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  [colpse]I moved with a skip to my step. “So, Mister Menu, feel free to tell me about yourself,” I said to the box floating before me. “I’m sorry that I haven’t spoken to you in a while. I was sort of busy. Then again, I know that you’re kind of shy when you’re on the job.”

  The menu popped away, letting me see the long, treacherous road ahead. A thought made it e back.

  “Now, now, no running away!” I chided. “I o grind my new skill. You’re the one who gave it to me. Or at least, I think you are. It doesn’t feel like something Miss Menu would do.”

  The box just dispyed the same thing it had for the past twenty minutes or so.

  FriendmakingRank F - 13%The ability to make friends. As you practice this skill your ability to make friends will improve.

  “e on, I o get this skill super high so that I make all the friends!” I told the menu box. “Maybe we try hugging again?”

  The box popped away.

  “No fun!” I called after it.

  Shaking my head, I refocused on the road a on walking. I had an eye open for any iing pnts, but so far all I had found was a nice spread of ile to top up my tea reserves. There were other pnts along the road, but hat had properties that ied me.

  I wasn’t about to start carrying around poisons if I could avoid it. That just wasn’t a very hing to do.

  I hopped up to a low hanging branch, then started jumping from tree to tree without using any stamina. It was good practi case I had to make a run for it.

  “Mister Menu, I see my profile please?”

  NameBroccoli Bunbsp; RaceHuman (Riftwalker) First Cssamon Bun Age

  16?  Health

  115? Stamina

  125? Mana

  105?  Resilience

  25? Flexibility

  25? Magic

  10?  SkillsRank amon Bun Skills ingC - 93% JumpingC - 57% GardeningE - 13%  General Skills InsightC - 17% Makeshift on ProficyE - 04% ArcheologyF - 39%` FriendmakingF - 13%  Skill points

  2? Css slots

  0? General Skill Points

  1?  ing was reag the edge of Rank B. I wasly grinding it ceaselessly, but I was trying to make sure that my mana was never pletely topped off just so that I didn’t waste any time.

  Jumping lodding along as well. It might overtake ing at some point in the near future. My general skills, oher hand, were falling behind. Insight was the only one slowly tig up, but the rest? I would o find a way to get them up a few ranks.

  It seemed as though the main barrier for skill growth wasn’t experience points at all. Sure, it could take days to get a skill up to max experience, but that didn’t matter if you were going to rely on that skill your entire life. It was the hard limit imposed by skill points that slowed everything down.

  A month of dedicated practice would be more than enough for me to get every skill up to the highest level they could go, I suspected. Then I would be stuck waiting forever to level up a just one more skill point to spend. It felt like an almost artificial restri on what I could aplish.

  Annoying, but uandable. If skills allowed the user to bee super strong with only minimal effort and some grinding, then they would be pletely broken.

  The road forked.

  I paused at the interse and took iwo diverging paths. Oo my left, deeper into the forests, oraight ahead towards the marshes. her towards the mountain city that I assumed ort Royal.

  I shuffled around to pull out my backpack, then grabbed the map Leonard had drawn for me. It showed the camp, the road, and indicated the fork with an arrow pointing ahead and towards Rockstack which was, acc to the map, not too terribly far. I had crossed half the distance already.

  The left path tinued and ended with a big skull and crossbones symbol. I wondered what was over there. It retty clear that Leonard thought it would be too dangerous for me, but he also seemed to think that tying my own shoes was beyond me.

  “I’ll go check ter,” I decided as I repced the map into my sack.

  Mid-day came a. I probably should have stopped for lunch, especially now that I actually had supplies, but instead I stopped for a quick break behind a bush, then after ing up, pulled some still-soft-ish bread from the supplies sack I had and nibbled away at it while walking.

  If I was within only half a day’s distance from Rockstack, then it was worth it to rush back over. There might be an inn, and people too. As much as I was enjoying my time on the road, having a roof over my head, a warm meal in my tummy, and a hot shower before bed sounded heavenly.

  I was finishing up the st of my bread when I caught sight of smoke betweerees ahead. I paused along the road, then climbed up a tree to see a little better. Not one smokestack, but about five, all of them joining together hundreds of meters above.

  It had to be Rockstack!

  My steps were a whole lot faster after I hit the ground. I wao make it to the town and I wao get there now!

  Then the road I had been travelling on for a few days now ended. No more cobbles, no more path, not even some fttened dirt to show where it could have been. I took out Leonard’s map and eyed it for a moment. It said to tinue, but I had been expeg to follow the road for a while.

  I ran ahead a ways, skipping over brush and bushes until, betweeep and the , I caught sight of a new road ahead.

  The stones were well-pced and untouched by roots. The sides had deep ditches with thin rivulets of water at the bottom. The path was even wide enough that two cars might have been able to drive along it side-by-side without issue.

  “Whoa,” I said as I took it in with a growing smile. Well-maintained roads meant civilisation!

  I checked Leonard’s map o time, turo the left, and started jogging.

  That didn’t st very long. I might have been w out a whole lot more, but that didn’t mean I was in shape. The weight of the backpack didn’t help, or so I told myself. My jog turned into a fast walk, then an easy, more stable pace as the terrain grew a little hilly.

  And then, at long st, I crested a hill and saw Rockstack.

  The first and most obvious thing, the only thing I could see, actually, was the wall. It was a solid barrier of living tree trunks, eae as thick around as my arm-span and nearly pletely branchless. What few branches were there all stuck out like the spiny thorns of a cactus.

  Huge, bulbous bowls sat atop the walls, eaade of some dark bark and big enough to fit half a dozen Broccolis. They reminded me a little of uts, only they were perfectly distanced all around the wall.

  I squinted and took in the form of two guards by the arch of the doors. Eae was only about as third as tall as the wall. There was even a small moat going around it, and the forest he town had been cut back to create a big clearing full of tree stumps.

  I reshouldered my backpack, made sure e was sitting pretty in my bandoleer and walked over to the gate.

  The guards were both grenoils like those in the Exploration Guild party, only they didn’t seem quite as intimidating. They had cheap spears and thick gambesons with a bit of scalemail that seemed ill-fitting.

  “Hello!” I called out to them as I got closer.

  A brenoil Fencer, (Level ?).

  A brenoil Hunter, (Level ?).

  “Hail, traveller,” the hunter said. He seemed to snap himself awake as I came closer. “What business do you have in Rockstack? Ah, I mean, Royal Outpost Seven?

  I stopped when I was still a dozen steps away from them, just in case they got nervous. “This isn’t Rockstack?” I asked.

  The fencer sighed. “It is. At least, zat’s what everyone calls it. Official name is Royal Outpost Seven. Not zat you look like an ior.”

  “Well okay then,” I said. “I’m here to find a pce to rest, and maybe a way to get to Port Royal?”

  The hunter nodded. “Zat’s fair. Might take a while before ze caravan passes zrough. As for ze pce to rest, go ask Juliette at ze Inn. You ’t miss it.”

  “It’s on the main road?” I asked.

  They both ughed, croaky chuckles that calmed down after a moment. “Miss, zere are only seven buildings here. If you ’t afford an inn room zen it’s off to the tents with you.”

  “Oh,” I said. “If there are so few buildings, then what are the walls for?” I asked.

  “Keep zings zat want to eat you out at night. Had a high-ranking Wood Mage show up whepost was still fresh. Built ze walls in a few minutes is what I heard.”

  The fencer shook his head. “It took hours,” he said. “Zis idiot is just trying to impress you.”

  “Whoa, that’s still awesome!” I said. “I have a Gardening Skill, do you think I could do that?”

  The hunter looked at his buddy and it was clear he was trying not to ugh. “Yeah, sure. Go on in kid.”

  I did as he said, running through the ard into Rockstack. My eyes went huge as I tried to take it all in at ohere were people here, and a ring of buildings that all looked strange and unique, but what caught my eye right away was the huge structure right in the middle of the sort of square that made up the tre of the outpost.

  It was a stack of rocks. Sort of like the little stacks someone bored might make by bang one rock atop another, only this stack was teers tall and had rocks that would more appropriately be called boulders. There were three stacks, eae arg up at the top aing in the middle at a shiny bck stone covered in little golden flecks.

  Fool’s gold, if I had to guess, but pretty all the same.

  I tore my eyes away from the strange sorta-sculpture and took in the rest. The guards were right; there were only seven proper buildings ipost. There was a huge inn to one side, then three little shops with sed floors that probably had apartments. Then a big bcksmith’s shop. There was a huge home that looked like it beloo someone important, and stly twe buildings that were both square and b-looking, as if someone had built a fantasy office building out in the middle of nowhere.

  There were a few people around, all grenoil and all minding their own business, so I decided to do the same.

  “Where do I start...?” I wondered aloud.

  The obvious answer was, of course, the Inn. That’s where all the best adventures began, after all. The Inn was a long building with a huge front. Three stories tall and pletely out of p the middle of nowhere like this. It was a bit strao see such a rge building so far from a proper vilge, but maybe there were enough travellers to make it viable.

  There was a sign on the front with a frog jumping into a mug and the words Hop on Inn after it.

  Grinning, I held on to my backpack by the straps and rao the building, every part of me ready for my first ce to see the inside of a w inn.

  The doors were, disappointingly, normal, but the moment I stepped through the threshold I was inundated with the sound of gsses king, people talking in low murmurs, the strumming of a lute and the mixed smells of seople and fresh food.

  I had found a small paradise.