Frostbitten Wayfarer

Zoe jumped from her chair and rushed to flood the man with her Restoration. His face lit up when the warm power ran through his body.

“I’m sorry,” he shook his head. “I’m so sorry. I can’t. I don’t have money.”

“That’s fine, I don’t need payment. Do you have a cleaning skill?" Zoe asked.

The man shook his head. “No, I. Thank you, so much. Thank you so so much.” Tears fell down his face.

“Do you want me to cast mine on you?” Zoe asked him.

He nodded his head sheepishly. “Please. Thank you.”

Blue light pulsed out from Zoe as she cast her Immaculate Enchantments. The sticky blood in his hair and dripping down his leg dissolved away and revealed the wound on his leg that was being stitched together by Zoe’s Restoration.

A deep gash across his upper thigh, with threads of flesh stretching out and merging into each other as Zoe’s magic flooded through him. She cringed as she watched it happen.

“Thank you,” he bowed his head. “Thank you so much. I didn’t. I don’t have money, I thought nobody would help me. Thank you.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Zoe said, and sat with him in silence as she finished stitching his wounds back together.

It took another few minutes before the man’s leg was healed, and he left after thanking her profusely a few more times. Zoe sat back in her chair behind the table and sighed.

She knew that injured people were going to be coming in for help, but she hadn’t quite processed what that meant until now. They’d be weak, down on their luck individuals who can’t afford normal healing. If she were established, maybe she’d have more regular clients who came in with less severe injuries.

But she wasn’t. She was a new clinic, nobody knew her. The only people who would be willing to go try and get help from somebody like Zoe would be those who needed it and couldn’t afford somebody more trusted. People like the man Zoe just helped, dripping with blood and who knows how far from death’s door, desperate for help.

The next few months passed by in a flash as Zoe continued helping the wounded stitch themselves back to health. Early on, most were too poor to afford her services. But after a few months of helping out word began to spread and more were leaving payment for her. Zoe didn’t mind either way, she had more than enough money to pay for her comforts and enjoyed building her own stuff anyway.

But it was nice seeing her work have a visible impact on the town, even if it was a small one. Zoe spent most of her time meditating to regenerate her mana to be ready for the next client. Whatever time she had left was spent on practicing her elemental skills, with a big focus on her new Water skill to bring it up to the others.

Zoe was surprised at the incredible number of people that used her clinic. She expected regular clients, but most of the people who wandered into her shop were new faces she’d never met before. Young children who Zoe wished she could stop from pursuing the dangers they were so clearly not ready for, older individuals hoping to extend their lives with some extra stats.

There were never all that many people in Gafoda, but the population was refreshed almost every week with dozens of new faces. Many who stopped by Zoe’s clinic for healing. Most of the time people had a small scrape or bruise they needed fixed, or an invisible near empty pool of health from an unfortunate encounter with a poisonous zombie.

But there were many who had missing fingers and toes, and even a few who outright lost their limbs and wandered in with bloody stumps on their shoulders and legs.

It was terrifying at first, to see injuries so devastating. But over time, Zoe took comfort in seeing her skill repair people from even such horrible damage. It gave her a confidence that she didn’t know she needed to see her skill pull its weight.

Near the middle of spring, many months after her shop opened, Zoe was rewarded with a new feat.

*Ding* For healing over 500 individuals, you have been awarded the [Healer] feat.

[Healer]

Where you stand, Death falls. All regenerative skills gain a bonus when applied to an entity other than the caster.

Zoe noticed the change almost immediately. The people she was healing were stitched together much faster than she was used to, and she guessed it was at least a twenty percent improvement. It would have been nice if it applied to herself as well, but it was a nice one to have anyway.

Summer rolled around, and Zoe was sitting on her bed in the backroom of her clinic. A young man with red hair and gaudy gold robes had offered to buy her clinic for twenty-five gold, and Zoe decided that was as good an excuse as any to pack up and climb the mountain again.

Most of her belongings were already stored away in her bracelet, though she chose to leave the table and chairs for the rich man to deal with. They were handy for her clinic, but now that she was going to return to ascending Moaning Point they would just take up some much needed storage space.

In total over the nine months she’d spent running her clinic, Zoe had made thirty two gold from donations. She added it to the growing pile of gold already in her bracelet and shrugged. Money had lost any sense of value to her many years ago. Getting enough of it to live was simple even when she was stuck at level eight, and with Ren’s mana orbs she made more than enough to enjoy luxuries for years to come.

All that was left before she climbed Moaning Point was to check her stats — something she hadn’t done in years, and then pick a new class. She noticed that she’d been stuck at level sixty one for a while now, but hadn’t felt the need to choose a new one yet.

And this time, she was excited. There was no unknown danger lurking on the horizon like last time, no unpredictable levels stored up waiting to rocket her to higher heights. She was level sixty one and might have a handful of levels backed up once she picked her class. But she was level sixty one, a few levels just weren’t that big of a deal anymore. She could take a bunch of classes for fun, try them all out and decide what she liked most.

But first, her excess stats needed to be dealt with.

Stat Points: 44

Strength: 70

Dexterity: 70

Vitality: 100

Endurance: 50

Intelligence: 250

Wisdom: 132

Health: 1000/1000

Stamina: 500/500

Mana: 5000/5000

Taking Wisdom to one hundred fifty was a no brainer to her, and she dumped the eighteen points into it. That left her with twenty-six to spend. Zoe decided to put all of them into Intelligence.

With her stats out of the way, Zoe brought up her class options. The quantity shocked her. Almost every class option she had from her last two were available, along with a plethora of new ones. Almost every new skill she’d gotten had at least two available.

Apprentice Swordsman, Potter, Master Carpenter, and so on. For almost every single new skill she’d obtained. There were dozens of new magic classes available for her new elemental skills. Zoe grabbed a bunch of them and looked at the bonuses, most were rather disappointing. Some nice bonuses to whatever skill they were for — and thankfully, when she tried taking a Fisher class, she did get the skill back when she replaced the class.

But there were a few classes that stood out to Zoe as being more interesting, and she left them for last. There was the Elemental Master class that had always stuck at the back of Zoe’s mind as a powerful, flexible option. A bunch of new enchanting classes, but the one that seemed the most interesting to her was one called Wandering Enchanter which gave her bonuses for enchanting things in places that were new to her.

The class that stood out to her the most was the Seasoned Cinders class. Seasoned Frost was nowhere to be seen on her class options this time, but Seasoned Cinders had the same requirements and almost identical description, barring the change from Frost to Cinders.

And the last class that interested her was the Healer class. It required her having the Healer feat, and provided many bonuses to regeneration. Based on the feat, Zoe thought it might only apply to other people. But when she took it to check, she found it didn’t have a similar restriction. Though it did seem quite reliant on other people being around her for most of the bonuses.

Zoe went back and forth on her choices for a while, but decided that another enchanting class wouldn’t be good for her. She just enjoyed her Chrono Enchanter too much to even think about replacing it, which was something she really wanted to do someday. But losing out on everything she’d gotten so used to having was such a difficult sacrifice for her to make.

Taking another enchanting class felt like she’d just fall into that same trap again, and never be able to go back to optimize her classes. The Healer class also just felt like it didn’t fit her so much. Healing was something she enjoyed being able to do, but not so much something she actually enjoyed doing. Taking the healing class might be the safest option, and many of the skills might even be interesting enchantments.

But it just didn’t feel right to her. She wanted something more exciting than that. Which meant it came down to Elemental Master and Seasoned Cinders for her. And this time, she didn’t need to think all that hard about it. She could try out both, and decide which she liked more.

*Ding* You have unlocked the Elemental Master class. Your body and soul will be adjusted to accommodate the change.

Effects:

- Elemental Master: Gain twenty stat points for each level in this class.

- Elemental Soul: Increased control of the elements.

- Elemental Might: All elemental effects boosted by 200%

- Magic Force: All elemental damage is increased by 150%

- Mana Well: Mana and mana regeneration boosted by 100%

Available Skills:

- Elemental Affinity: Increased elemental affinity.

- Elemental Manipulation: Manipulate the elements with your will.

- Elemental Disaster: Call on the raw elements to destroy.

- Elemental Arrow: Create an arrow of the elements and fire it.

- Elemental Vengeance: Reflect a portion of incoming damage back as elemental power.

- Elemental Shield: Create a shield of the elements to defend you.

- Imbued Power: Store power in an pocket of mana and detonate it at will.

- Elemental Clarity: Remove dirt and grime from objects.

Zoe noticed the twenty stat points first. Had she taken this class first, would she have gotten another hundred stat points to play with by her third class? Or did they scale to match the power of the class tier they’re in?

Overall, the class seemed fine to her. She had some decent offensive options and even a couple of defensive options. But everything other than the manipulation seemed so battle-centric, which wasn’t something she was interested in too much.

She focused on her class selection again and chose Seasoned Cinders.

*Ding* You have unlocked the Seasoned Cinders class. Your body and soul will be adjusted to accommodate the change.

Effects:

- Seasoned Cinders: Gain twenty-five stat points for each level in this class.

- Aura of Cinders: You radiate heat energy.

- Temporal Continuance: You gain experience through the passage of time.

- Regenerator: All regeneration effects boosted by 350%.

- Scorched Tempo: All heat and time aligned effects are boosted by 250%.

Available Skills:

- Heat Affinity: Increased heat affinity.

- Time Affinity: Increased time affinity.

- Cinder Manipulation: Manipulate the cinders with your will.

- Scorched Arsenal: Command the cinders to clad you in armour and weapons.

- Scorched Echo: Create an echo of cinders that copies your movements.

- Adaptive Cinders: Your cinders will infect all it can reach with a burning effect.

- Restoration: Apply a regenerative effect that mends recent damage.

- Haste: Apply a buff that increases quickness.

- Alacrity: Permanently increases quickness.

- Eternal Elegance: Remove dirt and grime from objects.

Twenty-five stat points as opposed to the twenty from Elemental Master, or even the ten from Seasoned Frost. If they were the same class, which Zoe suspected they should be based on the requirements and the options given to her, then she was satisfied with her Seasoned Frost pick so many years ago. Seasoned Cinders seemed far superior to Elemental Master, if she didn’t already have most of the skills from Seasoned Frost.

Zoe sat for a while and thought about why Seasoned Cinders was showing up now, instead of Seasoned Frost. Was it because it was currently summer? Both of the times she’d picked a class in the past were during the winter, so the system gave her the frost variant. But now it was summer, so she got the cinders variant?

But the class requirements never said anything about requiring a specific season. And she knew for a fact that was a thing because many of the classes she could see did require it to be summer. Apprentice Heat Mage required summer, and the cold variant required winter.

What was different about the Seasoned classes to the Apprentice Mage variants? Why would one of them have a visible requirement for the season when one of them didn’t?

She sat and puzzled on it for a while, but wasn’t able to come up with any theories that made sense to her. Maybe it was just another translation issue in the system, maybe it was some conspiracy far above her. Maybe whoever designed the classes simply forgot to add a season requirement. Zoe had no way of knowing.

Between Elemental Master and Seasoned Cinders, Zoe decided on the latter. Elemental Master gave her a lot of options today, but Seasoned Cinders just stood out as a much better option for her long term growth. More stat points, stronger bonuses, and if her theory was correct then she could collect all four of the seasoned variants for her own version of Elemental Master.

For the skills, Zoe had five empty skill slots again and made her choices. Both of the affinities, as that was always the best decision from what she’d heard. And the remaining three went to Scorched Echo, Adaptive Cinders and the third was up in the air. She settled on Alacrity for now, but Scorched Arsenal was a strong contender as well. Cinder Manipulation was an option, but she decided it made much more sense to get a general skill replacement than to waste a class skill slot on it.

Name: Zoe Mara

Race: Human

——

Stat Points: 0

Strength: 70

Dexterity: 70

Vitality: 100

Endurance: 50

Intelligence: 276

Wisdom: 150

Health: 1000/1000

Stamina: 500/500

Mana: 5520/5520

——

Class 1: Earthian (61)

- Identify (95)

Class 2: Seasoned Frost

- Cold Affinity (105)

- Time Affinity (113)

- Restoration (78)

- Frozen Arsenal (76)

- Alacrity (117)

Class 3: Chrono Enchanter

- Time Affinity (112)

- Mana Affinity (83)

- Enchanted Mirror (75)

- Mana Manipulation (97)

- Immaculate Enchantments (77)

Class 4: Seasoned Cinders

- Heat Affinity (1)

- Time Affinity (1)

- Scorched Echo (1)

- Adaptive Cinders (1)

- Alacrity (1)

——

General Skills:

- Vampyric Regeneration (37)

- Vampyric Senses (90)

- Vampyric Resistance (32)

- Vampyric Immortality (9)

- Vampyric Charm (71)

- Vampyric Empathy (76)

- Gathering (41)

- Archery (76)

­- Meditation (136)

- Cooking (54)

- Dagger-fighting (51)

- Tracking (44)

- Stealth (63)

- Frost (111)

- Alchemy (6)

- Spear-fighting (24)

- Sword-fighting (27)

- Shield-fighting (34)

- Wind (47)

- Earth (54)

- Carpentry (63)

- Pottery (7)

- Fishing (15)

- Smithing (7)

- Mining (25)

- Water (23)

Resistances:

- Mental (7)

- Poison (14)

­- Pain (8)

- Heat (1)

- Fire (1)

- Cold (35)

­- Disintegration (2)

- Time (3)

- Space (1)

- Water (1)

- Earth (1)

- Gravity (1)

- Ice (6)

- Wind (1)

- Lightning (1)

- Sound (14)

Feats:

- Patient Decider

- Master of Seasons

- Slayer of Frost

- Skilled

- Proficient

- Okiu’s blessing

- Healer