How far did the forest stretch? My new map showed a lot of forest, so much so that most of the influence area was only this. If I zoomed out enough, I could also make out some places that were, at least to my eyes, other villages.
Also, it showed the difference between a small dungeon like the one in Carmill Hill and a larger one like the one here. The new area showing up on the map was several times larger than the original one. On estimate, I think I had access to a good fifty to seventy square kilometres of visible area, a whole lot to explore on my way towards Dragon’s Tear.
And most of it was fucking forest…
Fucking. Lovely.
Part of the quality of life stuff were new markers showing up on the map. Some of them were there from before, such as the area with the headcrabs or the shamblers, those terrifying giant mushrooms, but there were also a lot more that signalled stuff like marshland or the field of the dead. There was also something called a shadow stalker near Harriet’s Heap, and it had a nasty little skull next to it.
When my attention snagged on that fresh detail, I got an image of the sleeping creature we’d run into while I was trying to grind levels, that horned cat-thing that seemed too terrifying to approach. Considering the skull icon, I thanked my luck that I hadn’t woken the thing. Sometimes, listening to my survival instinct was the way to go.
Probably should do that more in the future. What a brave new horizon spread ahead of me, where I wouldn’t run headfirst into whatever danger lay ahead.
But, for now, I walked headfirst into a tree because I was busy fiddling with the map.
Methol and the others didn’t even slow to wait or check why I was cursing. Bastards.
Still, the hike allowed me ample time to process some stuff. What I was doing. Why I was doing it. If I wanted to do it. Why I wanted to do it at all.
Last one had an easy enough answer: I’d started doing it so I would drive myself forward until the task was complete. Nothing else made sense, nor could it satisfy my expectations and demands of myself.
And yeah, at times there wouldn’t be rewards. Harriet’s Heap wouldn’t be the last time I bled for nothing. But I hadn’t gone in the dungeon for the furnars, now that I was actually honest with myself and past the hottest part of my anger.
I’d gone in because I wanted the insight level. Regardless of the circumstances of the village, I still would’ve gone in. I did it for myself. So my anger really didn’t have a leg to stand on.
Honesty fucking sucks, especially when you’re being honest with yourself.
And I walked into another tree, this time with a nose-crunching impact. I let out a squeak of pain, took a step back, tripped over a root, and fell on my ass. Injury to insult.
“When you’re done navel gazing, maybe pay attention where you’re walking?” Methol came back and offered a hand. “I find it strange for you to be so quiet.”
“You’ve barely known me a day.” I swatted her hand away and pulled myself up, wheezing through a busted nose. It clotted before I was up on my feet. “Less even. You don’t get to comment about me being weird.”
Then it struck me: I’d never questioned Methol’s presence. I got she was on her own mission and pursuing something she couldn’t speak of—bull-fucking-shit!—but why had she dropped in straight on Harriet’s Heap?! Looking at the map again, the village was as remote as remote got. Aside from the river running close to it, there was nothing surrounding it but the near-absurd expanse of forest.
“How did you find the village?” I asked. “Did you have it on your map?”
That brought Methol up short. She seemed surprised by my questioning her. Before she could answer, Crystal whistled from up ahead.
“Stinkies, move. Move! You waste light. Wasteful stinkies.” Her grumbles disappeared into the distance. We still caught another bit of “Wasteful stinkies.”
“Right. I don’t like your little friend,” Methol said, deftly sidestepping my question. “Every hermit gnark I’ve ever met has been a rude and unpleasant.”
“She’s not unpleasant,” I said, feeling offended on Crystal’s behalf. “She’s just eccentric.”
Granted, I got a flash of all the times I wanted to throttle the gnark, the few times I actually tried to do it, and all the unkind things I’ve had to say about her smell. I felt bad about them all. Let it never be said I never grow as a person. Crystal could’ve simply escaped with Tusk while I was in the dungeon, but she’d come back to the well for me. Eternity had told me all about it while I was glued to Harriet’s side.
“If you say so.” Methol shrugged. “Watch your back with gnarks. They’re not as temperamental as furnars, but they are difficult to deal with.”
I waited for her to come back to my question, but she did not. Instead, she turned and gestured for me to follow.
We started back up and kept walking for a while longer. The path, if it could even be called that, crested the hill, then descended sharply, in a series of switchbacks hidden among protruding roots. The silver of the leaves was so fine that it became hard to even imagine the devastation caused by the dungeon corruption.
When the path levelled out and the trees rarefied, we emerged onto the wide banks of the river. Or, more precisely, onto the bank of a small lake that had formed off one of the river arms. Late afternoon sun reflected off the lake’s almost glass-like surface. I could spot fish swimming in the shallow parts, whole schools of them darting one way or another.
“See, stinkies? Good fishing here. Good fishes here.” Crystal did her little jig at the edge of the water, sending a bunch of those good fishes scattering.
We even had a nice swath of land that separated the trees from the water, just enough to lay down in the tall grass if one had an inclination for it. It was, as far as I’ve seen so far on Oresstria, a perfect little spot for a picnic.
So, naturally, I immediately drew my sword and started stabbing at the grass. Because nothing on this fucking world had been even remotely nice or pleasant and I’d been through too much shit to welcome some new unpleasant surprise.
“Klaus,” Methol laughed. “Use your danger assessment. Don’t you know how?”
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I paused. Even Crystal was looking at me like I was mad. “Of course I have no idea how that works,” I said. “Again, no fucking manual.”
“Right.” Methol dropped her backpack on the grass and came to stand in front of me. “Look, focus on me. Yes? And reach out to your interface with a question. Is this person dangerous? Nothing more.” She smiled and encouraged me to follow her instructions. “You won’t get a lot of information at your level, but you should get some. And some information is generally preferable to no information, so get used to keeping this sense active at all times.”
I’d done that with the furnar consort earlier. Though I remembered asking myself “What the fuck?!” when the thing had landed.
[Methol, of Halin Endre. Drake-born]
[Risk assessment: Low threat]
Methol summoned her gauntlet, made a fist, and swung for my face.
[Methol, of Halin Endre. Drake-born]
[Risk assessment: Severe threat to life and limb]
“Fucking Christ.” I took a step back and almost tripped over the grass. Methol caught me by the front of my shirt.
“See? Once you lock in on a target, you can see instantly if the threat rating changes. It’s not perfect. You won’t get much information in areas out of your influence. And for people, you’ll only get information if you’re somewhat familiar with them. And, as you just saw, it can be tricked easily.”
Well, that explained how she’d been so utterly unimpressed by my threat earlier. If I could get at least this kind of information at my level, what would she have access to?
“Now, if you look around an area, and definite it for your interface,” she went on, stepping out of the way. “You should get a general analysis of the environment. It relies on mana density and overall observations of the area. You don’t pay attention to every detail surrounding you, but your interface does and it will package its observations for you. Do you understand?”
I did… I think. A risk assessment based on whatever I couldn’t directly perceive and the median of everything else that I did. Made a sort of sense, I suppose.
[Brightleaf lakeside meadow]
[Risk assessment: Low to negligible]
[Warning: Area mana density critically low]
Neat.
I got a general sense of the area the analysis referred to, with the feeling that in time I could expand the definition and the total area covered. An ocean of depth lay beneath the surface of my interface, spilling out in small eddies to give me tools for survival and exploration.
How overwhelming would it have been to be given everything from the very first moment? Was that the reason the insight restriction even existed, to space out these unlocks so we could adjust to the changes?
I dropped the musings into the file before they could consume my whole attention.
“Right, so nothing dangerous in the area,” I surmised. “Now, how did you—”
A couple fishing rods appeared in Methol’s hands. To call them basic was an understatement, as they were basically just sticks with some wire and hooks attached. She grinned as I shut my mouth with a click of teeth.
“I do, in fact, have better than this,” she said as she handed one to me, again skirting the question. I was mildly curious before, now I was about to get obsessed. She went on, oblivious to my glare, “But I’m not giving any of that to an amateur likely to break my stuff. I’ll be impressed if you catch even one fish with this.”
Reality whip-lashed around me as I gripped the rod. My hands ached with the phantom pain of having cracked open a glitch artefact’s head, itself an alien feat performed by someone else who wasn’t in their right mind. Now, the same hands gripped a fishing stick as I was getting ready to go poke the ground for some worms.
Just a couple hours separated these moments. Incredible…
Crystal beat me to the lure search. She showed up with two handfuls of wriggling white grubs. They were aggressively trying to squirm out of her fingers, snapping little black pincers at her fingers. She beamed with pride as she presented her catch.
“Blue and stupid human catch fish. Crystal cook.”
My stomach tightened into a ball of agony. Methol’s ears drooped almost to her shoulders. For a moment I got a flash of some old fantasy anime I’d watched in my teens.
“Errr, that’s all right, Crystal,” I mumbled as I reached down and accepted the grubs. Their pinch wasn’t that impressive. It tickled. “If we catch something, I’ll cook it. See if you can find us some really big, sturdy leaves somewhere around here. I want to make something like Earth cooking. All right?”
She looked at me dubiously, eyes narrowed, nose pointed right at my face. “What earth cooking? You use mud? Mud not for eating, human.”
“Earth is where I’m from,” I tried to reason. “Not earth, as in ground, but the planet Earth.” I pointed up at Areestra hanging above us in the sky. “Like that. We have really good food on Earth. I’ll show you. Eternity, I also need your help.”
“Of course, if I am able,” the dragon said from my shoulder.
“Go with Crystal and see if what she finds is toxic for us or not. Also, look for some fruit, preferably something lemony, if you know what that is.”
“Lemons do not grow in this part of the continent, but there are some alternatives.” It rose into the air and went to settle on Crystal’s absurd hat. “Let us go, Crystal. I shall guide you.”
“I don’t know if the prospect of you cooking terrifies me less or more than the gnark’s offer,” Methol admitted as dragon and gnark departed. Tusk sat in the grass, watching fish spearing through the water. “But I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. I’ve tasted gnark cooking. I think my constitution can handle most of what you can throw at me.”
“How high’s that stat?” I asked.
“Just over a hundred.”
“Can you tell me what the thresholds bring? I don’t expect that’s insight locked too.”
We went to sit on the edge of the water. Methol, apparently having access to an inexhaustible store of knickknacks in her inventory, pulled out a little leather bag in which I poured the grubs. Then she also produced two folding wooden chairs for us to sit on, which was just showing off at this point.
I hadn’t actually gone fishing in forever. Used to have a work buddy with whom I’d take off on Sundays and do some illegal fishing here and there. Illegal meant just not paying the guard on duty his usual bribe to let us fish, which speaks a lot about the state of some stuff in Romania.
A lifetime ago, very literally. I found that I still remembered how to get a grub on a hook—bone hook in this case, which gave me the momentary ick—and also how to do a pretty good cast—as good as it can get with a stick and a line.
Some stuff in life is nearly universal. Sitting on a small chair with fishing rod in hand, and just basking in the moment? That one seems to transcend the universe altogether as Methol made a pleased sound and cast her line.
“About those thresholds?” I prompted.
She shrugged. “Not much to say. Can’t help you. Exact threshold rewards depend on the individual. What I get when I hit twenty points will probably not correspond to what you’ll get.”
“My threshold’s at fifteen,” I said. “At least I suppose it’s there. Still need a couple points in constitution.”
“Lucky you.”
“Gear stats don’t count for it, right?”
“Right.”
She scoffed and yanked on her line. A fish the size of my head got yanked out of the water and sailed through the air to land with a dull thud in the grass. Before we got it farther from the water, Tusk pounced on the poor thing and nearly swallowed it whole, line and all. I had to dive on him and grab his jaws while Methol got the hook loose.
The next bite was on my line. I yanked too slowly and pulled out a pathetic half a grub. It still wriggled. I cursed and cast again.
“Do all skills evolve like that?” I asked to pass the time, one finger kept on the back of the fishing rod to better feel when a fish nibbled.
“Most. Some progress linearly until they reach a cap. From there you can try and find a Skill Merge expert and get an upgraded version. Tiamat is convinced that there’s no actual ceiling to how far skills can be evolved or improved.”
“And the system skills?”
“You’ll unlock their evolution at your fourth insight. Those need a lot more effort to grow compared to the ones you’ve been training.”
Ever appeared at that moment and started saying something. Methol shushed it with a finger, speaking in the tone of a conversation had once too often, “Tiamat explained this to me at first insight. I’m following in the example of my patron Protector. If you’ve an issue, take it up with his dew drop.”
That took the wind out of the rabbit’s sails. It deflated in the grass and grumbled something I couldn’t understand.
“Phrasing, Ever,” Methol tutted. “Such ugly words aren’t fit for a lady of your breeding.”
The next thing Ever grumbled sounded suspiciously like “Kiss my fluffy ass” but I couldn’t prove it. I just snickered.
What followed was Methol absolutely humiliating me in her ability to catch fish. She had a nice pile by her side by the time Crystal returned with Eternity.
I’d caught two fish. Two. And they were so small that even Tusk looked at me pityingly when he came sniffing around for more treats. I let him eat them, if only to hide my shame.