Shelby quickly skipped through a few more windows, including the ones detailing her Identity Skills, the unlocks for Apprenticeship, and so on. AIDAN advised her that the Identity Skill called "Snarling" would be a good choice for a Briarknight that focused on solo adventuring and completing contracts. The other two options were interesting, but seemed much better for large group content.

  The skill seemed at first glance to be oriented towards keeping an enemy's attention, but AIDAN explained the benefit to her further, "This skill can be utilized both defensively and offensively. Since you have no party to defend, its defensive capabilities are of limited value. Rather, you may deliberately disengage from enemies to deliver the larger damaging effect. This will allow you to engage in hit and run tactics that should be beneficial when hunting a large number of enemies in succession."

  Shelby nodded, basically she only needed to hit enemies once and then move on... as long as the enemies were weak enough to be defeated by one attack. The fruit rats she had fought earlier were weak enough to die from a single arrow, which AIDAN informed her was a similar attack to the thorn tether. The only problem was that she had to get close enough to hit the enemy and then retreat quickly. The Briarknight class had an interesting design because it only carried a shield and no other weapon, so defending and attacking were meant to be combined. Long distance opponents like fruit bats would probably cause issues for her, but enemies that attacked up close would suit her class well. She felt a little queasy about fighting fruit bats anyways, they were so cute...

  Shelby and AIDAN returned to the inn's job board and selected a trio of fruit rat hunting contracts which had minimal experience rewards but would each advance the town by 2 points. More importantly, they could be worked on simultaneously. Two of them needed four fruit rats to be defeated and the other contract needed three [Fruit Rat Fertilizer] to be turned in. There was a fourth fruit rat hunting quest that provided experience only, but Shelby could only take three contracts at a time for the moment. It had something to do with reputation, but Shelby already had 20 pounds of game mechanics stuffed into her 10 pound bag of a brain, so she waved AIDAN off as he tried to explain the details.

  The contracts each had vignettes from the contract issuer that explained why they needed an adventurer to assist them, and Shelby noticed that the advancement rewarding contracts tended to come from those without the means to offer monetary rewards. The first contract especially.

  It wasn't really clear how helping this child would advance the town, but Shelby chalked it up to being a game thing.

  After accepting the contracts, a handful of large, dim circles appeared on the mini-map indicating locations fruit rats would appear. There was one that was close to the inn, just past the end the road they were on, so Shelby jogged towards it. The roads in the village tended to end in cul-de-sacs ringed with four to six houses and a trail heading into the wilderness, which unfortunately was just as useful for leaving town as it was for monsters to enter. Sure enough, a wandering fruit rat with a spotted banana for a unicorn-like horn was traipsing down into town as Shelby reached the end of the road.

  The rats were mostly oblivious until they spotted an enemy, so Shelby was able to get within a few yards of it while it dug through a side yard, spraying grass and dirt behind it as it burrowed. She slung her large round shield off of her back and slid her hand through the thick leather arm strap and gripped the metal handle firmly. The shield was surprisingly light for how large it was. She could easily hide most of her body behind it if she curled up, and it was made from a hammered coppery metal that reminded her of a gigantic wok.

  Unlike her Binding skill, she didn't need to do anything but think about Snarling for it to become active. A spectral yellow vine that was covered in sharp, hooked thorns spiraled out from the center of the shield and wrapped the edge of it. Shelby poked one of the vines with her free hand but it wasn't solid to her touch. While the fruit rat was still unaware, she dashed forward and swung the shield in a backhanded blow. The rat jerked its head up a moment too late to react and it was flung across the yard. As it bounced across the patchy grass, the vine embedded itself near the rats throat and stretched out from the shield. The tether didn't quite get to the 5 yard limit, but it was close, so Shelby took a few bounding steps backwards.

  There was a slight tension on the shield as she pulled it back, and the rat was pulled to one side as it scrambled to its feet. Was that a side effect of the tether? Shelby could imagine using that to pull someone off balance if she needed to. Neat! After she crossed the threshold, the vine glowed brightly for a split second and burst apart at the end connected to the rat. A spray of thorns lanced through the rat's body. It collapsed as a white "1" followed by a "10" floated away from it. That was a lot easier then fighting three of them at once...

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Shelby dismissed the box, but it reminded her of how frustrating it was to have them blocking her vision the last time she fought rats. She turned a little and found AIDAN floating a little ways off, "AIDAN, is there a setting to make these boxes less annoying?"

  AIDAN sparked as he assisted her, "There are a variety of notifications settings that we can modify. If you would like, I could select an option to remove combat-related information."

  Shelby considered that, "I'd still like to know if I'm being hurt. I noticed that the skill menu had some kind of, uh, 'you just know' mode. Probably because I was about to die? is there something like that for combat stuff?"

  AIDAN bobbed in mid-air, "Certainly, I will change your combat messages to Intuitive Mode."

  "Thanks, I don't like having the messages show up when I'm trying to focus on surviving," Shelby grumbled.

  The rat was sparkling a dull white, and it had both a 'bunch of [Spirit Bananas]' and a 'mound of [Fruit Rat Fertilizer]' on it. As AIDAN promised, the quest log showed that they had triple-dipped on the quests with a single rat slain:

  Shelby wandered out of the town and into a marshy area that had thick mounds of wind-swept grass and shallow depressions in wide rings. These must be dried out ponds, Shelby guessed as she sunk ankle deep into the muddy bottom of a ring. The tree cover wasn't as oppressive as it was to the north, but the occasional massive tree cast a patchy canopy overhead and thick, ragged roots jutted up from grass-choked earth every couple of yards. It turned out that this was an excellent environment for fruit rats to hide in, because a pair of them surprised Shelby a few minutes later by jumping out from behind a twisting root.

  The lead rat galloped up and boldly threw itself at Shelby with its fanged jaws fully opened. She dipped her shoulder and flipped her shield off her back to pancake the unfortunate creature into a crater of thick mud. It was tethered to the shield as she lifted it into a proper grip, and she kicked it in the side as it rose to its feet. Her instinctual battle log did more than just free up her vision, it also helped her to effortlessly keep track of the damage she was doing without watching for floating numbers. The slam had done three damage to the rat, and kicking it hadn't done any damage at all. Aw, come on, Shelby whined to herself. As it recovered and regained its footing, the tether surged and dealt a single point of damage. This is way better than before.

  She considered just turning and running to cause the tether to burst, but she knew she was slightly slower than she was when she was a Brushcourser, and the rats were a bit faster than her then, so she couldn't outrun the tether while they were chasing her. At least the tether was still a useful way to slowly wear the opponent down when they were caught in a stalemate. She only needed to wait 30 seconds and the attached rat would likely die from being whittled down, and then the cooldown would be back too. She paced backwards, keeping both rats in front of her as the damage accumulated. The first rat could sense its predicament, squeaked out a few harsh notes to its companion, and they charged together, trying to catch her from opposite sides.

  Shelby ignored the second rat and charged at the first rat, putting her shoulder against her shield and barreling into the rat. It managed to hook a small grasping hand around the edge of her shield and she felt herself take 2 damage, but the blow killed the rat immediately after. She whirled on the remaining rat as it tried to take a lunging bite at her ankle. She lifted her foot in time to avoid the bite, and then brought her shield down in an overhand strike, hitting the rat's neck with the rim of her shield and pinning it to the ground. The blow was critical, hitting for 9 points, and Shelby quickly jabbed the rodent again to deal a final 2 damage and finish it off for good. I didn't even need the skill that time!

  Only one of the rats sparkled this time, but it had the mysterious fertilizer, so she was only one rat and one item away from completing her quests. Since she could probably head back towards town after another rat or two, Shelby followed a wandering path circling the outskirts of the village and quickly found a rat digging at a thick weave of dead grass. Since she had the drop on this one, she was able to repeat her sneak attack tactic and defeated it by allowing the shield tether to explode. It didn't have any items. Still, she had gained 40 experience so far, so it wasn't for nothing.

  AIDAN settled on her shoulder as she trudged through the grass, "Perhaps this would be a good time to explain the benefits of the Codex system."

  Shelby nodded as she scanned the grass, "Sure, what is it?"

  "The Codex is a tracker of your experiences in the game, and can confer useful rewards when you achieve certain milestones. For example, you have been accumulating progress towards the [Copperglade - Nature Spirits] Codex entry."

  "Because the rats are spirits?"

  "Yes, precisely. You may view your progress by mentally activating your Codex, but I can also inform you verbally that you have completed 5 of 10 entries towards the Codex milestone, one per creature eliminated."

  "Didn't I kill six of them?"

  "I believe that Coda received credit for one of the spirits, according to your battle logs."

  "Betrayed by my own bat!" Shelby bemoaned, "so, what does the milestone mean?"

  "In this case, entries towards specific monster types within a region rewards you with a slight gain in experience when eliminating that type of monster in the future, as well as an increase in item discover. This milestone would reward one additional experience per nature spirit defeated and an additional 2% chance of finding items."

  "Oh, that seems a little underwhelming..." Shelby sighed, "I thought I would get, like, I dunno... a pet rat. Oh, I could ride the rat! No, wait, I could have a rat farm! We could create a strawberry-banana rat!"

  "While the benefit may seem small on a per monster basis, the accumulation of extra experience will significantly increase your levelling rate should you choose to continue hunting that enemy type, and the effect is shared between characters, so your progress levelling with your Seedsage character should be faster, as well."

  Shelby thought about that, "So we should probably finish that milestone before we switch, then."

  "That would be optimal, yes. Defeating specific monsters, such as the fruit rats of this area, a predetermined number of times on a single character also produces a bonus item that may be of interest."

  "Oh? Go on," Shelby said as she spotted a rat scurrying between arching roots a dozen yards out.

  "Although there are exceptions, the bonus item is often a token that can be used to summon a rare variant of that monster type. Slaying ten fruit rats on this character would produce a token that summons a 'Treant'."

  Shelby slapped the rat out of the air with her shield and then danced backwards, letting it recklessly snap at her as its life dwindled away, "What does a treant have to do with a rat? Do we get something good for summoning it?"

  "Defeating it is likely to reward you with rare items, and it can be the objective of particularly rewarding contracts as well."

  Shelby cracked the rat over the head as it made a desperate bid to lunge at her, and she knelt to retrieve a final fertilizer item, "Ding ding ding," she sang, "No more missing toes for the children! So, I suppose we want to get more contracts and rinse and repeat until we fill out codex and get the rat token..."

  AIDAN bobbed, "It would also benefit us to take contracts that lead to the west. There is an [Excavation] Apprenticeship on the western coastline."

  Shelby sagged, "Fine, but then we get to have a little Coda time, and also get breakfast."

  AIDAN glowed a warm orange, "It is a deal."