Frostbitten Wayfarer

Joe sat at his desk in his room at The Risen Cask with a smile on his face. Even after all these years, he couldn’t get used to his rundown inn having a name, and almost for free at that! The large expense of paying an Enchanter was covered simply by being kind and helping out a young girl in need.

He shook his head. All because she needed a toilet. Did she even know how toilets worked here, back then? What would it have been like, wandering up the stairs and being forced to learn how to use magic on the spot like that?

On his desk were piles of papers, many were taxes. Income sorted and logged, payments ready. But the majority were keeping track of everything that happened at The Risen Cask. With its new purpose as more than just an inn — or frankly, barely an inn these days, Flester wanted much more information about its operations. Patrons levels, ages, what they were doing, how mentally stable they were, and so on.

And that wasn’t even mentioning Joe’s personal notes that he needed to keep just to be able to stay on top of everything. Who was staying where, what were their goals and aspirations, what did they suffer through, and what kinds of support did they respond best to. There was a certain tedium to all the work, at times.

But Joe was content with life. Jeffrey was almost ready to leave, eager to get a new job at an alchemist’s shop nearby. Lauren was struggling a bit, but seeing her confidence come back and watching her open up with some of the others at The Risen Cask made Joe feel a certain giddiness. Even Peter could be seen smiling sometimes, these days.

And to know that he was responsible for it, at least in some small part, made him ecstatic. To know that so many people had come to call The Risen Cask a place to feel safe, and wanted, and loved was more than he could ever hope for. What was a little paperwork compared to the knowledge that these downtrodden people were getting back on their feet? And if he had to lie on his paperwork sometimes to keep them from being noticed? Well, that was just the risk he had to take to keep the kids safe.

Joe had been at level one twenty three for a while now, and the urge to check his classes beckoned at the back of his mind ever since. That odd vampire girl he met so long ago had changed him in more ways than she’d ever know. Maybe taking your time to pick out a class wasn’t so bad, after all. She took a few more risks than he’d ever be comfortable with, of course.

But despite that, she had taken many more classes than he had and still caught up to him. Maybe taking your time and working things out worked. Or maybe it was the hordes of zombies and shards of ice she fought that got her there, maybe it was the system breaking for her in ways that would never be repeatable for Joe that got her there.

He brought up his stat sheet as he leaned back in his chair.

Name: Joe Kinsly

Race: Human

——

Stat Points: 0

Strength: 103

Dexterity: 344

Vitality: 615

Endurance: 120

Intelligence: 153

Wisdom: 275

Health: 13838/13838

Stamina: 1200/1200

Mana: 4590/4590

——

Class 1: Abyllian (123)

- Identify (123)

Class 2: Innkeeper’s Apprentice

- Physical Affinity (123)

- Food Enhancement (123)

- Paperwork (123)

- Prepwork (123)

- A Proper Inn (123)

Class 3: Innkeeper

- Physical Affinity (123)

- Food Enhancement (123)

- Ledger (98)

- Patron Examine (74)

- Repairing (84)

Class 4: Master Innkeeper

- Physical Affinity (123)

- Food Enhancement (123)

- Mana Affinity (111)

- Warehouse (101)

- An Inn’s Protection (69)

——

General Skills:

- Carpentry (43)

- Meditation (75)

- Repose (54)

- Cooking (123)

- Bartering (79)

- First-aid (54)

Resistances:

- Pain (3)

- Cold (26)

- Heat (53)

Feats:

- A Traveler’s Friend

The feat was his most recent addition and he looked at the description of it again with pride.

[A Traveler’s Friend]

You are a beacon of hope to the weary, a friend to those in need. Far and wide your name is spoken as a harbour of safety for travelers in need. Increased experience from helping those you’ve never met.

To think that his efforts to help people, to make the world around him that little bit better would have rewarded him with a feat. That people were speaking of his inn far and wide. People who he’d never seen before, who he’d never met knew of The Risen Cask as a place to stay. In towns he’d never been to, in city’s he’d never even heard of, people knew of him and his inn.

Joe never got tired of looking at his feat. Proof that his efforts mattered, that he was making a difference. That the people who he helped went on to be happy and successful enough to spread the word.

Satisfied with his sheet, Joe brought up his class choices for his fifth class. Originally, when he started he thought he’d follow in his mother’s footsteps. Maybe one day he could even surpass her and take Expert Innkeeper

But now, he hoped for something a little more. Maybe he would just settle on Expert Innkeeper and be happy. But he wanted something different, something that reflected his new purpose with his inn. Something that could help heal and mend the broken people that find their way to The Risen Cask.

Most of the options were rubbish, as he expected. An abundance of Apprentice classes for various professions, and even the odd regular variant for some. Plenty of classes just for his different stat thresholds. Mages and warriors, enchanters and speedsters. But those weren’t interesting to Joe.

Instead, he turned his attention to the few that grabbed his attention.

[Expert Innkeeper] Known through the lands as a place to stay. Powerful foods and a secured room makes your inn stand out from the rabble. Increased cooking buffs. Increased experience gained from patrons staying at your inn.

Requirements: Has the Master Innkeeper class.

[A Traveler’s Friend] A beacon to those less fortunate, you strive to bring all those you meet to excellence. Increased regeneration. Increased experience from helping others.

Requirements: Has the A Traveler’s Friend feat.

[A Traveler’s Keeper] A beacon to those less fortunate, a home to those in need. People from afar seek solace in your presence, and find safety in your walls. Increased regeneration. Increased cooking buffs.

Requirements: Has the A Traveler’s Friend feat, has the Master Innkeeper class.

[An Everlasting Home] Unaffected by the passage of time, a home for immortals in need. Your name is known and respected by those outside of time’s grasp. Increased regenerative magic. Increased experience from immortal patrons staying at your inn.

Requirements: Has housed five immortals, Has four classes, has the Master Innkeeper class

Joe looked through his options. They were all good, in his opinion. A Traveler’s Keeper and An Everlasting Home both had the highest requirements, perhaps the latter could be argued to be even higher. But requirements never influenced Joe’s decision much. If one had higher requirements, but another fit his lifestyle better? Then requirements be damned, he’d take the one that fit better.

What Joe needed most was something that would do just that, fit his new lifestyle as a home for the less fortunate. The first two seemed powerful to that regard, but Expert Innkeeper just seemed lacking. It would be more of the same, and he didn’t need that.

Which left the two classes for his new feat. A Traveler’s Keeper being tied to his innkeeper class seemed to have the same problem to him, so Joe wrote it off. He’d rather have something that might be a little weaker, but be closer to what he was trying to move towards. More cooking buffs just didn’t matter as much as more stats and levels, these days.

An Everlasting Home was tempting, but was that simply for the immortality? He had never aspired for it, never cared much for it. The idea of growing old in his inn and dying of old age naturally was almost a dream to him. Joe loved life, and loved living. But a part of him thought that it was so beautiful because it was so short.

That he needed to live the best life he could, because it would be over so soon. But to see immortality dangling in front of him, with just a mere thought he could take the class and if the description was accurate, become immortal himself.

Joe chuckled, thinking of the young half-vampire girl who stopped by every so often. She rambled a few times about taking multiple classes just to pick the best one. Every time, she glossed over the horrendous pain of the system ripping apart her body as though it was just a normal part of life. If she knew that he was stuck struggling between two classes, she’d probably just laugh and tell him to just take both and see which one was really better.

But that wasn’t an option, not really. Joe would be happy with either of them, he knew. Putting himself through that existential pain just to try and make a slightly better decision was nonsensical. Which meant it came down to him and him alone to decide which he’d prefer.

Would he like more regeneration that likely applied to other people, and a class that reflected the feat he was so immensely proud of. Or would he like immortality, magic that almost certainly could heal other people, and an inn that would last through the ages?

Joe shook his head and pushed the notifications away. He cleaned up his desk, storing all the paperwork in his Warehouse skill and then left his room. The long hallway was brightly lit with everlasting torches that hung off the walls, and a contented chatter could be heard from the lounge downstairs.

Peter and Lauren were both sitting on a couch by a table, playing a game of cards with each other while Jeffrey was in the kitchen making breakfast for everybody. Joe smiled at the sight. Kenzie and Sue were probably still asleep — they always slept in quite late, but seeing everybody else up and getting along filled him with happiness.

“Good morning, everybody.” Joe said as he came down.

“Morning Joe!” Everybody shouted back at him.

Joe sat down on one of the couches and sighed.

“Something wrong?" Jeffrey called out from the kitchen.

Joe shook his head. “No, nothing’s wrong. I was just struggling with a decision but I think I’ve figured it out.”

“Did you decide on your class?” Peter asked and looked over nervously. When he first showed up a few months earlier, it was a struggle to even get him to say he was tired. That he now felt comfortable enough to even ask about Joe’s class at all was plenty of progress, and Joe smiled back at him.

“Yup.” Joe said.

“Are you still going to be running this place?” Lauren asked.

“Of course, I don’t have plans to go anywhere anytime soon.” Joe smiled and locked in his class choice. Leaving these people behind because of some misplaced desire to grow old and die wouldn’t sit right by him. If immortality was on the table, if the option to continue pursuing his passion like this was in reach then he’d be a fool to not grab it.

*Ding* You have unlocked the An Everlasting Home class. Your body and soul will be adjusted to accommodate the change.

————

Meanwhile, in a cave not far northeast from Flester was a young woman with flowing white hair and skin to match. Her piercing red eyes scoured the pile of crystals in a box next to her worktable as she rummaged through it with her clawed fingers to find the specific failed experiment she was looking for.

[Smoke Compressor v3.0Final For real but Actual this time]

“Aha!” Zoe shouted as she grabbed the translucent gray crystal from the box.

It was one of her many failed attempts at replacing her chimney. The hole to the outside worked well enough for keeping her home clean and breathable, but it also left a wide open entrance for all sorts of bugs and pests to find their way in.

In a perfect world, the smoke and other miscellaneous waste would just be destroyed through some means. Disintegration would have been a fantastic option for her, but the only person she knew who had it died over a decade ago.

The gray crystal was one of her many attempts at simply compressing the gasses down with various skills. Her thought was that if she could compress them so much that they formed a solid mass, they would take up much less space and she could just toss the solid chunks of waste aside every so often.

Unfortunately, the best she’d managed was squishing in a lot more gas into a space than would be natural. Helpful, but for the amount of exhaust she had already in her home — and with plans to build even more, unless she could solidify the gas it just wouldn’t make enough of a difference. And doing so was still outside of her capabilities, for now.

She had tried adding plants to her home, flowers and vines that wrapped around her wooden frames, and even tried creating an enchantment that smashed the gasses between two slabs of stone. She tried many of those really, reminded of a colony simulator game’s automatic door gas deleters. But unfortunately, if the slabs did squish shut all the way then the gasses would just seep into cracks in the rock and a noticeable breeze would push out of the other side.

And whenever she did manage to make an airtight seal, then the slabs just wouldn’t shut all the way. Or in a particularly extreme case, explode into shrapnel that motivated her to keep her Frozen Arsenal armour on when she was testing new enchantments.

Zoe pushed her mana into the gray crystal and wiped away the framework that made up the failed enchantment. The wealth of enchantable crystals Zoe once had from her years on Moaning Point had dwindled. Lost to experiments that were a little more destructive than she anticipated, or sold off as utility gems in Flester.

This was her last usable wind attribute gem, and Zoe wanted to make a going away present for one of Joe’s patients? Clients? Zoe wasn’t sure what to call the people who stayed at The Risen Cask. Patrons, maybe?

Peter had landed a job as an alchemist, and Zoe couldn’t think of anything better she could give him than an assortment of utility gems. She’d already made a fire starter and a water spout, but wanted to give him a breath of fresh air to go along with it.

Zoe smiled and sat down at her work table in her enchanting room just above her growing library.