Frostbitten Wayfarer

By the time Zoe had finished preparing all of her meals, the sun was low in the sky. Not quite setting, but it was comfortably into the early evening. For a moment, she thought about going back up the mountain, but there were some other things that she could do in town too.

She wanted to map out Gafoda a little bit. It was a small town, only a few dozen buildings in total. If she walked around, it wouldn’t take longer than an hour or two to get a good understanding of what kinds of shops and stores were available to her. And it gave her some time to think about her mountain climbing experience.

Climbing was exciting, the fights she had with the zombies were scary but manageable. A scenario where Zoe were to be a little higher in the mountain and surrounded by higher level undead that could actually threaten her wasn’t hard to imagine.

Zoe knew from her research that the undead would start using tools, weapons. And even higher they’d have magic of their own. She didn’t really understand how it worked, did they just get another class that gave them combat options? Why would it take until even later for them to get magic? What restricted them from that?

Was it just the way the dungeon worked? Did it create them with certain classes, or did the zombies level up over time and wander up the mountain as they did? There were so many questions that she wouldn’t be able to find answers to any time soon.

She put her musings on how the dungeon worked to the side, she could do some more research when she got back to Kaira or maybe if she ran into Eliza again. What was more important to her right now was her own plans, what she wanted to do.

Did she want to put herself at risk and climb higher, to more dangers? Part of her did, that was why she was here after all. She wanted to conquer the mountain, to be able to say she bested it. That was the whole point. But she’d learned a lot even just from the one trip she had done that didn’t go very high anyway.

Should she just stick around at the lower areas until she felt more comfortable, and then continue ascending? That made the most sense to her at least. A lot more sense, once she really thought about it. Really, anything else would just be irrational and dangerous.

Okay, so she’d stick around at the lower levels, practice using her skills and see where her limits were. And then once she was comfortable, she could continue on. One thing she really wanted was to at least be more confident using a shield.

If she understood that, then she could more safely practice a variety of one handed weapons like the spear and sword. Her magic was great, but had she been able to use a weapon properly, she could have taken out the horde of zombies while she rescued Obai without needing to rely on her meagre mana regeneration while she was using Restoration.

Although, the argument could be made that if she put that time into practising Meditation in more stressful scenarios like that, then she would have had the mana regeneration to handle it anyway.

But at some point, even that won’t be enough. Her Restoration is going to continue levelling up, and it’s going to get even more costly as it does, she’d imagine. Her Meditation was a massive boon of course, but a spear didn’t cost mana at all, at least not beyond summoning one which was almost negligible.

Zoe continued wondering about what her plan should be as she walked through Gafoda. As she expected, it only took her a little over an hour to map everything out. Matching her previous stroll through Gafoda, most of what she saw were alchemy shops and clinics. But there were three inns — none that looked better than the one she was staying at, two blacksmiths and a handful of more generalized shops.

She had little interest in alchemy and clinics, at least for now. Maybe one day she could see about getting a job at one of the clinics, but her main interest were the blacksmiths. After thinking about it, she decided it made the most sense to put at least a token effort into her weapons skills, even if she was going to focus more on meditation.

In her eyes, it was better to spend her time getting a variety of options than to put all her eggs into one basket, at least when the cost wasn’t too high. And for now at least, it wasn’t.

Zoe walked back to the nicer of the two blacksmiths she saw. It was a large stone building with a forge around the back. A young woman covered in soot was hammering away at a large chunk of some blackened metal on an anvil.

It looked like a lot of hard work, but it might be a good idea to learn someday Zoe thought as she walked into the shop. There were two shelves along each side of the building, and a counter at the opposite end from where Zoe entered.

Most of what Zoe saw weren’t weapons or armour but tools and other more normal things she recognized. Hammers, nails and pipes. Even some cutlery and cooking utensils. All the things somebody might need that happened to be metal. There were some weapons hanging from the wall behind the counter and even a suit of armour set up on a mannequin, but they weren’t the main draw here.

It made sense to Zoe, in some way. A blacksmith just worked with metal, they weren’t only for making weapons. She just had this image from all the stories she’d read and shows she watched of blacksmiths with hordes of weapons hanging on the walls. But if this was where metal was processed, most of it was probably used on crowbars and forks if she took a moment to think about it.

The man behind the counter smiled when she entered and watched her as she walked around. Zoe checked out the knick knacks then stopped off at the counter. As useful as the random junk was, she really needed a better look at weapons so she could make better ones with her skill.

“Hello!” The man grinned.

“Uh, hi. I was hoping to get a look at some weapons, I guess? I have a skill that lets me create weapons but I kinda wanna get a better idea of what they look like and how they feel so I can use it better. Do you have some weapons I could look through? And shields, I’d love to check out some shields if you have some too?” Zoe asked.

The man frowned. “We’re not a charity, miss. I can’t let you just look through all our stock so you can steal our designs for free.”

“Oh,” Zoe said, realizing her blunder. Of course that was a little silly. It’d be like asking if you could look through a bookstore and copy some of their books into your journal to read later. Sure maybe the books wouldn’t be ground breaking and she could get them for free from a library, but that’s just not the point of a bookstore.

“That makes sense. I’m sorry. I can absolutely pay. Thirty silver to look at some shields and weapons maybe?” Zoe asked.

The man grinned again and stuck out his hand. “Sounds like a deal to me!”

Zoe grabbed his hand and traded the thirty silver over to him.

“Excellent. So shields and weapons. Anything in particular?” He asked.

“No I don’t really know much about this stuff to be honest. Just would like to see how real shields work and maybe see some more exotic weapons and stuff?” Zoe answered.

The man nodded and summoned an assortment of shields to the counter between them. There were a handful of smaller, round shields and a few longer shields of different shapes.

“Right, well here’s a handful of shields. These ones here,” he gestured at the smaller ones, “are all boss gripped. Do you know what that is?” The man asked.

Zoe shook her head.

He flipped one of the shields over to show the backside. There was a single metal rod on the back, and he gripped his hand around it. “This is a boss grip. You hold it with just your hand. Usually they’re smaller shields that you’d try and deflect with.” He held it at arms length out in front of him at a slight angle.

“It’s light enough to hold way out here, which increases the area of protection behind it. Keep it a little angled and most blows will slide off.” He put the shield down and flipped over one of the larger tear drop shaped shields.

“This one is much larger and heavier. On the back are these two straps. You put your arm through the first and then grip the second. Because it’s so much heavier, you’d usually keep it closer to your body and maybe extend it to protect your attacking arm.” He made a swinging motion with his other hand and moved the shield to cover his hand as he did.

“Make sense?" He asked.

Zoe nodded.

“Good. So those are your shields. The actual shape of the shield doesn’t matter so much, it’s just about striking a balancing act between the amount of coverage a shield has without making it too heavy to move around. In theory, if you were strong enough to hold a tower shield at arms length without losing mobility, that would be best. But if you can do that, you should probably get a sturdier, heavier shield and hold it closer anyway.” He shrugged.

“Okay, cool. How are you supposed to hold a shield anyway? I tried to block one of the zombies’ swings earlier and it didn’t work so well.” Zoe asked.

The man laughed. “A common mistake people do is think the shield protects them. It doesn’t. It’s just a hunk of wood or metal. It spreads out the impact across a larger area and helps you deflect the incoming blow. But you still have to brace yourself, you still have to absorb the force that isn’t deflected away. Stand strong, hold the shield out and try to angle the shield to deflect rather than stop blows.”

Zoe nodded. She didn’t expect a lesson for the thirty silver, but was appreciating it quite a lot. When she tried to stop the zombie’s blow before she took it head on. The zombie’s arms slammed into her shield and pushed her back, but if she stepped aside a bit and just held the shield up to stop the glancing blow, it probably would have worked a lot better.

She wasn’t trying to stop a cavalry charge, she was trying to not get killed by a zombie. There was no reason she needed to take the full force of its blow like she tried.

“Okay, that helps a lot actually. Thanks.” Zoe said.

The man smiled. “No problem, happy to help. Weapons next then?”

Zoe nodded.

He replaced the shields with a variety of weapons. A few swords, maces, axes and a couple spears. “Well we don’t have any exotic weapons, people usually get those custom made if they need something strange. But here’s a selection of more typical weapons at least. You have any experience with these?”

Zoe nodded. “I’m good with a dagger, and I used a spear once before. It was okay but kind of hard to actually hit things properly with it.”

The man nodded. “They can be. Best advice I can give you is don’t overextend. Keep the spear close to your body and the tip between you and your opponent. A lesson on each weapon is outside my wheelhouse and what you paid today, though.” He laughed.

“That’s fair. Thanks a lot though.” Zoe said.

The man gestured at the weapons. “Pay attention to the balance. Different weapons are balanced differently for different purposes.” He picked up one of the swords and handed it to Zoe.

“This here is a longsword. The balance point is a few inches above the hilt. This is a nice balance between keeping it easy to move but without losing weight in the tip.” He explained.

Zoe held the sword and moved it around. It moved through the air easily, and she was able to get the tip wherever she wanted with relative ease.

The man handed her one of the maces. “This is a mace. The big heavy ball at the end pulls the balance point very far forward. It’s much harder to move around, but that added weight helps make the blows that much more devastating.”

Zoe grabbed the hammer and tried to move it around. It was much heavier than the sword when she held it by the handle, though when she held it on the other end it felt much the same. Lifting the tip and getting it where she wanted was much more difficult.

“And there’s plenty of weapons with everything in between. Swords that pull the balance point closer to your hand for that little bit of extra mobility, or push it farther around for harder hitting slashes. It all depends on the style you use and what the weapon is supposed to do. Make sense?” He asked.

“Yeah. That does, thanks. I kinda knew that already but it’s so much more impressive to feel the difference between them like this than to just hear about it. Those weighed basically the same but felt so much more different than I expected.” Zoe answered.

The man nodded. “A lot goes into making weapons feel good to hold and use. A sword isn’t just a sharp stick.”

“Thanks a lot for that.” Zoe summoned another silver circle and handed it to him.

“Pleasure doing business!” He grinned and Zoe left.

Zoe suspected she vastly overpaid for just looking at some weapons but she didn’t mind. Forty silver for a brief conversation about weapons and the chance to hold a couple of them was almost certainly bad. But she learned lots and was excited to put some of it to practice.

She made her way over to the gate, summoned her frozen armour, a slightly shorter spear this time and a large tear drop shield. It might be a while before she truly mastered the shield, but she had all the time in the world to keep trying.