Viora healed me without complaint, and Tedor didn’t say a word when I returned to the logging camp, although I noticed the others glancing at my ragged shirt. Emilina sent me to help out a man named Iorg, and the rest of the day passed swiftly enough. As I dragged a second tree back through the woods – this time staying quiet and watching the forest far more carefully – I took a look at the notifications that had popped up while I worked.

Skill: Weapon Focus (Axes) has gained a level

Weapon Focus (Axes): Initiate 2

Benefits: 1% Armor Penetration per skill rank

Skill: Endurance has gained a level

Endurance: Initiate 3

Benefits: Rest requirements reduced by 10% + 1% per skill rank

You have 56 Unallocated XP

Because this XP was not earned through any of your Professions, it will be lost in 24 hours.

“Wait, Sara, what’s this about lost XP?” I asked with a minor flash of irritation.

“Killing the pisik didn’t really help any of your professions, John,” she explained patiently. “It didn’t help with the world’s imbalance; you didn’t do it bare-handed; it wasn’t a moon-cursed creature. I can hold the energy for a day – less than a day, now, really – before it will dissipate.”

“So, it’s just lost?”

“Well, if you adopt a profession that could use it in the next day, then no. I can apply it to that profession. Otherwise, it’ll be gone.” She appeared in front of me, looking like a short woman wearing a leather biker jacket, her dirty blonde hair cut short and unevenly, a silver stud piercing her left eyebrow setting off her dark blue eyes. As I walked through the forest, she kept pace with me, but she didn’t bother going around the trees in her path. She wasn’t really there, after all, so she could just walk through them like a phantom. It was a bit disconcerting, but I ignored it and kept my eyes fouces on the surrounding forest.

“You’ve been lucky enough to be offered some great professions, John,” she said, her face and voice very serious as she spoke. “The problem is, they’re mostly fairly specialized, so when you do things that don’t fall within the purview of one of them, you’re just losing XP. It might be a good idea to grab one or two generic, common professions that you can always level, no matter what. They won’t give you much, but at least you won’t miss out on possible XP.”

I sighed. I hadn’t really considered the downside to having rare and specialized professions, but I could see that there was one. “So, you’re saying that if I took something like Warrior, I would always have a dump profession for my XP.”

“I wouldn’t have called it that,” she laughed. “But yes, it would be a way to automatically capture any XP that didn’t apply to other professions. Warrior is a good idea, but I’d also add these two.”

A screen flashed in my vision, vision, transparent enough to see through easily but just opaque enough to be legible.

Scholar

Common

A person focused on gaining knowledge

Investigator

Standard

A person who attempts to solve mysteries or puzzles

“This way, any time you learn new information, you’ll level up Scholar, and whenever you’re trying to find someone or something, you’ll improve Investigator. It’ll catch a lot of the XP you’ve been losing so far.”

I quickly added the three new professions to my growing list.

Profession Chosen:

Warrior

Common

Primary Stats:

Prowess, Skill

Ability Gained:

Improved Weapon Focus

Ability: Improved Weapon Focus

Passive Martial Ability

Your Warrior profession adds +1 rank to all your Weapon Focus skills per 10 full levels.

Profession Chosen:

Scholar

Common

Primary Stats:

Reason

Ability Gained:

Heightened Learning

Ability: Heightened Learning

Passive Knowledge Ability

Your learning speed is increased by 3% per 2 full levels of your Scholar profession

Profession Chosen:

Investigator

Standard

Primary Stats:

Reason, Perception

Ability Gained:

Deft Tracker

Ability: Deft Tracker

Passive Skill Ability

Your Perception for the purposes of using the Tracking skill is increased by +1 per 2 full levels of your Investigator Profession

I added the 56 XP to my Warrior profession and read through my new abilities while I lugged the log through the forest. None of them really aided me right away; they all required me to level the profession to get any use from them. I supposed that made sense, really. If that weren’t the case, I could become extremely overpowered simply by choosing a hundred different professions and enjoying the benefits of all those new abilities. This way, I had to actually fight, study, or investigate to get any benefit from the professions.

Of course, some my rarer professions automatically gave me new skills or abilities when I gained them, but then, those were always tightly bound to whatever that profession was. Undead Hunter was a great example; I got some great abilities from it, but only if I was dealing with the undead. Sense Undead wouldn’t have helped me much in Kuan, but it was super useful now.

The rest of the afternoon passed swiftly enough. We stripped the branches off the fallen trees, by which point Tedor and his partner finally felled the one they were working on. I started to trim it, but Emilina stopped me.

“Iorg and Costa can handle that one,” she said. “You and I are going to start working on a new tree. That way, when Stefana and Nicu fell the one they’re on, they can take over from us, and they’ll be a bit ahead.”

“Fine with me,” I shrugged. She took me over to a tree about two feet in diameter and pointed out the ‘X’ that someone had cut into the trunk.

“This means that we’re taking this one,” she said.

“Why this one as opposed to any others?”

“Several reasons, but mainly because it’s the right size. Any thicker than this, and it would take three of us two days or more to bring it down.” She slammed her axe into the side of the tree facing away from the clearing, hitting it above waist height with a downward blow. She repeated the motion several times until she’d cut an angled slice into the tree. She then began swinging upward to make a second line a few inches below the first.

“This is where we’ll notch the tree,” she explained. “I’ll make the upward cuts; you make the downward ones. Once we’ve cut out a notch, we’ll move to the other side and cut straight into it. That way, when the tree falls, it’ll fall away from the clearing.”

I nodded and waited for her to make the first blow. I’d watched the others working, and I’d realized that they traded hits on the tree rather than striking it at the same time. I assumed that was a safety issue; if they were both striking together and something went wrong, someone might get hit by an axe. Considering that no one here wore armor, that seemed like a good way for someone to lose an arm or leg.

“You were saying that thicker trees…” I slammed the axe down into the line Emilina had cut, sinking it only a short distance into the hard wood. “…are harder to cut. Why?”

“Darkwood trees get harder as they age.” She chopped into the tree. “One that’s smaller this this is too young to have hard enough wood for our purposes.” She chopped again. “One bigger than this will start to form a dense core that’s really hard to get through.”

I swung at the tree again, feeling the shock through the handle as the blade quivered a quarter inch or so in the wood. “Why don’t you use saws, then?” Another stroke at the trunk followed. “Wouldn’t they be easier?”

“Too hard to sharpen,” she shook her head. “A crosscut saw would be dull before we were halfway through. We can sharpen axes easily enough with a grindstone, but sharpening a saw takes special tools and a lot of time that we don’t have.”

I nodded; I was still thinking like a 21st century Earthling, where everything was easier with technology. I had a bone saw – don’t ask – and I knew how to sharpen one, but it took a special tool to align the teeth and a taper file to sharpen them. I supposed both of those were harder to make by hand, and I wouldn’t want to sharpen a saw without them.

Once again, the more I swing my axe, the easier it became. The sun’s warmth surrounded me, and my muscles filled with energy. I stopped whenever Emilina told me to, but I didn’t really need to. My hands were sore and were probably going to blister by the morning, but I figured Viora could heal that easily enough. My muscles weren’t tired in the slightest, and while I was sweaty and thirsty, the cool air kept me comfortable.

One of the other teams felled a tree, and Emilina and I moved to clear it, allowing them to take over the tree we’d been working on. We’d just finished that one when Tedor finally called a halt.

“Sun’s lowering,” he told everyone, halting their work immediately. “Time to call it a day.”

We dragged the trunks back to the road, where to my surprise a girl of about twelve dressed in a plain, gray frock with pale blonde hair stood waiting beside a large animal with a massive body, four short but sturdy hooved legs, thick, shaggy, gray fur, and a wide head with a short, flat muzzle and four spiraled horns jutting from its head. The animal was hitched to a flat, open, wooden wagon on eight metal-rimmed wooden wheels, facing away from us, and I watched its tail twitch as it lowered its head to take a bite of the grass at the side of the dirt path, chewing the mouthful contentedly.

“Sun’s Peace, Maratin,” Tedor raised a hand toward the girl.

“Sun’s Peace, Tedormar,” she replied in a piping voice. I noticed both of them relax subtly as they spoke those words; that simply reaffirmed my belief that the greeting was more than just a salutation. There was something special about it.

“We’ve got five logs today,” he told her, indicating the fallen trunks we’d dragged out to the road. “Think one vasak can handle them all?”

“Doro can handle it,” the girl said confidently, patting the placid animal on the flank.

Tedor shrugged, and I followed Emilina’s direction as we all worked together to lift the heavy, dense trunks and load them onto the flat bed, placing the thick end on the wagon and letting the tapered end hang off. Once all five trunks were placed, the girl grabbed a leather lead attached to the vasak’s horns and pulled. The animal moved obediently forward, hauling the heavy load that had to weigh several tons. The wagon creaked and groaned beneath the weight, but it held without seeming issue.

“Sun-blessed darkwood,” Emilina told me, probably seeing the doubtful look on my face. “It’s strong as good steel and won’t warp as easily.”

I nodded, not that I understood everything she’d said. I wasn’t sure if “sun-blessed” meant that the wood was special among darkwood or it was enchanted somehow. By context, I could see it going either way.

We followed the wagon back to the village, where I helped load the trunks into some racks in a large shed that was already stacked with a couple dozen more logs and had cloudy glass windows set into the roof. To do that, we first shifted five trunks from a low rack down onto the floor, then replaced those with five from the rack above the first one, and so on until we’d cleared a space on the top rack for our new acquisitions. It seemed that the logs in each rack were heavier than the ones below them, a fact I mentioned to Emilina.

“This is the drying shed,” the woman told me, pointing up to the windows. “The sun slowly bakes the water from the logs so that they’re easier to move and split once it’s time to cut them into planks.”

“You have to split them into planks, too? That seems like a lot of work.”

“No,” she laughed. “Old Gogu over in Panja, two villages over, owns a sawmill. After the close moon, he’ll come buy the driest trunks from us, then turn them into lumber that he sells to city merchants.”

“I take it finished planks are more expensive than cut logs, then?”

“Of course. Gogu had to go to the trouble and expense of building the sawmill, and it costs him argents to maintain the equipment and keep the blades sharpened. He has to make that back, plus some extra for himself. It’s only fair.”

“Why not build your own mill, then?”

“Our only water is underground,” she pointed out. “Without running water, we can’t power the mill, and trying to set up an underground wheel…” She shuddered. “I don’t even want to think about how much that would cost. It’d take us a century to make back the investment, assuming we could maintain it at all.”

I followed the others to the center of the village, where a series of tables were set up, all loaded with food. Emulating the woman, I grabbed a plate that looked like a hollowed-out and sanded wooden disc and piled it with browned meat, some sort of orange vegetable, and a hunk of warm bread. I also took a metal tankard of what turned out to be surprisingly smooth and rich beer.

“This is good,” I observed, holding up the tankard.

“Raluca’s brew,” Emilina told me as the two of us sat down in the grass filling the square, pointing to an older woman with graying, brown hair and a powerful build that stood beside a large barrel resting on its side. “She’s been perfecting it for years.”

“You could probably sell this, too, you know.”

“I agree, but Raluca says it’s not ready for sale yet,” she laughed. “Personally, I think she’s just worried that it won’t sell and making excuses not to try, but that’s her business, not mine.”

“Wouldn’t it help the entire village?”

“Not really. We’re mostly self-sufficient. We raise crops in the fields to the south, we’ve got the herd of vasaks and the game Renica brings in for meat and milk, and the Darkwood provides us all the wood we need. We only have to pay for stone for Lacramora the stonecutter and metal of Dimi the blacksmith, and the logs we sell give us all the income we need for those.”

“Don’t forget my hides,” a voice spoke, and I glanced up to see Renica walk over to sit beside us, her massive dog trotting along at her side, holding two plates of food.

“True,” Emilina nodded. “The point is, more argents would be nice – Vasily could save them up for a time when we might need them – but they aren’t really necessary.”

I nodded as I dug into my food. The meat was a bit tough, and the bread was bland, but I was starving. I didn’t know why – I’d eaten plenty while I was recovering – but it seemed that my new body ran through food far more quickly than I was used to.

“So, how was logging?” Renica asked. I held up the piece of bread in my hand, unable to speak due to the chunk in my mouth, and Renica waited patiently while I chewed and swallowed.

“It was fun,” I finally said with complete sincerity. In truth, it had been, if a bit monotonous. I wasn’t tired or sore, and the work was easy enough. “I think I did okay for my first day.”

Emilina snorted. “You did more than okay,” she told me. “You cut more than I did, and that was after the pisik attack.”

“Pisik?” Renica asked, her eyes narrowed.

I nodded. “One ambushed the two of us while we were hauling a trimmed log.” Her face reflected concern, and I hastened to reassure her. “Don’t worry, I killed it, and afterward, I was on the lookout for more of them.”

“You killed a pisik with that hatchet?” she asked. “That’s fairly impressive – although it does explain the state of your shirt.” She shook her head. “You should give that to Ovidu. He’ll sew it back up for you tonight.” She paused. “That’s not what bothers me, though.”

“What’s wrong?” Emilina said.

“There’s something – odd in the forest,” Renica replied slowly. “The animals are behaving very aggressively. They aren’t hiding the way they usually do, and they even attacked me a couple times.” She held up her arm, and I saw that her sleeve was ripped, with a healing scab beneath it. “This was from a vulpik. It leaped at me from a tree while its mate charged Vikarik, here.”

“A vulpik?” Emilina repeated. “They don’t attack omeni, and they flee from cairniks!”

“Usually, that’s right. They hunt small game; omeni are just too large for one, and cairniks look at them as prey.” She looked at me and pointed at my shirt. “However, pisiks don’t usually hunt omeni, either. They might attack to drive you out of their territory or away from their young, but not an ambush like that.” She shook her head. “Something’s wrong.”

“What’s wrong?” a deep voice interrupted, and I glanced up to see the white-haired Vasily standing over us. Renica quickly explained what she’d told us, and the old man frowned.

“We’ll ask the Sorvaraji to do an augury for us,” he declared. “Perhaps the sun’s light will illuminate this mystery.” He glanced down at us. “I was going to take you to her, anyway, Ionat. You need a place to sleep tonight, and there aren’t any spare beds in the village.”

“He could stay with the loggers,” Emilina volunteered. She looked over at me, and I felt a tad uncomfortable as I saw the smolder in her eyes. “I’m sure we could find room for him.”

Vasily grunted. “I’m sure there’s room for him in the Altar,” he said. “That’s where strangers typically stay.”

Emilina made a dissatisfied face, and I concealed a grin. She was a good-looking woman, and I was tempted to take her up on her offer, but I didn’t really know anything about the village yet. Did she have parents who’d be unhappy with me? A boyfriend that might challenge me to a duel? Even just an admirer who might be jealous? None of those things really appealed to me, and until I understood the situation more, I wasn’t that interested in stirring up the local waters, so to speak.

Instead, I finished my meal and rose to my feet. “Thanks for the offer,” I told Emilina with a wink. “I’m fine staying in the Altar, though.”

I followed Vasily to the open building after stopping to hand my plate to a man standing beside a large tub, apparently scrubbing the dishes. “That’s a tough job to be assigned,” I noticed.

“We all take turns doing it,” Vasily laughed. “Same with setting up and cleaning up. Your turn will come, don’t worry.”

“That’s fine. I just wouldn’t want to have to do that every day.” I’d spent time as a dishwasher for assignments before, and it was a terrible job that didn’t pay nearly enough to justify doing it for a living.

“Not many would.”

We found Viora in the Altar, and when Vasily explained what he wanted, she simply nodded.

“We can perform the augury at high sun tomorrow, Vasily. It’ll be strongest then.” She looked at me. “And perhaps you can assist me. You can consider it the second part of your training.”

“Second part?” I asked.

“Yes.” She took out a thick, heavy book. “Can you read?”

“Yes,” I nodded. I probably couldn’t yet, to be honest, but I trusted Sara to quickly decipher the text for me.

“Then begin reading this tonight. Read as much as possible, and we will discuss it at sunrise.”

“Tomorrow, you’ll be going out with Renica,” Vasily told me. “If it goes like today, she could use the help, and I promised to give you whatever training you need. After the augury, you and I can begin our training together.”

“Our training?” I repeated.

“With axes,” he nodded. “I’ll scrounge up a pair in the morning and a couple of targes, as well. If you’re going to help defend the village, we need to make sure you actually know what you’re doing.”

“But I have an axe,” I protested.

He laughed, shaking his head. “My boy, that’s not an axe. Trust me. You’ll see.”

“That he will,” Viora shooed the older man out of the room. “Now leave him. You’ll have plenty of time to play tomorrow.”

Play? I looked at Vasily’s grinning face as I opened the book and realized that there was a good chance the old man and I had different ideas of how to play. I wasn’t sure I wanted to find out was his was.