After six readthroughs of every piece of information available to Hallvar through the system, they half-understood everything.

And half seemed generous.

The stats were stats. Considerately simple to a person who spent most of a 12-hour fever bound or shoved in a dark cart.

The [ hero skills ] displayed no information but a simple message:

hero skills

Heroes can learn common non-combat skills outside of their chosen class. Interact with "Aestrux" to unlock these skills.

That was easy enough. It felt like a reward for sidequests and exploring the little details in an RPG. Maybe achievements didn’t exist in this system, but [ hero skills ] could be beneficial.

No matter how Hallvar posed the question, the system couldn’t provide an example. Walking speed, maybe? Defense? No, defense was a combat thing. Crafting?

Hallvar’s [ unique skill ] was the most infuriating part of the system.

Luck was a gambling thing and Hallvar really didn’t like to gamble. It didn’t provide them with any adrenaline or happy feelings, just a nauseating distress of not knowing where their money would end up.

Luck affected crafting too, according to the system. And, uh, how often rare items were given to the player? Something rates. Hallvar couldn’t remember the words, but they knew what it meant.

What bothered Hallvar the most was that, if they had to pin a label to their chest, lucky was not it.

They struggled to reconcile literal, statistical high luck with lived shitty and terrible luck.

Their not-vision wiggled as Hallvar lay on their back in the moving wagon, unwilling to face reality yet.

Disagreement from the system? A snippet of text jumped to mind.

Confirmation of transfer success by the local authority has attuned you to the languages of “Aestrux”

Cool. What did that mean?

The notice hovered in their mindsight, unwilling to be moved until Hallvar’s tired brain caught up.

Did Hallvar need to break this down like sentence structuring in middle school English class? Was it that deep?

Languages of Aestrux. Yes. The ability to speak and be heard. And write and read.

Local authority has attuned you. Attuned? Next. Local authority? Did that mean the princess?

The resulting periphery sparkle startled Hallvar. They would have scolded the system if they could.

The princess attuned you to the languages. Okay, that’s – Hallvar knew that. Why was this such relevant information.

Luck affects system odds to benefit you.

Ugh, this system really wanted Hallvar to weave the threads of fate together and discover a masterful plan. Did it realize they only had 11 intelligence? Whatever that meant.

Another pop-up reminded Hallvar that intelligence was a measure of current memorized knowledge and the ability to research new things, not a measure of wits.

The tidbit about luck pressed forward into their mind again.

Fine! Hallvar would play. The princess attuned them to language, and luck had something to do with it. Luck that explicitly benefited Hallvar.

What the princess did was nearly run them over in the stupid gilded carriage and then get mad about a scratch. There was no luck in—

Hallvar squinted their already closed eyes, trying to focus on a thought.

Throwing a rock at her did end up unlocking language. And if Hallvar wasn’t already mad at that carriage from before, they wouldn’t have—

Was the princess in the carriage the first time?

That single thought both infuriated and amazed Hallvar.

Did each instance of bad luck lead them closer to one of the royals?

The rain chased Hallvar into town. Fern and the mage led them to the tannery, where they narrowly avoided the gilded carriage. A carriage which could have led them to language much earlier.

When that meet-cute failed, the beating dropped them off in the lap of the adventurer’s guild, where luck would have it, Fern worked. And Viktor and that mage with the deer ghost conveniently let Hallvar stay.

Even the mining quest gone wrong still saw them alive – scarred but alive – and placed in the path of a royal again.

[ unique skill: bad luck boon ] was shitty and wonderful.

With this knowledge of the system’s questionable benefit, Hallvar mentally tied up a few loose ends before addressing the elephant in the room.

Well, elephant was a mean term. She was an older lady in the driver’s seat of the cart, not remotely elephant-like.

Hallvar squinted around the cart as they gingerly sat up. Bags and boxes of goods were stacked around them; a few small plants wobbling near the exit. Not enough to run a business, but either she was stocking up or delivering goods to her neighbors too.

With some fumbling, Hallvar pulled a piece of canvas aside to reveal the front of the cart and the painfully bright outdoors.

It was mid to late afternoon, so the sun was at the perfect angle to make Hallvar miserable with their persistent headache. It felt like a hangover mixed with the flu, but at least they no longer felt feverish.

The woman was seated on a bench in the shade of the wagon’s arch, minding the large equine beast dutifully pulling them along. Hallvar would have spared more time examining the creature, but unfortunately its ass-end was the only visible bit past the bench.

They did notice that the “passenger” seat was occupied by a very large weapon. At first Hallvar thought it was a staff of some kind – they’d seen plenty around the adventurer’s guild – but it looked more suited to stabbing than casting. Maybe there were spear-staffs too.

“Is that your spear?” Hallvar asked, hearing how stupid the question was as it came out. It was an effort not to surprise the driver, since Hallvar was unconscious for a lot of this wagon ride.

The older woman looked at the spear, then looked back at Hallvar with a questioning stare before facing the road once more.

“I know I’m not wearing armor anymore-” It was tucked away in the wagon so Kiran didn’t have to sit with a straight back or deal with chafing. “-but… really? Greying woman with a big spear in quality armor – that doesn’t mean anything to you?”

Hallvar gingerly assessed the passenger seat situation, cautiously maneuvering into place to more comfortably talk. The spear was left within arm’s reach of the woman, propped between herself and Hallvar.

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“I remember talking to you before I passed out, but I don’t know what was said. Did I mention that I couldn’t speak this language until yesterday? Or today?”

“That, among other things.” Kiran wasn’t sure where to start in this conversation.

The boy might not remember, but she recalled several concerns. Not knowing the name of this world, barely knowing which country, a welcome message from the system, lack of language, and a 12-hour magic sickness.

“Can you remember your name?” She asked, expectations set low. Magic sickness could damage the smart-making bits if prolonged, and twelve hours was certainly prolonged.

After a pause, there was an answer. “Hallvar?”

The woman snorted and sighed in quick succession. “Is that a question for me? Or are you that unsure about your own name?”

Hallvar grumbled a bit under their breath before hazarding a reply. “I’m not from here, and I had to pick a name, and I’m not sure if Hallvar is an appropriate name. For all I know, it could be slang for dumbass or something shit related.”

She laughed this time. “Stick around, we’ll make it slang for dumbass.”

The woman let the adventurer sweat it out for a few beats before playing nice. “Hallvar is an acceptable name. Sounds northern, but you won’t get any dirty looks for it. Call me Kiran.”

Hallvar thought Kiran was pretty nice, considering all the turmoil of the last few days. She was sassy in the way older women tended to be, reminding you of how little you knew and how funny that was to them.

(In Hallvar’s case, Kiran was entirely justified in teasing about their lack of knowledge. The adventurer hoped she would be willing to provide some basic information about this world, even if they had to pay her for it.)

“Can we trade off questions? You ask one, I ask one, et cetera.”

Kiran nodded and shrugged. “Your turn, then.”

“You think I should know who you are. I guess, tell me that?”

“That’s not a question,” Kiran quipped, but she gestured to the spear next to her anyways.

“The formal title is Ser Kiran the Unyielding, First-Knight of Amnasín, retired. There are other titles but they’re grandiose and I don’t care. I’m known for using spears and polearms.”

She made a vague gesture with her free hand. “And for being old. I quit while I was ahead instead of dying in battle, which is a feat apparently.”

First-Knight was a fancy title. They wondered if she was connected to the castle or royalty – and if yes, why she bothered helping Hallvar out of trouble – but it wasn’t Hallvar’s turn to ask a question.

Kiran was ready with her turn: “Why don’t you know anything? Not what or how. Why?”

Oh, it was a fair question. Hallvar didn’t know how much of the system stuff they were supposed to reveal. The welcome message was rather… fill-in-the-blank about the names and specifics of this world.

“I’m… not from Authux. Aestrux, sorry. The name of my world is on the tip of my tongue, but it’s like I’ve forgotten the word for it. I can’t tell you what country or what city I’m from either.”

“Hrm,” answered Kiran, connecting the dots with ease. “Do you know what that means here in Amnasín?”

“Is that a second question?”

“Answer it.”

Hallvar rubbed the bridge of their nose, a habit for when they used to wear glasses. “I only understand a little. The system said something about a hero. Heroes, maybe? I don’t want to be a hero.”

Kiran felt sorry for the boy. “You are one.”

“But I’m not noble or heroic, and the most dangerous quest I went on nearly killed me. That’s not a hero thing.”

This seemed to confuse Kiran, but she took her time to answer. “A hero is an outworlder who is summoned. It’s nothing to do with success or quests.”

That was a great relief to Hallvar. “Oh, good. Heroes in my world are supposed to be champions of the people who are destined to, I don’t know, fight off villains and save kingdoms. Defeat the dragon, win the princess’s hand, be celebrated by everyone.”

The former knight began laughing and it took some time before she could speak coherent words.

“Sorry, I couldn’t help it. You’ve explained why the hero Leon is such a twat.”

“There’s other heroes?” Hallvar asked, trying not to sound too eager.

Kiran gave a run-down of the current situation. Five heroes accidentally became four – the brawler Gryphon, the mage Cait, the archer Sivanos, the show-off Leon – and the gossip of the kingdom was the fifth hero, curiously absent from any public events. There were even whispers that the fifth one had been recruited by the spymaster, thus they couldn’t show their face publicly.

She ended her explanation in a faux taunt. “So, hero Hallvar, it’s your turn to ask a question.”

There were a lot of questions on Hallvar’s mind.

Was this massive sense of anxiety and obligation a permanent state of being, as a supposed hero? What kind of duties and responsibilities came with being forcibly summoned into this world? Would Kiran pull over so they could be sick in the bushes instead of on the cart?

Hallvar chose practicality. “Why are you helping me and where are we going?”

“I’ll allow it,” Kiran said, of the multiple questions. “I’m helping you for three reasons.”

“First, the princess can be a brat especially when the Queen is away on business, but she’s a child who doesn’t understand the punishment for assaulting a royal is always death.”

Hallvar felt a new pressure, the need to repay Kiran immensely and immediately.

“I taught the princess basic combat for a couple years, so she should have told me first thing if she was attacked. It leads to my second point: they forgot you were a prisoner. No one mentioned the crime at all, not even as gossip. You were strung up and half-dead as a stowaway instead of for a stupid forgotten crime; it’s hardly justice.”

It made sense, though it was confusing. Did the princess really forget about the rock? If Hallvar wasn’t so grateful, they would have been insulted by the idea of being completely forgotten.

“So, you took me away instead?”

Kiran hummed under her breath, an indicator of indecision. “Not really. Letting a prisoner die due to negligence is cruel, and I will be complaining to the current First-Knight after this blows over.”

“I decided to prevent your death by heat stroke or horse-hoof and learned you’re one of Viktor’s. I owe him a debt which I’m paying in full by taking you back to my cabin to recover in peace instead of dropping you off at the nearest town to fend for yourself.”

The debt was somewhat imaginary. While her actions were a duty to the kingdom, Kiran developed a sense of remorse over the years as she watched the former spy dwindle under the watch of the Crown before he rebuilt a new life on the outskirts of the city.

She had to take Viktor down and bring him to the Queen for sentencing; a short-range duelist had little chance against a polearm-wielding wildstriker. It was a battle of debuffs versus afflictions, first-blood skills versus thorns and sapping poison.

“My turn,” Kiran began, thinking of all the intriguing topics she could broach. They still had a few hours of travel to go. This kid was ignorant but interesting. “What did you choose as your class?”

“My class?”

The rest of their journey circled around classes and subclasses, all the intricacies of how the system affected civilization and what expectations existed.

The origin classes were assigned automatically by the system and existed as mostly placeholders until a person decided what to do with their life. No person remained unclassed beyond their childhood, often developing into the skilled class in their teenage years.

Skilled was an exploratory class, meant to allow the system to encourage teenagers to find things they were interested in. The system provided guides to trying a variety of hobbies – from arts to combat to education. Any person who put effort into a task ended up with the skilled class.

The most common classes fell into the labor category: artisan, performer, scholar, physician, and more. These were people who didn’t want to focus their lives on combat or magic, but instead sought out a creative or social career.

Fighter and mage both fell under the combat type of class, though many a mage disagreed with the categorization. Regardless, most adventurers, champions in service of the crown, and mercenaries were classed as either fighter or mage.

Kiran spent a significant amount of time explaining her class – the landwise. They sounded like the crunchy, nature-oriented characters from video games, like druids or shamans, but Kiran didn’t look like a hippie. She certainly didn’t look like one with her armor on, from Hallvar’s vague memory.

Kiran’s voice held some aggravation as she explained that both landwise and beastmaster were considered mixed classes, ones that were primarily used by laborers but could be specialized for combat.

She complained on end about the taunting she received early in her career, that she wasn’t suited to be a knight, that Kiran should go back home to her farm, orchard, winery or go back to being a lumberjack, flower picker, or whatever other vaguely outdoors occupation the apprentice knights could think of.

Even with her noted success in the kingdom, landwise retained the presumption of being working class.

Grovetenders were ever present, their grove of choice producing better crops, better herbs, better fungus when the grovetender shared the land with the wild.

In the Qhai Republic, stormcallers had some popularity. Water was always needed in the desert, and sandstorms were deadly. In this kingdom, however, stormcaller was a sailor’s choice. Controlling the winds could save a ship from the bottom of the ocean.

Putrescient was the subclass no one mentioned in polite company. It was for gravekeepers and undertakers, those who had to work with the dead. Corpses produced good soil when rot and mold were encouraged.

Graveyards were for symbolic remembrances of the dead, not the body itself. Not when a mage could choose to be a gravecaller.

Then Kiran’s speciality, the wildstriker subclass. The ability to apply damage over time on an enemy was underused, she felt, especially if the wildstriker could control the battlefield and keep their opponents locked in combat.

She described quick-growing thorns that tangled between chain mail and skin, impossible to remove while fending off a bladed weapon. All types of poison from plant oils, fungus, or peppers – damaging organs, causing rashes and infections, choking the lungs, burning the skin and eyes.

A tired opponent was a dead opponent, Kiran preached. It only took a moment without a proper guard for Kiran to strike an exposed neck, stomach, or wrist. Bleeding out ended combat easily.

She finished her explanation with a half-hearted discussion of beastmasters and sages.

Beastmaster was associated with herders, ranchers, people who bred or worked animals. The subclasses of beast- keeper, tamer, hunter had limited use in adventuring and certainly not among the champions. Beasttamers paraded around their menageries, earning skills for each species obtained. They searched for rarer and rarer beasts, making money as they traveled. Beasthunters only kept one pet at a time, but they amassed rare materials and had access to beast-enhanced equipment and weapons.

On the other hand, sages were deceptively simple, as Kiran described them. The system offered this class to a scholar or a mage who met some unknown requirement. The sage, in turn, was permitted to have two subclasses – one from the mage class and one from the sage class.

It all seemed so complicated to Hallvar, though the system blessedly recorded this new information for reference.

“I don’t know,” Hallvar admitted once Kiran posed the class-question again. “I don’t see myself as a mage, but there’s nothing jumping out at me either.”

“We’ll put you to work and find out.”

That had a finality to it that didn’t sound pleasant. But… if it made class-choice easier, they could endure.