Frostbitten Wayfarer

Zoe spent the next month wandering around Flester, building out a map of the town in her head. As the winter drew on, the snow kept getting more extreme, threatening to cover the town in a thick blanket of snow.

Groups of mages would walk through the streets, the alleyways and parks. The snow rising and swirling around them before it would get sucked into them, or gathered in front of them before it vanished. When they first started up, Zoe spent a few days walking around watching them in awe.

At one point, she approached one of the groups to ask what they did with all the snow. One of the mages was a water mage and they would gather all of the snow they could and push it into the other mage who was maintaining a disintegration barrier around them that would destroy the snow when it touched them.

Zoe asked if that would be cause for accident if they accidentally touched somebody and disintegrated them, but the mage just laughed. They explained that snow didn’t take much to destroy, so they could maintain the barrier at a low level and all somebody would feel is a slight tingle as it worked through their skin.

They held out their hand and offered Zoe to try if she liked, and she shook their hand. It was an itchy feeling, as though somebody was tickling them just below the surface of their skin. Her health drained by a few points, but nothing even as bad as eating a klir leaf.

One of the first things she tried to find was somewhere that she could practice using her bow and dagger. It took her a few days of wandering around town, but she did find a park that fit her needs. It was a large concrete square with a bunch of different activities. Large basins of water that never seemed to run out or freeze over, straw bags that recovered any damage with the help of a little mana, and wooden walls with targets drawn into them.

It seemed to be an advertisement for a store nearby that dealt in large enchanted structures, but Zoe was much more interested in just having a safe place to practice her archery. Most of her time over the month was spent firing arrows at the wooden targets or slashing at the straw dummies with her knife in the hopes for another skill.

She didn’t get one, but she felt herself becoming more comfortable with the knife, though she didn’t think it would translate to helping her if she needed to use it in combat.

Every few days she would stop by Joe’s and chat with him for a while about what she was getting up to, or interesting people that came by his store. Joe offered to let her store some of her belongings at the inn, so she left the camping supplies she bought with him.

She also asked him how people kept their clothes clean here, noticing more grime and dirt accumulate than when she stayed at the inn. He explained that like most things, people often had a skill for it. Those who didn’t would usually have family or a friend who did, or would find a shop that cleaned clothes for them. Innkeepers often did it for their patrons, and he offered to continue cleaning as he had been when she was staying at his inn.

That surprised Zoe as she’d never noticed him doing it, but he just laughed and let the familiar blue magic wash over her, taking the noticeable grime with it.

Most of her nights were spent at the wooded park she’d come to like quite a lot, practising her meditation. She found it relaxing, listening to the noisy bugs chirping in the trees, and the little winter critters running or flying from tree to tree.

She again tried to remember to identify people, and use her vampyric empathy on as many as she could see. The habit never seemed to stick in the past, but she was committed this time, she convinced herself. Most of the people she identified were blue or green. Many of the wealthier shop owners and in particular the guards manning the walls showed up as dark red question marks.

One time she was sitting at the sandwich shop she and Joe had visited, enjoying her dinner and saw somebody walk by with dark blue question marks. They didn’t look any different otherwise to her eyes. She had expected the highest level she’d ever seen to look more incredible, wear some fancy armour. But they were just wearing a nice coat and heavy black pants, walking down the street.

Her vampyric empathy screamed at her, however. The man exuded a confidence she’d never felt from anybody else. No matter who it was, everybody always had this fear lurking just below the surface. There was no anxiety, no suspicion, no doubts in this man. He looked over at Zoe as he passed and smiled at her, as if to say he knew what she was doing and didn’t care. She didn’t see him again though, and the month drew to an end.

Zoe was sitting in the wooded park — Kaira, she learned it was called one night when a friendly old woman sat with her. A small paper bowl filled with rice and thinly sliced deer meat, covered in a mound of colourful veggies sat on the table in front of her. She brushed some rice that fell off of her fur coat, and decided it was time to check her stats and make some decisions.

Name: Zoe Mara

Race: Human

——

Stat Points: 0

Strength: 20

Dexterity: 20

Vitality: 20

Endurance: 20

Intelligence: 50

Wisdom: 25

Health: 200/200

Stamina: 200/200

Mana: 500/500

——

Class 1: Earthian (8)

- Identify (8)

——

General Skills:

- Vampyric Regeneration (7)

- Vampyric Senses (8)

- Vampyric Resistance (8)

- Vampyric Immortality (1)

- Vampyric Charm (8)

- Vampyric Empathy (8)

- Gathering (3)

- Archery (8)

­- Meditation (8)

Resistances:

- Mental (7)

- Poison (7)

­- Pain (1)

She stared at the window that appeared in her vision for a while, trying to think about her goals. What did she want to accomplish here anyway? At what point would she consider herself as ready to take her first class. She was immortal, and patient, but staying at level eight forever was dangerous, too. She needed more health, she needed more power. She needed to know that if she left the walls and travelled to the next town over she’d make it without being gutted by a boar on the way.

She counted her skills, nine in total, most of them stuck at level eight. She wondered if that was coincidence or if her skills were capped at her level. What would happen if she took a new class and they were? Would they have accumulated experience in her time stuck at level eight or would all that experience have been wasted? Something to pester Joe about, she thought.

The book she got never said anything about a skills requirement for the classes, at least not for the ones she’d found interesting. A few required five or ten skills, but they were mostly labourer classes that she ignored. She decided ten skills would be a good goal, and hoped her knifework on the straw dummy would pay off before long.

She looked to her resistances next, and they looked much less impressive. Frost incarnate required fifteen resistances, she thought as she stared at the pittance she was dealing with. Not that she had any intention of getting that class either. The Unfrozen and Slayer of Frost feats were out of her reach anyway. But even without those, she had other advantages awarded to her because of her situation. And leaving her resistances in such a sorry state just seemed like asking for trouble.

The disintegration mage Zoe talked to interested her, though. It was almost painless, feeling more like a tickle than a prick. And surely there was a disintegration resistance. Maybe she could ask to walk around with them someday and level up her resistance through them.

Perhaps other mages existed with weak damaging effects, who could give her resistance without causing pain. Though she wondered why there was a difference between pain and damage in the first place. If she was taking a lot of damage she would want to feel it, she thought.

Pain was something Zoe wanted to avoid if possible, so on the other hand she did appreciate the distinction. Inflicting pain on herself to gain resistances felt like a line she should strive to respect as much as possible. Though maybe that was a remnant from her world, she realized.

At home, hurting herself for gain wasn’t really an option. There were always better, healthier choices available to her. If she burnt herself, she risked losing feeling forever. And what gain was there anyway? But here, she’d always recover as long as she had health and out regenerated the damage she was taking. What was the risk? Why should this be an important line to her?

To keep her from developing an association with pain and pleasure? Would that even be a problem, though? Plenty of people back home and even Zoe to an extent enjoyed a little pain in their spare time. That didn’t mean she enjoyed grabbing hot coals or having her arms chopped off.

Pain was a necessary step to progress, and as long as she did it in a safe, controlled environment then it was fine. The hard part would be finding safe, controlled environments for another twelve types of damage so she could get to her goal of fifteen.

She turned her attention to her feats, wondering where they would be on her stat window when they showed up. Maybe below resistances, she thought. Winter’s Master was the first she was going to get, but she thought about the others that she knew of. Summer’s Master was another easy one, and she wondered why the book didn’t say anything about a Spring’s Master or Autumn’s Master.

Did they just not exist, and only the two extreme seasons had feats? Or were they not useful to finding cold classes. Her thoughts were interrupted by a message begging for her attention.

*Ding*

For turning 25 as a human without choosing a second class you have been awarded with the [Patient Decider] feat.

Zoe felt a surge of power rush through her. Pain wracked her for a moment as it felt like every fiber of her being was ripped apart and rebuilt. She gritted her teeth through the pain, and when it ceased she brought up the details on her new feat.

*Ding*

[Patient Decider]

You are the one who waits, who outlasts. Your fellow humans have moved on, grasped what little power they can while you accumulate experiences. Your patience is rewarded. Find power in the mundane, and draw strength from the passage of time. All classes gain a bonus to quality. All first class restrictions lifted. First class experience bonus is applied permanently. +1 Stat Point every year.

Her eyes widened and she looked back at her stat window again.

Name: Zoe Mara

Race: Human

——

Stat Points: 26

Strength: 20

Dexterity: 20

Vitality: 20

Endurance: 20

Intelligence: 50

Wisdom: 25

Health: 200/200

Stamina: 200/200

Mana: 500/500

——

Class 1: Earthian (8)

- Identify (18)

——

General Skills:

- Vampyric Regeneration (7)

- Vampyric Senses (14)

- Vampyric Resistance (13)

- Vampyric Immortality (2)

- Vampyric Charm (24)

- Vampyric Empathy (14)

- Gathering (3)

- Archery (14)

­- Meditation (21)

Resistances:

- Mental (7)

- Poison (7)

­- Pain (3)

Feats:

- Patient Decider

She stared at the window for a while, almost all of her skills had skyrocketed and she had a bunch of stat points to put in now too. She had just turned twenty-five, but had twenty-six points to spend. Her eyes wandered to her Vampyric Immortality skill which had also levelled up. Did that give her a stat point on her birthday as well, she wondered.

It was the only thing that made sense to her, Zoe thought as she stared at her window. The next question was what did she spend her points on.

On one hand, she could get her wisdom also to fifty. Intelligence and wisdom at fifty before she made her decision would give her an incredible starting class, she thought. But would it be better than having seventy-five intelligence and twenty-five wisdom?

And in the first place, should she be ignoring vitality as much as she is? If she put it all into vitality she’d over double her health and thus her regeneration.

Zoe thought about it for a moment but decided it was too risky at the moment. Both of the jobs she’d taken had needed her to share her vitality. By level eight a normal human would have at most forty-five if they put every single point into it. But even if she stopped there, she’d already shared it with multiple people. Could she really convince Liz that she was saving almost all of her points for the last twenty years of her life? Would that be believable at all?

She didn’t think so. Vitality would be the safe option, give her the best chance of surviving if she left to the wilderness. But it put her in an uncomfortable position, and she always had the option of just staying in town as she planned.

That left her with intelligence and wisdom again, and Zoe found the decision easy. Maybe it was an aversion to sunk cost fallacy, but having invested so much into intelligence already made her lean towards wisdom. Fifty just seemed so much more important than seventy-five to her.

She felt goosebumps rush across her body as she pumped her wisdom up to fifty. It wasn’t quite as much of a rush as when she levelled her intelligence, but it was still pleasant. She felt calm, a serenity that she hadn’t known possible for her. It reminded her of when she woke up after the vampire attack. A strange calmness that pushed away some of her fears.

The last point she saved. She could decide later on before she took her class, and doubted it would make a difference anyway.

Zoe sat for a while, eating her lunch and letting herself calm down. The sun drifted across the sky and the moon began to rise. She looked back to her stat window, wanting to finish her thought process on feats.

Now that she’d seen how valuable feats could be, she wanted as many as she could get. After Winter’s Master, she planned to experiment with a possible Spring’s Master and carry on, getting all of the seasonal master feats if she could. She also decided it would be worth doing some research on other feats she could get. Even if they didn’t directly impact cold classes, if they gave her any benefit at all they’d be worth it.