Chapter 30 - The Lake

When morning came the next day, her father was up and about acting like he was perfectly fine.  She asked her dad how he felt and he informed her that he was at full health and felt fine.  It was hard for her to accept that he could be up and normal after not even a full day of receiving a head injury like that.

He told her that he was lucky and did not suffer any debuffs from the attack and that his higher Constitution helped him heal fast from simple wounds.  The normal practice was for every level you gained, one point went into Constitution to help prolong your life and to make sure you were kept healthy.  When she asked him if there was a way for him to share his status screen with someone else he informed her that the only known way was to write it down or speak the numbers.

This led to a few other questions she had wondered about.  There was no way for someone to force her to show her stats, but there were tests that required certain stats to pass.  For example, unless she had a certain amount of strength, she would not be able to lift something.  Those people who lied about having extra stat points would be found out easily with those tests.  When she asked him if there were any tests to prove someone had more stats than they stated he asked her why would anyone want to hide their stats.

After a little more conversation, he did admit that there was a rumor of the ancients having devices to show information about someone’s level and stats.  He didn’t know if it was true because he had never seen such an artifact in person before.  She had been a little worried about her intelligence and wisdom being so high.  For an adult those numbers were normal but she had yet to unlock her stat points.

She had asked quite a while ago about when her stat points would be unlocked and the only answer she received was when you are old enough.  Asking her father the same question again finally yielded a different result.  Most children unlocked their stat points when they were around thirteen years old.  It varied from person to person but the earliest recorded person to unlock their stats was at age twelve.  Her skill points would also unlock at the same time as her stat points.  She was cautioned not to spend her skill points until she needed them to cross a skill barrier.  The higher the skill was, the harder it was to cross the skill barrier every ten levels.

-------------------------

It had taken them fifteen days of walking to reach the lake they were looking for.  They had managed to avoid any magically charged areas so the majority of the animals in the forest with them were afraid of their fire at night.  They had only encountered two stubborn animals on their trek.

The first animal they came across was a fox that was protecting her den.  When they spotted her, they took a long detour around her den to avoid her.  The fox did not charge after them so she likely had babies that she was defending.  While Violet called her a fox, the animal was closer to a mix of a fox and a raccoon.  She had the long fluffy tail and larger ears of a fox but her paws looked like hands and she had the mask of a raccoon.

The second animal looked exactly like a wild boar snout and all.  It wildly charged them but it must have been young or addled because it was easy for her father to dodge.  The boar was about two feet tall and four feet long.  Her father pulled out his sword and used it to slice the side of the boar as it ran by.  He was smart enough not to stand in front of it while it was charging him.  With Violet and her mother hiding behind trees, her father was able to injure the boar each time it charged him to eventually whittle its health down enough to make a killing blow.  It confused her why the boar didn’t just run away but kept coming back for more.

Her only regret was they did not have a way to preserve the boar meat.  The humid weather made keeping the meat longer than a few days a bad idea.  They had eaten very well for those few days though.

She was thankful it was humid enough for her to pull water easily from the air.  In just a few weeks of practice, she had gotten her synchronization with Water Manipulation up to 22%.  She wished she had a cleaning spell to easily get dirt and blood off of their clothing and armor.  Using water, she was able to use it to push the dirt and grime off of their clothing but it was not an easy or perfect process.  It got the majority of the stains and smells out but not all of them.

Being able to practice her magic openly helped her push all of her higher aspects back up to 100%.  She had lost some synchronization while practicing her enchanting and now had Disguise Self, Decoy, Cloaking, Shadow Blade, and Dazzle back up to 100%.  She got in the habit of using Fear or any animal she spotted because it had a longer range than Hypnotize did.

She found that Fear had a large margin of failure.  It usually worked well on smaller birds or squirrels, but it only enraged the monkeys she sometimes spotted in the trees.  Thankfully the monkeys had only thrown stuff at her and loudly made their displeasure known.  The one time she had used the aspect on her mother (after asking permission), it failed to work.  Her mother said it felt like someone was trying to do something unpleasant but she could only pinpoint the direction it was coming from and not who was doing it.  After that, she had decided to stick to animals until she had gained more synchronization.

When she was lucky enough to find an animal in Hypnotize range, she couldn’t make it do anything but freeze when the spell worked.  She was able to approach and touch the animal she was Hypnotizing but the length of time the ability worked on an animal was based on how big it was and what it was doing when she used the ability.  If she found a sleeping squirrel, the freeze would last longer than if she found one that was awake and aware of her.

[Magic]

Type % Aspect

Illusion 60%

Illusion 100% Disguise Self

Illusion 100% Decoy

Illusion 100% Cloaking

Illusion 100% Shadow Blade

Illusion 100% Dazzle

Illusion 15% Fear

Illusion 5% Hypnotize

Illusion 15% Enchant

Water 3%

Water 22% Water Manipulation

The skill barriers were proving to be difficult for her to cross.  It was also becoming quite a bit more difficult for her to naturally gain stat points.

Level 34

Age 7 1/2

Experience (58420/59500)

Health 280/280

Mana 750/750

Stat Points 165

Skill Points 6

Strength 20

Constitution 28

Dexterity 22

Intelligence 78

Wisdom 75

[Traits] [Skills] [Magic]

[Basic Skills]

Acting 38

Climbing 20

Drawing 10

Language - Common MAX

Mathematics 24

Meditation 20

Running 20

Writing 20

[Novice Skills]

Sneak 20

Visualization 32

[Advanced Skills]

Mental Notes 15

Language - Runic MAX

While she had made some progress on some of her skills, she decided she would try to pick up more basic skills.  The low-hanging fruit that she could think of was the skill for cooking and whittling.  They had begun to stop earlier in the evenings to set up camp.  She would ask her mother to teach her how to make stew and other meals that they prepared.  While she had helped cook in the past, she has never been the only one doing it and had not done any of the seasonings.

Her father had brought a few of his whittling tools with him when they had packed their bags.  The tools were small, lightweight, and potentially useful to carve wood scraps for starting a fire.  She would ask him for lessons on whittling at night when they were sitting around the fire before bed.

-------------

When they arrived at the lake, she wanted to go swimming immediately.  The closest portion of the lake was crystal clear and she could see rounded river rocks at the bottom of it.  The water became murkier as you got closer to the center of the lake because there was a current flowing from the north and heading east in a large arc.  The section they arrived at was a secluded section away from the current with a large variety of fish.

She dropped her bag and started removing her leather armor as well as the pants and boots her mother had made for her.  As she was heading toward the water in her dress, her mother said “And what do you think you are doing young lady?  We can teach you to swim after we’ve set up camp.  Until then, please help us get everything together.”

It took her a moment to realize she had never learned how to swim in this world.  After camp was set up, all three of them stripped down to the bare minimum to keep their modesty and approached the lake to swim.  All it took was a single toe in the water for Violet to start having second thoughts about wanting to swim.  While the water was not freezing cold, it was far from warm.

Her dad got a running start and then jumped in feet first.  It did not work out so well for him because it was not quite deep enough where he landed but it was enough for him to dunk his head and come back up with a shout.  “Come on in!  The water is great!”

Her mother rolled her eyes at his antics and held her hand as they slowly walked into the lake.  The rocks on the bottom did not feel great on their feet but they were all rounded so they did not have to worry about getting cut.  When Violet got up to her waist, she decided to dunk her head and get acclimated all at once for the rest of her body.  It did not take long for the lake to feel comfortable and pretty soon she was showing off her previous life swimming skills by swimming between her parents.

[Skill gained: Swimming 1]