Spring storms in the new world were no joke, Fyn decided, as he stepped out of the grotto for the first time in days. The clearing outside looked entirely different, refreshed and bursting with life. Fyn stretched breathing in the cool, sweet air.
It had rained for seven days. The river was overrunning its banks. The grotto had been threatening to flood for the past two days. The eastern path was blocked by the floodwaters, and the western wasn't far from it. Fyn got soaked to the ankles every time he ventured out into the storm to take care of life's little necessities.
The grass was cold under his feet, Fyn dug his toes into the fresh soil, appreciating the change from the stone of the grotto. He put on his pants, socks and boots, all removed to keep them as dry as possible, and ran his hands through his hair.
His brown hair, Fyn noted, pulling a lock of his bangs down to examine through squinted eyes. Greasy, brown hair, after seven days of being cooped up in a cave, afraid to wash his face in a pool with angry carnivorous fish lurking nearby.
Tonight, he would have to find a safe place to clean himself and his clothes. The smell of fish competed with the scent of unwashed teenager, making his eyes water when he caught a whiff of himself. Fortunately, his roommate had yet to object to Fyn's odor.
Which was a little surprising. Ricky was shockingly neat for an animal with an aversion to water and a taste for fish. When the water grew too high to traverse without wetting his fur, Ricky climbed the grotto's chimney, easily scaling the rock to venture outside every evening. He never made a mess inside the cave, despite his clear displeasure at the rain.
Ricky's fur was always spotless, shining white in the dim light of the grotto. The few times Fyn had gotten close enough to smell the animal, the only scent he detected was clean grass mixed with a floral aroma. It had made Fyn uncomfortably aware of his own state, but not enough to prod him into sticking any part of his body in the pool except to gather water.
A bath would wait, though. The storm had set back Fyn's leveling plan. After seven days of fishing, Fyn had accumulated eight white improvement points. He had spent four to bring his strength attribute to 1, leaving him with ten.
He had also gotten two yellow improvement points. Those had been provided by Ricky. Twice, the weasel-rabbit had ventured out on its nightly trips and returned with a yellow crystal. Fyn didn't ask how Ricky had gotten them. He didn't want to know. He was simply happy to trade a few extra fish for the points.
If his guesses about larger animals providing yellow crystals and smaller animals having the white ones, Ricky's procurement of the yellow improvement points was frightening. The more the weasel-rabbit exposed his capabilities, the more Fyn grew anxious about sharing a cave with him. If at any time Ricky decided he wanted to live alone again, that would be the end for Fyn.
Dressed, Fyn let the sun warm him, driving away his concerns as he busied himself gathering supplies. He breakfasted on berries and fresh picked edibles. He cut roots and searched along the river for stones large enough to serve as a foundation for his future shelter.
The humidity was thicker after the rain. Each journey back into the grotto, Fyn welcomed the refreshing spray from the waterfall that cooled his sweat drenched face. The summer would be a hot one if spring was anything to go by.
The subtle feeling of a level up came as he was picking flower stems to add to his nightly fish stew. Squatting back on his heels, Fyn wiped his forehead with his sleeve and opened his status.
Name: Fyn
Race: Human
Age:12
Class: Gatherer
Level: 2
Experience: 0/900
Strength: 1
Agility: .5
Spirit: .5
(Display Skills)
No stunning revelations were found. Fyn stretched and flexed his muscles. He had noticed an obvious increase in his strength after he used improvement points. He could carry heavier loads and travel farther without getting winded. There was no similar feeling of change from the level up.
He hit the display skills prompt. The same skills were listed, Sense of Direction and Freshly Picked in the passive slots. His active slots remained empty. However, Fyn had expected that.
He looked underneath the skills at the row of colored dots there. He had discovered that his improvement points were listed here a few days ago while randomly browsing through his status in boredom. Counting the dots, he came up with thirteen white and 4 yellow. So three free white and 2 yellow were awarded at level two.
Fyn rubbed his chin as he considered this. It wasn't a lot in the larger scheme of things. On its own, a level up didn't provide enough for a full attribute point or to max out a passive skill.
Frustrated, Fyn was about to close his status, when he saw a new tab displayed on the left-hand side across from his skills. The tab read, "General Skills." Clicking on it, Fyn arched an eyebrow as the screen changed.
The new page had a heading of "Passive Skills," with a long list underneath. Fyn flipped his finger up, scrolling through the screen. A lot of the skills were ones he had seen while looking at classes. Map, Long Walking, Sure Grip, they were all there. Only, unlike his class page, instead of having (0/5) listed beside the skills, these had (0/2) or in some cases (0/1).
Fyn let his head roll back, and he stared up at the sky. It looked like anyone could pick up various skills unrelated to their class, but they weren't able to master them. His cheat could, if he had enough points to spend.
Letting out a toneless groan, Fyn closed his status and surged to his feet. Nothing had changed. At this point, it was better to wait to see what skills he needed and what changes further level ups might bring.
He made one last trip into the grotto, depositing his stems and grabbing a few coiled lines he had made over the last few days. Heading back out, Fyn whispered, "Sleep well," to his unseen, nocturnal roommate. He wouldn't see Ricky until that evening, when the weasel-rabbit came out to collect rent.
Fyn went south at a trot. At the edge of the clearing, he found the trail leading to the birch grove, speeding down it without looking around much. This was familiar ground, even if the plants had grown out some due to the rain.
He needed to resupply his stock of wood. Almost all of what Fyn had previously collected had been sacrificed in small cooking fires and to stay warm while the weather was bad. That would wait, though. First, Fyn wanted to see how much experience a Gatherer gained for picking weaver's vines.
The birch grove was like he left it. Fyn hacked and pulled at three vines, separating them from the trees. He made a bundle with his shirt and collected all the gourds in it. The vines he would wrap around his torso on the way back.
Looking around, Fyn saw a dozen vines left to be harvested, and dreams of a hammock began to form in his head. He was sick of lying on cold stone covered with a thin layer of grass.
Setting the vines and his shirt aside, Fyn remembered to check his status, sighing at the sight of 10/900 beside his experience. Level three was a long ways away. Fyn closed his status. He would change his class in a minute, but first he had one last thing to do.
Fyn crept through the birch grove as quiet as he could. There were trails here, too small to have been made by deer. Tiny prints, dropping, and nibbled plants revealed themselves as Fyn searched. Rabbits, actual rabbits, Fyn hoped and not weird weasel hybrids, made their home here.
Possibly, Ricky was descended from these animals, a black sheep driven out because of his differences. Fyn could almost picture the moonlit night weasel father met rabbit mother, the passionate affair that followed and the offspring that had occurred. Fyn could also picture Ricky shredding a dozen rabbits for a snack, so, hopefully, all of this was his imagination.
Finding the trail that looked the most traveled, Fyn uncoiled the line of inner gourd string from around his wrist. He used two sticks, driving one deep into the ground as a support while the other was more loosely planted to keep a slipknot noose open, and soon Fyn had a rough snare trap built.
He stood back from the trap, squinting at it to confirm it wouldn't blow over in the wind. With a shrug, and an attitude of testing his luck, Fyn proceeded to set up two more snares on different trails. If the rabbits were as smart as Ricky, Fyn had wasted fifteen minutes. If rabbits were as dumb as they should be, he would be eating something apart from fish and flowers tonight.
Knowing snares were rarely filled, as you watched, Fyn went back to where he had left his shirt and vines. He decided to take the spoils back to the grotto before changing his class to explorer. That way, he could pick a few more handfuls of herbs on his way back through the clearing and have a shirt to wear while he was exploring.
It was funny how quickly plans could change.
"Think that will work?" the woman said, holding a long piece of grass in the corner of her mouth as she nodded her head in the direction of one of Fyn's snares.
Fyn froze, suddenly very conscious of his thin upper body displayed for the world to see. It was nothing to be ashamed of, but Fyn was embarrassed nonetheless. The woman watching him, sitting next to his shirt while chewing a piece of grass, made him feel vulnerable, exposed.
Her long blond hair looked a little darker than Fyn remembered, her armor streaked with mud here and there, evidence of her weeks in the forest. Even so, Grace had a casual slouch that said nothing bothered her, an easy smile playing about her lip. In an effort not to shout out her name and run, Fyn kept quiet.
"You learn to set snares like that on a farm?" Grace lifted an eyebrow, trying a different tack, her voice smooth and light, "You look like a farm kid… only, how would a farm kid get all the way out here?"
"Well, how about it, kid?" Grace's legs bunched beneath her and she stood like water flowing. She rolled her head from shoulder to shoulder and fixed him with a grin, approaching Fyn with sleek strides. "Don't feel like talking?"
Up close, Fyn saw Grace was a head taller than he was, probably close to 5 foot 8 inches. He wasn't sure if that made him short for his age, but he felt tiny.
Stretching out a finger, Grace ran her fingernail up Fyn's abdomen to his chest. He licked his lips at the sensation and then froze when her finger caught on the cord he wore around his neck.
Lifting the cord with its pedant and firestick, Grace tilted her head as she looked at them. Her grin grew wider, and the grass blade in the corner of her mouth fell out to flutter to the dirt.
"You don't look like an F class adventurer," She chuckled, holding the pedant by the corner and lifting it to wave in front of his face, "Farm boy, I'd buy, but F class guild member, well, you'd have to talk awful fast to convince me of that."
Fyn mind went blank. She said F, as in the English letter. He had thought the symbol on the pedant had looked like a stylized F but had shrugged it off as a coincidence. It didn't fit.
They weren't speaking English, and the language of his status didn't have any characters related to the English alphabet, either. It struck Fyn as very odd for the sound and symbol for F, to show up together.
He didn't have much time to consider it, though. Grace let the pedant fall, and he looked down when it thudded against his chest. When he looked up again, Grace had placed the flat side of a knife to his shoulder, with the edge facing his neck.
No, not A knife. His knife. The knife that her once belonged to Lucas. Grace had drawn it from his waist and he never saw her move.
"I knew an adventurer who was F-ranked" Grace's deep brown eyes and her smooth voice both turned cold, "he owned a knife just like this one too. I'd like to hear you say something about that, kid."