Jason scowled, his food only halfway to his mouth. It was almost stereotypical, how he'd just sat down to eat, only for someone to let out a high-pitched shriek in the distance. He hoped that the system wasn't at fault here, that this wasn't it somehow orchistrating events for a more authentic game experience, or something along those lines. If you could call a real life RPG a 'game experience'.
Would that make this some sort of way-too-serious LARP? he wondered.
Distantly, he heard the bellow of some creature, followed by a series of unintelligible words that had an air of cursing to them. A second bellow echoed through the trees.
Jason sighed, and put down his skewer. This was where he was supposed to come the rescue and be the hero wasn’t it? For a few precious seconds he considered staying where he was. But no, he needed to find his way to civilization, and he knew that if he just sat there while someone got hurt, he'd feel absolutely terrible after the fact. He wasn't the type to remain idle when someone actually needed help. It wasn’t that he specifically wanted to play the hero, he just didn’t want to be the asshole who pretended he saw nothing.
So he got up. Even if he wasn't sure what he'd be able to accomplish, at least he had a weapon. Jason supposed that heroes had to get their start somewhere, even if he wasn't really sure he wanted to be one; really, he just wanted to find a way back home, not that he really had much hopes of doing so. Besides, if he wanted to experiment with his class, he needed XP, which probably meant fighting.
Jason grabbed his longer fishing spear and followed the noise. It didn’t take him long to find the source. Down by the stream, close enough that the light from his fire was still vaguely visible in the distance, he came across two figures, one human, the other decidedly not.
He'd half expected a damsel-in-distress situation, and he wasn’t entirely wrong. There was a damsel, though from the look of her, he was fairly sure that calling her that would be pretty insulting. She was also hardly in what he would call ‘in distress’, because she was winning. Maybe at the very worst, it was currently a draw, but it looked like winning to him.
What he had found was a tall, young woman with faux-red hair who looked to be Jason's age. Currently, she was fending off a grossly fat, partially bipedal frog creature the size of a extremely large dog, using what appeared to be a badly rusted longsword held in one hand. The frog-thing didn't really have arms to speak of, but it did have some wicked-looking teeth, and it kept lashing out at the girl with a long, prehensile tongue. She would either roll to the side and dodge, or try and deflect with her sword, causing the frog thing to abort its strike. Jason could see flecks of greenish goo dripping from the creature’s tongue and scattered across the grass; apparently it had learned the hard way not to follow through when she used the sword.
Jason didn’t intervene right away, though he gripped his spear firmly, raising it in front of him. He wasn’t sure if the woman would appreciate the help or not, and she didn’t seem like she needed it offhand. He instead stood quietly at the ready, because he didn't want to distract her.
She noticed him anyway. "Hey, naked dude!" she yelled to him. "I just need an opening. Chuck your spear at it." She mimed a throwing gesture. Then she dodged to the side again as the frog took another swing at her.
Naked dude? he wondered. Oh, right. The shirt. He'd left it near the fire to dry, because he'd been using it to carry mushrooms again, and had rinsed it in the stream afterwards. He hadnt stopped to put it on before investigating.
Jason didn’t feel like it was a terribly good plan to throw his only weapon away, and it probably wouldn’t do much. He assumed the woman had some sort of plan, though, so decided to oblige her. He could always run away back to his camp to get his other spears.
He circled halfway around behind the frog, and the next time it opened its mouth to strike at the girl, Jason threw the fishing spear as hard as he could, striking it in the back. It didn’t penetrate well, falling to the ground, but it did manage to draw blood. With a bellow that frogs should emphatically not be making, it turned to face him.
Jason tensed himself to run, but it turned out to be unnecessary. With a series of swift poking gestures as if one-finger typing on a keyboard, the girl's hand sparked with light and a small arc of electrical energy spat forward, striking the frog square in the side.
Magic, he thought, Sweet.
The frog spasmed and fell over as the electricity ran through it and into the ground, unable to maintain its balance as its muscles contracted uncontrollably. The girl used that opportunity to dash up to it and stab the creature with her rusty sword, jamming it right through the creature's eye and into its brain. It died instantly.
Level Gained: Alchemist Level 2. Skill point aquired. Stat point aquired.
"Thanks for the assist, stranger." The girl said, letting go of her sword and leaning forward to place her hands on her knees, trying to catch her breath. "Still haven’t gotten the hang of this stupid quick cast system," she complained. "Keep having to do it manually through the menu, which takes me a few seconds."
Jason looked at her, surprised. He'd tried figuring out how to activate skills through the interface, but had given up on it. Maybe none of his current skills worked that way?
The girl eyed his pants thoughtfully for a brief moment. "I'm gonna go out on a limb here, and guess you're from Earth like me. I don't see blue jeans being a common thing in a fantasy setting."
"Uh, yeah," he said awkwardly. He was suddenly very aware of the state of his clothes. "Um, sorry about the lack of shirt. It's drying right now." This was not how he liked to make his first impressions.
She waved a hand tiredly. "Eh no worries. It's just nice to see another human being finally. I've been out here in the middle of nowhere for almost a full day now, just blundering around hoping to find some sign of civilization. I was stopping for some water when I saw your fire in the distance and came running, only for that frog thing to come lunging out of the water."
She stood upright and rolled her shoulders, then stuck out a hand. "I'm Lumiriel, by the way."
"Jason," he said, clasping her hand and choosing to ignore the frog guts. "Uh, this is a bit gross, but would you mind if I borrow your sword for a few minutes? I have two skills that will help me tell if any parts of this thing are useful."
"Or edible," he said with a grimace.
Her eyes widened. "Really? What’d you get?"
"I’m an [Alchemist], apparently." Jason explained briefly about how his orienteering and survival training, and finding the mushrooms and using his lighter, had led to his acquisistion of the class.
"Oh, thats pretty cool. I actually ended up with Knight. I was bored, and found this sword half-buried in the dirt by the road, alongside some kind of busted wagon wheel, and just started swinging it around, pretending like a tree was a giant." She ducked her head sheepishly. "Broke the wheel attempting to do a shield bash, too."
"Knight?" Jason asked. "Wasn't that a spell you used, though?"
"Sort of." Lumiriel shrugged. "I'm not really sure, but I think actual spells are different somehow. When I first arrived, I was just sitting around in the dark. Whatever that big ghost tentacle thing was that dragged me here, it seemed like it had to be magic, right? So on a whim I just ran around doing silly stuff, just in case I could get it to work.
"What, really?" Jason laughed.
"Yeah," she said with a lopsided grin. "I made a pretty big fool of myself, running around trying to do hadokens and yelling things like 'lightning bolt' and 'fireball'."
She laughed. "It didn't work, obviously, but when the system finally came back on, apparently it decided I'd given it the old college try, and it gave me [Elemental Cantrips], since apparently I have a really high spirit stat and a decent Intellect."
She paused. "I guess it wasn’t that silly, in the end.’ She said, glancing over at the frog's corpse.
"How did you choose which spell to use?" Jason asked curiously.
"I dont, really. Its more of a mindset kind of thing. Unless you mean the navigating the UI. The skill gives me the ability to conjure and manipulate small amounts of classic rpg elements. But I don't choose what I want it to do with the UI, that's just for activating the skill, which I've been having trouble with."
She tapped her head with a finger. "Once I've actually selected it, it's all about what I want it to do. Though I can't really do much damage directly with it. But it seems great for basic stuff like starting fires, stunning animals, that sort of thing."
"I’ll say. Speaking of, about that sword?" Jason gestured vaguely in the direction of the dead monster. "I’ve got a fire going, and plenty of quite good mushrooms and some onions. If its edible, I could cook kebabs I guess. You’re welcome to join."
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"That sounds fantastic," she said, laughing as her stomach grumbled. "I haven't eaten at all for a whole day; I didnt want to risk poisoning myself. Even the idea of giant frog legs sounds good to me."
"Same. I've been living off mushrooms. Some meat would be nice.”
Lumiriel passed Jason her sword and they went to work. Jason's skills informed him that indeed, the flesh of giant frog-things was just as edible as the normal kind. This was excellent news, because the creature had enough meat on it to feed them for multiple days. Even better, it turned out that the frog hide was actually quite tough, flexible, and relatively waterproof.
To Jason, that meant he could finally make some bags. Disgusting, temporary frog-skin bags, but bags nonetheless.
In addition to the fleshy, cookable meat and the hide, his skills also 'helpfully' informed him that if he was willing to dice up other parts of the creature and snack on them raw, Jason could further his knowledge of alchemy ingredients.
He nearly threw up just thinking about it.
In the end however, he used his Skill anyway, but only after consulting with Lumiriel; She agreed to keep an eye on him if anything happened. Jason was mostly sure it would be fine; as far as he was aware, all of a frog was actually edible, right down to the toes. It was just that a most of it wasn’t very palatable, or especially healthy, like the skin. So Jason just gritted his teeth and sampled some parts they harvested, despite his stomach’s protestations.
[Frogoid Brain] Trait Discovered: Enhance
[Frogoid Webbing] Trait Discovered: Water
[Frogoid Eyeball] Trait Discovered: Night
[Aquatic Sweetbreads] Trait Discovered: Breath
Congratualtions! You have fullfilled the requirements to learn [Basic Harvesting] at a reduced cost! Would you like to purchase it now for 1 Skill Point? Y/N?
Level Gained: Alchemist Level 3. Skill Point Gained. Class Point Gained. You have aquired a new Class Skill, [Brew Potion].
Jason felt extremely encouraged, even if he did actually throw up afterwards. Not only had he successfully leveled up a second time from all his skill use, but he thought he'd gained a bit more insight into what the alchemy traits might actually be for. If it worked like he hoped and he could find a village or town before the remaining ingredients spoiled, he could craft one or two potions he could potentially sell or barter with. That might mean not having to rough it even once they found civilization.
Jason said as much to Lumiriel, who agreed with him. She definitely liked the sound of having an actual bed to sleep in; Jason gathered she had never even been camping before.
She also had an extremely useful suggestion: If two of them were to journey together, she could help preserve the meat by using her [Elemental Cantrip] to produce ice.
Rather than haul the corpse back to camp and risk attracting scavengers, Lumiriel stood by with Jason's phone as a flashlight, while he used his new [Basic Harvesting] skill and her sword to salvage the hide and carve the meat off the bones as best he could.
While she encased the remaining ingredients and most of the meat in ice, he fashioned a [Crude Frogskin Bag], which he wrapped around the hunk of ice. Looping a pair of twine handles around the whole thing, he had an makeshift cooler to transport it in.
The rest of the frog meat Jason and Lumiriel brought back to camp and cooked thoroughly. Most of it Jason turned into kebabs along with mushrooms and onions, while the rest Lumiriel wrapped in more ice and left for later.
Jason also cleaned and set aside some of the bones, fashioning a [Crude Frogskin Backpack] to carry them in. Both his [Survivalist] and [Improvised Weapons] skill told him that bones made for decent spear or arrowheads when sharpened. While they were fragile and wouldn't last as long as a stone one would, bones were very sharp when split; thats how compound fractures happened, after all. And, well, you can always use one bone blade to get more bones.
Finally, he crafted a second [Crude Frogskin Backpack], this one intended to be filled with mushrooms in the morning, so he could stop using his shirt as a basket.
While Jason worked, and while waiting to regenerate her mana between uses of [Elemental Cantrip], Lumiriel fiddled with her UI. She too had hit level three, and she wanted to see what new options she had, if any.
"Oh hey!" she exclaimed after a moment. "I can unlock a new class!"
"Really? What did you earn?" Jason asked, looking up from his bag-making.
"Not earn, unlock," Lumiriel said. "I hit level three, so I got a Class Point, which is apparently what we use to unlock new classes we've met the prerequisites for."
"Sweet," Jason said, putting down the partly finished bag and opening up his interface as well. "I got one too. I hit level three from all the alchemy tasting stuff. Apparently using my class skill counts as Class XP.
"Maybe we get them every three levels?" Lumiriel suggested.
"That would be pretty nice. Lots of options, then. I wonder how many we can equip at once. I'm sure its more than one, since it says 'Primary', but I couldn't find any explanation of the rules, so to speak."
"Yeah, this system really doesn't like telling you things does it?"
"Yeah."
Jason and Lumiriel both browsed through their options, eventually deciding to compare thier available classes. This confirmed one of Jason's earlier suspicions about skills: If you didn't meet the requirements, classes and skills simply didn't appear on the selection menu. This meant that since they didn't even know what was possible, it was very hard to game the system for high-synergy classes and skills. It didn't mean they couldn't, but it would take a lot of research, and probably a lot of talking to other people who did know the system. To make matters worse, they discovered the system didn't specify much about what a class would actually grant you, only its general description.
Jason had a large number of basic civilian classes that reflected his crafting skills, like ‘Chef’, ‘Leatherworker’, and ‘Herbalist’. He also had a few standard woodsy-type combat classes too, no doubt thanks to his [Survivalist] skill, including one called ‘Wanderer’, which he could only assume was a civilian version of a ranger type.
Lumiriel's current choices were far more interesting to Jason. She had a number of different spellcasting classes available, nearly all of which seemed to have some kind of nature-based, partly spiritual theme, like [Witch], [Shaman], and [Druid]. They tentatively guessed that her [Elemental Cantrips] were somehow qualifying as nature, or natural, magic. Jason thought it was strange, as he thought of 'Elemental' magic in terms of fire and ice, which to him meant wizard-y magic, but Lumiriel argued that shamans and druids were well known in fantasy for their strong offensive spells, particularly along the lines of powerful thunderstorms and eruptions of earth, stone, and lava.
Lumiriel also had a number of close combat classes available to her, as in addition to [Elemental Cantrip], she had [Basic Swordsmanship] and [Basic Mobility]. She'd earned both at the same time that she had become a [Knight], purchased both on the assumption that they were both going to be important for her.
One class in particular stood out to her though. It was a melee spellcasting class from the sound of it, and since she'd already experienced how useful her [Cantrips] could be at close range, she decided to go for it, and unlocked [Spellblade].
Lumiriel made a faint humming sound, head bobbing from side to side while she poked at her interface, which she'd made visible to Jason. He meanwhile had decided to hang on to his Class Point for now and returned to finish his final bag.
"Well, this is kind of annoying." Lumiriel said. "Not the class, the equipping. It looks like the levels in each slot matter. Like, I can set [Spellblade] as my primary class, but then I can't set [Knight] as my secondary. But I can set both of them if I do it the other way around. [Spellblade] can also be set as a subclass of Knight, whatever that does, but Knight doesn't appear as a subclass of [Spellblade]. I think it's because one is level three, and the other is only level one."
"That makes sense," said Jason. "I've definitely played games that had a system where it worked that way."
"Well, at least we can use more than one, right? I always hated games that locked you into one single class, and liked the ones that were super free-form where you could just pick several different trees, or could at least swap around as needed.
"Yeah, I know what you mean," Jason replied. "I always thought it was weird where in some games, your barbarian couldn't just up and learn how to play the drums, because that was somehow only available to bards, or your wizard was incapable of learning how to use a sword in case he ran out of spells or something."
Lumiriel smiled. "Well, at least that's something I don't have to worry about, it seems."
Jason laughed. "Yeah, thats true. You know what? If we're going to be working together, I think I'll pick up [Basic Throwing], I think I saw that in my list somewhere. If you want to be the frontliner, I can be the back row, and use knives or spears or something until I can make something better. It certainly worked earlier. And who knows; I'm still hoping I'll learn to make bombs or offensive flasks or something, too."
"That would be pretty awesome. And you can maybe make me buff potions too. And healing ones, of course."
"Yeah, that's high on my list of things to work out. Which reminds me, actually... I got [Brew Potion] earlier. I should see what it says."
He thumbed through his status screen for a moment.
Brew Potion: By combining alchemical ingredients with complementary traits into a liquid solution and infusing mana into the resulting mixture, you can create permanent magical consumables that are capable of a wide variety of effects. Rank One: Capable of combining up to two ingredients for a single effect.
"Well ok, that's better than I expected," Jason said. "The explanation, I mean. I'm not sure what 'complimentary' means here exactly, but given the traits I've...discovered, I've got a working theory, but I need a to find some more ingredients and have something to put it in first before I'm ready to test it."
"Yeah?"
"Im thinking I'm supposed to chain together various traits like a sentence or something. Use three or four different things that make a sort of vague sense together. Like if I tried to mix the Frog, uh, Brains, with the Webbing, I'd get 'Enhance Water' which might say, make someone's water magic temporarily stronger, or maybe it boost someone's resistance against water based spells or something."
"Oh, like some games do runecrafting?" Lumiriel asked. "That makes a sort of sense. Odd to apply that to Alchemy, but then there's all sorts of odd things in this system. Its kind of all over the place."
"Yeah, I've definitely noticed that too. It seems really cobbled together, like it was drawing from a great many different sources for inspiration or something."
"Maybe that's why we're here."
"God I hope not," Jason replied. "That would be such a lame reason to be pulled into some kind of fantasy world." He yawned, putting down his tools. "Ugh, I'm exhausted. Its been a long day. You ready to turn in? I think we've pretty much done everything we can tonight. We've still got a little hide left, but I'd rather save it for later."
Lumiriel yawned as well, stretching. "Yeah, I'm good. Want me to douse the fire and make us some beds?"
"Beds?"
She grinned. "Well duh, no need to sleep on hard, flat ground. I don't just do lightning and ice, you know. Earth is an element too. And Life or something, apparently; I can do plants also, kinda. Here, watch."
It took her several castings and most of her remaining mana, but in short order she had formed two 'beds' on opposite sides of the fire: A mound of loose earth with a slight depression in the center, with a large 'pillow' made from a thick mat of soft grass.
"Thats...damn." Jason said. "You are ridiculously useful to have around."
"Aww, that's sweet, Mr. I-Know-How-To-Make-Frogs-Into-Bags."
"Pfft."