The first rays of fiery orange light peeked over Westport's walls, heralding the start of the fifth day since River had returned. I slowly drifted into wakefulness, with the realization that I was lying on my stomach, my head turned to the left, with drool running down my cheek. I used the sleeve of my green pajamas to wipe away the drool and rolled over onto my back. Staring at the ceiling, I saw the first light of the day peek through the curtains that were half-drawn over the window above my headboard.

  "Well, let's see where I'm at and what my options are." I murmured, while I drew up my status page with a thought.

  My eyes immediately jumped to the purple classes and as I read through my options, any remaining drowsiness left my body. Was I supposed to get all of this behind the scenes information on reincarnation? And what the fuck was up with [Eater of Souls]? Who in their right fucking mind would ever choose that option? Or [Lady of the Eternal Cycle]? Why would I choose a class that would kill me?! Well, at least that made it really fucking easy to choose. Because my [Boon] made my access to skill points go up in smoke, I wouldn't be able to use that 'easy access to skills' of any class anyway. With [Soul Sanctuary] I'd get a ton of stats and could help some less fortunate souls on the way. I mentally confirmed my choice.

  "Uh, okay. That's just too much for this early in the morning." Wishing that I had waited at least until after breakfast, I pulled up my status page again.

  "Might as well get all of it out of the way before breakfast then." I sighed to myself. More skills meant more tools for survival, especially because I would never be able to follow a pre-existing build.

  "Well, I doubt that there is a big difference between pumping 100 or 200 fragments into a new skill. Five times 100 it is!"

  "My feelers?! What the fuck is up with this stupid [Boon]?!" I yelled as, for a fraction of a second, a splitting headache washed away the satisfaction of newly gained skills.

  "Fuck!" This wasn't anywhere close to the pain the system had shown me, but something I recognized from back then was left behind, when the latest headache subsided. There was a new understanding, for lack of a better term, for the information my skin was gathering. My skin also seemed capable of gathering much more information than before somehow. Something was forming at the edge of my mind. Very confusing.

  I threw off my blanked and scooted over to the edge of the bed, where I sat upright, with my legs lifted in a way that left my feet dangling just above the wooden floor. With raised eyebrows, I lowered my feet and watched as they made a gentle landing. A moment later, my mind had a model of my entire room and more, ready for me to peruse, if I wished to. The details were slightly fuzzy at the edges, but as I inspected this mental 3D map of my surroundings, I realized that the fuzz grew more detailed and solid by the second. The map, as I had decided to call it from now on, expanded ever so slightly until I had a fairly detailed insight into anything that was within 50ft of the point of the floor that I was touching.

  I marveled at my ability to perceive things that would be lost on me without this new skill. There were godsdamned rats in the attic and they were actively making more at the moment. I really didn't need to know any of that. But aside from fucking rats, I could also sense useful things, like River sneaking down the stairs or the stash of coins that was hidden under a floorboard near the entrance to her room. I'd have to ask her about that. This skill, as much as it informed me of things I didn't want to know, would have easily saved my life yesterday. I wouldn't need an incredibly high perception to not get ambushed, but I was now wondering how perception and tremor sense would interact with each other. Would shoes impede my new 'vision'?

  By necessity, distributing my free stat points was up next. I always wanted to be a mage, but viability and survival came first. With what skills I had available right now, I couldn't go all-in on mental stats. But I also didn't need more strength than I had right now, I wasn't going to use a hammer or mace after all. I knew the 'rule of thumb' distributions for basic builds from research, but I wasn't an expert on this yet by any means. The best decision in this case would be to ask for advice.

  Course of action decided, I put on my slippers, which luckily didn't impede tremor sense at all, yay for shoes! I got off the bed and strode over to the floor length mirror that hung next to my door. My hair was a little messy and I didn't seem to have gotten all of the drool the first wipe around, as some was dried onto my chin. The drool was easily handled, but my hair wouldn't give up without a fight. With narrowed eyes, I tried smoothing out the birds' nest that had been constructed overnight. A quick search for a brush and a victorious battle later, I strode out of my room in my slightly too big pajamas.

  I traveled down the hall, descended the stairs and went to find River sitting in the kitchen with a steaming mug of coffee, by the smell of it, in one hand and a book in the other. The kettle she must have used to brew the coffee stood on the table with three more mugs and the containers for milk and sugar.

  "Hey sis, did you sleep well?" I asked as I passed through the doorway and walked towards the table.

  "Oh windy, you're up already? I thought you'd want to sleep in after yesterday." She replied as she put down the book and lifted an eyebrow at me.

  I took the kettle and poured some coffee into one of the cups she had prepared and sat down on the chair next to hers, before taking a sip.

  "Wow, that is some strong fucking coffee. But yeah, I wanted to. And I would have just gone back to sleep, if I hadn't chosen to pick a class this morning." I said while dumping some sugar and milk in my cup.

  "Oooh. Okay, makes sense. What did you pick? I bet you had some strong [Boon] classes to choose from right?"

  "Yup, three of those, two of them extremely fucked up and the third was pretty good, so I took it. One would have made me into the next calamity, it incentivized wanton slaughter of intelligent beings and waiting in the shadows, the other one would have killed me immediately, to make me into some administrator of reincarnation or something. The one I took also has me helping souls into the cycle for a reward and it will not kill me or make me into an immortal, people-hunting monster. The last part especially, is a big plus in my book."

  I could see her eyebrows climb higher and higher with every word I said

  "Yeah, that would do it. Fuck. Girl, am I glad I didn't make the same choice you did when it was my turn to get a [Boon]. [Road to Mastery] may be 'bland' for a purple, but at least I had a real choice when it came to class selection."

  "Yeah, I did. But at least I get a lot of free stat points. Which is actually what I was hoping to ask you about. I got a few new skills and I need help with my stat allocation. I was thinking I'd go with something along the lines of a high-mobility fighter for now"

  "Oh yeah, sure I can help you."

  And so, over the next hour, I got laughed at for actually having gotten the gardening and accelerate growth skills, was coached on stat allocation and started on making breakfast for our parents.

  "Yeah, yeah. it's funny that I actually got the damn gardening skill. You just keep joking. Somehow I'll get that skill to be really useful and then you'll eat your words instead of a delicious breakfast." I told my father as I set a plate with eggs over easy, bacon and toasted bread down in front of him before I sat down in front of my own meal and dug in.

  "I bet you will, I can't wait to see what you'll do with your two 'garden variety' skills" Dad said with another burst of laughter, to which I rolled my eyes. That one wasn't even good.

  "Come on, dad. Stop making fun of our 'delicate flower'." River jumped in with the dumb new nickname she had given me and laughed along with dad.

  "Oh stop it, you two. She's just starting out, it's not her fault that she's still green!" Mom chuckled along.

  Oh well, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

  "You guys need to grow up and I wish you'd accelerate the pace at which you do so." I said with a smile.

  We all roared with laughter at the mediocre jokes being thrown around. Apparently, I wasn't the only one who was a little nervous over my impending departure into the great, wide world for adventure. After a few more bad jokes about the 'nature' of my skills, we transitioned to lighter topics, finished our breakfast and made some more coffee for Dad and River and tea for those with less than a combined 1.000 in vitality and constitution.

  "So you just up and left the woman at an inn?" Mom asked incredulously

  "Well, yeah. I told her that it was just a fling to me. She is the one who followed us out of town, a hundred miles down the road and into an inn. She didn't even have the usual knights with her!" River defended herself.

  "Well, yes. But do you know if she got home safely?"

  "Yes, mom, I do. We hired a different group to look out for her and escort her home. She cost us 5 gold that day!" River crossed her arms in front of her chest with a huff.

  I rolled my eyes at her, knowing that 5 gold were peanuts to her at this point.

  Mom seemed weirdly worried about this though. So I looked to Dad with a questioning look and a raised eyebrow and saw that he pulled a face like he'd had sour milk.

  "Well, that's certainly expensive for such a short escort mission, especially along a main road. But that'll at least keep her family from sending assassins after you. Wouldn't bet on her own restraint though, she sounds cracked in the head." Dad finally contributed to the conversation and River's eyes widened as her arms uncrossed.

  "Nothing has come up yet, I assume something like that would happen within the first few months, right?" She asked, a little more worried now.

  "From what I know of nobles, yes. But do keep your guard up for stuff like that. Don't take requests that ask specifically for your group for a while, do the roadwork quests that are hard to track." Mom answered.

  "Roadwork quests? I've never heard that term before. What are those?" I jumped in

  "Well, you really don't hear that term until you hit Tier 4 and have a good reputation with the guild. At that point you'll have a guild liaison assigned to your team who will curate jobs for you. They take into account your skillset and the skillsets of your team members, the pay is much better. Roadwork quests is a catchall term for the jobs you did before that point. It covers the jobs that are posted on job boards, inside guilds, and they usually involve hunting specific monsters in the area, collecting certain materials, escorting caravans and other odd jobs. My team will very much not be pleased with me about this." River explained with a frown.

  "Oh, so you'll be in the shits with your team for a while, huh?" I deduced helpfully.

  "Yeah, but I'm the one that does most of our busywork anyways, so they really can't give me any more shit work."

  "Well, not too sure if it'd help much, but maybe you could buy them something? I still need to do some shopping for supplies before I can get on the road. Would you like to come with?"

  "Oh, bribes don't really work on them. They have enough money as it is. But I'll gladly come with you and help you shop for the good stuff, I'll get to haggle again!" River answered with a giddy laugh.

  "If you two are going out already, I'll give you a list of things to get for our feast tonight." Dad said with a smile

  I couldn't help but smile with him, knowing how much he dislikes leaving the house on occasion.

  "Sure, you'll pay us back right?" River shot back with a greedy glint in her eyes as we both got up to get ready.

  "Yeah, yeah. Just take 10 gold out of the moneybox before you go and keep the change."

  River pumped her fist like she had won the first prize in a competition. We left the kitchen and entered the study right across from it, River moved the massive bookcase aside with ease and opened the big, runed metal box that was sunk into the wall and usually hidden from view. She pocketed 10 gold, closed the box, moved the bookcase back and turned around to face me.

  "Shopping time!" She yelled as huge grins spread across our faces and our parents chuckled in the kitchen.