I woke up mad! I was to be compensated for rules that I didn’t know about but that hadn’t been followed, and every time I tried to ask that two-bit low-life used car scam artist a question, he didn’t show up! I bet this necklace wouldn’t do anything either.

I ate and then started to get worried about the dogs. They were close enough that I could hear them. Yet, I didn’t know if they were looking for me or just letting the world know they were there. So anyway, I cut it; I was now worried about my life again.

I needed to get better at fighting, and I needed to figure out a way to be safe. The most pressing was the safety thing. The tier of the cliffs and waterfall I was on was inaccessible without climbing.

On the far side of the river was a rock face that went all the way to the top of the falls and then some. It meant that I wasn’t worried about the dogs crossing on my level. However, the valley through this part was more of a very narrow canyon, and so if the dogs came, they would have to come up my side of the river.

Feeling more secure in my immediate surroundings, I set to getting ready for another fight. I went down to the waterfall level and cleared out a spot that was about 15 feet by 15 feet. I made sure there were no rocks on the ground. There was just the fine gravel and sand and some weeds.

Then I sat down and started to stretch like I used to do at the start of every Tae-Kwon-Do class I’d ever taken. After about fifteen minutes of warm-up, I started to go over all of my stances and strikes. I worked through standing still and striking and kicking to one and then three-step sparing drills. Then I started in on all the forms that I could remember. Some of them felt great but most felt like I’d a ton of rust on my body and my brain. Next, I felt my way through some of my katas that I could mostly remember, and finally, I felt the skill kick in and kind of remind me of the next move.

After I went through all 20 forms that I had learned for my rank, I started to work through the ones I had studied to help with aspects of my training. I went through my hard breathing katas and my focusing katas. I took the time out from training to run back to my camp and get both my spear and staff and came back. I ran through the two katas I knew with the staff and went through the strikes that I knew. I then changed over to my stone-tipped spear and worked the same katas trying to change them to work with a point.

After working through my katas, I started to work on falling and rolling. It had been a while, so it hurt as I threw myself onto the ground over and over, but I remembered that this was how you trained. So I spent about two hours working on training my combat skills. I then went and took a nice cold soak in the deep water and got cleaned up from my sweat.

After my soak, I took my weapons back to camp and moved more rocks. Next, I worked on making the outside walls around my cabin two stones deep. After I got the second row filled in, it was off to fire harden the spikes that I had made when I first thought about unnt trapping. When I finished with the spikes, I took the time to eat and think.

I had been moving hard all day. I needed to push myself to get better because the one thing that I had learned better than anything else was that this world was dangerous. If I didn’t set challenging goals for myself and push myself to my limits, then I wasn’t being kind to myself.

I pulled up my info again because the last time I looked at it was right as I was sleeping. I wanted to see how my leveling had been going, and I needed to see if other changes that happened. It would be good to stay on top of things more than just seeing the updates as I drifted off to sleep. Honestly, it would be nice if I could change it to show the updates when they happen or when I woke up. At this point, I didn’t know if I got the skill raise when I practiced enough or when I went to sleep.

Name

Arn

HP

20

MP

40

Race

Wild Human (0)

SP

30

Defense

1

Primary Class: Enchanter*

Level: 0

Secondary Class: Linguist* (ancient languages)

Level: 0

Strength

14*

Intelligence

8

Vigor

10

Dexterity

12*

Willpower

9

Vitality

10

Wild Humans have a plus 3 to strength

Wild Humans have a plus 2 to dexterity

Wild Humans have a plus 2 to all survivalist and warrior class skills

Wild Humans have a negative 3 to all Language skills and can not start as the linguist class

Wild Humans have a negative 1 to all Magic class skills due to low intelligence and cannot start as a enchanter class because of linguist issues

Wild Humans are all illiterate

Skills

Skills

Level

Racial

Spear**

6

Survivalist**

5

Tracking**

2

Primary class

Enchanting

1

Script*

*

Ink making

1

Etching

1

Power imbuing

1

Socketing

1

Secondary Class

Ancient languages*

*

Non class skills

Hiking**

2

Climbing**

5

Primitive tool**

5

Natural Shelter**

1

Spear Fishing

3

Primitive cooking

4

Herbalism

0

Stone Knapping

1

Staff

4

Taekwondo

10

Running

3

Stone Construction

0

Snake handling

0

*due to Wild Human starting restrictions of being illiterate this skill can not advance until literate.

** Racial Bonus for Wild Human, effective levels of all Survivalist class and warrior class skills plus 2

Spells

Communication spells

Level

Mana usage

Beseech a greater knowledge**

1

50

**Once per day powered by sunlight

By properly activating this spell the user may once a day ask a signal questions of Great and Mighty greeter Sam. This spell will only work for the lowly Arn.

As I scanned my full stats, I noticed something. Sitting right there was the reason that Sam wasn’t answering me. He had told me that he would make this a spell, but I forgot it with everything else.

I started to think back on my interaction with him, and it didn’t make sense to me. Part of it was that I didn’t press for more information and then part of it was that things were kind of blurry. I was starting to think that some of my interactions with this guy would always get messed up.

I knew that he was a jerk from the way that he talked to me. It wasn’t with me but always to me like he was far better than me. I also knew that he called me names, but when I was there, it was like there was a level of passivity that controlled my actions. My only guess was that I was being emotionally controlled, which I didn’t like at all.

Now I just had to find out how to use the spell. I spent a while doing mental leaps to get the spell description to come up as I did for skills. I’d that going for me. I knew it was a spell, and it showed up much like a skill does. I knew that skills influenced me to make the correct action, but I wasn’t sure what all they did, and I’d only rarely been able to help a skill influence me. I was still unsure how to activate a skill to make it do all of the work.

After a while, I’d figured it out. Skills worked passively beside what I was doing, or at least that is how they had been working—giving me the knowledge to do better at what I was doing. They tended to activate while I was doing. Like the climbing skill wouldn’t be on while I was fishing because I wasn’t trying to climb. However, when I was fishing, I’d be using my spear, so my spearfishing skill would guide me to the right places. So if this held true, I should be in the sun with the intent of casting the spell, and it should guide me to the right thing.

So I went out to my clearing near my garden in full sun since the spell said it needed the sun and started thinking about casting. I intended to use the spell beseech a greater knowledge. I felt my mouth begin to move on its own like I sometimes would with the spear. Then I felt my arms shoot up over my head like I was calling at touch down. My head looked up at the sky, and I started to yell as I also saw my vision start to close in around like I was blacking out.

“Oh great and mighty greeter Sam, I the lowly Arn beseech you to answer my question,” I yelled. “What does this necklace do?”

With that, my knees went out from under me, and I fell face-first into the ground.