With a great feeling of satisfaction, Suzette brought her adze down on the oak log and peeled away the last of the bark. She was tired from yet another day of hacking away at oak trees. This had better do it!

Huzzah!! You have raised your skill with an adze to Rank 5!

50% faster speed in killing weeds or creating a furrow.

50% faster speed when peeling bark and shaping wood.

Base chance to hit with the adze as a weapon:10+10% x level+5%x STR. At Level 10 and STR 4 you have a base chance to hit of 130% - creatures avoidance%.

Base damage with an adze: 10 + 5x STR + 5x Level = 80

"Oh god, yes!" She flipped her adze in the air and caught it. "Level 5 and done with this skill." There were chuckles from nearby. Many of the other workers shared the feeling. Stripping the bark off of oak logs and them turning them into rough timbers was hot and sweaty work.

But the gains were worth it. Many of the workers didn't have a skill that gave them experience in STR. Getting to level 5 in adze gave them five points of STR if they were in Tier 1, and four points if they were in Tier 2. They also finally had a weapon they could use. With a base damage of 10, an adze did the equivalent damage of a dull knife or small stick of wood. It wasn't great, but it wasn't classed as a 'default' weapon. Using one gave them experience. The additions to damage and accuracy from their Levels and STR turned it into a weapon that would let them fight in the BunnyBarrow, or the top of the Lair.

For the high STR, Tier 2 workers like Jorges, an adze became a much stronger weapon. Jon and Cham were pure murder-hobos with them, wielding one in each hand. Ozzy couldn't match their number of swings, but his over-sized adze hit extremely hard. Of course, his fists actually hit harder, so the adze wouldn't see a lot of use by him except for stripping bark.

Ozzy had been working nearby, doing just that chore. He clapped along with the others and gave her a wink. He knew this wasn't an enjoyable job, but she'd kept at it.

He'd been able to level the tool much faster, having more spare time to work on it. A smoke pit could run without him after a couple of hours each morning. The tavern demanded a lot of Suzette's time.

Ozzy put the tip of his adze into the end of the log he was working on, two inches below the bark. Twisting his arm he cracked the wood along the grain, splitting off the outer two inches of wood along with the bark. Grabbing an edge with his hand he pulled at the slab and moved the adze down along the cut. Withing a half-minute he had peeled the entire slab off of twenty feet of log. He turned the log three times, repeating the process, reducing the round log to a squared beam laying beside the 4 slabs.

The village could always use more wood. Beams and boards for building projects. Firewood for their homes and charcoal for the forges. The slabs could be burned, but they often found a use as rough boards for animal pens and barn roofs. What wasn't immeditately used would be stored in the barracks for later. And of course the work on Rowan Keep would take a large amount of wood.

The War of the Oaks had given them a head start, but the lumberjacks would be busy for the rest of the year. Luckily, there was a lot of forest, and it grew back quickly. Whether that was an aspect of the game, or some lingering magic of the druids, they weren't sure. Either way it was convenient.

Ozzy picked up all the parts of the log and headed to the wood piles, intending to pick up Suzettes as well. She waved him off. "I can do this!" She'd been enjoying her increased strength. Like all the workers, each point of STR let her lift about 250 pounds, and that was tripled with the Haul III skill as long as they were just lifting or hauling the load. She could lift and carry over a ton and a half of weight. Of course, that assumed a good grip, even ground, and a balanced load. Heaving up a twenty-foot long beam onto her small shoulder had taken some practice. The other workers gave her space to move. She'd given some accidental bruises moving her first log after stumbling over an exposed root.

Most of the workers could handle the smaller logs that were less than three foot in diameter. They weighed between three and four thousand pounds. The huge boles of the treants and larger trees were much too large for even a team of workers, and their largest wagons couldn't carry the weight. Jorges had claimed the biggest and tallest of the trees for the re-building of Rowan Keep.

Jon and Cham were put to work cutting these trees and treants into massive timbers forty foot long and three foot square. They were the only workers who had the strength and skill to work with the large trees, splitting the trunks with the use of sledgehammers and wedges. Ozzy often got called in to help with positioning the trees. After seeing how easily Ozzy could move and lift the massive trees, both put some of the CSP they had just earned into picking up Haul 4, 5 and 6. The skill was very cheap. Possibly another of the "ACME loves you and traded away all your normal skills for things that let you work harder." benefits.

Once trimmed, the beams still weighed in at eight tons. Jorges was making plans for some specialized wagons with the ability to move the beams. He'd need one carriage at each end, and another in the middle. Ozzy saw him working on the plans and taking measurements. "New wagons?"

Jorges explained the need for them. "Yes, to move those beams. I need them for the pillars in the great hall, and to support the wall above each of the big gates. It will be slow going to get these to the keep, even with the carriages." Ozzy looked at timbers and considered. "If you don't need them for a few weeks, I can just move them up there two at a time for you. I can do two of them to a load, and make two or three trips a week."

Jorges shifted his cigar from one side of his mouth to the other. Looked at the beams, did some calculations, and looked back at the butcher. "You've got a STR of over 20 now?"

"24, actually. Leveling adze, and a LOT of butchering lately. I have to be up at Gadobhra at least three nights a week culling those heards to keep our Baron and his local Dungeon Lord happy. A lot of my skills give me experience in STR."

Jorges shook his head in disbelief. "A hell of a lot of meat going to waste, just chucking it all into that dungeon. But yes, if you can move those, that fits the timeline just fine. It will be at least two months until I need them. We'll get them up off the ground to cure and leave them to you. And thanks, that's one less headache for me."

Ozzy pitched his voice lower. "I'll see to it. And don't worry, not all the meat is getting wasted. I gave Betty a few hundred pounds of smoked bacon yesterday, the dungeon doesn't like pork belly. Make sure you get to breakfast early. Suzette ok'd the expense of real flour for biscuits, and with the Golden Goose and the Evercheese we're looking at some fine omelettes along with biscuits and gravy tomorrow."

"Bacon and biscuits? Yeah, the boys and girls on the crew will sure appreciate that. I can't wait untill we get enough crops planted to expand the menu. Thanks for the bacon. I'll make sure every knows to thank Betty and Suzette as well." Jorges rolled up the plans for log movers he could skip making for now and strode off to oversee any of a dozen projects.

Suzette was waiting for him as Ozzy finished talking to Jorges. "Are you done making secret plans for your bacon festival tomorrow? I need a long swim in the creek to wash off the sweat and sawdust, and then I have to check in at the tavern. What are we up to tonite?"

Ozzy thought about it. "We slaughted stuff in Gadobhra for two nights in a row, and we practice Scrimshaw last night, I want a night off and some good food. Let's head up to Rowan Keep and see who has something tasty cooking up."

A night off sounded lovely to Suzette. "Good idea. Let's go hit the swimming hole and then put on some of our least patched work clothes before we saunter off for a high class meal under the stars."

The question 'What are we doing tonight?' was asked a lot. The workers rolled out of bed with the sunrise, and put in their first eight hours of work by the middle of the afternoon. As they got faster and faster at their jobs, they had more time on their hands. Many of them filled that by doing even more work, or venturing into the dungeons.

Building the keep for the Legion was of huge importance to all of them. No one wanted Vernon back in charge. Billy was more and more hands off, and even Layla wasn't around the village much. Suzette and Ben were taking things over more and more and Jorges had turned over the forge to his apprentices and focused on the construction of the keep. This suited nearly all of the workers just fine.

Heading up to the keep for an evenings work was popular. They could make the jog easily in an hour and arrive with time to do a small bit of shopping at the growing merchant faire. Then volunteer for a job and put in another days work digging out foundations, moving stone from the nearby quarry, or shifting building materials from one place to another. Everyone could haul and dig, and Jorges was taking advantage of that.

The merchants enjoyed the additional trade. Small magical items from the dungeons and special materials dropped by Named Elemental creatures were easy to transport and sold well in the larger cities. The workers wanted better food, comfortable clothes, and small things for their homes. The merchants made a profit and the workers were happy with the deals.

The Centurion had made it very clear to the merchants that cheating a worker would have consequences. The Baron was promising to build what would be the biggest fortress in the far north of the Empire, and Marcus hoped to command it. Everyone knew the importance of staying on the Baron's good side.

=*=

A quick swim to freshen up followed by a couple of cantrips from Ozzy had them feeling better. Suzette ran down to the tavern to check on things. Ozzy decided to relax and take a nap, and maybe decide how to spend the experience and CSP from the war with the trees.

Zephyr was doing better and better behind the bar and rarely needed help now unless it was the busy part of the night. Suzette had made a deal with her and her parents that as long as she kept up with her alchemy she could also work on her bartending skills. She had already picked up the Mixology skill and practiced it both at the tavern and in the laboratory. Her father, Aliester, had asked to be taught how to brew beer. It took him less than half a day to become proficient in using the cantrips and making the beer they used in the tavern. He and Zephyr had a plan to switch places once he had leveled Brewing to five, and she had Mixology to a similar level. Both were hoping they could merge the skills into Strange Alchemy as Suzette had.

Looking at his statistics, it was obvious to Ozzy that he need to put points into raising the caps on STR, CON, and INT. INT had surprised him until he looked at his skills. His Active Fire Resistance, Aspect of Fire, and now, Anatomy of a Monster were giving him experience in that stat and had already raised it close to level six. He raised the cap on INT to seven, STR to ten, and CON to eight. That would cover things for now. No sense earning the experience to increase a stat and not have room for it.

The 1000 experience earned in the Oak War he dumped into Pit Alchemy. It was the skill he needed to max before going on to Tier 3. It was slowly going up, but you could only smoke so much meat each day. Another reason he wanted to work on some of the stranger recipes. The bacon he had made gave a lot more experience than just smoking sedgebeast carcasses. The experience in CHA also bumped him up another two points.

His high charisma and Enhanced Reputation had gone a long way to soothing any problems at the butcher shop. He'd made it a habit to cultivate a relaxed smile and warmly greet the people coming into the butcher shop. Mostly it was players doing quests. But all of the regular citizens appreciated having fresh meat available, and especially the huge variety his shop had available.

There had been one small incident when Val and Strongarm had come in one day though. As runt had said, the spiral horns off the rabbits were delicious. He slow roasted them on his grill. Then you could peel the horn off the meat inside. It had the consistency of crab, but with a buttery flavor. They were becoming quite popular with the residents of the town.

Val had seen the pile horns behind the glass of his display case and been horrified. It took an hour to convince her he wasn't slaughtering unicorns. Runt had not been helpful. Referring to unicorns as 'meat ponies' and explaining that their horns were twice as big. Ozzy finally gave runt a handful of coins and sent him off to the tavern for a second lunch, and worked hard to convince Val that the lad had just been joking. Ozzy hoped he had just been joking.

With all of the experience from day to day work, killing crazed treants, and nightly overtime excursions, both he and Suzette had hit Level 10. He suspected Rolly and Ben had as well, but hadn't asked. They weren't in a hurry to be moved to Tier 3, and hadn't gotten a notification about it. All of them needed more ranks in some of their skills. The delay would let them earn points and raise their stats. With how the system worked, that was important.

Each Tier you earned, it took more experience to raise statistics. Suzette hadn't earned any points of STR in Tier 1. Now it was taking 2000 experience in Tier 2 to gain what 1000 would have given her in Tier 1. Granted, she had skills now to do it with. Skills were the key to gaining the experience to raise their stats. They needed every odd skill they could get.

And they needed to do every quest they could at the Butcher's and Hunter's guilds. With how limited they were in gaining skills, nothing was too silly. Ozzy had picked up both Shark Hunting and Fishing, for instance. The first would let him use a harpoon and give him more STR skill. Granted, fishing for small trout in the deeper pools with a large spear was silly and mangled the fish too much to eat them, but if it gave him experience, he'd work on it. Regular fishing was much more relaxing. It was also one of the few ways he could earn WIS experience. He looking forward to sitting half asleep for hours next to a makeshift fishing pole and leveling the skill.

That said, he was not looking forward to raising his agility. The only way he currently knew how was through the Bull Leaping skill Suzette had found. She had worked hard at it while he'd been working on Bulldogging. They needed to switch, and neither was looking forward to it. Especially since Rolly had meantioned 'A Surprise!' that he was setting up.

Deciding what to wear was easy. Other than work clothes he had one tunic that Adrianna had made for him. It was a dark grey that went well tucked into his kilt. The long sleeves were tight at the wrist but puffed out, giving him lots of room for his large arms. The fabric was heavy and very comfortable. She'd woven it from a blend of cotton thread and the fine silk that Squirmie spun for her nests. Adrianna had said it was very difficult to work with and had given her several levels in her seamstress skills.

For Suzette she had made a similar top that went with a matching skirt, in a grey that was a shade lighter than Ozzy's tunic. This was the first time they were wearing them together. Feeling an odd tingling, he turned around suddenly as Suzette was sneaking up from behind to tickle him. He caught her in a hug and gave her a kiss.

Suzette approved. "Wow. Nice start to a night off. But how the hell did you know I was there?"

Ozzy gave her a grin. "I took a chance with the enhanced sense from the Hunter's Guild."

"Really? Hearing or smell?"

"Herd sense actually, I talked to Rolly about it first, he had some good insight to it. He says that the bulls, especially Ferdinand get an idea if any of the herd is in trouble. It has to be something that triggers a strong emotion like fear or anger. You were totally gleefull about sneaking up on me and I felt it."

That revelation made Suzette stop and think. "You know, I would never have considered something like that. I'll probably take smell, to help with brewing and alchemy, and Ben was thinking sight. But knowing when someone is in trouble sounds good. Do you get it from the whole town?"

"Not so far. I'm more aware of where you, Ben, and Rolly are right now. Maybe your the only one's in my 'herd' right now."

Suzette suddenly doubled over laughing. "Oh my, sorry, it just hit me. You have 'Cow-sense' instead of 'Spider-sense' like Spiderman."

Ozzy could tell with his 'cow-sense' that a member of his herd was highly amused. "Oh god, please don't tell that to Ben. I'll never hear the end of it."

She pointed at him. "You got bit by a radioactive cow! I can't wait to see you sprout horns."

It was only after a couple of minutes, and much difficulty, that Suzette managed to quit laughing. "Ok, hear's the deal. You take me out for a nice dinner and some shopping, and I'll be quiet for a week."

Ozzy wasn't thrilled with that deal. "And in a week? What happens then?"

Suzette smiled over her shoulder as she got changed. "You take me out again. Of course."

=*=

Ozzy's Sheet

Name Class Race Level Skill EP Boss EP Total Ozzy Pitmaster Human:80% 10 12800 3500 17800/15000 Heritage: Tough, Fire, Shadowed, Sculpted Base (200 per L) Special Benefits From Stats From CSP Total Health 2200 50,200,150 1020 50 3670 Stamina (x3) 6600 50 1050 9800 Mana 2200 50 720 2970 Characteristics Stat: T1 Base Rank Cap EP Bonus Total STR 15 9 10 7550 24 DEX 2 2 5 550 4 AGI 0 0 5 0 0 CON 15 6 8 3000 +1 22 INT 3 5 7 2800 8 WIS 0 2 5 350 2 CHR 10 4 5 1700 14 PER 0 0 5 0 0 COR 10 0 5 0 +1 11 RAD 5 4 5 1000 +2 11 Core Skills Rank One Fist of Iron3: Unarmed Combat with fists, based on STR.

Base 30%+5xSTR+10xLevel to hit. (165%)

Base 40 damage + 5xSTR (125 damage) 3 One Fist of Steel: You have a chance to stun T1 creatures. This is half as effective on T2 creatures and less effective on Bosses. You may use fists for weapon blocks. 1 If One doesn't get you, the other one will: Multiple attacks. Number is = Level. Stamina drain of 50xLevel. Usable once every three combat rounds. 1 Mitigation: You ignore 20 points of physical damage per blow. 2/3 Dark Vision: You have normal vision in normal darkness (some light) out to 20'. 1/3 Taunting Voice3: Tier 1, and many Tier 2 creatures will focus all of their attacks upon you, even when this is a poor strategy. 3/3 Don't Mess around with Jim3: You have an intimidating aura (active). Tier 1 monsters will not attack you unless in a group. You can easily intimidate those weaker than you. Effects vary on the individual, and your actions 3/3 Eyes of Magic1: You can see magical auras on T1 creatures and objects within 10'. 1/2 Playing with Fire (Fire Aspected) 1 Endless Breath 4 4 Resist Torture (Primary WIS) 1 Acid Resistance, passive. (Tertiary, Con) 1 Extra Health 1 1 Prodigy: Grilling (DEX) 1 Haul 5 (six times normal lifting.) 5 Dark Vision 2 2 Mitigation 3 3 Smoke of a Distant Fire (Smoke Aspect: fire+dark 1 Jumping Jack 1 Skills Name Stat Level EP P/S/T Pit Alchemy CHA 8 3000 Primary Butchering STR 7 3000 Primary Slaughter STR 6 2350 Primary Choice Cuts WIS 3 350 Primary Precision Cuts DEX 3 350 Primary Anatomy of a Monster INT 3 350 Primary Hack Undead STR 3 350 Tertiary Active Fire Resistance INT 6 1800 Primary Aspect of Fire INT 5 1000 Primary Poison Resistance CON 1100 1000 Tertiary Caber STR 5 1000 Primary Billhook STR 7 2100 Primary Meat Hook DEX 0 0 Primary Demon Slaying RAD 5 1000 Primary Fire Eating CON 7 2100 Primary Boar Hunting STR 3 400 Primary Bulldogging STR 2 300 Primary Acid Resistance CON 2 200 Tertiary Grilling DEX 1 50 Tertiary Adze STR 5 1000 Primary Bear Hug STR 0 0 Primary Skinning DEX 0 0 Primary Skrimshaw DEX 1 100 Primary Shark Hunting STR 0 0 Primary Fishing WIS 0 0 Primary Hide Crafting DEX 1 50 Primary Dig ************ 2 Haul ************ 5 Herd Sense ************ 1 Butcher Shop Basics ************ 1 Enhanced Reputation ************ 1 Cantrip: Curse Dark 0 Cantrip: Clean Light 0