With their low persistence, the saltsmith was unable to scurry along in the manner of insects, all limbs and frantic speed. Instead, they meandered with intentionality moving a few feet at a time before resting.

Every time the practice completion hit 100%, either the saltsmith was able to add on a new captured object or stockpile the success for later. They watched the percentage rise slowly but surely as they explored the outside world.

They did not know how long it took to capture 302 objects, only that each full arm contained 30 bones that needed to be chained together. If the saltsmith focused, the chains were visible – not literal chains, but thread-like magic that served as tendons and muscle.

The next practice completion needed to be stockpiled, in the hopes that enough training would lead to higher persistence or better control. If the dragon returned and saw this Jack O’ Lantern with pilfered bones and stolen weapons, she could easily crush them beneath her claws before the saltsmith could scurry away.

But… their attributes were, indeed, better than before.

str 0 (4) ∙ awa 5 ∙ cha 5 (2)

agi 0 (5) ∙ con UNK ∙ int 5

dex 0 (7) ∙ end 10 ∙ luc 0

The system had to explain the concept of attributes in multiple ways before the saltsmith could process what, exactly, the numbers referred to. In fact, multiple tabs were lined up in the saltsmith’s mind waiting to be relearned and understood.

The unmodified numbers were the attributes of the pumpkin-shaped lantern, with no augmentations. Constitution referred to health and wellness of a living being, therefore the saltsmith’s unknown designation meant they were immune to disease, poison, and bleed afflictions.

The system provided a range of normal expectations for each attribute.

It seemed that 0 to 5 were low numbers, reserved for infants, children, and particularly awkward preteens. Those members of society who struggled with socialization or had a disability might dip into such a range, by no fault of their own.

6 to 10 was the range of adults, particularly those adults who did not try to better themselves or were unable to specialize in any one type of thing.

A scholar who spent all their time reading books could have a perfectly normal 7 as an agility score, and no one would question it. Meanwhile, a day laborer who was keenly uninterested in socializing could maintain a 6 with some social difficulty, but not enough to be a true hinderance.

The saltsmith fell onto the low end of every category, sheerly because they lacked a body. Their dexterity 7 was due to the number of hands they had, but the low persistence and bodily control meant that the saltsmith struggled to manage each limb in a coordinated, consistent manner.

The docked charisma reflected this. The Jack O’ Lantern itself was endearing and harmless. When the metal-coated arms were added ten times over, the charming decoration became haunting and terrifying. A façade of humanity, all crooked and jolting.

They folded up the extraneous arms, forming a chest-like ribcage of elbows so that the limbs were out of the way while climbing. The saltsmith rested on the high limbs of an evergreen tree, peering out over the world below.

It was nighttime once more, nearing the break of day with a touch of watercolor hues on the horizon. They marveled at the colors of the world, the bright sparkling diamonds of stars, strung up like twinkling fairy lights in the inky expanse of the night.

Behind them, far beyond the dragon’s lair, the massive mountain range faded into the clouds while wisps of green and blue danced near the peaks.

The colors wavered like nothing the saltsmith had ever witnessed before. Not here, not in their prior life. They were like beautiful, inverted shadows of a tree in the breeze; bright sunlight passing through a glass of water to ripple on the floorboards.

The saltsmith didn’t really know what to say. They watched the rolling tide of the colors until the sun began to chase them away.

In contrast, the forests below were dark, green-hued spikes covering every hill as far as they could see. A cluster of round-topped trees lay in the far distance, and beyond that still, the faded dot of a light. Some town or village, perhaps.

The dragon’s lair assured that no human would live too close, or else the beast would eat them. That was how dragons worked in every world, every story. Perhaps dragons could speak in this story – or shapeshift – but regardless, one did not build in their shadow.

They scaled down the tree with a few arms, their faux legs tucked away until needed. The saltsmith wasn’t sure why they took the swords, only that it seemed prudent. Could they wield them? Or better yet, could the saltsmith reproduce them in steel and bronze?

The time moved as slowly as the saltsmith did. An unnoticed function of their queer body was that they naturally made no sound, only dulled taps when metal-coated bone touched another accidentally. The saltsmith subclass was fortunate to have self-spacing armament, so no ores or metal slag or crystals slammed into each other and damaged the samples while merely walking.

It startled many a deer-beast in the early morning as the saltsmith gazed over a rocky-shored lake, approaching near-soundlessly in awe of nature.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

The deer weren’t… deer in the normal fashion. They had antlers that rounded out above their head like an arch or a halo, connected by dotted growths akin to knots on an oak tree. Still, they fled with their split tails raised high, in fear of the Jack O’ Lantern.

The saltsmith watched the lake for an hour or so, wandering out into the shallows with their arms for support. They knew the water was cold, but they couldn’t feel it. At least, not in the sense of flesh and blood.

It was as if their mind received a typed report. Weather, slightly cloudy, clean, chilly. Water, cold, refreshing, wet. Wind, pressing, northward. Forest, smelling of recent rain and evergreen needles, of foliage and decay.

It was a secondhand experience of humanity, of personhood.

And it was strange. The saltsmith did not want to linger too long on the negative aspects, but it was hard to come to terms with their new reality. Frustration and anger had its place, but that place was not here, in the middle of the forest, struggling to survive.

From another treetop, they navigated their way. An idle wish for a map prompted a note from their internal desk. The imagery of an accordion-folded map pushed into their thoughts, unfolding to reveal a thin section of the world drawn in ink pen.

Ah, so they could see where they had already been, but not the path ahead.

That was incredibly helpful, regardless of its flaws.

They climbed high above to pick out the smoke plumes in the distance from a settlement.

The gentlebeasts of the forest spooked at the sight of the metallic being, and those who would consider hunting found the saltsmith lacking in meat or flesh to eat.

Therefore, they travelled safely across the land, out of sight of the dragon, eager to find humans.

🎃 🎃 🎃

Every fatesworn day of work, Atteberry wondered why he agreed to this job in the first place. He knew why, even as he huffed and puffed and pretended it was a massively inconsiderate offer.

Guildmaster Yianna paid the carpenter more than a year’s advance to travel with her to the new Adventurer’s Guild site after her very public spat with the Governor of the Sovereign City Corcyra. It wasn’t embarrassing for Yianna, per se, but it certainly affected the guild.

The Governor wanted more taxes from the guild, specifically noting various apartments of guild members as ‘guild property’ which increased the tax way higher than it should be.

Atteberry was just a carpenter, and he knew all this in detail, because the first few days of their journey here, it was all Yianna mentioned.

She wasn’t a – well, no, she was indeed a spiteful person, but she was also calm, collected, clever, and generally amiable to be around.

To make Yianna mad about expenditures – Yianna of noble heritage, who wore gold daily as an ornament, who had more coffers than she knew what to do with? That was an impressive amount of stupid.

Juniper, the guild’s odd jester-figure, told the carpenter that ze once saw Yianna pay a full mark for a tea imported from Staareaux in the far west. The carpenter couldn’t remember the last time he spent a full mark on anything other than building supplies; nothing he owned cost that much.

With that in mind, Atteberry couldn’t imagine the amount of unnecessary taxes that would send the guildmaster over the edge.

Regardless, he’d been hired to do a job. Since the Sovereign City Corcyra would no longer work as a base for the Adventurer’s Guild, Yianna chose to pack up shop and move farther north.

That meant she needed a host of new employees, temporary or otherwise.

Atteberry was here to build cabins and shelters for permanent or visiting guild members, as well as residences for staff. The guild hall itself was important, but it required stonemasons and tile and an architect to make it work like Yianna truly wanted.

She was paying an exorbitant amount to bring in her own experts from afar, ones that would not arrive with materials and goods for a few months.

Building a new guild was not a brief event, let alone establishing a village around it; Atteberry expected to live here for years, if not forever. A carpenter could always find work when people were around.

The land for the primary guild hall was cleared and demarcated, but Atteberry passed it without a glance. He walked along the shoreline of the great lake – one of several that dotted this part of northern Kovatelli – and made his way uphill to the only building in the entire compound.

It was still in-progress, partially completed with help from various beasts of labor and Atteberry’s stubbornness. A small building with room for the guild staff to congregate, perhaps in close quarters, but congregate, nonetheless.

There was a table to serve as a desk, and even though no system mage had made it to this new location yet, some adventurers were serving double-duty as guild staff to help the random adventurer wandering through.

Because guilds needed adventurers, who in turn needed pay, which Yianna was more than willing to do. The requests came from local cities, each a short ride away on the other side of the lakes. Inconvenient but entirely manageable.

Most adventurers in Kovatelli were used to traversing the vast plains and grasslands that occupied the southern half of the continent, or the rocky forest-sea of the north, near the nigh-impassable Staargraaven. Even still, the eastern border of Kovatelli was all wetlands and marshes, one of the worst journeys imaginable on foot.

Walking around a few big lakes, tiptoeing near the Verdant dragon’s territory, all in order to go to the guild? That was a rite of passage in the making, as anyone who wanted to be a successful adventurer needed guts to face potential danger.

The carpenter circled his near-finished creation, eyeing the seal of the windows and considering filling the gaps with sifted lake mud or baked moss, just until he could find a better solution. Lack of supplies was his primary hinderance, as he needed to wait for orders to arrive to work.

He waved at Samir in the distance as the cook left his Yianna-provided tent to begin lunch work.

Samir was too handsome to be here in the woods, really, yet for some reason this encampment life appealed to him – one of no public baths, a large, four-posted, waxed canvas tent for privacy, and maybe a dozen companions in total.

The other man shifted to return the wave then stopped cold, halted as if he was terrified. It was hard to read Samir’s expression from a distance, but Atteberry felt like his gaze was looking elsewhere, not at the carpenter.

With a sudden fear, Atteberry whipped around, peering behind him into the treeline.

Many beasts made these woods their home, and that wasn’t to mention the [ territory ] to the west and its infinitely renewable resources. Had a gryphon wandered this close to the dragon’s land?

That was one of the main appeals of living this close to a dragon’s lair, that large beasts rarely took up residence here. Maybe a few Tawha wolves or a kjerrborn. The latter was rarely deterred by anything, neither dragon nor human, but it also wasn’t aggressive unless provoked.

Nothing.

No movement in the gently swaying branches of the fir trees, no ruminants hiding in the shadows with their mottled coats.

Atteberry watched the trees for a while longer, just in case he was wrong. No. No beasts emerged.

He turned back to Samir who hesitated to continue his way, shrugging an apology and giving a wave back to the carpenter. Less enthusiastic, but who could blame him?

High up in the branches, far above where the humans’ eyes searched, the saltsmith observed the encampment with great interest.