MY GARDEN!”
“I'm sorry! I get excited sometimes,” Nate said as he healed the damage from jumping off the second story rooftop. “I wonder where all of these rat-moles are coming from.”
“I've begun wondering the same thing. They seem to come out at around the same time every day and in increasing numbers.”
“Maybe we can track them?”
Fuzzball knelt to pull a weed from the soil, “Many of them tunnel close before appearing to damage my plants. It will be difficult to find the source.”
“I think,” Nate said with a confident smile, “I have a plan.”