Mircha the overseer was a much larger man then I had expected, a small mountain with a laugh like an avalanche booming into the space around him, I can definitely see between his obvious strength and warm personality how he could be a good overseer for a new village project.

  “Hey, Styx I believe it is? Hopefully we have a good time on this project. I am sure you read the documents but as the guard has a habit of skipping paperwork for swordplay I just want to run over it again. We will be escorting a small group of founders to a new village approx half a day's walk from here into the wilds, we do not expect anything over level twenty to thirty, your task for the trip will be to provide combat backup and combat healing. Once we arrive we can get more into how the healing station will be set up plus your rotation for hunting. Any questions before we get to the present part of this little introduction?”

  Presents were a surprise, but I had heard that it was common for overseers to give gifts which came from local government or even guard command to their weaker or newer members to help strengthen a trip or encourage them to join more trips. “Just one, why do you need a healer to hunt? I was under the impression we were taking mostly hunters as founders for this village”

  “Oh no, sorry I forget just how fresh you are, my last healer was with our group for close to a decade so it's been a while since I handled one. The hunting is for you, because you're a combat class not just a healer. We want to make sure you have a controlled space for leveling so you don’t run off on your own to do it. Happened a few times and after losing a few healers they made it so we have ta give you some hunting time with the guard or hunters”

  “Oh okay, that makes sense, I do gain a small amount of experience from healing but combat is definitely where my main gains come from. So you mentioned presents?” Bouncing up on the balls of my feet I hoped being excited wouldn’t give Mircha a bad impression, but I was quite excited to finally get to travel the wilds and achieve something. Even if that something was helping found a village of, at best, a dozen hunters that would have low chances of lasting through the first winter before they all returned to established towns instead.

  “Of course, of course, remind me of my own sisters when it came time for the spring equinox and it was gift time. Woke me near as I fell asleep I swear. Anyway, this bag is yours. It contains all your travel essentials including a bedroll strapped up top here. Go through it and get familiar. Otherwise I was informed you don’t have a general skills card yet right?”

  “That’s right, I was told to try to wait to get one with at least three survival skills attached, but with only a single card smith in this town I haven’t saved enough for that yet”. General skill cards were the lifeblood of combat classes, allowing them to learn things like tracking without being a hunting class or equipment repairs for travel without being a blacksmith. However they were in high demand and apparently difficult to make well, on top of that you only got one slot every ten levels and it had to be at or below your class's quality. So finding a good match was often more luck than anything else.

  Mircha pulled a small card box from inside his jacket, “Right well, this was one I picked up a while ago as a bonus payment. It's a bit better than the bonus pay for most jobs to be clear, but its going to help you pull your weight early so I consider it an investment more than a gift, here take a look then meet us an hour after sunrise tomorrow at the east road with your gear ready to get moving”. As he spoke Mircha passed over the small box along with my new travel bag.

  Hauling my new bag onto my back and traveling to my room I got ready to go through final travel checklists for tomorrow. First things though, as soon as I got into my bunk I pulled the card box from my pocket and opened it up.

  Card details:

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  Mend! While a really basic spell it was meant to be quite time consuming to forge it into general skill cards, and not everyone could use it as some classes don’t have access to mana or at least not enough to make good use of the spell regularly.

  Focusing on the card I willed it to merge with my core, and quickly accepted the system prompt.

  Feeling the card become part of my core I quickly found the new instinct for Mend and cast it on my shirt. Giggling to myself I watched the fraying ends of my sleeves pull back and become as seamless as when I first got them. Immediately I bustled around repairing the rest of my uniforms, my travel clothes which were basically brand new still, and my boots. Before long I realised I had mended everything in my bunk, but thanks to my relatively high mana and regen it had hardly made a dent in my resources.

  Looking up I noticed one of the local guard hunters Salis walking over “Hey, just a guess but you got a generalist card with mend right”

  Looking at the short lean hunter I felt suspicious, as the experienced guards rarely spoke to new members until they had been around a while, “Yeah I did, it was a gift from the overseer for my wilds trip, why did you need something fixed or?”

  “Oh most of us have the spell, we just aren’t mages so we don’t have the regen to waste it, or only use it for our combat gear to keep it in working order. So we have lots of items that are in good condition, but not so good that they can’t be mended, if you wanted to power level that skill a bit?” Smiling Salis wasn’t even hiding that she knew I would fall for it immediately.

  Sighing I got up from the bunk “Alright, its hard to say no to leveling a skill for free I guess, bring me the stuff”.

  Exhausted that evening after dinner I fell into my bunk and almost passed out straight away. Spending my whole day burning through my mana, meditating with one of the mages as they helped me improve my manual mana regen, then back to burning through it repairing everyone's socks had left me very tired. However, smiling as I pulled up my status window I realised Salis was actually giving me a gift. Hitting level ten, even with such a basic skill, really was an achievement that would help once I got into the wilds.