Frostbitten Wayfarer

On the way to school, Zoe realized she didn’t know where she should go to wait at anyway. Was she supposed to wait in the reception area? Or was she supposed to make her way to the classroom?

When she arrived, she found nobody else in the reception area and decided the classroom would be a safer bet. A new teacher was in there, showing up as a red marked mage to her identify.

She was wearing the same uniform as the rest of the teachers Zoe had met, the familiar quiver hung from her waist like any other. Zoe wondered what the difference between a mage and a warrior really was, at the end of the day.

The line had already begun to blur for her after her discussion with Emma, but seeing a mage kitted out in gear she would have assumed fit a more physical class better really drove home the point for her.

Emma showed up a few minutes after Zoe, smiling and waving as she entered the classroom.

“Hey Zoe!” She called out.

“Hey Emma,” Zoe smiled at her.

Emma sat at the desk next to Zoe near the front of class.

“What do you think we’ll learn today?” She bubbled with excitement.

“Well I hope dagger-fighting honestly. But I think they wanna get all the classroom stuff done first so maybe some stealth theory?" Zoe pondered.

“Hmmm, why do you want dagger-fighting so bad anyway?” Emma asked.

“I’ve been trying to get the skill for a few months now, to be honest. It’ll feel really good to finally be done with it.” Zoe answered.

Zoe watched as Emma’s lips moved to answer, but no sound came out. In fact, no sound was audible at all to Zoe. All the rustling of clothes and papers from students wandering in to class was cut off. The birds chirping outside were gone. It was absolute silence, not even the blood flowing through her body was audible to her.

Emma seemed to notice the silence too and she looked to the front of class. Zoe followed her gaze to see the trainer standing with a smug smile plastered on her face.

“Good morning students, I am Taylor, your trainer for today.” The sound returned as she finished her sentence, Zoe’s senses once again flooded with every mundane noise that surrounded her.

“As you can tell, one of my classes manipulates sound. It’s very useful for hunting, but absolute silence can be just as noticeable as a loud noise as you’ve just noticed. Don’t expect something like this to be the perfect solution to being undetected.” She waved her hand in front of her.

“But I digress, we’re not learning about stealth right now. Today we are going to learn about tracking. It’s a difficult topic as animals are so very different, but our hope is that we can help shift your mindset when it comes to tracking so you can better figure things out for yourselves in the future.” She paced back and forth at the front of class.

“For instance, one thing that many new hunters misunderstand is what is actually used for tracking. I suspect that a majority of you view tracking as simply following the path that an animal walked through. Finding each print and continuing until you find where the animal stopped.” She paused, many of the students nodding before she continued.

“This is wrong, at least in part. Tracking is much more than just following the, well, tracks. There are many other signs that we can use to identify an animal’s routine. Scat, urine, feed signs, among many others that we’ll go over during your time here at the School of Hunting Interesting Targets.” She said and summoned a table in front of her.

On the table were several glass jars filled with what looked like animal droppings, and some flatter objects that Zoe couldn’t get a good view of from where she was sitting.

“All of you come up here for a better look. We’re going to go over each of these in more detail.” Taylor said and waved the class up.

The students all stood up and walked to the table, humming and hawing over each of the objects presented. The flatter objects were imprints of animal tracks, Zoe noted. What was strange to her was that she couldn’t tell what animals made them.

She knew that if she saw the tracks themselves, she’d know as clear as day what animals they were. But the imprints that were being displayed? Zoe had no clue what made them. She could make a decent guess — there was one that looked kind of reminiscent of an ant’s pincers. She thought she remembered her mom making that connection at some point when she was younger.

But her skill didn’t help her at all, it didn’t give her any information. It helped her see the tracks better, note all of the minor imperfections in the imprint, all the scratches and scrapes that it had accumulated over however long Taylor had been using this.

It just didn’t give her that innate understanding of which animals they were. She wondered why that was. Did her skill only work for tracks that were left recently? Or was it because these tracks weren’t really tracks?

The jars of scat were probably real though, and those didn’t seem to tell her anything either. Maybe it was because these weren’t really signs of an animal? Or because these had become signs of a human she already could identify?

She’d never noticed her senses screaming at her when she was walking through stores before, browsing through the wares offered. Did she need to be actively using her skill, trying to find tracks for it to be used? It was worth testing later, she thought.

For that matter, she wondered if she would even be able to get the tracking skill, or if all the experience that would have gone to it would just be eaten up by her vampyric skills. Could she get multiple skills that shared the same purpose?

The class continued on, with Taylor going through each of the items she summoned and explaining what animal they were from, how to identify them or tell them apart from each other. It was fascinating, for Zoe.

Her skills never told her this information, she’d never known what boar tracks looked like before. She could identify them in the forest, but if she was asked to point out what exactly made her recognize it as a boar she would have been stuck.

Now though? She had a modicum of knowledge on the topic, she knew what to look for. The tracks were obvious, but the shattered seeds that littered the ground didn’t mean anything to her before. The ripped leaves on the ground around the bush were forgettable. It all screamed at her vampyric senses, but now she could better understand why.

And that felt good, that felt like progress again. More and more she was happy with her decision to join the school, two days and just as many revelations with how she could better use the skills she already had. Let alone getting the new skills she’d learn from this experience too.

Emma looked to Zoe when the class ended. “Did you want to come over for dinner? I asked my parents last night and they said it’d be okay.”

Zoe thought about it for a moment and decided it wasn’t a bad idea. She’d save a bit of money on food and more importantly get to spend some time with her new friend while she was at it. There was no reason to not take her up on the offer.

“Yeah sure. Where do you live anyway?” Zoe asked as she stood up as well.

“I live on Jenny lane, it’s not very far away. Did you have anything to do first though?” Emma asked.

“No, I was thinking of grabbing some food from the cafeteria for the buffs but I can skip a day of it.” Zoe said and stuffed her hand in her bag to dump mana into her orb and check on her progress.

[Mana Orb - 49232]

If she didn’t let herself stay at full for too long, she’d be done by the next morning and could drop off another orb for Ren.

“My dad can probably help with filling that orb too if you want?” Emma asked.

“Really? How much mana does he have?” Zoe asked her as the two made their way down the long corridor that ran the length of the school.

“I’m not sure, but a lot. He prides himself on being what he calls a mana battery build. He doesn’t get a lot of work but it pays well when he does. I don’t think he had any work today so he could fill up the orb probably.” Emma shrugged.

“It feels weird just taking mana from him though, if I’m being honest. In my head every single point of mana I’m recovering has a direct monetary benefit. Taking your dad’s mana just feels like I’m taking money, even though I know I’m not really.” Zoe said.

Emma laughed, “You sound like my dad. He says the same things all the time, but don’t worry about it. Mana comes back, it refills, it’s not actually money. Besides he might have had work today anyway.”

“I guess, yeah. If he’s alright with it, it would be a big help honestly.” Zoe said.

When they arrived at Emma’s house, Zoe could only describe it as being a mansion. She had seen massive houses when she walked around town, she knew that there were wealthy people living here. But she thought they’d have their own tutors, their own people to help them.

Although now that she thought about it, the school was quite expensive, at least by Zoe’s standard. Was two gold for two months of teaching expensive? With the ten students in the class they were making twenty gold, and that’s if they only had those students for this period. They might have more group at different hours.

“I had no idea you were rich, holy crap.” Zoe said, staring at the gates in front of the mansion, peering through them to the well kept garden behind.

“We’re not that rich, really. We just have a big house is all.” Emma said, giggling.

“At least where I’m from, big house means rich. Houses are expensive, land is expensive. This is insane to me.” Zoe tried to force her mouth to stay closed as she stared.

Emma laughed, “There’s lots of land all around town. It’d be weird if that was expensive.”

“Does the town expand often?” Zoe asked.

Emma tilted her head as she looked a bit puzzled. “Why wouldn’t it? If there’s more people here we need a bigger town, right?”

Zoe shook her head in shock, “Well, yeah, I guess. So if I just went and built a house outside the walls, they’d move the walls to include me?”

“Hmmm, I bet my dad would know more if you’re interested. I don’t think it’s just like, an automatic thing though. Maybe you have to pay a bunch of money to move the wall? Or I bet if there was a whole bunch of people who wanted to build outside town they could petition for an expansion probably.” Emma said, though she didn’t exude confidence.

“Huh. How pragmatic.” Zoe said.

Emma opened the gate with a red crystal and walked inside, gesturing for Zoe to follow. The gate closed behind them and Emma lead Zoe to the front door. Which was almost a minute walk away from the gate.

Zoe was still in disbelief that this didn’t qualify as being rich. She thought Emma must have a warped perception of wealth, though maybe she was right. Could Zoe afford something like this with a few years of saving up on her income?

A tall scruff man opened the door as they approached, his form towering over Zoe. He had a brown beard that was tied in a braid and came down just past his neck, his messy hair falling a little below that. He would have seemed like a picture perfect barbarian to Zoe were it not for the hot pink apron he was wearing. Identify showed him as a red marked mage.

“Hi dad!” Emma ran up and hugged him.

“Hey Emma, is this your new friend?” He asked and looked at Zoe.

“Yeah! This is Zoe. Dad, meet Zoe. Zoe, meet dad.” Emma said.

“Hello,” Zoe said a little sheepishly.

“Hi, it’s nice to meet you.” He looked at Emma and smiled, “She wouldn’t shut up about the weird classmate she met at dinner last night.”

“Dad!” Emma shouted over her dad’s laughter.

“It’s fine, I am a little strange, I guess.” Zoe said and smiled back.

“I didn’t mean it in a bad way, I just. You’re level eight still with feats and getting skills and stuff and I just thought that was really cool and—” Emma stuttered.

“No, really it’s fine. Honestly.” Zoe interrupted her.

Emma’s dad ruffled her hair and laughed some more. “Well don’t waste your time out here. Come in, come in.” He walked inside and gestured for Zoe to follow.

The inside of the house was gorgeous, with not a speck of dust to be seen. Every piece of furniture covered in ornate carvings, the windows almost completely transparent.

“We’re making roast ryz for dinner tonight, is that alright with you Zoe?” Emma’s dad asked.

“Yeah, I’m not picky. Whatever you make is fine, thanks.”

They were led to a dining room, a small wooden table sat inside the massive room. It felt a little goofy to Zoe, but she wasn’t about to make a bad impression by mentioning anything.

The kitchen was visible on the other side through a wide archway. A woman was in the kitchen, identify showing her as a red marked warrior. She had short, ginger hair that was spiked in the front and red eyes that narrowed when she saw Zoe.

The woman vanished and appeared next to Zoe a moment later. “What are you?" She scowled.

“Mom! Not you too!” Emma cried out.

“Not now, Emma.” She said to Emma then turned back to Zoe, her eyes almost glowing with an intensity that shocked Zoe.

“What. Are. You?” She asked again, fury bubbling from within her.