012: Class

Rain woke to the pleasant sound of his alarm. Pleasant in comparison to having his eyes melted from his skull, that is. Rolling out of bed, he immediately activated purify to clean his teeth and empty his bladder. This is so awesome.

He had gone shopping in the afternoon the day before, securing a few essential items such as a belt, a waterskin, a flint and steel, a second-hand knife, and a coil of rope. The knife was in its sheath at his hip, the crude spear discarded now that it was no longer needed. Rain fully intended to rely on his refrigeration aura to fight now that the range was sufficient, the knife being more for utility than combat. It was a good backup, though Rain wasn’t sure it would be much use against anything that his aura couldn’t handle.

Today he was testing a theory. Pulling on his boots and grabbing his now slightly heavier pack, he rushed from the room. When he reached the quest hall, he went straight to the board. To his satisfaction, there was a selection of low-level quests available.

Thought so. They put them up overnight, and all the good ones go first thing. I’ve been spending too long lazing about in bed.

A quest in the bottom row with the sword icon and a picture of a tailless beaver-looking thing caught his eye. Snagging it, Rain brought it over to Gus. The portly man looked wide awake despite the early hour. Rain somehow wasn’t the first to the counter and he had to wait, but soon enough he reached Gus and handed him the paper. Taking it, Gus nodded, then marked his plate number down in the ledger and grabbed a piece of paper. Consulting the ledger, he sketched Rain a crude map. The city was simply a circle with the guild marked near the east end. The river was shown, and Gus proceeded to draw an arrow from the guild out towards the river, following it upstream. He then drew a patch of trees and circled them, tapping the map with a finger.

Handing him the paper, Gus attempted to clarify, working laboriously around Rain’s limited vocabulary. Rain gathered that the creature, called a ‘Skiffun’, was damaging some trees outside of the city. It had been spotted by someone and reported to the guild. The bounty was 20 Tel, and the creature was level three or four. Rain jotted down some notes in his nice new leather-bound notebook, recording new words and their phonetic pronunciation moreso than details about the quest.

Satisfied that he knew what to do, Rain thanked Gus and retreated across the room towards a bench. He winced when he noticed the line that built up behind him at Gus’s counter. It had taken quite a while to get the details of the quest right, Gus starting to look a bit annoyed towards the end. The adventurers waiting in line at the counter gave him dirty looks but didn’t hassle him as he passed.

Quest secured, Rain pulled up his notifications to review yesterday’s progress now that he wasn’t in a rush.

Nice! Ranked up intrinsic clarity, and now it gives another 20% regeneration. Looks like it got a ton of experience without me doing anything special. Must be passive based on mana regeneration or something. The more mana I use, the faster it will level! I knew I was right about this build!

Selecting winter and maximizing the range, Rain set out, seeing no reason to wait around in the guild. He would eat on the road once he made it out of the city. He wasn’t sure how long he would have to hike to reach the copse of trees, so he decided to start early.

The city was just starting to wake up as he exited the gates, passing by a pair of armored guards with bronze plates stamped with the shield emblem. His guess was that they belonged to some sort of guard or militia and that the plates marked rank, just like they did for the adventurers’ guild. Idly, Rain wondered if there were other guilds too, such as a wizards’ guild or a thieves’ guild. The thieves in the city probably don’t use bronze plates to identify themselves. That would be pretty stupid.

The walk to the grove was pleasant in the crisp morning air. Much better than traipsing through the sewers. Rain occasionally activated purify to use up a bit of mana and level his skills, but he was careful to keep plenty left in his tank should anything jump out and attack him. The area was patrolled, so he felt safe enough, but there was no harm in a little caution.

The river road was largely deserted, but he did see an occasional traveler other than the infrequent mounted patrols. There weren’t any farms out here; instead, the road seemed to be leading into some hills. However, before he reached the hills proper, he spotted the grove off to one side of the road. It was not a full forest by any means, but it was big enough to get lost in. He left the road and headed for it cautiously.

The hunt for the Skiffun was less pleasant than the walk along the river. Rain spent the rest of the morning and a good part of the afternoon hunting through the trees looking for the beast. It wasn’t a large patch of woodland, but it wasn’t small either, and the underbrush was quite thick. Eventually, he found a tree that looked like it had been gnawed down to the stump. There was another similar tree off in the distance, and he proceeded to follow the trail of damage to the den of the beast.

The fight with the overgrown rodent was…. anticlimactic. The beast was about twice the size of a normal beaver, but it was slow, and it hadn’t been able to get anywhere near Rain as he froze it with his refrigeration aura at maximum range. It took nearly all of his mana, but he managed to kill it without it even touching him. He almost felt bad, but the way the creature had immediately leaped to attack him with its gigantic teeth had settled his moral issue, turning it into kill-or-be-killed.

He delayed checking his kill notification until after he finished making a horrible mess of skinning and cleaning the Skiffun. He had only tried because he was hungry and thought the pelt might have been worth something. He also built a small fire and skewered a slab of meat over it to roast, hoping that his stomach would have recovered enough by the time it was done. Removing the Skiffun’s intestines had been particularly upsetting.

I still feel kind of bad for killing the little guy, but I can at least make it so the meat doesn’t go to waste.

Sitting back to let his meal cook, Rain pulled up his notification log to see how much experience the fight had gotten him.

The level up was expected, but the line about class selection was a bit of a surprise.