Before focusing solely on his screen page, Alex glanced at the others. Only to realize Diana wasn’t the only one with her eyes closed. Daven, too, seemed to be asleep, huddled beneath his cloak. The only thing that gave him away was the movement apparent through his eyelids.

“You plateaued too?” Cedric suddenly asked.

Alex’s head shot up. “Uh, yeah, I did,” he said. “How did you know?”

The crew leader smiled. “That was a lot of Vinelings back there, Alex. Go on then, Valerian and I will keep watch.” He pulled something out of his pocket—a stone, it seemed, and laid his glaive over his lap. “Don’t lose yourself to it, though. Be steadfast. I’ve seen experienced chasers addicted to the feel of the Sight. It isn’t pretty. I’ve already told this to these two, so consider yourself warned.”

Alex didn’t know what to say. His mouth hung open for a moment, utterly confused, until he snapped out of it and muttered something in agreement. Following the siblings, he closed his eyes too.

He had never tried accessing his status like that, but the screen was there promptly.

[Status]

Name: Alex Hart

Level: 4

Class: Mage

HP: 60/60

MP: 118.9/130

[Attributes]

Strength: 6

Dexterity: 8

Vitality: 6

Power: 12

Soul Affinity: 13

Free Points: 5

[Skill Points]: 1

Fire Proficiency - 3/5

Water Proficiency

Lightning Proficiency

Air Proficiency

Earth Proficiency

Arcane Proficiency

[Locked]

[Locked]

[Locked]

…

If the difference between his and other people’s magic frustrated him—if nothing else than because the divergences between the two seemed completely random—then Alex could at least appreciate the consistency here.

It would drive him nuts if the attribute and skill gains of every level varied according to some arbitrary external factors like which monsters he dusted recently or if it happened inside or outside a dungeon.

That meant five free points again. The logical, game-like decision would be to dump them all in Power or Soul Affinity. They were certainly the attributes that would most affect his ability to fight monsters and protect himself. Magic was might for a Mage.

But it was different when a single health point could mean life or death for you—actual death too. He couldn’t count on spawning back where he started. He would be tempted to put some points on dexterity too, if he hadn’t already used three of his initial five to prop it up a bit. That would have served him well as a rogue.

Now that he thought of it, it had already helped him.

He’d been too occupied by the fact he could make fireballs to really test it out, but he remembered jumping over that stream yesterday when he would have never been able to do that before. That single point in strength might have helped, too. He was never scrawny, but no one could ever call him muscular at any point in his life.

Alex bit his lip, his fingers drumming against his thigh. No right answer here. Sometimes you only found the right way to go when you arrived there and looked back.

[Attributes]

Strength: 6

Dexterity: 8

Vitality: 8 (+2)

Power: 13 (+1)

Soul Affinity: 13

Free Points: 2

That looked… alright. Decent for a mage. Good balance between Vitality, Dexterity, and his more attack oriented attributes. A glass cannon was the last thing Alex wanted to be.

He moved on to his skills page, where he knew he would end up window shopping and not making a decision in the end. Knowing he wanted a new proficiency was one thing… choosing between the five options was a whole ‘nother.

Each one had its own charm, though the two that most attracted him now were Lightning and Arcane. A more defensive proficiency would be more advisable given the nature of his fire, but lightning as an element could be used for more than its pure destructive powers—with that being a temptation in itself, and arcane was just too wizard-y and mysterious to ignore. Diana’s own achievements with it just served to prove its utility.

Alex reflected on the two, trying to see which one edged the other out, until he remembered what a pairing of a Fire and Air proficiency could do. Damn…. He could have ripped the whole Vineling nest up into charred pieces if he had fed his fire with more and more oxygen.

As he considered this, a gust swept through their little nook in the forest. Wind whistled through the trees, and the scent of fresh grass tickled at Alex’s senses. His nose scrunched up, then a big wet leaf slapped him across the face with a loud squish.

Startled, Alex swore, whacking the leaf away with a hand. So much for increased reflexes with dexterity. He heard a laugh and allowed his eyes to crack open.

Daven was trying to hold in his mirth. “Your face man,” he said, near cackling. Alex glared at the archer, and he held his arms up in surrender. “Swear to the First it was only the wind.” He couldn’t hold it in and laughed. “It's got great accuracy though.”

Alex wouldn’t have believed had the leaf not come from the opposite side of where the archer sat. Before he could say anything else, his name was called.

“What?” He turned to the side, annoyed.

Valerian was staring at him. “Water?” The paladin held a leatherskin in his extended hand.

Alex looked at it for a second, hesitated.

“It’s boiled,” Valerian assured him.

Alex raised an eyebrow. “The leather?”

He got a half-second chuckle for that. “Yes, I suppose, and the water too.”

So Alex took it with a muttered thank you and gulped down a drink. The water ran down his throat sweet as honey. Another must-get from those peddlers. Wiping at his mouth, he offered the skin back to Valerian.

Across from him, Diana chose that moment to return from the Sight. She blinked up at the sky, letting out a satisfied sigh.

“Everyone’s done?” Cedric asked casually, eyes down on his lap. He was meticulously running a whetstone on the single edge of his spear. There was a faint shink sound for every pass the stone made on the blade.

He got nods from Alex and Diana for that, but Daven turned his thousand-watt grin to him. “Just opened the Gate of the Arrow. I’m about to blow shit up!”

The whetstone suddenly stopped. Cedric let out a chuckle that spoke of fond exasperation, and Diana put a hand to her face, groaning. “I already told you not to tell that kind of thing to anyone,” she said, her voice muffled through her palm.

The archer shrugged. “You’re going to see it soon enough anyway,” he said. “Who makes these rules anyway? Some fancy-nancy in that big city you want to go to?”

Diana threw her arms up in the air. “It’s called propriety,” she said, irritated. “You don’t go around telling people something so intensely private. You don’t want to tell them and they don’t want to hear it.”

Daven snorted. “I’m not telling people,” he said. “I’m telling the crew.” He shrugged as if what he said was just common sense.

His sister looked just about to explode, but to his other side, Alex glimpsed a small smile adorning Valerian’s usual stolid face. It seemed you could get a peek of the man beneath the stone every once in a while, so long as you looked for it.

As for the argument, Alex wasn’t quite sure what they were even speaking about. He could see how a culture of confidentiality toward one’s abilities would arise to maintain a person’s privacy—and the element of surprise, if you wanted to be honest about it—but if they were truly about to see it happen, then what difference did it make?

Well, it was okay for others to share, at least. He would be doing no such thing.

“Wait,” Cedric said. He was looking at Diana. At her arm. “Let me see that.”

“It’s nothing,” she said, still sounding irked. Daven had a knack to bring that out in people. The crew leader only had to raise an eyebrow, and she relented easily enough.

Alex grimaced at the sight. The skin around the cut had turned an angry red. But Cedric only hummed. “That will get infected if you leave it open for a couple days, but you’ll be fine with a minor heal tonight. Ask Lanna when we come back later.”

“Very well,” Diana said, peering down at her arm with a degree of concern now. The girl was angry, not stupid.

“Lanna’s a healer?” asked Alex. He didn’t even know for certain everyone had classes, but this seemed to confirm it if a small village barmaid had one too.

Cedric nodded. “Who do you think heals the Bedstone’s patrons in the morning when they get too rowdy the night before?”

“I didn’t even know they offered that at an inn.”

“Oh that’s right,” Cedric said, “you’ve never been to a city, have you?”

Alex shook his head.

Cedric still had his whetstone out, but he put it back into his pocket now. “Inns and taverns usually employ healers to cure hangovers and headaches and what not. It keeps the customers paying for drinks and all that,” he said, then he leaned forward over his glaive as if to tell them all a well-guarded secret. “Gambling houses make a lot of coin off of that. They have free drinks, you see, and pretty maids to serve them, but you have to pay to get its effects washed away. An increasing amount after every healing. Men have been known to go inside one and never come back. Not with their money any way… or their freedom.”

Their freedom? Alex crossed his arms, considering. Sounds like something they’d do back home.

Daven nodded along, pulled a piece of jerky from inside a pocket in his cloak and bit into it. “Told ya there’s something wrong in these cities,” he said, looking at Diana. “Not a single honest folk in there.”

Diana rolled her eyes. “Yes, the big city is vwery big and scawy,” she mocked.

Daven passed around his seemingly endless supply of jerky even as he and Diana continued their argument, descending further and further into childish insults. Cedric and Valerian just listened along, putting a word here and there, and laughing when Daven pulled out his best cityfolk impressions.

At the same time, Alex was thinking back on his first minutes in this world, and on the misclick that transformed him into a mage. “Wait a second,” he said, interrupting the duo. All eyes turned to him. “You said you can only elevate by dusting monsters, right?” Cedric nodded easily. “Well, how does a Healer ever level up, then?”

“They don’t,” Cedric said, shrugging at Alex’s stunned expression. “I know, but it’s the way that it is. The great majority of people who pick Healer when they turn twelve don’t ever plateau beyond the first time if they’re given a monster to dust at their Selection Festival, like they do here in Riverbend.” He opened his palms up and moved them up and down, as if weighing the other side of a scale. “Unless they’re rich enough to pay for chasers to bring them monsters, of course, or they have a crew that accommodates them and wants their Healer growing with them, which is rare to find.”

“That’s what I heard about arcane-focused mages, too. It’s too… bookish to be of much use in killing monsters,” Diana said, her eyes narrowed at the grass in front of her. “There’s exceptions, I heard, mages who’re able to turn arcane power into a veritable weapon. But they hide their secrets as jealously as corsairs do their treasures.”

“That’s why we’re gonna get you to Runekast, right?” Cedric asked kindly. “So you can learn and become that exception.”

“Maybe,” Diana said casually, failing to hide the hopeful expression on her face. Only for that to twist into a scowl when Daven snorted.

“That’s stupid,” he said. “Bunch of pansies go to that school.” He snorted again, chewing loudly on his jerky. “School,” he repeated the word while adding a healthy dose of scorn. “What are you gonna learn there that you can’t here, in the field?”

“Runekast is a prestigious academy,” Valerian interrupted. His voice brooked no argument, and Daven shut his mouth quicker than a rabbit caught in the sights of a hawk would run. Diana was glaring murderously at her brother now. “It’s a good dream to have, Diana. A noble dream.” Then the hawk turned to look at the rabbit, daring him to speak.

Daven only pouted like a child caught misbehaving, mumbling something incoherent under his breath. Diana whispered a quick thank you to the paladin and settled back on the grass, shooting another glance at her brother before she closed her eyes. It was quick, but Alex thought he caught something else in that final look, something much more akin to heartbreak than anger.

From where he sat, she looked to be doing breathing exercises to calm down now. He would too, in fairness, if Daven was his brother. And he was the last person to comment on a sibling relationship.

Nobody spoke after that. A heavy silence that no one wanted to break settled over the group, and Alex decided to hold on to any more of his questions until it didn’t seem like they would cause a nuclear reaction between the siblings.

To distract himself, he played around with his status page, thinking of the possibilities behind his future skills as he ate his piece of the leathery beef jerky. When the one hour mark came, and Alex could only assume Cedric used the position of the sun to count, the crew leader rose from the log.

“It’s time,” he said. For some reason, the words seemed to hold a weight to them.

The three hopefuls of the crew scrambled to their feet. A mixture of nerves and excitement coursed through Alex’s veins, his pulse ran wild.

“This will be a good opportunity to see how you deal with stronger monsters you have no information on. Valerian and I will hold back again, but I won’t take any chances there.”

Valerian rose too, with the same sureness he had in everything. “If I think you cannot handle it, I will step in,” he agreed.

“That understood?” asked Cedric. Agreement was all he got from the three of them. “Good, then let’s not waste anymore time."