I have read many progression fantasies where the hero is perpetually dancing on the edge of a knife and one wrong move would spell the end for him and everything that he holds dear. They were certainly exciting and, I get it, true progress comes with risk and struggle, but in most of those stories money is also super helpful. There are plenty of moral issues around wealth that we could certainly debate, but no matter how long my journey took the money route was going to ultimately be more realistic for me than the path of discipline or the way of the warrior. One look at those elves made it clear that where physicality and skill were concerned I was, as Elen so charmingly put it, woefully unprepared. Money was certainly going to be part of my path, but not exclusively my path. Afterall, overspecialization always breeds weakness.

***

Following their introductions the elven instructors made themselves at home in the lobby, lounge and library of the hotel along with my friends. It was like some fantasy college admissions weekend breakout session. It was a shockingly low bar, but I had even less intention of participating in this awkwardness than I did when I was in school and trying to settle on a college.

I approached Erin, Sarah and Elen as my friends shared a bit about their classes and experiences during the “bonus quest” week with the elven ranger. Slipping into their circle behind Erin and Sarah, I waited for my chance to join in as I mulled my list of objectives. I wasn’t using the system quests, but I had created my own custom questline of sorts.

* Determine what could be gained from the elves and develop a plan for doing so.

* Assess Queakers’ situation and goals and provide her any support that I could.

* Connect with Sarah, Lyle and Jim about my plans, so that they wouldn’t worry.

* Claim property in the safezone near the Treefort for my new business ventures.

* Get a job and use it to learn what I could about the situation while making money.

* Establish as many profit generating ventures as possible with a one year time horizon.

* Hunt in the surrounding forests for fun and profit.

* Purchase or develop the most powerful defensive artifacts, treasures or characteristics.

It was certainly not a complete plan, but I had put together a number of ideas and scenarios as I spent the prior week reading in the Treefort and I am sad to say that this was the best I could come up with. I wasn’t sure exactly how this place related to my life before awakening, but any way I sliced it, I needed to push forward to collect information and as many advantages as possible in the next year.

Taking pity on me and my utter lack of savoir faire, Sarah threw me a lifeline and said, “Harris, your situation certainly is unique among the group. Perhaps you should share your story with Instructor Elen and she can lend you the benefit of her wisdom, knowledge and vast experience.” As she spoke she looked at Elen with big doe eyes full of wonder and admiration. It may be apocryphal, but I think that I threw up in my mouth a little bit at this naked display of flattery, but the elf accepted it as a matter of course. Leave it to Sarah to read the crowd just right.

Elen said, “This one is here to help you lost lambs. Please tell me of your class and troubles and I will set you on the right path.”

To her credit, Elen listened with attention as I explained that there was an issue with my awakening process. I explained that I had found some guns and books recently and was looking to use firearms and study tactics to support my friends. I also mentioned that with my situation I was thinking of getting a job rather than training to allow me to contribute to my team in other ways. I kept the exposition on my class and decisions vague. Although Sarah’s eyebrows momentarily peaked at my mention of working rather than training, neither she nor Erin offered Elen anything additional about my situation.

In her beautiful, melodious voice Elen answered immediately, “Firearms are a broken peak. They are shortcuts that will permanently damage your foundations. You are no doubt fully awakened, I can sense it within you, but as you lack a true path you will quickly fall behind those with true blessings from the Unified System. To recognize your lack of potential is admirable, I do think that learning a trade so that you can at least be of some service to your teammates in making camp, repairing equipment and tending the mounts would allow you to hold them back as little as possible. You may also consider doing the honorable thing and leaving the party altogether. With your species’ limitations and ignorance, this party will already struggle to survive and after they have recruited a replacement for you, they could perhaps hire you on as a servant to tend their camp.”

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I had to hand it to Elen, she was direct and on point. I could see that Sarah was fuming, though I doubt anyone else could recognize it on her well schooled face. Erin looked shocked as well. She was always a little jealous of my friendship with Sarah, but I didn’t think that she was a bad sort. I even caught Kelly’s eye for a moment as she overheard Elen’s suggestion as she was chatting with Amrynn about the options for her thief class. I don’t know if she was quite feeling pity for me, but it was sympathy of some kind and if I was getting sympathy from Kelly things were looking real, real bad.

I agreed with Elen, thanked her for her wisdom and excused myself. She didn’t appear to give our conversation another thought as she turned back to Sarah and Erin. I actually rotated over to chat with Kelly and Amrynn for a few minutes about the stealth arts and what it took to learn them. Amrynn was terse and they were certainly less dismissive as Elen, but it sounded like without access to a base class that included a stealth skill it would be a long road to getting access to a stealth ability. Apparently there were skill tomes that could help bridge this kind of gap, but those weren’t likely to be available in the area for some time.

Caeda seemed to be generally following Ayre around as she chatted with each of my friends in turn. Ayre navigated the relatively awkward social situation with grace and ease. Caeda did not. I tried several times to engage Caeda in conversation, but all I got were one word answers. He seemed to have no interest in learning about anyone or in helping me in any way. Not necessarily a dead end, but a dead end for now.

Apparently our Elven instructors would not be claiming the remaining rooms in the hotel. They had plans to stay elsewhere in the safe zone for the duration of the training. They left a few hours before dinnertime without much of an explanation. It seemed odd that they wouldn’t be staying in the hotel, especially with the proximity of the hotel to the actual training grounds and ranges, not to mention their precious students. The elves were weird though and the whole thing seemed a bit off, so I was happy that they wouldn’t be sharing the hotel with my friends.

I asked Sarah and Queakers if they could meet up with me for a few minutes after dinner and made the same request of Jim and Lyle before heading out into the late afternoon sun.

***

While spending time reading and cataloging some of the books in the vast collection in the Treefort, I had run across A Primer on Frontier Administration by Xyrtihne. A half elf regional governor from a century prior, Xyrtihne was apparently an expert on all aspects of frontier land management, including property rights. From the maps and documents in the library, I had come to understand that wherever our tutorial was taking place, the Unified System had completed its awakening activities thousands of years prior. The kingdoms and countries that existed prior to the awakening had all collapsed quickly and a network of system sponsored administrative regions had been established in the subsequent centuries.

Based on what I had gleaned, the area in which we were located was a part of the frontier in Region Eleven. The regions were very large by Earth standards, some stretching for thousands of miles. There were typically a few cities in each region, which were surrounded by large areas dedicated to permanent agricultural or resource collection activities. The frontiers were located in the distant and remote areas of the zones. Outposts like the one in which we were living were not permanently inhabited. Instead resources were allowed to build up in these remote regions and then harvested in a cyclical nature determined by the region’s administrator.

Our outpost was called the Emerald Sea and it hadn’t been occupied for about a hundred years. The safe zone preserves and protects the outpost while it is uninhabited. When the administrator opens an outpost, people migrate there to work, trade and harvest resources. When the administrator closes an outpost, everyone has to move in the span of a few months. Assignments aren’t directed specifically by the administrator or his staff, but they create the incentives that shift the population among these frontier areas.

Apparently, people willing and able to work successfully under the challenging conditions of the frontier are relatively rare and this is a significant limitation in developing and securing these frontier locations. According to Xyrtihne sponsoring tutorials for the newly awakened is a one method to bolster the population of frontier inhabitants and comes with some benefits from the Unified System. There are many strategies that an Administrator can utilize to influence these situations, but the reality is that it doesn't make sense to manage them closely. It is more like seeding a meadow with wildflowers and letting nature take its course than carefully tilling the soil, sowing the seeds, irrigating the crops and harvesting them when the time comes. At least that was that analogy that Xyrtihne used in the book.

More importantly from my perspective, as an incentive to encourage people to rotate through the frontier in an expeditious fashion, any citizen could claim any unoccupied building in an outpost for use in commerce by affixing a sign for the business to the blank sign slot included with each structure. As luck would have it, all tutorial participants are given regional citizenship immediately at the start of the tutorial period in an effort to tie them to the region in which they had been “seeded.”