Chapter 105: Expert Counsel

Note: Apologies on the lack of chapters yesterday. The good news is that we'll be sprinkling in some double chapter days in coming two weeks (starting with today) to catch back up to 15 chapters ahead of RR.

--

“I can do that.” Lily said proudly as she looked up at the hill. “Remember to toss the first bit of the soil up, not down, okay? When you’re digging, I mean.”

“I can do that, sure. But why?”

“The better soil at the surface. If you throw it up, you can just knock it back down once you flatten the terrace. And then we’ll won’t have to do extra work to make the terrace farm.”

Arthur looked at the project. She was right. Of course, he couldn’t keep all the soil, but it would be easier than hauling it up the hill once he was done.

“That sounds good. I’ll do that.” Arthur took his shovel and buried the point in the soil. “Ready?”

“Ready. Let’s do it.”

Arthur wanted to eventually line all the terraces with stone so that they wouldn’t erode away and would catch more water from the rains. He had a vision of an entire hill transformed into row after elevated row of gigantic planters, growing tea in more varieties than he’d ever be able to use. But for now, he just needed a relatively flat place to plant that was near enough to his house to be useful. It was okay if it was primitive. Everything had to start somewhere.

He sneezed again.

Dumb allergies. You’d think vitality would get them under control.

He started digging, pleased at how much easier it was than anything he had done back on Earth. Even a little extra dexterity, strength, and vitality meant he could do things faster, stronger, and for a much longer period of time without getting tired. He fell into the rhythm of the job pretty quickly, tossing shovelfuls of dirt up the hill every few seconds.

At the back edge of the terrace, Arthur tried to cut the wall as straight as possible, which was much easier than it should have been after Lily started her first step in line with the back of the terrace itself. With her initial flat surface to work off as a guide, he managed to hold a pretty straight line as he worked.

Eventually, Arthur was completely zoned out, just shoveling, checking the depth of the work he had done, and shoveling some more with no more thoughts in his head than Karbo would have in a fistfight. Without bleeding hands or an aching back to stop him, he could just keep going. It was great, until he was suddenly stopped by an unmovable force.

“That’s enough for today.” Lily’s hand came down from the hill above him, landing on top of Arthur’s head. “No more digging.”

“I can do more. I’m not even tired, Lily.”

“You don’t think you are. But it’s already been a long day and you still have to cook. Besides, it doesn’t matter.” She waved her arm down towards the staircase and across all the work he had done. “You only wanted one, right? That’s one terrace.”

Lily was right. Arthur had been working so hard he had carved out an entire strip of the hill, all the way across from one side of his property to another. He couldn’t do anymore without starting another terrace or getting into someone else’s territory. The others might not mind, but it would be rude to do without asking.

“It’s so long.” Arthur gawked at what he accomplished. “We should probably put in another staircase on this side. So I don’t have to walk as far if I need something on the far edge.”

“Ask and you will receive.” Lily pointed at an already completed staircase. “You really were zoned out, weren’t you? I did both staircases and pushed back down most of the topsoil you’ll need. Just do the same thing for the last few yards and it’s done.”

“Damn.” Arthur shook his head. “You’re sort of batting a thousand today, aren’t you? It’s weird. Not that you aren’t always helpful, but…”

“Yeah. The ideas just keep coming,” Lily said. “It’s like I’m getting them from…”

Lily stopped mid-sentence like she had been hit in the face by a fish. Her eyes went unfocused as she sat down on the ground, plopping down hard in the upturned soil. Arthur immediately dropped his shovel and checked on her. He lowered himself to her eye line, and her gaze was still far away. It was like she didn’t see him at all, despite him being inches away.

“Lily? Lily?” Arthur said, shaking her a bit by the shoulders. It didn’t accomplish anything. She was still zonked out. “Lily, I’m going to get help. Stay here.”

He turned and took a few giant strides, sprinting towards the town. But almost as soon as he got started, he heard Lily’s voice behind him, calling.

“Arthur! Come back. It’s all right.” Lily was sitting up straighter now, all the focus returned to her eyes. “I’m fine.”

“You don’t look fine. You look like you had a stroke. I’m going to get help. Just stay here, okay?”

“I don’t know what a stroke is, and I didn’t have one. I got a skill, Arthur. Come see.”

—

“So then I wake up and Arthur is flying away. He’s midair, going to get… I don’t know. None of you are doctors or anything so I have no clue who he was trying to get. And it takes me five minutes to get him to calm down so I can show him.”

“Sounds like Arthur,” Mizu said. “We do have pills and things. He could have brought one of those back.”

Lily had a brand-new skill, one that might have been her primary class skill or might not have. Arthur was leaning towards not, but without Eito present, there was no real way to tell.

Expert Counsel

You are the eyes, ears, and wisdom of a project. You see, hear, and think better than others when observing an ongoing task, leveraging your natural curiosity and opinionated nature to know just the right way to go about things so that everything completes on time, under budget, and with a good-quality outcome.

This skill does not make you notice things you otherwise couldn’t notice, or come up with ideas you wouldn’t normally have. What it does do is leverage your WIS and PER stats to help you find improvements to a project at a higher rate than statistics would otherwise imply. You have good ideas and notice hard-to-notice things more often.

Note that these effects are limited to the kind of situations implied by your class itself. This skill activates when you are helping someone else with a task or project of a certain minimum length, where your assistance is through advice and guidance rather than other majicka-reliant means.

“It really is a good skill,” Milo said. “Putting Arthur’s hilarious ability to panic aside, this doesn’t seem to actually draw majicka, right? You were using some pre-skill form of it and didn’t even get tired. Which means you can use it any time anyone is doing anything. Just spam the hell out of it. You already helped come up with a good idea for the Slapstone.”

“And my hunting,” Lith said. “Noticed something I didn’t notice and saved me half a day of waiting in a tree.”

“Does it work with all classes though?” Rhodia said. “No offense, but I’m pretty good at ceramics. I’m not sure how well you could fix a process I’ve been working on for more than a year.”

Lily looked over Rhodia’s current set-up, a hastily built clay kiln with heaps of cups, plates, and bowls around it, far more than the settlement could currently use.

“There’s not much to change for the kiln, but it’s what you’re making,” Lily said. “We need to make more bricks. Tomorrow, we should dig out a bunch of clay, make a bigger kiln, and then you can switch over to bricks.”

“We already found the Slapstone,” Milo said. “Bricks aren’t high-priority anymore.”

“It is. The Slapstone is going to run out, right? We have all the cups and things we need. We’ll need more building materials once the Slapstone is gone.” Lily looked out over the barely-built town area. “And we can make a road out of brick. It’ll wear out over time, but it’s better than nothing. Bricks are going to be a big deal, at least until we run out of clay.”

“We won’t,” Kout said. “There’s clay all up and down the river. Tons and tons of it to take. Worst-case scenario, we get more water flow from widening out the river as take the clay. The only bottleneck is production. How much can you make?”

“As long as I have wood and keep building kilns, tons. They aren’t hard to make. And they’d go to use.” Rhodia was contemplative. “I could focus on production and lay the road myself as I go. I’d need help on digging the clay and catching up on getting rid of the bricks. But yeah, I could do that. Spiky? Leena?”

“On it.”

Spiky and Leena were the informal town planners, at least where details were concerned. They had dozens of sketches on how to best make use of the space they had, making sure the infrastructure of the town got a good, ordered start. They bent down with Rhodia over their papers, pointing at stuff here and there while plotting what roads to get started first.

“Well, that settles it. It works just fine on different class.” Arthur flipped over several big chunks of meat Lith carved off a large boar-like animal he had brought in. He had been slowly broiling the meat on top of a big piece of Slapstone suspended over the fire on sticks. “A good day, all in all.”

“It’s even better. I leveled up. Look.”

Lily Expediter

Level 2 Expediter

Stats:

STR 5

VIT 4

DEX 6

PER 6

WIS 4

INT 5

Unassigned Stat Points: 2

Primary Skills: Expert Counsel

Achievements: Filibusterer

“Lily, that’s great!” Mizu hugged the little owl, ignoring her wriggling protests. “Where are you going to put your stat points? Wisdom and Perception?”

“No,” Arthur cut in. “Vitality.”

“What? Arthur, that’s boring,” Lily said. “The most boring. I’m already keeping up fine.”

“It doesn’t matter. Remember what you agreed to when you were convinced Ella and the others to let you come out here? Say it.”

“That I’d do what you and Eito said.” Lily was instantly glum.

“And what did Eito say?”

“Put points in vitality until I hit eight. So I’d be safe.” Lily started imitating Eito’s most morose, hung over tones. “Survival comes first, Lily. Whatever help you can give, you will give. But first you need to be tough enough for that world.”

“And he really wanted ten. You talked him down,” Arthur said. “Dump the points, Lily. You’re already being helpful now. The levels come fast at the beginning, I promise, and you are years ahead of everyone else.”

Lily sighed, made a few hand motions at some invisible screen, then gasped.

“Don’t tell me you are going to pretend you dumped them into something else on accident,” Arthur warned.

“No, I did what you said. But look.”

Lily Expediter

Level 3 Expediter

Stats:

STR 5

VIT 6

DEX 6

PER 6

WIS 4

INT 5

Unassigned Stat Points: 2

Primary Skills: Expert Counsel

Achievements: Filibusterer, Advised Advisor

Advised Advisor

You have taken counsel from someone who knows better, ignoring your own desires and skills to err on the side of caution. From now on, you are very, very slightly better at assessing the quality of plans and ideas presented by others.

Rewards: Less than very slight skill in assessment of the ideas of others, small experience reward.

“I got an achievement!” Lily puffed up and strutted around the fire. “And experience! And now I’m at eight in vitality already!”

“Gods. This is happening fast, isn’t it?” Arthur asked.

“Looks like it. She’ll be harder and harder to keep up with.” Mizu hugged Arthur around his waist. “It’s good, though. She’s much safer than she was this morning.”

“Yeah.” Arthur flipped the big hunks of meat one more time, waited a few seconds, then set them aside to rest on the edge of the stone where the heat was lower. “Do me a favor and watch these, okay? I’m going to see a man about a fish.”