There was the usual delay while someone presumably used a Skill, then Lauren opened the door and came out. “Hey, Heather, what’s up? You’re not alone, are – oh, there’s everyone else,” Lauren said, glancing down the walkway at them.

  “We wanted to ask if your party would be needing a campfire tonight, and if you want to share again,” Heather said. “All the fire spots seem to be in use, on six and five, and besides that, the Rangers got to talking after they did their official business with me and Danielle last night, and we think you should know – maybe everyone should know, but you know us and how we ended up talking to Rangers well enough to listen, right?”

  Lauren’s eyebrows rose. “Well, yeah – but also, yeah, the fire spots are all taken. Where were you thinking of doing this?”

  “We can put our fire on the walkway again, like we did last Sunday,” Akari proposed. “We have some firewood to contribute, but it’s mostly smaller stuff, no solid logs. Any chance you have some?”

  “We could bring a log if you’ve got enough bigger sticks and stuff to support it – if you’re just talking tinder, we’re going to run out before stuff gets cooked.”

  “No, bigger than that,” Akari said. “Big enough to get things going, and give us time if we have to look for some deadwood to keep it going.”

  “Meet us out at the walkway in back, then?” Heather asked. “We’ll get the fire going and you can get together whatever you might be cooking tonight and join us?”

  “Yeah, all right,” Lauren said. “If you’ve done it this way before, you can show us how it’s done.” She opened her door again, and called into the room, “Get the food together, guys, we’re gonna share a cook-fire with the SHAD girls again.”

  To Danielle’s bemusement, the entire Lemonade hunting party almost immediately came out – all eight of them. “I guess you better go show them where, Akari,” she said, “and maybe dig up that maybe-charcoal from Sunday.”

  “Oh yeah, I almost forgot about it!” Akari said. “OK, I’ve already got my little spade, so I’ll see you in a few minutes.” She traded baskets with Sadie, giving her the fish and receiving the firewood in its place, and went back up the half-flight of stairs to walk around the building with the other hunting party.

  Danielle led everyone else around to 6024 to use the real toilet and get the food. They put the fish in the cold box, washed the pots and pans, refilled their canteens, and brought out the snare-meat, tomatoes, and the rest of the older batch of onions. By the time they got back outside, Akari already had the fire started. Cassy ran down to her room to drop off her fishing/foraging gear and get her scroll-making gear, then they all climbed the retaining wall together and went over to join the crowd around Akari’s fire.

  Lauren’s party was setting up a rough spit using two forked sticks and a longer stick that already had two rabbits and something else skewered on it. Danielle wasn’t sure what the third thing was, at first, but once she was close enough to inspect it properly, decided it must be some kind of bird.

  “Hey, back off of our meat!” Gonzo objected.

  “Sorry, I was just wondering what it was,” Danielle said.

  “Ruffled Grouse,” Marc said. “Kinda small, but it registers as food, so Reggie’s happy.”

  “Cool. Is it in the Guide to Edible Wildlife?” Sadie asked.

  “No idea. I’m going by a Skill,” Marc said.

  “Wanna tell us what you have?” Gonzo broke in suspiciously.

  “I’d love to, but I have no idea,” Danielle admitted. “A furry thing that got caught in my snare.” She shrugged ruefully, and several members of the other party laughed.

  “Want me to see what my Skill says?” Marc offered. “It kind of didn’t turn out to be what I thought, but it is useful at times like this.”

  “As long as it doesn’t do anything funny to the meat, sure,” Danielle told him.

  “It’s fine, it’s just a lore Skill,” Marc assured her, squinting at the meat Akari was setting up across two forked sticks of her own, using the metal skewer still in it from the night before. “Huh. It reads as, ‘Marmot meat, partially cooked?’ Why partially cooked?”

  “Because we had started cooking it last night when that girl – what was her name – Jennifer; when Jennifer ran up and asked us to bring Healers to rescue her hunting party,” Danielle explained. “We kind of just tossed it in the cold box and got ready to go, and by the time we got back, nobody felt like cooking.”

  “Oh. You uh, better cook it thoroughly, then,” Marc said.

  “It’s fine,” Sadie said. “I have a Skill for killing bacteria and stuff in food. Only works for food, but it’s pretty awesome. It’s gonna level like crazy.”

  “Oh wow,” Lauren said from across the fire. “That’s such an awesome Skill! What’s it called?”

  “Purify Food,” Sadie told her.

  “Nice clear name,” Lauren said with a grin. “I’ll have to remember that, though, that sounds incredibly useful. Before I realized that, like, a quarter of the camp was insane, I would’ve said that’d be one of the best survival Skills in the system! I’d still put it in the top ten percent. Our cold boxes are so stinking small, you know?”

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  “You’re not kidding,” Danielle agreed. “The instructions for drying fish are scary, too; it makes you wonder how our primitive ancestors ever stored up enough food for winter.”

  “Not to mention the last however-many generations of Sent,” Akari added.

  Cassy grimaced. “My parents said, a lot of Sent get food poisoning and have to call the Rangers for help; and then they get resistance traits that help keep them alive if-and-when it happens again.”

  “Well that’s kind of horrifying,” Regina said, and the other Reggie nodded in agreement beside her.

  “They were probably trying to scare you a little,” Cynthia said. “I’m sure a lot of them get Skills like, um, what was your name again?” she cocked her head at Sadie.

  “It’s Sadie. I bet they were trying to make sure she’d know she could call the Rangers if she had to. Did they tell you how to know when it was bad enough to radio for help?” she asked Cassy.

  Cassy nodded. “That would be like them – focus on the case where I needed special information to be sure I did the right thing, ignore the case where I could figure it out on my own. They only had so much time between the notice and when I had to leave, and they weren’t sure what they’d get in trouble for.”

  “Do you know how you unlocked Purify Food?” Lauren asked.

  “Sorry, no,” Sadie admitted. “It just came up on Decision Day, in the Outdoor Cooking Skill tree. I kind of tried to get one Skill for each of the basic needs, you know? Food, clothing, physical safety.”

  Marc looked like he was about to say something about that, but Akari beat him to it.

  “Our party needs to cut tomatoes while we talk,” she reminded them, and there was a lull in the conversation while they shared out the tomatoes into frying pans to cut up for the proposed ‘hot-pot.’

  “Do we have to put tomatoes in everything?” Heather asked rhetorically.

  “Find us some potatoes to fill it out with instead, and we’ll use them,” Akari replied anyway.

  “I wish we had tomatoes,” Cynthia said.

  “Find something that’s not tomatoes or onions and we’ll be happy to trade,” Danielle said. “That’s how the camp should work, you know? One person fishes and another one snares and another one picks berries and another one, I dunno, collects nuts? Obviously the foragers and the hunter/fishers have to switch off every so often, for mana, but you get the idea. We should be trading around for variety, instead of all trying to do the same thing.”

  “Dad says it’ll come with time, once people start getting better at the basics and especially once people level enough that hunting for food and hunting for mana start to be different things,” Cassy commented.

  “Is that a thing that happens?” Marc asked. “Did he tell you what the difference was?”

  Cassy shrugged. “You know how the Rangers were all concerned about what tier that wildcat was?” she asked.

  “Yeah?” Marc said. “I didn’t pay that much attention, really, but I remember them saying something about that.”

  “Did your guide tell you about the two rivers?” Cassy asked again.

  “Yeah, where they meet is as far south as the Rangers will be available for backup, after that we’re not in Firmitatem anymore,” Marc said.

  “Well, yeah, that too,” Cassy agreed, “but also, they keep the high tier beasts out from between the campers’ fence and the first river – the Noocline, that is. Right now, the highest tier we should see on this side is three, but once most of us are level two or three, they’ll ease up a little and let it go to four, then five. Never higher than that, though, for the sake of the fence. Between the Noocline and the Falling River though? That’s territory we claim, but we let the animals level a lot more out there most of the time. Rangers and Returned Citizens can get permits to go hunt out there to get a big mana burst for a fast Class level once in a while; and it’s open for Sent, too – my room’s guide mentioned it.”

  “Ours did too,” Sadie said. “She said it would be our best mana hunting grounds.”

  “I thought the government didn’t want people getting more levels?” Dana said, sounding confused. “My dad always complained about that; he said the government didn’t like people making full use of their System and getting more Skills or levels.”

  “From what the Rangers said, that’s one of the benefits of being Sent,” Danielle told her. “Once you get level 10 you can get that Trait, Aura Control – in fact, you have to, that’s what actually lets you go back Inside. It keeps you from putting all the mana your body makes out into the atmosphere and messing up the low mana density Inside. Once you have that Trait, you can have all the levels and Skills that you want; but until then, everything you add to your System makes more mana and raises the mana density where you live by just that much more.”

  “Oh. So Dad might have actually been right?” Dana asked. “Dang. I always thought it was just, you know, adults being grouchy about things they couldn’t change.”

  “It would make sense with what Ranger Flo was saying, anyway,” Heather confirmed. She took a breath as if to add something, then just sighed instead.

  “Is that what you wanted to tell us about?” Lauren asked Danielle.

  “Oh – well, that’s important too, but while the Ranger was telling us the secrets of the System, I asked a question you asked me about – getting new Careers – and then something even more important came up; so I was mostly thinking of those two things,” Danielle said.

  “Well, don’t keep us in suspense,” Nathan joked nervously.

  “OK, so the critical thing that absolutely everyone needs to know is this,” Danielle started. She raised her voice, just a bit, and tried to support it like Heather had been teaching her on the road for good measure, so anyone who tried to listen in from the building would have a chance. “The Rangers were so serious about this, they actually made me change my absorption pointer before they would leave. I don’t know why they don’t just tell everyone this before we even go into the Dome. Anyone who thinks they can get back Inside before winter is missing critical information that could get them locked Outside forever!”

  That got everyone’s attention, all right; Danielle willed herself to keep her eyes on Lauren, but in her peripheral vision, she could see girls at the fire corners of building six shushing each other. Perfect.

  “The trick they didn’t tell us is this,” she continued, still projecting as best she could. “If you level up your base more than once a month, your chance of getting a mutation goes up more and more based on how close together the levels came. Some mutations they can handle, but the most common type are also the bad type – they can be catching just through the mana. I think they meant, like, for babies and really little kids, not just for anyone at all, but either way, it’s not OK. They can’t let people with that kind back Inside.

  “The Rangers told us to protect ourselves from that, don’t level up on purpose more than once a month, even if you can. If you’re close to a level and it hasn’t been a month, they said switch your absorption pointer to you Class so you won’t get leveled by a bad mana burst. If your Class is already close to leveling too? They said, then take another Class and put your pointer there; anything to make sure you don’t level twice in a month. They said, you can tell it’s a month without a calendar by watching the moon – go see what it looks like right after you level, then as it changes shape, it’ll come back around and look the same when it’s OK for you to level again.” Danielle got out her canteen and took a drink while the group around her campfire absorbed that. She could see the groups at the fire corners break out into excited discussion.

  nosiness natural curiosity for good instead of evil!

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