Chapter

Twenty-Two

The next day was Brin’s day to work out at Davi’s place, so he set off a little early. Marksi didn’t want to wake up, but he knew the little guy would be sad if he left without him, so he put him in the hood of his new drab woolen shirt. Julinha had been as good as her word, and if the clothing was plain it didn’t look bad by any means. He’d ended up paying her full price after all, and felt confident that he’d fairly well won her over from Tawna’s side.

Davi’s family had a house in the city, but for the workout they’d decided to meet at his family’s farm. It was close enough that it was faster to go around the outside of the walls rather than cut through town.

Brin crossed the distance in a steady run. His Vitality was close to hitting the first threshold, so he wasn’t even winded when he got there.

First he walked past the fields of mato. The plant looked foreign and otherworldly, its long purple vines covering the ground without seeming to go in anywhere. The field looked like someone had dropped a big pile of purple spaghetti on the ground. It was nowhere close to ready to harvest, so the pods that would eventually grow the mato were just lumpy tumors on the vines.

There wasn’t a lot of mato here, just an acre, and two acres of hay, since Davi’s family had an entirely different focus.

After the hay, he passed a herd of grazing cows, cows being a somewhat imprecise term in this case. These animals were muscular and fierce-looking, with gray, hairless skin that reminded him of rhinos. Their horns were much thicker and longer than those of any animal he’d seen on Earth, and they spiraled out to the sides.

Despite how fierce they looked, they were completely docile and didn’t even raise their eyes as he went past.

He didn’t know why they looked like this. Maybe they had been normal cows at some point, and transformed by magic or Classes. Or maybe it was simple evolution. Brin guessed it was the former; Davi’s parents, Alvir and Bruna Pimental, were both [Cattle Farmer], an evolution of [Farmer] that focused on raising and breeding livestock.

Last, he passed the Pimental family treasure.

A bull stood proudly in a fenced-off area. It was a huge, towering beast, and Brin’s head didn’t even go to his shoulders. He had an intelligent look in his eye, while all his females seemed a bit dull, and he surveyed his land with cold calculation. The fence was covered in signs warning people not to enter his private pasture, and the way he met Brin’s eye with such unwavering dominance made him sure that the fence around him was nothing more than a polite fiction.

Davi had told him all about the bull, of course. The way that Brin didn’t really worry about money must have made Davi feel insecure about his own family’s wealth, though he really didn’t need to. Brin didn’t look down on people for being poor, and besides, Davi’s family really wasn’t even close to poor by Hammon’s Bog standards.

The bull was proof of that. A normal adult with a Class in Hammon’s Bog made a silver a day, but the Pimentals could rent the bull out for four silvers a day. He had the strength for jobs that even people with System-enhanced Strength had trouble doing on their own. Pulling up boulders, pulling up stumps, pulling wagons the size of school buses for bringing in the harvest. Sometimes plowing fields, but he was a bit pricey for that.

The System could increase your Strength, but it used your species as a baseline. A level ten bull would always be stronger than a level ten person, no matter what Class they had or how many push-ups they’d done.

The bull snorted, and Brin tore his eyes away. Don’t offend the expensive murder-bull.

Davi exited the milk shack, carrying something strange. The hulking preteen had a long stick on his shoulders. It looked like the yoke a bull would use, only it was obviously made for him. It had four hooks, and each of them held up a five-gallon barrel. He’d be willing to bet each of them were full of milk. Those had to weigh something like forty pounds each, and his yoke had four of them.

“So what’s this?” he asked.

“I made these yesterday,” said Davi. “And I got a Dexterity for it!”

“Nice! But what are they?”

“I figure today could be leg day! We can put on these bad boys and do walking squats while we bring the milk into town,” said Davi. “Plus, this is a job that really does need to be done, so it might even count for… you know. System stuff.”

“I’ll be honest with you, Davi. That sounds like absolute hell. It’s a good idea, though. Let’s do this!” said Brin.

“Who’s that?” Davi pointed at something behind Brin.

He turned to see Zilly walking down the road, coming from the town’s gate. “What’s she want?” They started walking towards her, but she held up a hand indicating they should wait and dashed towards them.

Since they were waiting for her to catch up, Brin spent the time figuring out how to put on the yoke. It was surprisingly well-balanced and fit over his shoulders easily, although it was heavy as sin.

“You made this? Did you carve it yourself?”

“Yup,” Davi said proudly. “Dad helped a little.”

Zilly caught up with them a minute later, gasping from the sprint. “I knew it. You guys… are training your Strength!”

“It’s not against the rules,” said Davi defensively.

“Well it sort of is,” said Zilly. “Everyone knows you’re Achievement chasing. But who cares? I want in.”

Brin and Davi glanced at each other. “You sure?” asked Davi.

“Yes,” Zilly said with a sharp nod that shook her curls. “I’m not going to get to Dextrous II before System Day. I just don’t have the knack for it and I’m wasting my time trying. I’d be better off trying for Strength I. Girls never get the… the special one. What’s it called?” She asked the last part in a conspiratorial whisper.

“Workhorse,” said Brin.

“Huh. That doesn’t sound that flattering,” said Zilly.

“You know what they say. The reward for work well done is more work,” said Brin.

“Who says that?”

“Well, I just said it. So there’s at least one person,” said Brin.

Zilly laughed. She was one of the few people that even noticed his dry sense of humor. Most people just thought he was being obstinate.

“So this is what you do? Carry heavy things around a lot?” asked Zilly.

“There’s a little more to it than that,” said Brin. “Tell you what. We have some extra time, it won’t take that long to bring this into town. Why don’t we go through our routine a little bit as a warm-up? We can show you how it’s done.”

Davi looked a little nonplussed as he looked between Zilly and Brin. Then suddenly he smiled and said, “You two… why don’t you two… You two get started while I go grab some stuff from the shack.”

Davi wasn’t subtle for a thirteen-year-old, and thirteen-year-olds weren’t famous for being subtle. He obviously thought that Brin and Zilly were crushing on each other. Well, that wasn’t going to happen. Zilly was a kid. The good news was that as far as he could tell, Zilly also only saw him as a friend.

Brin shrugged. “Ok, let’s start with push-ups.”

Surprisingly, or maybe he shouldn’t have been surprised, Zilly had no problem knocking out fifty push-ups. He started on sit-ups, but that woke up Marksi, who started squeaking insistently.

“Good morning, sleepyhead!” Zilly said to him.

Marksi ignored her and slithered towards one of the cows. Brin thought he was going to spook it and get him in trouble with the bull, but Marksi stopped and pointed at the air with his tail.

There was a swarm of shiny green flies, buzzing lazily over an old dry cow pie. Marksi wanted Brin to get him some for breakfast.

“Yeah, no. I’m not catching flies for you.”

Marksi collapsed on the ground, breathing heavy, wheezy breaths.

“Oh no!” Zilly said with a melodramatic flair. “I think you’ve broken his little heart!”

Brin chuckled, but bent down to scratch Marksi’s head. “Listen, buddy. I hope you know I’ll always take care of you. But you’re going to be a big, strong hunter someday! Just like how me, Davi, and Zilly are practicing to get strong, you need to do the same. Why don’t you practice your hunting skills on those flies? If you can’t get any, I’ll still find you breakfast. But it’ll be fruit.”

Marksi looked at Brin, offense written clearly on his little snaky features.

“I’m only saying it like that because I believe in you! You can do this.”

Marksi nodded twice, then sank down low and disappeared into the grass.

Back to the workout, Brin took Zilly through lunges, squats, and a few other exercises that didn’t need equipment, and talked about things like curls and bench presses.

“Hey, so listen,” said Zilly. “I saw Myra last night. She looked pretty bad. Do you know what’s up with her?”

There was no sign of duplicitousness on her face, but it could be because they were in the middle of a five-minute plank. Brin would be willing to bet this was the real reason Zilly had sought them out today. For the gossip.

Not that he minded. He wanted to get his story out there.

“She found me on the way back home after the lesson, and she was sobbing. She accused me of being a monster, like always, and said I was going to kill her mom.”

“What?” Zilly nearly dropped her plank.

“It’s not true, obviously. She’s not my favorite person, but I don’t want her dead,” said Brin.

“But if she thinks… Brin, she’s a [Weaver]!”

“Doesn’t mean she’s right. Hogg explained it to me last night,” said Brin.

“Myra said you were kind of mean,” said Zilly.

Brin groaned, but only because they were pretty far into the plank. He hated planks. “I may have gone a little too far. But they haven’t made things easy for me either. Could you tell them something for me? Tell them I just want this to be over. If they need me to take an Oath or something to prove I’m not evil, I’d even be willing to do that. I get that chasing achievements has people worried that I’m going to take an evil Class, but I’m not going to.”

“You’re really not?”

“No! I want to get stronger. These achievements will make our whole life easier.”

Zilly collapsed from her plank, her core finally giving out. She rolled around onto her back. “Maybe. A [Basketmaker] doesn’t care if she has fifty Strength or a hundred.”

Brin dropped out of his plank as well, even though he probably could’ve kept going another minute. “Until she has to care. This world isn’t always safe.”

“This world, huh? What other world is there? Besides, ‘this world’ is even more unsafe to people with evil Classes.”

“If I get offered an evil Class because I have too many achievements, well so what? I just won’t take it. What about you? I don’t think there’s anyone our age with higher scores than you, except maybe Davi. And I don’t believe you about not getting Dextrous II, by the way.”

“I think I could be happy being a [Collier] like Dad, or a [Fruitier] like Mom. But if I don’t even get offered anything else… I don’t know. I think I at least want to have a choice.”

They lay on their backs staring at the morning sky. The conversation didn’t start up again, and he didn’t know if it was a companionable silence, or an awkward silence. He could never tell.

Brin was trying to think of something to start up the conversation again, when Marksi got his attention. The snake had tried a couple times to snatch the shiny green flies out of the air, but always missed. He even pounced at them once, and while Brin was pretty impressed to see a snake jump, it didn’t get him any closer to his goal.

The little snake stopped and pouted, but Brin didn’t help. After a minute or two, Marksi stopped trying and curled around himself. Brin thought he’d given up, but after a while, Marksi started changing colors. Or rather, he was always changing color; instead, he stopped changing color. He turned the exact same emerald green as the flies.

Then he lifted up his head, slowly, ever so slowly. One of the flies landed on his nose. He bit it out of the air.

Marksi got three more flies that way, and when he returned to Brin, all fat and happy, Brin praised him with full enthusiasm. Zilly was all too happy to join in as well. See? He didn’t need to torture Marksi. Positive reinforcement and encouragement worked even better.

Davi returned from whatever it was he was doing in that shack, still smiling happily.

“So what’s up with you two?” he asked.

“Brin was just telling me about Myra. They had a fight,” said Zilly.

If anything, Davi’s smile got brighter, but then he forced on a glare, though Brin could tell it was for appearances’ sake. “Aw, come on, Brin. You need to be nicer to her!”

Oh, so that was it. Davi liked Myra. Poor guy. Well, Brin didn’t have anything against teenage love triangles in principle, but he had no desire to be part of one. Besides, Davi had nothing to worry about. Myra despised Brin.

“Yeah, yeah. Well, we should go,” he said.

They put their yokes back on, and Zilly grabbed one of the milk barrels by the handle in each hand. He was impressed. They had to be forty pounds each, but she didn’t seem to be straining too much.

They made their way towards town. At first they tried squat-stepping, but that lasted for all of ten steps. Brin felt like the walk alone would be pushing his body to the limit. There was no way he’d be able to do anything extra. Even those ten steps left his knees burning, and it wasn’t getting any easier.

They made it to the town walls before Zilly put her jugs down and begged for a break. Brin kept his yoke over his shoulders while they waited for her to catch her breath. If he put it down, he didn’t think he’d be able to pick it up again.

“Hey, there’s something I’ve been wondering. Why do we never train Magic? How would we even do that?” asked Brin. Hogg shut him down hard when he asked him about it, but so far Zilly and Davi had been an open book with this type of thing.

“I don’t think there is a way,” said Davi. “You need a magical Class to use magic.”

“Most Classes use a little bit of magic. Dad can make his charcoal burn super hot, and he can shoot it like an arrow, and it uses his magic to do that,” said Zilly.

“Ok, but that’s still a Class. There’s no way for us to do magic.”

Brin shook his head. “That can’t be true. I have a belt that unclasps whenever I say the word ‘Yonkers.’”

“I think it’s the belt’s magic that’s doing that,” said Davi.

Davi was probably right, since Chamylla had said his magical objects would stop working when Marksi sucked all the magic out of them. Actually, that was a question he hadn’t thought of. Were there magic items that did use the user’s magic? If so, he might be able to train his magic that way. He’d have to ask Perris.

“There’s a way,” said Zilly. “I heard Mom and Aunt Ema talking about it. You’re not really supposed to do it to your kids, but Ema was saying that noble families do it anyway, in the hopes of giving their kids a better shot at a magical Class. Did you know that nobles get normal Classes just like us? They get [Butcher] and [Baker] and stuff, and they have to try to advance it to [Nobleman] and [Lady] from there. I’ve never seen a noble, but Aunty Ema has seen loads.”

“I think Prefit Elmon is technically a noble,” said Davi.

“How do they do it?” asked Brin hungrily.

“Oh! So say you’re a [Baker] Class, but instead of doing any work yourself you buy a bakery. Then⁠—”

“Not that! How do they train in Magic?” asked Brin.

“Oh, no idea. Ema says it’s bad, though. I think they use drugs and stuff. That’s probably why so many nobles go crazy.”

So there was a way. He just needed to get Hogg to fess up to it. Easier said than done.

“Are you ready to go yet?” asked Davi.

Zilly jumped to her feet. “Yeah. Sorry.”

She moved to pick up her milk barrels, one in each hand like before, but it quickly became obvious that she wasn’t going to get very far.

Davi moved before he could. “Here.” He grabbed one of the milk jugs in one hand, using the other to balance his yoke. Zilly lifted the remaining one with a lot more confidence, and they were off again.

The walk into town was pure misery. He needed to have a talk with Davi about his “great ideas.” This was the worst idea Brin had ever heard of. Sure, he wanted to get stronger, but who yoked themselves like an animal? Honestly.

Despite his internal grumbling, he didn’t actually chew out Davi. He concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other.

After what felt like an eternity, they finally stumbled into Davi’s house, and he was greeted by a soothing blast of crisp, refrigerated air. This front room was a business area, where they stored the milk before delivery, he noticed. He loved it. The cold air was soothing on his overheated body, and even all these months later, coolness still felt like safety to him.

Many other big barrels of milk were stored here, and there was a big funnel leading into a contraption to help fill bottles.

One interesting fact of the economy here was that milk was so cheap as to be practically free, as long as you were willing to bring your own bucket and visit the farm. The Pimentals made most of their money from delivering milk.

Brin carefully set his burden down, and immediately got a notification.

Through training you have increased the following attributes.

Strength +1

Will +1

“Nice!” said Brin. “I got a Strength and a Will.”

“I got a Strength, too!” Davi cheered.

“Strength and Vitality for me. Still, that was… too much,” Zilly said, panting. “It was good, though. That put me up to twenty-two Strength!”

“What? That’s insane! I had no idea you were that high,” said Brin.

“I’m stronger than I look,” Zilly said, a little defensively.

“And she’s also almost a year older than you,” said Davi.

“My fourteenth birthday is in two weeks,” said Zilly.

“But System Day… oh,” said Brin. He’d been wondering why everyone was so happy to have all the kids unlock the System on the same day if it meant that their childhood would be cut off six months early. But that would only apply to kids whose birthdays were in the late summer, like Brin. Since they counted their years from summer to summer here, kids in the early fall would have their System Day delayed by six months. He wondered if Zilly’s parents had timed her conception for that, or if it was just luck. Not exactly something he could ask her.

It was also extremely unfair. She got almost a year longer to earn her achievements than he did. If he was in charge, it would be illegal to have kids with Brin’s birthday. Did this world conspire to screw him over every single way?

“Alright,” said Davi. He opened the door to a bright and cheery dining room. “Let’s get some breakfast.”