Sighing in defeat, Adam moved on. He didn’t remember exactly how many new things he had unlocked, but he was eager to see them nonetheless. Working backwards, he headed for Love, finding nothing. All he had left was Discipline, Chores, and Household.

Discipline was next on his list of fun things to look into. Chores and Household, while having powerful and useful skills, particularly the later, were the more boring options on his list, so he waited on them. It didn’t take long to spot a new addition right next to Disappointed.

The second slot on the three link line was occupied by a new skill called Scolding.

Scolding: A Mother can scold her children even while saying things that are technically compliments, but are somehow condemnations of the highest order. Children always know when they are being scolded, even if the neighbors don’t. Allows a Mother to turn any word spoken into a disciplinary action. Effects go unnoticed by all but the target. Causes minor crowd controlling effects and damage. Can be used while casting other spells with a verbal component.

It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.

Adam was surprised to see what was essentially a free form casting skill right after he had received a skill for using a weapon as a spell focus. That didn’t mean that he wanted it. It wasn’t that it was a bad skill, just that he didn’t really have a use for it at the moment. He suspected that it was something that took a fair amount of time to really build it up into something damaging enough to be useful, and that wasn’t what he had had in most of his fights to date. The stealth aspect of it was also unnecessary by his estimates, although it had its uses as well.

He was already regretting Shhhh in a way, so he didn’t want another wasted point into Discipline if he didn’t get something good. He figured that he would get a fair amount of use out of Shhhh in other ways, eventually, even if he had to force the issue. Disappointment was his measuring stick for whether or not to look further into Scolding, so he took another look at it while he was already in the tab.

Disappointment: A Mother’s Disappointment is a terrible thing, even more painful than the physical punishment they can distribute. The only thing worse than the pain of a Mother’s Disappointment is the crushing weight of knowing it’s your own fault.

Disappointment causes damage over time. Slows movement, attack, and cast speed. Causes no actual harm to children.

Now that was a skill he wanted to get. Once again though, he just couldn’t see it being useful in the duke’s estate. Yet. The duke had mentioned that the real need for a guardian for his children was still a year or two away. That gave him time to get his foundations straightened out before he needed to be more offensive than he already was. He’d been gaining most of his experience from combat so far, but Mother was technically a hybrid class. He could gain experience from combat, caretaking, crafting, or nearly anything else. At that point, Adam wouldn’t be surprised if Mother gained experience by breathing.

Moving on, he hit Household, finding nothing new there. Chores, on the other hand, had two. The first was Home Remedies. An interesting name and option, it was positioned on its own, instead of attached to anything else. Next to Organization, as though he needed the hint that the skill had led to it being unlocked, was a gods awfully named skill that he would never, ever take based solely on its name.

Perfectly Packed Pretty Pocket Purse.

He had a very small idea of what the skill did, but wanted nothing to do with it. He glared at it, trying to lock it back up, but something different happened instead. Its name changed.

Efficiently Packed Pocket Purse.

No.

Pocket Purse.

Still no.

Bottomless Purse.

How about… actually, that’s not that bad. Let’s see what it does.

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Bottomless Purse: A purse that has everything a Mother could ever need. Both a spatial storage space, and an endless repository, the Bottomless Purse is exactly what its name implies. Repository contains an unending supply of mundane items that a Mother may need. Does not include weapons, armor, or anything magical. Spatial storage can store anything that can fit through the entrance; sapient creatures not included. Non sapient creatures will be placed into a form of stasis.

Adam was more than a little shocked by his newly unlocked skill. Spatial storage items weren’t unheard of, but they were fairly rare. And expensive. Very expensive. There were skills that could do the same thing, but he had thought they were for evolved classes only, or at least they grew larger after evolution. If he was reading the description right, it not only had an unlimited storage but another effect as well.

The repository was a very interesting idea. He was uncertain how exactly it did any of what it claimed, but he had a lot of thoughts on how to use it already. His biggest concern was what, precisely, it considered a weapon. After all, he couldn’t use weapons, but did just fine with kitchen knives, brooms, and a host of items as yet undiscovered. If it worked as expected, he wouldn’t need to worry about his weapons breaking mid combat anymore, as he could just replace them from his new purse. Sure, they wouldn’t compare to any of the magical variants of he could possibly obtain, but he was a slave, he had no way to buy any of those. Maybe someday, but keeping himself equipped with anything at all was still better than fighting with his fists, or even a paring knife.

There were also the other options. Ingredients for cooking, snacks, even already made cookies? He wasn’t positive that his skill would work on cookies he didn’t make, but he liked cookies well enough to not particularly care. If he saved the ones he made for use as healing items, and just ate the ones from the Purse he’d be happy enough. There was also things like napkins or rags for cleaning, sewing kits for fixing torn clothes, even firewood.

He was going to grab the skill immediately, but organization twitched at him. A drawer slammed onto the desk behind him, but he didn’t need to look at it. It was his collection of reasons to not buy skills without thinking about them first. He didn’t need a new skill right that moment, he just needed to know what he had available.

He also, sheepishly, remembered that he had one more skill that he had only glanced at.

Home Remedies: A Mother needs to care for her children’s health under any circumstances. Home Remedies allows a Mother to make a remedy for anything out of all sorts of household items. It also assists in growing the ones that you can’t simply find lying around. There’s nothing Home Remedies can’t cure. Sick kids? Yep. In laws visit too often? You got it. Pest problems? Oh yes. Monsters? Of course. Need to work that libido one way or the other? Home Remedies has you covered.

Adam was stunned. It was Herbalism and Alchemy rolled into one. He also guessed that, much like cooking and cleaning, it would provide him with new options in weaponry as well as skills. As if alchemy wasn’t enough of a reason for the skill. Once more he had to stop himself from buying a skill immediately.

Looking over the contents, he realized that he had vastly underestimated the usefulness of Chores. His two most interesting new skills and Multi task came out of it. Mother Knows Best carried Household mostly on its own, as Mama Bear did with Protection. Mother’s Love was the only thing he even had in Love, but it was a fantastic skill. All of them combined would maybe match Chores for usefulness after he took both Home Remedies and Bottomless Purse.

That being said, no matter how useful they were, he was going to take the time to think his choice over. There was a possibility that he would have quite some time before he gained another level, and he only had one skill point left to spend. He almost regretted Organization, except that he knew it had been necessary to unlock Bottomless Purse.

Curious, he waved over Szellem. “Hey, can you tell me how I unlocked Home Remedies? I can’t figure it out.”

Szellem shook his head, laughing. “Yeah, that one would be tough to figure out. You needed two things for it, which complicates things, and it’s not even the hardest one you have. One was to use your own home made curative. Actually, it didn’t have to be a curative, just a homemade solution to a problem. For you that was your cookies. Even though they activate with another skill, it still counts. As for the other requirement, you had to do some sort of herbalism based skill. That was the really confusing one. Part of Herbalism is trimming and harvesting plants, a condition you achieved by fighting those thorn bushes. Technically, you both trimmed and harvested them, although they did a fair bit of those things in return.”

Adam’s mouth worked silently as he tried to find words to use. Nothing came out.

Szellem continued as though nothing had happened. “Honestly the System can be a little silly about these sorts of things. If you can’t figure out how you unlocked something feel free to ask. I can’t even drop hints about how to unlock things, but I get a free pass once they are done.”

Adam finally got his mouth working again. “That’s…. Ugh. Never mind.” He shook his head. Then looked at Szellem. It wasn’t often he had to do it, but… “Thanks.”

It was hard to tell which of them was the more surprised at his gratitude, but he faded out of his mind to escape the situation.

When Adam dropped out of his mindscape, he just sent Martin off to sleep. He didn’t really have it in him to talk about his options without first thinking them over. And lucky him, he had a whole night watch shift to figure it all out.