Darkness still reigned when I woke the next morning. The fire in the firepit was out before we’d fallen asleep; once the cooking was done, Aeld did something that sucked the flames from the log, leaving it only a little more blackened than it had been, but the residual heat somehow lingered through the night and held the cold at bay well enough that I was comfortable, if a bit chilled. Two of the hunting party stood at the entry wall; the rest slumbered near the walls, resting on piles of furs like the one beneath me. I sat up slowly, not wanting to disturb anyone, and did a quick check of my body to make sure I hadn’t slept on anything wrong.
My arm and leg still ached, but neither throbbed as painfully as they had last night. When we’d returned to the cave, I realized that Aeld had only given me the bare minimum of healing. What he’d done after removed most of my injuries, leaving only bruised spots behind.
It also seemed that his decision to have me join them wasn’t a popular one. Most of the hunters watched in disapproval as he healed me, and Bregg in particular glared at him fiercely. The two entered into a sort of staring contest that lasted for minutes, and the other hunters shifted around uncomfortably, looking anywhere but at the pair. Whatever silent communication they had eventually resolved itself with Bregg storming to the wall opposite me and practically flinging himself down to glare at me. I quite deliberately ignored him and instead used the time to check my notifications.
Ability Gained: See Spirits
Active Sensory Ability
Benefits: You can see the presence of free spirits.
“Free spirits?” I’d asked Sara silently.
“Yes, meaning those that aren’t still bound inside a living creature, John. You can see the spirits clinging to Aeld, for example—I think those are ones that he’s bound the same way you did that Hunt Spirit, by the way—but not his actual spirit, which is merged with his flesh. If it leaves his body, though, you’d be able to see it.”
“So, that’s what those colors all over him are? Bonded spirits?”
“Exactly, although I don’t know if they’re bonded or bound from what he said earlier. It might mean the same thing, but I think there’s a fundamental difference between those concepts.”
I stared at the shaman and the colors coating him and thought back to our battle in the spirit world. He’d struck at me with heat, cold, and wind; I assumed that meant he’d tapped those spirits somehow to do that. I guessed that the orange color I saw staining him was a Fire Spirit, the cloudy white indicated an Air Spirit, and the ice blue in his core meant an Ice Spirit. I wasn’t sure what the lavender colors were, but I guessed I’d figure them out eventually. The Ice Spirit seemed to glow a bit brighter than the others, and I supposed that meant that it was the strongest of them.
“Correct,” Sara assured me. “The brighter a spirit glows, the more energy it contains, so the stronger it is. And yes, the different colors indicate different types of spirits. The lavender ones seem to be animal spirits of some kind, by the way. And yes, I think he drew on the energy of those spirits to fight you, just as you drew on the hunt spirit to fight him.”
“I did?”
“It would explain the sudden aggression, the fury you felt at being considered prey, and the claws and fangs you grew.”
“Any idea how I did that?”
“No,” she sighed as she suddenly appeared sitting in front of me. “I think you did it instinctively, the way you usually first use magic in a world, but John—I think you should try to avoid that if you can.”
“Why? It’s worked for me so far.”
“Your intuitive understanding of magic has always helped you, yes, but it doesn’t make up for a lack of knowledge and training, and sometimes, it’s had serious consequences. Remember how Jing reacted to you gaining celestial qi in Kuan Yang? Or how you used lunar raju in Soluminos without realizing that it was illegal? Or how you suffered brain damage bonding the moonstalker in Puraschim?”
“Okay, I get it,” I sighed. “Are you suggesting that I don’t use magic in this world?”
“No, I’m just suggesting that you wait to see what Aeld will teach you first. The more knowledge you have, the more your intuition can guide you to use that training more effectively—and the more I can help you as well.”
“I’ll do my best, but I wasn’t exactly trying to bind that spirit in the first place.”
“I know. Now that you know how it happened, though, it should be easier to avoid, right?”
“Right. No mingling blood. Got it.” I sighed and turned my gaze away from Aeld to look over the rest of the hunters. To my surprise, each of them had the odd coloration of bound spirits staining their fur. Each had at least one lavender spirit clinging to them; I also saw a few sea green ones, several that glowed the color of polished steel, and a couple cloudy white ones. None glowed very brightly, though—at least, not as brightly as Aeld’s did. Bregg was the only one who came close. That probably made sense, since Aeld was a shaman and I thought Bregg was the senior hunter, but I didn’t really know. Like Sara said, I needed more knowledge, and I couldn’t wait to get it.
Dinner was a simple soup, as I suspected, and while it needed salt, it was warm and filling. After I ate, I closed my eyes and at some point dropped into sleep feeling full and exhausted. I didn’t sleep well, though; I woke several times during the night as the hunters shifted positions or changed watches, and once, I roused to the sound of something growling in the darkness outside the cave. Whatever it was, it made a bunch of noise for an hour or so before wandering off, but it had woken the entire cave, and it left an air of unease hanging over the entire camp.
“What time is it?” I asked Sara as I pushed myself into a sitting position.
“You’ve been asleep off and on for over six Earth hours,” she supplied helpfully. “What that means here, though, I have no idea since I don’t know how long night lasts in this world.”
I suppressed a grunt of acknowledgment and leaned my head back against the rock wall. “You know, I never asked you about professions in this world,” I realized after a few moments. “Have I been losing XP?”
“Not yet, although pretty soon I’ll have to funnel the XP from the fight with the stornbyor into Warrior. That’ll level it up, by the way. Of course, if you pick a rarer profession, you might be able to level it up instead and get more out of it, and by waiting, you did unlock some rarer options.”
“Okay, show me those, then. Rare or better only.”
“Happily. Here you go.”
A new screen flashed in my vision, and I looked it over carefully.
Isyagarl
Rare
A great hunter of the beasts of the ice and snow
Undebadar
Extraordinary
A warrior who empowers himself with only the most powerful of spirits
Undetmayer
extraordinary
A shaman who focuses on willingly bonding with spirits
Undkrager
Rare
A shaman/hunter hybrid who fights with spirit magic and weapons
“Okay, let’s dig into these a bit,” I replied. “It looks like that first one is just a hunting class, right?”
“Yes, although it’s designed around hunting dangerous creatures of ice and snow, so you wouldn’t get XP for killing harmless creatures or even large herbivores. It gives you bonuses to Tracking and Perception, though, as well as damage bonuses against dangerous creatures.”
“Got it. What about the rest of them?”
“Well, undebader sort of translates out to ‘magical spirit binder of the great spirits’,” she supplied. “You noticed that bonding the Hunt Spirit gave you stat boosts; this profession focuses on maximizing those boosts and using them to become a more potent warrior. If you choose it, you’ll get bonuses to combat and to the stat boosts that binding or bonding a spirit give you, but only if the spirit is of a certain power level. If it’s lower, you’ll actually get less benefit from it.
“Undetmayer means ‘benevolent spirit master of spirits,’ and it focuses on getting spirits to willingly bond with you, rather than binding them against their will. It gives you boosts to your spirit energy and to the special abilities those spirits give you, but it penalizes the energy and abilities of spirits you bind unwillingly. It’s the only pure shaman profession here, by the way; the others are all hybrids.
“And undkrager roughly means ‘spiritual warrior and hunter,’” she finished. “It’s a true hybrid profession: you get small boosts to hunting and combat skills and to spiritual skills, but not as large as you might if you specialized in either. The upside is that you can put XP into it from a lot more sources.”
“What do you mean?” I asked curiously.
“Well, you can only add XP to isyagarl when you’re fighting the large predators of the ice. You can only improve undebader when you use the power of a powerful bound spirit to boost yourself in battle, and you can only level up undetmayer when you use magical powers drawn from the energy of willingly bound spirits. For undkrager, you can boost yourself anytime you use your spiritual and combat skills together.”
I frowned. “But does that mean I’ll be missing XP for things outside combat? What about just binding spirits or generic hunting?”
“Yes, you’d be losing those XP. Typically, more basic actions like that are tied to more common professions, though—like these.” A second screen popped up in front of me.
Hunter
Common
A hunter of game
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
Letharvis
Standard
A spiritual shaman
Spearman
Standard
A warrior who specializes with a spear
My first instinct was to take the three less-common professions plus undkrager, but I hesitated before making that decision. “Is there any downside to taking them all?” I asked slowly.
“A couple, yes. Undebader and undetmayer both have inherent penalties. If you have both of them, you could only bond powerful and willing spirits to avoid those penalties, and I don’t know how hard that might be to do. Plus, you’d have to juggle where to put your XP since a lot of them have overlap. Your fight with the undvarn, for example, could give XP to isyagarl, undkrager, undebader, undetmayer, and letharvis. You’d have to constantly choose between bringing one or two to really high levels or leveling them all a little bit. The upside is that you’d get the base bonuses for each of them, though, no matter if you leveled them or not.”
I thought about it for a minute, then chose the three less common professions plus isyagarl and undkrager. Until I knew more about the whole spirit thing, I didn’t want to pick a profession that gave me penalties. For all I knew, spirits like the Hunt Spirit were really rare and willing bonds like that very uncommon—which would account for the professions both being extraordinary ranked, I supposed. I could end up crippling myself with a bad choice.
Professions Chosen:
Hunter
Common
Primary Stat:
Perception
Ability Gained:
Improved Tracking
Ability: Improved Tracking
Passive Ability
Your Perception is increased by 10% for the purposes of Tracking only.
Letharvis
Standard
Primary Stats:
Intuition, Charm
Skill Gained:
Ritualism
Ability Gained:
Speak With Spirits
Skill: Ritualism
Rank: Neophyte 1
Benefits: +1% per skill level to all performed rituals
Ability: Speak With Spirits
Active Ability
Benefits: You can speak to and understand free spirits without entering the Spirit World.
Isyagarl
Rare
Primary Stats:
Perception (+2), Prowess, Skill
Abilities Gained:
Cold Resistance, Ice Slayer
Ability: Cold Resistance
Passive Ability
Benefits: You suffer only half the penalties inflicted by cold and hypothermia
Ability: Ice Slayer
Passive Ability
Benefits: You do 10% + 5% per Isyagarl Level damage to Unusual or rarer predators of the Cold subtype
Spearman
Standard
Primary Stats:
Prowess, Celerity
Skill Gained:
Weapon Focus (Spear)
Skill: Weapon Focus (Spear)
Benefit: Attack and damage +1% per skill level when using a spear
Undkrager
Rare
Primary Stats:
Intuition, Prowess (+2), Vigor
Ability Gained:
Spiritual Strike
Ability: Spiritual Strike
Active Ability
Benefits: Your strike ignores corporeal armor and defenses and attacks the spirit directly. This can be used to harm spirits or do spiritual damage to living opponents. Once used, takes 1 minute to recharge before becoming available again (-5 seconds per undkrager level past 1)
You have 307 XP that needs to be assigned.
This XP can be assigned to the following Professions:
Hunter, Spearman, Warrior
If this XP is not assigned within 24 hours, it will be randomly assigned.
You have 797 XP that needs to be assigned.
This XP can be assigned to the following Professions:
Isyagarl, Hunter, Letharvis, Spearman, Undkrager, Warrior
If this XP is not assigned within 24 hours, it will be randomly assigned.
I read over the notifications a couple times. I tended to forget about my spells and abilities in the heat of combat—decades of training that taught me to respond to a threat with physical violence were hard to overcome—and that had gotten me into trouble several times in the past. I was determined to do better in this world, and that started by understanding my professions and the abilities they gave me.
Improved Tracking was simple enough. I’d be a slightly better tracker now; the ability basically boosted my Perception by two points when I was tracking something. Spear Focus wasn’t really any better, although it at least would level up with use, and hopefully it would make me less incompetent with a spear. Neither the ability nor the skill gave me much, really, but I didn’t expect much from a common profession. Those typically gave out crappy passive abilities like that or skills that I could get on my own with a bit of effort or training. If they gave great abilities just for taking them, I’d have snatched every damn one of them up in a heartbeat. As it was, if I got my Perception up to 100, Improved Tracking would bump it to 110, and if I became an adept with the spear, I’d do an extra point of damage for every ten I inflicted. Big fucking deal.
Cold Resistance was actually helping already; as soon as I took the Isyagarl profession, the lingering chill in the cave vanished, leaving me pretty comfy, all things considered. Ice Slayer looked like it was about as useful as Improved Tracking with its 10% bonus, but that bonus scaled, so if I leveled the profession, it would get stronger and stronger. To do that, I had to become an arctic big game hunter of sorts, but that might be doable. Aeld had suggested that the journey to the valskab would be long and difficult, which meant that I might just get chances to hunt things like the stornbyor along the way. I’d have to keep my eyes open for tracks and see if the opportunity arose.
I wasn’t sure about Ritualism and Speak with Spirits. I hadn’t had great experiences with rituals to this point—most of the ones I’d seen had been used against me or the entire world, in fact—so I didn’t know if I’d be performing that many of them. I also didn’t know how useful talking with spirits would be; how intelligent were they? Would we actually be able to talk, or would I just kind of understand them? Could I ask them actual questions? All those answers would determine whether the ability was valuable or just a curiosity.
Which left Spiritual Strike as the undeniable winner as far as how useful and powerful my new abilities was concerned. It looked like with it, I could have ignored the bear’s fur and bones and such and stabbed directly into its heart with one thrust. And thanks to Spear Focus, I’d actually have a chance to hit with that thrust, so win-win all around.
“Not exactly, John,” Sara corrected with a light laugh. “Yes, Spear Focus will make you more capable with your weapon, but Spiritual Strike bypasses the entire body and strikes directly at the spirit. You wouldn’t be able to stab something in the heart with it, I’m afraid.”
“Okay, so what does that mean, then? What’s ‘spiritual damage’?”
“Pretty much what it sounds like. It’s damage to the spirit that animates and sustains a body.” She hesitated for a moment, seeming to choose her words. “Think of it this way. With your spear, you attack an enemy’s flesh. The damage you inflict is meant to make their body incapable of functioning by directly interfering with the mechanisms that allow it to function.
“Spiritual damage, though, attacks the force that keeps their body animated and empowered. It’s almost like attacking their physical stats directly. Physical damage interferes with how a body works; spiritual damage makes it so that it can’t work as well in the first place.”
I frowned at her explanation, somewhat disgruntled. Suddenly, my cool ability didn’t seem like that big of a deal anymore. I mean, I could just stab something in the eye or throat to kill it; what was the point of stabbing it in the spirit?
“Okay, so what’s the benefit to it, then? Either way, the thing’s dead, right?”
“There are three advantages to doing spiritual damage that I can see immediately. One, most creatures’ bodies are designed to resist physical damage, but their spirits aren’t as protected. No spiritual skulls and ribcages, so to speak. That makes it easier to do a lot of damage with little effort.
“Two, while a minor physical injury won’t even slow down an enemy, any amount of spiritual damage will reduce their ability to function and thus to fight. That stornbyor barely noticed some of your attacks, but it would absolutely have felt the spiritual equivalent of a scratch on the arm. That means that just about any spiritual blow is going to be a significant injury, and a critical blow could be crippling or fatal even to an enemy that’s completely unwounded.
“Third, physical bodies are meant to take damage. It’s almost impossible to get through life unhurt, so bodies are designed to repair that damage. Spirits aren’t. They aren’t supposed to be injured, so they heal very, very slowly if at all. Cripple an enemy with spiritual damage, and even if they escape, they aren’t going to heal it anytime soon.”
“Okay, that is pretty powerful,” I admitted, mollified. “Although the once a minute restriction is rough. A lot of fights are done in that time.”
“Sorry, but the ability takes a lot of power to manifest. Once you use it, I’ll need some time to regather enough energy to activate it again. As you level up undkrager, though, I’ll be able to make the pathways for it more efficient, so you’ll be able to use it more often.”
“I guess I need to go hunting spirits, then,” I thought with a mental chuckle.
“And large cold-type creatures,” she reminded me. “Sounds like you’ve got a lot to do on this trip!”
The rest of the hunters woke within an hour and began to bustle about the camp. Aeld relit the fire, and the hunter who’d made dinner last night set to making some sort of oatmeal-like substance for breakfast. I watched everything, trying to see how I could help, but the hunters moved about silently in a sort of dance that I wasn’t part of. They just seemed to know what to do; everyone had a role, and once they completed it, they moved seamlessly into a new one. I had a feeling that anything I might have tried to add would have just gotten in the way. The food turned out to be bland and nearly tasteless, but it was reasonably filling and warmed me from the inside.
At last, Aeld walked up and crouched beside me. “Are you ready to leave, Freyd?” he asked simply.
“I’ve been ready for a while,” I replied with a smile.
“Good. We should get moving. The sun will be up soon, and it’s many days travel to our destination, then even more to the valskab.” He gave me a look that I thought might be humorous. “Let’s hope that it’s less exciting than yesterday. It’s a hard enough journey as it is, and by the end, we’ll all be ready for the warmth of the valskab.”