"I don't feel that I'd want to be a part of Joaqims group at all given feasible alternatives," Jim explained reluctantly, "I should greatly prefer to be homeward bound, but I find myself stymied consequent to family and school being located in Anival, the capital of the Empire. That is a substantial journey, and I have neither the appropriate skills to brave such a journey alone, nor do I possess sufficient wherewithal to make up for that deficit via more liberal methodologies. I may tag along with the team Joaqim wishes to build for a nonce whilst I scrape together sufficient funds to make it home. Alternately and preferably I may take advantage of a less lethal form of occupation if, upon arrival, I am able to acquire such. I needs must play it by ear, but risking life and limb is something of a nadir amongst my list of interests, especially when one contemplates how unfavorable my last endeavor proceeded. I have survived until now, but I lack both the savoir faire and the inclination to dissimulate to such an extent that I might propose the experience salubrious."

"That's as honest of a response as I could hope for. I do have a small amount of coin, but even if I gave it all to you, it wouldn't be enough to make that long of a trip."

"Understood and have no fear; I harbor no intention of imposing unduly. If you are sufficiently flush I may impose upon you to account for lodging for a spell while I seek employment, but I'm not so brazen as to yearn for any imposition beyond what is desideratum."

"If I can afford to do so I will."

“Your candidness and sincerity are greatly appreciated, Braza. Let us be off. Diamond Lake awaits.”

The next 3 days of travel are quiet, but eventually our good fortune catches up to us, and we end up stumbling across some Orcs that had just finished hunting down a buck at approximately the same time as they spot us. Orcs have a long martial tradition, much like the lizardfolk, and suffer from the same affliction as most monstrous races of having difficulty breaching racial class limitations. Like most Lizardfolk though, those racial classes establish immediate competency in their select areas. Meaning that if you're low level like us they’re very dangerous, especially when in large groups. We are fortunate that there are only 5 of them, which truly is a small group considering that they're considered goblinoids, meaning they are supposed to have a high reproduction rate and incline towards swarm tactics.

There’s nowhere near enough time to cast an imbuement, and these orcs are armed and armored. I’ve never fought orcs before to have more than a general idea as to how much danger we’re actually in, but the javelins and falchions they wield look more than functional, and they are quite stocky. When they hit, I expect that it will hurt.

They immediately turn to attack and we respond in kind, with Jim launching arcane missiles in a matter of seconds, plowing his two bursts of solidified aetheric energy into the closest of the Orcs, while I pull out my sling. Joaqim stands behind Jim, as he currently possess nothing capable of fighting at range. The Orcs waste no time launching a volley of their javelins before they start closing towards us.

Most of the javelins are as poorly aimed as my first sling stone was, it seems we weren’t the only ones that were a bit surprised by this sudden encounter. Only one of the javelins strike a target, hitting me of course. It barely grazes my shoulder, the majority of the force passing right by me along with the javelin that was transferring said force. Despite being a mere graze, it’s still enough to jerk me back and cut me down to 6 health. Holy hell, that's insane. If even a graze is enough to knock me down to nearly half health, a direct hit might be enough to drop me even if I were at full health. I finally reached level 1, but I'll need more levels for my toughness stat to really start showing its value.

Jim didn’t skip a beat after launching his first barrage, and continued on with another round of arcane missiles, this time he chose to send one arcane missile at the first Orc he’d previously hit but who had survived, while his second missile targets a second Orc. Amazingly, both Orcs fall over backwards, eyes rolling into the backs of their heads. I wonder if Jim split his spell like that knowing the outcome ahead of time? Are mages actually able to control the strength of their spells to that degree? I'd been led to understand that they were subjected to the same sort of random variance in effectiveness that priests and everyone else seemed to experience, but that little trick makes me wonder.

Regardless my next stone fly’s wide again, possibly in part due to my shoulder continuing to throb. Although they were only carrying one javelin apiece, the Orcs transition smoothly to a run, covering the ground remaining between us within seconds. Jim however, has no mercy for the Orcs. Or me. His hands glow red and he releases a spout of flames, scorching myself along with all 3 of the remaining Orcs in a powerful fire that threatens to light me and everything I’m carrying up like it's an oversized butane lighter. Although I was shocked to find myself among his targets, even as the fire blasts towards us I interpose my canvas backpack between myself and the flames, which takes off some of the worst of the heat, though this flamethrower like heat is quickly ruining the backpack.

Are you serious?! I’m down to 0 health again, right on the verge of passing out! I’m pretty pissed off for a moment, until I realize that 2 of the orcs that had just closed with us were now flat on the ground, while the final one appears to be in as bad of condition as I am. To be clear, I'm still not happy to have been turned into a giant fried chicken, err, lizard. But I’d be less happy having 3 competent fighters trying to introduce me to the pointy end of their toys, especially considering that I've already gotten a taste of what they are capable of.

I used my backpack to take the brunt of the flame, while the last Orc standing used one of his allies to achieve the same effect. His quick reaction was insufficient to save him, though, this fight is over. Jim seems to have lost interest in finishing them off, and Joaqims healing spell almost immediately restores me to 7 health. The orc lacks a healer, and hasn’t done much of anything since he was burned, standing carefully and slightly woozily as he eyeballs us. He seems to be struggling to decide whether or not it’s worth certain death to get a slash in. He must be, like I just was, at exactly 0 health.

Me though? I’m pretty astounded. I knew he was the strongest person in our little trio, but Jim is a good deal more powerful than he’d been showing up to now, having single handedly crippled or killed 5 of these creatures in the time it took for them to reach us. And he says he’s only level 3? I’m not sure if he has been hiding his strength and I should be unreasonably terrified of people 2 levels higher than me, or if these enemies were just particularly poorly matched against Jim. On second thought I suspect it to be the latter: He has been shooting those arcane missiles 2 at a time all along, and that cone of flame has strict range and areas limitations, so most of the time it really wouldn’t have been the best choice for the situations we’ve been in.

“Who are you? Is the rest of your tribe nearby?” I ask of the last remaining enemy, speaking in perfect Orc.

“Fuck you scaly boy!” he retorts.

I guess his mom never taught him to be polite. Well, it's not like I have a particular reason to keep him alive, and he's not interested in playing nice, so there's no real need to try and drag this out. I cut his throat with a claw and loot the corpses. This fight is a jackpot. We acquire 5 javelins, 5 falchions, 5 sets of studded leather, and get this: there’s about 250 gold worth of coins between the 5 of them. Gold. Each and every one of these clowns was carrying about 50 times more money than I’d ever seen in one place at one time up until now. Ok I saw more back on real earth, but the amount of wealth in front of me right now is staggering compared to what I've seen up to this point. Even splitting these 3 ways I feel downright rich. That’s over 80 gold per person, I could even afford to craft a couple scrolls!

The deer alone would have been sufficient justification for a break and some celebration, so this was a truly fortuitous encounter for us. Objectively speaking, at least. I didn't exactly have fun being barbequed, and I'm not looking forward to trying to patch my backpack up or my clothes, either, they are in terrible condition now and the best I can hope to accomplish from here is to Frankenstein the frame with some of the cloth from the Orc's clothing.

Looting complete, I thank the Orcs for the deer they’d already killed for us. We were all rather hungry at this point having not eaten in over a day for me, and 2 days now for the humans, so we set up camp right where we found the orcs after looting their coins and gear. I don’t perform any special tasks to prevent them from returning from the dead. That fight didn’t need to be to the death, or occur at all in my opinion, and I’m a bit resentful at having been the sole target of all of their ranged attacks. Also, even though it was Jim that tried to turn me crispy, he only did that because of them. And of course, the one person I tried to talk to was a racist prick. So yeah. Fuck those guys.

Although I'd not done anything to spare the bodies from reanimation, when Joaqim realizes I plan to leave them in place, he drags them a few hundred meters away and uses one of the falchions we looted to cut off their heads. Well, he is a priest, and they do have opinions when it comes to the undead. From a practical standpoint, I probably should have been sufficiently incentivized by the simple desire to not get attacked by a reanimated skeleton or vampire in the middle of the night.

The next morning we set off again, all 3 of us wearing the orcish studded leather I’d performed enough adjustments to for them to be suitable for our comparatively narrow physiques. For any sticklers who wish to point out that there’s no such things as studded leather? Well, yes and no. On Earth that is true, but it’s not like the armor didn’t exist, it simply wasn’t called studded leather, it was called brigandine. Here? It is a riveted armor similar to brigandine, but from what I’ve seen and heard of the plating, it is consistently leather rather than cloth, and the coverage will usually extend over the shoulders before switching to boiled leathers to cover the rest of the arms and legs without significant sacrifices towards mobility.

None of us have the right classes to take proper advantage of the javelins or falchions, but we bring them with us anyhow. Whether it ends up being sold or repurposed towards setting up an adventuring group, it remains to our advantage to carry as much of their equipment as we can. Which, due primarily to Joaqim being able to carry more weight than we’d anticipated, ended up being all of it. When speaking of priests, people always discuss their magic. I don’t have enough of a basis of comparison to know whether or not Joaqims abnormal strength and vitality is, in fact, abnormal at all. He’s definitely a priest and not a paladin, but from where I'm standing it's starting to look to me like that might be a matter of preference rather than capability. Every time that I compare myself to my companions, I’m reminded of how very little I have to offer them. I can barely carry my own gear. Endurance isn’t the problem: if I can carry something for more than 100 steps, I can carry it all day. But armor, backpack, weapons, some basic travel gear and food, and I'm near to my limit for what I can carry… That's bad, because it doesn't just mean I'll have trouble helping to carry loot, as Jim noted a few days before leather armors are among the weakest of armor types, being fundamentally little more than a layer of particularly calloused skin. They are also among the lightest of armor types. I may have allowed myself to ignore strength a little too much. Should I use some of the attributes you get from leveling to at least reach a normal level of strength?

Sadly, I don't know. I'm mostly flying blind and taking guesses. I know attribute points will be rare now that I'm an adult, and that I can't just train myself to increase them. Aside from levels, magical enhancements are a thing… But how hard would it be to get something that boosts my strength? Shelve it for now Elliot, maybe you can start looking into how accessible something like that would be after I get to Diamond Lake.