The house felt strangely silent with Caiden and Adriana gone. It was funny how fast things changed and became normal. Either way there was stuff that needed to be done so they got back to work. They kept expecting to see the kids walk through the woods making their way back to the farm. But unfortunately, or fortunately Aiden must have accepted them back as they didn’t come back that evening. Or even the one after that.
It was a week before the kids came to visit again. “Is he treating you alright?” Bjorn asked.
“He mainly ignores us. Which was better than he used to do by a long shot. But he seems to be slightly better, in over a week we haven’t seen him drink once. He also cleaned up the house and it seems to be tidier, he actually made dinner last night. I don’t think I have ever seen him do that.” Adriana replied.
After several other questions it seemed like things were better in the home life, but still not great. At least he no longer beat the kids, at least not yet, only time would tell if that happened. They ended up spending most of the day with Bjorn and Meira. The industry of progress stops for no one so they hopped in and helped out where it was needed.
The whole group spent the day together talking as they had over the course of the summer. It was nice and peaceful. At first there seemed to be a little bit of hesitation from the kids as if they were afraid of Bjorn and Meira being upset with them for moving back in with their father. As the day went on though that tension seemed to dissipate and things returned to normal.
The whole day everyone worked together on the shell for the water mill. A few weeks later they had finished building the external wall enough to where they wanted to implement the next part, so stone work came to a halt. The back wall was continuous except for a single hole that they left in the stone. It was roughly 18 inches in diameter and almost a perfect circle. Before they went any farther on construction Bjorn lined the stone circle with a piece of leather that he affixed into place with some specialized nails he had Chrome make. Then Meira took some animal fat that they got from the neighbor's slaughtered pig. She rendered it down and slathered it on the leather.
Next they spent a day searching for a tree just slightly less than 18 inches and made sure it had the same diameter throughout its entire length. After they cut it down to the right length that they needed they delimbed it and stripped all of the bark. Finally they wrapped the trunk in one place with another piece of leather. To finish it out they applied another generous helping of rendered fat onto the leather and fixed it into place.
With that done the final piece of the puzzle was they needed to slot it into place. The log was nearly 18 inches in diameter and roughly 16 feet long. To fit it into the stone hole was quite the task. That actually took quite a while as the log was too large to fit into the bag of holding and the portable pocket. What they ended up building was a bigger version of the saw horses that they built for the carpentry shed. It took a few days but they ended up with a way to move the log into place. They set it up and placed the log on top of the saw horses and cranked the log into place. Finally they pushed it into place so that the leather of the hole lined up with the leather on the log.
The next thing that they had to do was work on building the water wheel. Bjorn took several days making planks while Meira began work on the end of the log. They ended up making a series of planks around 7 feet long that could be fitted together to make a circle. They then made a second set that they could layer over the top of the first set at a 90 degree angle. This would lock both sets in place and give the structure plenty of strength.
Getting the wood in place and attached was difficult as the length of the wood made it sit into the water. As they affixed the planks into place they had to slowly rotate the log and use their fasteners on the newly freed wood that was soaked. Finally they finished the work and moved on to making the second set of wheels. After the second set was in place the next thing they had to do was make the slats that gave the water wheel its power.
Two weeks after they started work on the water wheel they had finished it. It was by no means a fast rotation, which is what they wanted. The water wheel slowly spun as the river flowed. The leather soaked in rendered pig fat was working surprisingly well. It was functioning just like a ball bearing, just a rudimentary bearing. With that finished they began work on the rest of the structure.
Bjorn and Meira spent all of the winter making stone blocks and putting them in place slowly building up the walls of the building. Finally they had the walls to the height they wanted. They started work on the stone floor, as they had no clay tiles for the roof, and if they were going through all this effort to build this building there was no reason to skimp on the roof.
One thing that did happen during the winter was Bjorn finally got a new skill. He spent almost all of the time where he wasn’t working on the building, or taking care of his husbandly and fatherly duties working on the plans for the grinding mechanism.
He spent hours on hours drawing up and thinking of how the gear mechanism would work. He wanted to devise a mechanism that would allow them to turn on and off the main power that would run the mill as well as be able to power other tools that they decided to make later on. Finally he had something that he thought would work and they got to work on making the gears that would be needed.
In a perfect world they would have made the gears out of metal, but the cost of that would be expensive. One thing that the mass production on earth was good for was making everything cheaper. Metal especially in large quantities still cost a good amount do the the labor that was needed to first mine the ore, then smelt it down, and finally a skilled laborer had to beat the metal into shape. With what they wanted to do the cost of having Chrome make the gears wouldn’t be worth the longevity that they would get out of the gears.
So they went forward with making the gears out of wood. When they finished making the first gear Bjorn got a prompt.
You have gained the skill: engineering. There are many different ways to power in the Eld. There is no right or wrong way to progress. Each different way has its benefits and drawbacks. Today you have started the journey of harnessing the natural world in an unnatural way to gain power. This power is more subtle than others, but the snowball effect of industry can lead to nations of machines and tools and even weapons.
When Bjorn read the prompt about engineering he thought that it was a bit dramatic. Sure there was power in harnessing the world around him to make their lives easier. Then he thought about it. Back on earth great wonders were built, sky scrapers, massive machines that could move thousands of pounds of dirt and rock in moments, and even giant metal tubes that screamed across the sky at extreme speeds. All of those wonders were possible because of engineering, he would be a fool to discount the wonders that could be achieved with engineering.
Granted he was a long long long way away from being able to achieve even a fraction of that. Afterall it took literally thousands of years for humanity to go from simple gearboxes that the ancient Greeks used to the modern gearbox that was common in any manual car.
Either way he was still happy to have progressed and gained a new skill. That was how they spent the rest of the winter, building gears for this contraption. It was a mix between enjoyable and frustrating as Meira didn’t understand the concepts that Bjorn was talking about. More than a few fights were had due to Meira not understanding the idea of tolerances and Bjorn was not kind about it. He didn’t mean to but truth be told it was frustrating.
By the time the spring rolled around they had the gears mostly made and the contraption that housed the gears mostly made. Now all that was needed to be done was install it, something that they put off for the time being. The reasoning behind that was that the mechanism was almost delicate with how it would move, as well as it was fairly tight and well put together. They had spent several months making and then remaking new gears that fell outside of the accepted tolerance of the contraption. If the wood got wet and it swelled it would cause damage to the contraption that would be a bitch to fix. So they decided to hold off until they had a roof for the mill.
The ground was still too wet for them to plant when the trade caravan came to town. So Bjorn and Meira packed up their goods, crops, and the potions that Bjorn always made in preparation to sell at the small pop up market. As they made their way into town they were met by Caiden and Adriana who joined them on their trip. At the hip of both they carried their daggers. It brought a smile to Bjorn’s lips to see how proud they were and happy with their birthday gifts.
Eventually they made their way all the way into town and set up their booth. By the time they made it into town there were tons of smiling faces as people were waiting for the pair. Their alchemy stall had become the most popular stall at the market. There were several people who offered to help set up so they could buy their potions sooner and move on with their day.
Around mid-day Bjorn got up from behind their table and made his way over to the magic trader, the only trader he truly cared about. Anything else that he needed he was able to either make himself or have someone in Leefside make it for him. Even though he gained the enchanting skill he still had no real idea how to enchant, or make skill books, or spell books. All in all the magic vendor had the most interesting things for sale.
The man saw Bjorn approaching and his eyes lit up. From what Bjorn could tell he was the only person who actually bought from this merchant in Leefside. Not many cared or had the money to buy from this merchant. “Ah Bjorn, it is good to see your smiling face!”
“Good to see you too, friend. How have the roads been of late?”
“Surpisingly calm. We did pick up a stranger in the woods a week back though. He said he was lost and looking for a nearby town. We gave him a ride but he gave me the hrhrhr. If you understand what I mean.” The sound was made by shaking his head with his lips loose. He shook his entire body as if there was a chill that ran through it.
“Oh? Why is that?”
“I don’t rightly know, there is just something about the man that is slightly off. Ah there he is now.” His eyes were gazing in the direction of Bjorn’s booth.
Bjorn turned around and saw the man. He was a tall man, with a well built frame. There weren't any tall tail signs of an elf, or any other race in him, meaning he was without a doubt a human. He had bright orange hair and a crooked bent nose. His forearms were thin and thigh with muscle, as if he was used to hard work. While Bjorn’s eyes settled on the man he got a slight feeling of unease, though he couldn’t tell why.
He was bent over the table that Meira was sitting at, looming over her. Both of his hands were on the table as he leered down at the beautiful elf. As Bjorn watched he could see Meira's face screw up with first annoyance, then it turned to anger, then disgust. Interested with the interaction he excused himself and started making his way over to the exchange. As he drew nearer he used W.A.I.L.A. on the man.
“I already told you once sleezeball. I have a husband, now if you aren't going to buy anything then shove off. On second thought I won't sell you anything even if you wanted to buy it. So get away from my table.”
By the time it escalated to that point Bjorn had made it over to the two. “What seems to be going on here love?”
Both Meira and Jarred turned to look at the intruder. Jarred opened his mouth to speak but Meira beat him to it. “Jarred here was just leaving. Weren't you?” The last two words were less of a question and more of a command.
When Bjorn got a look at Jarred's face he was just as greasy from the front as he looked from the back. Upon seeing the intruder he quickly seized up Bjorn and decided it wasn't worth the fight that would inevitably come from standing his ground right now. “That I was. If you ever get tired of this.” He basically spat when he said this. “Boy, my offer still stands and you can come play with the men.” With that the man turned and slinked off into the crowd.
Bjorn then made his way around the table and took a seat right next to Meira. “What was that about?” He asked in a quiet tone as he leaned in so he could speak directly into her ear.
“The creep said he had a remedy that he had been cooking up all day that he could give to me. He said that as he none too discreetly grabbed his junk. Then he told me that it is best when injected orally.” She shuddered at the thought of the comment.
“He gives me the creeps.” Bjorn said. “I can’t put my finger on it, but something about him just feels off.”
“I agree. We should keep our eye on him. He gives me the feeling like he would touch little kids.”
Bjorn snorted with a laugh. “I shouldn’t laugh, but I think you are right. We should keep our eyes on him.”
“Anyways, it’s getting late, let's pack up, the Jenkinson's invited us over for dinner and offered us their spare room.”
“They have a spare room?”
“Don’t you remember, their son left for Leeward this spring he went to-...”
They spent that night at their friends house and in the morning they were slow as they were in no hurry for the day. It was early morning when Bjorn, Meira, and Alaric finally left their friends house and started making their way back home. On the way out of town though they stopped by the magic merchants' stall again as Bjorn hadn’t really had time to look through his wares.
There wasn’t anything too crazy that they would want to pick up, no new spells or anything of the sort. He told them that he learned his lesson with the soul trap and soul stone books that they bought. He was very adamant that he would never buy a spell book again. One thing that he had that surprised Bjorn was magical herbs. As any good trader does he keeps his eyes out for anything anyone might need or want. With the fact that Bjorn was an alchemist he put in extra effort to collect herbs that weren’t native to their region.
Being a good friend, and appreciating the effort Bjorn didn’t really haggle when he bought the herbs. They would be useful in a number of potions and remedies. After their purchase they made their way back to the farm and quickly worked together to transplant the new herbs into their newly expanded garden. That was one thing that they appreciated about the merchant caravan, they came in the spring so anything that they brought could be planted or of use when people stopped hibernating for the winter.
Things quickly fell back into routine. After years of this farming life for Bjorn and Meira the days started to blend together a little bit. Not necessarily in a bad way. It is just that they had spent so much time doing the same thing day after day that it became almost benign. That's not to say that they didn’t still enjoy what they did. The slow days, lackadaisical feeling, and slow progress as they shaped the land to fit their needs. It was rewarding on a level that their time adventuring never was.
One evening as they were sitting out their back door and watching the suns go down, Meira asked Bjorn a question. “Do you ever miss our old life?”
It was a bit before Bjorn answered. He sat there drinking in the landscape. As the suns slowly went down the massive puffy clouds were slowly shifting through half a dozen different colors. In the ten minutes between question and answer the clouds slowly shifted from white to yellow to orange to red to blue to finally grey. During that same time Alaric was moving through the grass alternating between plucking grass and hunting down bugs that ran, jumped, and crawled away from him.
He took a sip of his tea that they grew and brewed in the kitchen that they built together, and sweetened by the honey that they collected from the hive that they cared for. Afterwards he pulled his wife in close and held her as she snuggled into his chest.
“No, I don’t miss that. I miss our friends, the ones that we lost on our way. I miss Alaric’s smile. His charming and yet somehow annoying constant dialog usually talking shit. I miss Tayla’s playful mischievousness. I miss Rickie’s steadfast presence, somehow the barbarian seemed to be the most centered and calm out of all of us.”
He kissed the top of her head. “But I love the life that we have built here for us. I am proud of what we have done, who you are, who we created. I love our son with all my heart. If somehow I have the ability to go back and do it all again. If somehow us meeting that mauler was inevitable I would still have chosen the life we have now.”
Meira was quiet for a while after she heard Bjorn’s answer. Finally after both of the suns went down and night was beginning to fall across the land she spoke. “I agree.” She pulled herself away from Bjorn ever so slightly, just enough so she could twist in his grip and be facing him. “I love you, I am proud of you, I wouldn’t trade a single day for a hundred years the other way.”
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
Bjorn laughed, though Meira never understood why he laughed. She got confused and her mind started to wander as he began talking about music from earth, and then talking about country music.
Over the next several months life was good. They made massive leaps and bounds on building the mill. Almost all of the walls were finished and windows were in place in the walls. Finally they had the walls in place enough that they got to build their now familiar clay roof. Once they had the roof built far enough that it could cover the majority of the interior of the building they moved on to the next step.
All throughout their construction the waterwheel had been slowly turning and with it the log it was attached to. During the months of constant flow from the fall until the spring they kept an eye on both the grease soaked leather and the wood. It was holding up surprisingly well with the constant strain and rotation the water wheel was under.
Upon closer inspection they found that there had actually been no wear on the leather on leather, as well as on the wood from rotating. What he found out through the inspection was that the leather actually consisted of thousands of tiny fibers that looked like hairs. With the constant slow rotation both pieces of leather rubbed against one another and aligned the fibers which actually strengthened the material in that particular direction. The only thing that they had to do to make sure that the wheel continued to function without issue was apply more grease to the connection and let it run.
There was only one time since the wheel was made that they had to do any repair work on it. Something had managed to knock one of the paddles of the wheel off so they had to replace it. Other than that the wheel part was working just as intended. It was a little difficult to replace the paddle as there was no way for them to reasonably stop the wheel. They decided that they had to come up with some sort of stopping mechanism but that wasn't a big issue for now.
With the almost pristine condition the connection was in they were able to move forward. Seeing how the outside structure of the mill was almost finished they decided to chance putting the gear box in place. But before it could go in place they had to build a frame to hold it in place. That took a day to build the frame and make sure it was in just the right spot, after they had to reinforce it so the box wasn't going to go anywhere.
It took some effort as the gear box was around 3 feet by 2 feet by 3 feet. Eventually they got it in place and then attached the mechanism that they could use to connect or disconnect the box from power. Finally they were able to test the box that they spent months working on and developing.
Bjorn threw the lever and with a loud clunk the gears inside the box began to rotate in time with the rotating log. Bjorn threw his arms up in victory as Meira began to bounce around in joy. They high fived, hugged, and then kissed, happy that the effort didn't go to waste. To make sure that they didn't put any undue strain on the gear box Meira flipped the lever and the gears quickly came to a halt. With all of that in place they began finishing up with the exterior of the building.
One thing that was equal parts annoying and worrying, Jarred ended up electing to stay in Leefside when the merchants left. Unfortunately he seemed to be finding his place in the village and people were starting to like him. How they didn't get the creeps from him was beyond Bjorn but the man was odd.
At first he thought that he was just being unfair to Jarred, that he was being prejudiced against him for what he said to Meira. As time went on though his first impression just continued to become reinforced. It wasn’t anything major, it was the small moments here and there whenever Jarred was around.
When he and Meira would walk through town they could often find Jarred giving a look of both lust and anger when he looked at them. At town events he would catch Jarred leering after young thin girls. The man would make small comments in passing like. “Watch out.” or “Looking tasty.” The only major downside was he would only seem to do those things when others weren’t around, or weren’t paying attention.
When he was not being watched he would have a large charismatic smile on his face. He told jokes, helped out his neighbors, and was good with the children. The fact that everyone else only ever seemed to have nice things to say about Jarred just furthered their mistrust of that man. Unfortunately he was becoming such an integrated part of the town that they couldn’t do anything without real reason. The man was careful and never slipped up around others.
So instead of doing something about the man they decided all they were going to do was keep an eye on him and make sure he can’t get away with anything in Leefside. This was hardly the first time that they wished that Tayla was still alive, she would be able to catch him out. They didn’t have the same skills and intuition that she had.
On more happier notes though Alaric was growing up fast and making major leaps and bounds. He was able to fully walk on his own and oftentimes did so without any complaint even when they had to travel far.
He was smart. Every parent thinks that their kids are smart but Alaric was. They rarely had to tell Alaric anything and he just did what was needed. For example when Bjorn was putting the stone blocks in place for the wall of the mill Alaric would sit in the corner watching his dad work. Unlike most kids who would run over with no regard for their safety Alaric was not like that. He would sit patiently in the corner well out of the way and wait for his father to finish before coming over. He never was in the way or under foot.
While Meira was in the herb garden or in the fields pulling weeds Alaric would watch at first with his deep blue intelligent eyes. After a few minutes he would follow along with his mother, maybe a few feet over and his eyes would be searching the ground. Whenever there was a weed or a plant growing where it wasn’t wanted he would stop, squat down and pull the weed.
In the evenings when they liked to sit out the backdoor and watch the suns go down Alaric would be playing in the grass. He never would walk anywhere near the edge of the cliff. It was the same with inside the house, he never played on the stairs, he never was in the way. He would never run around the house where he could run into anything and end up injured. He was careful and both self aware and spatial aware, well beyond what a child his age should be.
If Alaric wasn’t their son it would be almost disconcerting. It was as if he was 12 or 13 in terms of his mental capabilities and spatial awareness was well beyond his years. He also very quickly picked up words. It didn’t take him long to have enough words to start to string simple sentences together. In even a shorter amount of time he was able to speak in full on constructed sentences. His syntax was immaculate and his vocabulary was impressive for a child who was not even 2 yet.
The mental capabilities of Alaric only continued to grow as the spring turned into summer, and slowly started to turn towards fall. The only downside, if you could even call it that, was that Alaric developed physically the same if not a little slower than the other kids in the village. He was scrawny and lacked some of the fine motor skills that are common in kids around his age. Not that it was a major hindrance, he used his brains to make up for his lack of physical growth and strength.
As summer began to turn into fall they finished up work on the exterior of the mill and turned their attention to the interior of the building. The whole mechanism was currently wasted as they didn’t have anything to use all of the power they were harnessing from the river. Bjorn planned to remedy that.
The main plan for the mill part of the mill was to make a complex system of both shafts and gears that could be used to rotate a stone affixed to a shaft. That in of itself would be useless without something for it to grind against, so they needed to bring in a stone block for the stone to grind the various grains into flour. That was the first order of business.
They spent two whole days first finding a stone of the right size roughly that they would want. It needed to be around 3 feet tall and roughly the same size in diameter. Once they had the stone they quickly cut off any excess stone that they didn’t need, with Bjorn’s advanced skill in masonry that job was quite easy to do and didn’t take long. Afterwards though they needed to move the stone into place, and that was where the majority of the time went. Moving that size of stone was close to 2500 lbs. Even with the reduced weight for Bjorn the 1250 lbs that he would have to move was well beyond what his strength attribute could handle. On top of that it was too large to go within the bag of holding.
What they ended up doing was exactly what old Egyptians did to move heavy stones, kind of. Instead of using copious amounts of slaves they took one of the two ways they moved them. They made a bunch of small logs that could roll and then used their combined strength to roll the stone. That was what took the most amount of time. Unsurprisingly it took a considerable amount of time to roll the stone across the forest floor, as they had to clear underbrush and level out the more extreme slopes.
One unforeseen interaction was that his weight reduction to stone only seemed to apply when his hands were physically on the stone itself. While he was pulling on a rope that was attached to the stone the weight wasn’t reduced. Something that ended up being kind of annoying.
Eventually they got the stone back to the house and over the bridge. As they were bringing it into the mill its weight as well as the slight 45 degree drop 3 feet down into the basement gave the stone enough momentum to break a part of the stone floor that they had already put into place. After much swearing they got the stone settled below the mechanism they had already begun making.
Once they repaired the broken floor the next order of business was chiseling the trough that the grains would sit in. As Bjorn slowly worked on that he was being very careful. It was uncommon by this point for him to over use his strength and more of the stone than was intended chipped off. Just to be on the safe side he wanted to make sure that didn’t happen. If there was an issue with the trough they would have to either live with it or replace the boulder than they spend 2 days and many arguments moving into place.
After three days of slow pain staking work he managed to fully cut the trough into the bolder so that the stone that they had crafted would fit into the groove and could both stand up on its own and fit snuggly into the groove while having around an inch of room on the sides so that the stone wouldn’t run into the sides.
While Bjorn built, Meira made the wooden mechanism that would be attached to the stone that would rotate and start to grind down the grains. The most impressive part of the whole contraption was something that Meira came up with on her own. She talked to Chrome and got him to make a rudimentary spring. She then attached it in such a way that it could put constant down pressure on the arm that the stone was attached to so as it span it would have the force to grind. Then she put the arm on a free swivel point at the end of her contraption.
The end product was a stone that could run on its own as the power from the waterwheel would spin it as long as the gearbox was engaged. The stone attached to the wooden arm but wasn’t affixed. She used wooden pegs on either side of the stone so that it could spin freely while not sliding off the arm it was attached to. Then whenever she wanted to fill the trough with grain she could move the stone out of the way, fill it, then place it back in the trough so it could grind the grain. The entire contraption worked surprisingly well.
All of this was for the simple fact that they could finally get flour automatically. Every two to three days she needed to spend several hours grinding up the flour that they would use in their baking. She never complained about it since bread was an important part of their diet and she loved baking it. They basically spent the entire summer building this building to save meira 6 to 7 hours of work each week. Worth it? Definitely.
The summer quickly turned into fall and soon it was time for harvest once again. It was rather uneventful as they made their way in towards town pulling all of the crops in for everyone. Bjorn briefly marveled at the fact that everyone was willing to help everyone else out with their harvest each year. All for no profit. They did it because it was the right thing to do, and if the time ever came that you were in trouble or got injured your neighbors would help you out. The type of thing that would never happen back on earth, least of all in the United States.
Everything was normal as always all of the crops got pulled in and then the town began working on getting ready for the harvest festival. They made their way into town with Alaric in tow and met up with their neighbors as they went. By the time they made it into Leefside they had a group of near 20 all in high spirits as they were going to party.
The day and into the evening was lovely as everyone was enjoying the light atmosphere. That was until Jarred decided to ruin Bjorn and Meira’s night. He of course had to push the boundaries as the night went on and people started to get deep in their cups.
He came up behind Meira where she was sitting and put his hands on her shoulders. At first she didn’t react as she thought it was one of their friends. “You're looking lovely as always, Meira.” He said in his oily voice. It was obvious that he was trying to be charming, instead he just came across as creepy.
Meira recoiled as soon as she heard Jarred’s voice from behind her. “Don’t you touch me ever again. If you do, you won’t be able to touch anything ever again.” There was fire in her voice.
Jarred just smiled down at her. “One day I am going to get my hands on you, and there is nothing you can do about it.”
Bjorn took a deep breath and let out a heavy sigh and stood from the table. He turned to face Jarred, at the same time he stepped in close to the slightly shorter man and looked down at him. “Jarred, why do you always have to be creepy? This has been a lovely night and there is no reason for you to ruin it for us. I am giving you this one chance to walk away before I take matters into my own hands.”
He took another small step further invading the man’s personal space. He spoke in a low voice so that the only people who could hear him were Jarred and Meira. “I am sure by now you have heard what I had to do to Aiden. Don’t make me do that to you. And if you ever lay hands on my wife again I will introduce you to the definition of pain. By the time I am done with you you’ll be begging for death.”
Defiance flared in Jarred’s eyes for a brief moment before he seemed to think better of it. Instead he took a step back from Bjorn and said. “One day you will regret that threat.”
“I highly doubt that. Now begone knuckle dragger, and go ruin your own night by yourself.”
He turned and left after that. There was something about his tone that didn’t quite sit right with Bjorn and Meira so they collected Alaric after a few minutes and went to bed. That night they talked about how odd the interaction was.
A week later Bjorn had an errand he had to run to town for. During harvest they chipped the blade of their scythe and needed to get it repaired. So he took it into Chrome to let the rotund dwarf work his magic.
On his way back home he pulled open his character sheet and marveled at the skill growth he had made over the last two years.
You have advanced your skill level in alchemy, reaching skill level 41. Potions you make will have 41% increased effect and 82% increased duration of effect.
You have advanced your skill level in archery, reaching skill level 28. Damage from arrows you shoot is increased by 42% over base damage.
You have advanced your skill level in bowyering, reaching skill level 7. The arrows and bows you create have a 7% chance to increase in quality.
You have advanced your skill level in carpentry. reaching skill level 28. Durability of wooden items you build will be increased by 70%.
Congratulations you have advanced from a novice carpenter to an apprentice carpenter. You have gained a perk. You are able to see flaws in wood before you start to work with it.
You have advanced your skill level in climbing. reaching skill level 8. Scaling objects with handholds has become 48% easier.
Congratulations you have advanced in the skill: Cooking, you are now skill level 25. Your attempts to make an edible meal have increased by 25%.
Congratulations you have advanced from a novice chef to an apprentice chef. You have gained a perk. You have lost the benefit of the chance to make an edible meal. Instead you have gained a percent chance that anyone who eats your meals will have an attribute increased for a duration.
New bonus: Meals that you create will have a 25% chance to increase the imbibers attributes for a short duration.
You have advanced your skill level in construction, reaching skill level 29. Buildings you build will have 58% increased durability.
Congratulations you have advanced from a novice builder to an apprentice builder. You have gained a perk. The maximum number of people you may have working under you is increased to 25.
You have advanced your skill level in road building, reaching skill level 18. Roads and path that you build will increase movement speed along them by 18% and increase the durability of the road by 36%
You have advanced your skill level in the skill: Engineering. Reaching skill level 6. Items you make related to this skill have a chance to not lose durability. They have a 6% chance to not lose durability when their durability would be reduced.
Congratulations you have advanced your skill level in farming, reaching skill level 37. Crops and herbs that you cultivate from a sprout have 74% increased yields.
Congratulations, you have advanced in your skill: Gardening. You have reached level 19. Plants under your care are 76% less likely to be affected by diseases.
You have advanced your skill level in hand to hand combat. reaching skill level 15. Blows you land with bare fists and legs now deal 30% extra damage.
You have advanced your skill level in herb-lore. reaching skill level 24. The efficacy of plants and herbs you collect will increase by 72%.
You have advanced your skill level in Leatherworking, reaching skill level 11. Durability of items that you make will be increased by 11%.
Congratulations you have advanced from a beginner leatherworker to a novice leatherworker. You have gained a perk. You may expend 100 stamina to repair the durability of leather by 10%.
Congratulations, you have advanced in your skill: Masonry. You have reached level 38. Stone structures you build with the stone you work with will have their durability increased by 76%. You also have 76% increased working speed while making stone products.
You have advanced your skill level in small blades, reaching skill level 9. Your attacks with daggers and knives now deal 18% more damage over base value. Additionally critical strikes done with your small blades will deal 9% more damage.
You have advanced your skill level in stealth, reaching skill level 14. You will now be 56% harder to spot while stealthing.
Congratulations you have advanced in the skill: Survival, you are now skill level 11. You are now more likely to see dangerous situations before you are in them.
You have advanced your skill level in tracking, reaching skill level 12. The tracks that creatures leave as they travel through the world make just a little more sense to you.
Congratulations you have advanced from a beginner tracker to a novice tracker. You have gained a perk. You may now expend up to 5 stamina per second to brighten any particular track that you are trying to follow up to 2x brighter. This can highlight tracks that have no discernible trace for you to follow.
You have advanced your skill level in trade, reaching skill level 17. Items you buy and sell prices will be 8.5% more in your favor, this also includes bartering.
You have advanced your skill level in woodcutting, reaching skill level 23. You will do 57.5% more damage to trees and wooden objects.
You have advanced your skill level in light magic. reaching skill level 16. You have unlocked the ability to learn higher level spells.
You have advanced your skill level in fire magic. reaching skill level 3. You have unlocked the ability to learn higher level spells.
You have advanced your skill level in water magic. reaching skill level 24. You have unlocked the ability to learn higher level spells.
You have advanced your skill level in sonic magic. reaching skill level 7. You have unlocked the ability to learn higher level spells.
As Bjorn walked he was distracted by the musings of how much he was able to grow and how much they had accomplished over the last 4 years that Meira and he had moved to their little piece of land and started a farm.
When he grew closer to the farm Alaric saw him coming and started running towards him as he often did when one of his parents left for town. He would sit on top of the bridge and wait there patiently all day for them to come home. “Dada!” He exclaimed in excitement as he hopped down from his perch and ran to his dad.
A smile crossed Bjorn’s face at hearing his son’s excitement. The joy on Alaric’s face morphed into worry as a more concerned “Dada! Watch out!” Left his lips.
In reaction Bjorn dropped into a fighting stance and started to whip around to see what had made Alaric react the way that he did. As he was turning something hit him on the side of his face and his world went dark.
