Friends in a Foreign Land

The next morning the team met for breakfast around sunrise. While they were eating they were discussing skill gains and levels.

“I’m just saying that I don’t understand why I have to go to sleep before I can make decisions related to leveling up. I gain levels in my spells and skills without needing to sleep,” Hazel complained.

“Maybe it’s because the levels in skills and spells are just acknowledging that you’ve learned something, while the levels require actual changes to you,” Nolan spit balled.

“Next time you pray, ask the gods. They’re the ones that set it up that way,” Arden suggested. “How are y’alls levels looking? I went up two levels yesterday, to level four.”

“I think we all did,” Nolan answered. “How were your points assigned?”

“Two to Social and I went ahead and assigned four to Athletics to try and get my health up. I came too close to dying with that bear yesterday and I’d like to avoid similar close calls in the future. I also unlocked a couple spells, [Divine Cleansing] which removes poisons, curses, etc. and [Blessing] which grants a temporary buff to a single stat to whomever I cast it on. Oh, and I earned my first stat point this morning while I was exercising. Strength increased by one.”

“Nice! I hope we don’t need that cleansing spell but it’s good to have just in case.” Nolan paused before continuing, “That [Blessing] spell sounds a lot like one of the class abilities I unlocked. But let me start with saying I dumped my free points in Athletics as well. I unlocked two class abilities, one that gives me supernatural balance to help me react faster and dodge better. The second is simply called [Mantra]. When I clicked accept on the level up screen, knowledge of different mantras appeared in my mind. At first I thought it was one for each of the ALMS but they are more specific. One to make me faster, one to make me stronger, etc. Now I’m able to temporarily increase my abilities just by doing a bit of chanting. I think if I level it up, I’ll be able to use it on others as well but I’m not sure yet.”

“Interesting. My spell seems to be geared the same way. I wonder if I blessed you to make you stronger if you could then do the mantra for the same and raise it further?”

Nolan’s eyes widen, “If so, that’s pretty powerful. And if we can both level these up to include others, that could potentially make us crazy over powered.”

“I’m okay with that. I think for today I’m just going to keep casting [Bless] on all of us each time it expires. I’m going focus on temporarily raising Luck unless we get into a situation where we need something else.”

Frustrated at her father and uncle for getting carried away with their own skills and not asking her about hers, Hazel let out a loud, “Ahem”

Arden turned to Hazel and asked in an overly sweet tone as if talking to a child rather than his mid-twenties daughter, “Honey, how did your level ups go? Did you get lots of yummy points?”

“Yes I did,” Hazel responded, “Since I leveled up twice, I had four points to assign. I split them between Athletics and Mental. And I got a new spell,” Hazel said, clearly happy. “It’s called [Poison Gas]. Evidently I hold out my hand and gas will come from my palm. It only goes out twenty feet right now but if I level it, it’ll go further and become more poisonous.”

“Nice! Willow?” Arden asked, expectingly.

“Hold up!” Hazel exclaimed. “I have more to share.”

“Apologies, please continue.”

“I got two new class abilities. One allows me to absorb mana from the environment around me increasing my mana recovery rate and one that allows me to create a mana shield around myself to absorb damage.”

“Dang, those sound like solid abilities,” Nolan said. Once he was sure Hazel didn’t have anything else to add he looked over at Willow, “Whatcha got?”

Willow’s eyes had the vacant stare of someone checking their status menus as she answered, “I’m ten experience points away from level 5. We almost leveled up three times yesterday.”

“No worries,” Nolan said comfortingly, “That just means we’ll be more likely to level up multiple times today. So where’d you put your points?”

“I put three in Athletics, and one in Social.” Willow answered.

“Why Social?” Nolan asked? “Does that give you any bonuses to a skill or something?”

“No, I just didn’t like how that one was lagging behind Athletics and Mental,” Willow said with a smile.

“Sounds about right,” Arden said cutting Nolan off before he could say something about Willow’s choice being illogical. “Hazel, why did you choose Athletics and Mental for your points?”

“One to move faster and the other to raise my mana pool so I can cast more spells.”

“Makes sense.” Nodding Arden said, “Glad to see you two are putting thought into how you assign your points.”

“Just think how strong we’ll be once Willow starts turning into animals and eating goblins for us,” Hazel replied with grin.

“Oh no, they smell too bad,” Willow responded, laughing.

“That does bring up an interesting topic though. You said before that you could turn into things now, but you’ve yet to do it,” Arden said questioningly.

“Yeah… well…” Willow stammered, “I only have one Wildshift slot. And in order to be able to turn into something I have to have a really good knowledge of it. And once I choose something I can’t change it. From earth, I know a lot about animals like dogs, cats, ball pythons, and honey bees. From this world so far I know about wolves and that grizzly we fought yesterday. By the way, I tried to turn into a grizzly to fight the grizzly but it wasn’t an option until after the fight. Anyway, I’m not really sure which animal would be best to fill my slot with.”

“You should go with bear! Rawr!” Hazel said while holding her hands up like paws with claws which got everyone chuckling.

“Take your time, there’s no rush. Every one of those have their pros and cons,” Arden said still chuckling.

“Yeah, that grizzly bear form would be great for fighting with as tough as it was,” Nolan added. “And some of the other forms would be useful for spying and getting into places unseen.”

“That second part was something I hadn’t thought about,” Arden said, cutting in. “You could turn into a field mouse and sneak into places. You should know enough about them from that first winter on the ranch when they kept coming into our home.”

Willow’s eyes went vacant for a moment before she responded, “Hey, field mouse is available.” Willow said with a grin. “Should I chose that one?”

“I wouldn’t. Save a slot in case we need something like that but for now focus on finding a form that would come in handy fighting these goblins,” Nolan advised.

“Yes sir,” Willow replied, “I also got a class ability called [Barkskin] which basically turns my skin into bark, protecting me from some physical damage. And I learned a spell called [Mold Earth] that will allow me to move up to 10 cubic feet of ground and shape it a bit. It doesn’t say exactly but I get the feeling I could use to it make walls. Maybe a starter Minecraft house of dirt? I’m not sure how much 10 cubic feet actually is, though. As I level it up it says I’ll be able to move more.”

Nolan looked at Arden with a quizzical expression.

“What is it?” Arden asked.

“Sounds like the gods just gave us our first trap. Willow can dig pits now and Hazel can fill them with poison.”

“Woah, I didn’t even think about that. Well, I guess they know more about what’s coming that we do. How about we drop Ewan off and go level those spells up?”

⚷

Half an hour later the party was entering the woods to the north of the town, Arlo in the lead trying to find a trail while the others were all attempting to make use of their tracking skill they’d just gotten the day before. They were all self-conscious about any noise they made, wanting to be as quiet as they could. After an hour they still had yet to find any goblin trail and were about to give up when they heard a familiar voice and saw Oringo approaching.

“What are you all doing this far north?”

“Looking for goblins. But we’ve not found a single trail.” Willow said dejectedly.

Oringo stared at them for a long moment, like he couldn’t decide if they were morons or not. Finally Arden spoke up, “Out with it Oringo. We did something stupid evidently, what is it?”

“The goblin fort is a few days south of Wildemill. You’re going in the complete wrong direction.”