Upon exiting the forest, the sight that entered Sylvia’s eyes set the almost nonexistent remains of annoyance from earlier alight, converting them to flames of anger and frustration. Before her, the part of the cliff around her cave had turned into rubble, almost as if a mini landslide or an oversized cave-in had happened.

It almost looked as if some large creature had been thrown down on the cave, in the same manner as superheroes in movies creating craters in the ground when thrown into it. All other thoughts left Sylvia’s mind, and she just set off for it, running faster than she ever had before.

Once she arrived at the rubble, it quickly became clear that this wasn’t fixable, and unless she wanted to build herself a hut, she’d have to find a new cave. On the other hand, she could always use earth magic to try and clean up and then remake the cave, but she decided that it’d be more efficient to just find a new one.

Thus, having thought up a plan she could actually execute, her anger and frustration began to be drowned out by the dedication to complete the plan. So, she turned around on the spot and made way for the large patch of carnips, so that she could acquire some food. Upon arriving there in record time, she turned into Frank and simply filled up the woven basket, seeing as it wouldn’t weigh Sylvia down.

Once that was done, she headed back to the outskirts of the forest, and decided to go in the direction of the creek and cross that to look. To help fill out her racial forest map ability, she stayed on the outskirts for as long as she still had good vision at the mountain. When she reached the creek, she went onto the more open fields and set off in a run, before jumping alongside the creek.

Due to the increased stats, her jump length was definitely long enough to cross the creek. So, with the test done, she backed up from the waterside, and with a runup, she jumped and crossed the creek in a quick motion. With that obstacle passed, she resumed her search for a cave.

Around the time evening came around, a sweet but pungent smell entered her nose. After a little pondering of what it was, her experience with weather kicked in, and she realized that rain was on its way. Upon realizing that she could either hurry up and hope to find a cave before it began to rain, or she could try to gather some wood while it was dry, so that she could make herself a fire and keep warm, she made the split decision to do the latter.

Quickly and fairly efficiently, she sacrificed some of the room in the basket to carry firewood instead of carnips. A little more than an hour after she finished that, it began to rain; at first it was fairly calmly, but it slowly but surely got stronger and wilder. And just before she decided that she’d prefer to risk it with just digging a pit and try to cover it with earth magic, she spotted a cave entrance in the distance.

In a hurry that only the stat increase made faster than her run from the goblins, she made a dash from the forest side to the entrance. At multiple points during the short sprint, Sylvia felt like she’d slide in the muddy grass and fall over, but she managed to make it inside without that happening.

Once she made it inside, she sighed in relief of finally being away from the rain. She quickly changed into Frank, as he was still dry and had the stuff needed for making a fire. A bit of time afterwards, a small fire was burning brightly and releasing a nice warmth. Now he could also see that the cave was quite a bit bigger than his old one, so he smiled to himself.

Since he had it alright and his clothes were dry after turning into Frank, Frank figured that Sylvia would still be drenched and fairly cold. So, now that he had a fire, he decided that he may as well warm up as intended with the fire. Frank then turned into Sylvia, and right away, she could feel her body be cold. But she was smart enough to realize that it’d be a waste to spend time and fire on having the water evaporate, so she moved a hand across her clothes and hair and extracted the water, which she threw outside.

With her clothes now dry, all that was left to do was to sit by the fire and soak in the heat. As she sat there and regained her warmth, the exhaustion of the day slowly took over, and she laid down close to the fire and fell asleep. Had she looked better around in the cave, Sylvia would’ve seen a couple traces of dry foliage, but mostly a lot of charred remains.

The following morning, Sylvia decided to split the day into three main parts. Part one, spear and strength training until lunch; part two, go out to catch some meat and look around the area; and part three, make some necessities in the evening. With a plan made, she began the first part, training.

As the sun began to make its way towards high noon, Sylvia decided to call it with the training and take an early lunch; she wanted a good chunk of time to explore the surrounding area. While eating, she decided to check if her |Basic Spearmanship| had leveled up.

|Basic Spearmanship|

Level: 15

Rating: Common

Improves one’s ability with a spear.

Effect: Increases damage done using spears by 15%

“Level 15!?” She exclaimed in surprise, almost spitting out the piece of carnip she was eating. The quick rise in level really surprised her, but upon thinking it over a little further, it began to make sense. It most likely just accounted for the spear skills she’d practiced before gaining the actual skill. “If I go with that explanation, then it does make some sense how it increased that quickly. I also assume that it’ll become harder and harder to level up, as tends to be the case with skills.”

After a bit more time thinking about her class, a small voice in the back of her head seemed to remember one of her titles saying something about it. As soon as the thought was sounded out mentally, she quickly recalled that it was her [Person of Many Faces] title that said something about it. So, she pulled up that title to check.

[Person of Many Faces]

…

but the class, racial ability, and appearance will differ from one form to the other.

List of available forms:

-Frank Carter, Male, Human, 18, Classless

-Sylvia Hisprit, Female, Elf, 24, Novice Spearwoman Trainee

“Huh… it seems that Frank isn’t affected by this class. But that’s weird, I didn’t get a pop-up yesterday when I turned back into him. Do I have to do something to activate it? Do I have to level up as Frank to get it to pop up?” In case it wasn’t that but much simpler, she turned into Frank to test another idea she got. “Alright, open classes.” Frank said out loud, and low and behold, the class list popped up.

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Available classes:

* Builder

* Mason

* LOCKED:

reach intermediate trainee in five different classes in base form (0/5),

reach advanced trainee in different classes with two unique forms (0/2),

graduate training for a single class with a unique form (0/1).

“Builder, Mason, and Locked…?” When his eyes reached the last available class, his mind decided to take a quick break from seeing something like ‘LOCKED’ for the first time. “Based on the fact that the conditions mention unique forms, it’s probably related to my title, but there’s not much I can do about it now. Though it does make it seem more likely to get more forms in the future.”

Things unique to powerful abilities often have a tendency to be quite strong in fantasy, so seeing that such a thing would eventually be available to him made Frank a bit giddy inside. Then he returned his focus to the other classes that he could choose, and for a quick second, the giddy feeling left as he thought he’d be unable to use that class due to selecting another one instead.

But realization then struck, that being that one of the conditions was for him to have reached a certain point if five different classes in base form, ‘different’ and ‘base form’ being the keywords. That implied that it’s possible to change class later on. So, with fairly little hesitation, he decided to just start out with mason, as he’d be working on quite a bit of stonework, since he didn’t have any of his old stuff with him.

Mason condition:

Make three Poor quality works of stone

or

Make one Acceptable quality work of stone

Seeing as he was already planning to do that kind of stuff after going into the forest, Frank just turned into Sylvia and decided to wait with that until later; it wasn’t like there was any hurry in gaining the class that couldn’t wait some hours. With that over, Sylvia finished her lunch and set off for the forest.

As Sylvia had expected, this part of the forest was quite similar to the other, but it still took her a good hour before she found anything of note. This thing of note happened to be a larger than usual tree with fruits hanging from it. From what she could see, the fruit seemed to be at least the size of a large orange, but each with their own color of peel. The colors ranged from between blue to black to a couple multicolored.

Curious as to what they really were, Sylvia approached the tree and inspected it. The bark seemed both rough with areas to use as hand- and footholds and quite solid. So, she began carefully climb it, hoping that there were no creatures who made the tree their home. As she made her way up the good ten plus meters to where the canopy began, she really appreciated the increase in her strength and endurance, which made everything easier.

Upon reaching said canopy, she found a large branch to at the very least sit on, before she’d decide whether or not to continue trying to get a fruit. “Phew. That was a bit harder than expected, and when I look down, I’d prefer not to fall down. So, should I still go for a fruit?” As she asked herself that question, she looked around to see if there was a fruit that she could get while using another branch as support.

And there it was, a large sample with a blue outside. To reach it, all she had to do was balance on the branch she was currently on while using the branch the fruit was on for balance. Carefully, to make sure she didn’t trip or lose balance and fall, she made her way the five meters out and was able to just extend her hand and grab it. It didn’t take a lot to pull it off from the branch, which Sylvia hoped meant that it was ripe.

Now, the question was just how to get back down with a fruit in hand. Due to Frank having the basket on his back, she didn’t want to turn into him and risk getting overbalance and falling off uncontrollably. But she couldn’t deny that she was a bit curious to actually test, how the major increase in stats compared to level 1 would influence her ability to safely land from height. “I should probably start with a lower height first; it’d be dumb of me to bite of more than I can chew and get heavily injured.”

Not wanting to climb with only three limbs, she eventually settled on stretching out the back of her shirt and put the fruit in the tension between her shirt and back, hoping that it’d stay whole. Thus, she began her gradual decent, making sure not to make too large movements that’d increase the risk of squishing the fruit up against her back.

When she got down, she pulled out the fruit and sighed in relief upon seeing that it seemed completely fine. As she didn’t know if it was poisonous or not, she’d rather try it in the relative safety of her new cave, so she put it away in Frank’s basket, before continuing her look for some meat.

As the sun began to reach the horizon, Sylvia arrived back at the cave with little success. Over the past couple hours, she had found another of those weird trees and a small patch of carnips, but nothing to kill. “I really need to get better at tracking and finding prey.” She muttered to herself while preparing a campfire for when the sun had set.

After turning into Frank, he first put away the small tree he’d cut down, before emptying out the stuff he had in his basket. Which was the blue fruit, some dry branches, and a lot of large leaves to use as some simple bedding. He quickly decided that the fruit could wait until dinner. Once that was done, he took a seat close to the entrance with easy access to the stone wall.

Now, the time had come to focus on achieving that class condition. So, he took some stone out of the wall and began to form it into a pot to hopefully make some stew in at some point. Then, to test out if something had to be equipment to count, he said “Finished.” And to his joy, a pop-up appeared.

Count for masonry class acquisition conditions?

[YES]/[NO]

To his surprise, the notification actually asked him to say if it counted or not, which he definitely found a bit weird. But he decided not to think too much about it and just say yes, and that was part of why he made the item in the first place. Sadly, upon reading the following pop-up, he got a fair bit disappointed.

Name: Stone pot

Rating: Beginner

Quality: Poor

Description: A stone pot made by the beginner crafter Frank seeking a masonry apprentice class. The lack of proper masonry ability being shown by the crafter and an overreliance on magic resulted in a pot that is usable, but with little to show off for being the work of someone seeking to become a mason.

Seeing that description, Frank’s faith in actually making any timely progress in the mason class shrank quite a bit. To think that crafting things through magic could reduce the quality of the equipment to that extent. “At least it doesn’t appear to be just the magic that’s an issue, but actual ability as well, which I can improve. It also just discredited an overreliance on magic, not the use of it itself…”

Upon speaking those words, an explanation for the pop-up question took form in his mind. “Ahh. It probably asked, as something judged to be a mason’s work makes sense to be judged more heavily on the masonry abilities of the crafter, instead of-. Huh? What was that?” Stopping that entire train of thought, was a low growling that he heard from just beyond the wall he sat by.