An Unbound Soul

After that, I didn't see any of the catkin family for a few days, largely due to the worsening weather. The previous sun deteriorated into a few days of heavy snow, leaving us all trapped indoors. When the weather calmed enough for Cluma to be back out in the street, at first glance, she looked like her usual hyperactive self. That delusion lasted until I saw her face. She wasn't depressed anymore; she looked angry. I was worried Camus had said something to her. I was also worried that going out to speak to her would be kicking a hornets' nest; Camus would be at home and might interfere. Meh, screw him. The brainwashing would stop him from hurting me.

"Peter!"

With [Strength], I caught her flying tackle without flinching. She certainly sounded normal, and didn't slack with her traditional leap-hug... Did I imagine her bad mood?

"You're all glowy."

"All the better to squeeze you with."

I hugged back, confusing her greatly. Obviously, she didn't see the relevance of the red glowiness to her hugs. Anyway, down to business. "What's wrong? You don't look happy."

Her ears drooped, confirming that my first impression had been correct. "We're moving away. I won't be able to see my friends anymore."

Hah, that was actually unsurprising now that I thought about it. If Camus wanted to continue sticking his head in the sand, then switching village would help; other villages didn't have me in them. And of course Cluma would be unhappy about that; other villages didn't have me in them. Or the other children; I wasn't so egotistical to believe that I was the only one Cluma cared about, and knew full well that she would happily make friends with the entire world if she could. Thankfully, that meant she'd soon make new friends wherever they moved to. Where would that be? Also, how did he convince Clana? Oh, Clana wanted to open a restaurant in Dawnhold, didn't she? Maybe he used that.

"You're moving away so mummy can open a restaurant?"

"Yes..."

"I'll be sure to come and visit, okay. And you won't be moving until winter is over, anyway."

"Promise?"

"Of course. Besides, you'll make lots more friends there too, so you'll end up with even more in total."

Interesting... He was willing to move back to Dawnhold, with the dungeon he despises so much, to get away from me? But I'd be spending time in Dawnhold myself. That strategy seemed counterproductive. There must be something I'd missed... Maybe this was nothing to do with me at all, and Camus really did get over his dungeon phobia enough to let Clana open up the restaurant she wanted. That would be nice, I guess...

"I can tell when you're trying to placate me, you know."

I blinked at Cluma. Kids grew up way too fast in this world... I still remember back when stringing two words together into a sentence was a once-a-day achievement for her.

"I didn't say anything that wasn't true. Besides, I'll miss you too, you know. I'll have to come to visit and collect my allocation of hugs or I'll suffer from Cluma withdrawal and break out in a rash."

She gave me her stop-talking-nonsense face, and I grinned back. I spent the rest of the morning acting the age I was, with Cluma and the other kids, in a village blissfully free of orcs. I had more stamina these days, and didn't need to break off half an hour in, but by the end of the day, I was still worn out. Cluma, as expected, wasn't, and ran around giving everyone her customary goodbye hugs. But when she got to me, I would swear she muttered 'hypocrite' under her breath... She couldn't have, right? How would she even know that word?

For the rest of winter, I trained my magic rather more seriously than I had done the previous couple of years, never permitting my mana pool to fill up apart from when I slept. It helped that using magic in kids' games was no longer a complete cheat; it seemed that the abnormality of Cluma and myself had ended up pushing the physical stats of the whole village youth above average. Not just their stats, either; in one game of catch, I was quite literally shocked to find Joseph had statically charged our ball before passing it to me. [Appraisal] informed me he had changed class to [Apprentice Mage]. I didn't know what career choices a lightning mage would have, but I mentioned the incident to Kari and left it to her to take care of.

Witnessing the growth of the kids, I decided to make an effort to spread knowledge of how to get titles. I'd already been using Cluma as a bit of a guinea pig, so had the first part of a strategy to unlock [Jack of All Trades] ready and tested. As well as dagger and staff there were proficiencies for swords, heavy-swords, axes, maces, flails and polearms, all of which could be unlocked with an hour or two of swinging around an appropriately shaped lump of wood, plus a small bit of chain to get something the System recognised as a flail. There were also bow, thrown and unarmed proficiencies, which needed a tad more effort, but not much. The name of the skill [Weapon Proficiency: Unarmed] seemed like an oxymoron to me, but I didn't want to complain at an unlock. That was eleven of the twenty-five already.

[Mana Sense] needed a few minutes of me using [Mana Control] to push mana into their bodies, and covered the required magic skill. Everyone could pick up [Basic Cooking]. The other crafting skills for tailoring, carpentry, smithing, farming and foraging did require some actual education, as did [Inspection], but the villagers were happy to spread their knowledge around. That was nineteen.

By purchasing [Inspection] anyone could run their mana pool dry to unlock [Enlarged Mana Pool]. With the exception of Cluma, everyone could sprint their pool to zero as I had done years ago for [Enlarged Stamina Pool], giving Kari much glee when she levelled [Rejuvenation]. For Cluma, we had to improvise a much more gruelling training session, but we managed to run even her insane pool dry in the end. [Meditation] was easy to unlock too, with a very small amount of tuition. That was twenty-two.

A covert skill was harder. The title required at least one, but [Privacy] was a non-starter; it wasn't sufficient to be appraised without your knowledge; it needed to be against your will. The kids here really didn't care who appraised them, so there was no way to gain it. Angus was surprisingly enough the one to come to my rescue here, teaching us [Concealment]. It was a rank one version of the [Stealth] that had permitted Noah to vanish in broad daylight, and didn't require any specific class to learn. The effects were not so pronounced; it just made the user blend in with the background, so they were harder to notice. You couldn't move around with impunity in the same way as [Stealth] permitted either. Nevertheless, it was cool enough that it made it onto my list of things to buy if I was ever drowning in soul points. Angus had come out of his shell a little since rescuing me; I think in some way, saving my life had served to justify his survival to himself.

For anyone planning to take a second rank one class that was more than enough already, the last two being made up with spells or rank one combat artes. Not that anyone was planning on [Apprentice Fighter], but we did have a couple more wannabe mages on top of the kid who had already made it. For those who weren't interested in magic, we needed two more skills. Since all of mine required [Apprentice Mage] we needed to look for things I hadn't unlocked.

The villager who'd taught us all how to use a bow provided the first, teaching us [Hunting], which was a skill much in the same vein as [Foraging] except for animals instead of plants. The final skill stumped me for a while until I remembered something else I'd never seen here; musical instruments. I'd thought about making a music box before, but had never considered instruments. I made a few attempts at building a recorder, the instrument of choice of junior schools back at home on Earth. Some of them were even capable of producing noise. None of the attempts would produce what I would call 'music', though. In the end I gave up and smithed a few bells instead, hanging them on cord and whacking them with a stick. That unlocked [Musician] for me, so I shared my bells with the rest of the kids.

The existence of a music skill suggested that instruments and music were out there somewhere, even if I hadn't come across them yet. Not that I'd done much to come across them; we could have bards playing in the tavern every evening for all that I knew. Mum sang nursery rhymes, and Dad had a habit of whistling, so it wasn't as if I'd never heard anyone string a couple of notes together before, but as to what sort of instruments would exist in this world, I had no idea.

And thus every kid in the village gained [Jack of All Trades] for the measly price of two soul points, much to the amusement of the parents, who saw no point in the whole thing but were quite happy to have something to keep their children occupied all winter. I also let them know how to get [Skilled], although I doubted many would bother. I was hoping all that teaching would grant me a skill or title of my own, but alas not. It did do wonders for my charisma, though. Added to my magic practice, it ended up being a very productive winter.

Strength increased by 1

Dexterity increased by 1

Wisdom increased by 1

Charisma increased by 2

Skill [Minor Dexterity] advanced to level 11

Skill [Strength] advanced to level 3

Skill [Minor Intelligence] advanced to level 9

Skill [Enlarged Mana Pool] advanced to level 10

Skill [Mana Control] advanced to level 9

Skill [Basic Carpentry] advanced to level 7

Skill [Basic Smithing] advanced to level 6

Skill [Enlarged Stamina Pool] advanced to level 6

Skill [Appraisal] advanced to level 7

Skill [Greater Mana Finesse] advanced to level 3

Class [Body Mage] advanced to level 2

New skill acquired: [Dexterity]

A level up allowed me to grab the next of my rank two spells. Whereas [Strength] displayed itself in thin, straight lines of red with sharp corners, [Dexterity] showed itself as gently curved blue lines. Even [Dexterity] didn't let me keep up with Cluma, but it let me soundly beat out all the older kids at tag. At least until my mana ran out. On which note [Enlarged Mana Pool] hitting ten had unlocked another new second rank skill.

Skills available for purchase:

1 point: [Basic Cooking] [Basic Tailoring] [Foraging] [Basic Farming] [Weapon Proficiency: Dagger] [Endurance] [Weapon Proficiency: Sword] [Weapon Proficiency: Heavy Sword] [Weapon Proficiency: Axe] [Weapon Proficiency: Mace] [Weapon Proficiency: Flail] [Weapon Proficiency: Polearm] [Weapon Proficiency: Bow] [Weapon Proficiency: Thrown] [Weapon Proficiency: Unarmed] [Concealment] [Hunting] [Musician]

4 points: [Enhanced Stamina Recovery] [Mana Perception] [Extended Mana Pool]

[Extended Mana Pool] - Your mana pool is considerably larger than normal. Higher levels further increase pool size. (Rank 2)

On several days throughout the winter, Camus had visited Dawnhold on foot, on one occasion slogging through falling snow. He definitely seemed to be taking the moving thing seriously and was obviously preparing to leave with his family as soon as possible. He had never spoken to me again since we returned from Dawnhold, which suited me fine. Warren and Angus, on the other hand, had no new plans. They'd come here to stay, guard duty or not.

Winter rolled into spring, and the weather finally started to warm up, which meant it was time for me to return to Dawnhold. It was a busy time for the farmers, so Mum and I were travelling with Henry while Dad remained behind. Travel was a lot easier in the spring weather than it had been in winter, and we reached the town without incident. I was getting a little nervous, but there was no avoiding this now. It was time to collect my equipment.