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Chapter 17- Get To Work

  Training sted a whole week, and blessedly, included several more visits from Regina. I chafed at the ck of my own Nakamamon creature companion, but Rainer assured me that it was highly dependent on the job I was doing, and the needs associated. I’d nded myself in the most dangerous of professions, and that meant it was more important for me to have the appropriate Nakamamon. Rangers and guards could have whatever they wanted, since their jobs almost never required them to use their Nakamamon in the doing of their duties.

  Rainer took me out and quickly became impressed with my ability to find and identify local pnt life, then state what they were used for generally.

  We went through a number of fruit and vegetables that were typically used in making oils for the drinkable cures. I was forced to get a dab of each on my fingertip and try to identify them by licking them, which was practically impossible… at first. By the third day I could tell olive oil from cano oil without difficulty, and both of those against sesame oil, no problem.

  Rainer’s training forced me to overcome several system checks. Some of these I spent Tokens to deal with, while others that seemed lower down the dder of importance I tried to tackle with my skills and stats. These rgely succeeded, though I failed a handful of times at Likability checks with Nakamamon in the field, and an Affinity check to synthesize a potion.

  The cool thing was that I got experience points for successes and failures, and the even cooler thing was getting more experience points for the failed checks. I netted only a handful of xp for easy or moderate checks, and a lot more for hard and more difficult challenges. The harder ones were usually beyond me, but they still provided more xp than succeeding at easy and moderate.

  I leveled to Trainee 2 and 3 in the first and second days. I was eted, but Rainer seemed unimpressed. This led me to look into Allie’s info tablets, where I found that there were 25 levels of Trainee before getting to Apprentice rank.

  Trainee level 2 granted me 2 skill points, while Trainee level 3 granted me the first special ability: Hard At Work

  Hard At Work

  (Special Ability, Common, passive)

  When engaged in checks that pertain to your css, your Tokens are worth double.

  The best part about leveling up was getting my Tokens refreshed. I had initially hoped that I might end up with more than my Attributes, if they weren’t spent, but it was not to be. My Physicality Tokens went from 1 to only 3, instead of adding my Physicality level of 3. The upside was that I had 6 Free Tokens… every level.

  Thanking the Goddess of the Meadow for my unbelievable power, I stared at my new and improved character sheet, basic as it was.

  Christopher Fletcher

  Healer - Trainee 3

  Attributes:

  Affinity 2 (2/2)

  Durability 3 (3/3)

  Ingenuity 5 (5/5)

  Likability 4 (4/4)

  Physicality 3 (3/3)

  Free Tokens: 6/6

  Unspent attributes points: 0

  Healer Skills:

  Diagnosis (physical 3, spiritual 3, magical 3, mental 3)

  Treatment (potions 2, salves 2, tinctures 2, elixirs 2, unguents 2)

  Develop cure (swarm 3, small 3, rge, huge)

  Develop cure (elemental/nature: fire, earth, water, pnt, electric)

  Develop cure (spiritual, beast, insect, fairy, dragon, psychic, unique)

  Administer Cure 7

  Unspent skill points: 9

  Special Abilities:

  Hard At Work (Common, Passive)

  Divine Gifts:

  Floral Knowledge (Rare, Passive)

  I thanked Allie for letting me know I’d be a Trainee forever, and she chuckled. Most newbies got out of Trainee status before their first few months on the job were up.

  “Apprentice,” she informed me, “is not even where the system rapidly increases in difficulty. No, you will have to reach past level 250 and become a Master.”

  I was level 3. The concept of hitting level 250 was astonishing to me. Then again, the next day I hit level 4, and was given one Ingenuity point, and one Attribute point to spend how I liked. I was tempted to go straight into Physicality, sorely tempted. I knew my body could use the boost, to stop my legs from being a problem. That said, I also understood that the magical sense in Affinity was bound to be useful to the job I hadn’t even started, and Likability was apparently good for working with the natives. Although they were a pacifistic sort of people, that didn’t mean we automatically got anything we wanted when we went out to py doctor in their nds.

  I let it sit for now. Once I started my job I would now whether or not I could sink it into my dump stat Physicality, or if I’d need magic knowledge, the ability to work for longer, more charisma, or even a better thinkey brain.

  So far, the system seemed forgiving, which felt a whole lot like most video game systems I was used to. The ones created after the first generation NES and Super NES, that was. The days before tutorials were a thing. After 1990, video games got increasingly easier and easier.

  On the fourth day, there was a problem requiring Rainer’s expertise.

  When I woke up, with Regina in my arms and Tweedle Dee sleeping at the foot of the bed, something felt different. The moment I got out of bed and put my foot on the floor, it sounded like a thundercp. A tiny thundercp, but a thundercp nonetheless. The next footstep gave off an audible squelch that made me giggle.

  Outside in the hall came a cacophony of bizarre sounds, along with confused excmations here and there. I heard some muffled ughter, and some cursing through the wall, and grinned.

  The next step sounded like a cricket chirp. After that it was the sigh of a satisfied lover.

  “Okaaaaay,” I said, and made my quiet way to the shower. Every time my foot came into contact with the floor, a new and weird sound emerged. A bee’s buzz, the crackle of static from televisions of decades past, a brief burst of police sirens, a roar of ughter from a sitcom ugh track.

  I was spared most of that in the shower, but by the time I got out, Timmy was at my door.

  “I hope you don’t mind, you didn’t answer—“

  His eyes flew wide open when Regina appeared with the squawk of a bird that wasn’t a chicken. She locked eyes with him, and both froze. Then she disappeared back into my bedroom, trailed by a series of snorts, grunts, crinkles and other odd sounds.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Dude,” he hissed. “I heard you pissed off Bke and he ended up getting demoted down to local vilge security out in the boonies. You can’t just be stealing his girl like that.”

  “She’s not his girl,” I said, unimpressed with where this was going. “Now, you came here for a reason that definitely had nothing to do with Bke’s nonexistent significant other. What’s going on?”

  “Rainer sent for you.”

  We made the absolute weirdest noises heading across the castle to find him.

  ***

  Rainer was frowning, which I loved. It made his mustache completely consume his mouth. Without his mouth, he just looked like a video game doctor, like from the MegaBot series of video games. Sure he wasn’t wearing a b tech’s white coat. Sure, he was standing on a gigantic floating manta ray style creature. Sure, instead of a clipboard or a tablet he had a backpack suitcase with all sorts of ingredients inside.

  “Fletcher, there you are.”

  “We have a situation with a god?” I asked.

  “Just so. You’re going to get your first chance to approach one without foolishly touching one before you have any idea of its condition, and let me remind you that touching it is strictly forbidden.”

  “Got it,” I said.

  “Climb aboard, son.”

  I cmbered up onto the Nakamamon’s back, while Timmy and Wendell looked on.

  “Mr. Rainer—”

  Mustache Head just held up one fat hand and the manta ray slid noiselessly out into the air. I spared one st look at Timmy and saw a concerned grimace on his face.

  Ugh. I couldn’t control what people talked about. I hoped like hell Regina could sort him out, or he was cool about what he’d seen. We were all technically adults here, but people like Bke, the other guards, and possibly Timmy tripped my ‘not yet grown up’ sensor. Like they were on their way toward being adults, had adult bodies and all, but weren’t yet out of the ridiculous drama phase of their lives yet.

  “Using Affinity, we will be scouting out the location of the god in question.”

  It was the God of Footsteps. “What’s the size of something like that?” I asked. “Small? Swarm?”

  “One hopes. On the other hand, the smaller ones are harder to find. And if they are yet to be in serious distress, they may be quite mobile.”

  I opened my mouth to say we should just follow the sound of the squeaks and grunts and ambunce sirens and record scratching noises, only to realize those were everywhere. Everywhere people walked the sounds of their footsteps went berserk.

  “If possible, we try to isote the phenomenon. If this is a god of blue eyes, we round up the blue eyed people and see if we can use them to work toward a location. This won’t be so easy.”

  Affinity (unknown) check: As part of you efforts to diagnose the situation, your ability Hard at Work comes into effect. This check is extreme difficulty. Would you like to spend 12 Tokens to automatically succeed this check?

  “Twelve Tokens to automatically succeed it,” I told him.

  “If you have that many—”

  I pressed Yes just to see what would happen. All my Affinity Tokens (two) and four of my Free Tokens went into the pot, doubled because this was now my job, and a sound like a pulse resounded from deep in the well of my… I don’t know. My guts? Wherever your third eye is at any given time. The chakras as a concept were sort of correct here, meaning that sometimes your Affinity resonates from your heart, sometimes from your butt, sometimes from the top of your head. Just now, it came from my gut.

  The pulse flew out in all directions and echoed off the god in question. Then, whatever fueled the power narrowed into a single beam, and I pointed in the direction of the faint blue line heading toward the rightside up portion of the castle.

  Rainer gave me a significant look but swung his flying manta ray up and around in the direction I’d indicated. Soon enough we were heading there, and I noted the beam of light intensified. Came into focus. Sharpened.

  “We’re getting closer,” I told him.

  He nodded. The plethora of noises that came with the territory grew in volume as we got closer. We skimmed along the edge of the castle until it became clear that the huge shaft in the center of the castle was a better bet.

  “Up and inside,” I told him. “Then down.”

  The ray swooped sharply upwards, and I grabbed on to the harness handles provided. Soon enough we swooped up over the castle walls, over the courtyard in the rightside up part, and the line came even more sharply into view.

  “Very close now… but it’s… it’s distracting.” The sounds of so many messed up steps was impossible to ignore. Some were elephant trumpets, others howler monkeys shrieking out, shouts and calls of birds, hints of violin solos, car horns, and one that I was sure was a repeated burst of armpit farts. I don’t care who you are, that’s sure to get in your brain and shove everything else out.

  Rainer opened up his mouth, and thundered out. “Everybody freeze!”

  It was like a magical ability in and of itself. The UI informed me that he had used Hard at Work for a critical success at a Likability check, and I opted not to spend any of my Tokens on what was an action designed to help us do our jobs. It sure did work on me. I suddenly respected the man so much I was willing to obey this very reasonable request. The other reasons flooded in: the sooner he was done, the sooner people could get back to their own jobs, he was trying to fix this thing, and also that injured gods were terribly dangerous, and best to let him get about his business.

  The noises mostly stopped as people froze in their tracks.

  We followed the blue beam of light… into the dorm rooms. And after we hopped off Rainer’s Nakamamon, the beam continued to lead us right to my dorm.

  “Not awesome,” I muttered, over the sound of my footsteps. They were frogs croaking, that horrible sound your fingers make when you rob them down a balloon, and the sound of a whiteboard marker screeching on the board. I chuckled, despite the fact that the god of footsteps was just outside my window.

  It was nearly invisible, and it was indeed small. It appeared to be nothing more than a pair of shadowy shoes.

  “I knew it,” I breathed.

  “You’re getting ahead of yourself, trainee,” Rainer said, leaning heavily on the word trainee. “Keep away from the entity.”

  “Sure,” I said. Why was it close to my dorm?

  I heard several confused yips from above, right where my window was, followed by the glimpse of several flower-covered tails.

  “What do we do next?” Rainer asked.

  “Call for guards, secure the area.”

  “Correct,” he said, so I cupped my hands and called out for the guards. It wasn’t long before several came running up, their footfalls sounding like pots and pans banging together, like a jet engine screaming high overhead, or like a crack in the thick ice in the center of a ke, among others. Heads peeked out of windows, and several guards zipped in on modes of flying transportation. When they hopped off, the ridiculous fanfare continued: a marching band pying a half second of something upbeat, a vocalist singing out in falsetto, and the explosion of artillery fire. It was wild.

  “We have a sick god here!” I called out. “Let’s cordon off the area.”

  Thankfully they knew their jobs better than I did. Several of them hovered around overhead at a good distance, to keep an eye on things, while others quietly called out orders: set up a perimeter, keep people from coming out to this courtyard, get someone in these dorm rooms and get them cleared out, and… and Rainer was frowning at me.

  “What’s next?” I suggested.

  He nodded, eyes almost vanishing under his twin mustache eyebrows.

  “We’re supposed to run a series of diagnostics,” I said, not sure how that was supposed to go exactly. Sure I’d read the manual, but ‘run a series of diagnostic tests’ was pretty flipping vague.

  “Also correct.”

  I stopped myself from sighing in relief or beaming at getting two in a row right.

  He reached into a pouch and produced a small vial of dried green leaves. As soon as he pulled off the stopper, the scent of purple whimsy wafted out. Rainer got a good pinch of the whimsy and spread it out in a circle over the twin shadowy shoes. I’d been given advice on how to streamline the UI process, turning dialogue panels into just pin scrolling text at the bottom of my field of vision, or to have the words appear directly in my head. Allie had spent a long time going over the Settings and specific options I had at my disposal. Healers needed every avaible advantage, because theirs was the only real dangerous job here in this new world.

  “We’re doing a test for magical ailments first,” he said. “Do you see what I’m using?”

  “Dried leaves of purple whimsy,” I said, and this time those eyebrow mustaches shot up.

  “Somebody’s been hitting the books,” he said.

  Someone had actually been hitting that ace, I thought, but definitely didn’t say.

  He didn’t have to conduct the other three diagnostic tests, because the purple whimsy erupted into fmes that first appeared blue, but quickly ran through several other colors.

  “It’s magical, all right.”

  “Is it always?” I asked ahead of my brain.

  “Of course not,” he said, his mustache brows knitting back down and making his eyes vanish again.

  I’d known that, of course.

  “We’ll try treat the little guy with an elixir or a potion. These are best for magical ail—”

  The little feet suddenly moved, and Rainer jumped back. Not fast enough. The feet brushed against his wrist and he yelled out.

  They went running off, but I held my hands out.

  “Hey,” I told it kindly. “It’s all right. We’re trying to help.”

  “Back away from that thing, Fletcher.”

  “I know, you’re probably scared,” I said to the little god. I made sure to remain calm, quiet, and nonthreatening. I took two very slow steps toward it. “We’re all scared too, but we’re going to fix you.”

  “Back off!” Rainer barked.

  That did it. The feet jumped a foot in the air and took off. They got about eight feet before they bounced off a magical shield held by one of the guards. In the meantime, Mustache Head threw a potion together on the fly, muttering the ingredients. A pinch of this, a scoop of that, and soon enough he had it dissolving in the liquid. I watched him work, trying to make sure I could replicate it if something happened to him.

  And like that, the potion fshed to life. It had stats from the UI, but Rainer thrust the potion down at the inky shoes and spshed the mixture over it.

  They shuddered and rexed.

  This is Christopher fearing he may have made an unwise choice.

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