When Livia told the fellowship what had been going on it well and truly rocked their world.

Retrospectively they all felt like they had coped well with meeting a time traveler under distressing circumstances; of course her being Human and speaking the same language–albeit in a rushed, and at times funny accent–helped with that a lot.

As did their growing up with magic and hearing about all kinds of legendary Spells, that you knew for certain were real, even if you had no actual clue how it was possible in the first place.

But finding out that the magical System–the very thing that made their daily survival possible–to learn that the very thing that had saved their ancestors and given them a place in this world, that it could have been improved upon–however slightly–was mind boggling.

Especially when you tack on the fact that one of its new 'Marked' was sitting in front of them now, looking abashed.

For one, how this had all originally come from the future; this meant that it was truly possible that even greater ages, than those who had come before, may yet lie ahead.

Sure, it was still vague and far-off. But even in such a state, around here something like that was hard to take for granted. At times life could feel cheap on the frontier, the ambition to survive for another year could feel like plenty.

Out here even magic that may be considered common in other places was sort of rare. At least outside of purchased items, and they lived with the dark cloud of being able to find out that Humanity was at war again, the news could come down from Dormata any year.

It all made long-term hope a rare and beautiful thing, a solid hope that things would get better and not worse during your lifetime.

Livia’s news really did feel like that, like a new source of hope, once they had gotten the chance to properly digest it. Even if Livia explained that the Mark was because of her being a ‘traveler’, and not something commonly attainable, that was still fine–because she also told them there may well be others.

With Mr Beard whispering in her mind she gathered the courage to tell them she knew for a fact that others would have made it; even if she didn't know where specifically they might have ended up, nor even when. Others from home must have survived the 95 days.

It was still big news for Humanity.

"To make it clear, we can't tell this to anybody, maybe not even every guild member. I saved you all by chance, and we've gotten to know each other, and I do trust you all." She had to.

They still needed to be safe. "And I know you have other people that you trust just as much," They had all had that thought, even though they felt they understood the risks.

“But remember that so do they, and so on, and eventually everybody in Salcret would know,” It was a hard thing to argue against. Where did the buck stop? By then it would be out of their hands.

“If we do manage to get out of here and actually build something worth enough that people will want to take it, we can't have our every secret outed by the first person who thinks to go visit Salcret," They all gave her solid nods at this.

They knew what was at stake.

Oscar chimed in. "We're going to have to explain to people that you have a Skill that works better if you talk to it, or something," His reminder of how she must have looked was making Livia blush.

"Uh, you noticed that, all of you?"

[You're hardly subtle.]

Livia was still the only one who heard Mr Beard’s voice, but the words were followed by teasing and laughs all around.

Stolen story; please report.

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Weeks of winter went by and passed the new year, but everybody had their energy lowered by the short and dark days. And the constant wet, as soon as it snowed once it never left. Until spring.

Roldy and Kalle still found ways to work out their Skills–with the aid of Oscar–but for once their progress had stalled.

The forest's nature energies lay largely dormant and Harold could only access them at the greatest need. Him and Oscar still sparred all the time, and he still went to visit Brunner at least once a week; but with having to trudge through the snow–there and back–and Brunner working him to the bone, more and more the less he showed up, it just didn't feel worth it without his usual reserve of energies to draw on.

Kalle meanwhile had discovered that moving Oscar and mundane objects around–and trying to push snow and ice–were very different matters.

He hadn’t yet determined if it was because the snow had some subtle magic energies he couldn't detect, or if it was the temperature; or maybe the sheer weight… But his [Telekinetic Push] felt like it had digressed to its original level 1 state when he tried it.

So now Kalle was busy working up to his usual prowess, but in the blistering cold, which reminded him of being back at the waterfall. It stirred up emotion, certainly. Granting him access to that strange empowerment he had found on his venture. But he was forced to take frequent breaks to calm down unless he wanted to be running [Esper's Balm], which didn't seem healthy. Not to mention really cut down on his effective time out there, his magic pool was still far from limitless.

Kalle was overall much happier these days though, learning how his magic interacted with different elements was clearly tremendously important, and he was glad to have caught on to the increased difficulty so early.

But for once Livia was the one making the most progress. She'd started to figure out her new [Quest] system, but it took some interrogating Mr Beard to finally understand the basics.

For one it was apparently the case that the System had always had the ability to provide things like the [Quest] system, humanity had just never leveled enough classes in that direction highly enough for it to warrant unlocking that infrastructure.

What Mr Beards team had done was create a shortcut that made the function available to but a select few, those carrying the Mark, rather than the population at large; and thus it did not force the Human System to remake its reward-ladder fully.

Mr Beard, in the state he was in now, was not however an actual part of the System.

He was in fact very limited, and could not even tell her something like where the other Earthers may be.

Rather he was a part of her Mark and had only the knowledge that the man himself had managed to accumulate right as they created the [Temporal Magi] Class and enacted their ritual.

So big parts of the System remained a mystery still, one that perhaps only the ancestors knew the answers to.

For now Livia needed to focus on leveling.

Her time in Salcret had not been poorly spent, she had been doing what a [Business Guild Master] did best, scouting for members and building up her crew.

The list now included all kinds of Classes, although mostly young people who she could imagine actually managing to convince to leave for the capital with them; hopefully without Livia having to end up spilling her every secret.

Even if she only planned on recruiting trustworthy guild members it would still take spending some quality time with–and getting to see more of their character–before she could consider trusting them fully.

It was time to get to work on the [Guild].