You’ve reached Level 3 in Mana Manipulation.

  Ryan waved the notification away and stared at the small sprout in his hand, already withered and dead. It had been a seed just a few minutes ago. A few days earlier, his conversation with Ingrid had drifted into how healing spells worked—essentially using the body’s own energy and coaxing it to heal faster, fast enough to stop bleeding out at the very least. That energy then had to be replaced through normal consumption of food. The explanation had given Ryan ideas about stimulating plant growth. Still, even after managing to gain the Mana Manipulation skill—which had, in turn, granted him a single point in Mana Regen, a pleasant surprise—every seed he managed to sprout withered and died shortly thereafter.

  “Maybe it needs a break,” Ping said.

  “What?” Ryan asked, lifting his gaze from the dead plant in his hand to Ping’s face.

  “Well, plants don’t normally grow that fast. So maybe it needs a pause. You’re doing it too fast.”

  Ping seemed to be done chewing him out for wasting a point in Mana Pool and had moved on to chewing him out for rushing the skill. Then again, she might actually have had a point.

  The ability to sense where his mana was and how to move it had been a pain in the ass to achieve. Getting a seed to sprout, on the other hand, had been surprisingly easy. The seed already had all the energy it needed to reach the sprouting stage—he was just helping it get there. All he had to do was to will it to believe it was time to grow. It was just running out of energy.

  With that realization, Ryan let out a deep sigh—one appropriate for nighttime, not for early morning.

  “Gods, I’m an idiot.”

  “While I won’t argue,” Ping said, a grin plastered across her Asian-like face, “what exactly are you an idiot for?”

  “I’m starving the damn thing,” Ryan said.

  She nodded. “And you’re late.” She shoved a partially stale piece of bread into Ryan’s mouth, barely giving him time to grab hold of it before letting go, then started pushing at his back to get him up and moving. Ryan let her shove him out the door into the cold Northwatch air. He took a bite of the bread, then crouched to clear a small patch of dirt near the doorway—somewhere it likely wouldn’t be stepped on. He placed a seed there and poured the last remaining dregs of his mana into the tiny living thing. It grew to about half the size he’d been forcing before. Roots pushed down into the soil this time, while small green shoots reached upward. Ryan added a splash of water from his waterskin, studied the plant for a moment, then shrugged. He set off toward the Lord’s Hall. First on his itinerary was a meeting with the steward, followed by militia training, followed by an untold number of shield bosses that still needed to be pounded into submission.

  It was going to be another long day.

  ***

  “All right, so what’s going horribly wrong today?” Ryan asked as he dropped into the chair in the only open space at the meeting table not covered by Bjorn’s paperwork.

  The older man looked up and glared at him. “You mean other than the fact that rumors of food shortages are spreading, and people are hoarding food—which is likely to actually cause starvation?”

  Ryan winced, but in all fairness, it wasn’t entirely his fault. “Well, if you have any other state secrets,” Ryan shot back, “perhaps you’ll see fit to actually let me know that they’re secrets.”

  The older man glared at him for a long moment, then nodded, conceding the point. “Well, while it’s not exactly a secret, we did have a messenger come through last night. It would seem the goblin host is a bit larger than usual. The collected lords and their retinues have decided to fortify one of the larger towns, utilizing its walls. However, while most of the horde is heading in that direction, a sizable chunk split off and is heading toward us. We don’t exactly know what ‘sizable’ means. It seems no one got a good count.”

  Ryan let that information settle for a few moments before continuing. “Okay. What’s next?”

  “Well,” Bjorn said, shifting to another list laid out to the side. “The brush has been piled up around most edges of the wall. Theoretically, this makes it harder to place ladders. However, there’s concern that if we set the brush on fire, it could degrade the walls. Short-term gain, long-term loss. Most people have had some training with shields and spears. We’ve managed to craft enough spears to arm everyone in the village, along with makeshift shields. We’re currently switching the smithy over to making shield bosses, but have only…”

  “Yes. I know how many bosses I’ve made.”

  The older man didn’t look particularly pleased at being cut off mid-report, but he also seemed to recognize that explaining the state of the smithy to someone who worked in the smithy was a bit redundant.

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  “We’ve got water barrel locations set up in case of fire. And that’s about it as far as the report goes.”

  “What about bows?” Ryan asked.

  “Bows?” Bjorn echoed, momentarily confused.

  “Yeah. Can we make more bows?”

  Bjorn stared at Ryan for a moment, then shrugged. “We only have one bowyer in the village. As far as I know, he expects to finish ‘a’ bow before the goblins arrive. But it’s mostly pointless—we don’t have the arrows, and we can’t produce enough to arm more than a handful of villagers.”

  “How long does it take to make a bow?” Ryan asked.

  Bjorn shrugged again. “I’m not sure. Our resident bowyer only makes two or three a year, and it’s more of a side project. His primary job is as a hunter.”

  “Why don’t we have more arrows?”

  “Crafting arrows is time-consuming,” Bjorn replied. “We have a number of people with the Fletching skill, but they’re busy doing other things.”

  Ryan frowned. It was an unpleasant bottleneck, to be sure. More arrows and more bows meant more dead goblins before they ever reached the walls. He pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “Okay. How much time do we have before the goblins show up?”

  “We expect them to be here in two days.”

  Two days. They only had two days left to prepare for this shit. It was, without a doubt, going to be a very long two days.

  ***

  Ryan thoroughly enjoyed smithing. Something about beating metallic rock into useful shapes meshed well with his soul. He enjoyed the fires—especially in the colder climate—and the constant outdoor work without being directly under the sun. Blacksmithing was still work, and therefore drudgery on some days, but he appreciated the overall difference in his daily tasks. Sometimes he would come in and set to work humming tunes that fit the overall smithing vibe, including fictional dwarven songs that—as far as he knew—didn’t even exist in a world with actual dwarves.

  Unfortunately, the last few days had been a lot of work, and a lot of it had been repetitive. He was exhausted, and hammering out yet another shield boss wasn’t fitting his ideal smithing flow. An art and a science—smithing was something he generally enjoyed—but right now it was just beating metal so it could be mounted on something else and be beaten with different metal. That was probably just the exhaustion talking.

  Ryan tossed the cooling, still-unfinished shield boss back into the embers and shifted it around until it was properly covered. He took a step back, let it sit, and reached for his water—only to find it gone. He turned and looked around the smithy, his eyes settling on the sole occupant who clearly did not belong there.

  Ping stood there holding a tray of food and drink, looking for all the world like a petite Asian angel—or possibly a demon, if one wanted to focus on the adorable little horns protruding from her forehead.

  “Eat,” she said.

  The single word made him blink and realize it was already dark out. No wonder his eyes hurt. Ryan shifted the shield boss to a cooler side of the forge, buying himself more time before he’d need to pull it back out. He crossed to the other side of the smithy and sat down on a stool, letting out a sigh so long and heavy it made him briefly worry he might not be able to get back up again.

  “So, what’s your smithing level at?” Ping asked conversationally as she dished out his food. A small serving of rice, plenty of vegetables, and a few tiny chunks of meat. Almost the opposite of how he used to eat. Then again, most of what he’d eaten back home had been highly processed bullshit, so today’s meal was far more nutritious than anything he’d been used to.

  “Level twenty-two.”

  Ping nodded. “That’s pretty respectable.”

  Ryan snorted. “Yeah. took over three months though. Did I tell you I hit level twelve in War Leader after the first engagement with the goblins?”

  Ping froze, her eyes locking onto him as she stared. He stared back, suddenly wondering if he’d startled her. Then she shrugged. “You can read. Did you study ancient battles or something?”

  Ryan was about to protest that he hadn’t—but that wasn’t exactly true, was it? How many hours had he spent watching documentaries about the Roman Empire and other ancient wars? How much did he know about Thermopylae, about Greek naval engagements, about modern military tactics? Well. All hail the History Channel, apparently.

  Now that it made sense, being level twelve in War Leader didn’t feel quite so awkward. Apprentice levels were mostly about gaining information. Adept was about applying it. Essentially, the system had simply decided he’d applied enough of what he already knew to warrant level twelve. Come to think of it, the ordering and cycling of men on the ramparts hadn’t been much different from the few LARP battles he’d participated in—just with more screaming and real blood.

  “Still,” Ryan said, “three months to get to twenty-two in smithing seems like a lot.”

  “Well, how much did you know about smithing before you started?” Ping asked.

  Ryan thought about it for a moment. The answer amounted to: heat metal and hit it with a hammer.

  “Practically nothing,” he admitted.

  Ping just shrugged, making a small, wordless hand motion that clearly said, “well, there you go.”

  Ryan dug into the food and realized just how ravenous he was, finishing the entire meal quickly. When he was done, he glanced back at the forge and sighed. At this point, he very much did not want to go back to work. He didn’t even want to walk home and fall asleep. The thought of cleaning up first felt exhausting all on its own.

  “When are you coming back?” Ping asked.

  Ryan hesitated. Even if he wanted to stop now, he’d still have to clean up. “I think I’m going to clean up and then head home, so… figure an hour or so?”

  Ping just stared at him.

  Talking in minutes and hours had been second nature to Ryan for his entire life. In a place where time was more often measured by the burn of a candle—and even that was rarely precise—his estimate didn’t really translate. “I’m going to clean up,” Ryan said again, simplifying it, “and then come home.”

  Ryan poured every ounce of effort he had into standing up and making his way back over to the forge. Ping gathered the dishes and headed out, lingering in the doorway for a moment—looking back inside—before disappearing entirely.

  Ryan stared down at the forge and the unfinished shield boss. He’d finish it tomorrow. Still, there was a lot to do just to leave the forge in a state that wouldn’t earn him a scowl from Haroan in the morning. He let out the longest, deepest sigh of the day.

  And they only had two days.

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