“Hey, Finch, I’m off to do a job hunting Giant Crabs for a while. Don’t know how long I’ll be gone, but it’ll at least be until I get my next level.”
“Good luck to ya then. I’ll keep yer door locked ‘till ya get back. But don’t go getting killed, will ya? Giant Crabs are tricky beasts, an’ their shells are tough.” Although, he thought, it was strange that there were enough of them that he’d be hunting for more than a day. It’s rare enough to encounter more than one at a time, even if there’s a lot of regular crabs around.
“I will, thanks. See ya.”
And with that, he left. Finch waited a few seconds to see if he’d come back for whatever reason before he went up to the door and put up a sign outside to tell people that he was closed, then locked the door for good measure.
It’s bad fer business, but I’m so close. I’ve got enough money to last me a while, I can finally finish it soon.
He walked through the door behind the counter into the kitchen, but kept walking until he reached a hatch hidden beneath an empty cupboard in the back corner. What he was doing down there wasn’t strictly illegal, but that was only because he was planning on using it on himself.
After climbing down the ladder he touched a particular spot on the wall, pushing in enough Mana that the runes etched into the bricks lit up for a second, before all of the torches throughout the room burst into flame simultaneously. They settled down after a second, but it was always startling for the room to suddenly become so bright so quickly no matter how many times he experienced it.
The room itself was decently large, probably at least twice the size of any of the bedrooms upstairs, but the ceiling was a little too short so it always felt a little bit cramped. That feeling was certainly not helped by the various half completed contraptions dotted around the place on shelves and counters. Most of them were useless toys, made purely to level up his Skills, but there was one in a pride of place at the centre of the room that seemed to be much more important.
For one thing, it was significantly larger. Most of the other projects were things that you could hold in your hand, but this one was almost the size of a person. It looked almost like a chair, but there were a series of seemingly random monster parts firmly attached to various points across it, connected to each other by wires.
Most notably, attached to the back of the chair at around where the lower back would be for anyone sitting in it, was a bizarre rock seemingly made up of congealed rat tails. The Rat King’s Crown. Strangely, most of the other parts shared the same pure white colouring as it, looking like a blank canvas ready to be painted on.
He searched through a few piles of junk around the room for something, before finding a red gem that emitted a fiery light, placing it on the seat of the chair and pressing his palm on its arm. A look of concentration came across his face and, a few moments later, previously invisible runes began to light up through the device. Something seemed to whirr in the air, and the monster parts began to glow with a gentle white light. That glow was tinged a barely visible orange, then slowly built to red, soon dancing in time with the flickering flames of the torches surrounding him.
The gem in the centre seemed to be doing the opposite, slowly becoming duller and duller. Roughly 10 minutes later it looked almost like an ordinary red gem, if one ignored the faintly dancing ember deep inside it, and most of the monster parts had taken on its fire. All of them, in fact, except for the Crown.
Finally, they seemed to reach their limit and the whirring stopped suddenly, unable to continue its transfer any longer. The fiery glow suddenly stopped around the monster parts, returning them to their inert states, and allowing the flame to burst into life within the red gem.
I have all of the parts I need, the Crown alone might be able to handle all of it, but that’s not the problem is it?
He thoroughly inspected the chair, tracing his fingers along a seemingly random line leading from the seat to the Crown and frowning the whole way.
The connection’s not good enough, why can’t I fix it? If it weren’t for this one thing I could have finally gotten this done already, after all these decades.
I’m so close to finally Resetting my Path.
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As a child, Finch’s parents ran a small Inn in a village close to the mountains. They’d get a lot of Dwarven Craftsmen passing through whenever they wanted to head into Dillak, so he was able to spend a lot of time talking with them about their Crafts, and he developed a huge amount of admiration for their Skills.
He probably would have ended up becoming a Craftsman variant himself if it weren’t for his parents dreams. They loved running their inn, but had only realised this love well after choosing their Paths. His father was a farmer and his mother a seamstress, as their parents had raised them to be, and their parents’ parents raised them to be as well.
So, by the time he was 18, he thoroughly believed that becoming an Innkeeper was the best thing for him to do. His parents loved it, so why wouldn’t he?
Unfortunately, life wasn’t always quite so simple.
It only took a week of running the Inn for him to realise that he hated it. Before even getting his first Skill choice, he’d grown tired of the bartering, the catering, the cleaning. He could barely convince himself to keep trying, for his parents’ sake.
The first Innkeeper Skill was Barter, which he was okay with. It was a useful skill for basically anyone that made their own purchases anyway, but he didn’t truly enjoy it. Once he reached level 5, he chose Cooking, since it was the only part of the Job that he seemed to truly enjoy, but it wasn’t what he truly wished for.
By the time he’d reached Level 10 and was able to choose his next Skill, he realised what it was that he wanted to do. Above all else, he wanted to be a Craftsman. The Path was entirely out of reach for him but, if he chose his Skills correctly, it wasn’t entirely out of the question that he could still do it as a hobby if nothing else.
So he chose Repair, which only further cemented his love for Crafting in his mind. But it also made him hate his Path all the more. He didn’t think for a minute that there was any chance of him being able to change it, until a dwarf seemed to notice his struggles and told him something that changed the course of his life forever.
“Listen closely lad, ‘cause I won’t be sayin’ this more’n once, ye? I can tell that ye’ hate the Path that yer on, ye’d do anything to change it, right?” Finch nodded, “Well, it won’t be easy, ‘specially since yer not a Craftsmen yerself, but some o’ the nobles up there in Mongard ‘ave some way to reset their Paths. I meself don’t know how, and ye can bet that anyone that does’ll be keeping it secret from ye’ but if ye’ manage to figure it out yerself ye’ll surely get a Rare Path, maybe even a Feat.”
The chance of success was small, but it was there, and that ignited a flame of hope in Finch that continued to burn even decades later, when circumstances forced him to move away from his home village and into Ironhold.
After doing a bit more digging, and asking as many people as he could, all he ended up figuring out was that it was possible to use Carved Runes to transfer affinity between objects and that, somehow, could be used to trigger a new Awakening and change your Path.
He would keep his current Skills and Level, but somehow he’d get a completely new Skill Tree that started at the last skill he took. He’d already taken the best Skill an Innkeeper could get for crafting, so he resolved to get as few levels as possible until he was finally able to change his Path.
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Whilst Rob was gone he didn’t open up the Inn even once, it’s not like he actually got any patrons this time of year anyway so he was hardly even missing out on any money, and stayed down in the cellar making and remaking the Transference Runes that led to the Crown.
After spending so much time on it, he was finally able to figure out the problem. Simply put, the Pure Mana in the Crown refused to allow the Affinity through unless it was either actively controlled by a Rat King, or the force-for lack of a better description- pushing the affinity in surpassed that of the Crown trying to push it out.
But he didn’t have a clue how he’d manage to increase that force without any Path Skills to help him. He’d filled his General Skill slots with anything he could find to help with crafting and Rune carving, but they were severely held back by their low level caps. Even after evolving them once they only raised to 15, which was far lower than any Path Skill could reach with a fraction of the effort.
In his time spent focussed entirely on his work, his food supplies had been drained substantially, and the money he’d saved up wouldn’t be able to support him for much longer so, with much regret and bitterness, he opened the inn back up so that he could hopefully start saving up enough money to try for just a few more days.
And he opened at the perfect time as well, because not even 2 days later Rob returned from his Job, apparently without having collected any kind of payment, and returned to his room to sleep.
Hmm, ‘is Lightnin’s quite powerful, ain’t it? It’s a bi’ of a long sho’, bu’ maybe ‘e can use some of ‘is magic to give tha’ last push.
Thoughts and calculations ran through his head, and he realised that it was technically possible. If he was a Pure Mage then maybe it would be all but guaranteed, but even with just a Lightning Affinity it might do something that he couldn’t manage with his Rune Carving.
He decided to ask him to at least give it a try in the morning, more out of desperation than any real belief that it would work, and went off to sleep himself.
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“You would be the Innkeeper of the Haggard Hoarbear, correct?” A figure that was well known by any citizen of the Ironhold stood in front of him, his imposing figure juxtaposing the unclean and cheap looking inn around him. The Guard Captain Sylas Ironheart.
“Ye’, what’s this abou’ then?” He was fairly certain that he wouldn’t be arrested for his unfinished Path Resetter (the name was a work in progress as well), but as far as he was aware it was in a kind of legal grey area, so he was cautious about it regardless.
“I am looking for the adventurer Robert Zeneki. He has done the Kingdom a great service and is requested to meet the Lord as soon as possible. My sources tell me that he has been living in this inn during his stay in Ironhold.” What could ‘e possibly ‘ave done to get this kind o’ attention? Were the Crabs plannin’ to overthrow the Queen or somethin’?
“I see,” He glanced at the Captain suspiciously before pointing up the stairs, “First room on the left, ‘e’s been in there all day.”
“Thank you for the assistance, have a good day.” Without another word the Captain walked up the stairs, coming down a minute later with a very confused Robert in tow. Finch sent a questioning look his way, and simply got a shrug as a response before they left the Inn.
I’ll jus’ ask later then.