(CS) Chapter 4. D1 (Patreon)

They spoke very little as they walked. The journey would take a few days, if they walked fast, but no more than a week. Arik started out their long hike bouncing with excitement, but that energized state quickly faded as they walked. After a few hours of silent walking, he grew tired. Not so much physically, but emotionally. He yearned to talk, but what about?

John noticed his distraction, and offered an olive branch. “Let’s play a little game. It’s called, ‘I spy.’ Heard of it?”

Arik shook his head. “No, how do you play?”

“Well, it was made to keep scouts sharp while walking. You look around, and mentally pick something in the surroundings. Then, you say, ‘I spy, with my little eye, something,’ and then you give a single descriptor, most often a color. I’ll start.

“I spy, with my little eye, something blue.”

“The sky?” Arik asked, an eyebrow raised.

“Yes, the sky. Now it’s your turn.”

“Alright. I spy, with my little eye, something brown.”

John pointed with unerring accuracy at the tree Arik had been eyeing without even looking at it himself. “That tree.”

“How did you know that?!”

“You didn’t look around at all your options, you just focused on something and started talking. You hardly looked away at all. Try again, but look at all your options first.”

They played the “I spy” game for a while. John was much better at it than Arik, but at least it was a way to pass the time.

===

“I spy-”

“Let’s settle down for the night. Getting late, don’t you think?” John gestured to the setting sun through the trees of the forest. Arik shrugged and accepted the blanket the man handed over to him. “C’mere, I’mma teach you how to start a fire.”

“Do we really need one?” Arik asked. It was Talif, and the summer solstice was just next month.

The Olikrian New Year was the day after the winter solstice, the center point of winter. The 15 months were called Awlin, Naha, Sinjisu, Lenitha, Nomun, Adiful, Talif, Yira, Harar, Alrabon, Mahsu, Fisdu, Amhamisu, Matun, and Nihaiat. The system was said to have come from an ancient empire, whose charts laid out their system of time. Sadly, their language had died with them, and no one quite knew what the words meant. Scholars could speculate, but there was no translation. Skills that might normally work on such translations usually draw from the user’s knowledge, or the sum understanding of everyone in Olikros, but no one knows the first thing about the language, so they fail to make it into something comprehensible.

“Well, not for warmth, but I’d like to cook some rations.” The Hulendorian eyed Arik. “Are you not hungry, boy?”

Arik’s mouth opened, then closed. He was actually quite hungry. Duh. Of course the food needs to be heated up.

John rolled his eyes, and gestured for him to come hold what he called a “flint and steel.”

After trying to create a spark for a few minutes, Arik wondered aloud, “Why don’t we just use an Essence tool?” He had seen trinkets for sale in town that could light fires like this in an instant.

“Well, on one hand, this is cheaper. Journeymen can usually afford that kind of thing, but as for intersoldiers, they can’t. For some utterly ungodly reason, the high cities of Eyladia refuse to provide their sponsored military groups with proper equipment. On the other hand, you won’t be able to throw Essence around on stuff like that. Maybe you’ll have run out of it by casting your strongest spell to finish off a monster before it can kill you and the rest of your party, or maybe you’re being hunted by a monster that can smell Essence. In either case, using any more than you absolutely have to could get you killed.”

Arik nodded and went back to trying to create a spark to light the twine. After a couple minutes, he figured out the trick and got it working.

“Good, good, now carefully set it under the lean-to, with the kindling.” John had managed to set up an entire campfire in the time that Arik had managed to create a single spark. Arik did as he asked, and soon a roaring fire was born. John popped some meat out of a compartment in his bag and started roasting them over the flame.

While he roasted the skewers, Arik gazed up at the night sky through the foliage above. His nightly ritual had fallen away a bit since his chaotic new life had begun, but as he looked up, he realized that he’d really needed this. While the beautiful portrayal he’d been shown during his Waking Dreams was certainly something, nothing compared to the real thing.

A few minutes later, the food was done, and Arik was handed a sausage, wrapped in some kind of bread. “It’s called a hot dog, a friend taught me how to make it. It’s not much but it’ll last you the night.”

The hungry boy snapped up the hot dog and went to sleep.

===

Name: Arik
[Blessing of Celestial Skies]
Age: 18
Stats:

Physique: 14

Limit: 13

Talent: 11

Wisdom: 10

Essence: 6

Purity: 17

Free Points: 4

Primary Class: [Stellar Paladin] (1)

Skills (3/5):

￮ [Heavily Armored] (1)

￮ [Bladework] (2) -> (3)

￮ [Starlight] (1)

￮

￮

Secondary Class:

Tertiary Class:

Skill Points: 2

After multiple days of effort, Arik’s [Bladework] Skill had managed to go up again. He’d had slow progress so far, but that was normal. To start getting the levels of his Skills to go up faster, he’d have to use them in new or more dangerous ways, or increase his Talent stat. Wisdom would also help, as it would allow him to better reflect on how he’d used his Skills improperly in the past, letting him rectify mistakes in his style.

Sadly, those stats were not affected at all by his Class’ leveling, so he’d likely have to pump free points into them to allow them to keep up. Having extremely high stats meant little if you couldn’t do much with them. For example, if his Limit was 100, he’d be able to nimbly dodge around attacks and put his weapon in the perfect place, but without a high enough Skill in [Bladework], he wouldn’t know where that was, and his sword might not even be sharp enough to get it there. An insane Physique would be amazing, and might offset some of the downsides of having a low [Heavily Armored] Skill, but he would still be slower than if he’d instead increased the Skill.

One thing that was particularly interesting about Skills like [Heavily Armored] was that their requirements, in this case, wearing heavy armor, went down as the Skill increased in level. While it would certainly take a long time to do, getting that Skill to level 92 would mean that he’d move 92% faster whether or not he was wearing anything at all. In fact, even at level 90 it was possible that he could just have the clothes on his back and the Skill would still apply.

One of the main reasons he likely would not be abusing this was that it was quite likely that he’d gain other complimentary Skills for his armor, such as increasing his armor’s durability. The base Skill, [Heavily Armored], was meant to offset some of the downsides of using the Class’ style of fighting. Classes often did this, offering one or two Skills that did something to this effect, and then a wildcard, like his Starlight. [Heavily Armored] and [Bladework] were both meant to entice him to use, well, heavy armor and blades. The Paladin Class was one most often seen wearing full plate, wielding a sword, and there was a reason for that. The Class offered Skills directly relating to the use of those objects.

Now, some could argue that heavy armor like full plate was loud, slowed you down, and was just clunky, but that was somewhat rectified by this initial Skill, [Heavily Armored]. As gruesome as it was, swords were weapons intended to be used against humans, not Divine Beasts. That was where [Bladework] came in. It didn’t directly state that it would make you better against fighting monsters with a sword, but it did say that you would have a sharper sword, and not only that, but your Talent would be considered higher while learning to use them. That effectively meant that as you increase the Skill’s level, it levels faster. Of course, that would be offset by the increased difficulty that came with each level, but it meant that blade-based Skills, including itself, would have that scaling difficulty slowed.

With nothing left to do or think of, Arik laid his head down into the grassy field of his Waking Dream.

===

Arik was slapped awake by John.

“Wha-” John put his large hand over the boy’s mouth. “Shh,” he whispered, pointing at something outside Arik’s line of sight. He removed his hand, and Arik slowly twisted to look at whatever was causing the man to act like this.

A Divine Beast. Beasts came in all shapes and sizes, but all had one thing in common: Divine Essence. No one knew quite how it worked, but Divine Beasts had a unique property in that they could consume Divine Essence directly from other plants and animals. The Essence was then used to fuel their own advancement. The current theory was that Divine Beasts were created when a creature or object received a massive influx of Essence, one which would cause them to mutate and evolve into something more. They then gained something of a taste for it, and would hunt down things with high concentrations of it and eat them.

The type of evolution a Beast received was based on the type of Essence consumed. For example, a tree that survived a forest fire that had an unnatural amount of essence may evolve into an Ashwood Sapling, or something similar. The number of possible mutations was theoretically infinite, but there were certain paths that seemed to be most natural to each creature, usually either advancing the Beast’s associate Essence type or the Beast itself. Small lizards had some of the most extensive research applied to them. When large numbers of them were placed into areas with high concentrations of various elements, they would often increase in size and become Wyrmlings, one of the earliest stages of dragonhood.

Lizards near volcanos could become Fire Wyrmlings. Lizards underwater could become Water Wyrmlings. Lizards in the forest could become Wood Wyrmlings. Sometimes there were more advanced elements, like Magma, Sea, Forest, or Sylvan, but no one knew quite how to replicate that. It seemed that advanced elements were less likely to occur than common ones, even in areas like the aforementioned volcanos, where Magma Essence was more common than Fire Essence. A Fire Wyrmling that consumed enough Earth-type Beasts, however, could become a Magma Wyrmling, which increased its overall strength, if not its development.

Divine Beast theory was one of Shaper Lapenbaum’s favorite lessons, and he’d always work back around to it, even though it didn’t apply to most other things he taught. He’d explained that there were two main theories about them currently circulating. The first was that Divine Beasts experienced Waking Dreams, just like humans. Believers in this theory argued that progression could not occur without the Waking Dream, after all, that was how humans did it. The other theory, the one that Lapenbaum himself subscribed to, was that the Divine Energy within them, left unchecked and uncontrolled, could cause such mutations. That would explain the ancient myths relating to other humanoid species, like elves and dwarves, even though no such people existed today.

Arik didn’t really know what to think. It was certainly interesting stuff, and relevant to what he wanted to do with his life, but it wasn’t like he was a scientist.

What all of this meant was that Arik immediately recognized the creature before him: A Blaze Elk. Blaze was an advanced form of Fire Essence, and an elk was, well, an elk. Put the two together, and you get a huge Beast that was permanently ablaze, had fire in place of its eye sockets, and had no fur.

It. Was. Terrifying. Luckily, though, it was busy munching on some grass, grass that charred the moment it came into contact with the Beast.

“Now, we’re going to back up very, very slowly,” John whispered. Arik nodded, and started to move with him.

One step, then another, then another. Neither John nor Arik took their eyes off the Blaze Elk, instead slowly walking away from it, careful not to make a sound.

Arik slowed his breath, focusing on making as little sudden movements and sounds as possible.

One step, then another, then another.

The Blaze Elk was getting further and further away. John seemed to relax a bit, which reassured Arik that they’d be safe soon.

Then Arik stepped on a large branch.

Everything went quiet, and all eyes went to Arik’s foot. John and Arik looked at each other, and then back towards the Blaze Elk. It stared right back, and stomped a hoof, scorching the nearby greenery with a puff of flame.

“Alrighty then, time to run!” John threw Arik into a princess carry and bolted.