I woke up rested but disturbed nonetheless. My dreams of being a wild human left a heavy emotional mark on me. The feeling I had would sometimes linger for days. I knew that I would feel depressed because of my dream, and there was little that I could do about it. I just needed to act whenever I hit emotions. I had to get to work. Work constantly distracted me on earth from the feelings that I’d have. That and reading, but since the only thing I could read were my stats, the reading wouldn’t do.

Even with such a rough dream, this was a day that I’d been looking forward to. I knew that I would get a chance to move my lean-to up a level. It had been relatively quick and straightforward with what I needed to do, and I was hopeful that I might turn this into something that provided more protection. So I didn’t neglect my morning even though I knew I would be doing something cool. Nor did Blink neglect training me on my agility as she kept trying to trip me as I walked.

After lunch, I got the rest of the materials to 100% that the magic of my house core showed itself again. I’d just brought a bundle of healing herbs back when I got the pop-up.

House Core Level up!

Congratulations on leveling!

Your house has reached level 1

Lean-to with Awning and fire

I jumped because as the pop-up came, the supplies I had stored in the Lean-to moved. The stones moved out from inside to form post footings, and my fire ring shifted a bit; near the fire was also what I always thought of as a deck chair. It was a low Adirondack style chair. To me, it was perfect; it was big but perfect.

It was under the awning within easy reach of the fire and rocket stove. Speaking of the awning, the leather that I’d all got sewn together much better than I could ever do and was stretched out to angle the water down away from both the fire and the lean-to. I’d about 8 feet of clearance under the new awning.

When I pulled up the House interface, I saw that I needed more wood and stone for the next level. I also saw that in the house core traits, I got added a new bonus. So my health recovery was doubled inside my home.

Now the good thing was I’d not been taking damage that often. A point here or there when falling or slipping on a rock in the river when fishing. It wasn’t often, but when I did, I’d get that point back within about two hours, so that wasn’t a huge thing. That being said, if I got messed up, I could see how it would be nice to recover faster. Which was likely to happen when I ended up in my fight or fights with the goblins.

I was out of easy stone since my stone walls were already mudded in. I’d cleared out all of the large river stones from my level of the waterfall. Well, all the easy ones. My next place would be to go up to the next level up and start tossing the stones down. I knew it would take longer, but in the end, it should be worth it since I could get my fitness skill higher, and my climbing would go up a bit as I climbed to the next level.

So I kept at it for the next week. I was climbing up the ten feet or so to the next level. Hauling stones from the water over to near my site. Dropping them off the ledge and back to it again. I wanted to get this house to level again since it was something that I could see making changes. It also seemed like it would be something that, in the long run, could take care of me since it could keep leveling while my skills would cap out.

I also was taking the time to work on my garden. Since I’d added several inches of topsoil, the garden was doing great. Along with my daily work on growing things with magic, I was already drying out herbs and things like peas. While I couldn’t dry out everything that could be dried, I did as much as I could, and what I couldn’t, I ate. I knew that even though food was easy right now, when winter came, I’d want more than I had.

A huge benefit of my house core level up was that the fire I had became magical. It no longer took the wood to burn and, as such, also no longer made smell or smoke. This removed one of my fears which was I’d be detected because of my fire which I needed to have for cooking.

The next few weeks seemed to go smoothly for me. It was as if the goblins had moved on. I found no signs of them nearby, which made me very happy. My home defenses were just about as good as I thought that I could get them at this point. I had used stone to dirt to smooth the rock face leading up to my level so that it was twenty feet straight up.

Sadly the only thing that I could do for the cracks in the rock face was to fill them with clay and smooth it out. While it was not much, it would hopefully make it slightly harder for the monsters to come at me.

I was able to quickly fall back into my normal cycle of training and working on my home and home defenses. My hunting of unnts had almost become routine at this point as I had several traps I could use to get one. I never took more than one unnt at a time as I didn’t want the herd to move on, and I just couldn’t use that much. There were also other animals that I was hunting to help expand the types of meat and fur I’d.

The armored versions of the squirrels and rabbits seemed to be something that I might could use to make better armor for myself. It was always odd finding in a snare a rabbit that looked like it had a turtle shell on it or when Blink would bring me back a squirrel with external bone plates. It couldn’t roll up like an armadillo, but it had plates like one. One of the best unnts that I was able to catch was the armored version. The leather on it was thick like it was already processed for armor. It took me twice as long to get that one stretched out for drying.

When I was working on stone knapping, Blink would come over and bump my hands, or when spearfishing, she would jump in the water right as I was ready to strike. I’d say she was trying to mess me up in training, but I honestly think that I was just not giving her enough time or stuff to do. I ended up teaching her to fetch, which she liked, so she would start bringing me stuff to throw for her.

It was after the third week that something odd happened. I was working through my morning katas. My mind had started to drift to my start fire spell and how it took so long to use. I could make runes on my spear, but that took too much mana to make it worth it to me, at least now. I was thinking through the dance and my form and trying to figure out if this ritualistic casting would ever help me in combat. I wasn’t sure how to get better spells or if I even could beyond the next level of Shaman. Nothing I had was direct combat; it was more of a support thing. With how long the dancing would take, it was no wonder it was all support.

It was as I was focused on how the fire would flow out of my hand when I started a fire that I got to a Kip and struck with my casting hand. I saw and felt something that made me stop. I felt fire out of my right hand and saw that around my fist was a red and yellow flame. Right as I saw it, the flame flickered out. I checked to see, and my mana reserves hadn’t dipped, which meant that whatever I’d done used the ritualistic casting to make the flame.

I went to work to see if I could recreate what I’d done. If I could harness ritualistic magic while in combat, then I might have a way to make up for my poor intelligence and low mana pool. I started by going through the same kata again and trying to drive the fire simultaneously. It almost took but didn’t quite do what I wanted. It felt odd like it was forced and not flowing.

I started to try to just run my kata like I was breathing hard again. It was one of my first, so I’d done this kata for years on earth before I stopped practicing, and since I was here, I’d worked on it each day for over two months now.

As I let my muscles loosen and my mind focus on the strikes, I felt my breathing shift. My breathing fell into the practiced hard, focused breaths that the strikes required. I felt my connection to the mana around me, like when I danced for my spells. Then I started my desire for my strikes to be on fire. Finally, I saw the flame had started.