Chapter 5

Abraxas had expressed the wish to take Lock into the wilderness and help him get a few levels in his Assassin class.

Lock was bitter about the nature of his grandfather's wish, but he had been the one to urge one into existence in the first place. And it wasn't like he could tell the man no. It was all very short-notice to be honest, but thankfully grandfather had nothing against Lock needing a few hours to settle his business.

Grandfather had also obviously been planning the excursion for a long time, gathering the needed supplies, and occasionally going out searching for something. Lock did not know what that was, but it had to be something important. The amount of maps his grandfather had revealed to him as he brought up the planned trip this morning had been fairly numerous.

Lock wished he'd been told beforehand, even if there were obvious reasons he wasn't. Still, he would be gone for several days for up to a week. That was a week's worth of Happy Time he had to brew up and deliver to Shink in very few hours.

The substance in the cauldron he was hunched over started hissing and spitting, signalling that all moisture had been fully drawn from the concoction. It left behind a hand-sized pale yellow brick that Lock pulled out of the cauldron and broke into powder with a mortar. The amount of Happy Time he'd just produced necessitated putting it into an actual bottle instead of the small paper package he preferred using.

A wooden bottle shaped like a flute, mind you. It wouldn't do to get caught at this point of the game. And by god if he had to be paranoid about people using sensing skills to feel an obvious potion bottle filled with an undefined powder on his person, then he would do so.

Lock disinfected his hands and wiped off the sweat on his forehead. There was no point in bathing it all off now, going to do battle in the wilderness as he was. He was going to have more than just sweat to worry about soon enough.

A knock resounded, rattling him out of his thoughts, but thankfully not the the door off its hinges. There was no need for anyone in his family to know about what he was making in his workshop. "I'm heading out to the gates. Meet me there in the next hour," his grandfather said through the door before leaving.

Lock exited the small building and picked up the rucksack that had been left before his door. He didn't bother looking into it as he made his way to the gate, one small detour in mind. He'd packed what he considered necessary and asked his grandfather to put in what he thought Lock needed in addition to that. There would be time later to find out what he had with him.

Lock made his way to Shink's residence. It was a small house in the middle-class part of town with a wide arrangement of greenery filling every part of its small garden. The only thing connecting the mess of plants in any way was that they were all poisonous.

Lock knocked on the door and fidgeted around for a bit, waiting for it to be opened. He wasn't amateurish enough to nervously glance in all directions and confirm to any observer that this was more than just a house-call between friends. But it was a close thing. The door opened and his tall compatriot ushered him in, giving him a suspicious glance all the way.

"My grandfather spontaneously decided to take me on a training trip. I'll be gone for a week." He fished out the wooden flute container and held it out towards Shink, who took it, a question in his eyes. "This is enough Fun for a week and a half."

"Alright, wait a moment," were the only words out of Shink's mouth. He turned around and left Lock in the strangely homely living room. Lock idly started counting the amount of self-made stitching present. It was the only thing he could really do, unwilling to sit down in the house of someone who he knew to be quite paranoid.

He had gotten to eleven when the older assassin returned, a plain wooden box in his hands. "I don't have enough money on me to pay for that much entertainment. Take this instead." The box changed owners and Lock opened it to take a glance inside.

It was a dagger, artefact grade clearly. It was a hobby of almost every class to gather the tools of their profession, almost religiously sometimes. Shields for Defenders, bows for Archers, and naturally, daggers for Assassins. What he'd just been given was probably a dagger that Shink had outgrown but still kept around for the simple sake of having it in his collection.

"This will do. See you in a while then," Lock said and made to leave.

Shink grunted and gave one last piece of advice as he closed the door behind him. "Don't let the power leveling get to your head. The kids who let it are always the first to have their heads roll."

That was a very good piece of advice.

Lock started walking to where his grandfather was waiting as he contemplated it further. The danger of power leveling was fairly obvious. Knowing his grandfather, that wasn't really his purpose for taking him into the wilderness, but it would be inevitable that he would gain many levels in quick succession when he... killed... him.

The first issue was that the body oftentimes had trouble handling the sudden improvements that stats provided. You couldn't suddenly become twice as strong and expect no repercussion to befall you. The other issue was that fighting for your life while unused to your new capacities was foolish, suffice to say. Adventurers needed to know exactly how their body worked to effectively use it. Knowing when a movement would reach its intended destination was important; milliseconds were important.

That's why it was necessary for a person who had recently leveled up to acclimatize themselves, which was bothersome. If you actually stuck to the job of adventurer, you would probably have to do so several dozen times in your life, if not more.

And the last issue. Arrogance. People born into adventurer families, or even rich families. They were often power leveled. Power leveling was the action of a higher level person bringing a monster to the brink of death, and then letting a lower level person deal the finishing blow. This way, the lower-level person still got some experience in their combat classes despite their actual contribution not being very big.

Now, power leveling wasn't bad per se. Someone who had been boosted in such a manner would usually defeat someone who hadn't been, who was a lower level simply by virtue of stats. It only became bad when it got to your head. Arrogance. As Shink had noted, people thought that levels gained with the help of others meant the same thing as acquiring them yourself. But it didn't, did it? It meant not having gotten one's hands on a certain other kind of experience.

Namely, combat experience. It could even be detrimental at times, if the person receiving the boost did not take the time to acclimate their body and elevate their skills to a similar level.

Being very strong and fast, or being capable of throwing a big fireball didn't necessarily mean that one was useful.

For in the end, what was strength, without skill?

-/-

Lock took a few moments to observe his grandfather as he arrived at the gate. An old man, clad in rather out-of-date leather armour, the occasional piece of matted grey steel peeking out from the brown. The buckler on his back was used as a cushion to lean on a tree, a grindstone was used to meticulously sharpen a short sword.

He looked wistful and strangely intimidating for a ninety-year-old man in slightly ill-fitting armour. People were giving him a slight berth as they passed to exit or enter the city of Abrakshana through its gaudy main entrance.

Really, the gate hardly needed to be a hundred feet high and painted in a vibrant green. Lock wondered how often it needed to get repainted and how the hell people were able to pass under it without taking a moment to appreciate the intricate carvings hewn into the arch.

"You're early," Abraxas said as Lock came to stand beside him, still gazing intently at the gate and its surrounding walls. There was an intricate system of houses built into the wall. Well, 'wooden shacks' would be the correct term, all connected to each other with the same wood that made up the structures themselves. Namely shabby, worn, and murky brown.

He glanced at the few ladders and the occasional staircase that let one ascend to the network of slums built into what was supposed to be the city's first line of defence.

"It's very dichotomous, the beautiful gate, through which one can see the beautiful forests that give this country its name. Surrounding it, ugly architecture, clinging to the walls like some sort of parasite." Lock contemplated for a moment, trying to sum up his thoughts in a shorter way.

His grandfather beat him to the punch. "Heretical."

Lock nodded. "Yes. Sullying the greatness of humanity, all that we have achieved, with their ugliness. Throwing away all conflict that Kruto has gifted us with, to showcase that despite all of the pain we went through collectively as a species, that most of humanity is still composed of bottom feeders, herbivores, and simply ugly individuals."

His grandfather raised an eyebrow. "Ugly? I didn't think you'd hold something they were born with against them."

"Ugliness here is not applied only to their outer appearance, but also to the things they bring into this world. The two do have a certain correlation. After all, forming the world around oneself in a mirror image of oneself is hardly pleasing to the eyes of others if the mirror image is lacking in beauty in the first place."

"This is philosophical and great and all, but we can just as much have this conversation while walking. We'll need a few hours to reach the city of Trydan anyway," Abraxas interjected before Lock could continue his diatribe.

The younger of the two nodded. "Did you have to add anything into my pack? I still haven't looked. Feels about the same weight though."

Abraxas snorted. "I removed most of the alchemy supplies you had in there and replaced them with food. Also changed some clothes around. You don't need to dress yourself up all fancy for the monsters."

Lock looked down at himself as they started walking. Steel greaves, leather pants with shin and knee protectors slapped over them, a long-sleeved shirt, and a chainmail vest that reached halfway down to his thighs. He hadn't put on his gauntlets yet, they being detrimental to finer tasks such as potioneering.

He turned to his grandfather after they had walked through the gate, having been busy appreciating the artwork during their passage. "What do you mean fancy clothes? I took my most outdated and hideous garments."

He gained a disparaging look for the question. "They might have been your least fancy clothes, but not mine or your father's. They're more rags than clothing and you'll be happy to be rid of them after you get shit all over them. But they're something nobody will miss, and that's what matters."

"I guess. I don't care all too much, I just hadn't thought of asking anyone else for their clothes. Why the food though? Weren't we going to live of the land?" He asked.

"No time. This'll be a short trip for purely combat experience reasons. We can hardly afford to waste time picking berries and chasing deer in the forest."

Lock nodded and they walked in silence for a while before Lock gathered his thoughts and started up the abandoned topic of discussion. "I also disagree with the fact that ugly people were born that way. One might not be aesthetically pleasing, but that hardly means all options are barred for you. Only people who want to stay ugly are ugly and that's a travesty if there ever was one."

Lock started the listing off all the ways ugly people could elevate themselves out of the ditch they were born in.

"Beauty potions, facial disfiguration under the guidance of a healer, bulking up, having an imposing voice, regulating your actions so that you come off as impressive despite an unfortunate appearance, just cutting off one's nose to distract from the rest of one's face, hell just cover up your fac-..."