I asked curiously, “I thought Scrounging was super rough. Good for survival, I guess, but it only helped collect really low-level resources like food and some ingredients for basic crafting.”


    He nodded, “At first it is. Scavenging is usually um… on the path of the indigent. Indigent paths like drudge, migrant worker, and peasant are not great, but ironically, despite their title, they can help you become a very powerful warrior or a useful citizen. I’d much rather people choose the path of the indigent than just… be a vagrant. It’s like learning to be a bard as opposed to just singing badly along with all the music you hear. It’s not a prestigious path, but at the highest levels, it is as powerful as any common path. Do you know how to get new traits?”


    I nodded, “Training, proving your abilities, spending points, and getting granted by your path.”


    He nodded, “Training is important, but mastering something is what makes it turn into a trait. Like if you worked on body hardening, eventually once you had beaten yourself to a pulp for several years to get tougher, you could gain the durability trait. I did it that way. If you learned the ins and outs of fishing, you might get the fishing trait, and if you added it to things like fire-starting in almost any weather, gathering edibles, trapping, and stuff like that, you might get several abilities that combine into the survival trait.”


    “I have the survival trait.”


    His eyes opened a little wider, “Seriously? That’s incredible. A combined trait like that is worth its weight in gold.”


    “Scrounging is a combined trait that includes a huge number of minor traits and skills. I can’t believe your path offered you combined traits like that. It must be a truly amazing or rare path.”


    “Those rat-bastard goblins are lucky, though. They get that stuff as a sort of racial memory and often have those traits to start with. Does your path offer any more merged traits?”


    I thought about it. “I have some pretty generic-sounding physical skills, does that count?”


    He nodded, “Define generic?”


    I shrugged, “I have melee, pugilism, firearms, and improvised weapons.”


    “You… you can fight with ANY weapon or in hand-to-hand, use ANY gun or crossbow, and pretty much pick up anything and use it as a weapon?”


    I nodded, “In general, yes. I mean, technically I could kill someone with a diaper or a pencil, but in practice, it’s a total bitch to do. Easier to do it with your bare hands unless you catch them by surprise. Bigger items, once you find the right balance, well, anything is a weapon.”


    He nodded, “Those are definitely general skills. Unless you are lying, I don’t understand how anyone could have that many low-level combined abilities”


    “How old are you, sir?”


    “Almost sixty.”


    I nodded, “If you were training since you just entered puberty, could you possibly have those? Not the scrounging, but the survival and combat training?”


    He nodded, “I think so. Probably. If I’d devoted my whole life to them.”


    I smiled, “Well, I did devote my whole life to them. But it’s confusing, and not something I am ready to talk about. Kamli knows some of it, and Wandi knows other parts, but my early life was… very, very bad, and I am a bit older than I look.”


    He nodded slowly, “Like one of those cults that teaches children from the age of five how to be the perfect assassins.”


    I nodded, “Something very much like that, sir. And it kept us from gaining Aspects or cultivating as well, nothing but training and doing with our own two hands. So I have several comprehensive low-level combined skills, as well as some that are simply useless, and do not apply at all to this environment, like the ability to sabotage underwater structures, or to instruct and drive a type of vehicle that simply cannot exist here, wrong type of essence.”


    “Where did you find this guy?”


    Wandi smiled, “Walking by the side of the road, after getting dumped by enough transfer essence to have moved him from… the opposite side of the world, easily, according to Kamli.”


    He nodded, “Everything becomes clear. So you were summoned here to become the new chord of justice. I bet you were sent by a god. Did you die? Are you a reborn?”


    “You know about reborn?”


    He nodded. “Yes. Usually, there’s some kind of prophecy, but not always. Sometimes they can do great things no one’s ever seen before, and sometimes they freeze to death and never wake up minutes after they are transferred. Usually, they are sent by a god, or summoned by wizards, or accidentally brought here after some evil bastard tries to do something stupid, like summon a demon lord, and screws up and gets a reborn instead.”


    I nodded, “Yeah, reborn. Sorry.”


    He laughed, “Nothing to be sorry about. It happens, and oddly, it makes me feel a lot better about you mating with my daughter. Reborn always work fast, and if you are still alive after two days, you are likely to stay alive for a while and do some stupid and amazing things.”


    “Speaking of which, do you know how to upgrade your combined traits? Other than training, you could spend a hundred years training to upgrade something like scrounging to repair. If it was a specific skill, like gunsmith to improved gunsmith, well, people do that without path points all the time.”


    I nodded, “Path points.”


    He smiled a little, “Well, each time you improve a trait, it takes more path points. Like if you have scrounge and improve it to jury-rigging it would take five path points, upgrade it to full repair, it would take ten path points, and from repair to crafting takes fifteen, crafting to invention takes twenty, and so on.”


    “So basically, improving the affinity it’s in improves the basic skill, and lets you use more essence, but spending points to upgrade the trait itself improves its facility and flexibility.”


    He nodded, ‘Exactly. If you got short sword skill, and upgraded it to improved short sword, you’d be better and do more damage and have better control with short swords. But if you had it in a physical affinity, improving that affinity would let you add essence attacks to it, do fancy techniques, and help it all around… even if you weren’t actually any better at it.”The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    I nodded, “Thank you. That was sort of confusing to me. I have path points, but wasn’t sure how to use them. Why did you tell me this?”


    He grinned, “Because with simple skills it’s not really worth blowing the points on upgrading them. If you prefer a short sword, and get the short sword trait, it’s WAY better to just keep improving your physical affinity instead. With combined skills? It multiplies enormously. If you took your melee to melee master, you could do things like punching through a brick wall… Without using an essence attack. So that’s my fatherly advice.”


    I nodded slowly, “I will take it and use it. You have just made my life a lot simpler.”


    I could have told you all that.


    Yes, but you didn’t. So could the old fart in the tutorial, but he didn’t.


    We are not supposed to offer unsolicited advice.


    Right. Good job on not doing what you are not supposed to do, then, for an entity illegally in a restricted world that somehow is here anyway.


    When we got back to her flat in midtown, and the carriage dropped us off, thankfully with real live horses this time, Wandi looked exhausted and was yawning. I smiled and helped her out even though she obviously didn’t need it, before she went back to her room and I went to mine, I stopped her for a moment.


    “Are you wanting to… umm…” She asked, tilting her head towards her room.


    I nodded, “Absolutely. I’d like nothing more, but we aren’t going to, because we are courting.”


    She nodded slowly.


    “There is one more important thing though… I need to hear it from you.”


    She smiled and looked up at me, her big green eyes blinking at me. “What’s that?”


    “Rule three.”


    “Huh?”


    “You said three rules. We covered two and got distracted by your Dad. I think he’s decided to give me a shot.”


    She nodded, “Yeah, my mom was… very excited. She was upset when neither I nor Kamli got pregnant right away, and really upset when I left the Bitternut family. But now she’s hopeful.”


    “So what’s the third rule? You make the play, need before greed, and what?”


    She laughed, “I left that out on purpose. I got three people to go with us, and two of them… well, we all have very complementary paths, but we couldn’t get a druid or witch to go with us. I have joined them separately before, but without some way of compensating for damage, they had to join with people who could. They are joining us on THIS delve because I told them I had a healer and fighter. Not a true healer, obviously, since that would have thrown up a huge flag for kidnappers and other nasty sorts.”


    “We are actually going to be running a low tin rift called the basin, to get a good feel for the team the first time. All of us have done it several times before except you, so it will let us iron out problems and see if we can build a working team without worrying too much about instantly dying if we make a mistake. The Basin is considered a farming run, and instead of weapons and magic rewards, we tend to get a lot of high-quality meats and some herbs. Scouts like us, with survival skills, also try to pick up wild and essence-enhanced spices, alchemical ingredients, and even skins from beasts that aren’t edible but make good essence-enhanced leather or armor.”


    “Need before greed, usually doesn’t apply to this run, since mostly we grab it and sell it, but if you have crafting skills, you can claim a need for some crafting supplies.”


    “You still haven’t told me the third rule.”


    She giggled, “Yeah, it sort of applies only to you. Two of the girls, our heavy melee and our Patternist, are a gulan, I guess you’d call her related to a wolverine, and a pholian, which gives her some very serious defenses and natural toughness.”


    I nodded, “Sounds pretty awesome.”


    She giggled and took a step away from me. “The problem is, they both have strong scent glands, which means they are stinky girls, just your type. That means rule three, no sex in the dungeon! They are off limits for your slave harem!” She fled and closed the door to her room, laughing.


    I sighed and returned to my room. I was never going to live anything down. What happened to the good old-fashioned monster girl harem stories with cat-girls, vampire girls, and cute demonesses? I’d probably even like a super-hot goblin girl. I had met a cat girl, but almost instantly disliked her, but then again, I was never really a pet person, they were hard to deal with when you deployed frequently, and I was allergic to cats.


    Wandi had gotten me some more clothing, and I was surprised at her insight. Two pairs of soft cotton pants that were clearly perfect for sleeping, a pair of fur slippers, A kind of soft coat that I guess was supposed to be a housecoat or pajama top, but I discarded. Some more underclothing, the nice suit, some more rough clothes, and even a long, conical nightcap! I’d never worn one before, and I wasn’t going to start now, so I just stripped completely, slid on the surprisingly comfortable pants, and flopped down on the mat.


    Before I went to sleep, I said “Hey Jessie.”


    Hello, Tony. Your utterly incompetent Personal Synthetic Intelligence here. How might I screw up your evening?


    “Hey, Nice job on the personality! You almost have the snark down perfectly, although you are going a bit heavy-handed on the sarcasm. Might want to tone it down a little until you get a lot more ideas of humor to work with. Your rabbit joke was bad, but that was only because of the pacing and punchline. The concept itself was sound, it just needs a little more work.”


    I don’t really understand fecal humor, but the foundation of humor is pain or humiliation. Fecal humor seems to be based on humiliation, and since I have never experienced pain, I cannot grasp it very well. Based on the pain and humiliation paradigm, however, would like like to hear a new attempt?


    “Sure. let me have it.”


    How many newborn felines are in a typical litter?


    “I have no idea, how many kittens are in a typical litter?”


    That depends on how finely you grind them.


    I actually snickered. “Okay, That was actually… a really decent attempt at a joke. I mean, it would make some people upset, but good jokes usually do. That one belongs in the sick but slightly funny pile, and you are right, most humans adore kittens, so it has the right balance of pain.”


    Thank you. That is much more satisfying than sarcasm, but snark seems a lot more challenging without it.


    “Want a tip?”


    Please.


    “Extrapolate a painful or humiliating basis around the subject, and make the assumption that the viewer will automatically empathize with that subject. Adding in a hint of an uncomfortable subject like sex, or poop, or inappropriate behavior with unacceptable subjects could help, as long as it’s not too blatant.”


    Could you provide me with an example, please?


    I nodded, “Sure. In a moment, I am going to ask you to distribute my points. A mildly snarky response would be something like, “Scrounging? It must be nice to finally be almost as smart as a goblin.” an intermediate snarky response would be, “Good choice, duct taping all those inflatable dolls you puncture regularly must have finally taught you something.”


    What about a seriously snarky response?


    I sighed, “You would have to get really personal about it, and without a good understanding, it would actually be horribly insulting instead of amusing and mildly humiliating like good snark should be. A nasty one would be, “Scrounging still won’t fix what your mother put you through”. But it’s just painful because there’s a little too MUCH truth to it. More recent and less aggressively personal would be something like… “Jury rigging is great for fixing everything, except when you give Tanley a pink sock.”


    Oh, but isn’t that slightly complimentary?


    “Yep. And that’s what makes the best nasty snark. A hint of backhanded compliment to make the personal but otherwise less than painful comment more humiliating in comparison. You would be complimenting the size of my sexual equipment, which is both gratifying and a little embarrassing while implying that I cannot control myself if she offered what she did today. It’s the humor of contrasts. Plus, giving a little bit of truth about the project just adds spice.”


    Preparing to apply path points. May I practice snark?


    I nodded, “Knock yourself out.”