Chapter Fifty-Six - Dreaming Big

“Cleanthrower!” I shouted as I stretched an open hand towards the nearest slime.

Cleaning magic poured out of my palm as if I had opened the tap on a garden hose. It splashed over the grey-ish blob of gelatinous magic, melting it apart.

“There’s another ahead of you,” Amaryllis said as she raised a hand. She was holding onto a ball of light, kind of like those I had seen Arianne make the first time I ever met a grenoil, only these were a bit brighter and she managed to cast a stronger light forward, like a flashlight that illuminated the way ahead.

I looked up ahead, and she was right, a huge slime, bigger than any I had ever seen before, was blubbering its way ahead in the middle of the road. I could see the entire half-digested body of a rabbit near its core. “I got it,” I said as I stepped up. I brought my hands together, palm flat by my side, “Kame!” I took a wide stance. “Ha... meee...” Then I shot my arms out before me with a loud. “Haaa!”

A white ball of cleaning magic puttered along through the air in a meandering course that ended when it booped into the slime’s chest. Then it kept going, carving a hole through the entire monster.

The slime collapsed.

“What was that?” Amaryllis asked.

“It’s a, uh,” I flushed. “Magical chant from my homeland. It makes you way more awesome.”

“It makes you louder,” Amaryllis corrected. “We’re lucky slimes are deaf else you’d have called every creature across the entire region with your incessant screaming.”

“Oops?” I said. I was a little sorry. It wasn’t nice to put myself and Amaryllis at risk like that. On the other hand, that was one more slime down, which meant just a little bit more experience towards the next level. I would need it. I had to be stronger, strong enough that the next time there was a fight, I could fight on my own terms, or at least make people think twice about hurting my friends.

Walking through the swamps at night--with only the rune-light on my helmet and Amaryllis light to guide us--was a bit scary, but it wasn’t so bad, especially after getting rid of just about every slime on our path. Amaryllis used her thunder magic liberally at first, but she then suggested we pace ourselves and switch every so often to keep at least one of us topped off with mana.

The moon above made the clouds glow silver and refracted off of the humid fogbanks rising up all around us. All the noises of the marsh were damped by the fog, which only made it harder to tell where something might come from.

Amaryllis said that monsters could usually sense that messing with a person was a bad idea, but we were also both in our first tier, which made us prime midnight snack material.

I had to get strong enough that no one would eat me.

“Hey, Amaryllis?” I asked.

“What inane question do you have for me now?” she asked as she panned her light across the woods.

“What level was Throat Ripper at?” The cervid mercenaries had backed off instead of fighting the bone doggo, so aiming to be at about that level was a good start.

“Third tier,” Amaryllis said. “That’s above level twenty of his primary class.”

“So he had... three classes total?” I asked as I worked out the information in my head.

“To get past twenty he would need his second class at level ten, and a third class, yes,” she said.

“How long do you think it would take me to get that strong?” I asked.

Amaryllis’ light shifted until it was illuminating me. She didn’t stop moving though, so nor did I. “Is this a riftwalker thing?”

“It’s a Broccoli Bunch thing,” I said.

She snorted. “Getting past the first tier is simple enough. A few years with safe and well-paced training. Far less with situations like ours where we’re fighting for our lives. Second tier can take anywhere from two to ten years to get past. You’ll rarely see anyone younger than thirty past level twenty. The pinnacle of most civilisations are those in their third and fourth tiers. It can take decades to move past those. Most people succumb to old age before hitting their fifth tier. Mostly because to keep growing at a decent rate you need to start facing challenges that are frankly ridiculous.”

I processed that for a bit. Amaryllis was really a fountain of knowledge. I think some people would have pegged her as a nerd back home, and they would have been very rude for placing her in a box like that.

So, the more one leveled up, the harder it got, and most people didn’t make it to level forty unless they tried really hard for a long time. That just meant that I had to either work even harder, or I could aim for a point where I’d be respected and stop there.

That sounded good enough, and it lined up with my goals in life.

“Why are you asking?” Amaryllis asked. “Not that the question is terrible. I’m merely curious as to what brought you to it.”

“I want to know how strong I need to be to carry out my dreams.”

“And what are those?” Amaryllis asked.

“I want a small house with a little fence around it. A dog, two cats, a gentle husband with a really nice chin, and two kids. A boy and a girl,” I said.

Amaryllis tripped over a root or something and her light went out. She said bad things while recasting the spell. “That’s it?” she asked.

“Well, I’d like it if I lived near my friends, that way I could visit them every night. We could do rotations where every night a new friend cooks supper. And we couple play boardgames! I think it would be cute.”

“What kind of peasant aspirations are those?” Amaryllis asked. “Don’t you want... more?”

“Not really?” I asked. “I want plenty of little things, but they're not my dreams. Oh, I do want to learn fireball, does that count?”

“No, no it doesn’t!”

Amaryllis flashed her light ahead of us, illuminating a couple of slimes that were slimming their way closer. She muttered something and arcs of lightning flashed out of her fingers and sizzled as they dug into the slimes.

If I ever found a glowing red sword I was giving it to her to complete the image.

We continued our trek through the woods at a sedate pace until, finally, I could see a faint glow in the fog ahead. “Is that Green Hold?” I asked.

“It might be,” Amaryllis said. “I’m not going to look for a hill to use as a vantage in this lighting.”

“Stop here for a bit,” I said. Crouching down, I took off my backpack and shifted my bum like a kitty looking for just the right balance. Then I pushed a chunk of my stamina into my legs and shot into the air.

I resisted the urge to scream in delight as the wind whipped at me. Then, when I was at the apex of my jump, I looked ahead. The town was covered in a thin layer of fog, but it was easy enough to see the little towers around it and the plumes of smoke rising into the sky.

I landed with an ‘oomph’ and resettled my skirts. “It’s Green Hold,” I said.

“Handy skill that,” Amaryllis said. “Just normal Jumping?”

“Yup,” I said. “Rank C. That’s, um, disciple?”

Amaryllis shrugged a shoulder and began walking again. “Most would try to get rid of it, or find a skill to merge it with. But if it works for you.”

“It’s got enough experience to rank up to journeyman, actually,” I said.

“Hrm. What’s your skill distribution look like? You only have so many skill points to go around before you hit your class evolution.”

“Do I get more after?” I asked.

“You do, but it’s slower. It’s best to plan these things out,” she said.

“Ah, okay,” I said. It made sense. What did I want to focus on? Having Cleaning at rank A would require three levels worth of skill points. I could do that as soon as it was ready to rank up. Or I could move other skills up a few ranks, or save some points for the next skill I’d unlock at level eight. So many choices.

“Skills unlock a secondary thing at disciple, right?” I asked.

“They do,” Amaryllis confirmed. She zapped a little slime with a wave. I was noticing fewer and fewer of them as we came closer to Green Hold. Maybe there were partols, or the mana around the town was different enough that they didn’t spawn every night?

“One more question,” I said as I looked at Mister Menu’s display of my profile. “How many General Skills can you have?”

“Five initially,” Amaryllis said. “You’ll get another five at the same time as you hit your bottleneck. You can’t really get General Skill Points.”

“Only from doing something for the World, right?” I asked.

Amaryllis slowed down. “You got some?” she asked.

“Um,” I said.

“World curse your ignorant luck,” she muttered.

“Just two of them,” I said.

“Yes, yes, just two. Two enough for some people to kill you.”

“What?” I squeaked.

She huffed. “Killing someone with General Skill Points lets you take them for yourself. But the people with those are... rare. Dungeon core breakers, who are fair game. Some champions that did extraordinary deeds. Sometimes the people who get a rare, an exceptionally rare, quest. They’re usually strong enough that killing them for the points isn’t worth the hassle, but when nations go to war those champions become targets.”

“Ah,” I said.

It sort of made sense. As far as I could tell, any skill could be acquired by anyone. That meant that you could have a skill that wasn’t part of your class. But Rank D was... lame? Not that great? It certainly helped, but it wasn’t beyond what a person could do naturally.

Jumping at Rank D made me good at jumping and helped with the timing and balance. Cleaning at that same rank made me a more efficient cleaner. But it had all been within human limits--with a bit of help. The moment those skills reached rank C they became... more. Magical.

So a person with lots of General Skill points could start unlocking plenty of new ranks in a hurry and would become a lot stronger in a short period of time. Assuming they got more than just two points, of course.

“Ahh, my head is stuffed,” I said.

“Yes, I’m sure Thinking isn’t one of your skills,” Amaryllis said.

I glared over at her, but the glare fizzled and died on contact with her smug grin. “You’re mean. I’m not an idiot.”

“You’re certainly smarter than most of the fools I have to deal with,” she said. “That doesn’t make you a genius by any measure though.”

“Who was it that needed saving yesterday?” I asked as innocently as I could.

Amaryllis did that cute huffing thing she did when I scored a point and started walking a little faster. “Those were exceptional circumstances. Circumstances that I will get to the bottom of.”

As I watched the walls of Green Hold grow closer, I started to have a really bad feeling in the pit of my stomach.