Dunk. Wring. Scrub. Dunk. Wring. Scrub. Pick off a bit of, uh, meat, and toss it. Anne was right. This was a job. Thomas now knew for certain it was a job, and a shit job at that, because if adventuring was some kind of heroic calling, there would be a lot less laundry involved. He dumped the bucket, waited a few seconds for the water to clear, and refilled it, then continued. After checking for leeches. He was pretty sure there shouldn't be leeches in a river – didn't they hate running water? – but that didn't seem to apply here, and they kept turning up in his bucket, and trying, unsuccessfully, to latch onto his skin.

The problem with the ability to change size was that it didn't bring his clothing along for the ride. So he'd solved that problem by just wearing oversized clothing. Dunk. Wring. Scrub. The problem with oversized clothing, however, dunk, wrink, scrub, was washing it. One small part at a time. It didn't help that his fighting style involved being in the splash zone. A mental hiccup, which he didn't bother to fight. He couldn't even know why some memories triggered the problem, and others did not, since he couldn't examine the problematic memories for a pattern.

Dunk. Wring. Scrub. They'd spent every evening fighting the deer. He'd been paralyzed with terror, right up until the first silver fawn had tried to bite him, and accomplished nothing. The message after the fight had suggested they had been lower-leveled than the ones that had nearly killed him; Anne had considerable control over what they fought. Some kind of ranger class distinction; she could choose to have an encounter with a target creature. Dunk. Wring. Scrub.

He'd leveled up again after that fight; apparently he had been on the brink of level 9. It had come with another boost to his ability to hit things.

Class Distinction: Stone Fists

Your base unarmed attack increases by an additional progression for each free hand

If the pattern held, he would level up again tomorrow. He shook his head. He'd gotten Inhuman Size 1 at level 5. He guessed Inhuman Size 2 would come with level 10. Dunk. Wring. Scrub. The clothing he was wearing was already ridiculous when he was normal-sized. The process of cleaning it was even worse. How big would Inhuman Size 2 be? Cloth was expensive. And … huh. Shouldn't he get overheated? He hadn't noticed temperature at all in a while. Like most discomforts, it had faded into nothing. Maybe the benefit of Constitution? Dunk. Wring. Scrub. Wring. And spread over the ground near the fire. It'd get dirty and sandy, but that didn't bother him anymore either. He picked up the skirt part of the clothing and began cleaning the blood and meat out of it, in turn.

He couldn't scale this up any further, realistically. So if he used Inhuman Size 2, he'd just have to suck it up and deal with the lack of modesty. Nobody else seemed to care that much about modesty; Madelaine had joined their other three companions in bathing in the river without compunction. Thomas still slipped away to do so in private.

His other option would be to … what, get bigger clothes, and just stay in Inhuman Size 1 all the time, so they were loose? Or see if there were magic clothes here that would grow with him. Probably not; Norris had laughed out loud when Thomas had inquired about that, prior to buying his current outfit.

Anchor was still another couple of days away. Thomas had expected to see more civilization as they got closer, but … no. Well, kind of. They'd passed around six villages today, and one … town? It was bigger than the villages. But they were following the river, and nobody put farms along a river; it was just asking for trouble. So they walked through wilderness, punctuated by clusters of houses. Anne would stop at each while the rest of them proceeded ahead; she was collecting bundles of letters that were headed the same direction they were, and leaving others. She took a few packages, as well, as they ate through some of the real food they had brought, and made room in the packs of Norris' ghost mule for more things.

Dunk. Wring. Scrub. They'd also been getting news. There were thousands of people from home at the capital, which itself was not that concerning; it was higher than the estimate Balier and he had worked out, but not too much higher. The alarming thing was that, from what he heard, people were still appearing, and it might be accelerating. He didn't know exactly how many people there were, at … in … from home. He had a sense of it, though, because the thought of thousands felt … insignificant. Dunk. Wring. Scrub.

Anne had come back from the last village this evening with news that somehow was more surprising; he wasn't unique, and maybe was not even the first to show up here. Another two parties had passed through before them, with apparently similar intentions, to try to intervene in what was likely already a disaster. He wasn't certain how he felt about that; it had been a relief not to be alone here. But … the first message he'd ever gotten had told him he'd been chosen, and as it became increasingly apparent he wasn't special, he slowly realized that at some level he had thought he was. He was experiencing a profound disappointment which he hadn't expected at all.

Anne changed things up the next day, and it was a swarm of green pigs, the size of large dogs. Jade hunters, she called them; apparently, as threats in this world were reckoned, they were just slightly more dangerous than silver fawn. They did manage to hurt him a few times, but it still wasn't anything he couldn't handle. He had to use Call Out three times in the fight, as well; the pigs were fast, and when they attacked, they turned into blurs he could barely follow with his eyes.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

However, Anne had prepared the field for this new fight with some digging. Well, Thomas had prepared the field with digging, and Anne had told him where to dig. The pits did their job, and Madelaine didn't get a scratch. The girl seemed increasingly annoyed with the way she was being protected; Anne promised she could join the rest of them in the front lines once she reached her eighth ascension, which would likely be tonight. Thomas still wasn't comfortable with it, but he'd already lost that argument.

The last pig took ten minutes to kill; it kept running in circles around their lines, moving erratically and dodging even Anne's expert shots. Madelaine had definitely learned some new language from Anne, because he heard one of the curses repeated in her higher pitched voice as the arrow downed the last Jade Hunter.

“I had a new spell school! Enchantment! Fucking ball-licking curse!” It took him a moment more to read the message. She read fast.

Minor objective complete: Survived a medium herd of level 8 Jade Hunters as part of a party. You've earned one customization point. You've reached class level 10! You've reached class path level 2!

“What? Summon food? That's shit!” More cursing. He stopped paying attention as she got angrier – something about mutually exclusive distinctions? – while he tried to read through his own.

Class Distinction: Inhuman Size 2

You get 25 additional health. Additionally, you may Enlarge at will, becoming up to Extra Large.

Class Distinction: Latent Power

+1 Maximum Stamina

Class Path Distinction: Fleet Footed

+10 Movement Speed

It was, basically, exactly what he expected. Well, except for the extra movement speed. That was a bit of a surprise. What did extra movement speed even mean?

“It's not working?” He looked over, to where Madelaine was moving her hands in the air, interacting with something he couldn't see. He looked back to his own hands, and realized, for the first time, what that must look like. Slowly he forced his hands back down to his sides, and returned his attention to what he was doing. Five customization points, and a free distinction, spent.

Distrinction: Greatly Improved Unarmored Defense

When wearing no armor and not using a shield, you get Tier 4 bonus Arcane Resistance

Distinction: Mastery of Flesh

+3 Damage Reduction, +3 to Maximum HP

Thomas then turned his attention to his status screen.

Thomas Bluebrim

Brawler

Legend of Wind

Level 10

0 Misfortunes / 0 Fortunes

0 Curses / 0 Blessings

211/266 Health

0/0 Mana

6/6 Stamina

1 Distinctions Available

38 Skill Points Available

2 Customization Points Available

Strength

Constitution****

Intelligence

2

5

0

2 Melee Damage Bonus

210 (266) Maximum Health

26 Additional Skill Points

4 Maximum Worn Armor

10 (19) Damage Reduction

1 (6) Maximum Stamina Points

0 Deflection *

12 Base Armor

0 Spell Piercing *

Wisdom

Agility

Perception

6

0

0

6 Lores

0 Bonus Targeting

0 Reaction Time

6 Arcane Resistance

0 Evasion

1 Stamina Regeneration

0 Mana *

20 (30) Movement *

0 Missile Range Bonus *

He blinked in surprise at the amount of health he'd lost in that fight, and looked down, to see the horrible gash running across his calf, and the pool of blood at his feet. Oh. He was still bleeding. And hey, that hurt. Thomas looked up; Anne was bandaging a cut Arias had taken; Arias looked annoyed, and was looking off to the side. Maybe annoyed. Thomas found Arias hard to read sometimes. He could wait, either way. The bleeding was steady, and his health was dropping, but it'd have to drop a lot before it actually did him any harm. He looked back down at the pool of blood; there was a lot of it. It didn't bother him nearly as much as it would have just a little while ago. And it hurt, but … well, he had gotten hurt a lot, and this pain just … didn't compare. Huh.

Madelaine got a couple of new abilities, and a gentle rebuke from Anne, for having ignored her advice and taken on another curse to try rerolling a distinction she hadn't liked, only to end up with something worse. Said curse had given her a new distinction; Scion of Summoning. Norris had winced when he'd heard it, and Madelaine looked furious about it. Apparently it was part of a mutually exclusive set, which meant only one could be taken, and the curse had given her the utility option - replacing the Enchantment spell school.

She'd also gotten another distinction that let her move quickly immediately after hitting something, which didn't sound that good to Thomas – what if you missed? – but which Anne had nodded appreciatively about.

Thomas, for his part, checked Inhuman Size 2 during his watch, after everyone else was asleep. It made him … enormous. He stamped into the dirt, shifted back down, and compared his oversized footprint to his foot. Since his proportions held, his new size was … around eighteen feet tall? Maybe twenty? The view as he grew and shrank was very disconcerting, the world growing and shrinking around him. It was just a pity about the clothing problem.

He did discover, however, that washing his clothes in his new larger size was actually pretty easy. He waited for Arias to wake up for her watch, and she just nodded when he wandered off; the bucket was laughably small, so he'd tested out wading out and doing laundry directly in the river. He had waded out until the water was waist-deep, and the oversized alligator that had come over to investigate him as he did so, well, it hadn't stuck around. As big as it was – he was bigger.

Even so, he moved back up into shallower water – just knee-height in his enormous form, to get more sensitive portions of his anatomy out of the water, away from things that might bite him before he could see them coming. He'd seen a death roll. No thank you.