Chapter 3: Pothole

Chapter 3: Pothole

Once everything was packed away, the group set out on the road. Hegar hadn't retied Rain's hands and had pretty much been ignoring him. That was fine as far as Rain was concerned. He was content to walk in silence as he poked around menus, looking at stats and skills. He had noticed a few more elements of the skill screen. Apparently, he could spend experience to unlock information about the next tier of skills. The descriptions for the first tier weren’t particularly detailed and he wasn't expecting it would be any different for information he paid to unlock. He had decided against trying it. Instead, he was paging through the tier zero skills and trying to get a feel for what each tree was about.

There were various trees for physical and magical skills. They ranged from general ones, such as the boringly titled ‘melee weapons’, to specific ones, such as ‘fencing’. In fact, there seemed to be several complementary skill trees available. Investing in both melee weapons and fencing seemed to make a lot of sense, as did other groupings like ‘fire evocation’, ‘evocation metamagic’, and ‘magical utility’. ‘Firebolt’ could be boosted by the evocation metamagic skill ‘guide sending’ to add a sort-of aim correction, while ‘intrinsic clarity’ from magical utility would allow for slightly faster mana regeneration.

There were even trees for things like ‘weapon-crafting’, ‘chemistry’, and ‘alchemy’, which was apparently different from chemistry. The skills in these trees seemed to be of the passive variety, at least at tier zero. +x% sharpness to crafted axes, for example. Rain mentally divided the skill trees into two categories: active and passive. Active skills were actions you could take to affect the world. For physical trees, these were straightforward, mostly fancy names and variations on stab, cut, throw, and shoot. None of these really stuck out to Rain after he had seen Brovose and Ameliah throwing magic around.

He had spent some time trying to figure out what skills they had been using. Brovose had probably been using ‘firebolt’, which was pretty self-explanatory. There wasn’t anything at tier zero matching the magical shield he had raised, though. Ameliah was a bit of a mystery. Her strength made him think that she had some points in the skill ‘strength of arm’, but he still wasn't clear on whether just adding stat points to strength would have that effect anyway.

The skill she had used after the battle might have been ‘purify’ from the utility auras tree. The description simply read: “Purify poison, corruption, and contamination within 1 meter.” Rain assumed that the range would increase with level as Ameliah's aura had extended much further than that. Either that, or she had invested in ‘extend aura’ in aura metamagic.The debut release of this chapter happened at Ñòv€l-B1n.

Those two trees were one of only a few pairs that were clearly meant to be used in conjunction. Pairings were usually more general, such as the ‘evocation metamagic’ tree which would boost ‘firebolt’, but not ‘ice shield’. The aura metamagic tree had Rain's long-dormant munchkin senses tingling. That one tree could boost three others: the offensive, defensive, and utility aura trees. Specializing in auras would allow a great amount of versatility without sacrificing too much power, depending on what was lurking in the higher levels of aura metamagic. The tier zero ‘amplify aura’ was already promising. It added 10% to the intensity of any aura. The cost was a 20% increase in mana consumption, but it was metamagic, so it would probably be a toggle.

He almost invested his points right then and there, but he resisted the temptation. This wasn't a choice to be made lightly, and there were still tons of trees he hadn't even looked at. There were options for any type of combat you could think of, unless you liked Bards, that was. There wasn't anything even remotely like a charisma tree, though there was ‘psionics’, which looked like it might turn into something like that eventually. Hard to tell when the only tier zero spell was ‘mental blast’, which appeared to be just a different flavor of firebolt.

Rain was jerked out of the rabbit hole his thoughts had been exploring when his foot detected an absence of the road. He pitched forward, shouting as his foot struck the ground about thirty centimeters lower than he was expecting. His ankle twisted and there was a horrible snapping sound as he fell, shortly followed by a sickening crack as his nose slammed into the earth. He hadn't even tried to protect his face as the still open skills menu was blocking his view.

“Huuururr,” Rain tried to scream through a mouthful of dirt. He suddenly felt himself being hoisted up and set gently down. His ankle immediately rolled and he started to fall again. Whoever had lifted him guided him down, so thankfully he didn't end up with a broken tailbone to go with his nose and ankle. Through the pain, he heard Hegar's grating laughter.

Seriously? Holy fuck this hurts. Not funny. Owwww.

He heard Ameliah say a word and felt her hand on his ankle. Suddenly, the pain was gone. She repeated the word and he saw her hand pass through the floating blue skills screen to touch his nose. He felt it pop back into place as the pain receded. Healing Word, tier zero, restoration.Rain thought, still in shock.

Once he felt that he had those few words down, he tried for something more abstract. He pointed at himself and said “Rain,” then at her, “Ameliah.” He then proceeded to point at each of the others in turn, naming them. Lastly, he returned to himself.

“I,” he said. Then, pointing at her, he said “You,” then Hegar, “You,” again, then Anton, “You.” He then looked at her expectantly. Catching on, she pointed at herself, saying a word, then each of the others, saying a single, different word.

Got it, ‘I’ and ‘You’, that wasn't so bad. Ok, next.

Indicating his shirt, then his pants, he learned the word for both before pointing at her shoes. She gave him the word. With all the pieces he needed, he put his plan into action.

“You shoes,” he said pointing at them. “I...” he let the word drag out, pointing at his bare feet. Then, he pointed at her pack “pack shoes?” He raised his voice at the end of the word, trying to sound hopeful. She smiled slightly and shook her head, saying another word.

Damn it. Well, at least I know the word for ‘no’ now. Rain sighed, then shrugged. Might as well keep learning words. This road seems to be going nowhere fast, and there is not much else to do. Shit, what was the word for ‘road’ again? Gah, this sucks. Why couldn't there be a translate skill?

Rain continued asking for words in this way for a few hours, slowing down considerably as he started forgetting the first ones and having to circle back to them. He picked up some essentials, such as ‘here’, ‘there’, and ‘we’, as well as a few more specific things, like ‘slime’. That one had been fun to re-enact. Eventually, Brovose had started getting annoyed at his continual mistakes and taken over from Ameliah. His tactic was a bit different; he would point at things and demand the word for them from Rain. Oddly enough, Rain found that this method helped him retain the words a bit longer before he forgot them again. At one point, Anton even tried to teach him a word, but Rain recognized it from one of Hegar's earlier bouts of cursing. When Anton said it while pointing at a bird, Rain noticed him struggling to keep a straight face. “No.” Rain simply replied and smiled. Brovose smacked the back of Anton's head lightly, saying something complicated that Rain couldn't understand. Gotta admit, teaching someone that ‘shit’ means ‘bird’ would be a pretty good prank. Look at all those shits in the trees. Shits everywhere.

Eventually, everyone was tired of the game and silence returned. To fill it, Hegar started whistling. Anton threw a rock at him. The hours wore on until the sun started going down and Hegar told Anton to start looking for a place to camp. Or at least, that is what Rain thought he said. He caught the word ‘camp’ but the rest he was guessing on body language, tone, and the tired mood of the group.

Anton replied and gestured down the road. Rain didn't catch any of it this time, but Hegar just sighed and trudged on, following Anton. An hour or so later, they came to a clearing on the side of the road which contained a ramshackle shack built from unhewn beams. Rain would have called it a log cabin, but really, it wasn't nearly charming enough to justify that.

That thing is nowhere near being up to code. Angus would have a fit if he saw me walk in there. Rain chuckled to himself at the memory of one of his co-workers from a job a year back. The man had hit the deck every time a crane brought a beam within ten meters of him. Rain regarded the shack skeptically. Well, I suppose it hasn’t fallen down yet. Better than sleeping outside. Rain's feet were dragging at this point and he was almost giddy at the prospect of rest.

Hegar poked his head in the door, looked around, then motioned the rest in. The interior of the shack was a bit cramped, and the floor was dirt, but there were four walls and a roof. Should stop a slime from eating me while I sleep, or even a musk wolf. Satisfied, Rain picked a spot in a corner, plopped down, closed his eyes, and went out like a light.