I didn't sleep all that well. The accommodations were fantastic, I managed to take a hot shower and lay in a comfortable bed, which was extremely relaxing, but I'd only recently slept, and with my new Fasting skill, I wasn't all that tired. I thought it was funny how Fasting affected sleeping along with food and water, while back on Earth, fasting had usually been either a religious or dietary avoidance of food for a certain period of time. Even though I wasn't really tired, I did manage to take a little nap. After that, though, I just stared at my Status Screen, trying to decide where to put my points.

I wasn't all that physically strong, as a magic build. With my new dagger, though, I might want to look into fixing that? Also, my Health Total wasn't as high as I'd like it to be. It wasn't low necessarily, but if things worked the way I thought they would, then hitting 0 on those would be a death sentence. Looking at it from that point of view, no amount of Health would ever be enough.

Honestly, I thought it was rather funny how Harmony hadn't moved since I'd become a Tiered being. It was still base human, less than a tenth of some of my other stats. Maybe that made my build unbalanced? Maybe I should fix it? Also, that stat was going to start going down soon. My Balance would as well. Was that a problem? Almost definitely. Could I use these points to try to counteract it?

Then again, perhaps it wasn't such a large problem. Maybe I should invest further into my Regen? I thought the stats for that were Vitality, Nerves, and Channeling. Channeling was also used in a lot of my Skills, and I thought that it might be used in sacrifice rituals as well.

There were so many options, so many things I could do with these points. Should I spread them out? Concentrate them in just one stat? Even if I did that, then I had 9 options to choose from. Ugh... In the end, though, the choice was somewhat obvious.

Everything into Willpower, baby. This guy? Lose his mind? Never again. My new Class and Profession barely gave anything to that stat, so I figured that just pumping my free points into it would work best, for now. The fact that it helped boost my Mana Total helped as well.

Name: Abel Halloran Class: Arcanoccultist Level: 20 Class Xp: 69% Profession: Bishop of Blood Level: 20 Profession Xp: 0% Health Total: 650/650 Health Regen: 53 /minute Mana Total: 922/922 Mana Regen: 95 /minute Physical: 84 Constitution: 67 Vitality: 147 Fitness: 37 Mental: 115 Willpower: 133 Nerves: 98 Intellect: 115 Astral: 56 Balance: 58 Channeling: 101 Harmony: 10 Free Points: 0 Traits: Prodigy

Inspiration in Suffering

Nice, my Mana Total was almost at 1,000. Chances were that 1k Mana didn't actually mean anything special, but oh well. It was a nice, round number, and those made for good goals.

When the night was over, a woman wearing reinforced leather and a short gray cloak entered my room carrying two large backpacks over her shoulders.

She tossed one of the packs at me, and motioned at me, then it.

"Sybil? That you under there?" I questioned, receiving a single nod of affirmation. I mean, I'd thought Sybil was meant to be the one coming with me, so it would only make sense to be her, but oh well. If I looked stupid, then that was just an accurate portrayal of myself, right?

Sybil didn't seem all that talkative today. Even as I looked through my bag to check what was inside, even as we strapped on by armor (and by that, I mean she strapped on my armor, and I fumbled about trying to help her), even as we walked out the front door, she didn't say a word. It was getting rather suspicious, and I was about to stop walking to interrogate her when she let out a long sigh.

"I really don't want to be here."

Well that was... kinda rude, but I also understood where she was coming from. She was a noble girl, and now she was stuck backpacking through the wilderness with someone who had no idea what they were doing.

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"Look, I'm sorry for asking your dad to send someone. I thought he'd just send some servant or another to help me figure out which direction I was headed. That said, I do have things I want to do. I want to level up, to improve myself. I want to see this- I mean, the world," she didn't seem to catch my slip, "from what I've seen, it's quite beautiful. I want to have fun, and enjoy myself. If you don't think you want to be there for all that, then I'm sure you could stop at the first town we come across, find an inn or something, and hole up for a while. If you're going to be hating this every step of the way, then it won't be as fun for me, either. Your dad sent some currency, yeah? I'm sure I could hire a guide, if you're not interested." I hadn't made a mistake, and I thought she was being kinda spoiled and boring, but I knew that camping and such weren't exactly for everyone, so I wasn't going to rub it in her face or try to force her to do anything she'd hate. That would just be rude.

She kept quiet for a while, before seeming to come to a decision. "I guess I can keep guiding you. My dad... he wanted me to be an adventurer, or at least start out as one. He wanted me to get experience as a mercenary, so that I could eventually handle issues for our House, our family. Issues like the Halls. You handled the Halls, though, and then you needed a guide, and I guess my dad saw that as an opportunity. It's always just felt like... like he was trying to get rid of me. I know he cares about me, and I know that it's for my own good to get stronger and improve myself, but still."

She seemed genuine, so I tried to respond in kind. "I don't really understand, though I wish I could. I've never been in a situation like that, really. I mostly stayed at home all the time, and only left on a few occasions, but with the exception of my schooling, those all seemed so very optional. They were all things I wanted to do. I was the one choosing them, I was the one pushing myself, and I was the one following through. In your case, though, I guess it's much different?"

She nodded vigorously, her hood hiding all but a few shadows and strands of hair falling past her neck. "In my case, it feels like everything I do is for my family. If da- uh, my father, wants something done, and he picks me, then I do it. I play a specific part in the family, and I don't really have much choice in it. If I succeed, it's for the family. If I fail, though, it's not my fault, it's his. At least, that's how it feels. He takes a lot of the blame for the things that happen to the family onto himself."

I decided to vocalize my thoughts, rather than just keeping them to myself. "Thank you for explaining. I think I understand a bit better now. Still, though, the offer stands. If you don't feel comfortable out here, then you can leave. At least, once we get to a city. I don't want to be lost in the middle of nowhere and get eaten by a bunch of monsters." I chuckled a bit towards the end. It wasn't all that funny, but I felt that it worked to break up the awkwardness of the situation just a bit. Communication was weird.

She seemed a bit awkward now, but after a few minutes of walking in silence, she managed to get out, "Thank you for talking with me about this. I haven't really gotten many opportunities to talk about my family, since, well..."

I think I understood this one, so I gave her a smile. "Most of the people you know are in your family? Or at least work for them, I'm guessing. I'm not a noble, and haven't really gotten to see the inner workings of a large House like that, but I'm guessing that you have a lot of servants."

"Yeah, that's right." I couldn't see past the hood, but I got the feeling that she was smiling.

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After walking for several hours, Sybil and I began to see signs of civilization. The terrain had slowly started to become more and more wooded, until we started seeing tree stumps and disturbed land. As we walked along the dirt road, we began to hear sounds that led me to believe that lumberjacks were working in the area. I started to grow excited, but Sybil seemed to be getting more and more anxious, pulling on her hood and tapping at the weapon strapped to her side, a sword.

"Hey Sybil, I'm just curious, what's up with that cloak?" I was curious, as I knew that it wasn't intended to block out Inspections, as it hadn't done so with mine.

She seemed startled by my voice, but answered back, "Ah, well, everyone will know that I'm a vampire if they Inspect me, but if they don't, then I'll just be an adventurer wearing a cloak to them. Not as scary. Some people tend to freak out when they know that a vampire walked around their streets in the middle of the day. With this, only the people paying attention will know, which should help prevent unease from spreading, or at least slow it until we leave town. For some reason, people still think that vampires burn in the sun and are allergic to garlic and stuff. Idiots." She giggled a bit, which I thought was an extremely girly sound to hear from someone who'd been so cold to me only the day before.

"I, uh..."

"Wait, Abel, don't tell me you bought into that crap too?" She started openly laughing at me.

"Hey, that's all I'd been told, and I'd never met one of you before... Actually, why are those myths a thing? Or are they all even myths?" I tried to redirect the conversation.

She took the opportunity to explain, "There are certain evolutions of vampire that have some of those problems, like not being able to touch the sun is a Nightwalker Vampire thing, and Demonic Vampires can't enter churches or touch crosses. The garlic thing, though? Yeah, that's just a bunch of garbage. It was probably based off a single Vampire having a bad reaction to it. It does have a rather overpowering scent, I suppose." She chuckled again, "Still, no excuse for people believing that dumb things like that apply to all of us."

I didn't love being made fun of, but it was all in good humor, and at least she was in a better mood now, right?

We continued our march towards the city, and reached it a couple hours after midday.

Sybil looked into my eyes, and for the first time since we'd started out on this journey, I saw her piercing red eyes beneath her cloak. "Welcome to Woodswright, the Kingdom's top producer of wood and wood-related goods. Also, conveniently, the location of the Adventurer's Guild headquarters."

"Adventurer's Guild, huh?" I grinned, "That sounds perfect for me."

She waved a gauntleted hand back and forth. "No, then it'd be called the Hobo's Guild. If there's one of those, it'd probably be in the capital. We could go looking, if you want, though I wouldn't recommend it. I went there once, place was nasty. Also, very anti-vampire. They'd probably try to hammer wooden stakes through my heart. Idiots. Of course putting something through my heart would kill me! Doesn't mean I'm weak to wood."

I gaped at her. I wasn't that bad, right?

She didn't notice my expression. Well, actually, I'm pretty sure she did notice, and just chose to ignore me.