I woke up that afternoon with a brown taste in my mouth and a headache. I wondered if this was going to be a habit of mine in the virtual world.

Yhdu was no where to be found. She must have slipped out while I was dreaming. This didn't hurt my feelings—I'd have been more surprised if she stuck around. I gave my armpit a hesitant sniff but wasn't assaulted by any particularly noxious odors despite not having bathed for two full days and working up a bit of a lather last night. Penumbra's designers only seemed to implement the more gritty and unpleasant aspects of pre-modern life when it suited the mood. I might have to step over pools of fetid water in the slums but now that I'd traveled to a comparatively well-off part of the city, things were clean and tidy.

Despite my unnatural hygiene, I wanted a hot bath and to wash my hair. The tavern downstairs was closed and didn't serve food. A portly fellow counted stock and told me of a public bathhouse not far from here.

A glance at my inventory told me I had 6 gold, 9 silver, and 12 coppers. I'd managed to lose five gold in less than 12 hours despite the fact that the majority of items only cost silvers and coppers. The details of how I'd spent the coin were fuzzy to me. Not that it mattered. Adventuring and the like should line my pockets with enough coin to live a comfortable or even luxurious life by commoner standards. My serious expenses would all center around the game-centered costs like armor, weapons, mounts, mercenaries, class tomes, and so on.

Still, I didn't know when I'd get a juicy quest and didn't want to go back to the adventurer's guild and their inane starter area. This wasn't because I distinctly recalled having my guts gnawed out in front of me there. Okay, that was a lie, but I didn't want to think about what other horrors the game might have in its dungeons while I was without a tank or healer. Yet another reason to join a thieves' guild and spend my time robbing the rich to give to myself.

The public bathhouse had a distinctly roman look to it, all white marble pillars and statues of naked heroes. It only cost a few silver to get a private room, so I did so. In a few minutes, I'd scrubbed myself under a running fountain and was soaking in a small, heated pool. It had a faintly medicinal scent that cleared out my sinuses and made my skin tingle pleasantly.

I could imagine players who were stickler for details complaining about the spa treatment. "Serious inaccuracy, public bathhouses in the game aren't dirty, filled with lukewarm and already used water, or a breeding ground for disease." I might try camping in the wilderness some time to see how the game portrayed that. It might be similarly cozy or they might make it more realistic to satisfy players who want to feel like they're roughing it. The name of the game was to provide an experience for the widest number of people, after all.

I had a number of notifications waiting for me and browsed them as I relaxed. I'd gained experience last night and gone up a level. At first, I thought it was a joke about my sexual encounter giving me XP but then I recalled that before that I'd unsuccessfully tried scaling a church and successfully slipped by a guard. It would be a silly if the AI only handed out experience when you killed things and fulfilled quests, especially at this low a level.

More interesting, I'd also gotten another change in alignment.

[+3 Sybaritic]

[+2 Autonomous]

I'd neglected to look up alignments and how they influenced character growth or relationships the last time I was in the farmhouse. That was probably because I hadn't had any alignment change in the tutorial area. Was that because they were disabled there or because I'd done nothing of note? It was hardly a pressing matter, whatever the case. The values were minor enough that I could adjust them without much effort if it turns out they mattered.

After my bath, I felt clean and invigorated. I'd hung my Fine Novice Uniform in a pool of sunlight as I soaked and now they were like laundry fresh from the dryer—they even had a faint dryer sheet scent.

I ate a breakfast of fruit and coffee at a small street stall, and grabbed a pocketful of raspberry tarts for Mon and Bete. Mon had pulled a stool out from his house so he could sit with some other older men. They chatted while watching kids play some version of football. He happily accepted my gift of food and proceeded to eat all the tarts but one.

"You got a meeting tonight," Mon said while handing me a folded piece of paper. I opened it up to reveal a crude map drawn in charcoal with the word 'Vambrase' scrawled across the bottom. I couldn't make heads or tails of it but got a notification that my own map had been updated. Pulling that up, a location was marked on the city map with a white dot. It was in a district I hadn't uncovered yet so it wasn't detailed.

"What should I expect?" I asked.

Mon grinned as though he had a secret. "You should expect the unexpected."

"You have no idea, do you?"

"Not a clue!" he laughed, thoroughly amused with himself. "I drink and punch people in the face. What the hell would I know what you sneaky sorts get up to?"

Fair enough. I crumpled up the piece of paper and tossed it into my inventory. It was marked as a quest item and took up no space. I considered logging off and looking up details on this questchain. As thief was a base class, I assumed millions of people had done variations of this before. My mind was tugged back to last night and the wild dwarven woman. She'd been hot like a forge inside and at some point I thought my jaw might fall off. Going off script was working well for me and the idea of spending an hour browsing wikis or forums wasn't appealing. I doubted I was in for a serious challenge anyways.

"I tried to climb a building the other night," I said aloud, "but couldn't scale it. My strength and athletics weren't good enough, I guess. How do you think I should increase them?"

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

None of the old men batted an eye at my activities or questioned why I was trying to scale buildings at night.

"Sounds like you need to build up those muscles," Mon answered. "I could whip you up a work-out or you could pick up one of those fancy training manuals. A bookstore might have exactly what you're looking for."

The man beside him snorted and tapped his wooden cane against the ground. "Rip you off, those stores do. A smart girl like you, I bet you could find some other way of acquiring training manuals."

"Some of them even honest!" another man added. The group chuckled at his outburst.

Mon was looking a touch more serious than the rest. "I've always felt you were meant for something more, Janus. I think manuals would be the best for you. Common ones are easy to buy but you can also find them or loot them in the wild."

I nodded. This was the closest Mon had come to breaking the fourth-wall of the game. I'd never mentioned that I’d be 'looting' anyone or going out into the wild. I assumed he meant that I could get them in dungeons or they would drop from enemies.

"Do you know of any nearby bookstores? I might want to browse this afternoon."

He did know of one, but it wasn't nearby. Again, I met my animal friends. As I walked through the bookstore door, the wind stirred up a group of pamphlets on a table and one fluttered into my hand. A moth had been scribbled in ink on the face.

Training Manuals

In Penumbra Online there are many ways for you to increase your character's power and skill. Classes, levels, and ability cards increase your combat prowess as well as the awesome, superhuman powers that make the game fun. But what about more mundane skills? What if you want to become a fisherman, crafter, scholar, athlete, or musician?

That's where training manuals come in! Once you acquire a manual, you can choose to read it and follow its training outline. Training can take everywhere from a few minutes to months depending on the complexity and rarity of the skill. Trained skills are ranked one to five and a new manual is required for each rank up. Some trained skills require you to have a specific rank in other skills.

Fletchering, Rank 1 requires Woodworking, Rank 3, for example.

Once you use a training manual, it's absorbed by your character, and you can train with it whenever you wish.

I was used to games where you purchased a skill, leveled it up through using it, and then bought upgrades or recipes from a trainer. They were designed to be time and money sinks and this one looked no different despite a few changes in implementation.

A shopkeeper was tucked beside his desk in a corner, chewing at the mouth of a pipe. Smoking struck me as a bad habit for a man who ran a bookstore. Thankfully, while it filled the place with the scent of tobacco, I experienced none of the irritation and coughing I'd suffer from in the real world. He was absorbed in reading a small newspaper and I decided not to trouble him, instead browsing the cramped aisles on my own.

Many of the usual suspects were there: Cooking, fishing, alchemy, smithing, and the like. Brass animal heads adorned specific sections. I noticed a new animal, a raven, where alchemy, archeology, and prospecting were located. Athletic manuals were stored in a bookshelf with a giant brass bull's head hanging from the wall beside it. The grumpy looking creature's face was caught in a perpetual scowl as though the customers were violating its space by coming here.

I pulled out the slim volume labeled 'Athletics I' and attempted to open it. It was stuck shut. I attempted a few others and found them all the same, I might as well try to pry open a wooden block.

Heading back to the front, I placed it on his counter.

"How much?" I asked.

He tilted his head to get a look at the title and said, "Twenty silver."

"What if I wanted all the Athletic ranks?"

"Then you'd have to go somewhere else," he replied with a faint smile. "None of my training manuals go above rank 3."

"Three then. How much would that be?"

"Eleven gold."

My eyebrows shot up. It seemed there was a sharp increase in price for every rank upgrade. That made some sense for a money sink but I'd assumed I'd be able to waltz in, grab a handful of training manuals, and waltz out.

I left the Athletics I book on the counter and browsed again with a more critical eye. Was there anything I really needed here? Lots of it would be nice to have, but I wasn't trekking across the wilderness just yet so I could ignore most of the survival oriented training manuals. There were also monster knowledge manuals in the raven head section. I was tempted to pick up the first one; the giant mole rats and bubblegum blobs had both been far enough from the standard RPG mold that I wasn't sure what sort of attributes they might have.

My eyes lingered on First Aid I. I already had healing potions because of Aria's gift and I had a First Aid active novice ability. Did this improve the ability? I pulled it out and examined the book, hoping for a clue as to its usefulness but all I got was a value of 20 silver and that it had no prerequisites.

No, I'd make due with athletics for now. I slipped it back among identical volumes and paid a gold for my Athletics I.

"Feel free to sit down and read it here," the shopkeeper said as he pointed at a battered set of chairs in the corner.

I settled myself down on one. A cat had shredded the arms and tufts of stuffing burst from the fabric. Upon flipping the book open, a pop-up appeared.

Would you like to absorb Athletics I?

I picked 'yes' and the book fizzled in my hands, changing from a thing of paper and wood binding to motes of light. A quest card appeared and I grabbed it.

Athletics I (0%)

0/100 Push-Ups

0/100 Sit-Ups

0/100 Squats

0/10 KM jogged

I checked my character sheet and now 'Athletics, Rank 0' was listed under trained skills.

Ignoring the disgruntled look the shopkeep threw me, I dropped to the ground and did push-ups. I kept the quest card lying on the carpet beside me and watched my push-up counter tick up steadily until my arms got sore and I switched to sit-ups. Another player came in as I went through my calisthenics routine. They only spared me a glance before heading to the back on their own shopping errand.

Once I was finished with the push-ups, sit-ups, and squats, my quest card said I was 75% done. I left the store and jogged down the street. It was crowded here so I headed for the waterfront, which was also crowded but had a nicer view. I maintained a leasurely pace as I passed by dock workers unloading and loading flat barges. An hour and so later, a mental thrum broke my stride and I checked the quest card in my inventory. It flickered 'Success!' once before fading from it's already limited existence.

I had Athletics I now but felt the same.

Testing was in order so I attempted to do 100 squats again. It felt slightly easier but that could have just been my expectations; there was no dramatic improvement. Training manuals weren't as fun as ability cards, I decided. Given how their cost scaled, that might be a good thing. I didn't want to feel forced to horde all my gold simply to improve how fast I ran when there were fun things to spend it on instead.

I jogged back to Mon's house and napped for the rest of the afternoon. I wanted to be fresh for tonight.