Daniel was slowly sucked into the process of learning. Filling his status with skills, working at affinities, and pre-leveling started to fill up his mind and time even outside of the church. He sometimes even dreamt of his status. He was probably getting a little carried away with it all, but he found he didn't mind. He had liked RPGs and MMOs in his past life after all, so it wasn't a surprise that the game-like systems were appealing to him.

As the year crept its way around, he planned to reach level six in his compendium skill just after his birthday. Unfortunately, his birthday was in winter, and he ended up having to wait for spring. Thankfully, the various bugs and worms he found in his grandmother's garden were more mundane than the creatures in the forest. He decided to go with names starting with town instead of forest, mildly worried he could break the leveling process if he wasn't following the correct conventions. It only took him a single afternoon to reach level six, but doing so did nothing, and he put it back to level one in disgust. Level seven brought similar disappointment.

At seven years old, in the middle of autumn, Daniel was whiling away an afternoon in the garden. He was idly juggling, while distracted wondering about what skill's affinity to work on improving the next day. Beatrix, a cheerful three-year-old, enjoyed watching Daniel juggle, and had been repeatedly bugging him to amuse her for the last couple of weeks. And then Daniel was pulled out of his thoughts by a discovery. He had gotten better at juggling.

His affinity for the skill was still basic, Zachery had undersold how difficult raising affinities was, and Daniel did not care much about juggling. His skill was still inactive level one of course, and since it was autumn his stats hadn't changed. But he had improved over the past two weeks. Extra stones added made things pretty obvious. It shouldn't be a surprise to him that you could improve at things by practice, but it did ask a certain question.

"What have I been doing?" he asked no one in particular, letting the stones drop.

"Banana, no!" Beatrix complained. Rory had told her that Anne was short for banana, and Daniel preferred her using that as his name, not that he would admit so to Rory.

The leveling drive bubble popped in his mind and was gone as if it had never existed. It was similar to his one-time experience with MMOs, slowly becoming obsessed, having it grow to consume every waking moment and thought, and then one day abruptly realising that he was wasting his time on a game had grown bored of already. Pop! The dream is over. Why was I doing that again?

Could this be blamed on some sneaky church magic? He wanted to do so but his blessing existed and this felt too similar to his past. There was more to life than levels, and looking at the stones on the ground he had to admit there was more to leveling than levels.

"What am I doing with my life?" he asked, slapping his own forehead. He had spent time working on his cleaning affinity. The halfhearted description should have been a clue to go no further. He never wanted to clean again.

"You're ruining it!" Beatrix cried, annoyed that her amusement was being interrupted.

"What do you want?" he asked her, a philosophical question.

"Juggles!" she said pointedly, but then noticed he wanted more. She thought for a moment, and then a goofy grin appeared on her face. "Tickles," she said.

Daniel took a moment to take in her silly smile before obliging. It did his heart good to listen to her giggling. He took a deep breath and looked up at the sky, feeling like he had just come up for air.

This was not the new world life he wanted. It was time to refocus on being himself. He wanted to escape. Explore more of the world and magic far away from the church. He needed to keep that in mind and only take in the useful parts of their teaching. Townie professions were stupid, he had known that. He had thought he had known that. He thought crafting in fantasy games was bad enough when it was automated. He wasn't about to spend the next fifty years fixing people's socks. Or worse cleaning them.

His family was the same. He cared for them more than he had anyone in his past life, as scary as that admission was to make even to himself. He needed to make sure he wasn't letting them down, but he wouldn't abandon himself. It felt good to know that he had managed to hold onto that part of himself all this way. He needed his own life. When he reached fifteen, he would have to grow up and probably move on. Living for your family was something he could not understand or accept. There was a level of servility there, in putting others above yourself. How could you respect someone like that? He couldn't live that way and didn't want his parents living for his sake. Ideally, his family would be something to think of fondly and then visit in between adventures.

But he knew he had been phoning it in for a while, with Beatrix and the rest of his family. He had performed the same lump poking service for his new brother Conrad as he had for Beatrix, but like many other interactions, he had been sleepwalking through it. He had told Dad he would take care of them but had become too distracted with power leveling to nowhere.

He looked at Beatrix. The little weirdo was sticking out her tongue and making a bizarre retching gesture. Maybe short visits only since he didn't want to catch the stupid.

"Grandmother will catch you if you do that," he warned her. He stuck his hand out and grabbed hold of her tongue.

"wuahyueyue" she protested, her voice muffled.

"What? I can't understand you, Bee, you must have turned back into a baby."

"I'm not a Bee," she said, finally freeing her tongue, "or a baby."

"Bzz," he said, booping her on the nose, "Come on little Bee let's go see Mum."

"Alright Banana." she agreed, the goofy smile back in force.

He led her across the garden to their mother, who was sitting on the step leading inside with Conrad in her lap. She looked up and smiled warmly at them as they approached. He wondered if this was happiness for her, surrounded by her children. She had mentioned wanting seven or eight, so Dad would need to be back soon.

"Mum," he said, "I want to spend time after church taking a look around town." Taking care of his mother probably didn't include randomly going missing.

"Alright, just stay in the walls and don't be out too long."

Daniel was ready to point out that he was already walking home alone, but was taken aback that she had agreed so easily.

"Just like that?"

"The town is safe, sweetheart."

"Huh."

Hopefully not too safe. A probably stupid plan was forming. First, tomorrow morning he needed to go rub it in the priest's faces that he was going home early instead of more dullard training. Second, he was going looking for trouble. If he could improve at juggling, and he could train at cleaning, he could work on something that mattered to him. He was tired of being a coward. He just needed to channel his inner idiot enough to get someone scary to shout at him.

"I want to come too," Beatrix said.

"No bees allowed," he told her. Conrad gave him a longing look that indicated interest as well. The boy was taking heavily after the father he had yet to meet. He probably had a Blessing of Dad's Meaningful Glances or something similar.

Daniel was filled with tense anticipation as he walked down the hill the next morning. He glanced back behind him, spotting Ellory a way back past some other kids, the beanpole standing out as usual. He saw Ellory quite a lot on his travels back and forth from the church, but it might partly be because he barely recognised any of the other kid's faces.

As he entered the church, he started rehearsing what he would say to Zachery. His plan had become slightly less aggressive with the light of morning. He wanted out, but there was a proper line of respectful denial he wanted to hit. Open rudeness to Zachery wouldn't help, but neither would showing respect for timewasting when he was the one supposedly in charge of how he spent his time. A polite discussion to see if there were any new lessons or lectures planned for today and then he was off to explore the town. Maybe if he got lucky he might find some sort of guild house while he was at it.

"Ah. Anne, good you are here," Zachery said as he arrived. "Come on we are heading up into town."

Daniel squinted at Zachery before following him. Stupid priests. He wasn't giving in, Zachery was just walking in front of him as he left.

"Where are we going?"

"To see Smith Paul," Zachery said. "We have a forge downstairs but it's in a special classroom so I have arranged an alternative."

A forge downstairs seemed risky. What about airflow, and fire safety? They probably had some stupid priest magic to fix it. Perhaps there was a mind-control field to convince people smoke inhalation was good for them.

"Shouldn't it be Paul Smith?"

"He's the head smith for the whole town," Zachery said as if that explained it.

Smith Paul was a stocky man with an easy-going nature. He was waiting for them outside his workshop, a flat sprawling building. The sounds and heat of many people working with metal emanated from inside. He greeted Daniel with a smile.

"Welcome, Anne. James has told me about you. He boasted to me about making a priest cry with the help of his favorite granddaughter."

"If he did I didn't get to see it," Daniel said. Maybe the tale had grown in the telling.

"I am here as well, Paul," Zachery said.

"I know man," Paul grinned at him, "That's half the fun of bringing it up."

"Did he really make one cry?" Daniel asked Zachery doubtfully, "was it you?"

"It was not," Zachery irritably responded, "If someone cried I did not witness it either."

Paul led them through the workshop. The building was even larger on the inside, with several different sections, each of them filled with men busy at work. There were also several boys helping out, that Daniel thought were probably apprentices. He could see why they would need a head smith. They had to wind their way past others a couple of times to get to their destination, a room at the back with a forge and a host of smithing tools.

"What do you make of the place Anne?" Paul turned and asked.

"There are more people working here than I expected."

"That's a show, I do half the jobs here by myself," he said. "But I mean the workshop, not the people, do you feel inspired to become a smith?"

Daniel looked around a second time. It was so hot and loud that working here might be worse than cleaning socks. Besides that, it was a bit too ordinary for his tastes.

"I don't. Can't you use magic for heating the metal?"

Paul laughed. "I can. But we are here for you to learn. Now come on let's get to it."

He handed Daniel a hammer and moved him over to stand by an anvil. The hammer was small but so was Daniel.

"Just stand there ready."

Then he used tongs to take a small bar of metal out of the forge, with the end glowing hot. He placed the metal flat on the anvil and looked at Daniel.

"Right then, I need this metal flattened out. So you take your time and hit the red part. It doesn't need to be hard."

Daniel swung, feeling slightly foolish. Sure, let the seven-year-old girl beat the metal into shape. The hammer hit, making an encouraging sound.

"Good. Now hit it again. Shouldn't take too long."

Daniel hit the metal bar several more times, gaining confidence as he went. It felt satisfying, but if he was accomplishing something besides tiring himself out he couldn't tell. As he stopped to adjust his grip, Zachery reached out with a guidance stone in his hand. Daniel reached out and held a hand above the stone, it would not work unless he voluntarily interacted with the stone. The white sections of it started to glow, a sign that he had learned the skill that the lesson was supposed to teach.

"Done I see," Paul said. "What about now Anne? Do you want to be a smith now? You want to do all my work for me?"

"I don't but thank you for teaching me," Daniel said, thinking over the experience in his head. "I didn't see any female smiths back there."

"Most women don't have the strength or the interest needed for the job," Paul said, "But Zachery loves to make sure."

"God-given talents should not be wasted," Zachery said.

"He's got us there Anne, can't argue with that one. Just be careful not to end up too talented, or you'll get sent off to the capital. The priests there are even worse than the ones we have here!"

Daniel looked curiously between the two men. Paul was enjoying needling Zachery, but he was friendly enough that it was hard to see poor sentiment being behind it.

"Do you not like the priests then?" he asked.

Paul hummed, rubbing his chin. "You can trust a priest but you don't have to like them. That's what my mother taught me."

Zachery scowled but remained silent.

"Oh come on Zachery, there's no need for that," Paul said, "We're all friends here. I don't dislike anyone in the town, not really."

"And the capital? The people I worked with there were very diligent and dedicated to their work."

"Well if you don't agree with me, why did you come to live out here?" Paul asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Fine. You might have a point." Zachery admitted, looking disgusted.

Paul laughed, slapping Zachery on the back.

"And there you have it. Now, are you sure that you don't want to try more Anne?"

"I'm sure."

"Good, then we are done. I need to go make sure none of the apprentices have started trying to eat the iron again."