Gryn's Party

Even though i was more than ready to set out the next day with only some weapons, the clothes on my back, and a blanket my mother thought completely differently. Even though i argued to the best of my ability my readiness for both camping and hunting by sharing knowledge of the practices i should not have, she still made us wait three days to make preparations.

The reason for this was because Gryn was planning the trip and had told nobody where we were going.

The only things he would say about it was that we were going to be traveling for several days before making camp for a few days and then returning for several days. This did absolutely nothing to allay my mother's fears. She even went so far as to place an order for hides to prepare herself and try to make me a suit of basic leather armor.

This would have taken her and her perfectionism at least a week to finish, so i had to reveal one of my hidden skills to let me travel without it. This was a combination of healing, earthen elemental magic, and alchemy that i had come up with when i had first started really sparring with my brother.

In some way and on some level, every bit of green life has cellulose coating its outside, while sulfur and magnesium photosynthesize or and work energy on the inside. Using these chemicals and materials in conjunction with alchemy and enchanting, i could grow grass from the ground up around my body in a tight weave and then transmute it into a metallic plastic armor. The armor was strong enough to block blades and blunt blow but it cracked and shattered in layers like a porcelain.

It was a quick fix for bad situations, but not something i could fight for long periods of time in.

After this reveal the day after our shopping trip, i was still forced to put together a large bag of necessary supplies and a tent. My argument is that i could make anything i needed with magic but she argued that i needed to save my magic for the possibility of fighting a wild animal.

Then i tried to argue that being overburdened defeated the purpose of fighting and she said not only was that that was what my magic was for but that i only weight about a hundred pounds while i had more than enough spare points in Strength to carry everything with.

Considering i was still 'only' four-and-a-half feet tall- which was getting close to average for my age- and my training almost prohibited me from gaining weight, I had the kind of Strength most young adults had to work years for.

In the past five years of my life since i was born, i had averaged a gain of ten Strength every year with a few extras now and then, but most of it had honestly only been gained in the last three.

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Name: Chuck Stan

Title: ----

Class: ????

Race: Halfling Hillman

Age: 5

Level: 0

EXP: 2035

Strength: 23

Endurance: 113

Agility: 121

Intelligence: 150

Willpower: 250

Luck: 777

***

Compared to when i was smaller, all of my stats had grown by leaps and bounds except for my Intelligence. My mother said that it can grow based on experiences or through leveling, but otherwise both Intelligence and Luck are only raised through opportunity.

However, based on life experiences, the Luck stat can actually be reduced or- more accurately- used up.

In my Skills list were now a few lines of the same strange glyphs as my class, but added off to the side of my translation skill was a skill group known as High Mountain Martial Arts. The following skills were marked underneath it to show they belonged to the group, but the three lines below were still the same block of unintelligible blah as my Class.

Whenever i hit actual maturity- my second puberty- my parents said that all of these unknowns would become clear. Obviously, the skills had come from my learning combat and magic, so we could relatively estimate what they were. My Class, however, was supposedly still undecided.

If my Class was based on the skills i acquired and how i used them, then i would probably be some kind of magic fighter or craftsman. If i could continue gaining skills just by my usual training and experiments, then i did not really care what Class i got.

However, my mother cared a great deal about my Class because even though i tried to use my abilities as an argument she would counter with the fact they were completely unknown to me.

And so after a few days of preparing a stockpile of food and medicinal alchemy goods, Gryn and i were finally allowed to go out and gather up his friends for this outing. The backpack i was given was like a tall hiking rack, but made to suit my relatively small body.

On top of a wavy canvas tarp and collapsible rods to make a lean-to from, the rest of it was a large leather rucksack that was only half filled on the inside with a few sets of simple but largely pocketed leather clothes, twenty pounds of five different dried meat jerkies, and basic alchemy equipment bundled up in a blanket. The outer pockets, however, were loaded.

Even though i was allowed to carry a small and light crossbow that fired long and narrow copper darts for small game hunting, i was not allowed to bring the saber i was not yet trained in. However, both my never-dull birthday knife and my ivory dagger were given to me to bring along. Normally i was not even allowed to have them except on special training sessions.

While the daggers were sheathed on the belt of my 'traveler's suit', i could not actually carry the crossbow on my person in town and thus wore it hanging from the front of my ruck and out of reach. Either of the tall pockets on the sides of my rucksack were filled with tools and reagents to handle dangerous or gross materials in the wild.

I was also given several leather bundles of empty vials and bottles, of which one whole bundle was allowed to be filled with poisonous or venomous harvests. The rest could only be used for gathering non-offensive magical harvests. Of course, all of my 'poisonous' materials were restricted to class-three and below.

These were mostly non-lethal and light irritants, hallucinogens, paralyzing toxins, and weak acids. There were, however, a few slow-acting poisons that could kill but required multiple doses over a period of time- thus ensuring my safety like a good mother should.

There was also a top inner pocket to my rucksack- which was otherwise just one big pocket- and this was where all of the medical supplies and antidotes my mother had made up for me were stored.

In contrast, Gryn was almost naked in that all he carried were his own daggers, shortsword, a light canvas rucksack, and a crossbow like my own. His magic was less offensive and varying than my own since his studies had taken place later than mine, so it was better that he be lighter equipped and fill the role of a frontliner.

The meds were a bit over the top, though. My will healing was effectively regeneration on any injury and basic anti-toxins here could be enriched with raw mana to treat something like cobra venom.

It was hard to argue with the venoms, though, because the forestry around the neighboring mountains were home to their own breed of giant colonizing spiders. These spiders came in three types and three sizes based thereon. Worker drones were about the size of a medium dog, warriors who defended the hives were about the size of a horse, and queens could crush a small cottage.

Queens who possessed the only lethal venom never left the home, so the warriors who sprayed an intense acid also never left the hive. The workers, who monopolized on paralyzing toxins, however, essentially lived away from the nests.

Queens were inherently magical which gave them a certain level of intelligence, this instinctive knowledge drove them to drive their drones to seek out magical materials. Sensitive to magic and therefore fearful of it themselves, queens can only rely on senseless drones to randomly stumble across treasure.

Gryn and I were both naturally and exceptionally magical people, so we would be a prime time buffet for any of them. Even if we were not traveling toward the mountains, it was still a good thing we were traveling in a group because these were not the only magic-craving critters.

Gryn's party consisted of four other people, two boys and two girls, of various ages at the 'east gate'. The east gate was not only the literal east gate to our town but also the only destination my brother would ever mention. This was what lead my mother to overreact with the antidotes.

The first person to notice and greet us was a long-time friend of my brother's that i recognized from a couple of my birthdays, a taller and older boy named Carth. Carth had reddish brown shaggy hair that reached down about his ears and toward dark brown eyes. While Gryn was twelve and about a little over five feet tall, Carth was fifteen and closer to six feet in height but still seemed to defer the group to Gryn.

Next was a lovely young lady with matching reddish brown hair and brown eyes, but where her twin brother was somewhat chunky despite being muscular in the arms and chest, she was tall and slender with slight curvature. Still, she had a sharply angled, almost matured face which gave her a unique kind of beauty.

Both of them wore matching leather vests, forearm bracers, and chaps over canvas versions of our leather suits. Both of them also wore matching shortswords and on the backs of their own rucks styled like my own were crossbows like Gryn and mine.

The other two were also people who had been to a few of my birthdays, a girl around my age and her brother who was Gryn's age. While the way Gryn and Carth's twin, Hilda, looked at each other during their hand-clasped greeting it was obvious their was mutual affection and attraction. However, this younger sister was shy and timid around Gryn in a way that belied her own attraction to the older boy.

Gryn was definitely a Chad. But a good Chad.

The boy and his sister were both dark haired with dark blue eyes and we both Gryn's height. I could not tell if this meant that Gryn was short or the girl was tall, but the other sibling pair was less equipped than the older pair in that they both carried light rucks, wore only canvas suits, and were armed with only a single large knife on their belts with bow and arrows on their backs.

Their names were Eman and Layla.

After only a few minutes of catching up and discussing our overall preparations, i quickly gained a few insights on our destination and was somewhat happy to have brought so much crap with me. Then, we set off out of the bustling gateway in the tall wall around our hometown.

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