Chapter 14 Instead of Becoming an Adventurer I Chose to Fish

Before I left this artificial forest, I managed to get the harvesting profession to level 2. It was a bit of progress, but having to climb trees took a bit of time. All of them seemed to be quite excellent for climbing, but I’m guessing they were purposely grown to be in this shape.

Sometimes the thought behind everything I was finding here seemed quite staggering. This beginner town seemed to be really well thought out. There must be worse towns out there, so I think I was quite lucky to end up here.

Once again, I took the path that led toward the training ground without ever actually entering the town. As I walked past the main gateway, for a moment I stopped, as I simply didn’t understand why I was so hesitant to enter the town proper.

Changing course, the sounds of the town surrounded me as I walked down the main street. It was now quite a bit later than before, so there were fewer people, but there were still plenty around. The place didn’t smell bad, which was unusual for this technological level, but we did have plumbing in our apartments, so perhaps the whole town did as well.

Everything seemed so well built. There were different shops here, multiple establishments to get food at, and plenty of taverns as well.

From each one, different music sounded. There was also music in the streets, with most of the people who were singing or using some instrument wearing the same uniform as I was.

They were probably grinding the Performer profession experience. It made the whole place a bit too chaotic for my liking. Eventually, I reached the market square. The main street continued on the other side, going on until the town ended.

Most of the stalls seemed empty; they were probably packed up for the day. The place was now filled with different types of performers that didn’t have anything to do with music, although there were some here as well, but they seemed better than the ones on the street.

The few stalls that were still open seemed to be run by students like me. They seemed to be selling simple things, and I really didn’t want to get tempted by anything, so I quickly moved past, taking one of the roads that led north.

The surroundings quickly changed. While there were still some performers on the corners, there were no longer any taverns or the kind of shops that were on the main street. There were still shops, but these ones seemed different and a lot larger.

One was advertising weaving experience—only 20 dollars for four hours. That was written quite large, but in smaller text it also noted that you needed to bring your own materials. The shops seemed to be where you could get stuff made for yourself, but also pay to make stuff yourself.

It made sense for things to work like this because grinding professional levels was so important if you wanted to get stronger. It didn’t take too long to reach the compound, and soon I was back in my apartment.

Sleep eluded me for a while until I understood what was wrong. The life inside the town, and the music itself, reminded me of home.

This also helped me notice the walls that I had been building around myself. There was more need to relax, so I could process the things that I had lost and would most likely never be able to experience again.

When I woke up the next day, my mood was still not the best, but I felt lighter, like everything wasn’t closing in anymore. Instead of starting the day with a run, I decided to go to the lake and just watch the sunrise.

As the sunrays finally started to hit my skin, it didn’t feel as good as it did just a week ago. Was it because my mood was worse now than it was then? Now that I really focused on it, everything felt less real.

Wait, is this because of my levels? Now I finally understood what it meant to start growing stronger, so much so that the very air itself didn’t feel like it should.

“Well, that’s depressing.” There had to be a fix to that. But thinking back on the history I have learned, that might not be possible. Better to get back to training.

With practice over and the time for class closing in, I cleaned myself up and, for the first time, visited a proper classroom. There were 20 tables and chairs, and even a blackboard for the teacher to write upon.

The teacher looked like she was in her 30s, but she felt older than me. The class wasn’t too long, and I didn’t learn anything new, although I did make some connections and confirm that, yes, me leveling up was the reason why the sun and the air around me didn’t feel as real as before.

“Before I let you go, is there anyone here who doesn’t have a class yet?”

No one around me made any indication of it, but I did raise my hand. “I don’t have one.”

“I am assuming you will pick one soon, before the fifth time we meet?”

“No.” My simple statement made everyone look at me. Some stared longer than others.

“Then I’m afraid I will not be able to assess you properly. Are you fine with that?”

“I am.”

“Understood. Then we will meet here tomorrow at the exact same time as today.”

And just like that, our class was over. It was time for more training. This time, as I entered the training fields, I headed over to the range. Then I set myself up to practice throwing javelins.

Those were really the only ranged weapons I was actually good at, although I think I should do some more training with a crossbow, as that is a more traditional ranged weapon.

I purposely didn’t want to put too much time into this, as I didn’t want my future skill choices to be too influenced by these actions.

Today I was throwing especially well, so I decided to focus a bit more. As soon as I did things fell apart. The 30-metre target that I was constantly hitting before, I noticed it didn’t have any javelins in it now. That was curious.

Why would thinking exactly how I was going to throw, mess things up? Or? When I was throwing before, I was a bit distracted with all that’s going on, so I wasn’t really thinking that actively.

Taking a few steps back, I let my mind go empty. Just thinking about the need to hit that target. The javelin left my hands at a perfect angle, hitting the target easily, only missing the center by about 20 centimetres.

Damn, that was a good throw. But was that also too much thinking? I focused on remembering how it felt to fish and how everything seemed to disappear during it. In those moments, it was like I was meditating, just one with my body and mind.

There was no active command by my mind to start moving, but I still did. My steps seemed perfect. First one to push and accelerate, second to gather speed, and third to line up my throwing hand and my body.

As soon as my foot hit the ground and made solid contact, the rest of my body, like a coiled spring, exploded into motion. It was at this point that I finally knew what my target was. It seemed that I wasn’t aiming at the 30-metre target, but the 40-metre one.

My fingers finally let go, my index finger just giving a bit more spin so the javelin would fly straight. The way it moved in the air, bending back and forth but still moving in the perfect arc, was magnificent to see.

It hit the 40-metre target with a triumphant thump, burying itself deeper than any of my other throws. It wasn’t quite a bull’s-eye, but as I got close, I realized it was only a finger’s width away.

I continued to practice, but I never quite reached that state again. Though I did improve quite a lot on my 30-metre throws. That 40-metre throw felt almost as good as fishing.

After that, it was time to do some more harvesting. It shouldn’t take me too long to reach level 10. Although there were quite a lot of others doing so as well, that cut down on the time I was able to gather the different nuts and fruits, as we needed to climb the trees to do it.

I was in class, but this time I was taking notes. As everything what was being said was new to me.

“Think about spellcraft in a similar way as leveling your Performer profession. The music you make influences the world around you, changing its structure. In this similar manner, spells can be created to have different types of effects.”

“Some might need vocal components, some hand gestures, some might need materials to properly be cast. All of these help you manipulate the mana around you. What helps you do that is your class, but you might question. Where does that fuel come from that helps you make those changes?”

“Most of you should know that when making something, if you don’t put yourself into that work, it diminishes. Every crafter needs to balance their desire to grow stronger with the need to make their craft as good as possible. To achieve this, they impart their very membrane into their work.”

“Does that mean that we can lose levels?” someone asked. Not out loud, but we all heard it anyway.

The teacher stopped talking and looked at her, but not in anger.

“A good question, but please raise your hand next time. No, you cannot lose your level. These are milestones that you cannot go under. Some of the most powerful spells do require you to impart your membrane like crafters do, but there is another fuel source available to all of us.”

She then went to the blackboard and started drawing what looked to be a membrane made out of small balls that looked very similar to a molecular structure.

“This is a crude imitation of what a mana membrane is. But you see all this space in between? While your membrane is more solid, in between is loose mana. It gets trapped there, and mostly skills use it to power themselves. But with a bit of practice, you can learn to draw this loose mana out to fuel spells.”

The explanation continued, getting more technical, but I understood it well enough. It seemed that this in-between and how much mana you could store was what was called your mana pool. It made sense that you couldn’t use your skills infinitely, and I guess that was the feeling I got when I exhausted this mana pool of mine when I messed with my inventory skill.

Interestingly enough, there were skills out there that allowed you to kind of optimize your membrane’s inner structure to allow you to store even more loose mana. Overall, this class was beyond interesting, and I was surprised when it ended. Because to me, it felt like we had only been there for 10 minutes.

This explained quite a lot about how things worked. One of those skills would definitely be on my to-do list, but actually achieving something like that would be a lot harder, especially if I didn’t pick a class that focused on spellcraft.

In the next class, she basically went over everything again, but in the end, we did learn two exercises that we should do to increase our mana pool.

It seemed that we could influence our own membrane to a certain degree—basically bending it inwards and outwards—which allowed for a bigger mana pool if you did it for long enough.

I decided to skip my afternoon practice and go back to my apartment. Sitting in the meditation pose I had seen so often in movies, it was hard to sense anything inside of me, but eventually, I did get the sense of something surrounding me, but it was also inside. It was really weird.

As I focused more, I did get the sense that I could either bend it inwards or outwards. So that’s what I did. Half an hour trying to bend it outwards, and then half an hour trying to bend it inwards.

Afterwards, I was sweating more than during training. This was going to be tough to practice, but this felt important.