The next day they were all up bright and early again. After breakfast, Rose, Jon, Liam and Lily spent the morning working on their combat skills. Rose focused on creating a fire ball attack, she began by following the same steps for the fire shot, but when the small flame appeared above her hands she focused on channelling more of her Essence into the flame, when she felt like she could push no more Essence into the attack, she fired it off her hand. The result was a fire shot maybe 3 times the size of the original shot, it impacted the dirt where she was aiming and left a large crater. Thinking she almost had it, she kept at it, waiting for a prompt to tell her that she had gained a new ability.

Jon worked with Lily to learn the stone spike ability and taught her his stone attack. Liam sat cross-legged on the ground and was learning to manipulate his Essence better.

Leah took everyone else into the meadow to collect more flowers to make into potions, along with the Blooming Rosewart flowers that increased healing speed, they managed to find two other flowers, one was a small white flower that looked similar to a daisy that Leah’s skill told her could be used to help Essence regeneration. The other was similar to a dandelion and could be made into a potion that would give you more energy, Leah thought it would work kind of like an energy drink.

In the afternoon, Rose took Liam and James rabbit hunting, James wouldn’t be much use without a ranged attack but he would be able to watch their backs, and help if another hoard of rabbits attacked. Leah, Emma and the younger girls sat in the keep, working on turning the flower petals they had gathered into potions that they could use. They were currently using tin cans that they had cleaned out to hold the finished potions. Jon took Lily out to the inner bailey wall and taught her the re-build skill, they then began working on the wall together.

The next week flew by with more of the same everyday, they worked hard and each of them had the skill gains to prove it. Rose managed to create her fire ball when she realised that she needed to actually make a ball of fire rather than just enlarging the fire shot ability, all the practice had given her a few levels in several abilities, even her skinning had risen as she had been dealing with the majority of the rabbit corpses.

Liam had managed to create a lightning AoE attack that would electrify the ground underneath his targets and Leah managed to find a way to improve it by pulling water from the surroundings and making the ground Liam was aiming at wetter, this fried the poor bunnies they tested it on much worse than just Liam’s attack alone. Leah gained a water manipulation ability from using her essence to gather the water for Liam.

Leah also discovered she could use Essence to heal, Liam had gone out with Rose to do some hunting, only to have a rabbit get close enough to take a chuck out of his leg. Leah had seen what had happened as she was out picking flowers at the time and ran over to see if he was ok, seeing that his leg was bleeding she began applying pressure to the would whilst telling Rose to run inside and get a healing potion. When Rose got back, Leah and Liam were sitting there with looks of shock on their faces. Just after Rose had left them, Leah’s hands had started to glow and Liam could feel a light tingly sensation around the wound. Leah lifted her hand away to see that the wound had completely healed, not even a scar. Leah then got a prompt saying she had learned a minor healing skill.

Jon and Lily had spent the whole week splitting their time between training their attacks and re-building the wall. Jon spent the time wondering how he managed to get the keep re-built in a single day, when it had taken two of them a whole week to fix a wall that was no where near as broken as the keep, thinking back on it, he shouldn’t have been able to do it with the Essence pool he had had at that point, now it was much bigger but it was taking longer to re-build. It was almost like the keep had wanted to be fixed, like he had some kind of help.

As soon as the wall was finished, Jon went straight to Rose to let her know. After he had finished telling her, a prompt appeared,

Quest completed

You have gained access to the followig blueprints:

- Basic Alchemy lab.

- Basic Blacksmiths

- Basic Watch tower

- Basic Bunk house

Rose brought up the settlement interface and thought about giving Jon access to it. As she thought about it, a prompt appeared asking her if she wanted to give Jon access, she mentally selected yes and told Jon to think about bringing up the interface.

Once Jon could see the interface, they chatted about what they thought needed doing first. They decided that the blacksmiths would be most useful after the woodwork shop, they needed better weapons and armour if they could produce it. Jon thought they would be able to find plenty of scrap iron to work with so raw materials shouldn’t be an issue.

Jon told Rose that he had always wanted to be a blacksmith, only there was never a need for it before now. Hopefully he would be able to remember what to do from all the online videos he used to watch, before he wasn’t able to anymore.

Once they had finished their conversation, Rose headed to the kitchen to tell Leah about the new option for an alchemists lab, it should make her life easier. After informing Leah that her lab was third on the list of things to be built, Rose decided to spend the rest of the time before dinner with Emily and Casara, it was nice to just be a family for a little while.

Before long, Leah had finished making dinner, rabbit stew and canned vegetables, again. Rose thought that they really need to start fishing or find some different game to hunt, a diet based of just rabbits got boring quite quickly. They all sat down to eat and then spent the rest of the evening chatting to each other and generally relaxing, they had been going full pelt all week and a little time to unwind was good for them. A few hours passed in relative quiet before the younger kids headed to bed and the adults followed not long after them.

Rose checking in on Emily and Alexia and saw they were both passed out, Casara lay in between the two beds purring softly in her sleep. Knowing that all was well, she headed into her room and sat on her bed to check her character sheet, she had been avoiding looking all week so she could see any gains all at once. Unlike any game she had played or Litrpg book she had read, she didn’t get damage notifications, or prompts when she leveled a skill, only when her main level went up did she get a prompt. She pulled up her character sheet and sat for a moment looking at the gains in various skills she had made,

Name: Rose Conehey Level 4 Health Esesnce Main attributes: Exp : 10/500 145 185 Strength 10 Intelligence 17 Wisdom 13 Dexterity 11 Constitution 9 Luck 15 Skills

Identify- shows target name and level up to ten levels above your own. 0.5% to next level

Essence manipulation- Allows greater control over Essence pathways: Level 3 45% to next level

One-handed blade – level 2 95% to next level

Skinning- User can barely skin an animal, but has more chance of success the higher the skill gets. Level 6 45% to next level

Abilities

Heatwave- Channel Essence to create a wave of heat to attack with , does minor burning damage to target. level 1 78% to next level.

- Heat blast: overpowered Heatwave using all remaining E for twice as much power.

Night light – creates a small flame in the palm of your hand, useful for starting fires and not much else. Drains E at negligible rate.

Fire Shot- Condensed essence in the form of a flame projectile fires from above the palm 5 meter range Level 2 67.5%

Fire blade- Sets any blade on fire, adds burning damage to attacks. Uses 1 E per 5 seconds active.

Level 1 2%

Fire ball – Forms a fire ball out of essence, will grow bigger if more Essence is channelled into the fire ball.

Level 2 - 45% to next level

Affinities Fire novice level 2: 50% to next level Blessings Gaia's blessing Your dedication to your daughter has led to Gaia awakening your fire affinity

She had managed to level up a few skills and others were closer to levelling than before, the affinity level up was nice, she thought her control over fire had been better the last two days or so, maybe this was the cause. This week had felt like one long training montage, even Emily had been learning how to defend herself using a baseball bat. Hunting rabbits had gotten boring, a fire shot through the head and they were done, she had more than enough Essence to get enough rabbits to feed them all without having to stop and meditate once. Rose wanted to get out and challenge herself, Emily would be safe in the keep with Casara and Leah, Leah’s ice attacks had gotten pretty good over the week, she could now fire ice shards and create small ice shields so even Leah could defend the keep if needed.

Rose decided that tomorrow she would see if anyone wanted to go out and try and find more survivors, maybe they could find some spray paint and spray messages on the walls of buildings to let people know it was safe in the keep. Putting all that aside for tomorrow, Rose got undressed and got into bed, drifting off to sleep as soon as her head hit the pillow.

Instead of a deep sleep, Rose found herself once again in a beautiful field. The same flowers dotted the picturesque landscape. She could see rolling hills and stunning blue skies. She heard the babbling of a small stream, and not seeing Gaia anywhere, she decided to follow the sound.