Book 1. Chapter 17

Book 1. Chapter 17

Brin left the general store, promising himself he’d follow Perris’ advice. At least, the advice about keeping his pet alive. As for the rest? He’d try Chamylla’s way first and see where that got him.

Despite his best efforts to ignore it, Perris’ advice kept ringing around in his head. Particularly the phrase fat and lazy and small. A worm. It was like an annoying pop song. One that comes over the radio or something before you can change the channel, and even though you didn’t want to hear it the first time it keeps tumbling around in your brain.

It was bad advice. He was sure of it. He’d gone through all the things Perris had talked about in Travin’s Bog. Terror, the feeling of worthlessness, and then the anger. Deep, slow anger that led him to building those traps, even though it didn’t really benefit him very much, and even though it may have given him away.

He’d come through all of that, but did that make him better than the children who hadn’t gone through trauma like that? Myra, Zilly, and Davi all outshined him. The only thing that made him special was the lifetime of memories inside his head.

Fat and lazy and small. A worm. That was how he’d died in his past life. This life would be different.

Fat and lazy and small. A worm. Arg! Would you stop that, brain?

Was he being lazy? He knew he wasn’t. He’d worked his butt off the first two months after he came to town. After that, well, he worked as hard as he was expected to. He’d also done a lot of playing around. But that’s what he was supposed to be doing. He was a child; Solia had said so. He had the body of a child and that made him a child.

He was more than just a child. He could be doing more.

When he got back to Hogg’s house, he’d made up his mind.

He swung the door open and said, “I want to start training my Strength.”

Hogg was standing over a big wooden box set up on the table. It was an ordinary wooden box, rectangular in shape, and completely at odds with the rest of the finely furnished living room.

“What?” asked Hogg.

“Oh, wait, first tell me how’s Marksi doing? Is that his tank?” asked Brin.

“It is. Hurry, come see. And hush,” said Hogg.

Brin tiptoed over and looked inside. He didn’t know why, but when Hogg said he was making a habitat for Marksi, he’d expected a glass tank like he’d use to keep a pet snake in his old world. Of course, glass wasn’t something you could get on short notice around here. Hogg had fashioned it out of wood.

It looked comfortable. There was a little pool, some plants for variety, and a lot of sandy loam, everything that Chamylla had told him to provide. Marksi had buried himself except for his head and the tip of his tail. The sand vibrated with the little snake’s purrs.

“He thinks he’s hiding,” said Hogg. “He thinks we can’t see him.”

Brin chuckled. It was pretty cute. “I got the stuff.”

He showed Hogg the lightly enchanted items he’d gotten from Perris and Chamylla, and they decided to start with the marbles.

Putting all three of the marbles in the middle caused it to heat up too quickly, so they kept the cooling one towards the center and the heating one on the edge, across from the pool of water. That cooled it too much, but with some more trial and error they found places for the marbles to make it just right, so that the temperature-telling marble turned a nice light blue.

Marksi was supremely interested in what they were doing. He followed the marbles around every time they moved one of them, and always rubbed his head against their fingers when they were nearby.

Once they’d finally gotten the placement just right, Marksi ruined it by scattering some sand over the cooling marble, which made the temperature marble turn a little green. They brushed it off, but Marksi did it again.

“It’s fine. He knows what temperature he likes better than us. I can’t believe he already figured out what the marbles do. You’re such a smart little guy, Marksi,” said Hogg.

“So, we’re just going to totally abandon the world-weary tough guy personality then,” said Brin.

Hogg’s scarred face turned to Brin with a withering glare, proving that he still had it in him. “Marksi is cute, ok? He’s damn cute. I’m man enough to admit that. Now, I could sit here and pretend my eyes don’t see what they see, but no. I refuse. Not in my own house. And if you tell anyone...”

“Please. I’m already keeping your secrets. I can add one more to the list,” said Brin.

“Good,” said Hogg. He leaned over the tank and made clicking noises while wagging his finger back and forth, grinning in delight as Marksi slithered back and forth to follow him.

“Oh, right, I had something I wanted to ask you,” said Brin.N0v3lTr0ve served as the original host for this chapter's release on N0v3l--B1n.

“About building up your Strength?” said Hogg. “It’s not a bad idea.”

“Well, I was thinking. When I was in Perris’ shop, he thought I was there to buy a sword to try to grab some Achievements before my System Day. Now, I know there are Achievements that you can only earn if you fulfill their requirements before you get your System unlocked. Warbound is an example.”

“Stop right there. What you’re asking for is illegal. And it’s wrong. I’ve already told you why. It’s one of the first things I ever taught you,” said Hogg.

“I’m not asking for the requirements for some weird torture Class. I just want to know the kind of things that any kid would know. Stuff they’d get by osmosis from growing up here,” said Brin.

“Sorry kid. There’s rules you break, and rules you don’t,” said Hogg.

“And there’s rules you bend. Can you at least tell me if I’m wasting my time with the Strength training?”

“It’s not a waste of time,” Hogg admitted.

“If I’m going to do the Strength training anyway, I should set myself a goal, don’t you think? I should pick a number. At random.”

“You’re killing me. Alright. If I were to pick a random number, I’d say go for 26,” said Hogg.

“Twenty-six? Not twenty-five? Seems like it should be twenty-five,” said Brin.

“I don’t make the rules,” said Hogg.

Twenty-six was extremely doable. He’d already gained six Strength in the last four months, although four of those were from the first two months when Hogg had been working him like a dog.

When he wiped his brow after the last delivery, the System had another surprise for him.

Through training you have increased the following attributes. Strength+1

Not bad. Two attributes in one day. Normally he was lucky to get one a week. Clearly, it paid to be extra.

He ate a big lunch, then wandered off to the crowd of children to play. Rough-housing was the last thing he wanted to do, but he was determined. He was going to do his normal routine, plus the workout. No cutting corners.

So he ran into the crowd, found the kid with the ball, and picked the ten-year-old up over his head and threw him into the other children. The ten-year-old in question couldn’t breathe because he was laughing so hard, which gave Brin the perfect opportunity to steal the ball. That lasted all of ten seconds before he went down in a dogpile, and the game was on.

There was a brief interruption when they all noticed Marksi on his neck and everyone stopped so they could ask his name, pet him, and coo at how cute he was. Marksi loved the attention, and rubbed the children’s hands with his head when they pet him, purring all the while. Eventually the novelty wore off and they went back to their game.

Marksi toughed it out on Brin’s shoulders, but after ten minutes he bit a kid. It didn’t break the skin, but Brin still made him sit out the rest of the game on the sidelines.

After a while, some mothers came by to fetch their sons away, and the group broke up, to Brin’s intense relief. Again, he got a notification.

Through training you have increased the following attributes. Will+1

It was a good day. A tortuous day, but rewarding.

Marksi was sad though. He’d been softly whimpering the entire time at having been left out of the fun.

“Tell you what, Marksi, we’ll play when we get home. Just me and you,” said Brin.

Brin picked up some groceries on the way home, to replace all of Hogg’s food he’d eaten and to prepare for all the binge eating he planned to do in the future. He bought chickens straight from the farmer, but everything else came from the general store. That meant the real general store run by a sharp-eyed [Merchant] woman, not the adventurer’s outfitter shop that Perris ran. He noticed the store sold the leather balls that the kids used, and he asked the shopkeeper if she had smaller ones. To his surprise, she did. She showed him a golfball-sized leather ball, and when she saw how excited Marksi got, let him have it for free. Everything together cost him half a silver. He was going through his nest egg rather quickly now. He didn’t want to have to ask Hogg for money, but soon there wouldn’t be another way around it.

Back home, Marksi couldn’t wait to try out his new toy. Brin wondered what a snake would do with a ball, but Marksi was full of ideas. He would slither along after it, bouncing it forward. He wrapped himself around it, tighter and tighter until it popped out. He flicked it with his tail, trying to see if he could get it to go straight up.

Hogg was completely fascinated, and kept asking Brin if there were any other toys that Marksi might like. Brin couldn’t think of anything. He couldn’t think. It’d been the most physically difficult day he’d had since the day he’d been forced to run ten miles and then fight all those Undead Soldiers.

He tried to be a good sport and cheer Marksi on, but his eyelids grew heavier and heavier until he passed out right there on the porch.

The next day he did the same routine. He woke up early and got straight into his weights routine. He was sore all over and wasn’t sure if he’d get through it, but he was surprised at how fast the soreness went away. Was this what it was like to be a kid again? In his past life when he went too hard at the gym, it usually meant a recovery day afterwards, but now his body seemed to be willing to take all the punishment and then ask for more.

He didn’t get any alerts from the System that day, but the day after that the [Millers] needed fifty bags of flour delivered across town, each of them weighing forty pounds. Even better, Davi wasn’t working with him that day so there was no one to steal all the work. He asked the other boys to let him handle the entire thing, and they happily obliged.

That left Brin, taking the flour sacks two at a time on his shoulders, walking across town back and forth, back and forth, with Marksi riding on top of his head like a hat. Some of the people on the street gave him the side-eye, but most smiled or openly laughed at the sight.

By the end of the chore he thought he might have overdone it. His lungs were burning, and his throat was so raw from heavy panting that he was sure he’d given himself a cold. It took him an hour longer than the work shift was supposed to, and he was so worn out that he’d have to skip playing with the kids, but it was worth it.

Through training you have increased the following attributes. Strength+2

For the rest of the week, he kept to his routine. He didn’t get any more popups, but he noticed a change when he took a rest day at the end of the week. Without any kind of notification, his Strength had gone up another point. That must've been the system reflecting his natural strength increase. His goal had been to get seven more points of Strength, and in one week he was past halfway there.

Two weeks later, Brin got the notification he was waiting for.

Congratulations! You have gained an achievement. Strong I (Common) You have reached 26 Strength. +10 speed with Strength-related activities. +10% Strength attribute growth.

What counted as a Strength-related activity? Wasn’t everything a Strength related activity? He tried a few simple exercises, and nothing felt different, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t doing them faster. He hadn’t exactly clocked his times before.

He jogged around the Hogg’s house a couple times, and he did feel faster than before, but honestly that could all be in his head.

The ten percent modifier was pretty cool. It was nice to know that not everything was tied to Classes and levels. Maybe if he got a Class he absolutely hated, he’d be able to sort of build his own Class by gathering all the right achievements.

He also noticed that the achievement had only said he reached 26 Strength. Nothing about reaching it before unlocking his System. Sure enough, he got another a moment later.

Congratulations! You have gained an achievement. Workhorse (Rare) You work like a horse. You have earned Strong I before unlocking your System. +1 Strength per level

This one was Rare, while Strong I had been Common. It made sense that most people got Strong I at some point, it was less common for them to get it before their System day. One Strength per level sounded really good. What would it be like if he got to Strong II before his System day?

Another thing happened on the same day. His “age” had gone up from 12 to 13. It was nice to know his birthday. Only one year left until he unlocked his System. He checked his status.

Information Name Brin isu Yambul Age 13 Race Human Class Child of Travin's Bog Level 1 Attributes Strength 26 Dexterity 19 Vitality 23 Magic 9 Mental Control 13 Will 20 Titles Survivor of Travin's Bog Locked Traveler Locked Otherworlder Locked Achievements Warbound (Epic)

You are born for war. You defeated at least 10 enemy soldiers before unlocking your System.

+10% Strength. +10% Vitality. +10% Will. +50% experience from melee combat.

Blessing of the Hidden Guardian (Rare)

You have been seen and accepted by the one who lays beneath.

Strong I (Common)

You have reached 26 Strength.

+10 speed with Strength-intensive activities. +10% Strength attribute growth.

Workhorse (Rare)

You work like a horse. You have earned Strong I before unlocking your System.

+1 Strength per level

Skills Know What's Real

You have the ability to understand when something you experience or remember is real, and when it is an illusion or dream.

Oaths

Oath of the Quest Survivor

You have sworn never to speak of how you became the beneficiary of a Quest