After they say goodbye to the scout, the group all sit against a tree and discuss how to continue. Jason starts off with the worry they all had thought of, “if the plant monsters are more active should we do this? That fight wasn’t hard but mossrams are a passive monster. If the scout was right and a herbivore is on the move nearby it won’t be a small fry like that.”

Courtney pulls out a rough map she had sketched out, “our trip through the deep forest here was to shave a week off of the trip.” She points to their current location and traces out where the deep forest should be on the map. “With our current path it still takes us three weeks to get through the forest with most of that being in this danger zone. If we had known about it ahead of time, we might have planned differently but here we are.”

Rosha chimes in that, “we are already in for three weeks so an extra week to that so we can avoid the deeper forest area would be worth it.” Jason shakes his head, “no, if we do that the danger would still be there. If we skirt the deep area of the forest we are still next to it. The mossram was on the edge so this could hold true for the rest of the area. In fact, our original path doesn’t go that deep into the forest. While it is a lot to use if the area was an orange we still are in the outer area of the peel. It only cuts so much time off of our trip because of how big it is.”

Rosha fires back that, “if we are going to face easy stuff like a mossram out here then think of what might have taken their place. I got the feeling from the scout’s words that this is nonsense happening deep in the forest. Nonsense like giant herbivores with hundreds of levels which make those trees over there look normal size. Why we stick to the regular forest area only is so we can stick to things on the level of the mossram.”

Both Courtney and Jason pause at this. Then together they both make noises of comprehension. Jason shrugs, “good point there. With that in mind I vote we stick with the edge as well.” Courtney only nods in agreement. Rosha claps her hands and declares, “Now that is decided I say we get started going that away.” and she dramatically points in the direction they came from. “We can exit this deep forest first and once out as long as we keep the trees visible on our right hand we should be fine.”

Courtney points on the map, “since we are not going straight through we need some way to figure out when to stop following the trees. This point right here is not quite where we would have come out but close. Most importantly though is there is a ruin marked right here. A boom town called, in the imaginative way things get names, Forest’s Edge. With where Jason came from and some of the other names on the map I think there might be a council somewhere that gets to name stuff. That or they let the simplest farmer who settles in a place to name stuff. My bet is on the council naming things though as there aren’t any repeats.”

With a plan in mind the group starts their journey. After the small bit of backtracking they need to do to get out of the deep forest their pace becomes steady. Whatever the kingdom did out here it most assuredly involved a lot of earth magic to flatten the land out. Only the occasional stream breaks up what, now that they are looking for it, is clearly an artificial landscape. Terrain this flat just does not happen.

A couple days pass before Courtney brings up something with Jason while around the campfire. They had just beat up a pair of wolves and she had noticed, “do you only have one combat skill? We might not use our skills much but both me and Rosha have shown a couple. Are you hiding skills or what? I know skills are rare but the average after the second bottleneck is two to three active combat skills. If you were a crafter one or even none would be fine but you aren’t.”

Jason smacks his fist into his palm, “That’s right, I need to sell my skill to the System. I had completely forgotten to do it.” Courtney scrunches her face and rubs one of her temples, “As interesting as that is it doesn’t answer my question.”

“Eh”, Jason shrugs, “I already know five skills. One attack skill feels decent. Plus I am somewhat of a resource monkey. You couldn’t have missed my little garden right?”

“Five skills! You have five skills?” Courtney rubs her temple harder, “How do you even get five skills without at least two of them being combat? Don’t even try to put it under your little garden. Resource farmers of all types tend towards even less skills as they focus on their bread and butter skill. Next town we get to the party is putting down cash to get you another skill.”

Jason leans back, “fine, I know when I’m beat. Next time in town I will get some stomp skill or what have you. I don’t feel right using everyone's money though, so let’s restrict it to what we earn on the way there. I know that is basically the same thing with our current financial status but please let me keep this at least.” Courtney turns back to the fire, “whatever. You're our tank so just stay up front.”

Now free of the conversation Jason brings up his Blast Punch skill and queries the System about selling it. The skills screen closes and up comes the text from when he hit level ten as well as asking what he would like to sell it for.

You may sell your self-created skill Blast Punch (Variant) to the System. Because you ranked the skill up to Initiate, the System would like to spread your it to others and provide you a cut of what people pay to learn it. Warning, if you do sell your skill to the System, they will change it to make it fit better.

Please Choose what you would like to sell this skill for.

Akhier

Thank you for reading! Next two chapters free on my Patreon ( https://www.patreon.com/dragonheartednovels ), five chapters beyond that for only a dollar, and many more for five dollars (two chapters release a week at this tier).