DAY 42, 10:00

I took my time heading back to the castle, having spent a while on archery training and getting up to rank 30. I was feeling alert, on the cusp of a breakthrough. I was nailing those shots, including taking a raven out of mid air.

For the moment I was taking a break, sitting against a tree idly chewing on another Nightbloom, and enjoying the casual indulgence of activating [Beastial Rage] for a few seconds, letting the mana point regenerate, and then doing it again. When the flower was gone I decided it was time to go.

Grabbing another flower out of my pocket I decided to do some more sprint training on the way back. Things were finally looking up, I was feeling good.

I got back to the castle early afternoon and went to find that alchemist.

“Hey, I’ve got the flowers.” I emptied my pocket, counting twenty two. “These things are great, thanks for telling me about them. I’ve got some more here somewhere, if I could get a bit extra.” I searched my other pocket, but didn’t find any more flowers. Surely I hadn’t eaten all the extras? “Oh, guess that’s all.”

“Were you eating them?” The alchemist seemed stunned as he grabbed twenty of them. I popped one of the remaining into my mouth and he jerked back. “Gods above how many did you eat?”

“Fourteen I guess. I was going to sell them but they taste great.”

“They’re addictive raw. I didn’t warn you of that, so I will include a detoxification potion free of charge. In the future perhaps don’t eat random glowing plants?” He put an Essence of Willow, and a milky looking Detoxification potion on the counter. “I recommend you take that now. The longer you wait the worse it will feel.”

I stared him straight in the eye and chewed on the vial, grinding the glass between my teeth and then swallowing it whole. He shuddered. Then the taste hit me. It was like sour vinegar and jock straps. A rapid headache struck me. A debuff popped up,

[Nightflower withdrawal, -25% maximum mana and mana regeneration] then it was flushed away by the detoxification. While I was hunched over dying the alchemist went over to his equipment, grinding the Nightflowers into a paste, and then boiling them, and collecting the condensation into small vials. I noticed that the twenty flowers I brought him produced thirty potions. I was getting ripped off hardcore.

That confirmed it, I needed to pick up that Alchemy instruction manual, get a kit, and start making my own potions. That would have been over three hundred gold profit making and selling those potions myself. I shoved the Essence of Willow into my pocket and stumbled away, headache barely fading, gasping for breath. My stamina had been severely drained and I was exhausted.

I got some strange looks as I stumbled into the library. The same clerk was there and thankfully recognized me, bringing out the books without me having to ask. All together they looked far heavier than I felt like carrying now, but I thanked him and staggered out.

Back in the market I headed for the stables, going to one of the men readying a wagon.

“Hey, how much will it cost for a ride to Lakepoint?”

“50 silver if you don’t mind riding in the back.”

“Fine.” I tried to juggle the books enough to grab my coin pouch, and ended up dropping them. I paid the man and tossed them into the back and then climbed in and flopped onto my face.

I slept for a while, and then read the rest of the way there, starting with the alchemy book. Sure enough, at the front, was a warning to be careful when you encounter an unfamiliar plant, because they can have harmful hidden effects.

I was partway through the lists of plants and properties when we rolled into Lakepoint. I looked around a little confused, that had been a lot faster than going on foot.

My first stop was Nathan’s shop, where I sold him the Lesser Core from the moose for 75 gold and inquired about where I could find an alchemy set. It turns out he had one he seldom used, having bought it for processing a few components for enchantments. According to him the set cost much more, but he was willing to sell it to me for 75 gold. With a sigh I handed the pouch of gold back to him. I knew how much I owed him already, so I didn’t want to irritate him by bargain hunting.

This was however now officially more than I could carry, so on his recommendation I left the books with him and went to the market to purchase a small hand cart. Thankfully, being an industrial town, there was a large wainwright shop and ample wagons and carts to choose from. I plainly could not afford anything requiring a horse. The cheapest option that would work was a small two wheeled cart with short sidewalls and long handles, the same as the workers used at the mine. It would cost ten gold.

I was standing there, staring into my coin pouch when one of the shop assistants walked over.

“Is there anything I can help you with today?

“Do you have any carts of a lower price?”

“These are all the functional carts we have.”

“What about carts that aren’t quite functional?”

“I suppose we have a few ones in need of repair out back.”

“Let me have a look at those.”

He lead me around to the back of the shop, where several broken wagons and carts were piled together.

A brief inspection turned up three carts, but only one that I felt comfortable repairing. Two had broken axels, and the third just needed a few deck boards, one new sidewall, and a new handle. I pointed that one out.

“Will you take two gold for that?”

“They do normally sell for ten.”

“But this one is broken. I can do two gold fifty.”

“After we repair it we can get at least eight.”

“Three gold fifty, that’s all I can do.”

“Fine. Just don’t complain to us if it’s more trouble to fix than you want to deal with.”

“I won’t, thank you.”

I paid the man, and when he went back inside I took a furtive look around the area. There were a few piles of scrap wood. Although I could do it with just my claws, I got out my tools. They’d be more efficient and faster.

Salvaging the wood went pretty quick, and in short order I had the cart back in working order. I hurried out of the yard with it, I didn’t want them to try to charge me for the wood.

I parked the cart outside of Nathan’s shop and ran inside to collect my stuff. He was talking to a customer about the merits of gloves enchanted to resist cutting and piercing. When he saw me looking towards the back room he waved me in. It took two trips to load in the books and the alchemy kit. The customer was still haggling when I was ready to go, so I just waved on my way out.

Pulling the cart was only a bit slower than walking normally, but was surprisingly tiring. If I hadn’t been training my stamina I probably would have to stop regularly, or go much slower.

Outside of the town I detoured around the south slope, towards the cave. The sun was just starting to set as I arrived.

The cave still smelled like her.

“Shrya!” My call echoed through the cave, and a moment later something rustled in a tunnel. She emerged from a fading Veil, still wearing that jacket.

“What?”

“I need to talk to you. What do you remember from before?”

“Before when?”

“About two weeks ago. Did you feel the world stop?”

“Got trapped in the mine.”

“Nevermind. How long have you been here? Longer than a month and a half?”

“No. Woke up here.”

“Great. Do you remember anything from before that?”

She stared at me, head tilted slightly.

“Dreamed. Saw war. Men. Castles.”

“Do you remember who you were?”

“I was me.”

“Uh, I was also me but I had a different life. I was a different me. Do you understand?”

“Yes.” My heart leapt. “Have jacket now. Am different me.”

“That’s not what I...nevermind. I’m going east, out of the human lands, do you want to come with me?”

She tilted her head the other way, ears twitching a few times.

“I will Follow.”

A new notification popped up, bringing with it a whole new screen.

[Follower Discovered!]

[Name: Shrya]

[Loyalty: 25]

[Species: Shade]

[Racial Traits: Shade’s Veil: +50% Agility, +100% Stealth. Cannot be used in bright light or in contact with gold. Cost 1 mana per 5 seconds.]

[Draining Bite: 20 Piercing Damage. Inflicts target with -10 Stamina per second for 1 minute. Regain +5 Stamina per second for 1 minute]

[Keen Sight: +50% to visual perception even in total darkness, does not apply in bright light.

[Keen Hearing: +50% to auditory perception.]

[Climbing: can move along any normal surface at half speed with at least two limbs in contact for vertical and three limbs in contact for horizontal]

[Shadow Affinity: +300% magical detection resistance. +25% stealth. -25% to Perception in bright light.]

“Um, did you just notice something?” I waved the menu away. Her eyes were flickering back and forth.

“What is a Teefies?”

“You can see that? Oh, I guess we share quests. Teefies is someone I need to find because I think she might have cursed me. Or maybe she can help me.”

“We travel east?”

“Yeah, but my information is old so I don’t know where we’ll end up. It may take a while. We might as well head out if you’re ready. We can talk and walk. We probably won’t meet any travellers at night, but If you stay in the cart they shouldn’t see you.”

Shrya was a barely noticeable increase to the weight of the cart, and I had to glance back a few times to make sure she was still actually there.

“So, what’s it like being a Follower now?”

“I am fine.”

“Do you have any skill challenges?”

“No.

“Okay.” What had I done now? She had become so impersonal. “Let me know if you get hungry, we can hunt a rabbit or something.

“Hungry. Hunting.” She jumped off the cart and ran into the bush, easily leaping between trees and scampering under branches.

Her agility and bite were actually quite frightening in action, and when combined with her ability to crawl on almost any surface meant she was even more dangerous out here than she had been in the cave. I could climb trees, but she could race up them nearly as fast as she could run. Her Veil transcended ordinary stealth, as she became transparent even to me and seemed to become lighter as well, able to perch on thin branches and run across soft dirt with barely any trace. It made me appreciate just how lucky I had been in my fight against Zhras. If I hadn’t been told about their weakness to gold, and he had gotten another bite in, he could have killed me.

Being drained of stamina and waiting for death would have been awful. Barely able to move, just laying there while some Nosferatu lookalike gnawed your arms off. I’d need to make sure I kept on friendly terms with Shrya, because with a few bites I’d be helpless.

The cart jostled a bit as she jumped back in with a pair of rabbits in her claws.

“You good?” I asked.

“I am fine. Sleepy.” She curled up with just the tips of her ears visible above the sidewalls, twitching any time there was a noise in the forest. Hearing her draining the two rabbits made me shiver.

As I walked I opened up the Follower menu, but didn’t see anything as obvious as a big button to enable personality. There wasn’t much there, but with the way things had not appeared until looked for, I looked anyways. I worked my way around the menu, looking for anything new, for hidden sections or configuration options. A headache started building.

Through the night I dismissed and brought back the menu multiple times, until it was nearly dawn and we stopped. Shrya crawled under the cart, and I got out some hides for myself.

As I lay there, I brought up the Follower menu again, and my headache finally broke. A new tab had appeared, called Command Bindings. Most of the list was question marks, but I found a few that seemed likely. [Suppression] and [Scripting] were currently set to “moderate” and with a flick of my finger I set them to “minor”.

From under the wagon there was a sudden quiet hiss, and I spotted her bright eyes staring at me before turning away again.

“You okay?” I asked. She just hissed at me in response.

“That’s good.” It wasn’t, but some of the puzzle pieces had revealed a few of their edges. Some part of the process exerted some sort of influence over Followers, and maybe others as well. Like the quests I had taken from the board at the Inn, it had been bugging me that the farmers and animals had been acting so weird for those, but completely normal at other times. Were the quests scripted, where someone had made the farmer incapable of finding his own bull? Was it some kind of mind control, or was this really just all a simulation? That didn’t feel right. This was too complex, too many little details.