Eritance - Chapter 21

The price was a bit expensive to me, but there was nothing I could do. At this point in time horseback riding was not something I could do. I decided it would be better to take a loss here, and just learn later when I’m more grounded.

We hired the carriage and got some supplies and set off for Hallen. Our driver was a very stoic middle-aged woman. I was surprised to learn she would be our driver. I silently decided that I would have to begin revising my perceptions of women after this, I’ve so far seen women to be crafty, powerful, and capable. It was nothing like the dainty flowers I had pictured in my head. Of course, I had been around women before.

There were many women that worked in the fields, however they came in to do the planting or watering. They didn’t typically do the harvesting or ploughing of fields. I always thought they didn’t do it because they were weaker, but maybe I just didn’t do any of the other things because I wasn’t taught how like the women of the village were.

I also made a vow to learn more useful skills in my life. On this trip I was really learning a lot about what I lacked in myself. It wasn’t just combat skills, it was life skills in general. Before, I was happy to just eat meat, but now I wanted flavor, and variety. Of course, I still wanted lots of meat.

During the ride there wasn’t much to do, so I decided to ask Ross more questions about my power. “Ross, how many beasts would I have to kill to be as strong as I can right now?”. “Well, that depends on what you kill. Hmmm. if it were two spine bears it would be enough probably, or maybe 15-20 dire wolves. It’s hard to say with the smaller beasts”.

Wow, it really seemed like things would take a long time for me to progress at this rate and what was up with those measurements. “Ross, why can’t you give me a better idea? Didn’t you say part of your soul merged with the power of the relic, and that the relic contained knowledge from the beast warrior tribe?’ I asked. “That I did boy-o, but I hate to break it to you, you’re just no that smart. I wasn’t given any schoolin either. If you could get smarter, I would be able to tap into that noggin of yours to give you better figures and even help you in other aspects, since I’m just using all the knowledge that’s inside your body anyways” he said somewhat amused.

Agh, I wish I hadn’t asked. That was just another thing I learned where I was lacking. I never thought learning to read or do math would be something that would be necessary in my life, but now Ross is telling me that if I want to use the relic better I had to be smarter too? Yikes.

I couldn’t understand how being smarter would make me stronger, but I thought it would all be worth it as long as I could get a specific number, instead of Ross guessing, or is that my brain guessing? It can be hard to tell, I didn’t really understand Ross’ explanation. It was just one more thing that I vowed to do as soon as I could.

At the very least, I could get myself stronger by hunting at night and finding things to kill when we stopped to let the animals rest. Of course, I would need to spend more time sleeping during the day, and that would put me at a higher risk if a surprise attack happened, but I couldn’t figure out a perfect plan. So, I decided to go with night hunting.

Over the course of the next week, I would sneak out under the guise of patrolling to go look for dire wolves to hunt. Luckily, they were a somewhat common beast to find in forests. Some days I found one or two of them, and others I didn’t find any. I wanted to bring their bodies with me, but I thought it would seem shady if I suddenly had all these dire wolf bodies with me. I didn’t want to let Ciara know about my secret.

The whole two weeks went by, and on the last day before we would arrive I had killed 10 dire wolves. I sat in the carriage with my eyes closed and meditated. I had been doing this a lot lately to familiarize myself with my power even more. I was slowly able to distinguish the feeling of gaining power after a kill. I couldn’t fully sense it yet, but I was getting there. I was also able to access the root of my power a lot more quickly now.

When I meditated this time, it seemed like I had just gotten back to around the same place I had been in before I imbued my stats into my jerkin.

“Ross, show me my stats” I said.

Orin Strength 2 (2) Stamina 1.3 (0.3) Speed 1.3 (0.3)

This was fantastic! I was feeling very strong. Although, I was somewhat disappointed that my stats were almost all in strength. Maybe if I had better control I could distribute the power better in the future. I wasn’t sure if this were true though, but it was a theory for another day.

Feeling quite confident, I posed a question to Ross. “Ross, if I were to match up against a spine bear now, how would I do? Can you show me their stats?”. Numbers appeared before me again.

Spine Bear Strength 10 Stamina 5 Speed 5

I was shocked! There was a huge difference between the spine bear and I still. I realized just how lucky I had been to survive at all. If I hadn’t been able to surprise it by sticking the dig bar into the ground during its jump, I wouldn’t have survived. The digging bar had pierced its heart and killed it. It really was just a lucky shot.