It was a trite beginning. Seriously. I didn’t like it any more than you probably do. How many of these stories start with the hero face-down in the dirt or grass or blinking their eyes open in an alley somewhere? Blame it on Fizzbarren. I would have written it differently, but I couldn’t go back further than this. I didn’t have a high enough skill in the time loop genre to control where I came back to.
Cue the pail of water. I couldn’t stop that either. I let the prologue spin out around me, automatically carrying the four buckets of water into the kitchen. I watched the stats ring up and quickly switched the notifications to End of Chapter Summary. My job as the cook had gotten me the edge I’d needed to defeat Beau. I had to get through Beau to save Kat. I didn’t want to change much until then. Or did I?
Sammi hadn’t appeared until nighttime. Hadn’t they said that it was because I hadn’t been alone long enough? I dropped the bucket next to the well and pulled up my character sheet. I cleared my notifications without reading them. I hadn’t known a lot of tricks that I knew now. If I thought about it too long, it made me think that Fizzbarren had set me up. A lot of things didn’t add up.
Name: Undetermined (pick something fun and entertaining that you will then be stuck with for the rest of your life and will then understand how your parents could have picked such a horrible name for you in your old existence)
Class: Undetermined (to say that you have no class at this time is an insult, I’m sure, but please use this horrible experience to develop some determination to become something… anything)
Level: 0 (considering that you haven’t done anything of note, is this really a surprise to you?)
Health: 10/10 (default minimum – if we calculated your actual health points, you might kill yourself on a splinter)
Mana: 10/10 (default minimum – see above)
Brains: 5
Brawn: 6
Beauty: 9
BS: 6
Skills: Do stuff. Get some.
I went to settings and set my character sheet so that it showed all my stats instead of Sammi’s dumbed-down version. My fingers nimbly slid over the words that hovered in the air. I’d lost out on a dozen bumps and skills because I hadn’t known how to use my character sheet like I did this time. I filled in my name, keeping the one I’d chosen the first time. On the line for Class, I tried to enter Author, but it wouldn’t let me, so I pushed my mind back and tried to input Mage-ish. Then I pulled it up again.
Name: Karma
Class: Mage-ish
Level: 1 (0/300)
Health: 10/10 (default minimum)
Mana: 10/10 (default minimum)
Intelligence: 3
Will: 2
Strength: 4
Constitution: 2
Charm: 0
Beauty: 9
Perception: 4
Dexterity: 2
Luck: 3
Skills: Lugging a bucket is not a skill. Try something else.
I checked my inventory. I had a dagger and nineteen empty slots. The rest must have been given to me by Sammi. I realized that he hadn’t shown up. It was another example of how Fizzbarren had stacked the deck against me. Everyone else had gotten a tutorial and Sammi or another guide within the first hour of stepping foot in this world. Me? I’d gotten lost in the confusion. That’s okay. He’d just made me stronger in the end.
I filled the bucket a last time and lugged it into the kitchen to do the dishes. I was weak as a kitten and younger but not as younger as I’d been the first time. I made myself notice everything. I pushed my arms to lug the full bucket and did a little extra footwork to get my dexterity up. It reminded me of Kat and my eyes misted over, but I sucked it up. In this place, for this moment, Kat wasn’t dead.
I missed my clean spell. I hadn’t had to clean anything for so long it was almost nostalgic to do it by hand. I’d forgotten how run down this kitchen was back… now? I dodged splinters in half a dozen things that shouldn’t have been cleaned with the stupid well water.
“Get yourself a bowl,” Mabel pointed at the pot of porridge. I knew I didn’t want to eat Mabel’s cooking, but I got a bowl and pretended.
I watched Mabel for the moment that had changed my destiny from sleeping in that dingy corner to running the kitchen. I watched her chop the meat that I now knew was the last of their previous chicken-lizards.
“Can I show you something?” I said, impatience making me try to skip ahead.
“What do you think you could show me?” Mabel scorned my interruption of her mutilation of the meat she was letting bleed into wood. It was a good thing I’d get clean and heal soon. This place was rife with enough nasty bacteria that it was a wonder I hadn’t died from that before my constitution got high enough. Then again, maybe that was why my constitution had gone up so much that first day of tasting everything in this kitchen.
“Unless you have some magic to bring a dish back from the brink of disease, I can cook better than you,” I tried to remember just what I’d said before, but I was pretty sure I’d flubbed it.
“Eh,” she shrugged me off and I sighed.
I reached out for the meat, my dexterity higher this time as I probably learned the dodge skill again. The knife she aimed at me wasn’t life-threatening, but it was Mabel and I’d expected it. I took the meat and cooked it up the way I had before. I knew where the spices were this time and while Mabel tried to stop me from pilfering them, I got my dodge up some more.
I shoved the perfect bite into Mabel’s scowling mouth, probably nearly chipping one of her pointed teeth. I let her chew slowly. I knew what she was tasting so I was content to watch her eyes widen and then narrow shrewdly. I ignored the faint scratching of the quill. I could hear it this time. I might have kept a few things from my Author class.
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“I’m either your new cook with a room upstairs, two copper and two meals a day, or I’m out that door and your patrons can continue to eat and probably die from your slop,” I crossed my arms over my chest.
I knew Mabel. Half the reason she’d been such a grump was that I’d seemed like a weak little mouse that was out to nibble away her profits. Mabel was also an NPC. She had a role to play, and I was pretty sure I’d hit the right notes to trigger the cook storyline she was programmed to accept. Mabel made me sweat it a bit with a grumble and a backhand that I dodged, but she finally gave me a nod.
“Deal,” she stuck a hand out for me to shake.
“Deal,” I shook her hand.
“Don’t make me regret it, girl,” Mabel warned me. “You don’t want to see me mad.”
I had half a mind to slit her throat. I didn’t like Mabel. She’d nearly cost me my life with Beau and that hadn’t been the only time she’d stepped in to enforce some arbitrary rule that I was sure Fizzbarren was making up in his den. Mabel and all NPCs were Fizzbarren’s puppets and I wouldn’t forget that this time.
“I’ll take my first two coppers up front,” I negotiated as Mabel tried to walk away. I needed the cook profession before I cooked the rest of the food that night. I’d lost a whole day’s worth of experience because I hadn’t been paid for my cooking until the next day. It was a hobby until you got paid and hobbies didn’t get experience.
“One copper now and another at the end of the day’s work,” Mabel snarled at me, flipping a coin my direction. She kept a dozen coppers in her pockets, coins she skimmed off the top of the bar sales.
“Fine,” I fumbled the catch of the coin, but fetched it from under the counter only after she’d left the kitchen. “Stupid Cinderella plotline,” I muttered under my breath. Fizzbarren was a hack, but I shoved that thought deep into my subconscious mind. I didn’t need him to flag something as “interesting” for a while. I didn’t want to be “interesting” yet. As far as I knew, he hadn’t found me interesting until I’d defeated Beau.
I cooked the stew, rejuvenated my sourdough starter, started up some pies, and then scratched my head. My first profession was booming. I wanted the next one. This was going to take some charm, so I checked my character sheet.
Name: Karma
Class: Mage-ish
Level: 1 (0/300)
Profession: Cook
Level: 1 (50/300)
Health: 32/32
Mana: 24/24
Intelligence: 7
Will: 5
Strength: 7
Constitution: 9
Charm: 1
Beauty: 8
Perception: 10
Dexterity: 9
Luck: 5
Skills: Cooking (9), Bartering (3), Dodge (2), Intimidation (2), Knife Fighting (2)
Knife Fighting was new. I hadn’t gotten that until later when I’d started actually using knives to fight animals instead of just cutting up vegetables. Maybe my body remembered the movements, or the system recognized my movements as being more aggressive than I was the first time. I might have been a mouse back then, but I wasn’t one this time.
I was going to need more charm to convince Mabel to pay me for fixing up the workbenches in the kitchen. I took up that broken mirror that hung over the rags that Fizzbarren had generously provided for my Cinderella story. I fixed up my hair. It was a longshot, but I knew this time that being able to get your way was a weird combination of charm and beauty. I brushed the flour out of my clothes and washed my face. I checked my stats again and knew it wasn’t going to be enough to charm Mabel out of another of her pilfered stash of coppers.
I hadn’t worn a dress since Kat… It was weird to be brushing it all out now. Brushing out the stupid apron made me remember how naïve I’d been. I’d been scrambling with a bit of hope, a bit of desperation and a lot of fear. This time, I was fuming with a lot of grief-fueled anger, a bucket of determination, and still that bit of desperation. Just because I’d gotten to the time loop last time didn’t mean I could do it again. Whatever I changed could turn on me as easily as clear things up. I’d taken the chance because me being the only family I had alive wasn’t living. In that, Joey had been right.
I ducked out of the kitchen, a plate of quick food and a bucket in my hand. I’d finished my cooking projects much earlier, having no need to explore the kitchen. I knew that kitchen like it was my own. I headed over to Chester’s store. I only had a copper to my name, but I wasn’t going to sit around and wait for Sammi to show up.
If Mabel came to look for me, it would look like I’d just gone for more water to wash dishes. I had no plan to wash dishes. I knew it was Marlo’s job before I came along. She could do it one more night. There were no skill gains in dishes.
Chester was not an NPC. I hadn’t learned this until far after what you might have read. Chester and Lily had been like me, tossed into this world to create stories for a selfish old man. I went through the front door so the bell would go off. That was another thing I learned in later quests. The quest did reset my hometown. Each nemesis I defeated would gain me another perk for the town. My cottage got bigger, and I got servants, not that I’d need the room. Fizzbarren was a sadistic author in that every victory cost the hero something dear. Each time I’d restart in a bed in that cottage with a new set of luxuries I didn’t want. Don’t ask how far I’d gotten. It didn’t matter.
“You must be the new cook,” Chester beamed a smile at me. “I can smell it from here. I can’t wait for dinner.”
“Hey Chester,” I gave him my first real smile of this reset. I was used to having to build new relationships based on some fictitious past that everyone knew but me. I just wasn’t used to resetting this far back.
“Mabel said you had some billows in your forge that might need fixing,” I improvised. This was a storyline I hadn’t found until it was almost useless. It was an alternative to the Cinderella one. Chester and Lily were always friends. I knew things I shouldn’t know, like how Lily was upstairs in a deep state of depression that I couldn’t do anything about until I got spells. If I had spells, I’d be working on them, but I couldn’t do that until after Sammi showed up.
“Sure do,” Chester frowned, not remembering the correct dialogue because it wasn’t in the story I was running with Mabel. Chester, not being a typical NPC, had this little pause while he caught up. I just waited for it to filter into his brain and told myself I’d make it up to him and Lily. “You know how to fix it?”
“Sure do,” I mimicked him, only I smiled. I was happy to use charm instead of intimidation on him. “If you’ll sell me a needle and thread for a copper, I’ll sew it right up for the nice tidy sum of a copper. I’ll even throw in some lunch for you.” I pulled out the simple sandwich I’d made and smiled as I could feel my Cooking skill and Cook profession ticked up with a thimbleful of experience.
“Sounds like too good of a deal for this merchant,” Chester gave me a stern look, his paladin nature not letting him agree to an unfair deal, even when he was the benefactor of such a deal.
“I get to keep the extra thread,” I bantered a bit. “I know you only sell it in the larger spools, so I get a needle and a bunch of thread to start a trade. It’s a good deal, Chester. Take it.”
He didn’t even blink at me using his name. I found that there was something in the non-NPC characters that remembered more, even if it was only in a de ja vu kind of way.
“Okay,” Chester nodded, confused but willing. “I’ve got a sewing kit that I normally sell for three coppers, but I’ll give it to you if you can fix the bellows. It’s got a dozen needles of different sizes, and enough thread to get you started. For now, I’ll let you borrow it to try to fix the bellows.”
I took the kit and gave him a wink. I got the sewing profession, and then I bartered that up to the woodworking profession by fixing a stool in the forge that had seen better days. I got myself some nice stat bumps too. Working will do that. I only had one level in each of the professions, but it was enough for now.
The trick was that each of these professions were at level one. Health and Mana were calculated adding all profession and class levels together and then multiplying them by their matching stats. I took a look at my character sheet one last time, ignoring the End of Chapter Summary.
Name: Karma
Class: Mage-ish
Level: 1 (0/300)
Profession: Carpenter (Level 1: 20/300), Cook (Level 1: 60/300), Seamstress (Level 1: 20/300)
Health: 80/80
Mana: 100/100
Intelligence: 13
Will: 12
Strength: 11
Constitution: 9
Charm: 9
Beauty: 10
Perception: 14
Dexterity: 14
Luck: 8
Skills: Cooking (10), Bartering (5), Dodge (3), Sewing (3), Woodworking (3), Intimidation (2), Knife Fighting (2)
I had earned a basic sewing kit and woodworking tool kit as well as four coppers for my efforts. I used three coppers for a cheap throwing dagger. I needed stuff more than I needed coins. I was also happy with how I’d gotten my charm up. Chester was easy to talk to and joke with.