**The Village**

“What do you mean I need to go teach someone how to speak common?” the young miss demanded, glaring at him for all she was worth.

For his part, Theril had put this off as much as he could. For one, the young miss, Myra, was stubborn beyond belief. Suggesting that she take a cloak with her in the afternoon because it was going to rain- out of the goodness of his heart!- and she would be more likely to not take a cloak with her because someone had suggested it to her. Even if she’d been likely to take one with her before you’d said anything.

The second thing was that she was likely to physically kick you if you pushed things too far with her. Given that she’d managed to gain a Rare Path, compared to his Uncommon Path, and her growth wasn’t anything to sneeze at. And it also seemed that she had added her extra attribute points into strength or speed, because he could swear that her kicks had started hurting more recently.

Or maybe she’d gotten a [Kick] Skill or something….

Either way, he’d unwisely put off the encounter until the evening before they were due to once again visit the odd human in the woods.

“The Chief thinks that it would be a good idea to teach a friendly, if ignorant, human who’s living close to the village,” he explained as calmly as he could, wary of her already twitching foot. “Besides, I’m sure you’ll enjoy getting out and about, not to mention that he’ll more than likely feed us…” he slyly added, knowing full-well that food was one of the only things that could bribe or motivate the young shrine maiden.

“Oh?” she asked, her left ear twitching slightly as her foot calmed a bit.

“I’m not sure where he’s from, but I’ve never had food like that before,” he said, nodding calmly as he tried to casually sell the situation for all that he was worth. “I would even go so far as to describe it as ‘heavenly’,” he finished, noting the sparkle that was slowly developing in her eyes.

“Well, I guess it would be rude not to help a newcomer,” she said as she reached down to pick up one of the fox kits that she was helping to care for.

Theril watched as she began grooming the little kit, no more than a month old. He was very impressed that its parents allowed such a thing, but considering that Myra was a [Miko], he shouldn’t have been.

For its part, the kit just sprawled out in her hands, thoroughly enjoying the grooming. It was one of the rare black foxes, so the extra brushing made its coat shine.

“Indeed,” he said, getting back to things. “I think you both are about the same age, so that might make things a bit easier,” he said, thinking that things might go more smoothly between peers as opposed to having a significant generation gap.

Though, he hadn’t gotten that impression from Joram during his first visit. If anything, the young man seemed… relaxed, yet… vigilant? Attentive? Slightly anxious? He wasn’t sure, but Theril thought that maybe Joram was a bit of a homebody, not one to entertain company often.

“What’s age got to do with it?” Myra asked sharply, her eyes narrowing as she glared at him once more.

Ah, horse shit, he thought, realizing that he’d stepped in a gopher hole.

That Myra was already twenty-one years old this year, and unmarried, was more than a sore spot for her parents. For Myra? Not so much. She pushed back against anyone that tried to guide her life in almost every way imaginable. From what to study, study tips, instructions, or helpful advice, it was all taken as people trying to control her life.

That she was the daughter of the Chief only made it worse.

Being the child of the Chief, even if she had a twin brother to help take away the attention on her, still wasn’t something that she enjoyed. If anything, she was even worse with her well-intentioned brother.

The “perfect” child of the Chief. The exemplary student, son, and villager. Not only was he quite filial, but he was also higher level than his sister, of whom some murmured was slacking off.

Theril had to admit that still being below Level 10 at her age was a bit… uncommon. That said, he was pretty sure that her brother, Kalduin, hadn’t reached Level 10 either, but he was sure that the young man was close.

Anyways, he’d said the wrong thing and had once again put up Myra’s guard.

“Not much,” he said, making placating gestures as he spoke. “It’s just that, well, I always had an easier time learning from my peers rather than one of the [Teacher]s or [Instructor]s. I figured that maybe this Joram fellow might also have an easier time with that, given how well he and Reldan seemed to get along,” he said, doing his best to deflect her ire.

Congratulations!

For your hard work, effort, and perseverance, you’ve leveled the following Skill:

- Diplomacy 5 -> 6

Theril just about fell out of his chair when the announcement from the Great Protector came, but smiled when he read it.

The Great Protector has recognized my efforts!! He jubilantly thought, beyond pleased at the recognition.

“I guess that makes sense,” she said, giving him the side-eye as her hands continued their work. “But why bring Kal along, then? Does mother suspect that he’s not on the up and up?”

“I think that she suspects that of any new person coming to the village,” he said, deflecting slightly. “That he’d living out there, by himself, is certainly unusual. So, having a [Priest] there to rule out any potential deception would go a long way to vetting the young man.”

Myra thought about that for a minute as her hands kept busy. She’d already brushed the black kit as much as was wise, so she was now giving it a combination of scratches and a massage, resulting in a very puddle-like fox.

After another moment, she picked up the now sleeping kit, placed it back in its bed, and picked up its sibling to start the process all over again.

“Do you think that he’s dangerous?” she eventually asked, still focussing on her work.

“To us? No. I get the feeling that he’s not a terribly aggressive person,” he said, shaking his head. “That said, while we were there yesterday, there was some sort of attack that occurred-”, he paused when Myra’s head whipped around so that she could pin him with her intense gaze.

“We’re fine, no harm at all to us. In fact, the whole thing only lasted a couple of minutes before it subsided. Or ended? Anyways, Joram only looked through the little peek-hole thingy in his door while we just kind of stood around.

“That said, when we left, we found many fresh goblin tracks outside his house. I’m not sure if they took off again, or what, but there were no bodies, or blood, anywhere. So, there’s that,” he finished, very much not liking that he’d had to share this with her.

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

Given how much Myra loved sussing-out mysteries, he very much suspected that Joram wouldn’t have an easy time of it with her. He was just glad that Kalduin was also assigned to teaching duty, as that should- hopefully- help keep Myra in check.

“What do you suppose he did?” Myra asked, now more fully engaged in the conversation than she’d yet been.

Theril sighed before sharing his suppositions. Who knows? Maybe things would go as smoothly as they’d gone when it had been just him and Reldan?

He could only hope.

* * * * *

Joram was just as happy as a clam buried in sand. Or maybe a lactose-tolerant cat that had gotten into the creamery? Anyways.

He’d spend the rest of his day practicing his Powers, or at least the ones he’d been using so far, as well as the Skills he’d gotten from the System. Which had resulted in more than a few gains.

[Concentration], [Metalshaping], [Meditation], and [Sculpting] had all gone up at least once. What’s more, when he’d once again reviewed his character sheet, he’d found that he’d missed a few things. Or, perhaps, they’d shown up after he’d looked earlier. Either way, he now remembered/knew that he had two interesting- and highly coveted- Skills that any isekai’d person would drool over.

[Analyze] and [Privacy Mode].

Now that he thought back a bit more, maybe they’d already been mentioned? Well, that really didn’t matter because he’d only just started investigating them last night.

[Analyze] seemed to be the same as the [Identify] Skill that you’d see in your typical isekai setting. Once he’d started using it, he came to realize that there were a few particularities about it.

One: it could name everything. No joke. Everything. Even things that he genuinely knew nothing about. From the plants outside to exactly what kind of steel the kitchen sink was made of, it gave it all.

Two: if he was at least partially knowledgeable about something, like glass, concrete, or metal, it would give him a much more detailed explanation regarding that item.

It was crazy. It even broke down the percentage of what element was found in the item, give a list of uses, and even a durability counter.

The last of which had worried him… a lot.

Every game he’d played that had durability for items had varied things slightly. From them just plain breaking when the item lost all durability to just becoming useless and “unequipable”. Then there was the repair mechanic, if you were lucky enough to have a developer who was kind enough to include such a thing.

That said, he’d have to pay a lot of attention to his items as he used them. For one, he didn’t want something to break mid-combat, and thus put him in even more danger. For another, he wanted to see what happened to something that fell to zero durability through normal use of said item.

Would it break? Would its effectiveness or efficiency drop? Or would it just plain vanish on him like some games did to you?

Then there was [Privacy Mode]. It allowed you to choose whether or not to display something if someone [Identify]’d you. He’d massed around with it for a while after having [Analyze]’d himself in the mirror, and had eventually settled on his current… loadout?

Name: Joram

Path: None

Level: 0

He wasn’t sure how much attention he would get for that, but he couldn’t actually fudge stuff. Yet? He hoped so, because if he didn’t, he’d likely garner a lot of attention if people were able to [Identify] or [Analyze] him.

Feeling good about his progress during the night, and his brief stint of meditation to renew himself, Joram got up and headed to the bathroom. He stopped in front of the mirror and looked appreciatively at his mostly regrown hair. Sure, the hair on top of his head was still only a couple of centimetres long, maybe an inch, but it was at least something.

No, what he appreciated more was that his eyebrows had fully regrown. Given how fast his other hair had grown, it was entirely possible that his eyebrows had regrown long before now. Much like his beard.

“Avi?”

‘Yes, Joram?’

“Could you tell me how to control my hair growth?”

Avi gave him a weird look before she spoke.

‘Just think about it.’

“Well, I don’t really know where to start, you know?” he said, getting a little exasperated with her.

‘No. Literally think about it. That’s it,’ she said, tapping the centre of her forehead a few times with her index finger.

“Oh,” he replied sheepishly.

He should have remembered that, given how much he’d written about Altaea over the years, and thus High Elans.

Hair and nail growth, and even colour, could be controlled by a High Elan. And that was the simple stuff. From the nearly perfect innate control High Elans had over their body, they could control almost every aspect of their body, physiology, and to a certain extent, morphology.

He could choose to look how old or how young as he’d like. Within certain limitations, that is. He still needed to consider things like preservation of mass and all that, so he couldn’t just choose to look like a toddler version of himself. Well, there were Powers for that sort of thing anyway, so that didn’t really matter too much to him.

Which got him thinking. Did the amount of physical self awareness and control that he had mean that most [Psychometabolism] Powers would come easier to him? Was that why it was comparatively easier to use [Natural Healing] than it had been to use [Astral Construct]?

Probably. Knowledge was, after all, power for Psions. Or, perhaps, Power? Was that why the old game developers had called psionic spells “Powers” in the old days? Was it just a pun?

Shaking his head, Joram returned his attention to the mirror, taking in his face. It was still the same face that he’d seen the first day… 4 days ago? Anyways, same face, but with hair.

His beard was certainly thicker than it had been at any time of his previous life. Not only that, the hair itself was straight! No more curly beard!!

He just about did a little happy dance before reigning himself in. He had things to do, after all.

He then took a couple of minutes to examine his hairlines, from jaw to neck to scalp and found that they were pretty much the same as they’d been before he’d become a High Elan. The beard covered up to his mid cheeks, angling slightly up as it approached his sideburns. On the bottom, he was surprised to see that it was remarkably level. Not likely to need trimming to make it look good. Or, just attention?

“Can I just turn off hair growth entirely?” he asked, thinking about how annoying trying to get a haircut would be when he didn’t even know where the closest bastion of civilization was located.

‘Yes.’

So, he concentrated on that for a moment before stopping, unsure if it had worked or not. Then shrugged. He’d certainly find out tomorrow morning.

With that done, he ran a bath, stripped, and had a good soak. Still, nothing beat a good bath for relaxation. Well, when alone, anyways. He was reasonably sure that the likelihood of getting a massage was effectively zero, after all.

Then, as the water was getting to the point of being lukewarm, he heard a knock at the door.

“Right, they said they’d come back today,” he mumbled as he got out of the bath, towelled off, and pulled on his pants.

As he walked to the door, he slung the towel over his shoulders, not really caring if the guys saw him without his shirt. Especially after having interrupted bath time.

* * * * *

Given that his two companions weren’t used to trekking through the forest, Theril wasn’t surprised that it had taken them almost half an hour longer than it would have had it just been him and Reldan.

But eventually, they’d made it. Now just approaching the unusual fortress-like house, he heaved a silent sigh of relief.

“You weren’t exaggerating, were you?” Kalduin asked as he looked at the one-story building that more or less looked like a giant box of some sort of stone.

“No windows? Really?” Myra asked, looking both dubious and somewhat appalled at the thought of living in a place without natural sunlight.

“From what Reldan told me, there were windows the first time he visited. But, for some reason, they were walled-up by the time we returned,” Theril explained, silently applauding Joram’s ability to do so, and the judgement that led to it.

“Goblins?” Kalduin asked, looking around a bit warily.

“More than likely,” he said, nodding as he continued to keep an eye out for the murderous little bastards. “Given that he’s alone out here, would you blame him?”

The twins shook their heads at the same time as they continued to inspect the house as they approached. It struck him as funny how they could be so unconsciously in sync when Myra would actively try to do things differently if she was paying attention.

When they arrived at the door, Myra took the lead by stepping up and rapped on the door with her knuckles, avoiding the new metal bands in favour of the more forgiving wood.

Was he attacked again? He wondered, inspecting the metal bands as he waited. They weren’t anything to write home about, maybe something an apprentice smith might produce… if you considered that he hadn’t seen a forge on his last visit, nor had he smelled anything of the sort.

Curious, and curiouser, he thought, the sound of the door being unlocked and unbarricaded came a few moments later.

Then there he was….

“Hel-” Joram began, then noticed Myra in front of him at the same time they all noticed that he was only wearing pants and a towel around his neck, revealing surprisingly defined muscles for the three of them to see.

Before they could react, Joram slammed the door shut, shocking them all to varying degrees.

For his part, Kalduin just seemed offended at the rudeness of it all. Theril, though, could understand both sides, his and Joram’s. They hadn’t exactly mentioned that Reldan wouldn’t be returning, nor that he’d be bringing two new people along for the visit.

But Myra, though, worried him more than a little bit. Her complexion was growing redder by the second, outrage and indignation warring with one another on her face.

By the time the door opened a minute later, both of Myra’s tails had appeared, and both showed just how angry she was.

Well, goblin guts, he thought, wishing that it could have just been him and Reldan today.