Hunter Ellen
Ellen was already glad her other two selves were gone.
It wasn’t like she disliked them. How could she? They were agreeable and friendly, and had even let her take the tent and bedroll with her. Adventurer Ellen had taken the spear, leaving the long knife for exploring the forest, but that was fine. They had limited resources and couldn’t give everything to her.
Constant competition and figuring out who was doing what wore her down though. Ellen just wanted things simple again, and if she had to change tactics and be a little woodland gremlin then so be it. If she could differentiate herself from the other two enough, the adventuring party idea sounded like a good one.
She steadied herself with a hand on one branch and heaved herself over a tangle of roots. Her feet were starting to ache after over half a day of trudging on the slopes of the mountain and threading through the trees. They’d thinned out in the last hour, but it was still a rough hike. At least she had actual boots.
Ellen almost tripped as she stumbled forward, steadying herself with a grasp at one sapling before straightening. Up ahead the trees were definitely thinner, and she saw the vine-covered stone wall of a building not much farther than that.
FIRST TIME AWARD: Discovered lost ruins.
For performing this activity for the first time, you have gained 150 Experience.
An additional bonus of 300 Experience has been applied from banked Experience.
LEVEL UP!
You have reached Level 6.
The notification wasn’t a surprise. Ellen had already identified from last time what first time bonuses she could quickly and easily do, and she’d been getting stupidly minor ones all during the hunt for the ruins. She also wasn’t sure these ruins would qualify as ‘lost’ since she was told about them—or at least, previous Ellen was. She wasn’t going to say no to 450 experience though.
“So weird,” she grumbled. The idea of a ‘previous’ Ellen was still awkward, and she half felt she should be more worried about that fact. Yet… it wasn’t like she felt any different. A little wobbly in the memory, but she felt like herself. The other Ellens that were dead were kind of distant in her mind. She’d be more torn up about it if one of the two she’d just parted ways with turned up dead. Those felt more… real to her.
Ellen shook off the thoughts and eased into the clearing, taking a quick look around for random bears, wolves, or whatever. Once satisfied she wasn’t strolling into a predator’s jaws, she settled her back against a tree and pulled up her Status to do her Level up.
SELECT CLASS
Your actions during the training Levels have given you the following Class options.
Hunter
Laborer
Fighter
Artisan
Merchant
The options made her blink, then frown to herself. They weren’t bad options… just unexpected. When the ‘original’ Ellen had made her choice, neither Artisan nor Hunter had been available. When Ellen Two had picked her class, Hunter had been at the bottom of the list, indicating a lower compatibility. Now Hunter was all the way at the top… but Artisan had not been offered to either original Ellen nor Ellen Two. That was a new one, and it was strange that it had been offered to her now. All she’d done was put together a sub-par sandal.
It was generally accepted wisdom that the first Levels up to five were more meant to determine what was unlocked for class selection than to be useful. But normally, people progressed through those first Levels over the course of years while trying out different things. That was also the whole reason switching a Class was easier early on. If someone managed to unlock a new Tier 1 Class before Level 11, they could swing that way with little trouble.
At least, people generally assumed that was the reason. It wasn’t like they could ask the System, but over the ages that had been the basic conclusion. It just normally wasn’t possible for someone to jump from 0 to 6 in a single day.
Then again, a lot of the things she’d been getting ‘first time bonuses’ for didn’t give such a bonus during that period. That part was even more strange! None of them were very large but with so many coming all the time—at least in the first couple days—they added up quick.
Ellen shook her head and sighed. “Maybe we can convince Village Ellen to switch to Scholar and figure this out.” She doubted it, since she was pretty sure Village Ellen considered herself the ‘original’ Ellen and probably still had her sights set on being an adventurer. Not a bad dream, but Ellen wanted to be more pragmatic about their situation.
Brushing aside her thoughts, she selected the Hunter Class this time.
ATTRIBUTE UP!
Your actions during the training Levels, combined with your Class, have given you an automatic attribute point.
You have gained +1 Perception.
A little pout touched Ellen’s lips, but she sighed and relaxed. She’d hoped for a choice between Agility and Perception, but hadn’t actually decided yet. This way she wouldn’t agonize over it. This way was probably for the best. She hurried on to Perk choices, knowing that this time she wouldn’t be able to choose Tireless. Her new bonus to Perception pushed it to 9, though. She should have very different Perks available.
SELECT PERK
You may select a Perk at this time.
Keen Eye
Tracking
Appraisal
Awareness
If she’d been trying for a true solo career, Ellen might have considered Appraisal, since it could be useful in a lot of ways. She hesitated a moment when she realized it could also help if she pursued crafting or traps of some kind, but then shook her head. If she was going to party up with the other Ellens, she could afford to specialize. If it was important, it would probably come up in later Levels. The System only gave four options each Perk selection, but they tended to be Perks that would be most useful to the way a person had been acting already.
Ellen considered Tracking carefully. Original Ellen had already fumbled her way through tracking the goblin, but if she’d had this Perk she might have been able to tell there’d been two goblins in the cave. For that matter, Ellen Two or Village Ellen might have been able to. Any single Ellen with the Perk would have saved Ellen Two.
On the other hand, Awareness might have helped as well.
Awareness
Prerequisite: Perception 9+
Effect: Automatically brings attention to unusual or dangerous potential situations while moving. This Perk gives a greater chance to detect ambushes, rockslides, and flash floods by drawing attention to the layout of the area that would make those situations more dangerous. It provides no bonus to detecting hidden or obscured people, objects, or entrances.
The utility there was obvious. It wouldn’t guarantee safety, but it would make it much easier to move around and explore without getting herself killed accidentally. Ellen, despite being pretty sure that she’d just wake up as two more people, really didn’t want to test that theory.
She looked at the last option to consider. It wasn’t bad either, since she’d be exploring the ruins.
Keen Eye
Prerequisite: Perception 9+
Effect: Automatically brings attention to unusual or out of place details when examining an area. This does not work when moving at any pace beyond a slow walk. This Perk gives a greater chance to find hidden items or entrances, or to notice environmental inconsistencies such as oak leaves beneath a pine tree.
This also might have helped out in the cave, and Ellen was sorely tempted to pick this one. If she were going to look around the ruins, spotting interesting stuff was sort of necessary. The only problem was, it would only trigger if something were out of place. She doubted this place had any secret doors or hidden treasure, but it could be great exploring other locations.
She remembered Uncle Anroll’s advice, then. Never pick a Perk you might use over one you know will be useful. That’s why she’d picked Tireless both times she’d done her Fighter Class selection—she knew it was immediately useful, and would likely remain useful.
With that in mind, Ellen picked Awareness and closed her Status. Leveling up was important, but she couldn’t spend all day on it. The short rest had been pretty nice, and she felt less achy, but she needed to find a spot to pitch her tent before nightfall.
Picking her way carefully through the remnants of the town, Ellen tried to move slowly and pick up what she could. She immediately had some buyer’s remorse about skipping the Keen Eye Perk. The various stone buildings were largely intact—minus their wooden roofs—but the town had also boasted quite a few more wooden buildings with a stone foundation. Picking out the stone foundations was a lot harder than spotting the remnants of the masonry, since dirt and mud had accumulated over the decades to cake the foundation and provide purchase for grasses and shrubs.
A little searching mapped out seven stone buildings in various states of disrepair. Two only had half-stone walls, and a third only had one stone wall to start with, so they weren’t very useful now. The other four were mostly solid, though one of them had suffered a plant invasion that had pried the mortar loose and made one wall dangerous. That would need to be repaired if they were going to use that.
This left three mostly-serviceable buildings in the town proper. Ellen thought she saw hints of another building higher up the slope—maybe near the mine—but she didn’t want to explore that this close to nightfall. Instead, she did a full circuit of the remaining buildings, flushing out any stray animals. A fox, startled by the sudden intrusion, bolted into the forest in a red streak. She didn’t poke into the den, but it was good to know it was there.
She knew it would take a lot of work to clean out the wildlife. That could be done another day, after she saw what condition the places were in.
All the roofs had collapsed, after 80 years of exposure to the elements without maintenance. She’d expected that. Ellen wasn’t all that up on construction, but she’d seen old houses before. Only one of the buildings had a stone staircase up toward what had been the second floor, and she climbed this slowly, testing each step before settling on the top of the wall to look down the hillside. A feral cat hissed at her from the other end of the wall, glowering angrily.
“Yeah yeah… it’s your home and I’m the intruder,” she laughed. “Some things never change, I guess.” The cat was probably descended from the ones in the original town. And where one was, she was sure the others were prowling around. At least that meant any of the houses in the feline territory would be low on vermin.
From this vantage, she could see a glimpse of the river further below. She didn’t need Keen Eye to spot that a large swath of the forest leading down to the riverside lacked any older trees. The town must have placed a road of some kind there, when it was still active. The unnamed village nearby shipped timber down the river… Onroc probably did the same.
“Kind of wild nobody bothered to reclaim this spot. It’s kind of nice.” Ellen sighed to herself as she made that observation. She did remember being told a more abundant iron mine had been found nearby, but why not two of them?
“I guess nobody bothers with that stuff this far out in the frontier,” she muttered, scooting off the wall to climb downward. “If I’m remembering my history right… I guess after the war they just didn’t have the people to spare, and then they just forgot about it.”
This seemed a shame to Ellen. The buildings were in decent shape, at least to get started. Sure, it didn’t have roofs, but that could be fixed. And if the three of them needed a home base in the area, all three Ellens could stay here easily. That was the important part. Or… second most important part.
The more important part is that this place could easily support more than three comfortably, and was nicely hidden away. That could be important if things turned out as Ellen suspected. They’d already had two deaths just from a simple goblin in a cave. Each one had spawned another Ellen.
Hunter Ellen, at least, had a nasty suspicion they’d need to shelter more than three Ellens soon enough.