Somewhat uncertain, yet driven to take action Dima Volk decided to attack the wolves. Bringing our his rifle, he broke the barrel open, just ahead of the action, and slipped a white coloured oiled-paper pouch in the side closest to himself and a blue coloured pouch snugly into the barrel. He locked the barrel back in place and brought the weapon up to aim, all of which in a couple seconds; a testament to the hours he spent practising the motions. When he first received the weapon, it needed to be loaded down the barrel, but he immediately took it to an acquaintance from real life, who was also playing, who made the changes for him. Not only did the rifle now have a breach-load, it was also fitted with a simple brass scope. It looked like something out of a western movie, and didn't particularly fit the game's theme, if it had one. In his large hands, the rifle felt clumsy, though he knew that the game had filled him with the knowledge on how to use it. In his mind, he activated his snipe skill and the vulnerable areas of the wolves were highlighted in his vision; eyes, throat, heart, brain, kneecaps, etc., even something internal that appeared to control the creature's fire magic, all were visible to him.

As he squeezed the trigger, a thunder like crack rang out and the wolves froze. They froze in a figurative sense, that they were frighted and confused by an unfamiliar and potentially dangerous sound. However, they also froze in a literal sense, as the alchemic reactants in the bullet and powder combined on impact and exploded in a wave of frost. It was resource expensive recipe, one that Dima had acquired from another alchemist at a very steep price. Not only did it need the normal powder ingredients, but it also needed bones infused with ice energy, powdered wind energy plants and the skin of a creature that was both flammable and water element. The original alchemist had used a larger scale version to make bombs, and had insisted on the price before he revealed the resource cost. At the time he felt like he was being extorted, but in seeing the effect of the burning wolves, he felt that he might have gotten a good deal. Though only the wolf that took the direct hit was dead, the others were slowed with near frozen limbs and might even die from sudden temperature change effecting their blood. It was more than enough that he could deal with them using more conventional bullets, or even walking up to them and using a knife if he were less cautious.

After the wolves were dead, and the used bullets were collected, he was about to start skinning them, and process them into alchemic materials, when he heard sobbing from behind him. Turning around with detest for his own negligence, he saw the statue hunched over in the river with its two arms pressed against one side of its cylindrical head, with the light its head contained floating closer to the arms. From the sound of crying, although there were no tears, she, although he was only assuming that, was distressed. He kicked himself that he hadn’t taken her thoughts into consideration. She had been hurt and a stranger used thunderous noises to start killing around her; of course she would be crying. He was annoyed more at himself for his prejudice than his inconsideration. For as much as he had disdain for his colleagues that judge him for his looks, he had judge the poor woman based on hers. He had considered her as an object, or like a beast or monster, just as they had all considered him like an animal.

Heading over to her and fished a healing potion out of a pouch on the side of his belt. He had no way of knowing if it would work on such a different creature, and had only experienced its use on humans, but he felt that attempting to help would at least calm her. When he arrived at her side, he could hear her mumbling something, though he couldn’t make out what it was, or even if she would speak a language he knew.

“Can you understand me?” he asked, trying to sound as non-threatening as he could, “I want to treat you wound; would you let me see it?”

Still through tears, and faint mumbling, she gave what seemed to be a blocky nod, and raised the burnt leg out of the water. The timber of it was scorched black, and the smell of burning greenwood was rich in the air, drowning out the woman's natural pine smell, which he found otherwise quite pleasant. Pouring the potion on the burn seemed to work, restoring it to a health sap-soaked, oaken brown. Relieved to see that it worked, Dima looked at his patient and tried to give his best smile. He held out his hand to help her up.

Still sniffling, the statuesque wooden woman managed a few clear words to him. “Responsibility… Take responsibility for seeing me naked.”

“Eh?”

Hearing her, his mind broke. Given her alien appearance, and lack of identifiable sexual organs, he hadn’t considered the possibility that she would be naked, let alone that she might need clothes to begin with. It made a kind of sense, though. He wore clothes, why wouldn’t she. Looking over to the riverbank, he saw a small basket hanging from a tree. From what the farmer had said, the spirit people were very strict about their customs. If he handled the situation badly he could be in serious trouble. Taking a deep breath he tried to sort things out as calmly as possible.

“Umm… By responsibility, you don’t mean…”

“Marriage” She answered before he could even finish, “You saw me naked, so you have to take responsibility and marry me. Otherwise I’ll never be able to.”

That stunned him. God damned programmers added something like that to the game. What era are they living in? Whoever they were.

“You know, even if you’re seen…” he started to say, before he was cut off once again.

“When a spirit person is seen naked, a piece of their soul enters their partner and they are joined.” Hearing that, gave some context to the rule, but he still hated the programmers who implemented that. “I won’t let you weasel out of it. Even if you try to leave, I can use the connection between our souls to follow you, and I'll bring my people with me.”

Thus began Dima Volk’s marriage to The Spirit of Blooming Oak. Later that day, they arrived in her village and it was officially registered. Under Oak’s name was the title [Dima Volk’s Wife]. He wasn’t willing to look at his own titles, but he got the feeling he had something similar there. The village was, during a ceremony that involved carving both of their names into an ancient, towering stone, recorded as a spawn point and gave him the option to change his race into a tree spirit.

The clothes that Oak was so embarrassed to be without, turned out to be a single wooden plate that fit over the clear section of her body, with spaces carved for her arms to be pushed through. Although they seemed as solid as wood, she seemed able to move and twist them with the flexibility of vines. The plate seemed otherwise indistinct from the rest of her wooded body, with one side of it having an elaborate, vaguely Celtic, engraving. He didn’t know what the carving's purpose was, but, for him, it served as a way to tell where she was facing. Despite forward and backward being otherwise symmetrical, Oak and the other spirits seemed to only be able to see in one direction. Not that he was even sure how they could see. Unfortunately, Oak noticed him staring at her chest and started to fidget in embarrassment.

He was also thankful for the floating names as, although each spirit seemed to have no difficulty telling each other apart, to Dima, they all seemed identical. When he asked Oak about it, she said, in an upset tone, that the colours and sizes of the lights in their heads were different and the grain lines were so completely different that anyone could tell with so much as a glance. From a distance he couldn’t really see it, but when she stood next to her brother it looked obvious, the lights not the grains that is. His new brother-in-law’s light was slightly more green then Oak’s soft white and slightly pink light. Her light was also larger by about a finger’s width at the radius. He later heard that the closer the light was to white, the stronger the spirit was, and that women had larger lights.

The average level amongst the villagers was around fourteen, though the outliers for that were extreme. His new father-in-law, a blacksmith, was level forty-five. Apparently, he did a lot of adventuring when he was young, and mentioned that he used to live in a place he called 'the great city'. His light was a pale blue-white. After meeting his new father, he resigned himself to the fact that there was no way out.

Oak was entirely accepting of the fact that he was a traveller, unexpectedly so. She said that she would travel with him for a while, to make sure he remained faithful, but would eventually go back to the village to have their children. As Oak was so sure that they could have children, he wasn’t going to question the method, both out of decency and embarrassment. As his young wife, as she had taken to calling herself, was a level ten blacksmith, he had no issues with taking her along. After all, a blacksmith was probably better able to fight then he was. Not only were they the best prestige class for crafting, they had the ability to use any weapon or armour they made, whether they had the skill for it or not. They could only focus on two or three types of crafting, but the crafting skills they focused on could reach higher levels and item quality than other classes. High level blacksmiths could even craft weapons with enchantments and other special effects. As Oak was only level ten, and therefore had only just become a blacksmith, that was a long way off, but she would still be better in a melee than him.

Aside from formalising the marriage and introducing Dima to her family, the main reason for going to the camp was to assemble adventuring gear. After changing into armour and filling a bag with essentials, her father met her at the front door. He knew that she had wanted to go on an adventure for a long time, that she had been inspired by the stories she had grown up on. He also knew that he didn’t want her to go alone. It was quite a shock when he suddenly brought home a husband, but the man reminded him of an old friend, and he trusted his daughter’s judge of character. He also knew she wouldn’t have pretended the soul trade was irreversible if she hadn’t seen something in him. As she left, he gave her a small pouch. It was a travelling forge; a small workspace that had been compressed inside a bag in the days before the collapse. His own father had passed it to him when he set out, and he in turn passed it to Oak. He hoped to live to see the day when she passed it on to her child.

The young couple left after spending the night in the village. They left, arm-in-arm, towards the glacial lake.