“Horse shit,” Jim said. We were all jogging at an easy pace. Well an easy pace for three of them while I, the only one without a pack, was already breathing hard.
“The easiest skills to learn,” Jim said speaking over Doty, “don’t require you to run. Running might the easiest to level for some people but it’s not the easiest skill. There are two you hardly have to move for. One’s holding your breath, and the other is coin flipping, and that’s a tier two! Don’t make the mistake of trying to train more than one skill at once either. Fully commit yourself to just that skill, and remember you can flip a coin a hundred times and never even earn the skill until you are trying to better the skill.”
“He means you must work on improving the skill,” Mrs. Kine said.
“The skill numbers reflect what you’ve already learned. To earn higher you need to improve past where you already are.”
“And they go past a hundred,” Doty said.
“No one gets them that high,” Mrs. Kine said.
“There is farmer out east with Skinning above a hundred here in the new world,” Doty said.
“Getting any of the General skills to Twenty, even a tier five skill, can be done in a week,” Mrs. Kine said.
“Far less than that,” Jim added and Doty agreed.
I looked at Mrs. Kine who was running next to me. She shook her head, then shrugged.
“The goal is focusing on what you are doing and how to make that skill better. Take running for example. Focus on how your foot falls on the ground, how your arms move, how you breathe, how long your stride is. Unlocking the skill is a bit difficult, then the first twenty to thirty levels are easy. After that,” Jim shrugged.
“You can get a whole new skill and raise it to twenty for two additions to the attribute it falls under faster than you can take a skill from thirty to forty,” Doty said.
“And you get another General Skill you can get better at,” Jim added, “and while the benefits of running are obvious there are other skills that seem pointless that you may find odd uses for. I have sixty-three points in holding my breath. I try to raise it each night before I sleep. It seems pointless but it is something I can do when I have a few minutes and nothing else to do. I found I used it while working with the hogs and their overpowering stench, or when starting and tending fires.”
“Is there a book or a list-”
The three of them start to chuckle. Even Mrs. Kine is smiling.
“There are many books with tier one, two, or three skills. People sell knowledge of tier four and five skills,” Jim said.
“Families normally keep an book and add to it,” Mrs. Kine said, “but there are enough skills know to raise attributes up. The real secrets are the hidden requirements for certain classes.”
“Like Soldier?” I asked.
“The least hidden of the hidden requirements,” Jim said.
“Lots of families keep information about that as well,” Doty said, “Thatchers and lumberjack families likely know what your attributes have to be to get offered certain wood-chopping classes or what Class Skills you might need.”
“Just don’t pick a class until you get attributes about three hundred,” Doty said with a smile.
Jim laughed and even Mrs. Kine smiled.
“Everyone takes a class right off as soon as they have five class skills to put together,” Mrs. Kine said.
“And that locks you into that Class right?” I said.
“For those five skills yes,” Jim said.
“So you can have the Class Skills but not the attributes for Soldier and still get class offers?”
“Oh yeah,” Doty said, “Grunt is offered, then you have to raise attributes to take soldier.”
“There are like five or six classes offered for any five Class Skills you put together. The better your attributes the better the class choices. And Class Skills can’t be leveled but they can be replaced. You can earn the skill Thrust, but later replace it with Vengeful Thrust. That won’t change the Class already created from Thrust and four other Class Skills but it will upgrade class selections if you haven’t picked a skill yet,” Jim said.
“And don’t worry too much about picking wrong. There are like forty different Class Skills you can combine in different ways to get soldier,” Doty added.
“But once you use a skill it’s locked. You can’t use Thrust for Soldier and then use it again with four other cards to unlock Fighter,” Jim said.
“So don’t bundle Class Skills right away,” I said to myself.
Mrs. Kine smiled and bumped into me.
“You won’t be doing anything at all for a while. Earning Class Skills is difficult in the shallows. Most Delve for them, even Farmers. And none of it matter until you can open your spirit book.”
“Technically you can earn skills,” Jim said, “you’ll hear the voice, but won’t be able to check your progress without the book.”
“Actually-” Doty said, but Mrs. Kine cut him off.
“Why don’t you focus on running,” she said loudly.
I tried, but I heard no voice and I felt like I was over concentrating on ever aspect of running to the point where I wasn’t running at all. Not really, I was going though all the individual steps of running. (No pun intended.)
Then I thought, maybe doing some sort of Zen running where you just become the runner, or something like that would work.
I tried that as well, tried, just running, but that didn’t work either.
“Don’t forget you can get training too,” Jim said, “it really does help out.”
“Is that real or a myth?” Mrs. Kine said.
“Nope it’s real. There is even a Class Skill you can earn from it.”
“What?” Mrs. Kine said her stride faltering for a moment.
“How does it work?”
He grinned over his shoulder at her and she closed her mouth and looked away.
“I’m only teasing you. I won’t charge. So long as you are thirty points higher in the skill than the one you are training you can train someone in it. It cuts down on learning time and helps the trainer as well. Thirty points for tier one. Tier two is forty points, tier three is seventy points.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Mrs. Kine said, “The more difficult skills are that much harder to level.”
“It’s twenty times the tier level plus ten,” he said with a shrug, “at least as far as I know. And honestly if someone tries to charge you they are cheating themselves because as the trainer you gain levels at about half the rate the one you are training gains them.”
We ran for a bit in silence until Mrs. Kine said, “Wait. That would mean-”
“Yup,” he said with a wicked laugh.
Doty asked before I did, “Means what?”
“Means if you get to seventy on a tier three skill, which is difficult to do, you can level fast again by training others.”
“How do you train them?” Mrs. Kine asked quickly.
“Tree,” Doty said as we bunched up to pass a downed tree limb in the road.
“You just watch what they do and correct it. I’ve trained some people with rock climbing and tree climbing and it’s not well defined. When I did the tree climbing they weren’t leveling fast and neither was I. I haven’t tested it out again but I think that was because I stayed on the ground while they climbed.
And when we did rock climbing I was climbing with them. But I’m not sure yet. The class skill is real though called, General Skills Trainer, or something. It lowers the skill you need to have above theirs to half or something close. I think-”
“Marker!” Doty called out.
We slowed to a stop and I was the only one truely winded as I bent over to catch my breath.
“I have fifty-six levels in sewing,” Mrs. Kine said as she joined me. She was still wearing her pack while I have shrugged my off already.
“It’s a tier two dexterity skill,” she said, “and I’d like to try training!” She was whispering but she was excited.
“I wonder how training works with Reading?” she said.
I offered her the canteen I’d been drinking out of.
She took a sip and handed it back.
I put it back in the backpack and then removed the straps from the bundle and shrugged my way into the leather coat.
As tall as I was the coat came down far enough to look normal, while on her it was knee-length.
We each had a stride length club. With the strength most people had that was considered a single handed weapon.
Mrs. Kine and I each had a small shield that slid over our left forearm that we held with our left hand.
I tested them both out for a bit. I’m sure I looked like a fool but I wanted to test the weight of the shield and the weight of the mace. The weapon was too heavy and too long for me. My wrist and forearm wasn’t strong enough and even my the massive shoulders these people had was tiring. I had to removed the shield to get the backpack on.
“Okay,” Jim said seriously, “my understanding is you’re small horned enough in the shallows that I’m going to cover the important stuff. It’s not an insult, it’s survival.”
“Please do,” I said and he nodded. Even Doty listened as if he had never heard it before.
“We stay together. The most dangerous situation we will face without fliers is getting stuck, falling, breaking a bone, or anything else that limits mobility. We do not risk it. We don’t jump over logs or slide down hills or scramble over rocks. If we have to we will go backward, which isn’t ideal because most of these things ill be following us. We aren’t here to harvest. We don’t stop to collect parts unless you see weapons or armor in a slime. If you do-” he said looking around, “You call out. You don’t go for it yourself. We shouldn’t see anything of the sort. We aren’t headed anywhere people normally go.
“We stay together, that means the slowest among us has to keep us informed,” he was looking at everyone in turn but we all knew it was me he was speaking to.
“This isn’t about pride. When you are flagging let us know, we will make a place to rest. I’ll keep asking and you keep answering, and we will do just fine.
“When it is time to circle I’ll call out Circle!” he shouted the last word.
“We will then run in a circle. This should free us from most of the imps and let the henkals fight and attack them. Kill the henkals as we circle. Imps are easy enough to kill. Leave the slimes if we can as they are preferable to new spawns.”
It was mostly walking, then a jog when we came upon monsters. Like the cart we were moving through alternating monster groups letting the henkals and imps focus on each other and then moving on with a small burst of speed. Well a burst for me, the others seemed unaffected.
Twice the henkals following us grew in numbers so great that Jim had us circle. Which amount to running in a tightening circle and killing the henkals at the back of the pack that was following us in a circle until we had the numbers down far enough that they wouldn’t attack. Then we started running again.
On Earth I would have gotten lost with all the circling. But with the planetary rings above you just had to glance up to get your bearings. Not that I was setting our course.
Twice we came to clearings where Jim called for us to circle and kill everything except the slimes which were happily camped out over the dead thing closest to where they were.
“Look,” Mrs. Kine said. I got up to walk over.“This slime has two monster cores,” she said pointing. It had more than that floating in it’s semi-transparent innards.
“Slimes don’t produce monster cores,” she said, “but they do eat everything else.”
I saw the round essence pearls, and a few dumpling looking cysts. The monster cores were small incomplete spheres, sort of like the death-star under construction. They were about the size of plums while the essence pearls were the size of marbles.
“And they are all just mana?” I asked.
“In different forms,” she said, “the monster cores are what alchemists crave as you make mana potions from them,” she said in a whisper.
“And you just kill this and pop those out to harvest them?”
She nodded.
The slime ignored us, as they did when they were eating something. This one had a half dissolved henkal.
I used a knife to cut into one of the dogs. It’s head was crushed as the obvious cause of death.
“What are you doing?” Mrs. Kine whispered.
“I’m curious about the organs,” I said.
I’d seen the inside of men, horses, and onya during the loops. Onya were technically monsters as they sometimes had monster cores and didn’t breed. Their insides were vastly different than horses even though they both plant matter.
The gizzard bit in the humans was present in the onya as well though much larger. They also had three different bladders forever purpose those served.
“We don’t want them to think we are harvesting,” she said.
“Is it okay to cut into this?” I asked with a loud voice. They’d likely already seen me as they were both standing on watch while we rested.
“I want to see how the organs are laid out.”
Everyone gathered around and I cut into the belly. The heart was massive, and the second heart was smaller. They were attached to what appeared to be two different sets of veins.
“So weird,” I said looking up at the others, “do other monsters have two hearts?”
Jim and Doty glanced at eat other and then shrugged.
“I don’t doubt scholars know, but why would it matter?”
“These seem to be on a completely different-” I got hung up on the words evolutionary track.
“He’s excited enough about pointless stuff to be a scholar himself.”
“He’s a Master Alchemist and an Enchanter,” Mrs. Kine said with pride in her voice.
I winced and began using some dirt to clean my hands.
Mostly I was horrible at killing. It wasn’t a lack of will so much as strength or skill. The others, Mrs. Kine included, could swing the long maces one handed and connect with their targets. Jim even had a way of doing it side arm instead of an overhead swing. When they connected, things crunched and broke.
Imps were horrid things if you didn’t kill them out right. Their cries of pain were so much like human children that I was constantly bothered.
They weren’t human though. No other imps went over to help downed imps or otherwise paid them any attentions.
When the maces connected with the over-sized heads they cracked and split like melons.
Henkals wouldn’t stop to eat the dead though so killing imps only happened when we had a huge number following us.
Mostly when we circled it was to thin the henkals out that followed us in a yipping, nipping pack. I think we only circled twice to deal with imps.
We’d set up a search pattern upon reaching the general area, but the sun was already beginning to set.
“Circle!” Jim called and we followed killing all the non-slimes until we slowed to a stop.
“We aren’t going to find it before dark,” Jim said, “Which means we will be doing this when they spawn. The only difference will be that killing monsters after dark means new monsters spawn unless we have a pack around us. We won’t get this,” he said gesturing to the dead around us, “unless there are a hundred more slimes.
“When we circle we kill all the non-slimes and let the slimes spawn in. Eventually there will only slimes. They likely won’t have enough dead to eat which means stay on guards for hungry slimes.”
We each fitted the upright sticks to out packs and Jim came around and checked everyone’s. He took a few minutes to show me how I’d done it incorrectly and how to fix it.
“If you don’t know,” he said, “Never-dark torches don’t last forever. I know you’ve likely made ten thousand of these but I’m in charge so I’m giving the speech,” he said with a smile.
I nodded, though I didn’t know much beyond alchemists made the never-dark torches.
“Once lit they stay lit for about eight weeks, eighty-three days technically, though some can die five days early and some can last five or six days later. You can also put them out if you suffocate them. If you do so they will turn black and never light again. Never put a lit torch in your pack or a dimensional space. Don’t cover or wrap them.”
The torches were spoon length pieces of wood with thick handles and a glass covered end. The glass was porous with hundreds of small holes the size of a pencil’s lead that gave access to the wood beneath.
Lighting them was as easy as spitting on them, dipping them in water, or taking a sip from a canteen and spraying a bit of water on the glass.
It began as a soft spot of fluorescence under the glass and then spread out until the wood under the glass was glowing with a harsh white light.
These handles, like most, had a flat spot for a flat piece of metal to slide into and a hole for a pin to push though.
Now we all had the cool-to-the-touch never-dark torches rising just above our heads.
We waited until the monsters started spawning before we began moving. As we did I realized we’d likely be moving for the rest of the night.
As luck would have it we came across a squat safe-stay not half an hour later. We hadn’t even stopped to circle once.
“Circle!” Jim called and we started jogging around the low stone building. It looked to be about a story and a half tall with a heavy iron banded wooden door on massive metal hinges.
“Doty we’ll do a couple of passes and then you’ll check the door.”
“Understood!” he shouted even though he was running right along side Jim.
I thought it reeked of boys playing solider but I realized quickly enough this was people people professional. Sure these monsters might be no challenge at all for these two, but no doubt they’d continue to act like this if we had to go deeper where the dangers grew.
They were right. The numbers didn’t really seems to thin out. Not that I saw any monsters spawn. What did happen was over time we cycled closer and then further away moving the slimes in a band that bunched up while we killed imps and henkals that weren’t already killing each other.
We circled for a good ten minutes.
“I’m flagging,” I called out. Ten minutes of running was still rough, but swinging the club, let along just keeping the shield up so the few fire bolts broke on it instead of me had turned both of my arms to jelly.
“Flagging. Understood,” Jim called back.
Nothing changed for two loops except that we moved further away from the building.
“Doty! Check the door next pass,” Jim said as we passed the door.
Doty moved closer to the building slipping between the slimes and racing ahead of us.
He was pulling the door open and slipping inside as we passed.
He was still inside, the door still open, as we passed twice more.
Then he was outside without his pack or torch and racing to catch up.
My arm vibrated with the hit on the henkals back. Likely I broke it’s back but didn’t kill it outright.
“Chain gap,” Doty reported to Jim, “I left my torch and pack after clearing the room.”
“Okay,” Jim said to him, “Gather up. Headed to the door. Doty and Jim to hold it you two inside. Chain gap!”
“Chain gap!” Mrs. Kine yelled back.
She looked at me and I quickly yelled, “Chain gap.”
We run for the door and then slowed as we entered. The wooden chains hung from the ceiling inside and the never-dark torch Doty had left was filling the room with light and shadow. There was a dead imp on the ground near his pack, the head crushed.
“Back it in,” Jim called and we moved further inside.
They entered, closed the door with a loud thump that spoke of a lot of mass.
I started to take my pack off, but Mrs. Kine put a hand on my arm and shook her head.
“It will be just a moment,” she whispered.
It was a single room. Still Jim circled it his torch almost brushing the ceiling.
“Wood,” he said loudly enough we could all hear, “water, rations, chain gap, blankets.”
Then he walked another loop calling out the same.
He did it a third time and then stopped near us.
“Jim, one,” he said.
“Doty, two,” Doty said.
“Mr. And Mrs. Kine, three and four,” Mrs. Kine said.
“Four taken and four arrived,” Jim said formally.
“Seconded,” Doty said.
“Then party disbanded,” Jim said with a smile.
We all got out of our packed and moved the never-dark torches to the holders on the walls.
“I’m going to step out and break some heads for a while,” Doty said, “so we can do some harvesting in the morning if that’s alright with everyone?”
Jim looked at me then shrugged.
“I’ll join you,” he said.
“We’ll get the fire on and the chains sorted,” Mrs. Kine said.
The metal box built into the stone wall was the fireplace, though it was more furnace than fire place.
There was a thin but tall woven basket that contained pine needles, wood shavings, and tiny balls of sap pressed with what looked like weeds.
There was a heavy metal grate in the furnace that Mrs. Kine pulled out to make a kindling bundle on. It looked like one of those grills you might find in a public park.
Below a cookie sheet was pulled forward but it was clear of ash.
The door opened and both men entered. They did the formal counting of two people and then approached.
“Got six of them here,” Jim said setting down five marbles in the ash tray. From the look of them he’d pulled them out of slimes and then tried to use dirt to scrub them free.
He reached up and over Mrs. Kine to the bulbous piece of glass I thought was an oil lamp of some sort.
He slotted the essence pearl in a slot and then lifted the bottom piece upward. It was on some sort of complex hinge. There was a crack and the oval globe was filled some sort of fog.
A moment later little lines began to glow inside the furnace. They looked like stitches as they rose up out of the metal before falling back into it.
I got a better look at the door where I could look at both sides.
“What is that?” I asked.
“A door,” Mrs. Kine said with a smile as the kindling burst into flame between her hands.
“You have the smaller branches.
Sure enough there was a shelf of some sort woven from reeds or wicker or thin strips of wood. Each space was filled with different sized sticks.
I panicked a bit and started piling the smaller stuff on, but Mrs. Kine pulled it off as the other two announced they were headed back out.
“Get the medium stuff,” Mrs. Kine said.
As I handed some over I saw the lines in the furnace had doubled or tripled.
“What are the lines,” I asked.
She paused as she glanced at me, “What lines?”
“The glowing lines in the furnace,” I said reaching out to touch one on the door.
My finger and the line met and intersected. There was no pain or any other sensation and no change in the line.
“Huh,” I said.
She pushed the metal grate back in and then slid a split piece of firewood from her side into the furnace. Then using a stick she pushed the burning kindling onto the wood and slipped another larger split piece in.
There was a wooden place of some sort of the wall near the globe with the colored fog.
It too had lines and lines of light.
I stood and stared at it. This was different. The lines of light warped into and out of the furnace and these lines were projected out from the surface in complex shapes and patterns.
I crouched back down to look at the door and noticed that now there were large curling loops that looked like long springs that existed only inside the furnace.
“No you don’t,” Mrs. Kine said slotting the end of a folding bellows into a hole in the front. A metal tube was connected on the other side and ran to the center under the grating.
As he pumped the bellows open and closed air helped the fire burn. Where it touched the long loops of springs it died a little.
I stood back up to examine the complex items growing out from the wood.
One of which was dense with tiny loops and knots and turns and curls. It was so dense it almost looked solid.
“This is so weird,” I said.
“Oh,” Mrs. Kine said almost wistfully, “It might be that you sense the enchantment. These safe-stays have light enchantments tied to the furnaces. I forgot that you would have forgotten this,” she said.
She stood beside me with the marble sized essence pearl.
“Put your hand on this,” she said pushing my hand on glass orb, “and now we put this in the cracker, and lift up on this” she said. As the pearl cracked the foggy gas inside grew thicker.
“Woah,” I said.
“You can feel it?” she said as she gave me a big hug.
“You might be able to learn-” she cut off as the door opened before drawing away.
The two counted off and then joined us, dropping several more pearls on the tray and then moving over to their packs as they continued discussing something.
Mrs. Kine moved the essence pearls to a small glass jar she found in one of the kindling holes.
“Help me with the chains,” she said to me.
We found twenty extra chains hanging in one corner. We took two of them and hung them where the two had been broken.
“We can fix these tonight,” she said.
I eyed the broken chains and wondered how. The wood was thin and flat and wasn’t going to bend. I wondered if one of the cards she was still bonded to but didn’t posses had magical wood manipulation powers.
There was no magic involved. The wood was soaked in boiling water and then bent enough at the cut to get the next link in and then bent back. It would dry and remain in a shape that couldn’t come apart.
It took an hour or so and a lot of complex magical shapes and lines extruded from the board, but eventually lines of light crawled up the wall then spread out.
Long curling spring looking shapes grew then looped back inside their own curl to create a second curl going back the other way.
This happened several times as I stared.
“What are you doing?” Jim finally asked.
“I’m looking at the enchantment I guess,” I said.
A few moments later the long spring shape with the multiple layers of curls burst into light filling the room in a way the never-dark torches couldn’t.
It didn’t blind me even though I was looking at it but the surprise caused me to stumble off my backpack which I was standing on.
I landed wrong on my wrist and cursed, “Depths!”
I’d long ago grown into the body during the loops, but later I’d look back and realize that I was even cursing in their language without having to think first.
“Let me see it,” Mrs. Kine said.
An hour later my wrist was swollen, but likely not broken, everyone agreed.
The throbbing pain was so great that I couldn’t sleep. We fed the fire and from time to time someone would crack an essence pearl in the spot below the glass.
I had a lot of questions about the glowing lines of enchantment, but didn’t want to show my ignorance to Jim and Doty.
Nothing moved in the complex lines of light. Nothing appeared to pump or pulse or rotate. It was as if someone took lots of wire of different gauges from twenty-two at the smallest all the way up to eight at the largest. Yet there were no obvious joins or places to tie in.
There were two places where I found a T-intersection between lines. The joined area had curves instead of one line just dead-ending into another, but no change in size as if liquid flows were being combined.
I assumed the loops and shapes had some purpose, but I couldn’t interact with the lines at all. I could pass my fingers or other objects through them, but that was it.
“We are going to head back out and thin out the numbers again to give the slimes times to work on the dead before morning,” Doty said.
I had assumed they were sound asleep on the other side of the room.
“Sure,” I said.
Mrs. Kine stood and blanket wrapped around her joined me were I stood staring at the dense magic protruding from the piece of wood.
“This wood is needed for the light enchantment. Don’t touch it or drill anything into it,” she presumably read off from it.
“Is that what has you so interested?” she asked.
I nodded.
“It’s amazingly complex,” I said seriously, “and I don’t know what any of it does.”
“I’ll be honest,” she said with a hint of laughter in her voice, “I expected you to have other interests tonight.”
I turned to her and then smiled like a teenager.
“Oh. Mrs. Kine, I didn’t forget about you,” I said as I began to lean in for a kiss.
Her ears bounced a bit as she blushed.
“Not me,” she said stepping back and looked at the closed door, “Your spirit book.”
It was like waking up and realizing that dream about peeing the woods was really just pissing your pants. It was so obvious.”
“Yes! Let’s do that!” I said with enough excitement she laughed.
So we sat with our backs to the wall and she explained what to do, and what to think.
I sat there breathing deep, my eyes closed as I tried to imagine a book on the floor between my spread legs. As I reached down I took a hold of the cover, that I could totally feel, and opened it up.
“Try lying down like this with the book over your head on the floor where you can’t see it, but keep your eyes open,” she said after a while.
She kept telling me it could take time, and not to get frustrated.
She kept telling me it gets easier once you could open it the first time.
“A friend finally opened hers by doing right as she was waking up in the morning but before she was fully awake.”
I was suddenly still then made my hands move again though I wasn’t thinking about them at all.
Mrs. Kine had slaves for friends, and those couldn’t be awakened, until her father sold them all. She had exactly one friend from her childhood and whatever had happened to her hadn’t been good. It had involved her father cheating his long term business partner out of money. That was her friend’s father.
She hadn’t spoken of what happened afterward but she’d told me horror stories with boiling water and beatings, so I didn’t have high hopes it including sunsets and butterflies.
“Butterflies,” I said.
“What?”
“I was just seeing if the word- I just realized I hadn’t seen butterflies anywhere.”
“I don’t know what worm-wings are,” she said.
She was saying butterflies, but sounding out the word slowly and I realized it was a compound word in the language we were speaking.
“Worm-wings,” I said saying the two words that made up the compound word for butterfly in this language.
“Worm-wing, worm-wing, butterfly, worm-wing, butterfly, weird,” I said with a small chuckle. Depending on how fast or slow I said it the words in my head changed while the sounds I was speaking were the same only faster or slower. It was like there was still some sort of translating going on from English to Turkish.
“Maybe they are from the Old World,” she said.
“Worm-wing,” I said slowly, then sped up a bit, “worm-wing, worm-wing, worm-wing, butterfly- that’s so weird,” I said.
She was frowning and staring at me.
“Sorry,” I said dropping the grin.
“We should rest,” she said, “with the amount they are killing they are going to want us to do the harvesting tomorrow while they sleep.”