Overlay - Part 3

If I had to describe it then it would be a quintessential fantasy rpg town. A blacksmith hammering away only a few shops down. A large tavern inn, children playing in the streets.

Honestly it felt weird and surreal, like it couldn’t possibly be a real town. Each of them had status information above their head. Most of them were low level like me, between 3 and 6 the only one who wasn’t was somebody who look liked a guard and he was level 10. They also had their name and what must be a profession.

Herbert had the horses pull the wagon up to the side of the inn before he stepped off. “Here were are, our first stop. Meet me here tomorrow at noon to take a ride or to get change if you changed your mind.”

“Thanks” I replied before getting off myself.

Getting a room in the inn was easy, it was only five copper which I think was a good deal. I still had plenty of money but I knew it wouldn’t last unless I had some source of income. Dungeoncity sounded like a good destination.

I still needed to figure out the rest of my spells though. When I asked the innkeeper where an acceptable play for me to practice was I was directed out back and told not to damage any of the buildings.

While I did expend the last reserves of my mana I did learned several important things. I was able to figure out how to cast my other two spells. The second thing that I learned was that my skills and job were definitely proficiency based. While I didn’t get any of them ranked up I did make some percentage progress.

There was a problem however. Once I was out of mana I couldn’t practice my spellcasting anymore. Being limited like that was quite annoying. I would need to figure out some way to practice them either without expending mana or to get mana back quicker. 6% per hour was too slow.

Since training those skills wasn’t going anywhere I decided to practice with my staff. I had a skill for using the staff as a melee weapon so I thought I should practice that too. It was most of the way to leveling before I ran out of energy. It was quite dark and I realized that I was very hungry.

I hadn’t eaten anything all day and the last thing I remember eating was back at my home, or former home. I returned to the inn and managed to get a meal. It seemed the place was open for food very late at night and many people had gathered there to get food and alcohol.

I was too young for the later so I just got the food. It turned out to be a generous portion of roasted vegetables with a small portion of a gamey meat, probably deer. It was far better than I expected it too be.

While I eat I contemplated whether I should have done something about the wolves I had killed in the forest. Their meat could have been valuable. I should probably get a knife in the morning before I headed out. Even if I never used it for butchering an animal I was sure it would be useful.

After eating I headed to the room that I had been allocated. I didn’t have much stuff but I tucked my wallet under my shirt before laying down to sleep. It was all I really had and I need to make sure nothing happened to it.

As I lay in bed I realized that it was only 10pm. I could tell because on my gui there was a small display on the right that showed the time. Normally I would stay up much later than this playing video games but I was basically in a one now and I was exhausted for doing physical activities all day.

I was asleep before I knew it.

If I had any dreams I didn’t remember them when I woke.

That was strange, well different everything was strange. There was something new a blinking dot near my settings. I opened it and was greeted with a toolbar of what looked like applications. There were only two of them but I had I feeling I already knew what both of them were.

The first was a clock symbol and sure enough when I opened it there were all the features I would expect from a clock application. A timer and alarms. Useful although I wondered what would happen when one went off, was my gui capable of making sound, would only I hear it?

The other was a note taking application. One which I was capable of mentally dictating too. That was extremely cool.

I checked my other menus and sure enough I found something else new. A third jobs, Traveler. It listed the two applications I had as features as well as a Long Distance Walking skill.

Was it common or rare to gain jobs like this? There was still so much I didn’t know about how everything worked. Did other people get updates to their gui like me? Was what was happening to me special or not, well obviously a bit special. I didn’t think anybody else came from Earth like I did.

It was early in the morning. Eight o’clock. I had things to buy before meeting back up with Herbert for the next stage of the journey.

The first stop was a tailor. My clothes were not in great shape. Given that I was attacked by wolves they were more whole then they could have been. A few copper later they were patched up and I was able to head to get a knife.

I was able to find something small and sharp for five silver. I was assured about its quality not that I trusted the guy much. Maybe there was some kind of appraisal job that I could get, maybe I could try getting Herbert to tell me some tricks, merchants probably have an appraisal skill.

Next up was some food supplies. I got what I could fit in my satchel, hopefully enough to last the day and a little longer if needed.

While looking through the different stores I noticed a potion that looked like the one that I had in my bag. The person selling it was trying to get 2 gold pieces for it. I didn’t know whether it was a fair price of not but it gave me a context about how much my 11 gold pieces were worth.

I hadn’t had to use them yet but I was beginning to run out of silver. I would need to start earning money soon although unless I got robbed I expected my gold to last long enough to get to Dungeoncity.

Then finally it was time to meet up with Herbert and travel onward.

I arrived at the inn a little before the departure time and was able to pay him the extra copper I needed for yesterday’s journey. And with that we were off.

One were were on our way I asked what I hope was not a dangerous question, “You must have an appraisal skill right?”

He didn’t look that surprised so I must have been save, “Yeah, it comes with being a merchant. Were you thinking of trying to be merchant instead of an adventurer, I guarantee that it is less dangerous.”

“No, I was just thinking that it would come in handy to appraise stuff I might find to know how much it was worth.”

“I’m sure that there is some adventuring job which gets appraisal as a skill. You should probably ask an adventurer when you get to Dungeoncity.”

I nodded and responded, “Yeah, I’ll do that.” Good, at least he confirmed that jobs and skills were things that everybody have. A strange world indeed.

Most of the day was quiet, with Herbert occasionally chatting and telling me about some of the different places that he has visited. I thankfully listened and was glad that he was the kind of person who liked to talk about this kind of stuff.

At four o’clock Herbert suddenly stopped the cart. He seemed intent and looked around quickly. I didn’t disturb him and instead looked around myself but didn’t see anything.

“Darkness, this is bad. I hate to say this but you should prepare yourself just in case.” He said as he turned toward the cart and fished around inside it before pulling out a sheathed sword.

“Oh,” I grabbed my staff tightly, “What is it?”

“A birdcall, several of them in sequence.” He said. Now that he mentioned it I realized that he was right, there had been several bird calls. I hadn’t thought anything of it but now I was on edge too.

“What does that mean?” I asked in basically a whisper.

“Goblins most likely. They shouldn’t be in this area but that just means it must be a new tribe. What is your effective range with your spells.” He had also pulled out a small crossbow from the card and a quiver of bolts. It looks like he was prepared for this eventuality.

There was a little bling and a small message saying, “Party Invite” appeared on the bottom left of my vision. I quickly accepted the invitation and Herbert’s name appeared just under my own with his own little bars about hp and mp. Because of my settings I could see the numbers. He had maybe 20% more hp than me and only 20 mana.

I had done a few tests yesterday and the results were quite favorable. “My ice shards are pretty accurate. I can probably hit at 40 yards. Anything beyond that is questionable.”

He nodded approvingly, it was hard to tell if he thought that this was impressive or not. He had changed modes into somebody trying to keep their life in tact.

“Hopefully they will not attack and instead try to weaker targets.” He said as he pulled the reigns to get the horses to start moving again. “Then we can report them and they will be dealt with.”

“How many to you think there are?” I asked straining to see them but they still hadn’t appeared.

“Goblin tribes are usually half a dozen to a full dozen. Will you be able to keep your mana up long enough?”

“Maybe, if there is more than a dozen I definitely will have problems.” Iceshard was a little bit more expensive than fireball. It had much better than however due to the faster speed that it shot at.

We waited with baited breath until finally Herbert shouted, “That way.”

I turned and faced the way he was looking to see ten goblins jump out of the bushes and begin to charge us. A couple of them had bows. Herbert began aiming at one of the ones with a bow and I aimed at the other.

My icebolt flew through the air at almost the exact same moment that Herbert’s bolt. The two goblins fell like synchronized swimmers, or maybe like some better metaphor which I couldn’t think of in the moment.

Now that they were charging us and I had a moment I was able to see what the goblins looked like. They were short greenish people. Were they scaled, I wasn’t able to tell and didn’t have much more time to examine them.

I waited for Herbert’s next bolt to fly toward the goblins before calling upon my gust spell. It didn’t really do damage but it worked wonders as crowd control against a horde of small enemies. That gave Herbert enough time to load another bolt and we both let out another volley against the goblins.

Two more fell leaving seven remaining. Herbert didn’t have any more time to find bolt so he slung his crossbow and drew the sword while I fired another ice bolt.