Brighteyes was indeed not stupid. And he'd aptly called Ulric out on his bullshit.
What if not a warrior? Ulric had fought a monster to the death. He'd then taken its place as alpha predator of the forest floor, despite not having had to defend his position from anything. Yet. He'd then ambushed a group of bandits or poachers or whatever the hell they were and killed one in an honest to gods duel. Here he sat making the armor of a legionnair.
"Well, alright, I guess you got me there Brighteyes." Ulric admitted scratching his beard sheepishly.
"When you put it like that I can't really say you're wrong, at least not according to the reckoning of your folk. Amongst my own people soldiers were sort of a career, at least a temporary one. It was something you decided to do for a living and I just happened to do most of the things I've done here out of necessity. Still. I have to admit I'm pretty much doing warrior shit and planning to do more of it if I have to. So yeah Brighteyes. I might be considered a warrior in a way."
The realization was strange to him. Especially to say it out loud. It was as well as declared outright in his status. Warrior's instinct and all. Important to keep in mind he wasn't LARPing around out here. Shit was real. And it got realer in a goddamn hurry sometimes. Ulric had long since decided he'd live on his own terms and that meant being strong enough to face or escape his enemies and to prevent his own will being seconded by another's if he didn't want.
Fine, Ulric thought, I am a warrior.
*PING*
Ulric didn't even open his status. He knew what happened. He'd classed, somehow, the details would wait until later. Right now, he had an armor to finish.
Measure holes, mark jerkin and plate, hammer hole, align to jerkin, punch hole, tie down. This process was repeated over and over again. As his arms tired, Ulric's headache faded, his core siphoning the mana from the land and refining it. Looking up from his work, the trance broke.
Twin suns had long since left the skywindow of the Ancient Glade. Brighteyes had made food at some point and was already asleep. A quick scan revealed his health to be 73% demonstrating that the extended rest was doing profound good to the child's bruised body.
Wiping his brow and shivering against the cold wind that now steadily blew into camp Ulric reviewed the fruits of his labor. A leather and bone scale armor, overlapping segments vaguely Roman in styling. If the thing fit right, he'd be able to fight, hunt, and travel in it without being too limited in motion. Taking a few minutes to tie the rough leather cord center laces and awkwardly fit the shoulder pauldrons Ulric tried the armor on.
Once tied, it was clear some of the laces would need to be lengthened while others were shortened. The pauldrons leaned against the left side of his neck so he'd have to redo that as well. Range of motion was good. He could roll his arms swinging them at nearly right angle to his shoulders all the way around, the segments shifting with his motion. Turning at the waist was a little stiff, the laces tightening against his abdomen, but he could fairly well twist freely. Bending at the waist was the major limitation. Ulric hadn't been able to make it so that he could do a complete bend, only just managing to level his back to the ground. But overall? Not a bad first try. It would seem that similar projects involving cardboard as a youth had paid dividends long into the future.
Comparing this armor to the armor worn by the beastman he'd killed it would seem to be more robust at the joints with fewer large gaps. The lack of large singular breastplate meant it wouldn't take a direct stab as well dead center, the tip of a weapon being more likely to push into a seam on a dedicated thrust. But the overlapping layers of pauldron and chest scales would be much better at shedding an angled thrust. Not to mention it should hold up slightly better against arrows, which he'd proven were a serious threat against similar styles of armor.
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Proof of concept established, Ulric decided he'd complete the set with armored skirt, shin guards, and bracers. He'd never get gauntlets shaped correctly with bone, he was nowhere near skilled enough at bone shaping and it would take more time than he could commit to figure out how the overlapping patterns worked, even using stiff leaves to make the pattern blanks.
A helmet would be nice too, but he wasn't sure about how to make one, it involved more complex leather work than a simple jerkin and more complex plate shapes. Maybe one of the elves in Brighteyes' village would either be willing to show him how to do it or even make one, provided he could make a satisfactory trade.
Ulric took the armor off and spent some time tending camp needs. Fire needed stoking. Food cooking. He was low on water so he brought up a couple of heavy woven baskets strung along his carry pole up from the rock pool. After a meal consisting of some of the remaining [Forest Lord] meat roasted in coals alongside glade garlic, onions, and some kind of celery like stalk, Ulric was ready to retire to the trunk cave shelter.
He was almost grateful for the destruction of his original shelter. It had motivated him to spend the effort to make a truly robust structure. He'd spent half a week under an impromptu lean-to while he burned out large sections of the truck of the fallen giant whose passing had created this glade. Burning, then chopping away the charred wood, rinse and repeat, he'd created an eight meter wide and five meter deep notch some two and a half meters tall. Some smoothing and flattening of the roof and walls had yielded a round ovoid space which he'd enclosed with driven stakes and rocks, packed with clay. A simple door of lashed branches fixed to a pole hinge completed the glade home.
The front of the shelter wall contained his large rock and clay oven/fireplace with its six foot chimney carrying smoke up and away from camp. The space heated easily, maybe an hour of wood fire needed to bring it to comfortable temperature from the cold of the oncoming winter. Ulric had not wanted to cook large meals inside, in case a predator should investigate food smells so he nearly always prepared food outside at his rock lined fire pit.
Inside now, Ulric finally sat down to go over his status and this new class. Which, it turns out, what actually a subclass.
[Status]
[https://i.imgur.com/GEDf1in.png]
[https://i.imgur.com/iReydtG.png]
When Ulric examined the tag next to class he saw an in depth description summarizing it.
Ulric's first impressions were that this whole class thing was slightly underwhelming. Maybe they didn't play as large a role as he'd initially suspected. Well, there were slight benefits. He'd gained a somewhat significant passive enhancement to learning the use of weapons, though the vagary left him somewhat baffled as to how exactly that would play out. There were no active skills associated with the subclass, though whether that was simply because it was new or because it was a subclass Ulric knew not. In fact, there was precious motherfucking little he actually knew about much of this status nonsense. The whole thing seemed borderline useless, if anybody asked him, he thought to himself with budding irritation.
"Don't make hasty judgements from too little data." He whispered, trying to regain his calm.
It was too soon to tell. He'd probably gotten a significant advantage with his armor crafting by having the armor adjustment skill. Misalignments in straps and an ill fit were not minor problems. They were things that could get you killed in the middle of a fight. If you brought a weapon back for a killing strike and had a shoulder piece hang up, the slight loss of speed or power could turn a fatal blow into a parried one and that could be all the difference. Essentially all of the near fatal experiences Ulric had had thus far had been decided on a knife edge. So, perhaps, at early stages the classes mostly provided basal improvements through passive traits.
Classes represented an advantage, even if, at this stage, minor ones. Which advantages did Ulric want? All of them. The shit that roamed these woods played for keeps. So did the men with balls enough to hunt in them. Ulric's victories so far had come by virtue of diligent preparation, near insurmountable advantage of position, magic, and more luck than any man had a right to.
Sooner or later things would go tits up and Ulric wasn't going to rely on getting lucky to pull his chestnuts off the fire. And the only way he could see around that was simple: get better. He needed to be better at everything. Move faster and quieter. Shoot more accurately from farther away. Figure out how to fight with spear, knife, and axe with more lethality. Lastly, but certainly not leastly, he needed to improve his magic. It was a trump card, as demonstrated in full against the not Vikings. He'd thrown everything he had at the last two and it hadn't been much to throw. It had just been enough.
Enough, Ulric thought, wasn't good enough by half. He decided then that every day until Brighteyes was ready to travel would be spent improving his combat readiness. He'd practice his magic in the early hours of morning. Once spent, he'd ride out the mana exhaustion doing camp chores and eating breakfast. Afternoon would be weapons training and maybe Brighteyes would have some ideas about that he'd be willing to share. Evening, when his mana had nearly recovered he'd work out new spells to test more fully the next morning. It was a solid plan and Ulric went to sleep satisfied that he was on the right track.