It took Edwin nearly a week, but he eventually managed to limp his way out of the forest. It hadn’t been easy, not by any stretch of the imagination, but he had done it. Every day, he’d walk as far as he could manage, eat enough food to keep himself going, find a spot to bunker down for the night, clean his bandages and repeat. Whenever he needed water, he’d find a stream to fill his canteen and boil it with either Firestarting or a heating stone, and he had found enough sources that he’d never gone too thirsty. He would have expected that he might have run out of food by now, but he just… didn’t need to eat that much. Not that he had ever eaten that much, but usually when he was physically active, he’d need a hefty amount of food to get by, but not at the moment. In any case, he was in great shape. His legs were getting stronger and stronger by the day, the hole in his foot had healed (it was still sore, though), and he’d gotten a bunch of skill levels just by using them constantly.

Level Up!

Walking Level 21→28

Packing Level 3→5

Language Level 34→36

First Aid Level 7→13

Survival Level 14→17

Athletics Level 25→27

Sleeping Level 20→21

Outsider’s Almanac Level 61→62

Identify Level 27→28

Seeing Level 16→17

Breathing Level 17→20

Mana Infusion Level 56→57

Things had slowed down recently. Language had barely leveled despite Edwin having spent nearly the entirety of each day devising and reciting the most twisty tongue twisters he could imagine, something which used to net him about a level per day. His Almanac continued to level, naturally, as he would mark any discrete object in his 4ish meters of range with a message. If someone was able to read his messages, they’d probably find some very confused ramblings, each in the form of a single sentence-length blurb covering branches, twigs, and leaves on either side of the road.

It wasn’t all good, though. Edwin had yet to see so much as a hair of his pursuers, which in some ways just made Edwin more nervous. How many were they sending, that it took them this long to get organized? He knew they’d be coming after him, it was just a question of how hard it would be to evade them. If they sent an army, he’d have no chance. If they sent for a specialist who was just taking their sweet time setting off on their hunt, he would also have no chance. His only real chance at this point was to get into civilization proper before his pursuers showed themselves, and... it looked like he had finally made it!

The Blackstone road ended with a massive archway,made of two giant Blackstone statues of dwarves with pickaxes raised and crossed at the peak, in an utterly superfluous yet really impressive construction. On the other side of the arch, the road changed abruptly to packed dirt, barely muddy even with the current drizzle making everything ever so slightly wet. Just as sharp of a change was the shift from the wild, untamed forest he had become so familiar with and farmland. If he looked off to the side, he was able to see a section of the forest which extended into the farmland, but it looked like it was some form of logging camp. Of most interest to Edwin, though, was what appeared to be a small town a little ways further down the road, next to a bend in a fairly large river meandering its way through the fields.

Edwin may have been dead on his feet by the time he got close enough to properly see that what he had thought was a small village was, well, calling it a small village was… he wasn’t sure. There were plenty of buildings, mostly made of what appeared to be living trees with branches woven together intricately to make walls, but they were all built in miniature. As were the people. There was lots of activity going on, bustling through the town square as the… halflings carried around bags stuffed to the brim and a few carried around timber and logs twice the size of themselves. The entire place emanated endless chatter in a rapid, staccato-sounding language of which Edwin couldn’t understand so much as a single syllable of. Time to change that.

Polyglot

You can understand me, right?

Make yourself understood

Increased comprehension per level

You may evolve your Language skill into the Polyglot skill!

Accept Evolution? Y/N

Done!

…

Calculating Rewards…

Class Change!

Alchemist Outsider → Foreign Alchemist

You have completed the Linguist path!

Your way has brought you far afield from where you started. To call you an Outsider is simplistic and incomplete. You are truly an outsider to wherever you find yourself, a foreigner to all. Yet with that status of standing on the outside, you are nonetheless capable of seeing what others cannot yet often incapable of seeing what they do.

Edwin had mixed feelings about losing the Outsider tag on his class description. For better and for worse, it marked him as different, something he had always loved and hated simultaneously. Being on the outside was much less painful if he were different, yet to be different was to set himself on the outside. Granted, ‘Foreign’ wasn’t that much better, but it was probably less exotic? Eh, it didn’t sound quite as cool, but it was what it was.

Edwin was drawing close enough to the town that he could tell there was a fair level of attention directed his way. A few glances tossed his way, children stopping and staring for a moment before continuing to run around, and a couple of people looking at him directly. Edwin wanted to shrink away from the attention, and very nearly did, but pushed through and continued towards the bustling crowd. He must have been quite the sight, with one arm in a sling, a backpack over his shoulder, and wearing a coat with more holes than leather. Now that he was closer, Edwin could see that the halflings weren’t quite just ‘humans but smaller.’ They had proportionally larger heads and eyes, and seemed to have an extra joint on their fingers, giving their fists an oddly fluid and unsettling appearance.

One of the halflings staring at Edwin- a ‘Watcher of the Community,’ according to Identify- approached him, saying something in the staccato halfling language. While he couldn’t understand the words, Edwin was able to get the gist of what was being asked- who was he, and what was he doing here?

In response, and with a voice that hadn’t spoken in a week, Edwin spoke in Dwarven, gesturing to the forest, “Lost in there. Can I get help?”

The halfling cocked his head, and responded in halting dwarven of his own, “Lost in… Verdant? Come, will give help.” He grabbed Edwin’s hand- the extra joint felt weird- and pulled him along the edge of the town to a grand-looking building, the trees which it was built from seeming to emanate age and strength. It was also one of the few that seemed to have a second story, the canopies of its corner… not cornerstones. Cornertrunks? The canopies of its cornertrunks were interwoven in a similar way to the walls on the ground floor, overall giving the building a vaguely mushroomed-shaped profile.

As Edwin was led inside, ducking inside the door and preparing to hit his head on the ceiling, he was pleasantly surprised, and more than a little confused, to find that the inside was far taller than it should have been. More skill nonsense, clearly, but one that messed with space. Seemed like his hopes of a bag of holding wasn’t just a dream after all, but decidedly possible. Oh, his guide was talking about him to an important-looking halfling sitting on a finely crafted wooden seat.

Level Up!

Polyglot Level 1→3

After some discussion, for which Edwin was completely zoned out for- his legs were killing him and he really wanted to sit down- the important-looking halfling, a Village Elder Head, stroked her chin, speaking in perfect dwarven, “So, you were in the Verdant? For how long?”

“About a week,” Edwin racked his brain for the Dwarven word for ma’am, but came up blank, “lady. Then I was with Clan Blackstone until I could escape.”

“Escape?” her interest was piqued.

“I was… held against my will. I took what I could as I ran.”

“A thief, then? You were arrested for stealing?”

“No… no. They… wrongly imprisoned me. Made me work, shot me when I left,” Edwin shrugged off his jacket and shirt from his wounded shoulder, showing his bandage.

Halfling lady narrowed her eyes at him, assessing his wounds, examining his expression, and Edwin felt his pulse quicken. She clearly wasn’t buying his story, Edwin could see tell. She didn’t believe him, and was no doubt going to contact the dwarves to return a thief, he could sense it. Ahh. He was in no position to fight his way out, to try and find another village to get help at. Okay, he could probably make it to the door, at least. Once he was there, he could-

“We will help you. Your wounds need healing and you came with no motive beyond seeking some way to survive. Taktalai will escort you to Sisi, he will help you.”

Level Up!

Polyglot Level 3→4

Whew. So, he was at least going to get healed first. He could escape hopefully before whatever messages they would need to pass to ship him back to the Blackstones would be exchanged. That was of course assuming they didn’t keep him under lock and key, but Edwin didn’t think that they would do something so obvious. No, their sort clearly liked to pretend to be nice while secretly plotting something. There were other roads, hopefully he could make it to wherever the next town was. They had to be relatively close, right? This looked like farmland, and so they wouldn’t want to have to tend to too large of an area outside their village, right? That was probably how it worked?

Edwin ducked into the house that… Taktally? Tactically? Taktala- Edwin quickly Almanaced his guide with what Edwin was pretty sure was his name- the house that Taktala was leading him into, pleasantly surprised to find that this building, too, was larger on the inside. The roof wasn’t quite enough for him to stand up straight, but it was close enough. There was another flurry of words exchanged- Edwin marveled slightly at just how incredibly different the language the halflings were speaking was from the dwarven tongue- about him again, and then he was directed to lay down on a rolled-out mat on the floor, next to a bed far too small for him.

Edwin removed his backpack and gratefully laid down. At the silver-haired Sisi (an Experienced Community Healer)’s mostly mimed directions, he also removed his shirt, as bloody and cut-up as it was (he was going through clothes fast). Once he was shirtless, Sisi knelt down next to him, slowly unwrapping his bandages to reveal his swollen shoulder, tutting softly. No, wait, Sisi was saying something about him doing something stupid. Or maybe that’s what the tutting was? Polyglot wasn’t very clear in its clarifications, not that anything with this System was.

It really was cool, seeing Skills at work from people who had clearly practiced with them their whole lives when they weren’t actively aimed to kill him, and Edwin, despite constantly waiting, never felt any mana coming from the halfling as he took a damp, clean cloth and just… wiped away Edwin’s burn. Wait, what? He blinked, trying to clear his eyes. What was that? That burn had been bothering Edwin for days, but carefully poking his shoulder still had him hissing in pain. The burn was gone, but the underlying wound was still there.

Sisi, who was examining Edwin’s broken arm, looked up at Edwin’s exclamation, and he carefully set Edwin’s arm down before examining his shoulder more carefully, gently admonishing him again.

Polyglot was weird. He could understand the intention behind statements, but only so long as he didn’t try to focus on the individual words. The more he focused, the better he could understand fragments of words, but the less he comprehended the statement as a whole. Concentrating let him identify the word ‘tikil’ as meaning some form of wound or injury, but he had no idea what context it was being used in.

Level Up!

Polyglot Level 4→5

If he broke his concentration on the individual words, all the similar-sounding syllables just started to blend together again. Actually, no. Apparently ‘tikil’ also meant the torso? Wait, now it was used again as an admonishment. Did the halfling language just have a half-dozen words with a hundred different meanings, or what? Still, he felt compelled to defend himself.

“Sorry,” he shrugged- earning a shot of pain from his still-injured shoulder, making him flinch- “I was bleeding out. Didn’t have a choice.”

Sisi narrowed his eyes at him- the large eyes halflings had made all of their expressions seem cartoonishly expressive- and lightly cuffed Edwin’s head, accompanied by a muttered statement regarding ‘idiot children.’ Hey, a more complex idea! Polyglot was improving! Sisi didn’t notice Edwin’s excitement, though, instead shaking his head and leaving Edwin’s shoulder with no further ministrations, instead turning to his broken arm. He nodded contentedly to himself, and wrapped up Edwin’s arm tightly in fresh bandages, but to no apparent change.

Edwin was about to say something when the halfling moved up to his forehead, tapping it and saying “Tikil.”

Wait, now it meant sleep? What the heck was… yawn… this… language…

Edwin awoke to shouting.