“Wake up, kid.”

Katri was standing over me, pouting. She clearly wasn’t a morning person.

“Don’t call me kid,” I grumbled and climbed to my feet.

Standing didn’t help much, she was still towering over me. It sucks to be this small.

Riffy was still sleeping where she held him tucked in one of her arms.

“Good morning, Riffy,” I said.

He didn’t answer.

Imber was standing not far away, grinning. “Good morning, everybody!”

Oh dear. He clearly is a morning person.

“Vidari went on ahead to do some tracking,” he said when no one responded. “There might be some game in the area and we’re going to need food.”

I noticed my Hunger circle was indeed getting low. I still had a few of the safe nuts Riffy had given me, but once I ran out, I wasn’t too excited with the prospect of eating some of the dangerous ones.

Imber seemed to be waiting for a response, so I nodded.

“Follow me then, and I’ll lead us in the right direction. Don’t worry. Vidari will be able to find us. She’s real good at that sort of stuff.”

I realised something then. Something I should have realised a long time ago.

“Imber, Vidari’s a ranger right? She has high perception and uses ranged attacks.”

Imber laughed. “That she is. And a bloody good one.”

“So why is she dressed like some kind of paladin?”

Imber looked a little startled by the question, but he answered, “Well, that’s Frontier gear isn’t it. She joined The Frontier a while back. I’m gonna be joining soon. Once we can afford it.”

“So what is The Frontier exactly?” I asked.

“It’s a bunch of wannabe knights marching around trying to control everything,” said Katri. “They are nothing more than a network of town guards pretending to be an army.”

“Well… they’re more than that,” said Imber. “But that’s kind of it.”

“And you want to join?” I asked.

“They have the best gear for the best prices,” said Imber.

“Interesting.” We walked a little while before I decided on my next question. “Do either of you know how to us a Quick Draw Slot?”

“You know more than you let on,” said Imber. “That’s one of the benefits of Frontier armour. It gives you a Quick Draw Slot. Vidari keeps a stack of her stones in hers.”

“How does she use it though?” I asked.

“I’m not sure. You’d have to ask her, I guess.”

He had a good point. I should probably focus my questions to things that are more suited to Imber. “So… how do you harden a weapon?”

Imber’s face lit up with excitement and he ran over to the side of the path to find a stick. Even Katri looked interested as he held up the stick and used his special weapon skill. The stick transformed into that ridiculous club of his and he chucked it to me.

The moment it was in my hand, the club turned back into a stick.

Imber laughed. “Go on try to see it as a weapon. Don’t just think of it as a stick. Focus your intention to really bash someone with it. Squeeze your power into it.”

It felt ridiculous, but I held the stick up and… tried to squeeze my power into it.

“If you shit yourself, I’m leaving,” said Katri.

“Hone it. Hone it,” said Imber.

“Hang on a minute,” I said. The memory of AIAI describing the Junior Combattant class returned to me. ‘Junior Combatant provides: +2 Brutality, +2 Constitution, +2 Dexterity, +1 Perception, Gain Skill: Hone Weapon, Gain Skill: Basic Defence, 25 gold & a Commoner’s outfit.’ “Imber, did you pick Junior Combatant as your primary class?”

“Yeah. How did you know?”

“Hone Weapon is one of the skills that comes with that class.”

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“Oh,” he said. “I forgot.”

I threw the stick on the ground. If I was going to be practicing a skill, it should probably be one of the ones I already had… like this Form Rust ability. I’m sure it would come in useful, I just had to figure out how to use it.

I spent the next few hours asking questions while I repeatedly formed rust in my hand and over my knuckles. Imber didn’t know much about anything. Most of what he did know, were things I had already guessed. I was starting to reconsider whether my initial impression of the guy as a dumb brute had been accurate.

Katri occasionally offered something useful, but she was withholding and a lot of her information had to be teased out of her. She still thought I was some kind of accursed blight against the All-Mother. The more I told her I wasn’t and that I had no idea what the All-Mother even was, the less she trusted me. It was pretty annoying actually.

One thing she was willing to talk about was Riffy. Yeah, she really likes Riffy. I don’t know whether I should be jealous. She asked how we met, and I ended up explaining the entire story of almost starving, discovering Riffy’s addiction, and eating the Ether Mushrooms in order to communicate. From the discussion of Riffy, I was able to get her talking about her healing or as she called it, “Bloom.”

As it turned out, Katri wasn’t as new to this world as I expected. I had assumed she was new, like myself. But she had actually been born nearly two decades ago and lived a fairly normal life… at least normal for this world. Her parents were deeply religious and raised her in the faith. The way Katri explained it, when she reached Level One she was summoned to the All-Mother and chose to become a Cleric Junior. The All-Mother is their name for AIAI. These dumbasses are worshiping that crazy AI as a god.

From what I could grasp, Bloom was a healing and farming Stat. I was starting to get a picture of this world from what Katri and Imber revealed… and in some cases, what they didn’t say. One important thing I realised before it really hurt my chances of getting these guys to trust me was that not many people have memories of Earth. Despite not knowing my identity, I actually seem to remember more than most. Some years ago there was a war between the followers of the All-Mother and another cult called The Earthians. That’s right. The people who remembered Earth started a cult and went ahead and lost the war.

Talking about Earth was considered blasphemy. As far as the average person is concerned, there never was an Earth and anyone who claims they remember such a thing is a demon. So, I should probably keep my mouth shut about that.

However, there was good news too. The concept of reincarnation was considered completely ordinary. Katri and Imber both believed they had past lives that they simply can’t remember yet. There were potions available from certain vendors that could restore the memories of a past life, but apparently they cost upwards of 100,000 XP. Still, it’s a start.

Vidari returned around midday. Up until that point our travel had been uneventful. Which was perfectly fine in my opinion since it allowed me to practice my Rust ability. So far I had managed to form a lump of rust in my hand that I could throw at passing trees. It exploded harmlessly on impact every time.

Imber explained his theory of blunt attacks, stab attacks, and slash attacks. I didn’t bother telling him that those were fairly standard concepts in games. Partially because he would suspect me of blasphemy and partly because he seemed pretty happy to explain his theory.

“So your blunt weapons,” he said. “Like my club, is for crunching stuff. You whack it and it goes bye bye. Simple and effective. I highly recommend it. Whereas your sharp attacks are more precarious. You can stab, sure. But what happens when you can’t pierce someone’s armour? Nothing. You’re screwed. Same as with slashing. You might be able to chop someone up, but when they figure out how to block your swipes… you’re bang out of luck. With my club, it doesn’t matter if you try to block me, I can just hammer away. Bam bam bam!”

“This is a very intelligent conversation,” said Katri.

I found myself chuckling. She had an interesting sense of humour. It was growing on me actually.

She still stuck her nose up in the air every time I even peeked in her direction though. She had grown so much that her cleric’s robe flapped around her thighs when she walked. I found it kind of hypnotic. It made me wonder whether my Rusty Longshanks would still fit me once I had leveled up a few more times. I hoped so.

Vidari wasn’t interested in talking to me at all. She returned to warn us of a potential ambush on the road and had us loop through the woods before returning to the road at a safe distance. She was good at her job. She even brought snacks for us. But I would have liked an explanation of Quick Draw Slots.

Not long after we returned to the road, I had my first big breakthrough. I formed my lump of rust in my palm for what must have been the thousandth time and I was thinking about Imber’s tip. Despite his advice, I really didn’t think blunt damage would combine well with rust. The rust was light and it broke easily. That wasn’t the ideal quality for a blunt weapon. I had tried forming a point a bunch of times, but I couldn’t get it anything close to sharp. My breakthrough came when I tried curling the rusty lump in my hand. It turned into a sort of semi-circle, like half a disk. The curved side of the disk was pretty sharp, at least it was sharp compared to anything I had tried before.

I hurled the half disk of rust at one of the trees and it exploded on impact as usual, but this time it left a small scratch on the wood.

I spent the next hour, forming the half disk over and over in my hand. Gradually, I remodeled it so that the curve ended halfway down my palm so that I could grip it like a handle. It was beginning to look like a rusty curved dagger. I thought it was pretty cool actually.

Imber said it looked like an orange dog poop, but he admitted it was improving.

Katri refused to even glance in my direction.

Not that I cared.

“There are Elk up drinking near the stream up ahead,” said Vidari. She had appeared again from out of nowhere. “We should all attack at the same time. Once they start running they can be hard to catch and they have a lot of health.”

“Great. I can use my new technique.” I was pretty excited.

“You are going to throw it?” Imber asked.

“I guess so.”

Imber shrugged in response. He looked unimpressed.

I realised he had a point. I was never going to be able to pack as much punch into my attacks by throwing rust. I might be able to learn sneak attacks or something like Vidari’s Tick Target skill, but that would lead me to becoming dependent on a party. That was always the risk of rogue builds in games, you had to play the shadowy support or become a self-centered liability. For now, I suppose I kind of have a party and I’m starting to like these guys, but we don’t have any plans to stay together once we reach town. I needed to be able to fight toe-to-toe with opponents and that meant ranged attacks and stealth plays weren’t viable as my primary focus. Besides my Vampiric Bite was a super-close range attack. If I was to fight at range, I would never be able to use it.

“Change of plan,” I said. “I’m going to charge up and stab it.”

“Good,” said Imber. “But wait for the signal. We all hit together.”

“I’ll stay back with little Squiffy,” said Katri.

“Riffy,” I corrected her.

She ignored me.

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