Frostbitten Wayfarer

The hardest part of her new class was the new sense granted to her eyes. Whenever she opened them, she was overcome with nausea from all the information thrust at her from her new class. Like staring into a washing machine as it ran with foamy water churning round and round, but for everything she looked at. The world looked a mess, and Zoe was glad for the new sense her class gave her that at least let her see the world around her even with her eyes closed.

But with time, Zoe managed to acclimate to it. As with her Mana Sight, the new information seemed to be in addition to her normal sight rather than a replacement to it. It was just much more zealous in its approach, and letting the sense fall away as she saw the world as she was used to was a bigger task than she had expected.

When she first got her mana sight, seeing through it was little more than a small step to overcome. It was almost second nature, somehow. And even for the new perception she had outside of her vision, using it was as simple as breathing for her. But seeing through the churning mess of information her eyes gave her was intense.

Joe reached his cap very soon at one fifty four, but both he and Emma were waiting to enjoy their new classes until Zoe had settled in to the power she was given.

By the end of the first week with her class, Zoe managed to be able to keep her balance even with her eyes open, with only a hint of nausea creeping in as she saw the churning mass of reality. By the end of the second week, Zoe was even beginning to piece apart what all she was able to see.

Part of the tangled mess was the future, or at least something resembling the future. Leaves that waved to and fro in the wind looked like colourful splotches as Zoe saw their next few moments as clear as the present. But another part of it was simply things that were very far away. Glimpses of Gafoda at the bottom of the mountain, or the rowdy group sitting up at the bench near the top of Moaning Point. The Abomination trapped in a new hole carved out of the rocky cliffs in the tier just above Zoe.

Zoe thought she understood Emma’s hesitation to explain her new vision when she took her space class back in Zoe’s cave. At times the glimpses of distant locations seemed so close — Zoe knew Gafoda was far away of course, but sometimes it looked as though it was just beyond the door to Joe’s inn. How could you describe what blue looked like to somebody who’d never seen the colour? What a fart sounded like to somebody who had never been able to hear?

Nothing Zoe could think of did it justice. It wasn’t just that things looked close, but that to Zoe there wasn’t a difference. Gafoda was at the bottom of Moaning Point, but in those moments the bottom of Moaning Point truly was just outside Joe’s inn.

Unlike with Emma’s class however, Zoe wasn’t able to step through space just by seeing the places nearby. Which made Zoe think that Emma saw things a little differently — even accounting for the odd time vision that Zoe had due to her cosmic affinity rather than simple space affinity. What would the world look like to somebody who could walk two steps and end up at the bottom of a mountain simply because that truly was how close the bottom was?

But, at the same time Emma didn’t have a dedicated teleportation skill — she only had her class effect to do the same thing and while it was powerful, Zoe’s skill had its own benefits too. Emma’s class relied on her vision — if she ever lost her eyes or even just had them closed then her mobility was hampered. Space wasn’t truly shifted for her, it just looked like it was and her class pulled up the slack.

Zoe’s didn’t have the same restrictions, though it did have others. First, Zoe wasn’t able to teleport to the past. No matter what she tried, no matter how little time she tried to move, travelling to the past just didn’t seem possible for her skill. It didn’t try to draw mana and fail to gather enough, it didn’t move her without any time travel. It just outright didn’t activate if she tried to push herself to the past.

Second, while she didn’t require sight to be able to teleport, it did help a lot. Without sight, she needed to give the spell very specific instructions on the distances moved. And while her new class did give her some innate understanding of distances, it was a bit of a catch-22. If Zoe could see a tree in the distance, she could tell her skill exactly how far she needed to teleport to arrive there. But if Zoe could see a tree in the distance, she could also just teleport to the tree, since she could see it.

Giving the skill a distance was only relevant if she couldn’t see where she was teleporting to, which made it much harder. Zoe tried teleporting into a tree at one point, just to see what would happen if she messed up and found the results terrifying. She teleported herself in the path of a tree so that the tips of her fingers would intersect with the trees bark, and rather than being pushed out like she hoped the skill simply left the tips of her fingers behind.

Part of her, after she calmed down, wondered what would happen if she tried to teleport her entire self into the center of the tree. If her fingers were left behind, then would her entire body be left behind and it would fail? But Zoe never acted on the thought, it was just an invasive thought like one would have when they stood at the top of a cliff far above the choppy ocean waves.

By the end of the third week with her new class, Zoe had begun to feel comfortable with her new vision. The confusing mess that it fed her began to fade to the background when she didn’t want it, and she had even begun trying to take advantage of the information too.

For teleportation, it was indispensable. Gafoda was far beyond her normal vision, but if she peered through the fabric of space then she could see the gates clearly and give her skill a proper focus to teleport to. In a moment, she could appear down at the bottom of Moaning Point for the low cost of just over a hundred thousand mana.

For fighting, the vision seemed rather pointless. Living — or undead for that matter, creatures didn’t seem to be very accurate to her future sight. Not that her future sight let her see even a second into the future in the first place. But while leaves that floated in the wind were clear to her, Emma’s movements looked like a sloppy smear in her vision as the endless possibilities overlapped each other.

It made for a neat party trick, where Zoe could tell the outcome of something rather deterministic — even if normally calculating the outcome that quick would be impossible. Like flipping a coin and seeing it land heads a moment before it does or placing her hand in the path of a leaf that was about to be blown aside by a sudden gust of wind.

But as soon as a consciousness was brought into the equation, as soon as her vision needed to guess at what something might end up doing, it may as well have been useless clutter. If anything Zoe wished she could disable the effect for anything that wasn’t deterministic in nature, but while she was able to disable the effect entirely she couldn’t separate it out like that. And the benefits outweighed the cons after she got acquainted with the skill.

Emma was the first to take her new class, and ended up taking the Space Archmage class. From Emma’s description it seemed like a carbon copy of the Archmage class Zoe checked out but with some fanciful space additions.

Rather than just Mana Sight, it gave her a combined space and mana sight which seemed rather redundant with her previous space hunter class effect, though without the ability to travel through space with it. Several of the skills were slightly altered to be more in line with the class’ space theme and it had an additional Teleportation skill available.

The class gave Emma more than a little pause after she grabbed it, many of its features were already given to her by her previous class — and the spacial mage class she took may as well be entirely redundant with the class. It was powerful, and well worth it just for the bonuses it provided alone. Doubling her magical power, quadrupling her mana capacity along with twenty five stat points plus three intelligence per level was enough to be worth keeping, let alone the skills.

But Emma seemed intent on one day in the distant future trying to loop again and get a handful of classes that worked better with each other.

Joe on the other hand was ecstatic with his pick. He took the A Traveler’s Keeper class and was enjoying the benefits quite a lot. It gave quite a few bonuses to his inn’s defensive abilities — though nothing offensive like with his An Everlasting Inn class, and the bonuses it gave to his cooking abilities were noticed by both Emma and Zoe immediately. His food tasted far better and the buffs he was capable of giving his food were both more varied and much more powerful as a result.

He could triple all regeneration for up to eight hours — or quadruple it for one hour, or he could give a straight magical power buff that Zoe wasn’t quite sure how to measure but enjoyed nevertheless. Emma’s regeneration with Joe’s buff was even almost half of Zoe’s without it, though if Zoe also ate breakfast as she often did, then Emma was left in the dust even with Zoe’s mediocre fourth class.

The three stood at the top of Moaning Point next to the bell that stood just outside the shimmering barrier to the boss fight as they waited for the last group to finish.

“So you’re not gonna do anything, right?" Emma asked. ”Just gonna put together the inn Joe gave you while we fight off the zombies, and then wait inside?“

The two had fought the Abomination a number of times while Zoe was getting used to her new senses, and Joe ended up with a rather peculiar fighting style. He designed an inn that he could throw together from components quickly and manufactured several sets of it so he could throw up a popup inn on demand and not feel too bad about it rotting away to the dungeon’s grasp.

He gave Zoe one set and her job would be to put together the inn for Joe and then plant herself inside of it so his skills could be used to the best of their effect. If things went wrong, then Zoe would step in to keep them safe. But according to Joe, “It would be a shame to come all the way to Moaning Point and not even give it a try.”

“Yeah, I’ll just put the inn together and then wait. I really don’t know how well that strategy will work though.” Zoe said.

Emma rolled her eyes. “We already told you. Step one is I teleport behind the summoner and kill it. Step two is we retreat into Joe’s inn to clear out the remnants. It’ll be fine.”

Zoe shrugged, and a few minutes later the barrier dissolved away. The group just before them walked out, battered, bruised and thankful for Zoe’s healing skill. Emma rang the bell, and the three walked past the threshold.

The ground below them rumbled, and a figure rose from the ground a hundred feet away at the opposite end of the rocky plateau.

“Who dares—” Zoe heard in a whisper that was interrupted by Emma stepping behind the figure and drawing her dagger across its back.

A deafening roar raced across the plateau and mana rushed from the figure to flood the ground. Dozens of undead, garbed in shining armour and weapons rose from the ground around Emma as she slashed her dagger at the lich once more but was met by twisted metal blade the lich drew from its waist.

“You shall fall like all the others you spiteful cur.” Zoe heard in a hushed whisper that echoed around her.

“Are you good?" Zoe shouted across the plateau.

“Yeah! Just get the inn up!” Emma shouted back.

Zoe shrugged and got to work setting up Joe’s inn with his help. Several of the armoured zombies and even two of the mages were running across the plateau towards them, and Zoe felt Joe’s nerves growing even without her Vampyric Empathy.

The inn was made up of six different pieces of wood along with a handful of pre-made furniture. Four walls, a ceiling and a flood. All slotted together as planned in less than a minute, and Zoe tossed the furniture in haphazardly. It didn’t need to be organized, it just needed to be present, according to Joe.

Emma replaced her dagger with a hefty mace she purchased in Gafoda and began pummelling the lich with it over and over, as the magic and sword wielding zombies buffeted her with their strikes. Magic washed over her and the physical strikes passed through her spacial armour. Something only possible due to Joe’s massive regeneration buffs, and if Zoe had to guess not sustainable for long.

The undead charging Zoe and Joe made it to his inn but were met with his seemingly impenetrable wall that struck back with blue energy at each strike that made it to his walls. Another minute later, and Emma appeared inside next to Joe and Zoe dripping with blood from the odd strike that made it past her armour.

“Dead?” Zoe asked.

Emma nodded and collapsed on the ground. “Heal me please.”

Zoe obliged and used her Restoration skill on her friend. The remaining undead threw themselves at Joe’s inn, but were unable to overcome his defenses and even quicker than Zoe had expected, they cleared the final stage of Moaning Point.

They each got a hundred gold coins for their troubles, along with a blue shield, a necklace with a big black sphere hanging off of it and a pair of black unassuming boots.