I stopped running, panting heavily for breath, as I approached a cluster of a few taller trees. Supporting my weight on one of the thick, heavy branches, I looked around to make sure I wasn’t being followed, took a moment to catch my breath, and made another futile attempt to do something with my ruined outfit, torn, stained, ragged around the edges as it was by now. A few hours, if that, in this new land, and it had proven one disaster after another. At least now I knew where the town was, should I want to risk running into those same guys again, or worse, for all I knew.
With some force, aided by my mounting anger at the whole situation, I snapped the entire branch off the tree. Tidying up the shredded strands of bark and broken wood at one end as best I could be bothered, I started pulling the smaller branches and twigs off. After some minutes work, I had a single thick, sturdy, mostly straight staff that I could rest my weight against as I took one sore step after another in search of whatever else this place would throw at me.
At least, that was the plan, but I didn’t manage more than a couple of those steps before another transparent vision of a notice appeared in my sight, quickly followed by more popping up, one after another.
Tool Crafting Ability Tree Unlocked
Grade 1 Abilities Available
Ability Points: 1
Wood Crafting (1)
Quarrying (2)
Enhanced Durability (2)
Drawing Board (3)
Two Ability Trees Unlocked:
Earn 15 Experience Points
Home Hearth Ability Gained
Experience Points Gained:
Level 1 > Level 2
1 Ability Point Gained
Skill Levels Increased
Characteristics Increased
I tried to keep up with the sudden flurry of new information, and figure out what it all meant, and quickly as I knew the messages faded after a moment, and as yet I had no idea how to bring them all back. At the very least, I had an actual Ability Point to spend, if I could figure out how to let whatever controlled this thing know what I wanted to spend it on. I also had an additional option to use it with, and some new other bonuses, whatever they did.
I couldn’t help but feel that clean drinking water was my top priority at this point, if I was feeling unsafe heading toward the town just yet. That or something to defend myself with, but that didn’t seem to be on the options list. That said, I had just been notified of a bunch of new options from the simple act of making something from a stick I found, maybe there were more options to unlock just as easily? If only there was some guide to tell me how.
The only thing I did know how to do was bring up my own status page, which never seemed to have anything helpful on. As the notices faded, and I hoped I had all the important information from them, that set of magically floating text appeared ahead of me instead, possibly summoned now just by the fact that I’d thought about it.
Name: ??
Species: Feliform
Hearth Mage - Level 2 (XP 15)
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Health 7/7 - Stamina 2/8 - Mana 2/9
Skills:
Rest - Create a comfortable resting place for yourself. Sleeping here recovers stats at twice the usual rate.
Home Hearth - The fireplace at the centre of your Home, grants bonuses to your Abilities and those of your family within its radius
Well, that was a little better than before, whatever these Experience points were, I needed to get a whole bunch more of them, and quickly, if I was going to be able to survive in this place. Of course, I had no idea how to get more, but surely I could experiment, I had plenty of time with nothing better to be doing. If building a dam and cutting up a tree counted, I could find other things in the area to play around with and see which caused more mysteriously floating notification boxes to appear around me. As much as I was tempted to try out that Water Filtration thing I remembered seeing earlier, I just knew the moment I did, five minutes later another better use for my one single point would turn up, so I left that alone for a moment, and turned to the other new thing that had appeared.
I had a new skill. As well as summoning a bed from somewhere, I could start a fire. Fire was great, it would keep me warm, as the evening came along, it would fend off wolves, maybe, hopefully if it came to that. I could cook things over it, I could boil the water to reduce the risk of getting some nasty illness from it. If I could find something to hold it in first. And that line about bonuses to my Abilities? It seemed a waste not to be using that, whatever it meant.
Leaning heavily against my new, level increasing Wooden Stick, I took a few steps back away from the stand of trees. The question was, where to put this fire, maybe somewhere a bit closer to the road and the stream as well, convenient landmarks as they were. I tried to picture a map of the area I’d wandered through in my mind as I walked, to roughly estimate a central spot close to everything of use, as best I could remember.
I stopped in a slightly clearer patch of mostly grass and small flowers, somewhere softer to sit, and with less that looked flammable. I could spend the evening and night here and consider heading at least close to town in the morning, take a look at it, ask some other people for help, and head off towards wherever my life was taking me, with portable fire and bed generating magic in tow. I thought for a moment about the new Ability, and this time text popped up, entire reams of text.
Home Hearth - level 2
The fireplace at the centre of your Home, grants bonuses to your Abilities and those of your family within its radius. A single use, permanent effect
The Home Hearth is the core Ability of the Hearth Mage class.
At level 2, the radius of your Home is [20 yards]
Within the Home area, all Abilities that require Mana or Stamina to use have their cost reduced to half as much. All Hearth Mage Abilities that can be so affected have their output or effect increased, typically by 20%, except where exceptions are noted. Abilities of members of the family unit also have bonuses, which vary by class and level.
While within the Home radius, all stats recover at 50% above the standard rate. This stacks with the effects of Rest. Within the Home radius, all members of the family unit can take advantage of the effects of the Rest Ability.
While outside the Home radius, Abilities associated with the Hearth Mage class gain additional penalties to use. All Abilities that require Mana or Stamina have their costs increased to twice as much. Outputs of class Abilities are reduced by variable amounts, up to 50%. Some Hearth Mage class Abilities cannot be used outside of the Home radius.
The Home radius will increase in size with each new level gained, and also benefit from upgrades and enhancements through other Abilities.
I tried to skim through as much of the text as I could read before it faded away, hoping I hadn’t missed anything important. All of it seemed to apply to future Abilities I didn’t have yet, changing the effect of things I couldn’t do, starting from before I knew what the standard effect would be. Still, it all seemed positive, as well as talking a bunch about a family, which I wasn’t so sure about, but who knew what the years might bring.
Confident that I knew what I was doing, I summoned fire into existence.
The Hearth, for all that word normally conjured images of an old-style home with a cosy fireplace against one wall, appeared instead as a small campfire, in the middle of the clear patch I had chosen. A pile of sticks and branches caught alight, and the flames flickered and crackled in the soft mid-afternoon daylight. Smoke drifted upwards on the breeze, and within moments warmth was spreading outward, a comfort I hadn’t even noticed I was missing in my scant, thin and torn outfit.
Congratulations - permanent Home location chosen
Your domain, radius [20 yards] contains the following resources:
Flowers
Berries
Soil
Looking at that notification, I started to wonder if maybe I hadn’t made the best of choices.
