Blink and I headed back home. It would be hard, but I needed to make sure that I was ready to fight and win. While I made it out of my fights with the goblins alive, I was almost killed during both. Physically I was better than a goblin one-on-one. However, they came at me in groups, which meant that I needed something to even the playing field.

First, I needed to go through the things I acquired by almost dying. After that, I needed to work on making cores and getting things ready to finish the goblins.

I was under-armed and under-armored. I also realized that while I was solid against one opponent, I would run out of power fast when taking on a group. My best attack was with my staff when I had it fully charged, which was a good attack, but it lacked sustainability. I was a glass cannon with how I was set up and what was worse was that I was an underpowered glass cannon.

I pulled out my bag and started to look at what I had gained.

1 Chainmail coif

2 short bows, one dark wood the other light wood

1 iron dagger

1 bronze dagger

1 bronze hatchet

2 maces, one with a leather-wrapped handle

1 iron short sword

1 seax

1 cleaver

1 cut-off iron spear (short spear?)

A few little bags that had random small sparkling stones.

2 crude quivers

8 crude arrows

It was a great haul of equipment. I normally would be overjoyed at it all. However, I almost died twice and Blink was still hurt. This was also ignoring the fact that this was the second battle in two days with an unknown enemy, with an unknown location and unknown numbers.

I wasn’t super happy about the information I had on the goblins right now. There were too many unknowns, which had almost cost me my life more than once now. I also wasn’t pleased at all with how I did in those fights.

Overall if I didn’t fix how bad off I was in that last fight, then I would end up with bigger problems for a long time or big problems for a short time and then no more problems ever again.

My staff skill had moved up to 17 from the fighting, which was good to see. My Ritualistic spell casting had also moved up to 13. I figured that it wouldn’t have made much of a change with the fighting since I only used it once. That being said, it seems to have improved faster in combat than with me training it. My Ki Focus also went up from 2 to 3, and ritualistic healing got a two-point bump.

I was happy that I had some metal equipment now; also, the chainmail coif I figured would be helpful provided that it would fit me well enough. Even if I could not wear it or repair it right now, I might could figure out something to do with it. I also needed to check to see if my magical armor could fix itself or if I would need to somehow stitch up my fur armor.

So I got to work doing the boring things of post-battle. But, first, I started to repair my armor.

I pulled up and entered the menu for my fur armor, and there was a new option undergrowth, and it was flashing.

>Repair

Repair must be completed before growth can continue.

Leather two feet by two feet

Mana 10 points

Repair with standard supplies may reduce Mana needs.

The good thing was it looked like it could self-repair. Which meant that all I needed to do was feed my armor. Which was a much better thing than trying to fix a fur armor using leather string and a bone needle.

I headed over to my storage room to get some of the Unnt hide. I took my armor with me because I figured that if I needed anything else, that would be where I could get it right now.

I hadn’t brought a torch because I wouldn’t be in here for long. The only light I had in this place was from the door or casting glow. It was something that I would need to address at some point. After I found the hides, I laid my armor on top of the unnt leather so and told it to consume. The greedy armor ate the whole leather, which was about three times the amount of hide that I needed for the repair. I then started to feed the armor mana.

I woke up with a splitting headache and my face on the ground. My neck was sore, and it felt like I both fell onto the dirt floor and slept there for a few hours. Finally, I pulled back up my armor to see what all was done.

I had blinking at the top the option to upgrade my armor by choosing a path that I could go down.

Armor rating

Magical resistance

Weight reduction

While I would love to give my armor magical resistance since I was sure I would meet a mage at some point, I just didn’t see that as something worth adding in right now.

The real toss-up would be between Armor rating and weight reduction. Armor rating would let me live a bit longer in a fight with the goblins and might have made it so that the arrows didn’t mess with me.

Weight reduction, on the other hand, could be excellent so that I wouldn’t be lugging around an extra 20 pounds of fur. It would mean that I could end up running faster or cover more distance. I selected the path for armor rating since I got too messed up in my last fight.

Armor core!

Max level 5

As your armor levels, its helpfulness increases.

General

Showing up in all light blue.

Arn’s fur armor

Level 1

Type armor core

Class uncommon

Durability 250/250

Weight 20 lbs

Coverage: Torso

>Growth

To level your armor, you must provide for its proper care and material.

Leather 100%

Mana 100%

>Traits

These are the abilities or traits that your fur armor has.

Protection- Your armor has a +2 armor rating

Durable- Your armor is durable. It will not wear out from normal wear. Durability will only decrease with targeted attacks.

So it looked like the armor rating went up one because of the traits, and it looked like the durability went up 50 as well. It also looked like the core had enough mana for me to level it again and most of the leather needed. Since it was most of the way there, I figured that it would be good to level up the armor again. So I grabbed another unnt hide and redid the process of laying the armor on the leather.

To say that I was disappointed when I saw that the armor was now maxed out on needed mana and leather but wasn’t ready to level would have been a slight understatement. After thinking about it, I guessed there was either a time frame on leveling or skill at being armor that the core had to get from being hit a few times.

I needed to figure out what type of equipment I was going to make. The armor had helped a lot, but I needed more protection and better weapons. The good thing was I had metal weapons now to work from. With some improvements to the equipment, I was hoping that if I had another pitched battle, I would be better than half dead.

Next, it was time to see about helping with the healing side of a battle a bit more. I had my Ritualistic healing, which I had done very little with. I had been working on things to raise numbers but not truly getting ready. I had yet to make any wards, and I had a waterskin that kept liquid fresh.

I made my way over to my storeroom. While Blink and I both weren’t showing debuffs, I was moving slowly and felt weak, and she seemed to still be favoring her wounded side. I gathered the herbs I needed to make more healing salves and headed back to my shelter.

I needed to see if I could brew a healing tea that I could keep in my beverage container to use as a low-level healing potion. Not sure if it would work or work fast enough, but if I could keep something that could buff me some, then that would help out in the next fight.

I spent the rest of the morning working on my healing salves and worked out a tea that I could use as well. It seems to help with healing and remove pain. It wasn’t like a two-point jump, or at least not as I was drinking it; more like it buffed my heal rate by 10%, which was good.

I also went ahead and made a sickness ward. The ward looked kind of like a dream catcher’s frame but was only about two inches across. It took me several tries to get it built and then to make the correct hand motions to make the ward activate.

It was such an odd feeling since it was both like a spell and a skill. It was like the dance for my hands, but only after I successfully got the twigs tied in the right places and in the proper order. I then hung in on a necklace and put it on. Next, I worked on building a few more of them and felt that I was being guided to different patterns for both the twigs and the dance my fingers did. So I made them larger as well and hung them on the lean-to so that they would help ward off sickness from my home.

Once I got the third one done for my home, I saw that Blink woke up. She walked over to one of the wards and head-butted it. The ward turned a bright white, started to smoke, and fell onto the ground. The raspy breathing that she had was gone now. She then pawed at her food bowl and looked at me like I was stupid. I got her some of the dried fish and then new water. As I was getting her the water, I noticed that the smoking ward had burned through all the ties I had put on it. It was now just a few charred twigs.

I tried to figure out how to activate a ward myself, but nothing seemed to work for me. So either I didn’t know what I was doing, which was true, or there was nothing that it could do for me. As I knew they did something, I was going to guess I just wasn’t eligible for the healing.

It had been a long day recovering from the fight. I had thought that once all my debuffs were gone and I was fully healed that I would be back to 100%. It seemed, however, that there were some lingering consequences to the battle. While I could move, I was still stiff and slow. Blink seemed fully recovered now that she used the sickness ward, but for me, it was just stiffness and a foggy brain.

That night I wanted to keep up with my questions for Sam. I wanted to know how skills worked. Since it seemed like I gained skills from trying things. Yet, along with these skills, I also got vague feelings or memories of doing the skill before.

When I got the memories related to most of my primitive skills or outdoor skills, they were of a wild human growing up in a tribe. When I leveled my ink making, I got memories of a man being taught by someone inside by lamplight. Both sets felt like me, but also, both were intrusive and not me. So, just before the sun went down, I asked my question.

“Oh great and mighty greeter Sam, I the lowly Arn beseech you to answer my question. Where do the memories from my class skills come from?” I yelled from beside the waterfall.

The sand seemed like the best place to fall. Everywhere else, I tended to start to bleed, but in the sand, I would be mostly okay. I tended to get it in my mouth, but it wasn’t as bad as it could be.

I do wish I hadn’t asked that question. It was one that I would regret over and over.