TMLoCL - Chapter 50

hi...

 *Cadence Lee (as Hewka) POV*


The conversation that night was a watershed moment for me that I worried would change everything.  In hindsight, however, it isn’t really that surprising that nothing much changed at all.  Rei asked me if I wanted to be called Cadence and I told her that, as far as I was concerned, I was Hewka in this life, and that was that. The greatest change was that I now had both Rei and Tamlin pestering me for stories on occasion, and it only got worse when the rest of Seeking the Horizon was brought in on my secret. 

Mostly they were curious about my first life because it was so different from what they knew.  They had a difficult time wrapping their head around the idea that Earth had lacked a System - to them it was akin to saying that Earth had lacked sound or light or maybe even something more fundamental like gravity.

“But how do you get better at Skills without the System?” Tamlin asked me one day, in utter confusion.  “If you can’t level Skills, how would anything even function?  No one would be able to do even the easiest task!”

“Does the System give you Skills?” I ask, mostly rhetorically.  “Or does it merely catalog and acknowledge them?”

“It does reward you,” Rauvin noted as we walked. “Each level of a Skill gives you something, are you saying that those percentage rewards are natural?”

“To an extent?” That is actually an interesting question, because it isn’t like the effects of a Skill’s level aren’t things that existed in my previous worlds.  Was the reduction of effort in my Dig Skill, for example, something the System gave me or merely reflecting how my increased ‘expertise’ meant that digging was easier?

“I think that that part is a reward from the System itself,” I said, thinking out loud.  “But it isn’t wrong to say that the more you do something, the easier that thing comes to you.  Or even something like singing: Singing, the Skill, might decrease your need for breath, but practicing singing in general increases your lung capacity.”

Not that I knew the details, it wasn’t like I had studied it. That was a problem with a lot of things really.  If I knew I would be reincarnated into ancient fantasy worlds I would have tried to learn a lot of different skills that would come in handy.  Hindsight is twenty twenty, I guess.

“Doesn’t that mean that people are qualitatively better in worlds like this one?” Ylma followed up with a curious expression.  “Our Skills give us innate advantages that, according to you, other worlds may or may not have.”

My reflexive instinct is to answer no, but I had to stop and think about that.  Would, all else being equal, a singer on Earth be equal to a [Singer] here?  Probably not, but on reflection making “all else equal,” was likely a disservice to Earth.  There were other considerations.

“Leaving aside technology,” I spoke slowly as I continued to think and tried to keep my focus.  “I think the comparison is…  Well, it is somewhat reductive.  The Class and Skill System makes you very good at what you have chosen to do, but it also restricts you.”

That was the biggest weakness of the various Systems I had seen so far, their tendency to pigeonhole people into a single role.

“Between composing, production, and performance,” I thought out loud as I worked through the question.  “There is quite a lot going on in making music, but the System seems to reward specialization.  Or what happens if someone wants to switch genres or something?”

One of the things I hadn’t really expected about “adventuring” was that it was mostly travel, and beyond that, it was very slow, very boring, travel.  With the alternative to the travel being “boring” usually being something aggravating like the Bronzebirds on our previous trip.  Which meant we had a lot of time to talk as we walked along.

Our destination was a mining and prospecting camp outside of Evergold, and although much of the trip would be relatively safe until other Monsters moved back into the former Bronzebird territory, when we got there it would be almost constant fighting.  The pay wouldn’t actually be all that good, but we were going there for the fighting itself - for the experience.  Seeking the Horizon, and in particular Tamlin, Rei, and myself, needed to level.  There had been too many close calls and there was a difference between a risky job and a job that you only survive due to sheer luck.

“I suppose that my personal opinion is that the System limits as much as it enhances,” I said as I brought myself back to the conversation, noting to myself that the increased Willpower from Evolving would be very welcome as well.  “It means that you need to plan out your life, and that if you deviate from that plan you will never be able to compete.  Like you guys, your only real option is to make enough money to retire, right?  You couldn’t try to go and become, I don’t know, a [Baker].  You will have to fight until you have enough, or until you die.”

Another interesting thing was that living in different worlds really has taught me that “common sense,” wasn’t.  At least not universally.  The idea of a [Soldier] retiring to go into a civilian industry was strange here, whereas a soldier would generally expect to leave the military at some point and enter into a civilian vocation on Earth.  Of course, levels and Stats change things a lot here.  People who keep leveling don’t really age the same way someone on Earth does, although I had a sneaking suspicion that the reason humans here lived roughly the same amount of time as they did on Earth, despite their Stats, was because they never did slow down.  Old [Soldiers] didn’t retire and the effort involved eventually killed them.

Maybe. I wasn’t sure.

To be honest, the more I talked with Seeking the Horizon, the less sure I was about a lot of things. I wasn’t exactly going to change my position but…  When I brought the conversation, with Rei from before, up with the others, their reactions were difficult for me to stomach.

“But we aren’t equal,” Karlin pointed out.  “We only appear equal because Rei is so young, but unless someone or something kills her, she will inevitably level to a point where no human or dwarf will be her equal.”

“Do levels make someone intrinsically better?” I had asked, and the reply had been along the lines of: “what kind of [Chef] would you rather have cooked your meals, a lower or a higher level one?”  People’s identities were so tied into their Class here, it wasn’t like having a job in my first life.

The fact that my lack of Willpower made arguing my points extremely difficult didn’t help anything.  I felt like I knew I was right, but I couldn’t explain why I was right. Struggling to explain my thoughts while also fighting my own brain was frustrating in a way that was almost painful.  Worse still was when Chaurl asked me:

“If you can’t explain why you are right, how do you know you are?”

“I can see how this kind of thinking might be attractive within a single species,” Ylma had added.  “But how do you square purging Goblins with that thinking?  Even if you could get someone to agree that they are equal as ‘people,’ their intrinsic nature is more dangerous than a lot of other species.”

Rei came to my rescue there, helping to communicate what was going on in my head; how hard it was for me to hold conversations on topics that were this complex, but the words stayed with me.  I had killed Goblins that weren’t really bothering anyone because I hadn’t really thought of them as people, just a cache of experience and gold.  If my thinking was applied without considering the reality of the situation then killing them would be wrong and they would literally eat everything on the planet.

On the other hand, that “reality” included the genocide of thinking and feeling beings whose only sin was that they were born.  I was born a fucking toad and had interacted with people with the hope that I could join society by showing that I could behave myself within it.  If I had been born a Goblin they would have killed me out of hand, regardless of the intelligence I showed or if I had helped someone.

 “Besides, you aren’t even completely right about our ability to retire,” Rauvin observed.  “It is one of the reasons most people don’t fill all of their Class slots as soon as possible.  I picked up my [Merchant] Class after I left the military.”

The common sense of this world was that delaying some Class selection was generally a good idea.  After all, it was difficult to level if you had too many Classes either because you would split Experience among too many of them to level quickly, or because your Classes were too different to gain Experience from the same, well, experiences.  I certainly understand the thinking, but I am not sure I agree with it.  My first instinct is that all of a person’s Classes should work together and work with their lifestyle.  

Then again, isn’t that exactly what Rauvin is doing?  Sure, [Merchant] doesn’t contribute to his ability to fight or lead, but it does help him in his lifestyle as an adventurer.  But he won’t ever be the best in his field with a Class devoted to something that didn’t help him fight.  I said as much to our team leader, but he just shrugged.

“I was never going to be the best in the first place,” Rauvin replied.  “You’ve leveled pretty quickly, but think about it: how many times have you been in mortal danger?  Realistically, Levels plateau unless you constantly push.  That is, in fact, the whole reason we are heading to this camp.”

“Besides, you can remove a Class,” Tamlin chimed in.  “Supposedly, the only way to become truly strong is to level Classes and then remove them to level new ones.”

“How would that make you stronger?  Do you get to keep your Stats?” I guessed that they probably wouldn’t, because otherwise Sapients and Demihumans with Classes would be practically immortal and quite nearly invincible and quickly Rauvin confirmed my suspicions.

“I wish!  No, you lose all your Stats associated with those Levels,” he replied with a rueful chuckle.  “You only get to keep one Ability per fifty Levels of the Class you remove, and unless the Class contributes nothing to your Vitality or Magic, removing the Class might just instantly kill you.”

“It is rather rare among elves,” Rei adds, then pauses. “Well, at least as far as we know.  Every one of us will reset a few of our Classes, but after we enter Reverie we don’t really gain much experience.  Dwarves and Dragonkin are the races most known for the practice.”

“What about Monsters?” I asked, curious- I had a Class, after all.

“Don’t reset your Class unless you plan to take a Demihuman Evolution,” Ylma warned.  “Resetting a Class is not an exception to the rules Monsters follow.  So you will lose your Class but not be able to take a new one unless you take a Demihuman Evolution.”

I think, on reflection, this has been the most frustrating life I have ever had so far.  Struggling to survive, struggling against my own mind, struggling to express myself…  Struggling against my own mind to express myself.  Now it felt like the System itself was working to frustrate me, but of course that thought was ludicrous.  Getting mad at how the System worked was like getting mad at gravity or thermodynamics (I hoped), but the fact it was a silly thing to do wasn’t much help in stopping how I felt.

It made me want to hunt something down and kill it.  A feeling that, of course, only frustrated me more because I started worrying about it.  The most annoying part is that it was a feeling easy to rationalize - people have hunted for sport across all of my lives and the creatures I would be hunting were literal Monsters that were actively dangerous to Sapient life - but that didn’t stop me worrying about it!  Nevertheless, Rei and I excused ourselves from the party for a brief time and took to the sky.

“Hewka, I think you are too hard on yourself,” Rei said as I banked a wide circle, searching the forest below.  “Through the Bond, it almost feels like you are trying to wrestle with yourself sometimes.”  She had said as much before too, I suppose it happened every time I tried to be Cadence instead of Hewka.
“I’d like to think we are friends,” Rei continued, sharing a sentiment I wholeheartedly agreed with, but then continuing to say something else entirely.  “So I hope you won’t take this too hard when I say you are a bit of a brat.”

“Underneath your internal struggle, I can feel the absolute confidence you have that we are wrong- that our world is wrong.  It took me a while to really understand what that feeling was, through our Bond, but you look down on us in a… strangely friendly way.  You don’t even consider the idea that our ideas might have some merit.”

“Rei, you don’t have toilets,” I replied, bluntly.  This wasn’t quite true.  The Dwarves had plumbing, apparently, but outside of their citadels it was extremely rare.  Rare to the point that my party only vaguely grasped the concept and didn’t have the actual words to describe it.  I had to say toilet in English to differentiate it from a usual latrine.

“To be honest, I think that having this happen to me is a terrible waste,” this was an old fear, by now, but one that I had never truly addressed.  One that I didn’t think I could address without knowing, why me? “With all of the experts that existed on Earth, all of the great minds and highly educated professionals, why am I here trying to explain ideas and philosophies created by people smarter than me?”
“I am smart, and I was well educated, but I didn’t study these things specifically and I certainly wasn’t the smartest or best educated person - far from it.  I am trying to remember and reconstruct information from literal lifetimes ago, all the while a dozen different instincts bubble around inside me, and the truth is that someone knowing something is not the same thing as them being able to explain that knowledge to others.”
“I know you are wrong because these ideas are part of what changed my society from something like this, to the one I was born in as Cadence - and that society was indescribably better than even the best this world can offer.” I thought for a second and then amended, “Well, perhaps aside from what the gods might be able to do.” 

“Perhaps, but this world isn’t that one,” Rei replied.  “How can you exp-”

“It doesn’t work like that!” I interrupted Rei in my frustration.  “Cultural relativism is fine in moderation, but there are limits, and Skill Levels are not the same thing as actual skill!”

In the end, I couldn’t really convince Rei, and the subject changed.  That was probably for the best.  Maybe things would be better after my Evolution, and after I have had some time to think about it.  Of course, maybe my new friends are right, and I was just trying to impose my values from literal lifetimes ago on a world where they simply didn’t work.  I didn’t know.

What I did know was that I felt better after I dropped down on a Monster and killed it.  Hunting did wonders for my anxiety - at least my instincts made something easy.  After that, we flew back to the party who was still walking along on their way to the Evergold camp.

I feel pity for these poor people who can’t fly; wings are great.  I think that, even when I have hands again, I am going to miss this feeling.  Not that I plan to give it up any time soon.

Eventually, we made it to our destination, and I have to confess that it was both better and worse than I expected.  I mean, it was called a “camp,” and didn’t have a name beyond that, so I didn’t have the highest expectations going in, but it had a lot more permanent structures than I thought it would.  It had a wooden palisade that shielded several log buildings - it also happened to be a massive, muddy, pit.  Which seemed odd to me, because that seemed like a lot more work than making a mineshaft, but presumably they knew what they were doing.

Not that there weren’t tents and other temporary structures around.  Quite a few of them, actually, with plumes of smoke coming from them that were probably cooking fires from the smell.  I could see people with armor moving around over there, so they were probably adventurers, like us.

The more permanent structures were probably for the miners and the other staff.  They were log longhouses, with an emphasis on the long.  Perhaps a tad roughly built, but certainly real, useful, shelters.  Among them was also a single structure made of stone.  It was guarded by men in solid plate armor, and with the wagons near it, it was pretty obvious it was storage for the gold ore.

That was the better part of the camp, and the worse was, obviously, that they were next to a massive, muddy, pit.  I hadn’t had much to do with mining in any of my lives, so I couldn’t say I knew much about it.  However, the winding “path” that made its way down the side of the pit, and the wagons that were making their way up and down, made me very grateful for the ability to fly.  They were digging out all of the dirt, stone, and ore and sorting it at the top, making the mine a giant pit.

A pit, I noted, that was ringed with ballista, pointed down inside it.  I have to admit, my first thoughts were that they were there to keep the workers in line.  However, a monster - which I can only describe as a hybrid between a mole and a centipede - suddenly burst out of the ground with a screech, only for the ballista operators to smoothly turn and turn it into a porcupine.

“Why do they even need adventurers at all if they can do that?” asked Tamlin, echoing my own thoughts.

“The firing position at the lip of the mine pit is a lot better than what we would get over level ground,” a man answered.  He had a slightly unpolished demeanor, as if he had dressed up for something important but then did work in those clothes.  Which, admittedly, was far better than most adventurers and workers.

“And we get a lot of swarms from the forest," he continued, looking over the group as his eyes fell on me.  “And these are best against big beasties.  I am a little curious how well they’d do against your pet- not that I would test it!”

He held up his hands in an apology as my team’s glare sharpened, sighed, and then chuckled while shaking his head.  I wasn’t terribly offended, although I was a bit wary, but I was curious too.  I suppose it depended on their Skills and Abilities, but didn’t everything?

“Well, that is a new personal record for me putting my foot in my mouth, I haven’t even introduced myself yet,” he tapped his hand against a metal badge attached to his armor.  “I am Captain Hamel, the dayside coordinator for the adventurers “

A particularly difficult job to do well, I would imagine.  Kind of like wrangling cats, but if some of those cats also owned sapient wyverns with attention problems.  He directed us, and the other adventurers that were part of the caravan, to a nearby building that served as an office.  I was left outside because of the inherent discrimination known as door width.

I hope the meeting won't take long.  I would hate to get bored.



Rei’Reihammara Solily POV: 


There was a surprising amount of decorations in the meeting room Captain Hamel took us into.  On a closer look, it was mostly Monster hides made into rugs or hangings.  Which made sense, but added to the sense that this was less a camp and more a burgeoning town or village.

Perhaps it would be, in a few years, if the ore vein was rich.

“So, the more I know about your party’s capabilities,” Captain Hamel said as he approached a large table with a map of the area weighted down on it.  “The better I can plan and the overall safer everyone is.  What you want to tell me is up to you, but I can promise that it won’t leave this room.”

“Keep in mind, if you up and run off without letting me know, your pay will be docked,” he continued with a grimace. “Not that I am keeping you here, but some forewarning is needed so we don’t end up with a hole somewhere.  And if you try to run off with some gold, well, someone will be coming after you and trust me when I say that you do not want that.”

“That won’t be a problem with us,” Rauvin assured the Captain.  “In truth, we are more interested in the experience than the pay.”

“You might be surprised to know how many people say that to me,” Captain Hamel replied with a grin, but then his eyes drifted to me and he continued. “Although, in your case, I am a bit more inclined to believe it.”

I certainly wasn’t very interested in the gold, that was true, but if he was thinking I would make good decisions just because I was an elf…  Well, I was hardly going to correct him and tell the Captain that I was rather rash for my species.

“So, to business, let’s start with the basics, I am Rauvin and this is my party,” Rauvin introduced himself and us.  “I am a tank with leadership skills. That is Karlin and that is Tamlin, who mostly operate as our midliners with sword and spear.  Chaurl is our healer, a priest of Jakkus, and the first of our two lovely ladies is Ylma, a fire mage.”

Rauvin then turns to me and gestures, “our second is Rei, who fights with the bow and is the rider of Hewka, the Gale Wyvern outside.”

Hamel glances at the door as he strokes his chin, thinking.  “I had noticed.  That is a truly impressive mount, and I am sure we can find a lot of use for your team.  The wyvern especially.  Let’s sit down and talk.”  He pulled out a sheet of parchment with a list of times and names and gestured for us to take a seat.


*Cadence Lee (as Hewka) POV*


In hindsight, I think it was a naively optimistic hope that the meeting would end before I got bored.  I was really starting to gain some empathy for dogs from my first life.  Having to sit and stay can be really difficult when you have nothing to do.  I can’t even doodle because that would raise questions.  Although, come to think of it, my dancing act a little while ago probably wasn’t the best idea either.

Thankfully, I was rescued from my boredom by the virtue of being a bit of a spectacle.

“Do you think…  we can just walk past it?” The nervous voice of one of the adventurers that seemed to want to talk to Captain Hamel amused me more than it probably should have.  “It is someone’s pet, right…?”

“And if it decides to take a bite?  If it were me, I wouldn’t want to pay for a potion!” Another replied.  Although whether this one actually wanted to enter or was one of the people that had come over to take a look was up for debate.

“Oh come on, stop being cowards!” A young man pushed through the group and walked towards the door.  As he passed by, I shifted to get a better look at him, which may have been a bit of a mistake.  It spooked the adventurer so bad that he jumped a couple meters straight into the air with a squeak and retreated!

They really didn’t have a good reason to be afraid.  Although they looked fairly young and new, even Tamlin was stronger than me and half of his stats came from being a [Farmer]! Not that I couldn’t win that fight with flight and poison, but I was on the ground and no one here knew I had access to poisons!  I suppose they couldn’t tell the difference between myself and an Adult Wyvern, and were grossly overestimating my stats… 

My amusement was causing Rei to worry, which itself amused me as well.  Carrying over the dog analogy, I had once heard someone say that the most worrisome sound you could have from a young dog or child was silence.  They were always up to something, the difference between noise and silence was that when things were quiet, you didn’t know what that something was.

I decided to go easy on Rei and pretended to lose interest in the people around me.  I gave a performative chuff and took a few steps further away from the door and pretended to settle down to sleep.  That allowed a few of the braver ones to “sneak” in.  


[Acting has Leveled up!  Acting is now Level 6!]


Oh, hey. Awesome. I needed to work on my [Acting].  It was surprisingly hard to raise, despite the fact I was using it a lot recently.  Perhaps that was because I was pretending to be what I actually was?  If a [Soldier] pretended to be a [Soldier] in a play, would they gain [Acting] experience?

You know, this place is actually kind of comfy.  Maybe I can test this by pretending to be a wyvern by taking a nap like a wyvern would?  That didn’t really make any sense, but I didn’t either, so it all worked out…   or it would when I woke up…