Born a Monster Chapter 382

382 282 – Diseased

For a number of days, I was limited to long walks. Well, short walks at first, and only after that longer walks.

The army was far from idle during that ti; Rakkal might not be able to chase down the centaurs, but that didn’t stop him from trying. And from the morale of the troops, he seed a notable degree more successful than Hortiluk had been.

I may have explained this earlier, that Hamr and Anvil is the tactic of driving the opponent’s cavalry into a heavy infantry force, the Anvil. This works best when the Anvil isn’t just standing there, easily gone around.

It also... well, the Hamr isn’t supposed to be outnumbered two to one. For all his politics and tricks within our own governnt, Hortiluk hadn’t made any great strides in keeping our friendships alive with the tribes that had been our allies.

When Rakkal was out, the central fortress was almost a ghost town, which allowed to patrol the walls, checking for spots where termites were active. So far, I’d only found the two, but there were also areas with wood rot.

Rather than replace those with wood, I’d ordered stones from Rakkal’s Glory. No sense in throwing away diminishing resources.

But Rhishi, I can hear Kist asking, why not the outside as well? Simple. The guards wouldn’t let outside the walls until all of my healing was done. Flora wasn’t about to lose contact with her childhood friend; plus, she wasn’t about to do any favors.

Blacksnake had opened my eyes to the world anew; Manahuru did no such... well, if you wanted a darker outlook on the world, I suppose he had.

Incidentally, if you ever wanted to know how evil your race can be, just check your System. If it has classes like Doomwarden, Necrotic Master, Slaughterheim, and Lifebane, that could be an indication of a darker history than you might want to explore.

.....

I did nudge Psychologist, though, to level one. It turns out that going around wondering what the hell people were thinking that led to them acting that way was a great way to generate XP for it.

It was a Scientific class that specialized in the treatnt of ntal and emotional wounds; don’t develop it when you have to spend over half your day in an infirmary anyway. And absolutely don’t do what I did, and ntion it to Flora and Chamala where your fellow patients can hear you.

Out of all the odd classes in my System... well, okay there was Roustabout, which was so variant of Porter for mobile encampnts. Sohow, I’d gotten almost 20XP toward that one. But the main limitation on classes appeared to be just becoming aware of them.

How had insane selected just eight of them?

said Manahuru. So far, I’d been able to just remove disease from the patients and feed him on that, but he needed four mana a day, which I didn’t always have. The types I could convert to that were the sa ones I needed to make Life mana.

It just felt, at that ti, that I was running along a wheel or a river log, getting further and further from any kind of recognizable goal the harder I ran.

I told him.

I sighed.

I said.

I sighed.

I stopped walking.

I blinked.

Manahuru asked.

And as much as I wanted to argue, he wasn’t wrong.

I couldn’t rember a person I’d killed just for pleasure. Not that killing wasn’t sotis pleasurable, never let it be said that I implied that. It just...

I wasn’t proactive about killing. It just didn’t have the sa thrill that say, exploring brought . Or eting interesting people. Not just new people; et a dozen different farrs and there isn’t a whole lot new to learn from eting another.

Or was there? Agrarian was one of those flexible classes, farr to rancher to orchard-keeper. So why did so many farrs just have the Farr class?

But my feet had betrayed , leading back to the wallowing misery that was... well, almost any occupied hospital area I’d ever been in.

“I notice we are setting up additional tents?” I asked.

“Not you.” Cletus said. “If I let you so much as pick up a tent stake in your condition, my wife and daughter will hound over it for a year or so.”

“If putting out the tent stakes is all that I can do...”

“I just said NO.” he said, but had his hands too full of sectional tent poles to stop .

And yes, laying out stakes and helping to put up a tent would normally gain Roustabout XP, but apparently I’d done it often enough to exhaust that source.

“Might I help by carrying cots to the new tents?” I asked Leotan, the older son.

“If you can find them.” he said. “Or even get them here. We’ve been trying for months. Turns out that the fras are made of wood, which ans fewer arrows for archers, or sothing. To hear Grimmin talk about it, wood isn’t quite as rare as tal, but it’s no longer as common as once it was.”

Grimmin was the quartermaster, an amiable enough person, if prone to overwork. He led a squad of laborers, although he complained that most of them were just Bearers, and few had the head needed to work in a warehouse.

mory was one of those weird sub-statistics, sotis using Intellect, and at other tis Resolve. And yet, it was still mory, and regulated the sa set of skills, such as rembering what exact place each individual box had been emplaced at.

“I hadn’t heard of it being that rare.” I said. “There are still trees near Narrow Valley, and I presu near Whitehill as well.”

Leotan gestured with his head at the walls. “Trees big enough to make timbers like that? Problem isn’t trees, it’s usable sections of hard lumber.”

The Industrialist in attempted to distract . I’d run a lumbering camp, once upon a ti. I had a magic that could rge pieces of wood together. If I could gather together enough people attuned to the Wood elent, teach them the spell...

Attempted, I said. But the idea would co back to hound later.

“But there seems to be plenty for tent poles.”

“You claim to eat wood. Take a look at this tent pole.”

I was about to say it had less nutritional value, and then I took a look at the rest of what my Reticule had to say about it. “It’s not a crafting problem.” I said. “The quality of the wood seems slightly less.”

“Like firewood.” he said, “Junk wood put to purposes that only higher quality wood normally would. Craftsn forced to do things with inferior materials.”

“Are you certain you don’t have a level in rchant?” I asked.

He shrugged, tamped a pole into place. “I’ve been forced to learn that classes aren’t everything. Do you know how many people ignore their skills?”

Skills. Cheap, easy to gain even without spending developnt points. Ignored by dolts like .

“Leotan, has anyone ever taught you how to brew the woodsman’s healing potion?”

Those of you from technical realms, if you know what a treadmill or exercise bike are, you can draw that analogy.