After arriving in the resupply city, the first thing that struck me was how much larger this city was than Virtue. I don't mean in terms of population, it is probably a fair amount smaller in that regard since the primary purpose of this city is to facilitate supplying Virtue, or at least the population would be comparable, but in terms of actual area of operation, actual size. The buildings are still mostly stone: with elemental manipulation being accessible stone is the primary building material used everywhere, but this city was more spread out, flatter, with wider roads and squatter buildings.

I quickly resumed walking as the soldiers guarding the portal waved at me to keep moving. Even this early, the through traffic is continuous. I didn't bother asking for directions or touring the city. It might not be nice to say, but Virtue was a city of refugees and cowards, while my assumption regarding this city is that it's nothing more than a soulless shell, whose only purpose was to feed the maw of the beast which called itself Virtue.

I'd probably be back here eventually to fill out more requests or sign up for the Adventurers Guild or find some materials I would need or for something else entirely, eventually. But I'd been waiting to be able to stretch my legs and breathe natural air, see using natural light, and feel the breeze against my skin for nearly a decade, and I couldn't wait to get far, far away from this mass of humanity.

Humming a light tune, I followed major thoroughfares until I reached the city gate, and I kept on walking. As long as I stayed near the roads I'd continue running into humans and towns periodically, and although I did have some specific goals that would benefit from interacting with those humans, for the moment I wanted to get out and see the stars and feel the sun and run my fingers through the grass. When I got bored of the farmland I switched to a steady, mile eating jog until I finally reached a forest. I double checked my bearings, and walked into the woods. The forest was exactly what I'd hoped it would be.

As a random aside, and though it should be quite obvious, I've already noted that the language here is different from my original language. Please understand that I'm performing translations as I go; for instance I referenced The Sun just now, while in the most prevalent language here on Grendel, the actual primary body of light for this solar system is actually called Illustrae… I will differentiate between the planets of Earth and Grendel because it helps to let you know when I switch contexts, but for the most part it is simply easiest to refer to the ground as earth and the sun as the sun when there is no specific need to differentiate.

After my initial scouting, I returned to the road and followed it until I found grass path, nearly wide enough to be called a road, which broke away from the main road, and which I then followed until I found a village containing about a dozen houses. I talked to a few villagers at random and I was able to confirm that there was indeed a blacksmith in the village, but even though I found the building that should have belonged to them, they were currently closed.

As it was approaching night time and I'd been awake and traveling, often at a jog, for the last three days, I once again took stock of the village location and got my bearings so that I'd be able to return. I then headed an hours walk from the blacksmiths shop, aiming deeper into the forest. There were a couple skills I wanted to start working on while it was convenient.

I infused and strengthened the Aether in two rocks, and then used one to break the other, creating a sheer edge. I already had a conventional knife, but making your own equipment is part of basic wilderness survival, and besides, stone rocks are practical because they are easy to make, easy to replace, and are both sharp and easy to repair when they chip.

After that I created a moderate size lean-to, and then used Aether to slowly transplant some nearby foul smelling weeds beside the shelter, which I am hoping will help keep away undesirable insects and animals, then I broke off some tree branches and stripped them down before sharpening and hardening one end, creating improvised spears and javelins.

When I became thirsty I would crush plants and use Aether to draw purified water from their bruised leaves, and so on. It had been a while since I'd gotten to exercise some of my survival knowledge, and trying to incorporate Aether into basic survival tasks was a fun twist on an old skill for me, albeit a fairly exhausting one. With the exception of accessing clean drinking water, trying to use Aether for everything means every task requires several times the effort that it would if I were just doing it conventionally. Still, my goal behind doing this has nothing to do with efficiency, and some of the techniques I'm experimenting with here will actually be useful should I ever find myself trying to survive in the wilds with no other choices.

Within a day I felt like my shelter was sufficient for staying in for a few weeks, and even though nothing had unlocked yet, it would have been a miracle if anything had unlocked in so little time, I felt confident that if I kept at it most of my goals for coming here would be met in a reasonable timeline. I slept, much more deeply than I probably should have considering I didn't know if there might be some stray monsters in the area.

When I woke up and handled my morning needs, I did my calisthenics and used my morning jog to return to the village. I expect that I'd probably slept for more than a day, especially considering how hungry and thirsty I'd been, and how pressed my bladder had felt. I'd probably woken up sometime as close to night as morning, but even after reaching the village I could see I wasn't alone; even in the predawn I could see signs of activity, such as light peeking out from windows and doors, and people moving around to milk their Joeys, the large Bison-like animals which served as the primary source of milk here.

Sadly, the house and shop I'd been waiting on were not among these early risers, so I entertained myself by chewing on some flowers I'd picked the night before and practicing with my impromptu spear until the Smith finally opened the doors to his shop.

"Morning." I called.

"So it is," he replied with a grimace as he leaned back and began examining me. "You a customer from another town or something?"

"Just turned 16, hoping to unlock smithing."

"Why would I want to train future competition?"

"Because I'm not competition. I stay here a while and learn, you get someone doing the manual labor for a while, I go somewhere far away. We both win."

"Smithing ain't something you can learn overnight, and those stick arms ah yours ain't gonna do me much good on the manual labor front, neither. Feed ya, house ya, train ya, and you turn around and leave as soon as you got what you want? That's a shite deal for me."

"Ok, lets talk terms, then. One meal a day, lunch, since I won't be able to forage while I'm physically here. I already made a shelter an hours walk from here, so no need for lodging, either, I'll just need to be able to work short enough days to handle my own needs in the mean time, so 12 hours a day tops, and those concerns aren't a concern at all. Throw in a week off once a quarter so I can visit the portal city and I'll be right as rain. As for the stick arms, what would you say the minimum strength to be useful would be? I haven't assigned my attributes yet so if I need to I can."

The smith finally looked at me as though he was seeing me, and I was confident that he was using identify in the process.

"What the hell is a Erudite?"

"An academic, it basically means I read a lot and try and learn new things as a hobby."

"Boy you're level 30, and I ain't never even heard of someone so gods fersaken useless they got a skill from reading books. Any less than a huntret and fifty strength is less than useless to me, and honestly you're gonna hate me if you got less than tree huntret. Same for toughness. You'd be a damn fool if you put all of your points in strength and toughness just ta pick up a toughness skill when all you know how to do is read books. You'll live longer that way, but you'll be cursin the four the whole way."

"150 is the minimum? Ok, I can spend the points to get to 150 in strength and toughness, and then spread the rest around. Erudite is actually a tier 4, so it wouldn't be as hard on me as you think."

"What, reading books is physical now? Or are you sayin yer an expert? You still ain't talked about me not getting my value out ya, neither. Ain't no good trainin someone up and thems walkin away just as soon as they get worth having round."

"Ok, two to one when it comes to time, then. If it takes me 6 months to unlock smithing, I'll stay another 3 months helping you do whatever smithing related jobs come up."

"6 months eh? You got any clue how many skills it takes? Smithins' Tier 3, son, might not be as fancy as yer Erudite, but it's not something you'll be learnin in 6 months. Ya gotta learn iron an copper an silver an tin an pewter an swords an armors an guns an… Boy you'll be lucky if yer a smith in 6 years."

"You know gunsmithing? No of course you know gunsmithing, you're a smith. Ok, if it takes 6 years it takes 6 years, and I'll stay on another 3. 2 to 1."

"Whatcha want fer pay?"

"Nothing for the things I work on without an appropriate skill, 10% of the things I work on when I have the right skill, but you'll be responsible for getting the materials needed to practice and learn the skills in the first place."

"I guess them books ain't all bad. As long as you weren't asking somethin like a gold a day I was plannin to gree, but you'd owe me a few extra years just tryin to pay yer debt back. Thems materials are expensive, boy."

"Ok how's this? If it's your materials, the finished products will also be yours to sell, won't they? If I buy the materials myself I'll want to be able to keep what I make, but I'm not wanting to make money off of you, my reward would be the skills, and I'd much prefer to merge my skills at the lowest possible levels, so as long as you can get the material value back from any given sale you won't lose anything, and I expect even low quality finished products are worth more than just the materials."

"Alright boy, you got a deal. Get your points assigned and get in here, Nelsons got their hands on some horses and are wantin them shoed, and the Lathriens are wanting a nother batcha nails, and I gotta get the bloomin started. We'll get you started the old fashion way, shoveling and haulin, and you can watch an learn and do the next batcha nails."

I left my attributes unassigned, of course. My thought process was that Daily calisthenics and jogging, combined with the attribute boosts from learning various physical skills, would be good enough. The entire reason I left my attributes unassigned is because I want to be able to get as much value out of training as possible, because attributes are easier to increase via training when they are lower. I stand by that decision being a good one, but I will say that smithing turned out to be a very, very physical job.

Over the following months I would perform my daily attribute training in the mornings and then, exhausted, I would jog back to my shelter at night, where I would try and learn some of the skills I'd moved out there for. I would enhance my vision and my sense of smell when I found animal tracks, and then I would try following them for as long as I was able to continue identifying a particular set of tracks. On the occasions I actually found the creature I'd been following, I'd use the javelins, reinforced and sharpened, to try and kill them. With a single bigger kill being enough to keep me fed for months, I actually ended up periodically bringing Sol, the Smith, extra meat to eat or sell at his discretion.

Considering that I already knew what I was supposed to have to do to unlock the remaining skills I would need to upgrade to Ranger, the process was fairly smooth… Getting Thrown Weaponry wasn't bad at all, and switching over to a bow after that was a far more comfortable experience for me. Tracking, Survival, and so one were a given considering that I'd been going out of my way for them as well. The only skill I expected to get in the forest but which I'd not been able to make meaningful progress on was the Spears skill. Although my hopes were initially high, it didn't take me long to realize that it would be far easier to learn the Spears skill if I trained it via sparring, and with how overloaded I was at the smithy I didn't feel I had enough time to spare to find a sparring partner. Not right away, at least.

Sol was thoroughly shocked as how quickly I was able to learn the various smithing prerequisite skills, and in 9 months' time I'd learned the smithing skill, which immediately combined with my Carpenter, Engineer, Weaver, and Mason skills to create the Artisan skill. I expect I probably could have been done in 6 months if there'd be enough materials, but getting materials isn't terribly convenient in a small village like this one, and we would end up having to visit the city to collect key materials on our own as often as the merchant would be able to fill materials requests in a timely fashion. In a way this worked out well for me, because the third time we ended up having to break the training cadence to visit the city, I'd scraped together enough money to get a session with a Diviner.

For the first time, I ran into a set of skills that would require multiple sessions. Diviners are rare, they are even less common than Necromancers, but after a 4 hour session I came to understand why that was the case. The Diviner skill set intersects with not just Divinations, Scrying, Fate, and Portents, but also Space, Time, and Luck magics. I took notes to the best of my ability, and naturally I paid close attention to everything he said and did, but even after seeing multiple demonstrations I'm not sure how long it's going to take me to be able to actually learn any of the associated skills.

The diviner himself explained that from a conceptual standpoint I would likely have an easier time grasping the subject if I were to learn the basics of soul magic first, and he suggested that I engage a necromancer before trying to hire another Diviner. I'm pretty sure when he said that he was thoroughly aware that it could be perceived as an insult, and I think he even enjoyed getting to say it, but since it is likely also true I didn't respond to the barb.

After that, with the summoning and binding skills I'd learned sufficiently well for self-study while I was still in Virtue having been learned and upgraded into the Conjurer skill, I enlisted the Lathrien boys to join me in spear training and firearms practice while I worked off the remaining time I owed to old Sol.

As expected, once the spear skill appeared it immediately rolled into reach weapons which rolled into melee weapons and combined with Athletics and Unarmed Combat to create the Fighter skill. I have more work to do before I have enough gun related skills to roll into firearms, but once that happens It should immediately combine with Archery and Thrown Weaponry to turn into the "Ranged Fighter" skill, after which I'll stall out until I can learn more vehicle skills and combine the piloting skills with the survival related skills and get the Ranger skill.

Carts, Wagons, and so on aren't a major issue, but sea and air vehicles are going to be hard to acquire, I might never actually get Ranger… Although to be honest, I'm only lukewarm about the idea of picking that skill up anyhow, I'd really only want it because it's a tier 4 skill so the attribute bonuses would be excellent, and it should be fairly easy to level up compared to many other tier 4 skills.

I'm not sure why, but not once did I run into any actual monsters despite camping out in the woods an hours walk from the village. They are out there on the ground, I even remember them being an irregular threat from before I went to Virtue. Even the seemingly safest areas will have occasional wandering monsters. And yet, the most dangerous thing I ran into in that town was an obese traveling merchant named Rudy, who I'd see from time to time and whom thought I'd make a good match for his equally obese daughter.

I ended up convincing the oldest of the Nelson boys to court the merchants daughter when her dad wasn't around. He was still working up his courage when I left, but I expect that if I were to come back there in a year or two, I'd be likely to find that he'd been forced to marry her after a meetup led to a child the fat merchant didn't know he should have been expecting.

It was surreal bidding old Sol farewell. He wasn't the sort that would complement a person without also insulting them, but his compliments would be genuine and his insults rarely contained more than a grain of truth to them. If he had a real problem with something, he'd address it seriously and in a mostly respectful manner. If I'm being honest, I almost wish it had been Sols roof I'd found myself born into rather than Seouls.

Thus it was that after spending a little over a year in the village of Lathe, I returned to the feeder city alone.