An Unbound Soul

Over the next few weeks, I largely reverted to my pre-Dawnhold life. Playing with the other village children, helping Dad in the fields and letting Kari talk at me about the wonders of magic while I unobtrusively practised my [Meditation] and let the tsunami of words wash over me. All the while, I considered my next move. Did I want a peaceful life? Did I want to join a delving group? Did I want to stay in this village, in Dawnhold, or explore the wider world?

If I wanted to delve into dungeons, my next class should be [Body Mage]. I should take the other body spells to get them to level ten as soon as possible, to permit me to learn the more useful rank two versions immediately. On top of that, even if my position would be support mage, I still needed some form of defence. I needed to look into the existence of any weapon skills. Kari told me that mages could use enchanted staves to improve spell efficiency, so a skill that let me use one as a melee weapon would be perfect. With my ability to boost my physical stats, I should be able to defend myself in a pinch.

On the other hand, if I wanted a peaceful life, my next class should be either [Enchanter] or [Spatial Mage]. Getting [Enchanter] would require me to learn [Basic Runecrafting], but there was no way I could pick that up myself, nor was there anyone in the village who could teach me. I would also need to check demand; I didn't know how many enchanters Dawnhold already had. There would be no point me going that route if demand for my services wasn't high enough to live off. [Spatial Mage] would be a more independent path; I needed no-one else to teach me new skills to acquire it, and I would be able to act as an independent trader moving between villages. I already knew demand for that sort of thing was there.

In the end, my decision was made based on Henry's words on our way to Dawnhold: one could meet the earth mother by reaching the lowest floor of the great dungeon. I had some questions to ask this goddess, and I was going to need a lot of firepower to do so. Decision made, the next step was breaking the news to my parents.

"Mum, Dad. How much would you freak out if I said I wanted to become a delver?"

Dad immediately choked and broke down into a coughing fit. He hadn't even had anything in his mouth... So the answer was apparently 'a lot' in his case. Mum didn't freak out, but did look at me with concern. "You seem to have put a lot of thought into this. Can I ask your reasons?"

As ever, Mum saw straight through me... "I want to meet the earth mother and find out why I was reborn into this world."

Dad, who had almost recovered, broke down coughing again. Ah, right, he wasn't there on the way to Dawnhold, so that would have been a pretty incomprehensible logical leap for him. I'd better clarify. "It's said you can meet the earth mother by reaching the lowest floor of the great dungeon."

Unfortunately, Mum had been there for that conversation. "It is also said that no-one has ever reached the bottom floor. You may be special, but you are not the only one in the world with a rank four trait. Why do you believe you can make it when no-one else has before?"

That was a very good question, and the honest answer was that I didn't. That didn't mean I wanted to give up before I even started. I wanted to at least try. "I don't believe it, but I do still want to try. Let me assure you, I have no intention of throwing my life away. If I don't think I'm ready, I promise I won't set foot in any dungeon."

Mum sighed. "This is your decision to make. I won't stop you, but I will insist you wait until adulthood before stepping into a dungeon."

I winced at that. In this world, humans were considered adults at fourteen, which sounded young, but on top of still being ten years away, if I was right about how the calendar worked, 'fourteen' was actually over eighteen in Earth years. I understood her concern, though, and had no intention of arguing. Besides, I found it highly unlikely that a four-year-old would be permitted into a dungeon even with parental consent. I looked over at Dad, who had been left floundering by the rate of the conversation. Realising he was expected to say something resulted in him flapping even more. The sight was so comical that I ended up laughing. "Do you need a minute to recover?"

"Sorry. You've been interested in dungeons and monsters ever since you first started speaking. I really should have seen this coming. I... I don't want you to put yourself in danger. I've known from the start that this village is far too small for you, but somehow I've always imagined you moving to Dawnhold and becoming a famous mage of some sort. Since your mother agrees, I'll allow it too, but I'm reserving the right to spend the next ten years trying to talk you out of it."

Of course. What parent wouldn't worry about the safety of their child? "Next question then, how do I go about learning weapon skills?"

"Huh? Aren't you a mage?"

"Given my affinity attunement, I'm more suited to support than attack or defence, which means I need an extra emergency defence of some sort."

Mum and Dad looked at each other, and it was obvious neither had an answer. Dad was the one who responded. "I'm fairly sure there's no-one in this village who would teach you any combat skills. Delvers are really the only ones who need them. I'd suggest visiting the delvers' guild in Dawnhold and seeing if they have teachers or classes or something."

Urk, I really did not want to go back to Dawnhold right now. Maybe I'd leave that till next summer. It wasn't as if I had soul points to waste at the moment, anyway. Although I did note that he said 'would' instead of 'could'; in this world of enforced truth, that was significant. Someone here had weapon skills, or at least was able to teach them. "Okay. I don't need it right this second; Mum's request that I wait till I'm an adult is perfectly sensible, so there's plenty of time. I doubt they'd even let kids into the dungeon in the first place."

With that out of the way, it was time to return to my utilise-Earth-knowledge task. I'd completely missed out on any opportunity in Dawnhold, with everything it had been throwing at me. Since learning that Clana wanted to open a restaurant, I'd actually slipped her a few Earth inspired recipe ideas, but while some had turned out edible, there was nothing that beat out what she already made. Cooking was simply not a skill I'd had on Earth, so I had no decent recipes to share. I'd had some hopes for board games, but they turned out to be a well-known thing already too. There weren't any being traded in the village where people lacked the disposable income to buy a set, but those who did want one just hand-produced their own. It wasn't surprising they already existed; the idea of putting pieces on a board and moving them around according to some set of rules was an ancient one back on Earth.

While they did have games here, they didn't have the same games as Earth. I was always up for trying something new, so I borrowed a carving knife from Dad, grabbed a chunk of wood and started whittling. I wanted to start with draughts and reversi, since they had simple rules, could both be played with the same board and pieces, and since the pieces were all the same I didn't have to worry about poor carving resulting in not knowing which piece was which. All I needed to do was cut out a bunch of flat-ish wood chips and colour one side. Alas, it seemed I'd overestimated my ability even that far, and I failed at even carving a usable board... We must have carpenters in the village. I needed help here.

"Mum, is there anyone in the village who can carve wood?"

"Yes. Your dad. Why do you think he had that knife?"

I blinked at my stupidity. I had no idea what level he was in [Farmer], but he must have the nine soul points from [Commoner], so of course he would have more skills than [Basic Farming]. Why had I never asked what they were? "What skills do you both have?"

"Your dad has [Advanced Farming], [Basic Carpentry], [Inspection] and [Foraging]. I have [Advanced Tailoring], [Material Manipulation], [Basic Farming], [Basic Cooking] and [Mana Sense]."

Huh?! "[Mana Sense]?!" No wonder she knew about it!

"Even I used to dream once. I wanted to be a [Starlight Weaver], a rank four class that mixes magic and tailoring. It would have involved lots of sewing outdoors at night, but that was just a part of the romance."

Sheesh, she was only in her mid-twenties. That was far too young to be giving up on hopes and dreams! "Oi, don't go giving up! You're still young!"

"Hah, nice of you to say, but hardly anyone reaches rank four. The way I'm going, I'll hit rank three around the age of thirty, and that's already better than average. To reach [Starlight Weaver] I'd have to complete [Expert Tailor], then [Apprentice Mage], [Light Mage] and [Light High Mage]. And that's assuming I even have access to light affinity to start with."

Okay, that was a bit of a steep task for someone sitting quietly in this village. Maybe I could find something in the future that would help her? Maybe dungeons had loot that boosted levels or something? In any case, it seemed like I needed to wait for Dad to get home. Cutting a flat board and a few flat pieces out of a lump of wood was harder than it looked. I continued with my efforts anyway, in the hopes that I could make something that wasn't a complete embarrassment by the time he got back. Mum, tactful as ever, refrained from commenting on my efforts.

ding

Endurance increased by 1

Skill [Minor Strength] advanced to level 5

Well, at least it had some rewards. I'd needed to boost my strength to even cut through some of the bits of wood, and keeping up my efforts was exhausting even when I didn't. Dad had talked about boosting skills being easier when using them in difficult situations, but I suspected there was also a boost for using them in novel situations. Playing with Cluma every day hadn't boosted my endurance, but this effort had given me one immediately. My spells would probably have levelled by now had I been using them regularly outside, but I figured that would be too unfair to anyone who wasn't Cluma, so I'd been a bit lax with magic training recently.

Fortunately, when Dad returned, he didn't laugh at my efforts too loudly. It took him hardly any time before we had functional pieces, which just left us needing some way of marking them. We could carve an x into one side of each piece, but colour would be better. I was pretty sure there wasn't any paper in this village, but surely there must be some form of ink? There was certainly none in our house, though. We didn't burn wood for fuel, so there was no soot available either. Maybe I could scorch it with one of the heat generating stones?

It turned out that yes, I could. Or at least, Dad could. Mum pointed out that a four-year-old shouldn't be playing around with crystals that could easily boil water and didn't have an off switch, and wouldn't let me even try. Which made me wonder why she was okay with the knife... That left me with a flat board with carved lines dividing it into an eight by eight grid, and a few dozen half scorched disks of wood that would fit into a cell of the grid. I explained the rules of reversi, and we started playing. Mum picked it up quickly, even beating me once or twice. Dad... did not. He did get another benefit, though.

"Oh cool, my intelligence increased. That hasn't happened in years!"

Interesting. That played into the whole novel situations thing, but if board games gave stat boosts, I'd have expected them to be a lot more popular. Considering it, the games I'd been told about when asking around seemed to be based more on chance than skill or logic, and I doubted playing the local equivalent of snakes and ladders would boost intelligence. Maybe this was a viable product after all? I'd have to check with Henry and see if he thought it was saleable. I wonder what [Inspection] would pick this up as?

Wooden playing board

ding

Skill [Inspection] advanced to level 10