I passed into the weird internal world of my spirit, the ground beneath me conforming to me nearly perfectly.

“Wow, you almost blew up your soul, and then you came right back in record time.” My guide mock-chided me.

I rolled up to sitting, then hopped up, opened my eyes and turned to face her.

Much like last time, she was still a terribly complex set of skills in the shape of a normal person.

I looked at her for a moment, staring into her wiggly bits where her eyes would have been if she was flesh and blood. She stood there, visibly uncomfortable at my unyielding stare.

“Why are you staring at me like that weirdo, it’s called banter.” She spoke without a mouth.

I started walking over to her, not letting my eyes blink, which was honestly rather easy, until I could reach her.

I must have been scaring the crap out of her because she started bumbling random nonsense.

“Hey, I. Whatever, I didn’t mean anything by it. Please stop staring at me like that, listen, I don’t know what is going on in your head, but I’m not liking this, please stop walking towards me like that. You’re creeping me out. Why are you getting so close?”

And so on, until I put one hand on her shoulder and stopped trying to menace her.

“I never got your name last time,” I told her.

“Is that all! You unbelievable bitch. You had me going for a moment there.” She said, slapping away my hand from her shoulder.

“Well? What is it, you faceless goober? What is thine name, yee long-fingered soul fiddler?” I asked the sassy squiggle that was my [Guide].

She only huffed at me, “We don’t have names. I’m a [Guide] we don’t need them.”

That confused me a little, even though I had a name. How would she talk with other spirit people?

“You don’t? Not even a one? How do you talk with other [Guides]? Do you just shout, ‘Hey you [Guide]’? Seems like it would be a chore.”

“No, you dummy, we just know one another, we don’t need names. We don’t communicate like you do. At most, we would just call to them by their role if we’ve never met before, but even that’s rare.” She said, huffing with indignity.

“Well…” I asked, “Would you be against me giving you a name? It would be a bit confusing to just call you [Guide].”

“If you must.” She said haughtily, breaking the contact. Despite her tone, I was fairly sure she wanted one.

The bigger problem was I hadn’t come in here looking to name her, and it was something I didn’t want to, and something I didn’t want to mess up.

“I’ll have to come up with one later if I’m going to give you a name, it should be a good name, not one I came up with on the spot, I would end up giving you a bad one, and that would be a shame,” I told her.

She looked a little disappointed, so I chimed in with, “I’ll have to make sure to get a good one.” Which got her to perk back up again.

“It better be, now, are you ready to get your new skill?” she said, turning back towards me with a string in her hand.

I nodded, and we got on with it, picking a skill.

It was a tough pick, but the hard part was picking between two skills.

[Wisdom Proficiency] and [Apprentice of Annabeth Mynes].

[Wisdom Proficiency], while confusing, made me more mentally resilient and would let me lean into using my Wisdom attribute up to my Mind stat. While [Apprentice of Annabeth Mynes] would make me good at learning stuff from Anna and get bonuses for doing apprentice stuff for her.

It was a skill that would level me up and let me learn spells from her faster, and it would give me more quickly, and I could pick up the other skill next time.

It was a temptation I slipped into.

I could also tease her with it, so it pulled double duty, and that gave it all the more utility.

She announced it and gave me my skill, which still grossed me out, but before I woke up, I decided to ask her about something important.

If I was going to start wearing a black robe and spouting obscure sentences, I needed to know.

“So… Can I ask about the death magic stuff?” I asked.

“Now you’re asking about magic? Is this Annabeth even a mage? Or is she a fake?”

“Hey! Anna’s a [Druid] death is not exactly in her wheelhouse, she isn’t omnipotent.”

She sighed.

“Death magic ends things not just in the killing but in most things. Life prolongs and extends, and death brings things to a close. Death magic ends Tenebral magics and works on the living and the undead equally well. It’s even better against monsters and mages that use the darker magics because it feeds off of the source of their power by ending the stagnancy they rely upon and returning the flow of mana. It’s not evil, it’s not bad, it’s not going to lead you down a bad path, so don’t freak out about it.”

“I would love to say I understand what your saying, and I kind of do, but I don’t totally understand it,” I told her.

“Well, get your [Druid] girlfriend to teach you about mana,” she indignantly coughed out, “go on, wake up and put that skill of yours to use.”

And with that, she kicked me out, or rather, she left, and without her, I drifted back to sleep.

Then I immediately woke up because the angry child did not care about me needing to sleep.

So, I got up, tucking Anna back in, who had once again wound up on top of me. She stirred a little but quickly returned to sleep while I got out and put on some tea.

I cleaned up the board, whipping away the recipes and putting them down on paper instead so Anna could make some if she needed or wanted some, and we could reuse the board.

I also studied the board for what type of mage I could be because it was the natural next step for my class. If I could figure out what I could aim toward, I could work on it.

And it wasn’t like I was doing much else at the ungodly time, so I puzzled out what classes would work for me.

I wasn’t looking for an overly complex class, all that would do was confuse me. I was a straightforward kind of girl, and I did my best work like that. I was also aiming for a relatively normal class, not an ultra-specialized one.

Most classes out of the gate would be generalist, focusing on a type of caster, like a [Wizard], but some were more narrow, like [Pyromancer]. I didn’t know what magic I would find the most useful, picking a class early could seriously handicap me.

I fixed up a list of questions and got to making breakfast, and before long, Anna was awake.

When Anna came out of the room, I started first by showing her to her breakfast, a cup of Kindly’s tea, which I felt I needed to come up with a name for, and the question of if she wanted a cup of purple tea. She still smelled like blood, the tea didn’t stop her bleeding, but it did take away the pain, numbing her cramping.

She did have some tea, so I brought her a cup, and we ate.

Afterwards, I got to my questions when we entered the study.

“I have questions about magic, magic questions,” I told her

“Well, ask away.”

“So, are there any magical exercises that I can learn? I’m an [Apprentice Mage] after all, I need practice.”

She thought about it before agreeing, drawing them down on the board before showing me.

I paid attention, making sure to remember not just the movements but how the mana in the air moved around her. It was a sight to see.

After she was done, I asked about the classes I was checking and got to cross a few off of a list. Then I checked what type of mana they used and made some more disappear from my list. Then I got rid of the funky technical classes.

I was left with a more restricted set of classes, each of which I could take, each of which could function with versatile flavours or attributes of mana. Those types of Mana, like life or heat and whatnot, could then give me enough wiggle room to test them out before choosing a mana specialty.

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If I had picked one of the types like [Pyromancer] and tried to work towards it but found out that I just didn’t like fire, I would be screwed.

They also required a specific approach for a double whammy of specialization, A [Pyromancer] was a type of [Elementalist], whereas a [Pyriphlegethon] was a fire [Sorcerer]. So, by cutting out the less straightforward classes, the restrictive casters, and the ones that relied on a specific type of mana, I got a generalist list.

It also eliminated types of casters, like [Sorcerer], which was generally more inherited, it required someone to be infused with a specific type of Mana. I could go that way theoretically, but it was just as likely to end up very wrong, locking me not only into one death but an endless series of deaths.

Anyone could become a [Wizard] or a [Witch], anyone could tie themselves to something and become a [Warlock], all without possibly killing themself.

After my questions, I could fit all the casters on the board, and with some questioning of Anna, I got one key feature for and against picking them and the number one thing that style depended on.

A [Wizard], for example, was incredibly versatile but required extensive training and time and required a line of sight.

A [Elementalist] could cast incredibly fast but needed to cast on the fly and relied on detecting types of mana.

And so on and so forth.

I kept those on the board and got Anna to show me the exercises again so I could do them to make sure I was good to go.

My hope was rather simple, ultimately, whatever I ended up picking would be based on what I was best with, and then I could take that and use what I needed to help fix it.

Anna was a thinker; she would come up with things that she could do and act on those. She taught and thought until she had as much of the final plan as possible.

Put simply? Anna would check and figure out what was the best way to do something, then she would find out how to get it done, and then get it done like she was writing down instructions.

I was a straightforward kind of girl; all I needed was direction and a method, and I would just do it as well as I could. It was all of that Kirin wisdom floating around in my head that made me think that taking Anna’s know-how and my do-how could fix it. I was probably being a bit too optimistic, but if I was going to save the valley, I was going to save the damn valley, and I wasn’t going to take no for an answer.

I got my chores done in a record time and got Anna to outline the problem while we were on break and how it could be fixed.

It was incredibly simple in concept, just get rid of the blockage. Mana flowed, and when Mana got trapped, it messed everything up. The big problem was that I would have to annihilate a dam to do that. Doing that would cause a load of problems.

The undead in the lake could escape, now with the possible threat of a [Necromancer], that could be a huge problem, even if they were gone, it would be bad because if the undead in the crypt still worked, the undead in the lake would also still work, which would leave everyone at risk.

Some of the food that was eaten was fish, of all things, which would compound the soon-to-be famine.

Most of the transport, especially across the two sides of the valley, was by boat; they used wagons, not carriages, and the roads were old, and in disrepair, so each major settlement had a way to get goods around over water.

A number of possible problems with erosion.

The list went on and on and on. Anna had come up with a lot of problems. She was planning on a scale that I could barely comprehend. But I had my obstacle and a direction. I could fight, not well, but I could do it. I was already planning for it, too, but I would have to find someone to train me a little.

It would be very hard, however, to find a teacher who could teach shovel warfare. You could even say it was not precisely a common weapon or a weapon at all. Anna wasn’t exactly a [Woman-at-arms], but she did know someone.

She wrote a letter, or more technically, three letters, and told me where to go when I brought it up, and with everything done, we went to town.

Or, more literally, to the city because we both headed to Moarn.

Anna was doing the same sneaky scheme thing she was doing last time I was in town, which left me curious, but I decided that if Anna wanted to keep it secret, she must have had a reason. Anna could keep her secret, stepping on her toes would be both a lack of trust and rude and possibly make something go wrong in one fell swoop.

I was sure that she would tell me when she was ready and do what I did best in the meantime. Get down to business.

I still didn’t feel safe in the city, not after what had happened. A part of me still worried about getting bushwacked in an alley by overzealous hunters or just about anyone. It didn’t help that I left a shovel behind. It might have been a paperweight in comparison to most of the things I could have carried, but it was a reassurance I lacked.

I checked over my shoulder rather frequently, expecting to draw attention, but much like when I visited with Anna, it was minimal. In a crowd, it was nonexistent, in a more open space, most people just didn’t notice because they were focusing elsewhere.

I caught more attention by looking over my shoulder than by walking around, and thankfully, I didn’t get jumped in broad daylight as I made my way toward the inner walls of the city.

There were guards by the gates, stern-looking younger men who should turn away people. Approaching them drew their attention and made them tighten their grip on their weapons, short arm-length blades, though I’ll give it to them, they didn’t draw them from their sheaths.

For this, I got out letter number one from where it was tucked into my beltline, checked it, and passed it to them.

“Guardsman,” I said in my best, ‘I am not an undead, please don’t ruin my day,’ voice.

They both looked unsure, but one reached out and took the letter, and read it.

Me and the second guard. I kind of just sat there for a hot moment, waiting for the second guard to finish reading.

“So. That weather, huh?” I asked.

He gave a tiny nod and prolonged the awkwardness with a simple, “The weather.”

“Lots of the weather going on,” I told him, nodding back.

“Tons’ a weather,” he agreed.

We both awkwardly remained silent after that, each of us attempting to ignore the presence of the other until the guard gave me the go-ahead, and I retrieved the letter and made my way past the crumbling stone wall and was met with a street inside, manses on either side of the street.

Hedges and other miscellaneous ornamentation dotted the lawns.

They looked fancy and left no doubt about the people who held ownership of the gargantuan houses I walked past. But they were not my destination, that lay at the end, and inside a second set of walls as high as the other walls.

It was, well, the Mynes Manor, capital letters. Anna just called it home, but home was an understatement, it was more like a castle. A small one, to be sure.

A baby castle was still a castle, though. I had thought it was strange that the city didn’t have a wall, but it apparently just didn’t have a new wall.

At the gate, there was no one there. So I waited until I worked up the nerve to peek in and try to ask.

I entered the gate and called out before seeing a truly odd sight.

“Hello? Is anyone there, I’m lookin'-” I called out as I walked in and saw two tables of well-armed people playing card games, who all, in the same moment and same movement, turned to face me.

“Uh, I have a letter?” I asked.

“Oh? Who’s it for.” A man asked from next to me.

I turned my head and found a bearded, mustached man next to me. and kept looking and saw his arm extended past me. And then I turned far enough to see an extended blade pressed into the solid stone wall.

He said it conversationally like he hadn’t crossed the distance faster than I could see and almost run me through with a sword.

I blinked at it. Too stupefied to freak out or shout or say much beyond, “Huh?”

“Are you daft? I asked, who’s it for, girl?” He said, his eyebrows scrunching into big brown caterpillars.

“One for Clause, and one for uh…” I checked, “I don’t know how to say that name.” I told him.

She turned back to one of them. “Taanka, that would be you.” He turned to tell one of them.

A man stood up. He was covered head to toe in armour, with no skin peeking out, I couldn’t even see his face through the helmet.

Taanka, as it turned out, was a mild-spoken man who said everything like it was a thing he had done a thousand times. He ended up summarizing my rambling explanation of what my deal was rather succinctly with a strange accent.

“So you’re not a fighter but want to fight using a shovel, yes?”

I nodded, and he told me his great secrets.

“Get a long stick, this long, and do some movements to get used to it here, I show you.” He said before showing me a number of movements with, of all things, a big stick. Because apparently, I had been wrong back when I had believed that a big stick might be a bad weapon.

Why?

Because you could stick things on a big stick. Like a spear, or an axe, or a hammer, or almost anything, apparently.

“Big stick is an ancient weapon, rivals big rock and hands,” he told me, “While we have grown and use metal, we have added onto big stick. Big stick can thrust, like a spear, can hack and wack like an axe or hammer, and is a good starting point for movements. You get?”

It did when I thought about it; basically, any weapon, minus bows and whatnot, were just metal sticks. A sword was a short metal stick, a hammer was a metal rock on a metal stick. They just had sharp edges.

“I think I do,” I told him.

He nodded, “Come back if need a refresher, or when you get good enough to do each movement, I test, then I give you more work. Now go deliver your letter to Lordling. Should be someone close to the door, just give it to them, and then can go back home and practice. Or back to work and practice. Or just practice.”

“You really like practice, don’t you?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said, “Practice makes mastery, is why I am [Master at Arms], can use any weapon, because I practice. Once used table leg in a barfight against scary [Rouge], won by using his weapons against him, knew how they worked, so I won.” He told me, tapping his helmet with one armoured finger.

A [Master at Arms]? Shoot, that’s like a [Master Swordsman] but for war. What the hell is this guy doing standing outside Annas’ house? That one hell of a guard.

I nodded and took in the rest of the armed men playing card games.

Is every one of them at that level? No wonder I couldn’t see that guy move. He was probably some kind of level 80 [Master Swordsman of Supreme Murder Death]

“Why the heck are you guys standing around here?” I asked him.

He shrugged, “Where else would we be?”

“Fighting? The valley has an undead problem and is on the verge of famine. I’m sure you could smash a few skeletons.”

“I have not seen the undead, seen the fog, but I can’t fight fog, if the skeletons come, I can fight, would be poor practice, but I would still enjoy it. But I can’t fight famine, can’t cut it, can’t smash it. That’s the job of a lord; is not my place.” He told me.

I decided not to make a comment, thanked him and delivered the letter before returning home. It seemed strange to me that someone who lived here would see something wrong and decide it wasn’t their place to fix it.

I picked up a big stick on the way back, I just picked it up off the ground. I could whittle it down and use it for practice.

I tried to sign up for some adventuring, but unfortunately for me, there was little in the way of freelancing. The hunters' guild was contract-based, it was a job, not a place to meet up and get some fighting experience. You also had to have some training to join on, which was apparently where those hunters that grabbed me had gone wrong.

I hadn’t seen them again when I had awkwardly checked, but that gave me little in the way of satisfaction. I hoped I never saw them again, and the fear of it kept me from coming back to the guild.

Instead, I asked Anna to keep an ear out for anything I could do and practice. I practiced like a maniac. I even found that I could get a bit more practice in by doing stuff like getting the grass to grow shorter so I didn’t have to cut it, and asked for a few more good spells to learn. It helped that the screaming thing gave me an aversion to sitting around in the room, so I was spending more time outside.

I practiced magic, I practiced with the stick and a shovel, and I practiced with some basic woodcraft, picking herbs and generally running around the woods like a mad woman, which got me to level five of [Aprentice Mage] and level two in [Woodsman] granting me the other skill I had wanted, alongside [Long Strider]. I didn’t get any total levels, I was still too low with my new classes to get some more bonuses, but that was fine.

A few weeks passed like that until I decided to check in with the little folk with Anna, and I got my chance to get some real work in.