Its vastness was scary, you see.
She clung to the land,
With feet in the sand,
Saying, "The ocean's no place for me!"
- Goldie Honorhide
Yoboc’s Farsight picked up things in the sky we would never see. He had us hide several times.
“Pretty sure that was an Avion flight in the distance,” he said.
“They wouldn’t see us here, would they?” I asked.
“Depends on the subspecies. Some have the eyes of a hawk,” he replied. At my blank look, he said, “Better than my Farsight.”
The Avion were a sapient species like Mer. The Mer lived in the sea, and the Avion flew the skies. From what Yoboc told me, they specialised in the fast transport of messages and goods, and they were organised into quite competitive nests. That was the limit of my knowledge, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out dimensional storage would be a huge benefit to them.
That is assuming the Astral ore enabled that. I had some ore, and I spent evenings examining it with my senses. My Cosmic Aura senses it as being there and not mine, but it is of the same type. The same spiritual sense.
I tried my Frigid Void on it, and it just got colder. The same was true for the Lightsteel ore and gems and the Orichulcum pieces I had. Frigid Void just makes things colder—extreme cold, but that is all it does.
Fishing with Frigid Void was more inefficient than fishing with my claws, as breaking the ice around the frozen fish often ended up breaking the frozen fish as well. I had no method for a quick thaw.
My Cosmic Aura seemed to be completely focused on the spiritual, and the two skills that interact with it are Spiritual Sensing and Frigid Void, both spiritually empowered skills. So why does Tremor not seem to interact? I don’t know, and I can’t seem to make it interact. Maybe it has something to do with my affinity, but then why Spiritual Sensing? Is that some sort of multi-affinity skill? Actually, that makes a sort of sense. We will have to wait for further information.
I have a 10m radius for continuous spiritual sensing, so there must be some way I can get better sensing of everything in that area. Two options come to mind: increasing Spiritual Sensing in some way or finding a way to use my affinity. My affinity appealed to me better as I seem to be able to learn things with it quicker than other skills.
We plodded through the ice and wild islands for two more weeks. I was happy even though we moved slower than if I was alone. The reason we were slower was the dwarves always wanted to stop and cook food. There seemed to be a ritual of sitting in front of a fire for hours before sleeping and then getting up late. They quickly ran out of ale, but that didn’t stop them. I got used to it.
My Dwarvish finally clicked over to Journeyman level, meaning I can call myself fluent. My constant use of Cosmic Aura also pushed that to Apprentice.
I was trying to get Felix to learn this, too. He has skills listed, even though I can’t tell what level they are. His mind doesn’t seem to function the same way mine does, and getting his interest in something that didn’t involve food, running or sleeping was challenging. I occasionally let him ride on my back by the packs.
When my aura was pushed out to the fullest, currently 13m, then the Frigid Void was weaker and this gave me the key to reducing the intensity. Less void, then it was more intense, more void, and the cold was less intense. The key to manipulating the intensity of the Frigid Void was to manage the amount of void. This bumped the skill to the apprentice level, and I was developing more control.
The Void seems to be part of the key to this affinity. This needed pondering.
Yoboc and Goldie had told me everything they knew about the stars, sun, and moons, but it was not much more than they had already told me. They knew enough to navigate. The fact that everything rotated in circles interested me, but I had no idea what I could do with that.
There was an upgraded skill for Spiritual Sensing that was a requirement for crafters, especially enchanters, called Spiritually Sensitive. It increased their sensitivity, but neither of them knew it or knew how to get it. It sounds very useful to me, but it will have to wait as well.
Then we stood on the edge of an Island, and my eye traced the ice, which became cracked and broken, and then there was open sea. In the distance, I could see hills. Yoboc will see more with his Farsight.
“Nope. Not happening,” said Goldie.
“We could walk along the coast more. It will be less distance.” Yoboc has talked to her about this the entire time we walked.
“Nope. I can’t,” she said.
I asked something I had been wondering about, “How did you make the voyage here?”
“She stayed below the whole time and was sick,” Yoboc said.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“It was a ship!” Goldie said, “A huge stable ship with competent sailors, not… whatever you are planning here.”
“And she stayed below the whole time and was sick,” Yoboc reiterated.
I shrugged. Yoboc was the one who had to convince her. I probably shouldn’t have mentioned the huge sea monster I spotted swimming under the ice a few days ago. It has made her even more afraid. None of us stuck around on that ice. It would have been simple for the creature to have broken through and killed us, and it probably wouldn’t have even noticed. My Identify skill just called it a Leviathan with a bunch of question marks. We ran. I kept wondering what it was doing so close to the surface, and these waters would be relatively shallow for it.
I turned back to the trees to find somewhere to camp. I could dump my load easily enough, and I did so when I found a hollow away from the weather and prying eyes. I then dug into the snow and discovered it was not that deep. We would be chopping a tree anyway so we could make a shelter. It looks like the clouds are closing in, and a storm is coming. We will probably wait here till it passes.
I turned back into my furry humanoid form, grabbed my axe and started felling a tree nearby. I was getting better. Goldie was the Forester and Axeman, and she was amazing at it, but I wouldn’t improve unless I practised.
All this time travelling was good for me to think about and examine my skills, but none of my classes has levelled. Under the Commander's training, they were regularly levelling, and I was getting attribute points I could use. That has all stopped.
The Hunter Scavenger class has required a lot more since getting to the Journeyman level, and I have been doing very little. Yoboc does most of the hunting. He did let me “steal his Kill” once, and I felt Kill Thief respond, but it was not enough to level it. I am also not Guarding anything.
This was a problem in that my experiments with the void were heading toward a skill, and Identify was telling me I was too low in Spiritual Perception. I still had two free points, but I just knew it was not enough.
What was ticking over in the back of my mind was that Yoboc had taught me many scouting skills and Goldie a lot of forest skills, and they made a point of continuing to teach. I realised the stories they told also included details about plants, herbs and animals that were not native to this area and Plant and Animal Lore were rising.
I sparred using the axe with Goldie and with the spear with Yoboc. Neither of them was good at Unarmend combat, so we didn’t bother with that. It was a skill used against sapients, not animals and monsters, and they both focused on non-people. They were a Hunter and Forrester to get away from people.
I asked Goldie what a Forester did one evening as it might be a class for me.
“Foresters have two main roles,” she said. “We care for the forest and its inhabitants. We also harvest resources from the forest.”
“Aren’t those two things conflicting?” I asked.
“Not at all,” she said. “If they are, you are doing it wrong. It is about maintaining a healthy balance.”
“What do you need for the class?” I asked.
She looked at me, “You have no hope cause you need the ability to create even a basic limerick.”
Yoboc laughed.
Goldie continued, “A few months of training from me is nowhere near enough, so give it up and concentrate on what you are good at.”
“And that is not limericks,” Yoboc added.
Goldie's advice was good, though. What am I good at? Sleeping. Wandering around. Anything else? Eating. I need to eat more fat. I have next to no fat on me.
I turn Identify on to the problem, which seems to highlight the wandering part of my life. This is a specialisation of the Hunter Scavenger Class. I search for food and other things.
This trip has brought some interesting sights. I have never seen a Leviathan before, and I wouldn’t have if I had stayed near the coast. I still haven’t really seen one; it's just scales moving under the ice that kept going and going. I have seen mammoths and Frost Spiders and cave salamanders. I am looking forward to what I see next.
I looked at Felix. Yeah, that felt right. We have moved beyond searching for food and scrap, and now we are searching for interesting things—new sights and creatures. Felix caught my feelings and wagged his tail.
I felt that settle in my whole being, and a class settled into place. I looked, and I was a Level 1 Explorer, and it came with the map skill. That pleased me. It was a five-attribute specialisation of Hunter Scavenger, but four of them had already been assigned. All three Perceptions got an attribute per level. I was curious to see that Mental Perception was included. That is about understanding people. I guess seeing people and towns is also exploration, especially for me.
The other assigned attribute went into Mental Agility. Maybe it helps me understand what I see. That is the only reason I can think of. Maybe when my Mental Agility rises, I will think of other reasons.
I shared this with Yoboc and Goldie.
“Do you know what triggers that specialisation, lad?” Yoboc asked. “It sounds like something I want.”
“You already have the Map Skill,” I said.
“Yeah, but getting levels by just walking around sounds perfect,” He countered.
“I think it is more complicated than that,” I said. “I had to have at least two different specialised environmental Lores, Arctic and Troglobite, and explore two completely different environments. I needed three senses at the Journeyman level. I don’t think it will level just by going to new places. I need to explore them and find new things.”
“Hurrumph. Probably too close to my Scout class anyway,” he grumped.
The Map Skill was fantastic. For now, it filled in what I could see around me. Yoboc said that as it levels, it will add different functions, and as my link to my bond grows, it will fill in what Felix sees as well. It did not show me where I had been before I got the skill.
“What additional function should I expect?” I asked.
“Depends on what you use it for. Mine has been used for scouting, so I can place markers and labels and share the markers with other map users, but not the map itself. Here, I will show you.”
He did something, and two crosses appeared on blank parts of my map. One was labelled “Forgemaker Mine,” and the other was “Worlds End.” There was no detail, just the position.
“I can’t share the map itself?” I asked.
“No. That is why I learned to draw. Cartographers are the only ones who can see someone's map, and they specialise in drawing maps for sale. Undoth’s Map works very differently and is specific to underground work. Your map will add features as you work at them and as it levels. It does sync with all your senses. I knew a tracker with a map that had smells mapped. I have no idea how that worked. He was a Dogkin, bloodhound stock, I think.”