When the hand of the Ancients is on you, you can only answer.

Wisdom of the Ancients, book 2

Johanna’s eyes slowly opened, gummed by sleep. The darkness that enveloped her was punctuated by a tiny sliver of light, which she realized came from the shutters that had already been closed when they arrived at the main inn of the city of Zahl yesterday.

It now felt like an eternity ago for some reason.

The Skeleton, she startled, remembering.

All of her vision from last evening came back to her in a rush. How she found herself in some abstraction of the ruins that they used to delve into, with the Ancient Skeleton on his five-stooled ruin of a chair dominating the perspective. The strange discussion with the nameless Ancient power, who showed her his four vistas into reality, through which it looked over them. Granting them “choices” as it said, Talents in truth.

Each step in their journey, since that distant day of summer when they found the ruined buildings where the skeleton was, it had watched them. It had given them complementary Talents, suited for each of them. Fire, Support, Strength, Discretion. It had helped them overcome, whether it was hordes of Changed Lepuses threatening their former home, immensely empowered Erinax or Murids in mana zones or even tribal armies from the North.

All that attention had made them into prizes. The Warden of the Montana, Edgard Maistry, had been ready to twist the laws of his state to keep his hold on them after drafting them, and Countess Catherine Rocastle had warned her that he wouldn’t be the last to play loose with the letter or even the spirit of the law. They had fled, first the army, then the Marches of the Montana itself, but they wouldn’t be able to flee forever. The bounty hunters, like the luckless band that tried to ambush them, would be replaced by stronger forces with major political powers backing them.

Her thought went back to Catherine. Thanks to the latest manifestation from the Skeleton, the four of them had converted Ancient Books, allowing the Countess to become a Metal Sorceress archmage, and her bodyguard a Guardian Hero. Or rather, the Skeleton did.

I can choose powers among the ideas – his word for Ancient Books – but I cannot make new ideas. Those had been its own words.

The Skeleton wanted them to provide Talents, the way they had received them. The powers the world needs.

She wanted nothing more than curl around Tom’s back, bury her head under the covers, and ignore all of this. But it wasn’t to be. The Skeleton had shown her where to find books for them to change.

She now had to figure out where that was, and you didn’t do that hiding in bed.

“What do you mean, you saw the Skeleton?” was Peter’s first question over breakfast.

“I know. It seems like a dream in a way, but it wasn’t. It was… far too clear for that,” Johanna replied.

Seeing the slightly dubitative look from Laura, she immediately elaborated.

“And I could see and hear you.”

“What do you mean, see us?” she asked slightly startled.

“You were on a table by yourselves. While Tom was chatting with a pair of guys at the bar counter.”

She saw Laura frowning, obviously trying to remember the evening before.

“And before you start asking, you were talking about your… you know… recovery from the Warden’s contraception drugs.”

“Wait, what?”

“Whether you’re with child or not, because your latest is late.”

She saw Laura’s eyes bulging in incredulity.

“There were four sorts of windows. From which I could see and hear through… each of us. The one that was all black was the inn’s bedroom where I was, but I could see you. Like the Skeleton does.”

“Wait, so it’s seeing us? Right now?” Laura blanched.

“All the time, I’m guessing.”

“Guessed it long time ago,” Tom injected.

“I know. I knew. Too often when things changed, before we faced bad odds,” Johanna replied, squeezing her husband’s hand.

“Good idea, inquiring about ruins, by the way,” she added.

Tom’s eyebrows rose before a small smile came.

“And so, got a vision,” he said.

“And he brought me to a table. A map.”

“Of what?”

“Some place… related to books. That’s what it seemed to be.”

“Where’s that?”

“I don’t really know. I mean, when I was moving around the… table that held that map, it followed my gaze. If it’s like a normal map – and they follow Ancient convention about the north upward – then it has to be on the east coast, over the Atlantic.”

Tom shuddered. But Peter was the one to voice the concern.

“The coasts are hellholes. Everyone knows that. They’re full of ruins, and mana zones. Heavy mana zones.”

“And we are equipped to deal with that. Thanks to the Skeleton,” she replied.

“Maybe,” Peter said dubiously.

Coming out of Timothy’s Rest and Ale was stepping into whiteness. True to the warning of the innkeeper, snow was there to stay. While the morning sky was primarily blue with small clouds, more snow had fallen during the night, adding to the previous covering, and several additional inches of it were all over the street, even pooling against the inn’s side.

Despite the snow and the slightly wet cold, the street was starting to fill up with animation for this Thursday morning. Stores lined the street toward the nearby marketplace, although nobody was hawking their wares outside in the cold air today.

This time, Johanna decided they’d get real repair kits. Their gear was not some magical impervious thing, and while Laura could fix wounds, the leathers they wore did suffer from arrows and blades, and teeth and claws.

Or, rather, not all their leathers, she thought, looking at Laura. Artifacts were extremely hard to cut or damage.

After the scuffle with the bandits, and how she’d managed to deflect a bit the last bandit’s knife, she handed Thirst – as Peter had nicknamed the pair of gloves they’d found in that Ancient building in the mana zone – to Laura. Laura could fix wounds, small and big, but if someone managed to take her out of action, they’d have problems, as her large trauma heals required her to intervene immediately. So, she insisted Laura wear those gloves as a small measure of protection. That meant her friend walked with a swirl of colorless light coming from her, which promised to be distracting, but that was the price to pay for safety.

The gloves were even fingerless, which allowed Laura to apply her touch-based healing freely. She had tried with real gloves, and the basic wound healing didn’t work quite well, so there was no way she’d attempt a full internal healing with some.

She turned to Tom, walking at her side, and asked, “What did you get about ruins? I didn’t follow everything once the Skeleton took me to his maps.”

Tom blinked, being reminded that she’d been watching and hearing despite not being there.

“Lots of small ruins used to be around, nothing really big close. Most are gone, Mark said.”

“Mark being the guy you were talking to.”

“Yea. For some reason, once in a while, a ruin will suddenly decay fast. Steel simply breaks down, and in a year or two, there’s almost nothing left, just some rubble.”

She winced.

“Want to check them?” Tom asked.

“I don’t know. We do have money, but it’s going to run out, sooner or later. Hiring us out as temporary guards for merchants… would mean we have to prove our worth.”

“Hard to do without showing Talents,” Tom admitted.

“And besides, if we’re not staying this close to the Montana, we need to do things that earn money fast.”

“Like scavenging.”

Johanna contemplated the snow cover. Traffic had cleared a bit the street, but most of it remained up.

“Like scavenging. Let’s hope the locals aren’t Grievar,” she said, alluding to the salvage wholesaler back in Valetta who used to be their main – no, their only – customer for salvage.

That is, until he recommended them for the Warden’s draft, trading the three of them – Peter being thought as “normal” – in exchange for fifty levies.

They found a tailor, but his store was closed. Thankfully, a local pointed to a general store next to the marketplace.

“Probably a better place. Nathan wouldn’t have kits to sell anyway. He can repair your clothes like he’s a legend, but that’s not the kind of things he’d have available…”

She once had a clothes kit, back in Valetta, but properly repairing leather required more specific equipment. And given how often these things happened lately, spending money in every city to get clothes fixed was adding to their costs.

Their next stop would be the marketplace proper, to see what was offered around, but what Johanna wanted most was to figure out if there was a market for ruin salvage, and a bookshop to see if she could find reference books for sorcery. What had Elena Worchester mentioned, back in New Benton? The Panoply of Miracles? About saintly things. And anything about heroes.

And, well, maybe the next book of The Song of Ice and Mists was finally out. Although the author seemed to have stopped writing, even if he had promised at the end of the fifth one two more books in the series, now that they had left Valetta, she wouldn’t put it past him to sneak in a new volume.

Douglas Moore kept a careful watch over his team of four, but he doubted he’d see the fruits of his semi-failed attempt at communicating with them. At least not anytime soon.

He might have tried to convey how they could create literal adventurers. People imbued with “normal” System-based specializations and attendant skills, ready to confront the Changed world of 2173. People to push against Changed beasts, go into the mana zones and clear the predators there, and overall make the world a safer place.

Of course, the plan was fraught with danger, he had to admit to himself. Even if Johanna had understood everything, it would be some time until they could amass a critical number of empowered people.

And part of him lamented the fact that, in the end, his Four might not be extraordinary anymore, if people like that Sergeant back in Valetta had higher levels and skills to match.

There would need to be some organization around that though. The normal empowered people, as described in the Mages of America book, were too few and without enough skills and focus to be truly dangerous. One just had to see how his Four – with a modicum of protection – could turn a battle, slaughter civilians with a bare minimum of training, and defeat small military forces all by themselves. The only people able to police that kind of people would… well, empowered people themselves.

An Adventurer’s Guild. Like any good Anime RPG.

Just because it was a staple of fantasy stories didn’t mean it lacked justification. Medieval guilds had once been guarantors of quality and conduct. He liked that part of the electives in his MBA. After all, the modern world – the Pre-Fall modern world – still had those, in the form of law bars and other professional organizations. Just with a lot less at stake.

Once the number of “adventurers” would begin to swell… well, hopefully, Moore would have hoarded enough personal XP to attempt contact again. If his ideas could be conveyed across the communication gap, he would try to impart the need for such a structure to his Four.

Speaking of personal XP hoard…

It was now time to change leveling plans. He remembered that level 10 sergeant back in Valetta, and others with significant levels. There was the distinct possibility that people might get ahead of the four. But his four had an advantage – someone who could micro-manage builds. And since he had realized he was accumulating his own experience and had options open to him – and the last day had confirmed that finally – using what he’d thought as a “global pool” to balance levels in his team was gone through the window.

Sorry, Tom.

Squeezing XP into immediate improvements was going to be more important than just chasing levels, notably with the Fibonacci progression starting to ramp up. Skill points meant new skills, and massive jumps in durability, true, but cheaper stat investments were at hand, and those also improved skills and sustainability.

Thankfully, his mental capacities were unaffected, if not outright improved by his bodiless state, and doing math without a calculator was still okay. To be honest, using one was mostly because it was handy and lazy, but…

No devices in the afterlife.

Johanna Marcia Milton

Female human, 19 years, 8 months

Fire Shaper

Level: 6 (13000 XP needed)

197/197 mana (+14 per hour)

0 unallocated skill point

XP: 3272 + 1462

STR: 14

AUT: 18 (230 XP needed)

Fire Handling (60)

AGI: 16 (1879 XP needed)

PER: 14 (852 XP needed)

Mana Sight (34)

DEX: 17 (1665 XP needed)

Flaming Blade (40)

Fireball (40)

EMP: 17 (2977 XP needed)

Steam Breath (23)

Bodily immunity to fire, up to 900°F

Detect mana flows & pools of 29.4 size or greater

Require 23% less oxygen

He did some mental divisions. Increasing Authority for a paltry 230XP gave her immediately 3 mana and improved every fire ability by raising the temperature cap by 30°F. Next in importance would be Perception. That one was hard to raise, but it also improved her mana regeneration in addition to the two points of max mana. And then, it would be time to hoard XP for a ×2 skill with the 7th level and Strength.

Okay, let’s go then.

In this, Moore wasn’t limited as he’d be through the Settings Scrolls. Not that it mattered. With his distorted time perception when the system descriptor opened, raising two stats was almost indistinguishable if he did it in two steps or one.

And now, with Johanna’s new 19, it was time to see if there were some useful skills appearing on his horizon. 20 Authority – the new limit – was probably associated with high tiers, but who knew what you’d get?

Mana Lock

Requires: Authority 20/Empathy 18/Level 7

Effective: N × Authority + Level (adds mana)

Passive: Increase your regeneration by (Eff/10) mana per hour

Active: Shave your opponent’s mana reserve by (Eff vs AUT)%. Removed mana is recovered when the effect expires.

Active cost: 1 mana per (Eff) seconds.

Mana Shaper

AUT 19/Lvl 6

N=3

Shaper

AUT 16/Lvl 1

N=2

Tyrant Fixer

EMP 17/AUT 16/Lvl 5

N=2

Combat Fixer

EMP 17/DEX 16/Lvl 5

N=1

Duelist

AGI 17/STR 16/EMP 16/Lvl 4

N=1

Fixer

EMP 16/Lvl 1

N=1

Moore’s non-existent brain froze.

Mana Shaper? WTF is that spec?

The new specialization that unexpectedly showed up was a weird one. All “elemental” skills multipliers dropped by 1, while every non-elemental one rose by 1 instead. It also added a few formerly Fixer-only skills at a ×1 multiplier.

Moore instantly switched to Peter’s descriptor. With 41 XP remaining in Dexterity, it was trivial to complete. But, unlike Johanna, no new specialization appeared with 19 DEX and level 6.

Okay. This System is officially bullshit. How can you plan for the future when everything is given to you piecemeal, and nothing is consistent or balanced?