The days and weeks started to roll by now that I was in a routine. I’d wake up and eat each morning, then move into my skills training for the rest of the morning. For any of my physical skills I was working on, I’d get a level raise just about every other day from practice alone up to level 10. Then it broke down to about every three days; I’d get a level, right up until level 15, with my combat skills.

Since I had no way of knowing if progression changed or if it just stopped, I kept on with my practice. Even if it just stopped, I knew that I wanted to keep on with my katas as I could feel myself getting better. Shaving a little off here and there, getting a little more power there.

I worked on crafting skills and magic skills; after lunch, those skills went up at odd rates. It seems that I’d gain all my XP at the completion of the craft, and the bigger the project, the more XP I got per hour. Overall I got all of my Crafting skills to level 10 in the month, with rope making the highest at level 15 and trap making at 14.

Enchanting was fun, in the not-fun sort of way; since I only had 10 scrolls, I ended up making just about everything I’d enchanted. Then I put my primitive runes on everything to see what would happen, which was mostly nothing from what I could tell. I could power the runes, which would take mana, and cast the spell, which was nice and fast. But, it didn’t count for XP gain, which meant that it wouldn’t help me improve, and with how little mana I had, I didn’t want to waste it. In addition to that, it seemed that if I used the spell from the carved item, it would burn off. They were single-use and not very effective at that.

Then I’d do a project that I was working on. Some days it was a hunt. On other days, it was working on building every other day was trap making for my landing. I had the walls of my house clayed in and standing 5 feet tall after three weeks of daily work.

I also picked up a new skill, or rather an old skill that I’d not worked on in years. I picked up Conditioning, a skill tied to the martial arts study that I did. I got that when I built some training equipment. I now had balance beams, palm blossom poles, a few slacklines, a makiwara board, a basket that I had sand in for punching, and a rope-covered tree I was using for kicks. It was about the time I started using a stick on my legs and forearms that the skill showed up, Conditioning. Soon after, I also picked up when making my pants and shoes Primitive tailoring.

Conditioning Skill Grouping non-combative:

Conditioning lets a person know how to hit themselves to become tougher. This skill lets the user know what type of objects to hit which places with, or what objects to hit to create stronger tougher parts of the body.

At higher levels proper conditioning can raise your damage resistance.

I ended up getting my root cellar/cave built. I built my walkway into my storage room using the stone to dirt medium cast. It was fun the first 4 or 5 times. Then it got hard. I figured that I’d dig into the side with the 3 cubic foot spell, and then it should be fast with a couple of the big ones. Hulling that much topsoil is not fast by any stretch. However, it was great for the garden as I turned it from a shallow bed to a deep bed.

As much as I wanted to, I didn’t skip my nightly horror trips. I had information that I wanted to know. Sam is one of the most literal horrible petty men that I’d ever met. If I’d phrase something slightly wrong, he took it that way, or when he didn’t know the answer, he would drag it out as long as he could.

Case in point.

Me “why I was picked to come here?”

Sam “Revealing that is not something that your feeble mine could handle.”

Me “Is it that you don’t want me to know or something else.”

Sam “No”

Me “Do the rules bind you from not telling why I was picked to come here?”

Sam “No”

Me “Are you able to tell me why I was picked to come here?”

Sam “No”

Me “Do you know why I was picked to come here?”

Sam “No”

Another such set of interactions included.

Me “What is the name of this planet?”

Sam “There are many names.”

Me “What do the Wild Humans call this planet?”

Sam “Ground”

Me “Would any one else recognize that I was talking about the world when I said Ground?”

Sam “How should I know, you truly are as dumb as your stats say”

Now, this might not seem that bad, except it took me 8 days to get that he didn’t know why I was picked to come here. That is 8 trips to being in his horrid study. So I figured that he was just trying to see if I’d stop bugging him, and that is why I was in the worst pain ever while in there, ants crawling on me, Spiders, scorpions, in the fire, in the water, all black, all white.

No matter how long or short the answer, I got to spend time in pain. That and always the clock. I’d started to hear the clock all the time now. If I slowed down and listened to the world, the clock was in the background everywhere, not enough for me to hear but horrid nonetheless.

Then when I failed to get my whole question out before passing out from lack of mana, I got the fun answer of “why didn’t you ask a question.” It tended to preclude me from asking in-depth questions that I wanted to know, as trying to get the question out needed to be something I took care with, so I couldn’t easily lawyer myself into the answer I wanted.

It was a full twenty-four days that I went almost on autopilot to get my first core. It was both a great time and a crazy time. I was great in that I was becoming better at all of my skills; crazy that I was pushing so many balls.

Also crazy that I was kind of forming a bond with a walnut tree because of using Plant empathy on the tree every day. Not there yet, but with growth and empathy, she was making a nice place for me to sit and watch the sunrise. By working with the walnut, I was getting levels in natural shelter as we worked on her canopy.

The leveling of my racial skills seemed to be separate then my class. I’d moved up in the past month from apprentice Shaman to Shaman, a level 3 Wild Human. This gain gave me an increase in my Willpower +2, Vigor +4, and dexterity +1. These gains weren’t something that I could pick like class levels should be. They were assigned, so I could only hope that I could get more health and intelligence at later levels. I truly hated how I passed out every time I asked Sam a question.

I ended up also getting a pair of new spells when I became a full-fledge shaman. I picked up purify water and glow. Purify water; let me well make water cleaner to drink. On the other hand, Glow was something that I could cast to make something glow. It was brighter than the old green-yellow of glow-in-the-dark toys, but not much gave the same glow. If I used it, I guess I could mark a path, or perhaps it would become stronger. Though any light in a dark enough place would be welcome.

Any night that I wasn’t getting a question answered by Sam was a night that I was having one of my dreams. I was sure that they were related to my skills and past memories of who I was on this planet. I almost was convinced that I somehow got pushed into another person, and the dreams were from this body. The only reason I wasn’t was that my body was still mine looked like I worked better, but it was still my body as I remembered it.

Name

Arn

HP

20

MP

40

Race

Wild Human Shaman(3)

SP

42

Defense

1

Primary Class: Enchanter*

Level: 0

Secondary Class: Linguist* (ancient languages)

Level: 0

Strength

15*

Intelligence

8

Vigor

14

Dexterity

13*

Willpower

11

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

Level

Racial

Spear**

7 Locked

Survivalist**

7 Locked

Tracking**

6 Locked

Primitive Runes

6

Ritualistic spell casting

9

Ritualistic healing

7

Animal empathy

9

Plant empathy

9

Primary class

Enchanting

10

Script*

*

Ink making

10

Etching

12

Power imbuing

9

Socketing

1

Secondary Class

Ancient languages*

*

Non class skills

Hiking**

10

Climbing**

12

Primitive tool**

10

Natural Shelter**

6

Spear Fishing

14

Primitive cooking

12

Herbalism

10

Stone Knapping

10

Staff

13

Taekwondo

15

Running

10

Stone Construction

7

Snake handling

0

Traps

14

*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 single questions of Great and Mighty greeter Sam. This spell will only work for the lowly Arn.

Ritualistic spells

Level

Mana usage

Stone to dirt

1

20

Start fire

1

20

Call rain*

1

20

Growth

1

20

Lay to rest

1

40

Purify water

1

30

Glow

1

15

I woke up after a great night learning from Sam that, yes, boredom is torture, and even if I can’t truly be hurt in the dream, I could develop issues. You see, after all the burning and freezing and everything else that he did to me, he stuck me back in the corner where I couldn’t see anything, and the clock was gone and most of the light.

I felt the clock the whole time in my brain, and my body felt like it was on fire or freezing. None of it happened well; it never did, but not even in the dream. Then Sam answered my question about how to turn on the mini-map. I’d guessed that there was one, and then bam. A night of suffering to be told by Sam, “It can’t be turned on.” This meant that either there is not one or it is called something different, which meant it would be back to playing twenty questions in hell to get that answer…

All that be what it was this morning wasn’t going to be like the others. I was making the last power stone that I needed to feed my necklace to make my first core and see if the hundred hours I had sunk into making these things was worth it. So after breakfast and workout, it was time to sit for 4 hours to make a stone to consume in 30 seconds. I guessed if life was easy, then everyone would be doing something like this. Assuming that they had the stones to do it, which I guessed since I was just using river stones, they would.

I was sitting in my lean-to on my bed when it was time to get started. Consume! With that command, the imbued stone got its power sucked out, and then the stone turned to liquid and vanished. Next, I pulled up the tabs in the necklace: Consume and Creation. Then then, I selected creation and then created core.