It didn’t take long for Lirillin and his friends to grow tired. Whatever energy the alcohol had given them was limited, and the cold water of the bay was doing an excellent job of bringing them back to uncaring soberness. Already nursing the beginnings of some serious hangovers, the group of men climbed back up onto the docks, making sure to tie me up properly once again.

“Right. I think that’s about my limit for the night. We’ll have to do this again sometime, to see what you remembered and what else we can teach you Lirillin. See you next week.” One of the unnamed men said, before starting to turn and stagger off.

“Nope!” Lirillin countered. “I have no plans of doing this ever again. And you don’t get to just walk away, John. I am soaked to the bone, somehow drunk AND hungover, and about to fall asleep standing up. I know you’ve got a spare bedroom that’s empty right now. I’ll be crashing with you tonight. This morning. Whatever.” Lirillin lost steam at the last moment as he got caught up in the technicalities of his statement, but the point came through clearly enough.

John sighed, too tired himself to argue. “Whatever. It’s a fair enough point, I guess. Just don’t expect me to be cooking breakfast for you.” Satisfied with getting the last word in, he staggered off towards his home, footsteps clumping heavily on the dock, with Lirillin’s slightly lighter steps following behind him.

“Quick check before we all go our own ways. Carter, the ringleader asked. “Everyone has all their clothes? No boots left lying around or shirts floating in the bay? The Ash Breeze is tied up firmly?” He tugged my rope at this point, and seemed satisfied that Lirillin’s new creation wasn’t about to go wandering off while he slept. Everyone took a moment to check themselves over, before confirming that they were ready to leave.

“Right. Go home everyone, and enjoy the experience we’ll get from this. Gotta have something to get you through the hangover.” With a little chuckle Carter left as well, and in ones and twos the rest of the group dispersed. Soon I was alone once again, and was able to begin to work through my reactions to the night.

A quick flex of my mind pulled up my status screens for me to go over.

Ash Breeze - Rowboat

Autonomous Intelligence

Component

Weight - 120/750

Durability 9/10

Enchantments 3

Mana Saturation 15/10

Hull - Wood

Navigation

Listening

Oars - Wood

Automation

Name

Robert 'Bob' Rowland

Class

None

Body - 0

Mind - 4

Spirit - 10

Perception - 2

Experience - 349

Skills

Power Strike

It turned out that all that was needed for me to take damage was to have several large men jump about on top of me without caring what might happen for an hour or so, alongside being submerged under water for a good few minutes. I involuntarily shuddered at the memory. I was feeling better now that I wasn’t stuck in that situation, but I knew that I was still affected by that near-death experience. Even if I wasn’t in any actual danger it was traumatic enough to qualify for the title, and treating my experience appropriately instead of brushing it off would be better for my long-term mental health. I didn’t have a convenient therapist that I could visit twice a month here to get my mind straightened out. I’d need to take care of myself mentally, and that included examining and understanding why certain events were painful.

I hadn’t been prepared for being submerged. My oars could easily row me across the surface of the sea, but they lacked the power needed to push my frame underwater. A rough enough sea with big enough waves might be able to drag me under, but before today I likely would have been confident that I would have eventually popped back up to the surface. Maybe sans passengers or cargo, but personally none the worse for wear. This was the first time I’d gone under, and I hadn’t expected to react the way I had.

That was okay., I reaffirmed to myself. Having an instinctual response to a strong stimulus was natural. It’s alright to make plans to subvert that instinct, but having it in the first place doesn’t speak badly of myself. In some ways, having that response is a good thing. It shows that despite my weird situation, I am still alive, and want to struggle to stay that way. I’m connected with my current body more than I previously thought. I just wish it hadn’t taken a near drowning experience to figure all this out.

After confirming that my reaction was inevitable and that I would at least be forewarned for the next time I went under, I moved forwards, examining the rest of what had happened. My response to drowning had been to struggle as hard as I could, which hadn’t helped me any. Would I have regretted it if the sailors had noticed my strange actions?

As I thought over the question, I found myself surprised that my answer was a solid ‘maybe’ instead of the definitive ‘yes’ that was my gut reaction. Getting to listen in on the townspeople for a day had helped me form a more positive understanding of this world and the people around me. They were still strangers, but every familiar struggle and interaction left them feeling less like aliens, impossible to understand or guess at their reactions. It now felt like an outside possibility that they would immediately destroy me for existing, although predicting their exact response was still beyond me. I wasn’t ready to intentionally reveal myself, but if it happened accidentally I felt like I could live with the results.

I was less confident in my ability to predict Lirillin’s response. While most of what I had learned from the people of Shellpin Bay could be treated as more general truths on the nature of humanity here, Lirillin was an outsider to the local community. He lived by himself, worked by himself, and had a vastly different set of knowledge and experience to draw from when he decided to react to things. He could easily decide that I was simply a malfunctioning mechanical intelligence instead of what I actually claimed myself to be, a conclusion that the sailors wouldn’t have the background information to even postulate. More than that, I resented him for putting me in this situation. It sounded like it was an accident on his part, caused by him repurposing a spell he didn’t fully understand, but his intent or lack of it didn’t change his culpability. He was the reason I was stuck in this wooden frame, and even if I could tell myself that it was better than the void of death, all I could compare it to was my previous life as a human, something it didn’t compare favorably to. I had gone from having autonomy, adventure, and a community of friends and family to being isolated in a new world.

Fortunately, between it being dark out and everyone being drunk, no one had noticed that I was moving more than I ought to. My secret was still safe, and I could continue to tease out my complicated feelings for Lirillin later. He seemed to dislike the events of tonight almost as much as I did, and despite what Carter or any of the other sailors might want I didn’t see this happening again for at least a few months. Of course, like Carter had said, I wasn’t calculating how the experience gained might change things. For me, it wasn’t enough to make it worth the horrible experience, but earning a couple hundred experience as a mostly passive observer was a whole lot more than I had gotten just sitting around over the past week.

I unfortunately didn’t have any new skills that I could purchase with it, and once again found myself evaluating the classes available to me. Overhearing the people talking had told me that while Classes were significant and private choices that people made, they weren’t completely permanent. It was possible to transform or evolve one class into another, shaping it over time into something that was unique to the person bearing it. Usually it was along the lines of a baker becoming a pastry chef, but there were cultural hints that it could do a lot more.

The main thing holding me back from picking my class had been a sense of finality. It was a choice that I had to make blind, with no way of knowing what my rewards would be or what the associated costs were that would inevitably follow. I had multiple problems that gaining a class might help me solve, but none of the classes available to me would help solve all of them, at least not at first.

I had been worried that only the Bound Spirit class would let me improve my magical capabilities, that only Ocean’s Child wouldn’t permanently tie me to my current form, that only Autonomous Intelligence would give me the ability to move about freely. Now I knew that it would simply take more work and time for some classes to meet my needs, but that it wasn’t outright impossible for them to grow in the direction that I wanted.

It was freeing. I still had to make a tough decision, without enough information to be confident in the choice I made, but no longer was it the only decision that mattered. If it turned out that I chose the wrong class, it wasn’t a mistake that would hang over me forever, but was something I could work towards correcting. It meant I could move forwards, even if some paths available to me might be slower than others.

I knew that there was an argument to be made for waiting longer. Even if I wouldn’t learn anything else this trip there would be other times that Lirillin would come to town, more chances for me to gather valuable information. I could rationally create that argument, but I couldn’t accept it. I had been hurt, left helpless and trapped by the casual actions of the sailors. That hurt, that fear of being hurt again in the future was what drove me as I opened up the screen to choose a class.