Chapter 10

Chapter 10

For the last few weeks all of our neighbors have been wondering why Judy came running home barely 10 minutes after going to see the caravan. Let me tell you that having them buy that it was all because of her finding the two emeralds in an odd piece of ore was a hard sell. But the way Judy sold it I almost believe she either got an acting or deception skill out of it. There were only 3 people that didn’t quite seem to believe it. Alana, Jonny and dad.

Alana might not really believe what she was being told and I can’t be sure that Judy didn’t come clean to her best friend but from the looks of it either she understood that it was none of her business or their friendship ran very deep from both sides and she does know but has not spread it further even to her own family.

Dad I think is sure that something else is going on but he just doesn’t know what else and has convinced himself that he actually not knowing is if not better for the family at least it's safer and has left it alone after the talk the night the day it happened.

And that left us with Jonny, who was having fishing expeditions so large and so often trying to find out what had happened they could have put fish on the endangered species with that kind of dedication.

We mostly dealt with it by playing dumb but I could see that it was starting to grate on both mom and dad that he was being so nosy, the problem was if they asked him to leave on account of this it would be pretty much the same as admitting that something was going on, and he seemed to know that too.

This led me to harvesting my little garden a bit earlier than I would have liked, after all this was going to be my pocket money and I wanted to at least be able to put a bit aside for a rainy day. After all, if he was taking a close look at Judy now, with Tom being the best fighter among all the kids his age, how long would it be until he started poking around in my business.

So with all my plants collected and ready I went to my mother in the evening knowing I would get a much better result if I was going to talk to her about the worth of what I had and at least gain some understanding of money.

“You already harvested but it should still be another cycle until they are ready, I know we agreed that you will be the one to handle your corner but we shouldn’t just throw away money like that” she says, her experience in growing these herbs for years upon years showing through.

“Still I think this would be a good experience for you” She says with a bit of hurt in her eyes at the fact that she will let me go alone as we agreed all those cycles ago when she let me set up my garden.

After that we carefully stored the plants back in the bags and we both went to sleep. I am feeling a lot better and not at all worried about how this sale is going to go now that I know what my product is worth. I don't see why I would accept an inferior price.

The next morning was a chilly one, with a thin fog coming down, nothing that would last for more than another hour or two , so I set about doing my usual mana and physical exercises, replacing the gardening portion with some more mana control until I see it reach as low as 30 in the corner of my vision.

The UI is, I think, one of my most useful interactions yet with this system. Yes, it may well have taken quite a bit of focus and willpower to convince myself that I could see my health, stamina and mana in the top right corner of my vision like I did in the games back home but it all worked out in the end. While everything in this interface seems to be set in rules, like a message once close cannot be opened again without re-triggering the action that made show up in the first place you can influence the system to work in you favor, for example I can introduce a new command to minimize the message instead of closing it.

As I was doing my laps around the village I made out the caravan coming down the road towards the village through the mist, so I decided to go take a quick look at it and maybe eavesdrop a bit. Maybe I can get some way to mark up my plants a little bit.

Looking out from behind a tree I am surprised to see Tom walking at the front of the caravan towards the village in a decent suit of armour with a big flat shield strapped to his arm. Not being able to make anything else out clearly through the fog I decide to go welcome my big brother home and find out why he is back here.

“Hey big brother what br-” is as far as I get after walking out towards him from behind the tree before I see a flash of movement and feel the ground slip from under my feet. Turns out stealthing close to a guard and suddenly pooping out from behind a tree to talk to them with no warning is a good way to get a shield to the face.

I feel myself lying down against the tree, my vision darkening quickly and a ringing in my ears. “Did he just call you big brother?” a melodious voice called out , the rest of the commotion was lost to the ringing, the last thing I saw was my health showing 30/70. Everything going black and drifting off as I heard “Alzinoth”.