Chapter 2 - Slow Is Annoying

Nevermind. I hate slow.
How people were actually okay traveling by wagon was beyond me. We’d only been in transit for a few hours and I was already wanting to rip my hair out. Between the uneven dirt roads and the wagon owner not knowing how to actually drive, the further we got from North’s Edge the more I wished I would have spent a few hours killing some of the monsters outside of the main gate to get a few levels.
And the worst part of the entire thing was how unbothered the other passengers were about all of it.
“My, those are some interesting clothes,” one of them asked after I accidentally looked over at them, causing me to glance down.
I was wearing a pair of denim pants and a t-shirt with a logo that had been for… hmm… I wasn’t actually sure at this point. It’d been so long and I so often changed into more appropriate clothes within a few minutes of returning to the tavern that I had no reason to remember what the logo had quite been for. I almost wish I would have stopped to grab a bag somewhere before running from the town, because now I was stuck wearing it if I didn’t want to answer that pesky “where’d you get those clothes from” question… though, then again no one had asked too much about me traveling with little to no visible goods.
“What Lord do you serve young man? Is that a heart clutched in a hand?” an older woman asked. The first voice, an older man sitting next to her shook his head.
“Don’t be daft, Diane. No noble house would use a bleeding heart with a silver stem.”
“Then what is it, Cyl?”
“Some sort of red pear, maybe,” Cyl responded and I resisted the urge to rub my temples.
“It’s not for any of the families,” I said, finally getting a word in. “It’s just a shirt. No actual meaning behind it.”
I must have come off as curt, because the two lowered their voices and started talking to each other, which was honestly fine by me. I looked out the back of the wagon and back down the road. We hadn’t passed anyone in a few hours now, though I was relatively sure I could see another wagon near the horizon heading our way.
This wasn’t necessarily the first time I’d run away from Frederick and his call. Knowing where things went–where they always went–there had been more than a few times where I’d struck off on my own with whatever excuse I could think up, only for our paths to cross each and every time. Which… sure, when you considered the prophecy nonsense, we were always meant to clash. But it never happened this quickly and I really hadn’t done anything I could think of that’d make Frederick insist on chasing me down.
“Who needs it,” I muttered, my eyes still on the wagon as I strained to make out any details. Frederick wanted adventurers, people who wanted the grand quest, and I was just done with it. Since death wasn’t a solution, disappearing was going to have to work.
One of the horses pulling our wagon whinnied, the cart coming to a stop only a second later.
“Making camp here for the night,” Woodrow, the wagon’s owner, called out. “Fire will be started soon. If you’ve got something you’d like to cook, you’ll just need to be patient. My cookware scroll takes a half hour to set up.”
The sun was going down and most travelers tended to agree that traveling at night was dangerous, especially this far out from the capital. Manaspawn density varied wildly around the kingdom, and the general amount any area could see was largely reliant on the size of the nearby towns. With how far we’d traveled though… I thought about it for a minute, going through the different spawns I knew existed relatively close to North’s Edge.
I hopped out of the wagon, taking a look around to see if I could place just how far we’d gotten. The mountains and giant cliff that dropped off into Dusk’s Chasm were still visible to the north, but that wasn’t what I cared about right now. No… there was some forest maybe half a kilometer to the southwest and I found myself taking a few steps off towards it when Woodrow whistled, causing me to look his way.
“I’d stay near the camp if I were you, kid. Couple caravans been attacked recently, rumor says there’s a–”
“Stoneboar, right?” I asked and he gave me a curious look. “Err… heard a rumor about it back at the Dawn. Couple folks were talking about putting a bounty on it.”
“Heh, yup, sounds about right. Without a system, you’re asking for trouble. Don’t worry, I’ve got some extra rations I can sell yah. Much better than trying to forage out there with the sun setting,” he said, clearly eager to try and upcharge me for rations that would taste like dust.
“Thanks for the advice… I’m still gonna take a walk,” I said, taking another few steps forward.
“Your funeral kid, that beast is s’pose to be at least level ten and you paid your fare in advance,” Woodrow said, turning back to the firepit he’d already set up, a long scroll disappearing into the wood as a fire ignited.
The older couple was finally stepping out of the wagon as I wandered away, heading right for the treeline despite Woodrow’s warnings. I didn’t rush, because I didn’t really need to. The sun was setting, but I had at least a half hour before it was too dark to see. Even then, I had more than enough Nightvision Potions in my Bag of Endless Depth. It’d only taken a few activations of Escape Artist before I finally made it a point of keeping every single item that I knew would be useful at lower levels in my inventory.
True, I didn’t have any of the powerful relics or magical items I gathered or forged in my most recent life, but none of those would really be useful farming the crops I needed to make my ale. Although, actually… now that I thought about it, since the system had only classified it as Uncommon when I’d crafted it, the Gourd of Drowning was still sitting in my bag and it could have its uses. A near never-ending supply of water meant that even during the dry seasons I’d be able to keep the fields irrigated, though… there were some logistical issues I’d have to figure out with that to make sure I didn’t flood anything.
I finally opened up my system interface, moving to the class selection as I considered my options.
I’d once had so many questions about why the world had this system or where it had come from. Years of research on it, on ways to exploit it had always turned up nothing on its origins and I frankly just stopped caring after a while when it became clear that it just didn’t matter. Because based on every last historical document I’d been able to find, the system–because that’s all it was ever called–had simply always existed.
Most everyone had access to what was called an inactive system. They could use scrolls, potions, and be tracked by the kingdom based on any number of contracts they signed, you know, the usual stuff.
But some people’s systems eventually became Activated. Whether it was through family history, wealth, pure dumb luck, or a headstrong prince forcing his adventure on others, once a system was Activated, then a whole new world was opened and the door was ripped off of the hinges. I scrolled through the dozens of classes available, trying to decide which would let me stay as under the radar as possible.
“Suppose I could actually use the Farmer class for once… would make sense. I’d also rather jump into Dusk’s Chasm than choose that,” I wondered aloud, walking into the treeline and weaving through the brush. “Most of the Farmer’s class skills are absolutely useless long term… Brewer would take care of the end goals, but be pointless for almost everything else. Hmm… maybe Alchemist. Yeah, that’s the ticket. Could mix some fertilizer, and potion brewing can’t be that different from ale…”
I selected it before I could think about it for too long, several windows appearing to list my “new abilities” that I waved away. You couldn’t gain levels without a class, so I needed to make the selection if I wanted to eventually unlock my spell list. I didn’t need to reach the peak of power or access to the world-rending powers that were locked behind the more powerful prestige classes I’d used in the past, but like I said, it’d only been a few hours and I was already tired of the wagon.
I took a look over my shoulder, making sure I’d gone far enough that I wouldn’t be visible before I started pulling reagents from my inventory. I’d never chosen the Alchemist class, or any Utility Classes for that matter in all of my lives. Largely, it–like almost all of the non-combat classes–seemed pointless when you could still do all of the things those classes could do if you just cared enough to do the research and work yourself. That said, having Mix as one of the class’s staple abilities did mean I didn’t need a full lab in order to actually make concoctions.
It took no time at all before I had what I needed, a silver liquid with green flakes swirling in the flask. I made my way toward a small cliff face sticking out of the center of a clearing. There was an aura that lingered in the space that, under old circumstances, I might have been a bit fond of. There was a huff that echoed through the clearing, drawing my eyes to a cavern entrance at the base of the cliff.
“Hey old buddy,” I said, tossing the flask up and down. “Don’t worry, you’re not gonna have to fight Wingguard this time around.”
The boar snorted and huffed, its hoof pawing at the ground as it prepared to charge. I didn’t always come this way, but Stoneboars were powerful beasts and with the proper master, they could do quite a lot. The strength alone would be great for tilling the land, not to mention the potential for high-tiered fertilizer if I put together the right feed for him.
“Come to daddy,” I said, refusing to back down as he charged. The boar only made it halfway across the clearing before I tossed the flask, a cloud of smoke erupting as the glass shattered on impact a few feet ahead of the boar. The charging beast hit the cloud, made it a few steps through… then went crashing down with a loud thud, skidding to a halt only a foot away from me.
My system flashed to life, the unconscious status counting as a victory that granted enough experience to bring me to level three. I might’ve been annoyed about the fact that defeating a monster nine levels higher than I was only granted me two levels, but I’d only subdued it, so the gain was heavily reduced and the system didn’t care how annoyed that made me, so I breathed the feeling out before I moved on, not wanting to waste any more time. I rifled through my inventory screen again until I found what I needed, making a large cage appear next to the beast.
“Now… How am I going to get you in here.”