In the weeks after the death of the sebetan I found myself, for the first time since I’d arrived, restless and bored. I guessed that while my brain doesn’t like to dwell on things now that it was half-elf, it did seek new stimulation and activity. Without a war to fight or a series of kidnappings to investigate, I just didn’t have enough going on.

Both the stonemen and the mushroom dwarves told me that there should be a caravan passing through any day now. My plan was to join up with the first one that arrived so I could make my way to the nearest human settlement or at least to a dwarven city with its own caravans headed to human civilization.

While I waited I spent all of my time busying myself with training and trying to learn more about the world. I found an almost overly willing sparring partner in Tog, and spent most afternoons getting wailed on. I realized quickly that I just could not beat him in a fair fight. If I hadn’t dueled him in the most cowardly and roundabout way possible I would never have beaten him. You’d think that this would convince me to focus more on gaining general strength, and to a certain extent I did do that, but I also started trying to find more methods of fighting dirty.

The first way I did this was by going out hunting in the caverns with Zevrack and a few others of his clan. With their help I was able to solidly boost my stealth skill, while also gaining the skill trapping. It also convinced me to never accept a meal from a Kobold. The animals they considered food, and the organs of those animals they chose to eat, were not something I ever wanted to experience for myself. No matter how "juicy" they were.

Realizing how helpful it had been to be able to move along rooftops in battle I began practicing climbing up onto and leaping between them. One of the things I’d always enjoyed the most in games was getting into areas I wasn’t necessarily expected to be and attacking enemies from areas where I couldn’t be hit myself, and this felt like a natural extension of that. The training resulted in unlocking an acrobatics skill and ranking it up several times. The people of Mykas also seemed to enjoy watching the silly elf move along the rooftops as whenever I looked down I’d frequently be waved at or called out to by people below.

I also invested more time in magic, or at least thinking about it and speaking about it with Elle. It seemed to be based around a slot system, like it had been with Dungeons and Dragons on Earth, but there were also ritual based spells, as well as spells that were so minor they could be used an unlimited number of times per day. I had managed to learn the spell Stone Toss from Tog’s chanters after working them into my acrobatics training. They would summon rocks at me, and I would dodge them. Tog loved the idea at first, but grew annoyed when he realized how easy it was to dodge when one knew they were coming. This led to him encouraging multiple chanters firing rocks at me at once. When I’d learned the spell and checked the notification I was of course hit by a stone and doubled over.

Stone Toss- Gather remnants of dust into a solid rock and fire it as a missile (cost: stone dust)

That new spell got me thinking about the other ones.

Grease- Cover a 5x5 foot area in a fine coating of flammable grease. (cost:1 drop of oil)

Flash Step- Instantly appear five feet away in any direction (cost: 1 small feather)

Both were limited to once per day use, and I’d used them as liberally as I could, but they both also had numerical elements for the amount of area they covered or would allow me to cover. The system was meant to be a concrete way to make yourself stronger, but I wondered if it wasn’t also limiting in some ways. One day, after training with Tog and Galgrum, then doing some rooftop running, I stood out in a mushroom field and decided to try something new. I pulled up my spells and focused. If I could instantly appear five feet away once per day, why couldn’t I teleport one foot away five times a day? If I could cover a 5x5 area with grease once per day, why not twenty five one foot squares once a day?

I thought about Flash Step, really picturing how I’d used it and what went into it, rather than just relying on the instincts the system had given me to access it. I took a small rock and made a mark where I was standing, and one foot away, onward to five feet away. I stood at the far end, and focusing on that first mark, I cast Flash Step.

It was as disorienting as before, but looking down I found that I’d succeeded! I cast flash step four more times, rapidly moving to the far end of the marks that I’d made. When I was done, I moved out of the marks and started casting grease in the same way, first creating two 1x1 foot squares, then finishing off with a 3x3. I grinned, this would make my spells even more useful than they’d been before. I could create only a single square of grease under a charging enemy’s foot and still have twenty-four potential casts left over, or I could use flash step to narrowly dodge blows or set myself up for counterattack rather than relying on it solely as a finisher.

I went to try and cast a reduced version of my new spell, turning it from stone toss into pebble toss. It still fired the pebbles with enough speed to kill a small rodent, but the reduced size meant it would likely only work as a distraction on larger foes. Still, distractions were something I was becoming increasingly adept at.

I noticed a notification in the corner of my eye and brought it to the forefront of my vision.

Congratulations! You’ve unlocked the ability Reduce Magic!

I pulled up my sheet to look at the ability.

Reduce Magic- You can cast lesser versions of spells for reduced cost

Well, now I’d unlocked one unique ability by going with what the system was expecting from me and another by actively trying to manipulate it. I had the impression that it wanted people to be stronger either way, and didn’t particularly care how it happened. I decided to pull up the rest of my sheet and give it a look.

Cormac

Half-Elf

Lvl 6 Mercenary

->XP: 9470

->HP: 80

Stats:

->STR: 14

->DEX: 17

->SPD: 17

INT: 14

WIS: 10

PER: 11

->CON: 12

LCK: 8

Known Skills:

->Sword (LVL 9)

Club (LVL 6)

Mace (LVL 5)

Axe (LVL 5)

Spear (Lvl 8)

Hammer (LVL 5)

Bow (LVL 5)

Dagger (LVL 10)

Improvised Weapon (LVL 7)

->Barehanded (LVL 10)

->Stealth (LVL 5)

->Feint (LVL 5)

->Trapfinding (LVL 4)

Negotiation (LVL 1)

->Trapping (LVL 2)

->Acrobatics (LVL 3)

Abilities (Racial):

Half Borne of Magic

Abilities (Class):

Anything in a Pinch

For the Right Price

A Job is a Job

Abilities (Unique):

Left Hand Free

->Borne of Two Worlds

->Reduce Magic

Spells:

Flash Step 1x per day

Grease 1x per day

Spark unlimited uses

->Stone Toss 1x per day

Compared to when I’d first arrived, the sheet was getting more than a little unwieldy. I was grateful that it noted which items were new, otherwise it would quickly become impossible to keep track of it all. I made my way back to Mykas, allowing my temporary high from progression to alleviate the boredom I’d been feeling until it came into view.

Mykas had been a lot more diverse recently. Their communal nature and general desire to help had made the kobolds and even the stonemen feel welcome despite the cultural differences between the three groups. The kobolds would pass through as they made their way to their new ‘territory’ which had been made much more hospitable by the death of its previous resident. They frequently traded fish, small blind things with silvery scales, for different herbs and other goods that the mushroom dwarves cultivated. The stonemen on the other hand, seemed to enjoy visiting just to visit. Their people were new, and due to their manipulations of the sebeten they’d been isolated for quite some time. This was apparently the first time they’d been able to interact with other people since they’d arrived in the caverns.

With all of these disparate groups getting along, I was starting to feel like the odd man out. They all certainly made me feel welcome, and were grateful and respectful of all that I’d done, but there was just something about being twice as tall as everyone else that made you feel a little disconnected from them.

As I closed in on the town, I noticed that something was different. There were fewer people on the edges of the buildings, and a fuss seemed to be building in the center of town. When I walked past the exterior buildings, the source of the commotion came into view. Three massive beetles with equally massive carriages resting atop their thoraxes were standing in the town square. They were loaded with goods, and a number of dwarves I recognized as neither stonemen nor mushroom dwarves were talking to Lokren and several others. A caravan had finally arrived.