DAY 57

Today had been a slow start. There had been an excessive amount of drinking, and then the three of us had crawled into our room, and the humans had gone to theirs.

I was laying on the bed, Shrya had her head on my leg again, twitching slightly as she dreamed about something. Abe was in the corner again. Him being too tall to even fit on the bed made decisions easy. The puppy was sprawled out on top of him.

It felt entirely too early to get out of bed, so I was playing with my wand. Now that abjuration had been discovered I was curious to develop it. Those warding spells had saved my life, so I was casting them on myself over and over, and then meditating to regain mana. Watching a skilled Abjurer in action had given me a lot of insight, and I was making decent progress. Experimenting had discovered another of the spells she had used.

[Shield(Abjuration, Spell, Channelling)

Mana Cost: 50 per second

Cast Time: 0.25 seconds

Range: 0.5 Meter

Critical Chance: 16%.

Creates a transparent hemispherical shield possessing 200 armour and +50% global resistance. The shield only provides protection in the direction it is pointing, but can be freely moved. A critical cast doubles the armour rating.]

A shimmering shield appeared in front of my wand like an umbrella, sustained for a few seconds, and then collapsed into sparkles. It consumed a tremendous amount of mana, which made it a good choice for also developing my mana pool and meditation skills. I could cast it without the wand, but that used even more mana. For some reason making a forcefield was easier than [Open Mind] which I still hadn’t figured out how to cast manually.

An hour of practicing this morning had done me more good than entire days had in the past. Abjuration was up to rank 7, and my mana pool had just increased to 150. Meditation had just hit 25, informing me I was now a Practitioner, and would now regain 5 mana every 20 seconds while meditating as well as increasing my passive mana regeneration rate to 5 points every 45 minutes rather than 5 every 60 minutes. It came with an extra surprise.

[Skill challenges available]

[Meditation trait: To prove yourself a Focused Meditator demonstrate your ability to ignore discomfort by meditating while below maximum health. Progress 2/100]

“No more sparkles.” Shrya groaned, pressing her face into the mattress.

“Thanks for saving my ass out there.” I flicked the tip of her ear lightly. She mumbled something I didn’t understand and then slithered off the bed and under it.

“Do you want to stay in town for a few days? We’ve got the money for it now.”

“Too loud.”

“Okay. Well I’m going to go run some errands. I’ll be back later.”

I put on my spare outfit, being the only clean and undamaged things I owned, and then grabbed my pack and some other supplies. My chest armour had a big hole on the side of it, the leather and even iron pierced clear through. That shadow spear had been brutal. A few centimeters closer and I would probably have had an arm-sized hole in my lung.

I grabbed my stuff and headed out. Abe still hadn’t moved, but I was pretty sure he wasn’t dead, judging by the way one of his fingers kept slowly petting the puppy.

On the way through the inn I stopped by the bounty board. Loggers were needed to cut down and process trees for an emergency expedition north to the forest, pay would be 50 silver for each tree felled and loaded into the wagons. It was back in the direction of the blueskins, but shouldn’t be dangerous. I doubted they had made it that far in any significant numbers. Expedition would be leaving from the market at 2 pm, which was in two and a half hours, with an hour travel, three hours work, and then an hour travel back. I had gotten pretty decent at cutting down trees, and figured I could get an easy 700 silver, potentially double that depending on if they didn’t need us to load the wagons ourselves.

A glance over the other jobs showed anything near that lucrative was way outside my scope, such as hunting down “Hofnyr Giantsbane” a bandit of nearly legendary reputation, who had single handedly invaded a town south of here, killed most of the male giants, and declared himself king. Payment would be 5000 gold upon his death. I couldn’t help but glance out the window at a few of the Giants within sight. How exactly would one manage to kill an entire town of them? Poison? A drone strike?

The other jobs were all extremely menial tasks, like 10 silver for shovelling out the stables. I dismissed those and went out to the market, looking for someone selling leather. All I had at the moment was the Shade hide, which was less protective than anything other than rabbit hide, but had a very nice camouflaging trait. It didn’t take long to find someone with a few hides stretched out on racks.

“Got anything strong enough to replace this?” I held up the armour. The giant merchant leaned down to inspect it, and then held up a hide from the rack.

“Fine Elk hide, good and strong. 70 silver each.”

“Do you have any dyes? Something to change the colour?”

“I have few. 25 silver each.” The giant brought out a box of vials, black was the most common, then some browns, five bottles of dark grey, and a smattering of other colours.

“I’ll take those five grey, and three red.” I did some mental calculations. “How about five elk hides, the eight dyes, and a dozen bundles of sinew for six gold and two silver?”

"Five silver, and only six sinews.”

“Fine. Is there a blacksmith nearby?”

“No smith. Good Tailor though.” The merchant shrugged.

I handed over the coins, and then put the jacket on to free up my hands and staggered out with my load. The dyes came with a handy tutorial when I picked them up, just dump the contents on the item you wanted to change the colour of. Simple enough.

I figured since I had some money I might as well check out the tailor here. Their shop was only a few doors down, and it didn’t take long to see that they were more skilled, or just more patient, than I. The miner’s jacket Shrya wore was about to fall apart, Abe’s gear wasn’t much better. My own was looking a bit strained, some of the seams loosening.

“How much would you charge for three sets of jacket and pants? I can supply the materials.”

“Hmm, let me see. Put them up here.”

When I had the hides, dye, and sinew laid out he started inspecting them, running his hands over, bending and stretching it, even licking a part of the hide. It gave me a deeper appreciation for just being able to glance at stuff to inspect it.

“I can work with this. Of a style similar to what you have now? I can do twenty gold per set.” He looked at the bundles of sinew disdainfully, sliding them back towards me, “With proper thread.”

That would be half my funds right there. I groaned and looked around the shop. He did good work, both more protective and more durable than I could.

“Okay, fine. How long will it take?”

“Two hours.”

“Sounds good.”

“Shall I dye the pieces now?”

“Does it matter?”

“Two bottles of dye now, for all the hides, or six once the pieces are finished.”

“Oh, okay. Yeah, do that. Grey for them all.”

The tailor smoothly opened the bottle of dye, touched it to the hide, and suddenly a third of the ink was gone and the hide had changed to a dark grey.

While he was working on that, I wandered around the town. There was a nervous energy. Not fear, but more of anticipation. Some of the merchants seemed to be taking almost whatever deal they could, and several were packing up and ready to travel.

Nobody seemed to be paying me much attention, though I did spot the goblins from the other night getting hassled. Maybe it was the clothing, everyone assumed I was a Follower, while these tribal ones were mostly just wearing loincloths, and some belts or slings for their bags and tools.

An argument had started outside the Inn, and from the looks of it a few of the Humans were telling them to leave. I didn’t want to get dragged into any feud here, so I just kept walking.

After a while I found a quiet corner and sat on a large rock to try out the meditation method that Kim had mentioned. It made sense, but ultimately it wasn’t special compared to my previous concept of ‘suck up mana through a tiny straw’ that I had been using. I tried to imagine a bucket going up and down, and the mana just sloshing back out. The best I could do was shorter bursts of effort rather than a long sustained effort.

With each mental slurp green light flickered around my hands, as the mana escaped my control. I did that for half an hour, until I was on the verge of developing another headache, then I headed back to the tailor’s shop.

The three outfits were ready, even with a bit of leftover elk hide. They looked great, with a simple understated elegance.

“Oh, that’s excellent.” They had lace-up fronts, as zippers and snaps didn’t seem to exist here.

“Thank you, I take pride in my work.”

I brought my bundle of leathers back to my cart at the inn and got out the red dye and carefully painted on a spiky red leaf on the backs of the jackets. Well, the paint dripped and ran a bit since I was doing this manually, but it was close enough. Interestingly enough the paint did dry within seconds, and the bottles vanished when empty.

With the scrap elk hide I crafted two small pouches.

Then I grabbed what might be the last bit of soap and scrubbed off my gear, starting with my good clothing, thankful every second that doing so only took a few cursory movements and didn’t require water. Just rub the soap onto the item and watch the dirt vanish.

Then I grabbed the leathers and brought them into our rented room. Shrya and Abe were awake, and both stared at me in a way suggesting I had interrupted something. Becka ran over to headbutt me in the leg and sniff excitedly.

“Hey, I’ve got something for you.” I laid the leathers onto the bed.

“For me?” Abe asked, picking up a jacket to sniff it.

“Yeah, if you want. I think you’re outgrowing the stuff you already have.”

He enthusiastically started getting dressed. I wondered if the lacing would give him trouble, but once he got the jacket on it tightened and tied itself.

“Fancy!”

Shrya was looking at the other outfit and I couldn’t tell what she was thinking.

“What are you two up to?”

“Nothing.” She hissed, and then took the clothes. They both seemed far more alert now. I wondered if there was a hangover potion.

“I saw another job, an easy one, just cutting down trees north of here, leaving in a few minutes. I know we’ve got a lot of gold now, but it’s going to run out pretty quick if I have to start paying for repairs and stuff in town.”

“Is good. Lets go.” Abe said, running his hands along his new jacket.

“Fine.” Shrya strapped on her belt and grabbed her shortspear.

“First, something else.” I got out the two pouches, and then gave each of them 25 gold coins, almost all that I had left. “You’ve both helped a lot. Thanks.”

Then I put on my own leathers, and they fit magnificently. All the clothing here fit, but these had something extra.

That left my old and tattered ones, and I dug my claws into it, shredding the leather and it went poof into just a bit of dust.

We got to the market just as the first logging wagon was starting to move. I paid one of the merchants a few silver to leave the puppy with him while we were gone.

The logging group was three human sized wagons pulled by horses, each looked like it could hold two dozen trees or more, one giant sized wagon pulled by a mammoth and the gods only knew how many trees it could haul.

“Hey, still need one more logger?”

“Sure do. Hop on!” The others were a mix of humans and young giants. I had been noticing a bit of a trend, the older the giants got, the larger they got and the slower they moved. Did they just stop moving entirely one day when they got old enough?

The one I ended up sitting beside looked quite young, maybe early teens if I had to guess, and probably only two meters tall. On his other side, walking alongside was an older giant, maybe six meters tall. They both had well worn mammoth bone axes.

“Hey, I’m Karl.”

“Ho. I am Hamyl. This is my father, Samyl.”

“What’s all the wood for?”

“War is coming.” The father grumbled.

“Who would be dumb enough to fight giants?” I asked, purposefully not looking at Abe.

“Blueskins.”

“Why would they come this far south? There’s over fifty kilometers of forest between us and them.”

“When they eat the forest bare, they will come. They always do.”

On that ominous note, we rode the rest of the way in silence.