Bjorn took a closer look at his new hand.

  “Well shit.” Bjorn said out loud. Not that anyone could hear him as Adriana was still in her trial. Now that he had his hand back he hadn’t thought at first that it would be a double edged sword. He looked down at the hand contemplating if it was worth keeping or trying to find another way to regenerate his hand. He did purchase basic regeneration from his ‘Latent Potential’ perk. Which would mean that he would regrow his hand in roughly a year's time.

  He weighed his options trying to decide what the best course of action would be. On one hand having access to his second hand would definitely be a boon, it would make his quest definitely worth it. On the other his body was slowly being consumed by the bloodroot spriggon and it would eventually kill him in the process. He had no idea how long it would take for the parasite to take over his body. Was it worth it?

  As he was contemplating his choice the veins of green energy that were running through the taproot slowly began to turn red as the parasite began to greedily drink in his blood. The sight was actually quite unnerving. He made up his mind. This wouldn’t be the best way to regain his hand, it ultimately would consume his body fully, it wasn’t a risk that was worth taking.

  With his mind made up he reached down and picked up the ax that he used to sever his stump and was positioning his hand so he could cut away the parasite when Adriana must have finished her trial because the light in the middle of the room winked out briefly and her knees buckled, she collapsed to the floor in a heap.

  Forgetting his plight with his hand for a moment he made his way over to where she was laying. She was unconscious which Bjorn took for a bad sign, kneeling down next to her he began casting a spell. Its 15 second cast time passed in a flash as Bjorn cast create water. Upon completion a spout of water appeared at the tip of his fingers and began to pour down onto Adriana’s face. He channeled the spell for exactly one second before he let the magic fade. One gallon of water splashed down on Adriana during that duration.

  It did the trick as the water slammed into her face. She sat upright, sputtering and coughing. “What the fuck?” She exclaimed, looking around for the asshole who rudely woke her up from her nap.

  “Sorry.” Bjorn said not really sorry at all. “I thought that maybe you had failed your trial and were dying. You were unresponsive.” Bjorn lied. “I wanted to try the water and see if that woke you up.”

  She narrowed her eyes at Bjorn, annoyed at being rudely woken up by water getting poured on her face. The annoyance quickly faded as she took in Bjorn’s hand, correction, hands. “You have two hands again.” She said excitement in her voice.

  He nodded. “Yes, I do. It was my reward for passing the trials. Only time will tell if it really was a reward. I was actually thinking about getting rid of it.”

  “Why would you do that? Isn’t this what you wanted? To regain your hand?”

  “Yes and no.” Bjorn replied, he then filled her in with everything he had learned about the hand since it had become attached to him.

  “I see why you were wanting to get rid of it. Are you sure that is the best course of action right now? You said so yourself, we are going to need all of the advantages we can get. I have a feeling like this hand will be a boon in the days to come.”

  “I know, but there are too many unknowns. This parasite, or creature, or item. However you want to classify it as having too many things that we don’t know. What if it only takes a month for the Taproot to fully consume my body? Then I will never be able to take Kairon down. I won’t be able to avenge Meira. I don’t think the risk is worth it.”

  Adriana chewed on her bottom lip as she thought. Eventually she nodded. “You are right. I feel deep down that you are probably right. So what do we want to do about it?”

  “Well the thing is still weak as it just got attached to my body. I think maybe if we cut it off it might kill it.”

  “Worth a shot.”

  “My thoughts exactly. You take the ax and I will place my hand on that pedestal, chop with all of your might. Let’s see if we can kill this thing.”

  With that Bjorn put his hand on the pedestal and Adriana positioned herself perpendicular to where he was standing. She raised the ax high over her head and swung down with all of her might. It took a surprisingly high number of chops to cut away the hand, 9 swings in total. Each time the ax fell an ache began to grow in his arm. At first it was a dull ache, by the time it reached the 9th and final swing the ache had grown into blinding pain. It felt just like the two separate times now that his hand and then lower arm had been cut off.

  Finally when the hand was cut away no blood came pouring out of the wound. Instead before his very eyes he could see the hand start to grow back. It was by no means fast, but the wood and bark that made up his new hand was without a doubt growing back. At the same time that the hand began to regrow there was a sucking and draining feeling coming throughout his arm. As he watched his own stamina began to slowly fall.

  “This mother fucker.” Bjorn said. “It's feeding off of me and stealing my stamina to regrow itself.” He sighed. “I don’t think that we are going to get rid of this thing that easily. Well shall we go?”

  “Wait. I haven’t claimed my reward yet.” Adriana said.

  “What you passed?” Bjorn asked, surprised. “I assumed seeing how you collapsed that you failed. Which one did you get?”

  “Give me a second.” Adriana said, holding up a finger. Her eyes got that distant almost glassy look that meant she was looking at her Hud. After a few seconds a smile spread across her face. “I got the ability orb I think. It was called the shrine of growth. I have a feeling that the shrine of growth isn’t the blade.”

  Bjorn wasn’t entirely sure that was the case. He had heard of growth items that could grow stronger through use. But he was willing to believe Adriana’s gut feeling. However he got excited at the thought of a weapon that grew stronger through the slaughter of his enemies.

  “Alright then, go collect your orb and we can get on the road.” Bjorn said.

  She nodded and walked over to the pedestal holding the orb that Bjorn was pretty sure held an ability. When she drew near she slowed down her movements. He watched carefully if there was a sign of an attack in any way at all he would pull her away from the pedestal. Their caution didn’t seem to matter however as she was able to retrieve the orb from the stone without any issue.

  The exact same thing happened this time that happened when Bjorn collected the Taproot. As soon as the item passed the bounds of the shield the stone pillar cracked and crumbled. This caused Adriana to have to jump back to avoid being squished by the falling stone.

  She held the orb up in her hand examining it in the light. Then she held it out to Bjorn. “Use your identifying ability on it.”

  Bjorn nodded and complied with her request.

  Upon reading the description of this item his first thought was “How do I get more?” His second thought was that he needed to share the description of the item with Adriana.

  Once he had done so Adriana looked at the bead in her hand with reverence. “Legendary? Wow. What do I do with it?”

  Bjorn started to make his way out of the room and called over his shoulder back at Adriana. “You eat it, duh. If you don’t eat it then give it to me and I will. Come on, we are wasting time.”

  She looked down at the orb for a second and then decided to follow after Bjorn. She tucked the orb away and hurried after him. When they were both at ground level again they were surprised to see that the suns were low on the horizon. Checking their internal clocks they found that it was late in the day, they had been in their trials for nearly 14 hours.

  Bjorn swore under his breath. “We lost a lot of time. Let’s get moving, might as well try and make up some of the ground between us and Blackrock Bay. If we hurry we might be able to beat them there.” With that he set off in a light jog, Adriana followed after him.

  They traveled until the suns went down. They weren’t following any particular path as they headed south. They had Bjorn’s map that allowed them to know where they were in relation to Blackrock Bay which made it significantly easier to make their way south. They found a nice defensible location for them to set up for the night.

  Once they were settled in for the night as they ate their evening meal of hard tack and bread Adriana pulled out her ability bead. “So I just eat it?”

  Bjorn nodded at her. “That is what I did. I just ate mine, granted I have no idea what happened after I ate it as I passed out from a lack of oxygen as a group of gnolls were trying to smoke me out of my hidey hole. When I awoke I had the ability to identify items.”

  She nodded and then swallowed nervously. “Alright then, here I go.” She took the ability bead and put it in her mouth. It was a large item and it was hard for her to force herself to swallow the item. She tried chewing it at first but it felt like she was trying to bite down on glass so she stopped that immediately. Eventually she managed to swallow and the bead made its way down her throat.

  For about 5 minutes nothing happened. Then just when she started to relax her body went stiff. A rainbow of colored light began to pour out of her body. It escaped from every hole in her body, as well as her eyes. She shone like a human torch for roughly a minute before the light began to die down and she relaxed. When she finally relaxed her eyes began to flutter before they shot open.

  “Are you alright? How are you feeling?”

  It was a bit before Adriana answered. She slowly began to explore her body with her hands making sure that she was in fact totally fine. Once she had determined that she was still totally intact she replied. “I think I am alright. I don’t know how I feel. I feel light, and grounded at the same time, it’s odd and hard to describe. Give me a second.”

  Her eyes got that distant look again and Bjorn sat watch as she figured out what happened. Finally after what felt like forever she spoke.

  “So I got the ability called Parasitic partner, which you knew that already. Based on the description I am able to form a bond with someone. The bond lasts exactly 1 month. During that month I steal 25% of the experience that they earn. They do all of the work and I get the benefit, regardless of how far away they are from me. There are a few criteria though. To form the bond I have to touch the person for 1 minute. If I lose touch for even a moment the entire bond is ruined. I am able to form 1 bond every month. They don’t have to be willing participants. The last one is that If the person I am bonded to dies during that month I lose all of the experience I have earned from both the stolen xp and my own gains during that time. It also will be harder for me to regain that experience.”

  Bjorn sat there in stunned silence. That ability is amazing. Briefly he was filled with envy and he wished he had gotten the ability bead instead of the taproot. She got something that let her power level by stealing from others, he got something that would slowly consume his body. He couldn’t help but feel like he got the short end of the stick in this situation.

  “That sounds amazing. Use it on me.” Bjorn said as soon as his own greed went away. It made sense, currently Adriana was mostly dead weight, she couldn’t do much on her own. The sooner he was able to make her stronger the sooner she could be a greater help in the field. He was still level 9 while she was level 2. The faster they could bridge that gap the better. Even if she stole 25% of all of the experience that Bjorn got he would still grow faster than average. She will steal 37.5% of his 150% xp gain that he got.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Absolutely, use it. Use it now.”

  “Okay. Don’t be mad at me because of this.”

  “Stop fiddlefarting around and use the damn ability on me.” Bjorn said. “We need to get you stronger.”

  She hesitantly moved over and touched him lightly on the arm and she closed her eyes. A slow trickle of warmth began to spread across his body centered on where Adriana was touching his arm. The longer the touch remained the more powerful the warmth was. At a minute a pleasant warmth had spread throughout his whole body that made him want to relax.

  She removed her hand and took a step back. “Alright, the bond has been formed. Now what?”

  “We wait and see.” Bjorn said. “Go to bed, tomorrow morning we need to keep heading towards Blackrock Bay.”

  That night they were going to do their normal watch routine, what ended up happening was that Bjorn fell asleep on watch because he was lost in his own thoughts and didn’t notice how dangerously low his stamina was getting. The taproot had drained him of all of his stamina which made him pass out unintentionally. Adriana slept through the night not waking up at their normal agreed upon time.

  When she did wake up in the morning she found Bjorn passed out with his hand almost reformed. The majority of the hand regrew the only thing that was missing now was the fingers. She momentarily thought about waking Bjorn up but decided against it. He rarely slept these days so she figured he needed all that he could get.

  It was well into morning when Bjorn finally woke up slightly annoyed at his sleeping in. After a few grumblings they set off heading southward. Under proper conditions it was a several week journey south from where they were to the border of Escar and another week south from there to get to Blackrock Bay.

  By that afternoon the taproot finished its regrowth process and he fully had access to his wooden hand again. As they traveled he did a few different tests with the hand. He could feel from the wood, which he thought was weird. It must have tapped into his nervous system and was able to send signals to his brain. It was ever so slightly stiff in comparison to his other hand. Understandable seeing how it was made out of wood. The major surprise was that it was significantly weaker in grip strength than his real hand. He was no expert but he thought it probably had something to do with the hand being level 1 versus his level 9 body with strength enhancement by an additional strength per level.

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  All in all though he was quite happy with the change and free range of motion he had from his wooden hand. Over the last week of travel tracking Kairon he had gotten used to his lack of movable hand. Now however it was almost like he had reunited with a long lost friend. He very quickly got used to having 2 opposable thumbs again. He hadn’t noticed how much he missed it until he had both back.

  They continued traveling south. For some reason Adriana was in a talkative mood on the fourth day as they moved southward. Over the course of the day she asked Bjorn everything and anything she could think about their quarry. Up until now he hadn’t been the most forthcoming with the information he had. He didn’t know why exactly, maybe it was because of her incompetence with fighting, and with the work they were trying to do. Maybe it was because he was still holding on to his time and freedom of expression with Meira. Maybe it was because he was a stubborn asshole who didn’t like to share.

  On the fourth day he wasn’t really in a sharing mood either. As they moved south, Adriana asked Bjorn questions on who they were, what they did, and what he had managed to find out about them. Early on in the day he would answer in short sentences. As the day moved on his short sentences changed to one word answers. Then they became irritable one word answers.

  He wasn’t entirely sure why, it wasn’t fair to Adriana. All she wanted to do was know, but for some reason Bjorn really didn’t want to share. Her continued questions just wore on his patience. By mid day he was getting downright angry at her litany of questions. Some part of his deep, deep, down knew that he was being unreasonable, that she wanted to know and Bjorn wasn’t giving her the answers she wanted. The other part wanted to just be left alone, he hadn’t asked for help on this quest, he knew that it was suicide. There was no need for Adriana to throw her life away as well.

  It all finally came to a head late in the afternoon. “How do you think their party dynamics work? Do they have team leads? Are they broken down into small groups that operate independently?”

  “God damn it Adriana!” Bjorn finally snapped. “I don’t fucking know. Stop asking me god damn it. If I knew or had a clue then I would have given you whatever information I had. Could you shut the fuck up for a few minutes and let me think in peace?”

  Adriana got real quiet and replied. “I’m sorry. I just am trying to figure this all out and I think better out loud.”

  Bjorn began to stalk off totally disregarding and ignoring her apology. He was over her and needed some time. As he made his way through the trees he all of a sudden got light headed. He stopped abruptly and placed his hand on the nearest tree to stabilize himself. In a moment the feeling passed.

  He shook his head to clear it, then he pushed himself off of the tree to try and continue traveling forward. He made it exactly 3 more steps before the feeling of lightheadedness overtook him. In a blur the ground very quickly rose up to meet him and he no longer felt anything.

  When he opened his eyes again he realized that he was laying on some sort of bed with a blanket covering his body. He only got a snippet of that before his mind fled consciousness again.

  The next thing he knew he opened his eyes slightly to see Adriana above him. She held a spoon in her hand and was trying to feed Bjorn. He took a bite of his stew being fed to him before he fell asleep again.

  When he finally woke up he was groggy. He opened his eyes slightly to look around, he was in a small room with various herbs hanging from the ceiling above him. There wasn't much to the room other than the herbs and the bed he was laying in. Next to the bed was a small wooden stool that had a bowl filled with some sort of incense that was slowly burning filling the room with a light smoke.

  “Hello?” Bjorn called out in a hoarse voice.

  There was the sound of wood scraping in wood and then the door opened. In the doorway stood Adriana, her young face filled with worry lines.

  A voice called out from behind her, it was a wizened man's voice. “Shut the door before you let all of that smoke out. He needs it to draw the disease out.”

  Adriana moved to step into the room, but a hand caught her by the upper arm. “Oh no you don't. That smoke will kill you if you don't need it.” He pulled her away from the door and closed it.

  Bjorn, still groggy from being woken up. “What happened?”

  The voice could be heard muffled through the door. “Your friend Adriana told me you two fought a khumat. At least that was what it sounded like based on her description. You're lucky it had to be a juvenile one otherwise there is no way you would have survived. Anyways every khumat carries a disease called ‘summer's kiss’. You must have contracted it. The signs you showed were consistent with summer's kiss.”

  “When you passed out I was worried.” Adriana said.

  When Adriana started speaking Bjorn got a strong feeling of something getting caught in his throat. It was as if he started to choke on something. This brought on a fit of coughing. He tried to dislodge this offensive item that began to block his airways.

  Just when he thought the attempt was futile a large lump of something dislodged from the back of his throat and into his mouth. The lump had the taste and feeling of phlegm, only it was hard as well as slimy. He looked around frantically and eventually saw a bucket sitting on the floor next to him. Picking it up he spit into the bucket. The offending mass was jet black and made a small splatting sound when it hit the bottom of the bucket.

  Grossed out by what just came out of his body he lay back down closing his eyes. Coughing up that phlegm took more effort than he wanted to admit. “Are you okay?” Adriana called out from the other room.

  Instead of answering he just let his mind wander. He didn't want to give her the effort of replying. “How large was the chunk?” The old man's voice called out.

  “About the size of a golf ball.” Bjorn crooked.

  “A what?”

  “The size of a small rock.” Bjorn called out.

  “Ah. So anyways you are suffering from summer's kiss. It is an awfully nasty disease that slowly kills its victims by invading and killing their lungs. It's a simple enough disease to treat if you catch it early. You however managed to somehow last a week at least before its effects took hold. That is quite the accomplishment. For most people it takes 15, maybe 20 hours tops. Do you by chance have some resistance to disease?”

  Bjorn shook his head before realizing the stupidity of shaking his head. “No not that i-.” Bjorn started to reply but he had to stop in the middle of his reply to cough again. This time it was a smaller chunk of phlegm and thus was easier to dislodge. “Sorry. Not that I know of.”

  “Hmmm.” The old voice said.

  “He seems to heal exceptionally fast.” Adriana said.

  “That could be it. Maybe an ability or an inborn trait. It would make sense, maybe your body was fixing the problem faster than the disease could do damage. It must have eventually outstripped your ability to heal. Even though you weren't working through the disease you were still being held together. That makes sense to me.”

  “So what now?” Bjorn asked.

  “Simple, you have to wait until your disease free until then if you leave there is a chance you relapse.”

  Bjorn coughed up another hunk of black mess. “And how long will that take?”

  He could hear the man hemming and hawing on the other side of the door. “Not too much longer, maybe 4 or 5 days. Your case was pretty advanced.”

  “4 or 5 day?!” Bjorn exclaimed and then immediately fell into another fit of coughing.

  “Yeah, maybe sooner if we are lucky.” He got a somber tone in his voice. “Your friend told me about your plight. I wish you could do something more about it. But if you leave now you could very well die.”

  “There is nothing to it I guess.” Bjorn said and lay his head back. Adriana’s voice came through the door but during their talk he had exhausted all of his energy and all he wanted was sleep.

  The next time he gained consciousness he was once again greeted by the sight of the incense burning on the stool. He slowly sat up feeling weakened. This time instead of calling out he decided to check his notifications.

  You have succumbed to an advanced stage of summer’s kiss. Your body will slowly lose strength, endurance, and constitution at the rate of 2 points, one point, and one point respectively per day.

  Your body hasn’t been able to fight off the effects of this disease.

  You have breathed in the incense of summer’s remediation. This has slowed the growth of the disease within your body.

  You have received healing, its nonmagical nature means that it will take time for your body to fully recover. Your body hasn’t thrown off the effects of summer’s kiss and is still infected. The healing you have received has halted the advance of the disease.

  Your body has managed to defeat the disease ‘Summer’s kiss’ As such your body has begun to repair the damage left by the disease. You will regain your strength, endurance, and constitution at the rate of 1 point per day.

  Startled by what he was reading he pulled up his status page to find that endurance and constitution were reduced by 8, while strength was reduced by 18. It was no wonder he felt weak.

  Thinking it through, it had to have meant that he lost attributes for 10 days. 10 days. So much for getting to Blackrock Bay before Kairon’s crew. They were likely almost there already. It took almost two weeks for the healer to stop Bjorn from losing more attributes.

  Finally he called out. “Anyone there?”

  There was a scraping sound again and this time the door opened again. In the door stood a disheveled Adriana. “You're awake.” She said simply and moved into the room.

  “Stop. Last time you couldn’t be in here, he said the incense would kill you.”

  “Not this time.” The man appeared at the door. Bjorn finally got a good look at the man. Before he had been too groggy to really notice anything about the man other than he was old. His mind hadn’t even realized that he was small. He was a species that he hadn’t seen overly much, a sprite. “This time the incense is just to remove the smell of the room.”

  Bjorn was confused. “What smell?”

  The sprite got a wry smile on his face. “How do I say this? Your body for the last two days has been expelling as much material as possible, in both solid and gaseous form, from both holes.”

  That was Bjorn became aware of some mostly solid objects in his pants in his nether regions. “Don’t worry.” The sprite said. “We were going to clean you later today. It won’t do to have you laying in your own filth.

  “Ah.” Bjorn had a million different questions for the assembled party and was at a loss for where to start. Eventually Bjorn settled on. “What happened after I passed out?” Bjorn did some internal searching as to why he had fallen unconscious, after all his new immunity to the unconscious debuff should have prevented that from happening.

  Adriana began to speak. “I didn’t know what to do. You stumbled and fell to the ground. You just looked like you were asleep, but no matter what I tried to rouse you nothing worked. Eventually I decided that I needed to go to get help. There was no way I was going to leave you behind so I created a litter of sorts that I could use to drag you behind me to get you help. It took several days before I came across another town. For those days I tried to feed you and make sure you had drank some water, but I didn’t know what to do.”

  Adriana stopped and made to make a spitting motion, then thought better of it. After all they were guests in this healer’s home. Instead she just continued. “Those bastards did nothing to help me. I clearly needed some help, as I was starting to run low on food.” Her eyes flicked to Bjorn’s bag of holding on the floor next to his bed. “On top of that they basically told me to just keep moving. As I was leaving a little girl ran over to me and told me that if I followed a path it would lead me to another town. Her mother scolded her for it.”

  “I followed the path for another 2 days before I came across another town. This one was more friendly. They saw my plight and took pity on me. They had told me about Yen here and two of the town’s men actually helped carry you out here.”

  “I don’t like people so I live a little on the outskirts of town.” Yen said.

  “After I got you here Yen took one look at you and had them bring you inside. For the next day he spent the entire time working on healing you, I have no idea what he did but it seemed to work. During that time they fed me and clothed me. The snow has set in and I wasn’t fully prepared for the winter yet.” Again her eye flicked to Bjorn’s bag of holding, where they had stored most of everything that they needed. It made no sense to carry a bunch of heavy packs when the bag of holding reduced the weight of anything they put in there.

  “How do you know what to do?” Bjorn asked the sprite.

  He just smiled. “There are many ways to heal the sick, magic is only one of them. Besides, I am a professed herbalist. That title is useful for more than some clout in town. Anyways like I said before you had a rather advanced case of Summer’s kiss and it took a lot of work to keep you alive. You are still on the mend however and should stay here for a few more days.”

  “How long?” Bjorn asked.

  “I think this is the 13th day since you passed out in the woods.” Adriana answered.

  “You are stronger than you look.” Yen said. “By my rough guess you lost at least 10 days worth of attributes. If I was right about the severity of your sickness then you were likely close to death. You have to be at least level 8 or 9, probably even higher, based purely on how well you are doing and how you have recovered so far.”

  Bjorn didn’t want to give the sprite a truthful answer. Based on the rate at which he was losing attributes he could have lasted another 5 days before he fully succumbed to the disease. “I was.” Bjorn said as he nodded in assent.

  “I thought as much.” Yen said.

  From there they spent a while talking about things that weren’t overly important. Yen answered tons of Bjorn’s questions about his profession and how it differed from alchemy. Surprisingly it was fairly similar, instead of relying on potions and salves to get the end result herbalists relied on poultices, incenses, and raw herbs to get their desired effect. Based on what Bjorn managed to glean there was nothing to lead him to believe that herbalism or alchemy was better. Different tools for different jobs, and sometimes for the same job that each tool worked just as well.

  Over the next several days Bjorn slowly got stronger. He started to feel better and could stay awake longer. Over those days Adriana, Yen, and himself talked about a bunch of different things. Bjorn finally filled Adriana in on what he had learned about Kairon’s crew when it was just the two of them. He also retrieved some items from the bag of holding that Adriana wanted while Yen wasn’t around. Not that they didn’t trust the sprite, but why even tempt him. The bag of holding was a wondrous item that anyone would love to take.

  On the last day before they left and got on the road Bjorn got a notification that he wasn’t expecting.

  Bloodroot Spriggon Taproot had leveled up. It is now level 2. It has gained +2 natural armor and increased regeneration. Your health regeneration has decreased by 2%

  The fact that it only took a few days for the taproot to reach level 2 was worrying. He needed to find more information on his hand. He needed to find out what will happen when it gets stronger than him. Finally he needed to know what what fueling the taproot’s growth. If there was a way to slow it down he needed to find out. He had an idea but he wasn’t sure if it would work, that would have to wait.

  When they left Bjorn paid Yen several silver pieces. He tried to beg off Bjorn’s generosity, but if it wasn’t for the healer Bjorn would be dead right now. Yen said that he was just happy to save Bjorn’s life, but he wasn’t hearing it. They left afterwards and started to make their way south.

  By the time they had left the little town winter had fully set in and traveling southward was difficult. They were still in the forest so the snowfall was limiting their forward progress, so instead of traipsing through the wood they decided to stay on the trails. There was a trail heading out of town that went south and kind of east. It was likely a less efficient path, as it wasn’t a straight line, but they were able to travel faster on the trails and paths than breaking fresh paths through the woods.

  Once they were several days out of the town Adriana broached something that had been on her mind. “Hey Bjorn. What are your abilities?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “It’s just, ever since I have used parasitic partner on you I have gotten 90 experience from you alone. I don’t mean to pry but that doesn't add up. I am taking 25% of your total experience. I for one get 1 experience per day. This means that you should have gotten 360 experience so far over the last 16 days.”

  “Like I told you before, I have an ability that gives me increased experience.” Bjorn said not entirely sure where this was going. Her math was right based on the facts that she had. Ultimately she didn’t know that Bjorn’s ability increased all experience gained by 50%, giving him 150% experience. Her parasitic partner ability gives her 25% of Bjorn’s experience, this means that she actually took 37.5% of Bjorn’s experience.

  “And you also have an ability that lets you identify items. But that isn’t what makes me wonder. You have told me that you are level 9. This doesn’t add up. You are what, 28?”

  “25.”

  “I started gaining experience at 18. If you started gaining experience when I did that would give you 7 years of experience gain. By my calculations you gain 22.5 experience per day with me taking 25%. That would mean that you should have gained well over 80 thousand experience. You should be at a much higher level than you are. On top of that I know that you and Meira used to travel and fought stuff consistently. So with all of that being said, why are you so weak?”

  “Your math is fantastic. How did you learn?”

  “Miss Weaver runs a school for any kids who want to learn. She taught me. Now you are avoiding the question, please answer me.”

  Bjorn didn’t want to answer right away. He had to figure out how to answer this. Even though he trusted Adriana his ability to reset his level was too great a power it had to be kept a secret. There were many people in the Eld who would kill Bjorn purely for what he could become one day. Out of everyone he had met in the Eld so far he had the greatest potential to become the strongest person in this world.

  After a few minutes of thinking he decided that Adriana has proven herself worthy, he could trust her. So he told her, not everything, just enough for her to understand. He didn’t list out his particular purchases for ‘Latent Potential’ but he told her enough that she understood the implications of Bjorn’s abilities.

  Finally understanding dawned on her face. “That makes so much sense. I always wondered how you were a professed alchemist. Everyone knows that for a non-combat profession you have to be at least level 10. With you being level 9 I thought there was no way you were a professed alchemist. Meira was insistent that you were though.”

  She was quiet for a few minutes as she processed the implications of Bjorn’s power. “Does that mean that when you reach level 10 you will be able to gain another profession?”

  “I honestly don’t know.” Bjorn replied. “I want that to be the case, but I have no idea. There isn’t really any readily available information on my synergy.”

  After that they started talking about the power in detail. This was how Bjorn introduced her to his map. He pulled the physical map from his bag of holding and handed it over to her. He told her to keep it as it was how they were navigating southward. He then proved to her how she didn’t need to be overly careful with the map, if it got destroyed he could recreate it, it just took time and mana. She had the idea that maybe he could create multiple. When they tested it however, as soon as Bjorn made the second map the first one disintegrated into dust.

  It ended up taking them a total of 3 more weeks for them to travel southward to Blackrock Bay. It was slow and difficult, the hours they could travel were reduced as with winter the amount of daylight was reduced. Without Adriana being able to see reliably in the dark it was too dangerous to travel at night.

  They followed the trails to the southeast, hitting small towns and villages as they went. Whenever they could they would take a path to the south or one that led to the southwest. Finally they made it back into Escar. Once that happened their rate of travel dramatically increased. As they were able to make it onto real roads that increased their movement speed. On top of the increased movement speed the roads were clear. Making it so they didn’t have to struggle through tons of piled snow. Either Escar had enchanted their roads or they had people dedicated to removing the snow, as they were all snow free.

  It took them 2 of the three weeks to make it back to Escar, and the last week was spent on the roads through Escar to make it to Blackrock Bay. After several weeks of long travel they rounded a hill and the city came into view. Bjorn wasn’t sure what to expect when he saw the city. He didn’t know what Kairon had found. Over the several weeks Bjorn’s imagination ran wild as he wasn’t sure what they would find.

  Blackrock Bay seemed to look normal from a distance. It was an impressive sight to see, and something Adriana had never seen before. “Oh wow.” She said as she took in the view.

  “Indeed, let's head into town. We need to find out what has happened and make them pay.”