Frostbitten Wayfarer

Zoe left Gafoda and headed back to Flester to visit her friends before she took on the boss of Moaning Point. Eliza might still be there too when she got there, and Zoe could get a proper look at the Space and Time skills themselves, rather than mere representations of their magic through other skills.

She had managed another four levels on her way down the mountain, meandering through the groups of mages and studying their magics. The one hundred twenty points she pushed straight into Vitality.

Flester looked the same as it always did when she arrived. The towering stone walls surrounded the city, and she nodded to the guards as she walked through the gate. Her first stop was Joe’s inn, and she found him in the dining room sitting at the bar drinking from a glass mug.

Zoe walked up and sat down next to him. Identify showed up at level eighty four now, the same as Zoe. Though she’d been eighty four many times over now as she collected her stat feats.

“Hey Joe,” Zoe said.

“Hey Zoe. How was Moaning Point this time? Any better?” He looked at her and smiled.

“Yeah, actually. I had a lot of fun climbing up it. Y’know, at the top there’s actually this super awful ball of gross that they keep trapped in a giant crater just cause it’s annoying to deal with?" Zoe laughed.

Joe chuckled. “Nobody wants to kill it?"

“No! I did! And they got annoyed at me for it. I had to go help them trap it again.” Zoe smiled and shook her head.

“I thought of a name.” Joe said.

“Oh? For the inn?" Zoe asked.

“Yup. How’s Zoe Lived Here?” Joe laughed.

“No. Absolutely not.” Zoe shook her head.

“I’m kidding, I’m kidding.” Joe laughed some more.

“I mean I thought you were but you had me for a moment.” Zoe laughed.

“How’s The Risen Cask?” Joe asked.

“The Risen Cask?" Zoe asked.

“Yeah. I’ve helped a lot of people here, and these past few years I’ve taken to doing that a lot more now, too. I think I’d like to make this a place where people down on their luck can come and get back on their feet.” Joe said.

“And get drunk while they’re at it? I mean you’re calling it The Risen Cask, not The Risen Lowlife.” Zoe said.

“Well it’s a tavern after all.” Joe grinned at her. “And don’t forget, you were one of those lowlifes. Maybe I’ll put up a sign that says Zoe Lived Here after all.”

Zoe rolled her eyes. “I think it’s a good name. When do you wanna name it?”

“Well I’ve got some errands to do in a few days, I’ll probably register it then. You can come along if you want, and then name the inn when we’re done? It’s been a while since we’ve wandered around town.” Joe suggested.

“Sounds like a good time to me.” Zoe said.

Joe smiled. “I’m glad you’re still around, Zoe. I was worried when you left that you’d be throwing your life away for some ridiculous goal.”

“I think I kinda was, back then. I didn’t have anything, y’know? I mean I had you, and Emma. But that was it, really. And that’s still it, for the most part.” Zoe laughed. “But I’ve got a place of my own, kinda. I’ve got a couple others who I talk to now too. I enjoy being here now. I’m attached.”

Joe chuckled. “Well you could do to visit a bit more often. You disappear for years at a time, y’know?”

Zoe frowned. “I know. I get distracted with something and before I know it, I’ve spent more time than I thought I would on it.”

“It’s fine, really. You should be out there and having fun, doing what you want. Maybe send a letter though. You talked about that when you first left, y’know?" Joe suggested.

“Yeah, I did. Gafoda doesn’t really have a proper thing set up for that, and my home certainly doesn’t either. Maybe I can find out how Lila sends her messages and do something like that, though. That'd be nice.” Zoe said.

“Lila?” Joe asked.

“You remember the mages who owned the farm I visited for resistance training a little over a decade ago now?” Zoe asked.

Joe pondered on it for a moment. “Ah, yes, back when you were still level eight and needed an escort to walk down the road.” He laughed.

“Yeah, them. Ash died a while ago, unfortunately. But Lila’s still around, and she has a skill that sends messages to people. Something like that would be convenient.” Zoe said.

“It sounds nice. Does it work both ways?" Joe asked.

Zoe shook her head. “I don’t think so. I didn’t try, but it didn’t have an obvious way to do it when I got a message, anyway.”

Joe nodded his head. “That makes sense. Usually people’s skills don’t give you abilities like that. Sometimes, though.”

“You ever had something like that?" Zoe asked.

“I get all kinds of people in here, Zoe. Some of them have powerful magic. I remember this one fellow, a few years ago. Gave me a buff that let me float my kitchen tools around. Lasted a day, but that was a nice convenience.” Joe said.

Zoe and Joe chatted for a while longer. Joe shared some of his stories of helping out some more people who wandered into his inn — which was garnering quite a reputation for it at this point, apparently. And Zoe shared a bit more about her experiences on Moaning Point, and then she headed out to Kaira park when the sun began to set.

In the morning, she’d go visit Emma. But for the night, Zoe wanted to relax and enjoy the park she’d spent so much time in. Flester had changed quite a lot since she first arrived. Roads were renamed, shops sold and renovated to fit the new owner’s tastes.

The magic of it all was never lost — buildings floated above the ground and had wondrous magics floating around them just as often. But it was strange seeing shops she had grown so used to seeing as she wandered through town replaced by something entirely new.

The sandwich shop that she bought so many sandwiches from was no longer around. The comfortable gazebo style restaurant replaced with a multi storied building made from what looked like threads woven into the shape of walls.

Lynn wasn’t ever in Kaira park now when she did stop by, but she supposed that made a lot of sense given how long it had been. The birds they watched years ago were still around, hopping and dancing on the branches in the park.

The foliage in the park was different, too. Many more bushes surrounded the park, and the trees surrounding it had all grown several feet.

It was always interesting watching the town grow and change as she spent years away from it. One day, she might come back and there wouldn’t even be a town. Maybe not next year, maybe not the year after. Maybe not even for a few decades. But in hundreds of years? Thousands?

How much change was Zoe going to see throughout her lifetime? How many cultures would come and go as she lived her life?

Immortality was something that Zoe appreciated having a great deal. Death never seemed like a particularly fun part of her life, and conquering it at least in part was a dream come true, in many ways.

But the implications of it never ceased to astound her. Every time she had a moment to think about it there would be something new that she hadn’t even considered before. Would people a thousand years from now remember what bowling was? Would they remember what Barlahai was?

She thought back to her own world. How much was lost in the thousands of years prior to when she was whisked away to Abyllan? Roman architecture worn away to time, literature and languages lost to overzealous leaders destroying them for their own pleasure or pride.

There were so many things that were known to have been lost, even thousands of years later. How many things were so forgotten that there wasn’t even a hint that they had been lost? Even just on a smaller scale, over the course of a few hundred years Scurvy was discovered, cured, forgotten, cured, forgotten and then cured again.

People were alive long enough to be around when Scurvy was cured. Twice. And Zoe was going to live for tens of thousands of years? How much progress would she see, how much regression would there be?

Did she have some responsibility to human society to be the bearer of knowledge? She didn’t think she did, and she also wasn’t the only immortal around so that was a silly thought. Maybe there was some coalition of immortals who worked to keep progress from being lost, somewhere on Abyllan.

Zoe imagined a tour of their library. “Yes here are the lists of every important medicine ever discovered, what they do and how to make them. And to the left you can see the list of every sexual activity people have ever done. If society ever falls apart, it is imperative for our species that we restore it so we may continue our progress.”

She giggled to herself. They were probably all stored in storage items anyway. The library would just be some guy’s wrist, she thought.

The night passed as Zoe pondered her immortality, and she made her way to Emma’s tower. She spent the day chatting with Emma, catching up with everything that’s happened to the two of them. Emma had left her hunting job and started her own butcher from a small store she bought near her tower.

After getting so much higher level than when she started, her group had decided that it didn’t make sense to be hunting together anymore. If something like the Okiu showed up again then they were still far below being able to do anything about it anyway.

And on the note of the Okiu, the city had finally adjusted to the new knowledge of the higher class tier. Rumours had spread for a few years, and most people knew of the seventh tier for a while. But it wasn’t until a few years later that they announced anything officially.

Initially, the corruption that was spread by the Okiu was seen as inert. Useless. The darkness that hung over the forest where the Okiu appeared stuck around even until now, but nobody could tell what it did. It didn’t cause problems aside from the damage it had already caused.

The official report was that it simply didn’t have the capability of doing anything when it wasn’t attached to the Okiu. However; just last month there began a big push to harvest all of the corruption from the forest. Most of it was cleaned up within the weeks after the Okiu’s arrival, but there seemed to be a renewed interest in making sure it was completely purged recently.

According to Emma, there’d been no statements on it other than rumours of increased guards to the west of town. Emma was convinced they had found some use for the corruption, but Zoe wasn’t sure. Maybe they just decided to expand to the west and wanted to clean up the forest.

Didn’t make an awful lot of sense for the corruption to suddenly be useful almost a decade later, but stranger things have happened she supposed.

Oliver was still doing well — and Emma had even adopted a second black cat named Fennel. He was a bit of a rowdy, vocal cat and took a while to get comfortable according to Emma. But he was a great addition to her home and she liked having the little void around for some extra company.

Zoe spent the next few days at the library just wandering around researching whatever popped into her head. Part of it was looking into how long cats lived, since Oliver had been around for a while longer than she would have expected and looked none the worse for it.

It seemed that a few hundred years earlier, people had found a solution to extend mundane animals’ lifespans with the assistance of mana. The food they produced cost a little extra, but in exchange your pet would live for as long as you were around to feed them. The magic had very little effect on those already touched by mana — people, monsters, and the like. At best it would make their skin feel a little softer and help them grow some hair back.

But for non magical pets, it worked wonders to keep them healthy for as long as you were around to feed them. A convenience that Zoe would have appreciated back home in her previous life. And if she could ever figure out a way to replicate the effect she might even be able to have her own pet at home, if she ever stuck around long enough for that to be responsible.

Maybe a little rat, or a crow. She always liked both of them, but never had the chance to take care of them. Crows were hardly pets anyway, she supposed. Maybe if she found a super smart crow that would help keep her home safe, someday. She giggled at the thought.

A lot of her time was spent reading about techniques used for building, well, buildings. She wandered around the library without a goal and ended up at a bookshelf with a plethora of books on them and ended up fascinated by them.

There were a bunch of different materials commonly used for construction, depending on the use case. Expensive stones harvested from the depths of the planet or peaks of mountains. Woods from trees only found deep in the middle of dangerous forests.

And more common materials. Different types of glass for windows or structurally sound components of the building, how to work with different types of wood and stones. The evolution of the art as magic weaved its way into construction and helped alleviate weight problems, or structural integrity problems.

She made some notes of ideas she’d like to take back to her own cave. Different methods of building chimneys and forge designs. How to keep libraries dry enough that the books aren’t damaged, but not so dry that a spark burns it to the ground. Which materials worked best for containing mana and which materials would corrode to water. It was an accident that she wandered into the bookshelf, but she ended up with a lot of useful information from it anyway.

The day came around for Joe’s errands, and Zoe started making her way down to Joe’s inn. Or The Risen Cask, as it would be known after today.