by Alston Sleet
“Mennen, I might not be able to provide unlimited gold directly, but if you continue giving me guidance in this world, I might be able to provide things even more useful. You want that gold simply so you can pay for things and buy resources and services for the village…why not help me develop spells which can be used as payment or services for the village directly?” I inquired with a small grin.
From my point of view, this was a win two-fold. I would get guidance on what I should strive for, my ball of heat and fireballs were not useless but they definitely fell into niche categories, but more importantly I would also gain information about why he saw one spell as more useful than another. Hopefully, before I wasted another level on a useless spell, or in modifying one to be slightly less useless.
Mennen wandered around the village with me mulling over my suggestion as he casually swatted bunnies out of the air. I could see his process was far more effective than mine. One rotation swatted the suckers, a second collecting the resources in a bag he carried. On his second lap as we reached a particularly desolate area further from the village than normal Mennen started to speak.
“I can see the wisdom in this, my village and you grow in power in tandem, you will also start to gain some investment in the village.” I nodded. I had been making an effort to not get too involved in the day to day life of the villagers since I was expecting to only spend a winter here. I didn’t want to settle down yet. I knew I would eventually; with the years ahead of me I probably will have multiple periods of village life, adventuring, and hermit-hood ahead of me, heck probably periods of conquest and rule as well.
“What spell suggestions do you have so far?”
What followed was a mind numbing conversation where I repeatedly would suggest some epic creation of destruction and Mennen would then tear it apart explaining why it was either dangerous for others, or simply not needed given daily life. He conceded that when I went adventuring many of my ideas would be a sound choice. He refined my thinking about when to use individual spells. Friendly fire was a continual concern of his, hence why he thought the idea of fire to be basically a non-starter.
Finally in exasperation I mentioned the idea of controlling stone to grab and hold the legs of enemies. This idea finally got Mennens approval, though he mentioned modifications on the sane order of ‘ball of heat’ into ‘fireball’. He went into a wonderful soliloquy about all the possibilities of being able to move dirt around, compress it into stone, use it to shove trees over, build fortifications, houses, roads, on and on and on. Eventually I realized that Mennen had stopped talking to me and was just fantasizing about all the improvements to his village he could have if he could just move the very earth around at command.
I finally got him back to planet earth, or at least whatever planet this one was. I explained that I wasn’t sure how much of that I could accomplish with the first version of the spell, but that it sounded like it should be my next goal. To ensure that my spell would be available soon he went to organize a power leveling session from the village.
I knew what power leveling was, it was a term whereby higher level players speed up the leveling of a lower level player. The downside is that the lower level player needs to learn the ‘feel’ for the performance of their now higher level character for which they didn’t really earn the power. I wasn’t particularly worried about that since I literally had all the time in the world to learn my new power level, besides I would still be relatively low level.
The faces of the villagers when Mennen announced they would be power leveling me was a study in confusion. Apparently Mennen was someone who normally advocated against power leveling villagers since it lead to arrogance, usually in the nobility, and was generally a low return on investment for the people involved. It was usually just a better idea for everyone to slowly level themselves up together than to spend a lot of time leveling just one person up only to have to waste that new higher level persons time helping to level others up in the same way.
I could see the confusion, and in a few cases anger, over my special treatment. Mennen cleared that up pretty quickly by explaining that I was only one level away from a spell which would be useful for the village and at that point I would spend my time helping to improve the entire village with my new spell.
This seemed to clear up the issue for most, though not for all of the villagers. Reos still had the look of someone who had taken a bite of a lemon, but I noticed he still formed up with the rest of the villagers to help out.
The plan was not what I had expected. I was imagining villagers running out and angering bunnies and running them back to me so I could dispatch them in a steady stream. Mennen felt this idea was so slow that we might as well just continue with me hunting alone. No, Mennen’s idea was far more ingenious and insane.
As Mennen explained his plan I felt my mind start to recoil at his idea. It would work, it would be faster than anything else I could possibly try, and it would have me performing the most reckless part of the plan. Mennen cheerfully explained that if things went wrong I would have as much chance as anyone else to survive, though I noticed he wasn’t suggesting he would stand next to me as the plan was executed.
Shortly the villagers had arrived with shovels and what looked like crudely formed shields. Walking out into the fields surrounding the town the villagers slowly dug holes deep enough for multiple people to hide in and narrow enough that the makeshift shields would act as lids to cover them. Then they marked these holes with the shields set upright. Gathering the bunnies which had attacked the workers then returned to the village.
I was instructed to stand at one of these hole and shield pairs and be prepared to cast a fireball.
Which is how I found myself standing concentrating carefully as the teenagers ran around the glen angering every bunny they could find until they had a swarming white bouncing horde ranging behind them. As each teenager would tire out they would hop into a hole and pull a shield on top of themselves as another teenager would lob a rock or stick into the mass and cause the rolling fluff ball of doom to turn and continue on towards them. After half an hour of running around the swarm behind the teenagers was so large I was starting to wonder if I would be able to kill them with a fireball!
It was clear that these bunnies had been so riled up that bunnies had even left their burrows and the surrounding forest to assist in the murder of the pesky and annoying humans. The high pitched squeaks and thumping started to feel like a cute version of an earthquake. Reos was the one bringing the rampaging bunny horde to me, and I could see the evil grin on his face just before he hopped into his hole and covered himself with his shield.
I felt a bit for the teenagers who had been hiding in their holes this entire time, popping out to check things out would be suicide and they had been instructed not to get out until Mennen called for them. Every other villager was inside cottages or peeking through wooden shutters or around mostly closed doors.
I gathered every bit of focus and concentration I had into creating a giant fireball and lobbed it into the white mass from half the field length away. The fireball caused the first bunny hit to instantly turn to ash and it continued into the mass. For a moment it looked like the giant squirming cotton ball had absorbed everything and that my white swarmed death was but a skip and bunny hop away. Suddenly the white fluff ball of doom expanded into a red, yellow, and white explosion of bunny parts and fire.
I had found myself mesmerized by the explosion and death when I mentally kicked myself and started forming a second fireball. Moments later the second explosion ended the last of the evil bunny menace and I found myself 3,746 experience into my third level of the 5,000 needed.
The villagers laughed and whooped as they exited their cottages. The teenagers were told to leave their hideyholes and instructed to clean up the few bunnies which had survived the conflagration. They were also told to sweep through the remains and see if any of the bunnies had dropped any bunny parts. I was informed that if the co
rresponding body part was destroyed, rarely would the creature ‘drop’ that part upon death. Another reason fire was considered a poor weapon in this world.
That was the end of the day for me, I was as worn out as everyone else was for the day. I was unhappy to note that I had been awarded the title ‘killer of the white horde’ by my good friend Reos; I was starting to remember why I disliked children so much.
After collecting what few items remained, the village settled in for a well-deserved rest for the night. Laughter and jokes about the runners and ‘the killer of the white horde’ were prevalent in the inn that night. The thought that we would be doing this again in the morning did not excite me, but the idea of having a new spell, one which would actually be useful for me and my hosts, calmed my nerves.
Chapter 5
Like The Romans, Not In A Day.
I felt the grin trying to split my head in half. It was taking more effort than I felt comfortable with to keep from giggling like a mad man. With a bit of effort, I returned my focus to smoothing out the road that bisected the village. It was going from packed rutted dirt to stone as I slowly moved along turning my focus to each section as I went. It took me roughly an hour to turn churned mud and packed dirt in a fifty foot long stretch into road work.
I didn’t care if this was tedious and tiring. I was an engineer. I was finally back to building things. I had spent months preparing for my plot after leaving my job. Three months more sitting in what was essentially solitary confinement feeling like my brain was leaking from my ears. I was finally getting to turn things inside my mind into things in this world. I was creating things again!
“You are so slow! God I hate babysitting,” and there went the grin from my face. I was again stuck with Reos following me along as I formed the road. I had made a bit of a miscalculation with Reos. I had been stuck in the mentality of this world being a video game. I couldn’t seem to get it out of my head. I kept finding myself falling into video game tropes and so I didn’t take any of the conversations from the kids seriously.
Which is why I found myself being followed around by a whining, and insulting teenager. I understood the situation well enough. Reos found that he could be insulting to me and I wouldn’t retaliate, this helped him to feel like the big man in the village. Mennen was rude to me since he knew what he was talking about and I was obviously in need, we had an exchange going on. He gave me needed advice, I gave him services. Reos was just doing what teenagers do, pushing the envelope and seeing if he could get away with things.
The problem was that I had just ignored him at first, he literally never entered my mind as being important. He was background art for the scenery of the village. Annoying and loud at times, but not something to worry about. By the time I got my head in gear and figured out -everything here was real even if it is a game- the pattern of behavior had been set.
I was now noticing his behavior and worse sending recriminations towards my past self over the fact that I let this develop in the first place. Even a nasty glare near the start would have worked well enough to put him in his place, by this point he would see any rebuke as a way to get even more reputation for himself. By the time I had figured this out, it was too late. I had already told Mennen that unless I was attacked or harmed I wouldn’t harm any of his people.
An offhand comment had caught me out without thought. I wasn’t sure if doing something like locking Roes’ feet to the ground with stone would count as ‘harm’ in this context, but I wasn’t going to take the chance. My powers are the only thing that set me apart from the rest of the villagers and without them, I could see Mennen cutting our deal short. I needed to keep being useful since I was pumping him for information every night and the view of the world I was getting made it pretty clear I would need money or power, or both.
Village Melcot was a small village between two ‘adventuring towns’. It was at the midway point between these towns and acted as a nice rest stop for people traveling between and the occasional caravan of goods which came from each of these ‘adventuring towns’. Adventuring towns are apparently built around dungeons, yes just like from classic fantasy video games, and adventurers do dungeon dives to gain resources which are then carried back to the capital with merchants and villagers extracting money along the way.
Melcot was along the route in a location where the least dangerous and numerous of monsters would be, this afforded the town the luxury of being cheap and easy to defend. Mennen thought of this as being unprepared for migrating or random high-level monsters. I had to agree with him. Just trusting that nothing dangerous would wander through seemed like the wrong choice.
So that is where I came in. Slowly hardening the road in an effort to improve travel through town. Once The road from forest edge to forest edge was taken care of, a village wall would be started. After that, turning out bricks which will be used to make houses, I would then seal the bricks together every night as the house was built.
Mennen was actually kind of a genius at planning. He figured that I would be slow, easily distracted, and probably not very skilled right from the start. So he started me on working on the road where mistakes would be less important and easy to notice. He planned for the wall next since it would take more skill and speed would be useful, and finally, replacement homes where mistakes would be noticeable and definitely need correcting.
In his usual half casual, half insulting way he mentioned his reasoning to me as an aside while I had first been trying to get my earth shaping spell to work after the final bunny ball of death incidence had earned me enough experience. I am absolutely convinced he timed things like that so that when I looked up in insult from the insinuation of failure, that it would be the moment I fizzled the spell and almost knocked myself over as the earth shaping spell went wild.
All I can figure is that Mennen was in charge of the village not just because he was good at his job getting things done for the town, but also because he had a talent for undermining his political opponents.
With a grunt, I again dodged the suddenly bulging and spiked ground. I had let my concentration waver again and the result was a violent fizzle of my spell work. I could see a pattern developing. Losing concentration caused spells to violently overreact. It wasn’t like they slowly faded out, no, it’s like one or more of the variables of the spell would suddenly randomly change. Power? Control? Smoothing? Blurp! All random! Suddenly spikes of earth in a large number of directions.
It was turning out to always better to finish what I was doing and take a moments rest then to lose my concentration. I could feel the design of the Digitals in this and it made sense. Once I join the greater community I would have control of forces so overwhelming that not being able to handle them would be like handing nuclear weapons over to children.
After I cleared up my mistake I decided to take a short break. Reos had a collection of rabbit bits from protecting me from wandering members of the white scourge. He needed a moment to take back his loot. I spent the walk back thinking about the rider who had come into town from the other side of the forest.
Travelers were not particularly rare, this was the only way to proceed between the capital and one of the more popular adventuring towns, but they were infrequent enough that it was interesting each time. Usually, the travelers were the stereotypical adventurers. A man with metal armor a sword and shield, a few people in leather with small arms, a healer of some kind I assumed because of the nice clothing, and on one occasion an obvious wizard, pointy hat and all. I noticed that with the casters Mennen had just so happened to find a reason to have me off away from the visitors at the time.
In this case, the visitor was in brown leathers, dust worn and sweat stained. His horse looked like it had been through a long ride. I’m betting from the last adventuring town toward the capital. I could see the leather messenger pouch on his horse and I could guess what type of services he provided. The small bundle of oiled leathers and parchments that were passed off to Mennen confirmed m
y suspicion. With a sigh, I turned to walk back to my road work with Reos.
One of the things I hadn’t expected from a fantasy world, but should have, is the sheer boredom of a pre-mass communication world. There had to be maybe three books in the entire village, one of which was Mennen’s for marking village accounts.
When I heard Mennen cussing a blue streak I remembered the adage about watching what you wish for. Glancing back at Mennen I saw him and the messenger looking in my direction. That had been exactly the thing I had hoped against. Well, nothing for it. I started to amble along toward Mennen and the uncomfortable looking messenger.
“Hey Mennen, everything OK?” I asked with a raised voice as I wandered closer. I could see Mennen was upset, but I couldn’t tell if it was with me or the messenger or something else.
“Boy-o, didn’t I tell you I didn’t want any troubles? What do you bring me? Troubles,” Mennen grumped as he stared at me then the messenger in turn.
I was a bit pissed at him then. I had done everything I could for Mennen, I had broken none of his rules -stated or otherwise- and had worked hard to help the villagers. I had just spent the last two days staring intently at the ground while a whiny teenager grumped around me. I think I had gone beyond the pale here all ready.
“I didn’t do anything and frankly I’m getting a bit tired of the attitude Mennen. I’ve done nothing I wasn’t asked to and I’ve worked hard at that. I’ve never been anywhere near the capital so whatever that letter says, it doesn’t concern me,” I said with some heat in my voice.
The messenger moved forward and around Mennen as if he wasn’t there. I was not looking forward to dealing with that kind of arrogance, I could already tell this guy was going to be annoying just by the way he relegated Mennen to nonentity status in that brief moment.
“The King has ordered all villages to be on the lookout for a level one wizard. This wizard is to neither be harmed nor helped. I will have to ask you to return with me to further discuss the news of your existence in Melcot village with the King”.