SKIPS-ONE-STEP
She felt the wind on her skin, she felt the strong call of the wide open land and she ran with her newly changed skill and yet, she took time to make sure the way she was running was as efficient as possible, raising the skill over the level of the settlement, just enjoying the utter rush of progression after a threshold had been passed. She felt exhilarated, energised and as if she was running on air, not sand, rocks, and other ground with shoes which had disintegrated a while ago. Then, all of a sudden, the tiredness she had pushed back against until her breakthrough, came to the forefront and hit her like a freight train. All of a sudden, energy was replaced by an immense pressure, a feeling of tiredness, exhaustion. She decided to return to her settlement and reversed her tracks.
As she approached, she saw a group of scorpions-of-Tsanh who were transporting a few monster corpses on their backs. “Hi! Had a successful hunt?”
One of the scorpions made a gesture indicating both no and don’t ask. So she didn’t. “Can I help?”
“Do you have any healing skills?” a female scorpion asked, obviously looking at the male companion who was walking slowly.
Skips checked her status for the first time and gasped: The skills had all linked into the unified skill Advanced Longstrider. “I don’t. I am pretty fast though, so I can get someone to your aid.”
The group confirmed that this was acceptable and pointed the direction to a nearby village.
She immediately ran off and found the village in some kind of disarray. As the sand settled, she realised why: A group of humans were harassing the natives.
She shouted: “Stop right there! What in the green hills of fair Ireland is going on?”
Rush took a few steps toward her and looked at her strangely: “Sa… Skips-one-Step? You have to help us!”
Skips looked at him with disgust: “What kind of trouble did you get yourselves into?”
“A Grade 10 Dungeon.” Ruah admitted. “We have made it out with our lives, but little else, not even our communicators and now we need to find a way to contact our compound. And the scorpions seem not to understand what we need help with.”
Skips made a gesture to indicate Rush to stay away: “Stay outside of the village! They are having their own issues right now that do not pertain to you. Also: the further you are away from me the better.”
Rush murmured: “I can understand that!”
The scorpions seemed relieved as the humans moved away from their settlement. As Skips herself approached, the others were more cautious around her, quite a change to every other Tsanh village she had been to. She explained to a local scorpion: “There’s a hunting group out in the desert that is in need of medical help. I’d assist, but this is not my repository here, so I cannot gain any skills here.”
The expression immediately grew worried: “The Jumps-over-Fire group? I told them to be careful and yet… Can you lead us to them?”
“Yeah, I can.”
The scorpion seemed relieved: “Do you want to take a ride on my back? We’d probably be faster that way than if you used your short legs.”
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She shook her head: “I have Advanced Longstrider, so I probably can outrun you.”
The scorpion nodded and instead found a piece of cloth that was awaiting repairs that xe then enchanted with a levitation spell to lift off the ground. Xe then held on to Skip’s shoulders and then, Skips ran.
“Wow! I am sorry to have doubted you for even a moment, that’s insane! You’re that fast human, right? Skips-one-Step?”
She confirmed: “Indeed. What’s your name?”
The scorpion responded: “Crawls-in-Caves. I am the sibling of Jumps-over-Fire.”
A few moments later, Skips slowed down and waved at the group of scorpions. “I brought a healer!”
Crawls immediately went to heal the injured scorpions. Skips hung back for a few moments, unsure as to whether she was still needed. The next thing she realised was that someone shook her. She opened her eyes: “Where am I?”
Crawls looked at her in concern: “You just dropped here. You seem to need medical attention!”
Skips nodded vaguely: “I fell asleep. I worked on my foundational skill all night and now I am just tired and kinda passed out.”
Crawls wasn’t satisfied: “Are you sure that you’re okay? You didn’t even burrow!”
Skips nodded: “Humans normally don’t burrow for sleep but in the cold of the night, it makes sense, so I do it. To be honest, I thought of just resting for a moment and ended up dozing off.”
Crawls seemed okay with that. “Okay. Then I am sorry to have woken you. I was just worried about the humans that arrived. I knew you were able to handle the humans, so seeing you in what I thought to be a bad state made me very worried.”
Skips asked: “Did they behave badly?”
Crawls confirmed: “Very. Can you believe that they ran into the village as if they were here to raze it? They even had to be dragged away from the nests!”
Skips shuddered: “You know what? I am running to the human compound now. They need to pick up their troublemakers!”
INIT ANIIK
The doors opened and the cold air of the dungeon wafted through. Init immediately strutted in, Jaaru following reluctantly behind. The area in the dungeon was a dark, icy cave. Neither Init nor Jaaru were able to see in the dark, but they had cheap torches. A screech indicated the presence of monsters, and she reminded her sister: “Let me get a strike in before you decimate the monsters! You don’t need the experience and I need to get every morsel of it.”
Jaaru nodded: “Yeah, I am aware of our level difference and the goal of this trip. Just take care, the ground here is really slippery!”
Init nodded and slowly moved ahead.
The ground was icy and Init almost slid and landed on her backside, but Jaaru’s level 100 reflexes steadied her. Jaaru seemed to be largely unaffected by the terrain and perfectly at ease in the environment, just grumpy that it was early in the day and she had to be up and doing things on her day off, while Init was a bit grumpy about just how unpleasant this place was. “Do you hear anything?” she asked.
Jaaru nodded and pointed forward, then indicated the letter 3 with her left hand.
It actually took a few more minutes of walking until Jaaru motioned at Init to stop. She then picked up a pebble and chucked it into a rock. An angry white snowcat didn’t appreciate her hiding place being disturbed and attacked. Init managed to slash at it with her kitchen knife. Barely enough to even make the animal bleed, but Jaaru already felled it before it could attack her. Jaaru tilted her head in an unspoken question. Init received an experience notification as well as a level up one and nodded.
Jaaru threw another pebble or piece of ice and two more snowcats emerged from their hiding places. Again, Init tried to swipe at the snowcats, but this time, she was too slow. Moments later, they fell to the ground, their limbs separated from their bodies.
“Init, you might want to go ahead!” Jaaru said.
Init understood and decapitated the monsters and received the experience and levels. She basked in the feeling of the level ups and her free stat points. She still had the skills and spells of her previous class, confusingly enough. The only thing that changed was the name. So she took a moment to make the choices that she had thought about long and hard since she was a kid. She caught her breath for a moment, watching it freeze in the torchlight, then moved forward, trying desperately to level up. To prepare for what was about to come.