They walked toward the southern gate with purpose, doing their best not to break into a run. Running was suspicious. Walking toward the gate with a ‘don’t fuck with me’ glare and long, stompy steps? That was just business.

Rory: Layla, if we get out of this alive, I’m going to kill you.

Layla: Oh, c’mon. We’re having fun, right?

Erin: I’m gonna bonk both of you with my gauntlets if you don’t quit spamming chat and walk faster.

In the right circumstances, a minute can seem to stretch into an hour, and a quarter mile can seem like a marathon. No shouting clerks, charging guards, or goose-stepping inquisition stopped them as they neared the south gate. The guard there looked up briefly from the wagon he was inspecting, noted their weapons and backpacks, and waved them out of the gates onto the south road.

“There’s no way we can be this lucky,” Jack huffed, trying to slow his breathing.

“You cast mind control on a GOVERNMENT AGENT, Layla!” Rory whispered fiercely.

“Well, she was… trying to extort us?” she replied weakly.

“I had that well in hand,” his voice steadily rose.

“I mean, I know, but… umm… magic?” the words seemed unwilling to escape the clutches of her mouth.

“Your excuse is ‘because you had a button to press, you pressed it’!?” he was almost yelling.

Jack: Rory, too much. People are staring.

Rory: We could be hanged, or burned at the stake, or mounted on pikes THROUGH THE ASS, JACK! Do you understand!? They could kill us. Dead. D. E. D. Dead. Because Layla wanted to spend mana instead of waiting two more minutes for me to convince Frau-Sheisse-For-Brains to let us go and not say anything to the bloody Nazi inquisition. The. Nazi. Inquisition. Jack.

Erin: We got it Rory. Ya done?

Jack: No more Leroy moments, Layla. It’s not a wipe and reset. We die here, we may bloody stay dead. And that’s absolutely less concerning to me than the idea that they might cook our fucking feet and feed them to us, you understand?

“Yes,” she choked the word out between tears.

“Stop that. Don’t… ah… fuck,” he sighed. “C’mere. Silly tart.”

She buried her face against his tunic, “I’m… fffff … ffff… sorry, Roh-fff-reee…”

“It’s alright, just… ah, fuck. Alright, alright. Come on, dry it up would you?” he patted her head.

“So, I don’t mean to interrupt, but, uh, where the fuck are we going now?” Jack scratched his head and shifted his feet in the dirt of the road.

“I suppose we’ll head south along the road, into the forest. The clerk said it was mostly safe if we stuck to the road and didn’t wander off, yeah?” Rory replied.

“We, snFFffff… could… snff… get some more xp... “ Layla began to wipe at her eyes with the ends of her sleeves.

“That’s my fearless demon,” Erin leaned in and hugged her. “Let’s go kill some monsters.”

-----

The Fyrwood was less of a ‘wood’ and more of a sub-tropical pine forest. Now that the four were off the mountainside and nearer to sea level, the Empire’s sweltering climate was beginning to have an impact. In their heavy armor, Jack and Erin’s Endurance skills had shot up to their cap halfway through the first day, and even Rory was feeling the heat. Even with the new skills, their Stamina steadily dropped from pure, stifling exhaustion. Layla seemed largely unaffected, but still asked for breaks every few hours.

Arguably, the heat was more of an issue than the monsters. They got the impression that the Fyrwood was allowed to exist so close to the imperial capitol solely to give its novice adventurers somewhere to hone their skills. Slimes seemed ubiquitous, mostly of the green variety, but they spotted a half-dozen monster species in the first day, the most annoying of which were easily the volkelaks, knee-high beaver-muskrat-weasel things. The bucktoothed creatures had thick, durable, brown-furred hides, squat legs, and long, noodly bodies with generous rumps terminating in a flat, otter-like tail, which they thumped against the ground to warn each other of danger. Their mouths were built like a giant rat, with long sharp incisors and a handful of molars on each jaw, and they were perfectly capable of savaging flesh to the bone if they got ahold of a body part not covered in metal. More importantly, they were utter cowards if outnumbered, but would swarm solitary prey, including predators and adventurers, if given a chance.

They’d spotted a cluster of the things scavenging what appeared to be the remains of an elk, or something like an elk. They were even numbers, so it was a coin toss whether the critters would flee.

Erin: Same as last time? I charge, Jack follows, Rory looks for backstab opportunities, and Layla stays back and chucks firebolts?

Jack: It worked with a bigger group than this.

Rory: Yeah, only issue will be if they decide we outnumber them, then they’ll scarper.

Layla: Ready check?

Erin: Good.

Rory: Good.

Jack: Roll for initiative.

“CHARGE!” Erin’s war cry echoed through the clearing as she was catapulted forward by the martial art, barrelling into the mass of beaver-weasels, ending her movement with an armored backhand that sent one of the critters tumbling into a tree with a satisfying crack.

Layla immediately followed her by summoning a fist-sized ball of flame and slinging the Firebolt directly into the downed volkelak, receiving a kill notification as her reward. She quickly stepped behind Jack as he rushed toward the mass of beasts, where he side-stepped a pair of razored teeth and dipped his blade to the left and down directly into the critter’s mouth, the off-kilter slash of Crooked Hew penalizing its defense and resulting in a devastating critical hit. In the same smooth motion, he stomped down and wrenched the blade out of the beast’s body. Coupled with the bludgeoning from Erin’s charge and the prodigious internal injury, the creature would bleed out within moments and was in no shape to be a further danger.

Rory had slipped up behind Jack, and as one of the volkelak rounded on Erin, she slammed her bracer against it’s bare-fanged face, abruptly ending an attempt to bite her leg. Rory took the opportunity to ram his quillion just behind the beast’s shoulder and jerk the blade abruptly to the side, making what was already a serious puncture into a catastrophic internal laceration. He ignored the notice of his successful Backstab and instead threw a handful of dirt and leaves into the face of the final critter worrying at Erin’s left greave. He was rewarded with a snort as it spit Erin’s leg out and rubbed it’s face against it’s rat-like hands. She finished the fight with a violent stomp from her hob-nailed boots, the impact releasing a sickening crack as the creature’s skull surrendered to the force.

“Do you feel like this is getting easier?” Jack leaned over, catching his breath.

“Dunno if you’ve noticed, but as our skills rank up, we get better at using them. I’ve never fought with a dagger. Never fought with anything really, other than a couple schoolyard fist-fights,” Rory wiped his blade across the furred back of the volkelak.

“Yeah, I’m definitely hitting a lot harder than on the mountain,” Erin didn’t even seem winded.

“I wonder if that’s a normal thing here, where everyone gets steadily better by ranking up, or if it’s just us,” Layla mused.

“Worth asking someone about when we find someone we can trust,” Rory replied.

“Hey, what time is it? I feel like it might be dinner time,” Erin grinned.

“C’mon, Erin, can’t you just eat rations?” Jack whined.

“Nope. Pancakes. Yummeh, in mah tummeh. Doooooo it,” she laughed.

Jack pulled up his panel, looking back over the previous updates. They’d come across a merchant wagon transporting mostly food, and the group had insisted he get ingredients to cook. ‘In the interest of leveling his job, of course.’ After looking over the merchant’s goods, he’d haggled a bit, and bought everything they needed for a solid breakfast, as well as enough for dinner. Based on the cost, including the ludicrously expensive syrup, they’d need to eat more trail rations until they could make some more money. Even with the barter for the monster hides they’d harvested, they were down to a handful of silvers. After cooking the food in the mess kit included in his gear, he’d pulled up his panel and stared wide-eyed for a solid minute.

Appraise Skill Level Up.

Appraise Skill Level Up.

Haggle Skill Level Up.

Haggle Skill Level Up.

Knives Skill Level Up.

Knives Skill Level Up.

Congratulations, you have reached Cook Level 2.

Your Health, Stamina, Mana, and Spirit have increased.

You have pending Options.

Knives Skill Level Up.

Craft: Cooking Skill Level Up.

Craft: Cooking Skill Level Up.

Craft: Cooking Skill Level Up.

Your Cooking Skill is capped. (You still gained experience.)

Your Cooking Skill is capped. (You still gained experience.)

Your Cooking Skill is capped. (You still gained experience.)

Congratulations, you have reached Cook Level 3.

Your Health, Stamina, Mana, and Spirit have increased.

You have pending Options.

>>

You have 1 Optional Feature.

You have gained Make Due I.

Make Due I: You can create flavorful dishes with less than stellar ingredients. Has increased effect with higher quality ingredients.

You have 1 Attribute bonus.

Choose Agility or Mind.

Your Mind has improved by 1.

The maximum rank of your Mind skills has increased by 1.

He’d been absolutely stunned, silently turning the panel for the others to see.

“I mean, I’m not shocked, cooking is complicated, and you already know how to do it. The system is just catching up with your actual proficiency,” Layla said around a mouthful of pancake. “These are so good. Why are these so good?”

“Bacon grease,” he said absently, still staring at his panel. “This is insane.”

“The system must consider southern-style breakfast with seasonings to be a higher level meal than a starting cook would normally attempt,” Rory dipped the fatty sausage in the remains of his syrup and took another bite. “I bet that trick with the bacon grease raised your difficulty too.”

“So, if my skill is too low to do a task, but I know how to do it anyway, I can still succeed?” he looked up.

“Seems that way. Maybe you get some kind of bonus. Or maybe cooking is still like chemistry here. You know, if you do it right, you automatically succeed?” Layla continued to speak through her food. “I wonder if, like, alchemy works that way.”

“Maybe. But I suspect that magical stuff has less leeway than purely mundane tasks,” Rory replied as he shoveled his last bite of egg into his mouth. "Don't you have some ability that makes you more likely to succeed?"

"Yeah, it's called 'refined palette', which is hilarious, given that I used it to make a greasy spoon breakfast," he snorted and took another bite.

“You know, if the regular people here don’t have these screens, they might not even know that doing something beyond your skill level will create big gains,” Erin spoke up.

“Nah, someone somewhere is gonna exploit or close any loophole,” Rory smiled as he wiped his mouth. “If it works that way for everyone, regardless of whether they have status panels, someone out there is abusing it to level up fast.”

He wasn’t wrong.