The first three nodes of the Gatherer skill tree fell somewhere in between bright and dim. Fyn would like to say he considered that as his pushed his finger against the dot labeled Common Plant Identification. Later, he would justify this as an experiment that needed to be carried out, to see whether his gardening experience meant a lower cost when unlocking a node related to plants.
But the truth was he was hungry, and plants could be eaten if you knew what they were. While his mind might hold the experiences and knowledge of an older man, his body was twelve. He was a growing boy who had run, dug and climbed all day. He had been shocked, frightened and confused since his eyes first opened to read that condescending message from a sender who never identified themselves. At some point, his brain was bound to lose control.
Setting a horrible precedent, his wild guess turned out to be true. As he pushed the node and watched it light up, the first white ball at the top of the page dimmed some, but didn't disappear.
Fyn smiled at that, and that smile threatened to become a senseless grin of the moronic variety as it grew. All too soon, though, Fyn's lips halted and then drooped. He had been correct about needing less to fill in subjects that he was familiar with, but he hadn't considered what spontaneous learning would feel like.
His brain itched. Words, and concepts he had never heard of before, scratched themselves into his memory. Images and phrases pounded into his mind, ten years of cram sessions all engraving themselves into his understanding, all at once.
Fyn sneezed, his head feeling swollen and tight. Pressing his palms to his eyes, he leaned back against the cool stone, waiting for the sensation to pass. In the dark behind his eyelids, he could see numerous plant species flashing by as a soundless voice announced the names and uses for each.
When it was all over, Fyn opened his eyes and looked out over the dark clearing.
"Lestiherry," he said, his lips feeling dry as he remembered the vining plant he thought might be a nasturtium. Lestiherry and nasturtium were similar in appearance and taste, but the Lestiherry had far more uses than the ornamental and herbal flower Fyn was familiar with.
Closing his status, head still aching and stomach growing furiously, Fyn crawled to the edge of his ledge and swung his feet over, carefully feeling for secure points to climb down. Moving with utmost caution, Fyn started his descent.
He was halfway to the ground when his body, hungry and exhausted, failed him. His fingers couldn't maintain their grip as his foot dangled, searching for a firm spot to step on. Fyn dropped with a yelp, palms, and fingers scrapping on the stone wall as he tried to catch himself.
Fyn's feet slammed into the ground, his face bouncing off the cliff. Tumbling backwards, he fell to the ground, breathless. Covering his face with his hands, Fyn groaned and tried not to move as he took stock.
"I'm going to feel this for days," He muttered into his hands, "probably weeks. I'll be lucky if I didn't break anything."
It hurt to fall at his age. He didn't bounce back the way he used to. Bruises lingered, and an overextended muscle could ache for days. Fyn held still, waiting for the shock to wear off and the pain to set in.
But it didn't. Minutes passed and Fyn began to feel better. Not great, by any means, but not terrible either. Sitting up, Fyn's legs and palms felt sore, and that was a far cry from the shooting pain he expected.
"I'm twelve," Fyn snorted, stretching his arms above his head.
If he had been given a choice, there is no way Fyn would have accepted a second childhood. Childhood was terrible. Small, and weak, with no money and everyone taller than you telling you what you should do, Fyn had no delusions about how great it was to be young.
However, he had forgotten some of the benefits. Twelve was an age when your body bounced instead of breaking. It was an age when the phrase "walk it off" was a helpful suggestion rather than something you wanted to punch someone in the face for saying.
Falling five feet as an adult of 35, that was something that could put you in bed for days if you were unlucky. For the current Fyn, a few minutes of serious pouting was all it took and he stood up.
The first few steps he made with extreme care, expecting a broken hip to announce its presence, and when it didn't, Fyn stepped out with more confidence. Chuckling, he moved through the clearing, searching in the dim moonlight for plants he recognized.
He passed by several plants and bushes that Fyn thought might serve as a quick meal, simply because his knowledge, new and old, said he should be absolutely certain of anything he intended to pick. The light was bad, and he had little confidence in his mastery of most things green and growing.
Finding a lestiherry plant with broad, flat leaves, growing on vining stems, Fyn knelt beside it, feeling its thick, fuzzy surface. He had set his sights on this plant for various reasons, most importantly because it was difficult to mistake for anything else. His new memories told him lestiherry was commonly known as a Gatherer's Friend.
Growing nearly everywhere, all parts of the lestiherry were edible. Dried, it could be used as a seasoning similar to black pepper. Fresh, and mashed into a paste, lestiherry could be applied to wounds to aid in healing. It wasn't very valuable, but in an emergency, it could keep you alive.
The scrapes on Fyn's fingers ached as he dug at the base of the sprawling plant. Uncovering the roots, Fyn grabbed hold of the thickest one and unearthed the entire thing. He had to pull with his whole body to do it, but with a strained grunt and a long pull, Fyn successfully dragged out a clump of thick roots, attached to vines and leaves.
Holding the mess of foliage in his left hand, Fyn reached back and drew his knife. The oh so sharp blade came free of its sheath and Fyn took the time to examine it.
Twelve inches long, the knife was about as wide as his palm at the tip, tapering to half that size where it met the cross guard. Single edged and straight, it was a perfectly serviceable blade… for a grown man.
Fyn found the hilt of the knife a little thick for his small hands, and the length of the blade made it challenging to wield for delicate jobs. It was what all he had, however, so Fyn made it work.
Pushing the roots against the blade, Fyn cut off the tips and let them drop. Kicking them a few feet apart, he stomped the bits of root into the soil. Lestiherry was a hardy plant, easily propagated. A small section of root would regrow in a few months, replacing what he had taken.
Holding the plant in one hand and the knife in the other, Fyn walked towards the river. He watched his feet, marking plants he would want to check on in the morning when the light was better. Finding a flat rock on the river bank, Fyn sat and placed his knife on it.
Bending forward, he washed dirt from the roots and leaves, lightly rubbing them until they were clean. He stripped the leaves from the stems and put them in a pile on the flat stone. The stems went into another pile, and the roots into a third. Sadly, there were no flowers, as that was the best tasting part of lestiherry, but there was nothing to be done about that. It wasn't the right time of the year for flowering.
That thought made Fyn pause as he picked up his knife to peel the roots. It was early spring, the threat of frost hadn't passed yet, and sudden rainstorms were common. Plants like lestiherry would thrive in these conditions, putting on a bounty of leaves and long stems, but it would be months before they flowered.
It was something Fyn hadn't considered when he recklessly chose to fill a node in a class he wasn't sure he wanted. Common knowledge of plants was a broader subject than he had realized. He knew the weather and season the local plants liked, how to pick them and how to ensure more would grow. Fyn knew what animals ate them and what predators would be attracted by the presence of prey.
His search function had seemed fairly random when he used it, but now Fyn admitted the results were good. Gatherer, as a class, probably didn't come with a lot of combat skills. He wouldn't be fighting blood wolves or three-eyed crows anything soon. However, it would let him feed himself while avoiding plenty of trouble just by knowing what the surrounding plant life was telling him.
Positioning his knife, Fyn began to peel the rough outer skin of the lestiherry plant's root by dragging the tubers back against the blade's edge. The skin of the root was as edible as anything on the lestiherry, but the taste was bitter compared to the inner flesh.
After he was finished peeling, Fyn held a single six-inch section of root, and nibbled at the end. The taste reminded him of fresh carrots, if someone had sprinkled those carrots with pepper. Fyn would have preferred salt, but all in all, it wasn't bad. He ate three of the eight roots in large bites, then sat back, his stomach almost overly full.
That was another plus of the Gatherer's Friend. A bit of lestiherry root went a long ways. Filling and nutritious, it would be a poor Gatherer who starved while this plant was available.
Feeling more optimistic than he had all day, Fyn stood up. Sheathing his knife, Fyn picked up all the rest of his foraged goods. Hands full, Fyn made his way back to the cliff. There were probably far more plants of use to be found in the clearing, but they would have to wait until morning.
Stripping off his shirt, Fyn made a bundle to hold his goods. Hanging the makeshift bag around his neck, Fyn scrambled back up to his ledge. Back in a place of relative safety, Fyn unloaded his groceries, stacking them at the back of his shallow cave, and quickly put his shirt back on.
Taking off his belt and setting his small coin pouch next to his food supply, Fyn put his knife on the ground, near at hand. He tried to get comfortable, but the heat he had built up through movement was stripped away by a light wind, that carried a promise of a cold night to come.
Huddling up as much as he could, Fyn opened his status. Food and water had been found, shelter and civilization remained distant dreams. As tired as he was, Fyn intended to look a little more before giving into sleep.
Fyn had thought that filling in a node was the same as selecting a class. Seeing the words, please select, occupying the class slot, he had to rethink that assumption. Clicking on Class, the same grid of rectangles appeared, though this time, Gatherer was listed first.
Instead of clicking on it, Fyn concentrated until the Explorer and Scout classes reappeared. Of the two classes, Scout, was more attractive to him, yet as his finger ticked back and forth between the two, it finally landed on Explorer.
It was simple. Fyn had one yellow ball and two and a half white balls of light to spend. Explorer's prerequisites, Terrain Features—> Weather Identification—>Setting Camp, were all dimly lit. They were things he had experience with from a life of casual outdoor activities, and military service. The requirements of, Tracking—>Trapping—>Concealment Tactics, that Scout demanded were brighter in comparison.
Fyn was nearly certain he could have the Explorer class just by pressing his finger to the screen a few times. He wasn't as confident in Scout, and there was one more experiment he wanted to make.
Without confidence but before he could second guess his decision, Fyn pressed on the white node, Terrain Features, and braced himself for the coming rush of brain mushing information. He was surprised to find it wasn't as bad this time.
You learned a lot of things of the course of a lifetime. Some of those things get lost when you don't use them. Perishable knowledge was the term Fyn associated with this phenomenon. Things, like mathematic formulas and the proper way to read a detailed map, became harder to access unless you refreshed them from time to time.
The flood of new information this time was more of a gentle spring rain. It nourished the things Fyn already knew instead of filling him with alien words and terms. All those little things he had forgotten were renewed for the low cost of half a ball of white light. One more ball unlocked both nodes for Weather Identification and Setting Camp, leaving Fyn left with a slight headache, one white ball, and a chance to unlock the yellow node, Sense of Direction.
Taking a deep breath, Fyn back out of the Explorer screen, opened Scout. Gritting his teeth, Fyn spent his last white ball on the nodes for Tracking and Trapping, then closed his status and lay flat, letting the surge of fresh knowledge and the accompanying discomfort distract him from how cold it was getting.
When it was all over, Fyn lay there for a long time, simultaneously marveling, and complaining about the experience. He had considered himself somewhat of an outdoorsman. Now, in a new four-foot eleven inch body, he looked down on his previous six-foot tall self as a greenhorn that couldn't be trusted to light a fire with matches.
The knife he had been so happy to get was now a good to have, but unnecessary tool. Without it, Fyn could still track, trap and cook small game. He could find or build shelter twice as well, in less than half the time he could previously.
Cracking open an eye, he knew that building a shelter was something he would want to do soon if he couldn't find a way out of these woods. There was a hard rain coming, and it wasn't likely to let up for a day or two. Judging from the wind, the look of distant clouds and the scent hanging in the clearing, a torrent would arrive by noon tomorrow at the latest.
That was a problem for tomorrow, though. Tonight there was one last thing, besides falling asleep and hoping he didn't freeze to death, that he needed to do.
Fyn went back to his status and quickly clicked to Explorer. He had everything he needed to survive now, except a class. The tutorial message he had received said he needed one and that had been confirmed by all the white nodes he had unlocked.
He was capable of doing a lot more than he could when he became conscious this morning, theoretically. The concern was, he wasn't strong enough. Fyn was still a child, with a child's strength, deep in an area his new woodcraft senses said was more dangerous than he had realized.
Did he want the passive skill, Sense of Direction? No. How about the class, Explorer? There was a time he would have said yes, but now, in a world of swords and magic, no, not really.
What Fyn really wanted was to figure out how to get white balls of light so he could unlock all the nodes of every class. That was impractical, even if he knew how to do it. So his finger selected Sense of Direction with hopes of survival if not dreams of greatness.
In a pinch, any class would do.