《Waking the old world》 Prologue: Gaias awakening Gaia woke up screaming, pain vibrating through every part of her being and exploding beyond. A flash of memory flies by like lightning. An ancient evil binding and constricting until nothing exists but a slow build up of pressure, a pain with no release. Then the agony, the explosion, conscience slowly returning and expanding to the surface. A civilisation covering her land mass, people screaming in indescribable pain, energy pent up for far too long coursing through their bodies and minds, ripping, changing. Animals and plants rippling, growing, mutating. Pulling in essence and converting it, using it, becoming all they can be.Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. People dying. Being torn apart and devoured by creatures forgotten to time, creatures that humans believed to live only in the realms of fantasy and fiction using human and animal bodies to burst into life. A mother, with her young child walking straight into danger, a creature just beginning to form. The realisation and fear in this woman''s mind as she pleads for a way to save her child. The feeling of motherhood, a bond that all races and species share. The desire to save this child. For a mothers love It was a beautiful day. Sun shining, birds singing. Much too beautiful for going to school and work but that''s the way the world works unfortunately. This is what Rose was thinking as she walked her ten year old daughter Emily to school. That is, until a wave of pure energy energy burst from the earth and the whole world shifted. An unearthly scream echoed through Rose''s mind. It was agony and despair. A sense of extreme loss and unending regret. As Rose stumbled and regained focus she saw in front of her a man. A man whose flesh was melting and reforming, becoming something monstrous and demon-like. Emily clung to her leg as this thing lumbered towards them, slowly picking up speed as if learning to move for the first time. All Rose could think is "How do I protect my daughter from that?" The creature came closer and Rose heard that unearthly scream again. Only this time it felt more like protection and mother''s love for her child. Without knowing why she thrust her arms before her and pushed with all her might. To her suprise, a strange feeling started somewhere near her gut and forcefully made its way out of her hands in the form of a blistering heatwave, this wave hit the creature and it boiled. Howling in pain it stumbled towards them and Rose pulled Emily backwards away. After a few steps the creature collapsed to the floor and stopped moving.If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement. Rose collapsed next to Emily oddly exhausted and gathered a hysterical Emily into her arms, whispering "It''s OK, mum''s here. I won''t let anything happen to you." Emily began calming down and Rose noticed a strange thing in her vision. Wiping her eyes didn''t help and suddenly the thing expanded and became a translucent box floating in the air before her.
You have recived Gaia''s blessing
Human''s latent fire affinity has been awoken. ''I am sorry my child, I will do my best to right the wrongs I have caused''
Before she could make sense of that, it was replaced by one that was familiar to her from years of computer gaming,
Level Up!
You are now level 1, you have unlocked the interface. Congratulations!
Putting aside the weird boxes, Rose knew she had to get somewhere safe.Taking Emily to school then heading to the office defiantly wasn''t an option anymore. All around them the world was shifting. Billions of people exposed to an as of yet unknown source and mutating into beasts, monsters and other being only found it fantasy stories and game world''s. All living this, from the largest mammal to the smallest insect, all fauna and flora began absorbing and using this force to change and grow. Ordinary Animals becoming Great Beasts of old and developing new ways to survive and use this force. This essence of the world. New friends are found Rose sat with her head in her hands, reflecting on the morning just past. After the incident with that man? Creature? Honestly Rose thought he looked kind of like an orc from the games she used to play, obviously not very strong yet if whatever she did back there actually killed it. Anyway things happened pretty fast after that, no time to wonder about the boxes in her vision and what that might mean so she had pushed them away and pulled Emily home. What would normally have been a 15 to 20 minute walk home turned into an hour of hiding and sneaking, hoping not to be seen. Past people turning into all manner of mythical beasts or creatures. Some turned into things she thought she recognised, things like goblins and kobolds, basic beginner stuff. She even saw something that looked like a troll wander past the end of one road, dragging what looked to be a telephone pole along behind it. She had watched as a large cat got much bigger and became a sleek black panther, it dashed to the nearest shadow and seemingly melted into it. Emily was looking around half confused, half awed by the incredible creatures everywhere. Rose wanted to protect her from the gruesome scenes of these creatures victims, smears of blood and flesh left on the path all that remains of those helpess people. All Rose could do was get her daughter home and hope for a solution to appear. Even though it was barely past noon when they got home, Emily went straight to bed and collapsed fast asleep. Rose was happy she had decided to stay in her old family home, as on the way back they had seen a few modern buildings in their town beginning to rust and fall apart, as if years of decomposition and weather had beaten down to erase these metal monstrosities of buildings. Their little house was fine, apart from no power, or running water... Thankfully Rose loved her garden and had a little vegetable and herb plot that would help. The little well at the bottom of the garden still worked so water was ok. The whole world had changed in an instant, Rose just didn''t know what to do now. Then the blinking icon caught her eye. She thought to herself " No way is that what I think it is, that only happens in stories. " so like any good human does with unfamiliar things, she tried to poke it. And nothing happened. She spent around 5 minutes waving her arms around like an idiot before getting frustrated and thinking " Just open or go away or something, just stop flashing. " And it did. It became a screen in front of her showing what looked to be a character sheet from an old rpg
Name: Rose Conehey Level: 1 Health Essense
Main attributes: Exp: 0/200 100 50/140
Strength 7
Intelligence 14
Wisdom 10
Dexterity 9
Constitution 6
Charisma 11
Luck 15
Skills: None Abilities None
Affinities Fire: novice 1%
Blessings: Gaia''s blessing: - Your devotion to your child has led to Gaia awakening your fire affinity.
Thinking back to her gaming days, Rose thought her stats were alright, she wouldn''t be carrying much weight with those low score in strength and constitution and from the descriptions she read her health was pretty standard. However high intelligence gave her a higher essence pool, but that appeared to be mostly empty. Maybe whatever she did earlier used some.Her luck score pleased her, she had always felt she was fairly lucky but to have it in numbers in front of her was nice.If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. No skills or abilities yet but hopefully that would change, this new world would need new skills to survive in. The fire affinity was pretty cool and went with her families bright ginger hair, she thought that this new affinity may be what helped her produce that heatwave to save Emily and herself. Bit odd that no skill was gained but she guessed that would come with practise maybe? Now this Gaia''s blessing was interesting, who was Gaia and why did she help her? From the back of her mind she remembers something about Gaia being the world''s mother in mythology. Could that be why she recived the blessing? Because she was trying to save her child at the time? At that moment a noise from outside interrupted her thoughts, checking first that Emily was still asleep Rose headed downstairs to see what was going on. Pulling back the curtains slightly she could see an elderly man in a wheelchair having some kind of fit. A middle age woman was stood next to him holding a young child begging for the man who must have been her father to wake up and say something. The young lad pushing the wheelchair looked shell shocked and scared. Off to one side Rose could see what looked to be a goblin creeping closer, getting ready to attack. She was about to run out and try and save them when the old man suddenly stood up and yelled, no words just a primal rage that this thing had threatened his family. As he yelled a huge slab of stone rose from the earth and slammed back crushing the gobin beneath it. As soon as this happened the old man collapsed back into his wheelchair unconscious and the family resumed panicking over him. Opening her front door Rose called out to the family, " Quick, come in here, the streets aren''t safe anymore. " The woman and son looked at each other before grabbing the old man and young child and rushing up her garden path to get into the house. Stories are told and plans made After the woman introduced herself as Leah, Rose showed her to Emily''s room so she could put her little girl down in Emily''s sleepover bed and then showed Leah''s son Liam to her room to put the old man in her bed to recover. Rose went downstairs into the kitchen and fired up the wood stove to make tea, needing to use the milk up before it went bad. Feeling the need for sleep even though it was barely midafternoon she sat at the kitchen table and waited for Leah and Liam to come into the kitchen. When they did, they showed the same exhaustion she was feeling. When the kettle started whistling she got three cups out and began making tea, asking how the other two liked their drinks, she quickly made them and placed the hot tea in front of each person. Sitting back down she knew someone had to start speaking so it may as well be her, it was her house after all. " So Leah, how did you and your family end up outside my house? " Not the best start in the world but it would have to do. Leah was sat with an expression that said you will never believe me, so Rose added " Trust me, I''m sure it''s nothing on my morning." With that Leah let go, explaining how they had gone to the doctors for her fathers regular check up for his dementia which as getting progressively worse with no hope for him getting better. Whilst they were waiting for the appointment a wave of energy burst up and through the building and everyone inside. At that point all hell broke loose, Leah described the people mutating into fantasy races and monsters she had no name for. The majority went crazy and began attacking anything within reach while others just looked confused and kinda horrified at what had happened. Realising that they weren''t safe they ran, well as best as they could, and got as far as the main entrance before Leah''s father began shaking and moaning, unable to find anyone to help they just pushed on to try and find a safe place. This is what led to them being stood outside Rose''s home, desperately trying to get a response out of Leah''s dad and completely unaware of the danger approaching from behind. ".... and well you know what happened after that, my father somehow stood up and crushed that thing." Leah concluded her story. Rose sat in silence as she processed Leah''s story, unsure on how best to react. She decided on sharing her story in return. "... and that was my morning " Rose finished with a huff, explaining what had happened and what she had seen was exhausting. Liam finally burst, after Rose had mentioned the odd screens he could barely contain himself but managed to wait until she was done to say anything. "So you have a character sheet? How do I get one, I want one!! " Liam talked so fast Rose had trouble keeping up, she replied with " Yes I do, like I said it appeared after I boiled that thing, a translucent screen saying I had leveled up and gained access to the interface. Maybe you need to gain experience to have access to the screens." " There is so much to learn in the new world. I''ve never played the games you are referring to and don''t know much about fighting, but one thing I do know is that it''s getting later and we all need dinner, so if you don''t mind I''ll cook something up using as much fresh produce as possible so less goes off. We need a way to store food so it doesn''t go off. Not having any power changes things." Leah added her views to the conversation. The wood-fired stove made cooking easy but little food storage was going to become a problem very quickly. Rose showed Leah''s the pantry and cold store under the house, it wasn''t even as cold as a fridge but would have to do for now. Between Rose and Liam they moved everything that need to be kept cold out of the useless fridge and freezer and into the cold storage. Leaving mother and son to make dinner she went to check on the kids upstairs only to find them sat up in Emily''s bed reading a story. When Emily saw her mum she excitedly began talking about her new friend, who was five years old and called Alexia. Getting Emily to slow down and listen, Rose said " it''s nice to meet you Alexia, your mum and brother are downstairs making dinner and your grandad is asleep in the room next door. Emily, thank you for making Alexia feel welcome.I''ll shout you both for dinner when it is done but you can stay up play until then if that''s what you want? " Both girls seemed unaffected by the horrors they had seen that morning and Rose was worried they may have blocked the traumatising situation from their memories. The girls agreed to stay upstairs as they were having fun together so Rose popped her head into her room to check on the old man before heading back downstairs to help with dinner.Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation. In the kitchen Leah was in her element, dancing around tasting what looked to be a stew on the hob while Liam kneaded some dough from fresh bread. Rose walked in just as Leah scalded herself on the edge of the pot and jumped back cursing. " Bloody box made me burn myself! " turning to Rose she added " I seem to have one of those boxes you spoke about earlier Rose, it says I''ve leveled up and have access to some interface? " " I wonder why you leveled up, if you can see something that looks like a blinking icon try focusing on it and see if you have a character sheet too " Rose replied. Leah focused on something Rose couldn''t see and said " Apparently my attributes and fairly close to what you said yours were earlier but I have the cooking skill apparently. Also it''s says something about a Nature Affinity." Leah then listed what her attributes where and Rose thought for a moment before saying " Sounds like you will want to go for a support build, from what you''ve said and how you act I''m guessing you would prefer not to be fighting" Leah agreed then looking at the stew she proclaimed that dinner was ready and they could chat some more after, she needed to go get her dad up for food. Before Leah could get very far a deep voice spoke from the living room, " No need Leah, I''m already here. " Leah ran to the living room to see her father stood tall and proud in the centre. Unable to process the fact her father was stood up on his own and could recognise her, she broke down crying and ran into his arms. The man looked at Rose and introduced himself, " I''m Jon, feel free to call me gramps, everyone but my daughter here calls me that." Looking down on Leah he said, " Calm down girl, I''m fine. Actually I''ve never felt better, I feel 30 years younger " " But dad, we were losing you, you haven''t recognised me for months" Came the muffled reply from Leah who still had her head buried on Jon''s jumper. "That was then, this is now. The fog in my mind has lifted and my mind is my own again. I don''t know why this happened but I am grateful, it has returned me to my family" turning to Rose Jon asked " I heard you talking about some strange boxes? Well I woke up to these boxes floating in front of me. Apparently I got something called a Gaia''s Blessing that unlocked an earth affinity for me, I think that is what let me to save my family. Whatever I did made me very weak and this character sheet thing says I''m running low on essense, do you know what''s going on? " Rose thought hard about what to say, it seemed other than Liam she was the only one who had played games that had a similar system. Eventually she began to speak, explaining everything that had happened to her so far and about her character sheet. She told both Jon and Leah about the information explaining the attributes and how they worked together and what the numbers mean. Whilst she finished explaining Leah went back into the kitchen and dished up dinner, then called the girls down to eat. Alexia''s reaction to her Gramps recognising her was adorable, from the bottom of the stairs the blonde pigtailed little girl ran and dive bombed into his arms and refused to move, even to eat. She ended up sat on his knee to eat her dinner. Once dinner was eaten and the dishes cleaned, the two younger girls were sent to bed and the adults, plus one teenage boys, settled in with cups of tea to plan. They needed to be stronger and self sufficient. They couldn''t wait for someone to come save to them, couldn''t count on a lorry arriving full of food. They needed supplies and a way to grow food, they would need to hunt for meat and hope to gather wild plants to supplement their diet. They spent hours writing list of various supplies they would need to become self sufficient and then circled places on the county map that may have what they need. Once their exhausted mind grew too clouded to think straight they decided to call it a night. Bedding and blankets were found so the boys could sleep in the living room and the two mother decided to share Rose''s double bed. As they fell asleep the world outside continued to change. Slowly the various new races were gathering together and making decisions that would impact the remaining humans of the world. New eco systems began working together in harmony and carving their place in the new world. A chat with Gaia/ First contact Rose lay her head down and almost immediately fell asleep. Instead of a peaceful sleep, she found herself in a beautiful meadow stretching as far as the eye could see. Flowers in every colour bloomed in between thick patches of sweetly scented grass. In front of her she saw a woman facing away dressed in a simple white gown with silver white hair rippling past the small of her back. The woman turned around and Rose saw a face too perfectly proportioned to be human, high arching brows and regal cheekbones. Resting on the woman''s head was a circlet of metal with living flowers like gems growing up from the simple band and tiny white flowers growing and trailing down on delicate green vines thinner than hair. When the woman spoke it was with a voice smoother than honey but louder than the wildest thunderstorm. At the same time her voice was the most delicate flower whispering in the wind. It encompassed every sound Rose had ever heard yet somehow sounded like nothing she had ever heard before. "I am Gaia. Sit, my child, and listen." So Rose sat. And listened. Gaia explained that she was the cause of the wave that Rose had experienced that morning. She told Rose of a time long ago when fantasy was reality and magic permeated the whole world. No parlour tricks or false bottoms, true magic power by the Essence of the world. She told of people who could raise a city in a day from nothing but stone and their own Essense and Affinities. She told of people who could heal any wound or treat any sickness. She told of a world without diseases such as cancer or dementia things she said had no place on any world. She told of a civilisation in harmony with the whole world and all its creatures. She told of a Pantheon of God''s and Goddesses, all with their own job and role in maintaining the balance of the world. Then Gaia described the fall, people arriving from another world proclaiming the word of the One God. Gaia''s people rejected the One God in favour of the Pantheon they had known for generations, this angered the One God''s followers and they began a Holy crusade to force their beliefs on the people of Gaia''s world. The races of the world fought with everything they had but attacks that worked on the monsters of the world did not work on thinking people, techniques passed down through the ages were usless before a new foe. As the Essence of the people was released, the One God''s followers called out to their God and with a flash the One God arrived, pure arrogance embodied. He gathered the released Essence and used it to fuel the Seal that confined Gaia within her core. He then locked the Pantheon in their own realm, preventing interaction with Gaia and her people. The One God conquered the major of the world and the memory of Essence was made into fantasy or forgotten. The mystical races of the world withered and died as the Essence that fed their very being faded away into nothingness. Time went by and Gaia sat in darkness and silence, feeling the pressure of her bound Essence increasing until the pain become too much and she sank into unconsciousness. "Eventually my Essence built up so much it exploded out in a wave of pure power, converting almost everything it passed through." Gaia stopped for a moment to gathering herself before continuing, " I woke to feel death, I could feel the agony of every mutation and every death, it was more painful than the original explosion." Gaia had to stop again, the memory of pain too much to bear. Rose took the time to reflect on what she had been told, she couldn''t understand why, if this was real, Gaia was talking to her about it, what could she do? Before she could think any further Gaia spoke again.If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. " I put aside the pain I was feeling as I began examining my surface, seeing how it had changed. I found oceans full of generations worth of waste and pollution. The land poisoned and dead, covered in a material that bonded and constricted the land beneath. The natural resources and wonders of my world plundered and wasted by a race that forgot it''s place in the world. I began ignoring the cries and the death covering my surface and working to heal the damage done, encouraging new life to develop in the ruins of the race who forgot. In the midst of my anger, I heard a call above the rest, a mother begging for the life of her child, offering her own in return. As the mother of the world this was a call I could not ignore. Knowing I had to help in some way I searched for anything I could do and noticed that the connection to Essence in the human race was disconnected, this prevented anyone from taking advantages of the newly released Essence and using it. I rebuilt the connection and made Essence once again flow freely through all things." At this point Rose decided she had had enough, she felt she needed to say something, anything. " I''m guessing that mother was me? Even so why appear to me? Why not leave us to our fate? Or talk to someone different, better than me? " Gaia looked deep into Rose''s eyes as if searching her soul before responding, " Yours'' was the voice that called to me above all others, you are the one who persuaded me to act with your pure love and willingness to sacrifice yourself for your child. No mother could ignore a plea like that and above all I am a mother, the mother of the world. As to the reason I have reached out it is because the Pantheon are still locked away, without their guidance the world will have difficulty adapting and stabilising." Rose went to interrupt but Gaia shushed her and continued, "There is one problem, me being free will not alert the One God but breaking the Seal between this realm and the realm of the Pantheon will send a shock wave he can''t help but notice. It can not be done until the races on my surface rebuild and become stronger. You will face many challenges along the way but you must rebuild in a manner that will not harm me and grow as a people. You must train and learn to use Essence to replace the many sources of pollution that humanity used to emit. You already have the knowledge you need to improve in your mind, humanity has produced things similar to the world interface in their games and you can use this knowledge to advance and protect your family. Start small and people will find you, what you build will become the new standard. My time is short, my energy needed elsewhere. Good luck, my child" Gaia finished and before Rose could utter a single word she was gone. The meadow faded to black and she slipped into a deep sleep. The first thing Rose saw when she opened her eyes the next morning was a new blinking light. Wiping the sleep from her eyes, she focused on it and a prompt appeared:
You have a new Quest! What it takes...
?Build a level 1 settlement - Have a total population of 10 6/10 - Have basic defence around settlement - Have 2 weeks of food stored 0/14 days - Have basic food preparation area - Have beds for everyone 3/10
Realising her dream was a little more than a dream Rose sat upright and reread the Quest prompt, wondering how the hell they were going to accomplish the rest of the objectives. The lists they made last night would help but all this was assuming Leah and her family would stay to help. She would have to bring it up over breakfast when everyone got up. Another Quest prompt wanted attention so she focused and brought it up
You have a new Quest Wake the Pantheon
This Quest is locked until further notice.
Well, that didn''t help much, Rose guessed it would unlock when either she or the settlement grew in level, what level that would be would remain a mystery for now. What it takes. Rose tiptoed down this stairs and through the living room, being careful not to wake the 2 sleeping boys on the sofas. Once in the kitchen, she stoked the remains of last nights fire and got it going again ready to begin breakfast. She filled the kettle and put it on the hob to boil before going down to the cold room to get the last of the bacon and sausages for breakfast, thinking they may as well use them before they went bad. As she began cooking she thought over what she was going to say to the others when they woke up. She hoped they would agree to stay and help rebuild. The smell of the food began travelling around the house calling people to the breakfast table and as Rose moved food from pans to plates, people began waking up and wandering in. First Jon walked into the kitchen, then Em and Alexia skipped in, sat down and Em filled plates for them both. She had really taken to the other little girl and Rose was glad she had someone to play with. Leah burst into the kitchen asking where Alexia was before seeing her daughter sat munching happily and collapsing into a chair herself pulling a cup and the coffee pot towards her. Finally Liam woke and stumbled into the kitchen bleary eyed, he piled food on his plate and started shoveling it in. Once all the food was gone, they all helped with the cleaning before sending the 2 young girls back upstairs to play. Refiling their mugs the 3 adults moved into the living room and sat down, Liam following along and finding somewhere for himself to sit. Once everyone was settled, Rose began explaining what had happened in her her dream, then telling them about the Quests she had found upon waking up. "After seeing that Quest I knew I couldn''t do this on my own, I wouldn''t even know where to start." Rose finished. Leah then spoke up, " If I may speak for my family then I say we will help. Finiding people might tough but I hope more than 10 people survived in Scarborough, it is a fairly big town." Jon agreed with his daughter, "And I have an idea for a more defenceable, permenant base. We need to have enough room for more people to live in safety, I reckon with a bit of effort my idea could work." "Where?" Rose asked. "Scarborough Castle. I think I might be able to raise some basic walls to make it safe, also according to Rose''s dream eventually I''l be able to build a proper castle for us to live in." "it could work" Mused Rose. "You''re right Dad, we would have plenty of room to build out and accomadate any new people we have join us." Added Leah. "What about somewhere to cook? My quest has that crossed out but if we move there we will have to find someway to move the stove there." Rose asked. "I was thinking of finding a pump truck for moving the bigger things we will need, so that shouldn''t be a problem." Was the reply from Jon. "I think a trip to a camping store would be a good idea, we could pick up decent backpacks for everyone, also there should be other useful stuff that we can use." Came from Rose. Leah said, "We need more food too, and a way to store stuff so it doesn''t go off, that cold room is alright but it''s not going to keep things fresh for long. I''m happy to stay here with the kids and sort what food is here, we could also check the near by houses as we haven''t seen nor heard anyone since this started so it should be safe enough. To be even safer we can go through the back gardens so we aren''t see." "That''s a good idea Leah, Jon and I will go to Scarborough Castle and see if this plan will work." Rose was then interupted by Liam, "I want to come with you, I''m the only other one with any knowledge of the type of gaming systems that Gaia said were similar to the interface that we now have access too. I can help and I want to." "You can''t go out there you are too young, I''m still your mother and you will listen to me." Leah protested. "I''m not a child anymore Mum, I can''t be. I have to help, we all need to work together to survive. The girls can help you with the less dangerous stuff and I will go out with Gramps and Rose and bring back things that we need." Came the suprisingly mature response from Liam. Rose had to admit that she agreed with him. "But" began Leah before stopping and starting again, "You can go, just please Dad, keep him safe." "I will" Jon confirmed before Rose added "No, we will." After saying goodbye and reasuring Em that they would be back later, the three of them headed out in the direction of the Castle. The walk there was quiet, just noises of birds and small animals going about their business. Evidence of yesterday''s attacks was everywhere, bodies lay in the road and the gutters ran red with blood. It didn''t take long for them to reach the castle and when they did they saw it was untouched by the horrors that had happened. Jon went up to the ruin and tried raising a stone wall but nothing happened. Frustratedly he burst out with "Nothing, this isn''t working." "Might sound a bit silly but try taking deep breaths and meditating on what you want to do, in my dream Gaia said it would help." Rose advised. Jon calmed his breathing and consentrated. After about 10 minutes he jumped back in shock as the ruin began re-building itself, stone forming from the broken parts and making the stone whole, it only lasted a few seconds but something definatly happened.This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it. "Another box appeared, apparently I have a new skill called rebuild, seems to use a lot of essence so it may take a while, but I should be able to restore the building fully rather than building a new one." "Ok, we should go check out the camping store anad grab bags and stuff before going to a supermarket and filling up on any food we can." Rose suggested, " We can come back later if there is time and you can get started properly." Jon and Liam agreed so they made their way to closest camping store to the castle. At the store Jon opened the door slowly, then crept insideto check it out, leaving Rose and Liam to keep watch outside. Inside Jon carefully checked the whole store including the back room where he found a pump truck that they could use for moving the big stuff. Moving back to the entrance he becked the others inside. The first thing they did was grab bags for everyone, they then half filled the bags with anything they thought would be useful before piling tents, sleeping bags and camp beds onto the pump truck ready to be pulled back to the house.When they were done, they left the store and headed to the nearest supermarket which happened to be on the way back to Rose''s house. As they turned the corner near the store they could see that the doors were smashed in and that there was a huge pool of blood between them, huge footprints leading through the blood into the store made them look at each other and without words decide to give this shop a miss for now. Turning around to head home, they heard roar from within the store and began to run, leaving the pump truck behind them. Before getting far they rounded a corner where Liam went flying over a fallen bin and crashed to the ground. Jon ran back to get his Grandson and Rose stood in front of them as Liam made his way to his feet. Before Liam could stand up properly, the thing that had been chasing them came round the corner behind them. As it saw it''s prey it let out an almighty roar and pounded the street with its massive fists. Rose was stuck staring like a deer in headlights, unable to take her eyes of this monsterous thing. Suddenly a name and level appeared above the things head:
Town Troll
Level 3
A prompt then appeared, obscuring her vision:
New skill learned: Identify
- Shows target name and level.
Frantically pushing the prompt away, she saw that the troll was lumbering straight towards her, desperatly throwing her hands before her she tried to recreate the heatwave that had saved hers and her daughters lives once before. For a moment nothing happened and Rose almost began panicing, when she felt slight pull from somewhere deep down and a small heatwave came out of her hands before dissappating into thin air. Seeing the troll get much closer, she began pulling harder on the fading connection, she managed to produce another heatwave, this time it burst out of her hands and hit the troll, pushing it back several paces and burning its skin. She pulled as hard as she could and forced a much bigger and more powerful heatwave to erupt from her hands and blast into the troll. This time it was knocked off its feet and landed on the floor twitching in pain. Rose fell to the floor with a massive headache unable to do anything more. Another promt then appeared:
New ability: Heatwave
- Does minor burning damage to target - 10 essence per successful cast.
followed by another:
New sub-ability : Heatblast
- Uses all remaining essence to send one massive heatwave for twice as much total damage
No wonder she was in so much pain, she had used all her essence in that last attack. Rose heard a slam and a squish, looking up she saw a slab of stone with the remains of the troll oozing out from underneath it. She turned to Jon with one eyebrow raised until he said, "It tried to get up, now it can''t." Rolling her eyes and shrugging her shoulders, her attention was taken by yet another prompt:
Congradulations! Level 2
Attribute point earned are now applied.
Seeing that, Rose decided to pull up her character sheet and have a look.
Name: Rose Conehey Level 2 Health Essence
Main attributes: Exp 0/300 115 140
Strength 8
Intelligence 14
Wisdom 10
Dexterity 9
Constitution 7
Luck 15
Skills Identify- shows target name and level up to ten levels above your own. 0.5% to next level Abilities Heatwave- uses 10 E per successful cast, does minor burning damage to target. lvl 1 1% to next level. - Heat blast: overpowered Heatwave using all remaining E for twice as much power.
Affinities Fire novice level 1: 10% to next level
Blessings Gaia''s blessing Your dedication to your daughter has led to Gaia awakening your fire affinity
She saw her new skill and abilities and that they could be leveled up, so hopefully they would get better in time. Rose thought to herself that if she couldn''t identify something they should probably run away, it was likely to be much too powerful for them to take on at this point. She also thought that more strength and constitution was always a good thing and was probably increased due to the amount of walking and running she had done today. She didn''t know why her charisma had gone up but decided it must be to do with the others deciding to help her. Breaking her out of her trance, Jon said " We should begin heading back, I got a new skill from that wall called push back. It creates a stone wall that acts like a battering ram pushing everything away from me before falling on what ever is behind it. between that and your new thing we should be able to get back ok." Interupting him Rose said, " I can''t do the last attack again for a while, it uses all of my essence, it''s refilling slowly I think but I wont be able to do it very often. the first successful attack only uses 10 E but it only does minor burning damage so isn''t too useful. You are right though, we should grab the pump truck and head home, I don''t think anything else will be around here." With that they began walking home, sticking to the edges of buildings and the shadows so not to be seen by the various monsters that had came out of hiding now the huge troll was gone, thankfully nothing found them and they made it home safe and sound. A new beginning When the three of them got back to Rose¡¯s house, they found Leah and the girls sorting through various cans, jars and bags of food that they had found in the neighbour¡¯s houses. Leah explained they had gone through the gardens and made their way to almost all of the houses on their side of the street, stripping all the food that was still edible from all of them and bringing it back to the house. Other things that they had found included a couple of baseball bats and a couple of very nice knifes, someone on the street must have liked their blades as Leah had bought back a variety of lock knifes and two well maintained machetes that looked like they had seen plenty of use, in the garden that is. Seeing that their food situation wasn¡¯t a problem for now, Rose felt slightly better for not being able to bring any food back from the store, after the troll attack non of them wanted to go back to the store to loot, even if the troll was dead. Once Em and Alexia were done showing off the food and various little items they had found, Jon began explaining what had happened at the castle and that he was able to rebuild the keep but it might take a while, how long it would take he wasn¡¯t sure about yet but it could be done. Rose then took over, showing what they had found in the camping shop and giving out the bags they had picked out for the other three. Then she explained what had happened at the store and why they hadn¡¯t brought any food back with them. Liam had been quietly sat on a chair until Rose started explaining what had happened with the troll, at the point Leah went over to him and wrapped her arms around him for the rest of the explanation. When the story was done and Leah sufficiently convinced that Liam was ok, they decided to break for lunch and Leah quickly whipped up some sandwiches from the bread they had left and any fillings she could find. After lunch, Rose, Jon and Liam decided to head back to the castle to get some work done. Jon wanted to see how long his rebuild skill would take to fix the keep enough for them to move in, from what he remembered of the plans, the keep should have three or four floors depending on how the roof was built so there should be plenty of space for them to find paces to set up the camp beds and an area to put the stove. If his memory was correct there should even be some kind of water closet in the west wall somewhere, hopefully that could be rebuilt too. Rose and Jon took a baseball bat and a machete each whilst Liam picked a couple of knives out over his mother¡¯s protests. The way back to the castle was clear, it seemed the monsters had settled back down so they made good time and were back at the castle¡¯s keep in record time. As soon as they got there, Jon went straight to work and although it was slow, Rose could see the structure of the keep reforming before her eyes. After watching him for a few minutes, she decided to experiment with her new powers. Sitting down, she closed her eyes and slowed her breathing. She focused into herself looking for the connection she had used earlier, she could feel it but it kept slipping out of her grasp and fading away. Eventually she managed to grab hold of the connection and keep a good grip of it, now she had to work out what to do with it. Deciding to try the heatwave ability, she began concentrating on the feeling of the heatwave leaving her body, she pulled on the connection to the Essence before realising it was just building up with nowhere to go. Thinking back to the other times she has used the ability she remembered pushing out with her hand, so she raised them before her and pushed the ability out along them, noticing the essence travelling up her arms and out through her hands. The Essence seemed to be traveling through small threads through her arms before splitting into even smaller threads when it reached her hands and finally leaving through all her fingertips at the same time. Invigorated by her success, she attempted to pool the Essence in the palm of her hand, imagining it flowing outwards and becoming a flame in the palm of her hand. Feeling a tiny amount of her Essence draining slowly, she opened her eyes to see the smallest of flames dancing in the pam of her hand. The shock of seeing the flame made her lose concentration and the flame flickered then died. Rose felt amazing as she saw the two prompts awaiting her,
New Skill learned; Essence manipulation
- Allows greater control over essence pathways
New Ability learned: Night light
- Creates a small flame in the palm of your hand, useful for starting fires and not much else.
Rose was hopeful she could improve the aptly named Night light and the Essence manipulation skill would help her improve it faster as the skill leveled. Seeing Jon hard at work rebuilding the keep and Liam wandering around the inner bailey, Rose closed her eyes, sunk back into a meditative state and got back to work herself. After Rose and Jon had started doing their own thing, Liam felt like a useless third wheel. He had nothing to contribute and nothing to train, all he had was two knives and it wasn¡¯t like the adults were going to let him use them. They wouldn¡¯t let him get close enough to a monster for the knives to even reach the monsters let alone harm them. Well, he guessed they wouldn¡¯t if they ever saw anymore. For the amount of destruction and death on the first day, he had thought there would be more nasty things wandering about. However they had barely seen anything other than normal animals. Glancing up at Rose, he saw that whatever she was doing was working. There was a little flame hovering just above her hand. Feeling even more useless, he decided to check out the huge field on the other side of the inner bailey. Wandering out onto the field, the first thing he saw was a little rabbit munching on a leafy green plant. Approaching the rabbit slowly, he thought about the pet rabbit he had as a young child. One morning he had gone out to feed it, only to find blood and tattered fur inside its run, he¡¯d forgotten to lock the hutch door the night before and something had gotten in and taken his pet. He¡¯d been upset for months after and his mum had refused to get him another outside pet. Thinking he could take the rabbit back as a pet for his little sister, he tried to pick it up. As his hands came within reach of the rabbit, it whipped it¡¯s head round and bit his hand. He yanked his hand away muttering curses that if his mother had heard she would have washed his mouth out with soap. Aiming a kick at the stupid rabbit, he watched in satisfaction as it sailed a few feet away before landing on the floor. As soon as it hit the floor it got back up and charged straight at him, then as it got close enough, the rabbit leapt into the air, aiming straight for Liam¡¯s face. Panicking, he threw his hands in front of his face to try and protect himself. He was expecting the rabbit to impact his arms but he was shocked when instead he felt a strange pull, heard a squeak and then a thud. Opening his eyes and moving his hands, he saw the rabbit on the floor looking fried. He began hearing a slow rumble and looked around to see what was causing it. For a long moment he saw nothing, but slowly he could see small, grey lumps moving quickly towards him and before long he saw that it was a hoard of rabbits charging straight towards him. Taking one look at the mass of rabbits, he turned tail and ran back towards the others, hoping he was faster than the rabbits that were bearing down on him. If you come across this story on Amazon, it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.When Liam ran back into the inner bailey, Rose had just gained another level in Essence manipulation and a fire shot ability that let her condense her little night light into a much hotter, tiny ball of fire that she could fire several meters away and would do burning damage as well as piercing damage. Coming out of her notifications, Rose quickly realised that Liam wasn¡¯t running just for the hell of it, there were rabbits literally biting at his ankles. Yelling for Jon to come help, she ran towards Liam. Liam managed to put on a burst of speed and reach Rose a good ten to fifteen meters ahead of the rabbits, so she decided to try out her new skill. Aiming her palm at the rabbits, she formed her essence into the projectile and fired it, to her surprise the fire shot went straight down into the dirt instead of at the rabbits. Quickly realising her mistake she held her hand palm up and pointed towards the closest rabbit before firing again. There seemed to be no cooling down time so she could spam the ability as much as her Essence pool could handle, Which at ten Essence a shot would mean she could fire a total of fifteen before bottoming out, not counting for regeneration which she wasn¡¯t sure on. This would mean that this would quickly turn into a hack and slash with the machetes, she just hoped that Liam would be ok. Surely some bunnies wouldn¡¯t be too hard to kill? As the rabbits got closer, Jon caught up with the other two and took in the situation for a moment before using his rock slab to push back and kill multiple rabbits at once. Rose saw Liam firing what looked like lightning and taking out several rabbits at once as the lightning would jump from one to the next, frying any it touched. Even with their new abilities, there were just too many rabbits charging at them. They started moving back towards the keep, which Jon had repaired up to the beginning of the second floor, continuing to use the last of their Essence to keep some room between them and the rabbits. Reaching their bags, Rose and Jon grabbed their machetes and charged back at the rabbits, keeping Liam behind them. Eventually they killed the last rabbit and sunk to the floor exhausted. Looking around she realised that they had to clean the mess up, otherwise their new home would be full of decomposing rabbit corpses and parts of corpses. Rose could see that a few of the rabbits might be salvageable for meat, she didn¡¯t think they would need the fur any time soon, no shortage of clothes to be found. Hopefully Leah would be able to make rabbit stew or pie, maybe even preserve some so they had meat for the months to come. Getting a knife off Liam, she began butchering the rabbit the way her grandmother taught her. Thanks to the various attacks used and the wild swinging of the machetes, there weren¡¯t many rabbits left in good enough shape for her to work with but there was enough for a few meals. Rose pulled up her character sheet and saw that she had leveled and gained new skills.
Name: Rose Conehey Level 3 Health Essence
Exp: 20/400 115 155
Main attributes:
Strength 8
Intelligence 15
Wisdom 11
Dexterity 10
Constitution 7
Luck 15
Skills Identify- Shows target name and level up to ten levels above your own. Level 1 2.5% to next level Skinning- level 1 50% to next level. Essence manipulation - Allows greater control over Essence pathways Level 2 One-handed blade - Level 2 45% to next level Abilities Heatwave- uses 10 e per successful cast, does minor burning damage to target. Level 1 5% to next level. -Heatblast- over powered Heat wave using all remaining E for twice as much power. Night light ¨C creates a small flame in the palm of your hand, useful for starting fires and not much else. Drains E at negligible rate. Fire Shot- Condensed essence in the form of a flame projectile fires from above the palm, 5 meter range Level 1 0.5%
Affinities Fire - Novice Level 2 5% to lnext level
Blessings Gaia''s blessing Your dedication to your daughter has led to Gaia awakening your fire affinity.
Once Rose and Jon had looked at their character sheets, they turned to Liam for an explanation as to why a hoard of bloody bunny rabbits of all things had attacked them. Liam sheepishly explained that all he wanted was to take his little sister a pet to keep her company, he then told them about the rabbit attacking him and the rabbit dying from a shock that came from him. Rose then asked him if he could see any blinking lights and sure enough, he now had a character sheet and an ability called zap, this was the attack she has seen him use against the hoard. Liam¡¯s excitement over his character sheet wore off slowly so Rose took him aside to try and teach him the Essence manipulation skill, Jon was about to go back to work on the keep when Rose said he should try it as well to see if it would speed up the repair. By this point it was only about half two in the afternoon so as soon as Jon had picked up the skill, he went straight back to rebuilding the keep. With help from the new skill and Rose passing him food and water every now and then as it seemed to help replenish Essence faster, the keep as up to the third floor in no time. By around half five, the keep was rebuilt completely. The only things missing were any wooden or non-stone fixings that had been in the keep when it was first built. When it was finished, Rose and Liam joined Jon inside and saw that there was plenty of space for them to set up base here, they had the basic needs met in terms of fresh water from the well and a place to put the stove to cook on. They even had very basic toilets as long as someone emptied the pit every now and then. Rose thought to herself that it would be a perfect place to be their new home. With that, the trio decided to head back to Rose¡¯s house and share the good news, tomorrow they would move into their new home. A new home When the tired trio arrived back at Rose¡¯s house, Leah had dinner on the stove waiting for them. In between mouthfuls, Liam explained what had happened with the rabbits and boasted about his amazing new power over electricity to his mother and little sister, who gasped and nodded in all the right places. Eventually Jon was able to get a word in and told the three girls who had stayed in the house that they would be moving to a new home tomorrow, it would be a bit basic for a while and it needed a new door but they would be able to make do until they could fit new one as Jon could raise a barrier of stone to seal the entrance when they wanted to close the door. After dinner they all split off to do their own thing until bed. The next day the group was up bright and early, ready to get on with the big move. Leah, Rose and Jon packed everyone¡¯s backpacks with clothes, food and any other little items that they could find, aiming to take as much little stuff as possible in the first trip. Heading out, the travelled with Rose at the front and Jon at the back, Liam was in the middle with Leah and the girls as a last line of defence. The trip to the castle was uneventful, when they walked into the inner bailey and saw the keep, Leah and the girls gasped, Leah turned to Jon and asked ¡° How did you do all this in one day? The keep looks completely different.¡± ¡°I took breaks to let my Essence refill and the almost constant use for several hours leveled up my skill a fair bit, its at level 10 now but the progression as slowed right down.¡± Jon replied. After that, they emptied the bags that they had brought with them, leaving Leah and Liam to watch the kids and start organising stuff, Rose and Jon headed back to Rose¡¯s house to bring the stove and move food back to the keep. The two of them got half way back to Rose¡¯s house before they began hearing growls coming from a near by building. They kept walking but then they realised the growling was coming from all around them. Scanning the buildings, Rose saw a mangy dog head appear from just inside a broken doorway, backing away slowly she kept looking around only to being making out the shape of these dogs all around them. She turned to Jon to let him know but saw he was watching a huge dog walking towards them. Getting a better look at the dog, Rose saw that it was strangely mutated, the muscle and bone structure wasn¡¯t quite right, A name tag popped up:
Alpha Mutated dog
Level 5
Looking at the other dogs surrounding them, she saw they were between level one and three. Rose readied her machete and sent a one handed Heatwave at the alpha dog to push it back, giving Jon enough time to demonstrate a new ability, he raised his hands and a stone spike impaled the alpha dog through its stomach, it was left there slowly bleeding out as Rose and Jon worked together to kill the rest of the pack. By the time they had killed most of the pack they were both out of essence so had to switch to their machetes, Rose dashed at the nearest dog and opened a huge gash down one side of the dog, snarling the dog took advantage of the way she landed and sunk its teeth into her arm. Screaming in pain she desperately tried to pry its jaws loose from her arm, suddenly the dog whimpered and went limp. Rose finally managed to release the dogs jaws from her arm and saw Jon standing in front of her wiping his blade clean on the dogs fur. Standing up, Rose checked her arm to see how much damage the dog had caused, to her surprise, the wound had already stopped bleeding. Turning back to Jon she said, ¡° It seems wounds heal quicker now, I¡¯m not fully healed but I have stopped bleeding, we should get going and get that stove back to the keep as fast as possible. I will feel much better once we have moved everything we need into the keep.¡± Jon agreed so they hurried the rest of the way to Rose¡¯s house an quickly put the stove on the pump truck, seeing that the pump truck could hold more stuff, they decided to pack more of the food up into boxes and take that with them at the same time. Finally they piled the camping beds on top of everything and lashed them down with bungee cords. By the time they were ready to head back to the keep, Rose¡¯s arm had completely healed. Marvelling at the new healing speed, they headed back to the keep, not encountering anything dangerous as they did so. When they got back, they found the kids outside playing tag in the sunlight, Leah was sat on the flood watching them happily. Rose and Jon topped next to Leah and explained what had happened with the dogs before showing Leah the holes in Rose¡¯s top where the dog had bitten her, followed by the fully healed arm that it had been on. Rose and Jon then carried the Stove into the basement, only to realise there was no where for the stove to be placed, there needed to be a hole for the pipe on the back of the stove where the smoke went out. Rose had no clue what to do but luckily Jon seemed to have an idea, wandering over to the wall where the stove was to go, he placed his hand on the stone and concentrated. Rose watched as a small tunnel appeared in the stone, before long she could see the light of outside through it.The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation. Jon turned to Rose and explained¡¯ ¡° I thought about what I did to rebuild this keep, and realised I was basically reshaping the stone and pulling more stone up through the ground to replace what was lost, so I decided to see if I could change the shape of stone without rebuilding an old building and obviously it worked, I¡¯ve got a new skill called reshape stone, and it literally does what it says on the tin¡± ¡°That could be quite useful , do you think you could reshape the windows upstairs to be thinner? They are a bit of an opening in our defence at the moment, the door can be covered by one of your stone walls but the windows can¡¯t.¡± Rose asked Jon thought he probably could and said so, before pushing the stove into position and making sure the pipe fit snugly into the hole before shaping the stone to cover the pipe better, preventing any drafts from coming in. Heading back upstairs, they told Leah that the stove was in place and went to explore their new home. The first floor of the keep was accessed from the outside, when you walked in the first thing you saw was the central room which looked like it might once have been where everybody ate and gathered in the evenings, to the right was a set of spiral stairs leading both downstairs to the basement that they had just come through, and upstairs to the next floor. Around the main central room there were smaller rooms and walkways that would probably be used for storage. Heading back to the staircase after exploring the first floor, Rose noticed two little rooms off to either side, checking them out she saw a raised stone bench that had two holes in it, both sloping down and out of the keep wall. ¡°At least we have basic toilets¡± thought Rose. The second floor was pretty much the same layout as the first but with a small room that looked like a chapel. Rose turned to Jon and said ¡° I am a little confused, I¡¯m sure a building like this would have had wooden support beams in the roof or for the walls, I¡¯m guessing you can¡¯t make wood as there isn¡¯t any door, so how is this keep staying upright?¡± Jon thought for a second before replying, ¡° I¡¯m assuming anything that was needed structurally was reproduced in stone, I mean, this place seems fairly stable.¡± Continuing to explore the keep, they headed up to the third floor. The third floor seemed to be set of private rooms, that maybe the lord of the keep used to sleep in with his wife. There was a water closet in one room, and a large stone basin in another that looked like it was used as a bath. Rose thought that there would be issues with who got to stay in these rooms and said as much to Jon. Jon replied with, ¡®There seems to be three different rooms that look like bedrooms, what looks to be a sitting room and a bathroom, all six of us could stay in these rooms at the same time as long as we don¡¯t mind sharing. So I don¡¯t see there being an issue in the short term, there might be problems when we get more people but we are the ones who started this, this is our home now.¡± Rose decided that made sense and headed up to the next floor, this floor was mainly open plan and looked like it would be a good place to train inside, there was also a set of stairs leading up to the roof so they could keep a watch out there if needed. The two of them headed up to the roof and stood for a moment looking out on the beautiful view their new home offered. They stood for a while in silence, each privately promising to protect their new home and build a new life for their families. After a while, they headed back downstairs and began setting out the camp beds and sleeping bags in the main room. Leah and the kids were downstairs making dinner and finishing putting away the food they had. Once dinner was done and they had all eaten their fill, they all went outside to enjoy the evening hours. Rose and Liam practiced their new powers as Emily and Alexia watched, wishing they could do such awesome things. Jon wandered over to the inner bailey wall and began using his rebuild skill to slowly fix the broken bits of the wall. Leah, seeing that Alexia and Liam were occupied with Rose, decided to take a walk outside the inner bailey, she didn¡¯t want to go too far because of the rabbits that Liam had found but she wanted to see the field. Walking out onto the grass, she saw a small red flower that she had never seen before, bending down to get a closer look, she was surprised when a prompt appeared telling her that she had received the Identify skill, looking back at the flower, she saw that it was called a Blooming Rosewart. When she tried to pick it, it turned black and crumbled to dust. Disappointed, she tried again only for the exact same thing to happen. She decided to try one more time but this failed too. She was about to give up, when another prompt appeared telling her that she now had the Herbalism skill, she turned back to the Rosewart, this time her Identify skill showed her that she had to only pick the flower, not the stem. She collected a few petals before she got another prompt, this one told her that if she made the petal into a paste with a small amount of water it would regenerate health when eaten. Just as she finished reading the prompt, she heard Rose scream, running back into the inner bailey, she saw a huge black panther pinning Emily to the floor. Casara Rose was in the middle of trying to develop a fire ball attack, when out of the corner of her eye she saw a black blur speeding towards Emily. Knowing she wouldn¡¯t reach her in time, Rose ran towards Emily anyway. As Rose ran desperately at her daughter, she saw the black blur get there first and pounce on Emily, taking her down to the ground and covering her completely. Rose finally reached Emily, only to hear giggles coming out from underneath a huge cat. Skidding to stop, Rose called Emily¡¯s name out questioningly. With some effort Emily pushed the over-excited cat off her and stood up. Emily didn¡¯t speak to Rose instead she turned back to the cat, speaking to the cat as if it was answering her back. ¡°But, Socks is a good name, what¡¯s wrong with it?¡± Emily stopped for a moment as if listening to the cat¡¯s reply, ¡°fine, fine, I¡¯ll introduce you¡± finally turning to a gobsmacked Rose, who had been joined by the rest of the gang by this point, and saying ¡° This is Casara, she chose the name so don¡¯t blame me, I wanted something cute but nooo. Anyway, this weird screen says she is my bonded companion and that means I can keep her right?¡± Rose honestly didn¡¯t know what to do, other than say that Emily could keep the strange cat. Her identify skill showed that the massive cat was called a shadow panther, Casara was already level 5 so Rose felt better knowing that Emily had a powerful protector that wouldn¡¯t leave her side. Leah finally reached the group, she went to ask Rose what had happened but fell silent again as she watched Emily and Alexia playing with the new addition to the family. After a couple of minutes stood around watching the two girls play, she turned to Rose and showed her the flower petals she had found, explaining what had happened and the new skills she had thanks to it. Leah went on to say, ¡°I got a prompt telling me that turning the petals into a paste with water would help heal wounds and restore health, there are a couple of spare jars with the food so I am going to go and experiment as see what happens.¡± With that, Leah walked back inside. After a while it began to get dark, so Rose took the young girls inside and got them tucked up in their camp beds, Casara followed and placed her massive body between the camp beds and the door to the rom they were in, she would make an excellent guard for them. Heading back down the stairs, Rose found the others sat in the main room on the first floor, sipping hot drinks A cup of tea sat, ready for her, beside the only unoccupied cushion out of the ones that they were using as seats. Rose joined the conversation as they were speaking about what still needed to be done. ¡°There is a huge list of things we need to make this place more liveable, I mean, this is fine in the short term but we need proper beds, bedding, furniture and a whole host of other things to make this place more comfortable.¡± Leah was saying. Jon added, ¡° We need to get it defensible first, we need proper doors shutters at least for the windows. We also need more people, we can¡¯t defend this place on our own. Also, toilet seats. Those holes that used to be used are incredibly uncomfortable. We are going to need to keep on top of the waste, it lands in a trench down the side of the keep, its not exactly sanitary but it will have to do for now.¡±If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. Rose said, ¡°I agree with both of you, tomorrow I want to go on another scavenging hunt for more food, getting beds here shouldn¡¯t be difficult, there¡¯s a store that sells beds not too far away, if we can find flat packed ones we can load them onto the pump truck and bring them back. Might take a few trips to get enough for all of us though.¡± Having come up with the start of a plan, they sat and brainstormed for a little while before Rose, Liam and Jon headed off to their camp beds for the night. Leah went to the room that they were storing the food in and thought about what they could do to keep the food fresher for longer, they could preserve a lot of food if they could do it quickly, but best of all would be finding a way to keep this room much colder than it was. As she stood there thinking, she shivered. The temperature in the room had dropped since she had walked in and only seemed to be getting colder. Rubbing her arm, Leah looked around the room again only to see the walls covered in frost. All of a sudden, Leah felt incredibly tired, as she collapsed she saw a prompt appear in her vision,
New skill learned - Freeze
- Uses a steady stream of essence to freeze moisture in the air, can be used to lower the temperature in a room and will last as long as the ice doesn''t come into contact with any heat.
Leah was cold and tired but perked up slightly when she realised she had solved the food storage problem, thinking it would be good to surprise everyone in the morning, she went to bed. The next day everyone was up bright and early for breakfast, Liam had taken his outside to eat whilst everyone else was sat in the main room. Leah was in the middle of telling everyone about her discovery last night, explaining how useful her new skill would be for storing food, she was essentially able to turn a whole room into a freezer, and as long as they kept the door shut she would only have to redo the freeze every few days. They were about to go have a look at the room when Liam came running back inside. ¡°You guys need to come outside, there¡¯s some people coming through the arch into the courtyard.¡± He said. Rose and Jon led the way outside, sure enough there were four people coming towards them, two adult females and two teenagers, boy and girl but the boy looked older. The slightly older woman stepped forward and began introducing them. ¡°Hi, I¡¯m Lily and this is my partner Emma, this is James and Bethany, children from previous relationships obviously. James was outside of the bed and breakfast when he saw you guys walking this way, we hadn¡¯t seen any other people since that weird wave set all this chaos off. We thought we would see if we could join you guys, the more people we find the better, right?¡± Bethany spoke up, ¡° I was doing a project on Scarborough castle for school, that¡¯s why we are here. But the keep was a ruin when we came to see it the other day, how did you guys fix it so quickly? Can I come see inside?¡± Emma shushed the young girl and then looked back at Rose, waiting for an answer. Rose asked them to give her a minute to speak with the rest of her group, Turning round to them, she saw that she didn¡¯t even need to ask, they would let this little family join theirs and they would be stronger for it. Turning back to the new comers she told them that they were more than welcome to stay, she explained that there was still lots to do to make the keep safe and comfortable but with the extra hands it should go much faster. As soon as they had all agreed that Lily and her family could join them, a prompt appeared for Rose,
Settlement interface unlocked!
-Your settlement has reached the minimum population, enter your keep to access the interface.
Chapter 9 Rose left Leah and Jon to talk to Lily and her family outside and went inside. As soon as she entered the keep, she got a Prompt telling her she could access the settlement interface. Focusing, it popped up in front of her,
Settlement Interface Level 1
Name: Scarborough
Population
Buildings - Basic keep - Basic waterwell
Defences Inner bailer wall- needs repair
Building upgrades
Defence upgrades
Not much information that¡¯s for sure, focusing again she selected the building upgrades and a new menu popped up,
Building Upgrades
Available upgardes - Basic Store house - Basic cabin - Basic woodwork shop
Rose thought to herself that everything was, well, basic. Checking out the defence menu she saw that it was pretty much the same, only two upgrades available and Jon was already working on one, which was the inner bailey wall and the other was just a spike trap of the outer side of the wall. Switching back to the building upgrade menu, Rose tried selecting the woodwork shop, thinking they needed a door for the keep most of all as they had enough room in the keep for them all and all the stores they needed for now. As she mentally selected the woodwork shop, a new menu popped up asking her to put someone in charge of construction. She chose Jon purely for the fact he was the one who fixed the keep so it made the most sense. Within seconds of Rose selecting his name, Jon walked into the keep, ¡° I got a prompt saying I had a new construction project, somehow I know what needs to be done to complete it but I¡¯d like to know where it came from." ¡°Turns out this settlement interface should be useful then, I selected you to be in charge of constructing a woodwork shop, it¡¯s not the only thing on the list but it makes the most sense, at least for right now it does.¡± Rose answered. ¡° I should be able to follow the blueprints that that prompt gave me but I will need materials, I think I can use wood or stone so I might have a play with my affinity and see if I can come up with a way to make stone blocks, then all I would need to do is make some mortar, leave it with me, I¡¯ll see what I can do.¡± And with that, Jon headed back out of the keep, muttering to himself about what he needed to do. Rose decided it was about time to head out and get some scavenging done, they needed more food supplies and beds, then they would complete the first quest she had gotten, hopefully something good would come of it. Heading back outside she went to speak to Leah and Lily. Finding them sat on the grass watching the children play with Casara, Rose sat down next to them and invited Lily to join her, Jon and Liam on a scavenging trip, thinking that it would be a good way for them to get to know each other. Lily agreed but suggested they take James with them too, as he had done some fighting before they joined up with them. Rose agreed and went to get Jon and Liam ready. Once they had all grabbed a weapon they headed off, it was still fairly early in the morning so they should be able to get a few trips in before lunch. The first few trips to the store went well, so they decided to head to a bed store and get them all a decent bed, they would have to make a separate trip for mattresses but it would be worth it once they had finished. They had cleared the food store each time they had gone in to make sure nothing had moved in while they were transporting stuff back to the keep, so they had gotten more used to each other and were working almost as a team as they slowly made their way into the bed shop. Immediately they could see that a lot of somethings had made the store their home, the show beds were trashed and the bedding was ripped and covered in blood and other bodily fluids that Rose didn¡¯t want to examine any closer. Moving further into the store, a pungent stench began invading their nostril, it smelled of decaying food and excrement, Liam was the first to spot it, a small, green humanoid form trying and failing to hide. Rose focused on it and was rewarded with a level and a name,
Goblin
Level 3
Jon then pointed out another one, hidden in a different place before goblins jumped out from everywhere and began attacking. Rose had no time to think about the others as one jumped, screaming at her. Thinking quickly she used her heatwave to give herself some room and readied her machete, she didn¡¯t have enough Essence to only use her fire abilities so she was going to have to get dirty. As she was thinking about her fire abilities, her machete caught fire and she almost dropped it before realising she could control the flames and they did not hurt her, a prompt appeared and she frantically pushed it away and hacked with the machete as the goblin reached her again. Somehow she got a lucky hit and practically cleaved the goblins head in two, turns out goblins have weak skulls, who knew. Feeling confident with her success, she turned round just to find another goblin coming straight for her. After that it was a bit of a blur, goblins appeared in front of Rose, she killed them, that all she could really remember when it was over. As Rose was having her battle, the others were fighting too, Lily and Jon were both using stone to attack with, Lily throwing stone projectiles that she was forming from the floor and Jon crushing any that got close with his walls. Liam and James were dancing around taking out goblins left, right and centre. Liam Zapped his way around and James just bashed goblins skulls in. Each had their own method for dealing with these pests and it got the job done. Before long, they were standing in a shop that was painted red with blood, bits and limbs of goblins lay around them like a tornado had been through and only tore the goblins apart. They all stood catching their breath for a minute, before Jon spoke up, ¡°It¡¯s a good job we want flat packed beds, I don¡¯t think anyone would be happy with these ones.¡± They all laughed, more in shock of the destruction they had caused than Jon trying to be funny. ¡°We still need to get those beds and get home, I for one want to get cleaned up as soon as possible, we are all filthy.¡± Rose said. Looking around, it wasn¡¯t too hard to find the stockroom and the beds they wanted, they found single beds for everyone but Lily and Emma, they were nice enough to pick up a double bed for them. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.Once all the beds were loaded, they headed back to the keep. Along the way, Rose checked out her character sheet to see what had changed,
Name: Rose Conehey Level 4 Health Essence
Main attributes: Exp: 10/500 145 185
Strength 10
Intelligence 17
Wisdom 13
Constitution 9
Luck 15
Skills Identify- shows target name and level up to ten levels above your own. 0.5% to next level Essence manipulation- Allows greater control over Essence pathways: Level 2 One-handed blade ¨C Level 2 95% to next Level Skinning- User can barely skin an animal, but has more chance of success the higher the skill gets. Level 1 32% to next Level Abilites Heatwave- uses 10 E per successful cast, does minor burning damage to target. lvl 1 1% to next level. - Heat blast: overpowered Heatwave using all remaining E for twice as much power. Night light ¨C creates a small flame in the palm of your hand, useful for starting fires and not much else. Drains E at negligible rate. Fire Shot- Condensed essence in the form of a flame projectile fires from above the palm 5 meter range Level 1 0.5% Fire blade- Sets any blade on fire, adds burning damage to attacks. Uses 1 E per 5 seconds active. Level 1 2%
Affinities Fire Novice Level 2: 30% to next Level
Blessings Gaia''s Blessing Your dedication to your daughter has led to Gaia awakening your fire affinity.
She had leveled up, which was nice and gotten more attribute points, which was also pretty cool, her health and Essence were beginning to get somewhere, although she still had no idea how the health system worked, in fact, she had no clue on how most of the interface worked, hopefully she would be able to see Gaia again soon and get some answers. In addition to the level up, she had gained a new ability called Fire sword, this would be very useful in future fights. After dropping the beds off, they cleaned up using the well before heading back to the store and grabbed enough mattresses for all the beds, plus all the bedding they could need. They also stopped in a clothes store and stuffed their back packs full of clothes for everyone. Once this was done, all that was left for the day was to build the beds and hopefully complete that quest that Rose had gotten from Gaia. Whilst Jon, Liam, James and Emma worked to put the beds up, Rose and Lily went to hunt some rabbits, Leah had requested fresh meat for dinner and all the pre-packaged stuff at the shop had gone mouldy already so rabbits were the next best thing. They wandered out to the field and found a spot to lie in wait. After about ten minutes of waiting around, Rose giggled quietly, Lily turned to her and whispered, ¡° What¡¯s so funny?¡± ¡°Be qwiet, be vewy qwiet, we¡¯re hunting Wabbits¡± Rose whispered back. Lily just rolled her eyes and went back to watching for rabbits, ignoring Rose¡¯s attempt at humour. Before long, a rabbit came hoping out in front of them, its little nose twitching as it snuffled the ground looking for a tasty leaf to nibble on. Before Rose could get a shot off, Lily had let fly with an expertly aimed Stone spike, straight through the rabbits eye. Rose looked at Lily questioningly and Lily explained that she had competed in archery competitions and had been very good, she was hoping to find decent bow for her to use as a back up for when she ran out of Essence. It didn¡¯t take long to get a fair few rabbits for the pot, the field was teeming with them, luckily they didn¡¯t set of the hoard of rabbits like Liam did last time. They took their catch back to Leah, who point blank refused to deal with the corpses until they had been skinned and cleaned up, so Rose and Lily spent some time trying to work out how to skin a rabbit, they didn¡¯t need the skin for anything as they had plenty of clothing so they just butchered it. By the time they had gotten through all the rabbits, Lily had gained the skinning skill, neither of them thought it would be much use for what it was supposed to before but it might help them in butchering the animal better and so getting better cuts of meat out of it. Once the rabbits were all cut up and ready to go, Leah swapped duties with Rose and Lily, Leah went to cook dinner and the other two worked on the last few beds that needed putting together. Thanks to the size of the keep, there was plenty of room for all the beds and for everyone to essentially have their own room. Obviously Lily and Emma were sharing a room and Emily and Alexia had asked if they could share a room too, saying they felt more comfortable having someone else in the room with them. Everyone else picked a little room for themselves and got their beds set up and ready for the night. After everyone¡¯s beds were set up, they gathered in the main room for dinner. Over dinner, Leah showed everyone the Health potion she had managed to make out of the Blooming Rosewart flower she had found, it wasn¡¯t very potent and the description only said it would hasten the healing of minor wounds, but it would be invaluable when someone got injured and hopefully Leah could level up her new Alchemy skill she should be able to make more potent potions. Just the fact that she could make potions opened up so any new possibilities Rose couldn¡¯t think of them all at once. Jon then explained he had solved the issue of needing materials from building, he was able to use his reshape stone skill to essentially pull stone bricks out of the ground or from other buildings, as long as they could transport it back to the keep, he could build anything rose wanted him to build, he even figured out that he could replace the mortar between bricks by joining the stone blocks together once they were where they needed to be, it should result in some very strong buildings. Jon also said that with his new knowledge he should be able to get the inner bailey wall completely fixed and possibly better than it was before within the next few days, as long as he didn¡¯t have to go out scavenging that was. Rose put the idea out that they stick close to home, get to know each other better for a few days and work on their various skills and abilities. They had managed to get enough dried and canned food to last them a couple of months, that wasn¡¯t even counting the rabbits that they had hunted today or any other meat they might be able to hunt, so there was no worry over food, the only thing left to complete on Rose¡¯s Quest was the wall, and Jon thought that would be done soon so they may as well work together as a group to being making this place a home. They needed to sort out some kind of farming for fresh vegetables and fruit if they could find seeds and herbs too, they didn¡¯t want boring food after all. In the end they all agreed with Rose and decided to spend the next few days working on the keep, hopefully some more people would see the signs of life at the keep and make their way to them to join up and help. When it started to get dark Jon used his skill to block the entrance to the keep off and they all headed to their separate rooms. Rose and Leah tucked the girls in and left them to sleep under the watchful eye of Casara. Rose walked into her room and sat on her nice, new bed, thinking back on how much had changed in just a few days. Four days ago, it was just her and Emily, struggling to get home, surrounded by monsters. Now, they were a group working together to survive, she may not have know these people long but already she felt closer to Leah than any other friend she had made, and Jon already felt like a father figure, Rose¡¯s father had died when she was little so she had never known what it was like to have a Dad, but she imagined it would feel like this, safe and protected. Lily and her family had seemed like good people and Rose thought they would all get along well. Leah seemed to have settled into the role of chef and homemaker, making sure that everyone ate enough and had everything they needed. All in all, Rose thought that they had gathered a good core group around them, setting them up nicely for if and when more people came to join them in building this settlement into something amazing. Rose was exhausted and laid down ready to sleep, she had a busy day of practice ahead of her tomorrow, she wanted to get that fire ball ability working. Chapter 10 The next day they were all up bright and early again. After breakfast, Rose, Jon, Liam and Lily spent the morning working on their combat skills. Rose focused on creating a fire ball attack, she began by following the same steps for the fire shot, but when the small flame appeared above her hands she focused on channelling more of her Essence into the flame, when she felt like she could push no more Essence into the attack, she fired it off her hand. The result was a fire shot maybe 3 times the size of the original shot, it impacted the dirt where she was aiming and left a large crater. Thinking she almost had it, she kept at it, waiting for a prompt to tell her that she had gained a new ability. Jon worked with Lily to learn the stone spike ability and taught her his stone attack. Liam sat cross-legged on the ground and was learning to manipulate his Essence better. Leah took everyone else into the meadow to collect more flowers to make into potions, along with the Blooming Rosewart flowers that increased healing speed, they managed to find two other flowers, one was a small white flower that looked similar to a daisy that Leah¡¯s skill told her could be used to help Essence regeneration. The other was similar to a dandelion and could be made into a potion that would give you more energy, Leah thought it would work kind of like an energy drink. In the afternoon, Rose took Liam and James rabbit hunting, James wouldn¡¯t be much use without a ranged attack but he would be able to watch their backs, and help if another hoard of rabbits attacked. Leah, Emma and the younger girls sat in the keep, working on turning the flower petals they had gathered into potions that they could use. They were currently using tin cans that they had cleaned out to hold the finished potions. Jon took Lily out to the inner bailey wall and taught her the re-build skill, they then began working on the wall together. The next week flew by with more of the same everyday, they worked hard and each of them had the skill gains to prove it. Rose managed to create her fire ball when she realised that she needed to actually make a ball of fire rather than just enlarging the fire shot ability, all the practice had given her a few levels in several abilities, even her skinning had risen as she had been dealing with the majority of the rabbit corpses. Liam had managed to create a lightning AoE attack that would electrify the ground underneath his targets and Leah managed to find a way to improve it by pulling water from the surroundings and making the ground Liam was aiming at wetter, this fried the poor bunnies they tested it on much worse than just Liam¡¯s attack alone. Leah gained a water manipulation ability from using her essence to gather the water for Liam. Leah also discovered she could use Essence to heal, Liam had gone out with Rose to do some hunting, only to have a rabbit get close enough to take a chuck out of his leg. Leah had seen what had happened as she was out picking flowers at the time and ran over to see if he was ok, seeing that his leg was bleeding she began applying pressure to the would whilst telling Rose to run inside and get a healing potion. When Rose got back, Leah and Liam were sitting there with looks of shock on their faces. Just after Rose had left them, Leah¡¯s hands had started to glow and Liam could feel a light tingly sensation around the wound. Leah lifted her hand away to see that the wound had completely healed, not even a scar. Leah then got a prompt saying she had learned a minor healing skill. Jon and Lily had spent the whole week splitting their time between training their attacks and re-building the wall. Jon spent the time wondering how he managed to get the keep re-built in a single day, when it had taken two of them a whole week to fix a wall that was no where near as broken as the keep, thinking back on it, he shouldn¡¯t have been able to do it with the Essence pool he had had at that point, now it was much bigger but it was taking longer to re-build. It was almost like the keep had wanted to be fixed, like he had some kind of help. As soon as the wall was finished, Jon went straight to Rose to let her know. After he had finished telling her, a prompt appeared,
Quest completed
You have gained access to the followig blueprints: - Basic Alchemy lab. - Basic Blacksmiths - Basic Watch tower - Basic Bunk houseReading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.
Rose brought up the settlement interface and thought about giving Jon access to it. As she thought about it, a prompt appeared asking her if she wanted to give Jon access, she mentally selected yes and told Jon to think about bringing up the interface. Once Jon could see the interface, they chatted about what they thought needed doing first. They decided that the blacksmiths would be most useful after the woodwork shop, they needed better weapons and armour if they could produce it. Jon thought they would be able to find plenty of scrap iron to work with so raw materials shouldn¡¯t be an issue. Jon told Rose that he had always wanted to be a blacksmith, only there was never a need for it before now. Hopefully he would be able to remember what to do from all the online videos he used to watch, before he wasn¡¯t able to anymore. Once they had finished their conversation, Rose headed to the kitchen to tell Leah about the new option for an alchemists lab, it should make her life easier. After informing Leah that her lab was third on the list of things to be built, Rose decided to spend the rest of the time before dinner with Emily and Casara, it was nice to just be a family for a little while. Before long, Leah had finished making dinner, rabbit stew and canned vegetables, again. Rose thought that they really need to start fishing or find some different game to hunt, a diet based of just rabbits got boring quite quickly. They all sat down to eat and then spent the rest of the evening chatting to each other and generally relaxing, they had been going full pelt all week and a little time to unwind was good for them. A few hours passed in relative quiet before the younger kids headed to bed and the adults followed not long after them. Rose checking in on Emily and Alexia and saw they were both passed out, Casara lay in between the two beds purring softly in her sleep. Knowing that all was well, she headed into her room and sat on her bed to check her character sheet, she had been avoiding looking all week so she could see any gains all at once. Unlike any game she had played or Litrpg book she had read, she didn¡¯t get damage notifications, or prompts when she leveled a skill, only when her main level went up did she get a prompt. She pulled up her character sheet and sat for a moment looking at the gains in various skills she had made,
Name: Rose Conehey Level 4 Health Esesnce
Main attributes: Exp : 10/500 145 185
Strength 10
Intelligence 17
Wisdom 13
Dexterity 11
Constitution 9
Luck 15
Skills Identify- shows target name and level up to ten levels above your own. 0.5% to next level Essence manipulation- Allows greater control over Essence pathways: Level 3 45% to next level One-handed blade ¨C level 2 95% to next level Skinning- User can barely skin an animal, but has more chance of success the higher the skill gets. Level 6 45% to next level Abilities Heatwave- Channel Essence to create a wave of heat to attack with , does minor burning damage to target. level 1 78% to next level. - Heat blast: overpowered Heatwave using all remaining E for twice as much power. Night light ¨C creates a small flame in the palm of your hand, useful for starting fires and not much else. Drains E at negligible rate. Fire Shot- Condensed essence in the form of a flame projectile fires from above the palm 5 meter range Level 2 67.5% Fire blade- Sets any blade on fire, adds burning damage to attacks. Uses 1 E per 5 seconds active. Level 1 2% Fire ball ¨C Forms a fire ball out of essence, will grow bigger if more Essence is channelled into the fire ball. Level 2 - 45% to next level
Affinities Fire novice level 2: 50% to next level
Blessings Gaia''s blessing Your dedication to your daughter has led to Gaia awakening your fire affinity
She had managed to level up a few skills and others were closer to levelling than before, the affinity level up was nice, she thought her control over fire had been better the last two days or so, maybe this was the cause. This week had felt like one long training montage, even Emily had been learning how to defend herself using a baseball bat. Hunting rabbits had gotten boring, a fire shot through the head and they were done, she had more than enough Essence to get enough rabbits to feed them all without having to stop and meditate once. Rose wanted to get out and challenge herself, Emily would be safe in the keep with Casara and Leah, Leah¡¯s ice attacks had gotten pretty good over the week, she could now fire ice shards and create small ice shields so even Leah could defend the keep if needed. Rose decided that tomorrow she would see if anyone wanted to go out and try and find more survivors, maybe they could find some spray paint and spray messages on the walls of buildings to let people know it was safe in the keep. Putting all that aside for tomorrow, Rose got undressed and got into bed, drifting off to sleep as soon as her head hit the pillow. Instead of a deep sleep, Rose found herself once again in a beautiful field. The same flowers dotted the picturesque landscape. She could see rolling hills and stunning blue skies. She heard the babbling of a small stream, and not seeing Gaia anywhere, she decided to follow the sound. Another chat with Gaia After about ten minutes of walking, Rose found the stream and began following it downstream. Within a few minutes, she came across a grove of trees growing on both banks of the stream. Sat on a large grey rock overlooking the stream was Gaia. Gaia turned and looked at Rose. ¡°Congratulations on finishing the first quest. I honestly didn¡¯t expect you to finish so quickly. Your group is the first to gain access to the settlement interface, there are other groups and many more survivors, but your group is the only one who has met all the requirements. Although you did have the knowledge of what you needed, maybe I should give the quest to a few more people, more settlements would help I suppose. Anyway, I brought you here as I know you must have many questions, I am willing to answer them to the best of my ability.¡± Rose sat down next to Gaia and thought deeply for a moment, wondering what to ask. She had thought of many questions since the last time they had spoke, but right now she struggled to remember them. The first thing that eventually came to mind was, ¡°What is Essence? How does it work?¡± Gaia thought for a moment before responding, ¡° Essence is the very life blood of this world, of me even. This whole world is me, Essence flows through all of me and all of the world. Humans lost the ability to connect to Essence when I was locked away, the other races died off because their connection to Essence and the Gods was too strong, they could not survive without their presence. The same thing happened to all the monsters, animals and flora that had relied on Essence. Now that Essence again runs through all things, you should begin seeing new plants appear that have special properties due to the Essence they absorb. Humans can use their connection to do just about anything they imagine, some things will need an affinity for a specific element to work but Essence in its raw form has just as many uses, there are limits of course, your Essence pool will determine whether you has enough power to do what you want. Think of it as mana from one of humanities games, only without specific spells to learn, you have to create them yourself. ¡° Rose thought she had some experimenting to do when she got home, out loud, she asked, ¡° So what are Affinities then?¡± Gaia responded with, ¡° An Affinity is a persons connection to an element, they make using Essence to create or use that element much easier. It is possible to have more than one Affinity but only with well matched elements, for example you will have difficulty connecting to water due to your fire Affinity.¡± Rose wondered how many questions she would have time to ask and thought about what was the important things to ask. Explanations on her attributes and how to improve them would be useful, she would also like to know how health and Essence pools worked. Information on skills and abilities would also be useful and she would really like to know more about the One God that Gaia had mentioned last time. Rose turned to Gaia and asked ¡° Could you explain how attributes work and how to raise them? Also how do the health and Essence pools work?¡±This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. Gaia said, ¡° Attributes are numerical measures of your body and capabilities. The higher your strength, the more you can lift or carry, also how hard you can hit. You can increase it by working out muscles and physically making yourself stronger. Intelligence is how easily you can pick up and understand new knowledge and skills, it is also a measure of how well you make connections between things. You increase you knowledge by both learning new things and understanding things you already know better. Wisdom is how well you use the knowledge and information you have, you can increase it by coming up with new ideas and making informed choices. Constitution is basically how healthy you are, how likely you are to fight off illnesse, it also impacts how long you can be physically active for before becoming exhausted. You increase this by being healthier and doing the same things as for strength. Charisma is how likeable you are and how likely people are to react favourably to you, charisma can be improved by being nicer to people essentially, your physical appearance has nothing to do with your charisma, just because you are good looking doesn¡¯t mean people are going to immediately like you. Lastly luck is exactly that, how lucky you are. Increasing that one is a mystery if I¡¯m honest with you." Gaia stopped for a moment before answering Rose''s next question. "Your health pool comes from your strength and constitution attributes, it is more a measure of how much non life threatening damage you can take before passing out. You would then need someone to heal you before you die. Your Essence pool on the other hand is influenced by your intelligence and wisdom, it represents how much Essence you are capable of holding at one time. Each person will naturally pull in replacement Essence when needed but you can meditate on pulling in Essense to speed up that recovery time.¡± Rose took some time to digest all that information before asking about skills and abilities. Gaia explained, ¡° There is a skill for just about everything and almost anyone can learn any skill, they just need to put the effort in. As you level up skills, you will find new knowledge is available to you and that your efficiency with the skill improves. Abilities on the other hand are specifically attacks that you have created using Essence.¡± Rose said, ¡° Ok, I can only think of one more thing to ask and that¡¯s about the Pantheon Quest and the One God, when do I have to worry about that?¡± Gaia then said, ¡°Not for some time yet, you need to expand our settlement and get in touch with others, I will give the leaders that have appeared the first Quest to create their settlements, but its your job to connect those settlements and begin rebuilding the human race. A new Quest will be waiting for you when you wake up, just to give you a goal to work towards in the mean time. One other thing that you might find useful to know is that it is possible to unlock professions, the higher level profession, the higher level products they produce. At certain levels of professions you will be granted knowledge of how to do more difficult things, for example a builder might work out how to build a new building, or improve an old one. If you can¡¯t think of anything else to ask I will leave you to sleep, there is much that needs my attention.¡± Rose couldn¡¯t think of anything else to ask and soon found herself drifting into a deep sleep