“You were blind?” I asked Terra on the way to the coop.

“I saw the major shape of things but not like this,” Terra told me like we’d always been talking with each other.

“I feel terrible that I didn’t know,” I tried to apologize. “I should have gotten you glasses or something.”

Terra sat in a patch of green on the dirt path that led out behind the general store, so I stopped beside her. Chester had told me that this path led to the coop. I was just happy that he’d known what chickens and eggs were.

“Why?” Terra asked.

“Because you seem so much happier now that you can see well,” I explained.

“Yep,” Terra confirmed, taking off down the path again. “I am happier. I’m glad I can follow you around. You’re my favorite person.”

“That’s cool.” I followed her. “You’re my favorite cat ever!”

Terra scampered ahead to the “chicken” coop. Most of it was in shambles. The ten-foot dome of industrial strength chicken wire was bent out of shape with gaping holes. The wooden frame of the doorway had collapsed and the door itself seemed singed. There was a stream that ran through it, but the water had rusted the wire that seemed to run at least three inches underground all around except for where the water was. If I was going to make a parrot cage, it might have looked like this coop. I started casting Basic Repair. Even with the upgrade, it wasn’t a very powerful spell against the damage the coop had endured.

“What are chickens?” Terra asked, poking her head into one of what looked like nesting boxes, if nesting boxes were supposed to house something less than nine inches tall and more than half a yard long. I didn’t want to imagine what this world’s version of a chicken was. I’d end up with nightmares. I had a vivid imagination.

“I have no idea,” I admitted on a sigh. Something had singed that door from the inside.

Terra gave me a look with her head cocked to the side, but let it go. I ran myself out of mana four times before the coop looked sturdy enough to keep “chickens” in it. That’s saying a lot considering that I currently had a whopping 152 mana and the upgraded spell still only cost ten mana per cast.

I worried a little that I was spending my time getting my utility spells up instead of figuring out how I was going to defeat Beau. It wasn’t like I could defeat Beau by repairing him to death. I’d done enough of trying to “fix” that boy when I’d been his girlfriend. What I needed to be working on was the Spark spell. I wondered what it would upgrade to if I spent as much energy on it as I had Mend and Basic Clean.

“It’s not like you don’t know how to be a gamer.” Terra put herself smack dab in the middle of my thoughts. I found I didn’t mind. She had a point. She might not have ever seen a chicken, but she’d sat between Kat and I when we’d played video games.

“I know what a chicken looks like now,” she protested, chasing a bug out of one of the boxes.

“Then you know more than I do about it!” I cast my new clean spell on the box, giving her a few more bugs to chase. I got a feeling of crunchy satisfaction as she ate the beetle-like thing.

“I don’t mean the ones around here,” she told me, and I realized she wasn’t speaking out loud. “I can see it in your head. I get that picture of what you’re thinking about.”

“That’s handy,” I said out loud. It was going to take me a bit to get used to.

A dozen boxes meant a dozen casts of the new clean spell and my mana was spent so I plopped myself onto a large rock inside the enclosure. Terra dutifully hopped up next to me to expediate the process. It sure helped that petting her quickened my mana regeneration and that she liked being petted. She was right about me, more right than even I was right now.

I hadn’t been as bad as Clara, but, when Kat was still in diapers, I’d run my own guild in the first version of EQ. We’d had over a thousand dollars in consoles that Kat and I had used to blow off steam in college. Survival games were my jam, but I’d beaten down demons with swirling firebats, delivered presents to fuzzy little neighbors, and defeated Undyne in genocide mode. Before that, I’d memorized the maps for Skara Brae, CTR-SHFT-C-ed my way through four versions of Sims, and three of Civilization.

I’d read enough LitRPG to know about puma checks, mana cores, and that Terra was nothing like Donut or Alfred. Why was I treating this world like I had to fit in to survive? That was my old world, but it didn’t have to be this one. I needed to get past this survival mentality and into a gamer one. I had access to stats. It was like having the cheat codes to life.

If Beau was coming after me, this wasn’t a survival or simulation game. Unless I could take over this truck stop and turn it into a town, it wasn’t even a city-builder. I wasn’t trapped in VR, so getting out wasn’t even an option. This seemed to be a pretty straightforward RPG progression. I scraped my thoughts out of the whiny mode that always annoyed me as a reader. No, I didn’t. It took more than a simple realization to kick my butt into gear, but I got there. Eventually.

The coop was ready by the time my internal pep talk saw results, but I’d gone through another five batches of mana by then in an effort to get Spark caught up. I didn’t know what those big rocks/small boulders were doing in a chicken coop, but they made good targets for Spark. I only knew that Spark upgraded because it suddenly cost more mana. The only thing different about it was that I could hold the spark harmlessly on the end of my finger before I shot it off in a direction. I reluctantly turned the notifications back up to full force and got my end of chapter summary a little early.

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Summary

Will +2 (20)

Constitution +1 (14)

Perception +1 (19)

Dexterity +1 (14)

Luck +1 (9)

Spark +16

Spell Upgraded to Sparkler

Basic Repair +10

Clean +5

Meditation +4

Pontification +1

Woodworking +1

Exp (1060/800) – Level Up!

Exp (260/1200)

Terra and I didn’t head back to the tavern until the sun was turning the sky into a field of orange, pink, and purple sheep. I knew my food was okay. I didn’t know how I knew but I did. Maybe there was something in having the profession of Cook, but I could feel my pots simmering if I thought about it. It was like leaving a crock pot running most of the day while you went to work.

I really was torn between wanting to cook and nourish people and trying to get ready for a life-and-death confrontation. I officially hated this quest. It wasn’t who I was. I liked leaving the past behind me. I forgave people when they came at me. I was the type of person who just walked away from negativity. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

I soothed myself with the assurance that I’d only have to do it twice. Once Kat was here, she and I would renew the quest once each and bring over her dad and my best friend. The rest of the world could lump it. There were only a few people I’d miss, and I just couldn’t justify upending even my enemies’ lives to bring them here. Could I? No, I told myself sternly. I could hear Terra scoff, but I ignored it. My mind was already editing the list of people I wanted but felt I shouldn’t bring here. It felt like making up the invitation list for my weddings, all three of them.

I pulled out my spellbook. It had more pages, but it wasn’t any thicker. I needed to get the buff and Heal up next and they had a long way to go. The problem was that I could only buff what hadn’t been buffed already and heal something that lacked health. The buff lasted an hour, so it was going to take a long time to cast it as many times as I had cast Spark to get it to upgrade. Maybe tonight, I’d hang out at the bar and try to heal and buff the drunks. Would they notice?

At least I’d gotten two levels today. That was good because just as I was congratulating myself on getting ahead, I realized that Beau would be leveling too. He’d already started out ahead of me by however many days he was away from me. I couldn’t afford to rest. I stopped at the not-pig pen and stable to buff up some animals and then repaired and buffed the enclosure just in case the pigs got any buff-induced ideas.

Constitution +1

Basic Buff +2

Exp +20 (280/1200)

“You’re stalling.” Terra butted her head against my arm. She’d hopped up on the pen’s railing. Now that I’d gotten a closer look at the pigs, they had a mild temperament. I brought them a pail of water from the well and another for the single horse in the stable. The horse was ornerier than the pigs.

Strength +1

“Yep,” I answered Terra. Now that I had tested the temperament of the pigs, I was okay with leaning on the railing watching the sunset while I got some mana back.

“They’re going to love you.” Terra rubbed her contribution of mana into me with relish. “Not as much as I love you, but they couldn’t help to love you at least half that much.”

“Thanks.” I sighed, and hurried the mana process by petting her ears just the way she liked it.

Meditation +1

Exp +10 (290/1200)

Hm. I guess I did get meditation increases with her. They were just a bit more infrequent. This was why I’d needed the notifications back. I needed to be able to micromanage my progress. It was the only way to get ahead faster than Beau. He’d been a convention-going DnD player, so I knew he’d been working his way up fast. Still, I hadn’t known him to play many computer games. The games he preferred were playing with living people, not online ones. If I knew him, he’d have a kick-ass strategy by the time we met.

I looked up to see the clouds settling into the grey of dusk. Dusk meant customers and customers meant that I really needed to do the final touches to the food for the night. Reluctantly, I returned to my kitchen. The chili needed brown sugar and the stew a bit of salt. I tested and adjusted everything that bubbled and then scooped a little of each into bowls for Mabel.

Cooking +1

Professional Exp +10 (300/300) – Level Up!

I rolled my eyes at myself. I wasn’t going to be able to cook Beau to death either. Then I nearly dropped the bowls. My mana had increased. I was feeling it more now that I’d been working with it so much. When your mana almost doubled, you noticed. I set the bowls down and pulled up my character sheet. Then I did the math. I did it a bunch of ways.

Intelligence +1

My Professional level had been added to my Class level when calculating my mana and health pools. This was good. This was very good. I let the back of my mind process that as I picked the bowls back up and headed to the main room. Another thing I noticed in my character sheet was that my food had given me a boost to stats. I had two extra temporary points of Constitution just from my food.

Character Sheet

Name: Karma

Class: Mage-ish (Level 4 – 290/1200)

Profession: Cook (Level 2 – 0/500)

Health: 192/174

Mana: 120/252

Intelligence: 22

Will: 20

Strength: 14 (+1 temporary)

Constitution: 15 (+2 temporary)

Charm: 12

Beauty: 10

Perception: 19

Dexterity: 14 (+1 temporary)

Luck: 9

Skills: Meditation (32), Cooking (25), Mana Infusion (13), Intimidation (3), Woodworking (3), Bartering (2), Dodge (2), Pontification (2)

Spells: Clean (37), Basic Repair (34), Sparkler (21), Basic Buff (6), Basic Heal (2), Lift Spirits (2), Summon Witch’s Familiar (2)

Recipes: Pie (2), Sourdough Bread (2), Stew (2), Buffalo Sauce (1), Chili (1), Cobbler (1), Cornbread (1)

I put the bowls down just long enough to fuss with my hair and cast clean on my clothes. I’d made a mess of myself during the day. That Beauty score seemed to fluctuate above and below the average of ten, probably based on how well I kept myself. I’d have to ask Chester what he’d charge me for a brush and something akin to a scrunchy or barrette. I was wracking my brain for a homesteading recipe for hairspray as I picked the bowls up for the third time.

Beauty +3