Shelby's quest log was complete, so she gave Plin a nod and they started walking back towards town.

  AIDAN continued to explain the weapon skills system to Shelby, who was having trouble listening to his technical style of speaking while walking through the dense brush, "Many of the Maneuvers players can learn are locked behind progression of their skill level with their class weapon. I should inform you that you are currently at 6 of 20 required points towards level 3 with your short bow. However, there is a basic maneuver available at level 1 and a progression of that maneuver at level 2 that you could obtain."

  "Where can I see the maneuver?" Shelby asked, stepping down into a dry creek bed and jogging along the mostly cleared dirt.

  "Acquired maneuvers are listed in your Skills page. However, since you have not unlocked any thus far, the Maneuvers panel will be empty."

  "It's always something with this game..." Shelby grumbled, "So what do I need to do?"

  "You get them for free if you just do the Maneuver," Tara added in.

  "Ms. Tara is correct, discovering maneuvers through use is the easiest way to obtain them. You may also learn the skill from Ms. Plin by paying for training at the Brushcourser's Guild."

  Shelby shouted at Plin, who was darting through a grove of wiry trees ahead of her, "How do I use a maneuver?"

  AIDAN protested, "You are required to pa-" but cut himself off when Plin reacted.

  Plin stopped and put her hands on her hips, turning to Shelby, "Who taught you to be a Brushcourser?"

  "No one, I just became one."

  "You can't just become one! Someone has to teach you!"

  "What is there to teach? I just shoot things with arrows."

  "You tamed your bat, didn't you? That's our skill! Our class perfected that!"

  "That just... came to me."

  Plin huffed indignantly as Shelby stopped next to her, "You are impossible. Travelers coming here without a bean in their head and then they tame a bat? Nonsense."

  "I have plenty of beans in my head!"

  "Fine, but no one trained you... you're just a lamb lost in the woods!"

  "Plin, you're the person who is supposed to train me. I'm in your guild!"

  Plin stepped back in shock, "Me? Well, for now I am..." then she started walking back towards the town with renewed purpose, "we have to give that medicine to your real master."

  Shelby followed after, "Wait, what about Maneuvers?"

  Plin pulled her bow off of her shoulder as she spoke, "Do you know the most basic maneuver, Measured Shot?"

  "I don't know any Maneuvers!" Shelby whined, but she got her bow ready as she walked alongside Plin.

  "It's like this," Plin said as she quickly drew an arrow and fired it into a nearby tree.

  "Like what?" Shelby said with a blank look.

  "You have to feel it! One smooth motion, draw your arrow, nock, pull, and when it feels perfect, fire. You can only do it if you already know exactly what you are firing at. Shoot the tree, it won't move."

  Shelby stopped and drew an arrow, placed it in her bow's rest and then drew the arrow back to aim at the tree. Plin held up a hand, "You can't stop, it needs to be one motion. Draw and fire!"

  Shelby let the bow go slack and then tried again, slotting the arrow and pulling back in one movement. She felt a kind of tension in her mind as the bowstring pulled tighter and tighter, then something clicked and she fired the arrow at the tree. It seemed like it struck a little more powerfully than normal, and the wood splintered on impact. Plin clapped, "Yes, did you feel it?"

  "Good job, Shells!" Tara whispered, clapping somewhere near her microphone.

  Shelby nodded, and the game confirmed that she had learned something.

  Plin smiled, "Great, you are all trained now," and started walking again.

  Shelby hesitated, trying to hold on to the feeling, then jogged to catch up, "Are there other Maneuvers?"

  Plin looked Shelby up and down as she stepped over a rotting trunk, "Try to perform three Measured Shots in a row, that is a trick young hunters usually have trouble with, but maybe you'll get it. Do it while we walk. You don't need to stand around to use your skills."

  Shelby nodded, "Okay, three in a row."

  Doing the maneuver even once while walking turned out to be difficult. Every one in three tries she would successfully perform the attack, which definitely was a little stronger than what she had been doing thus far. She managed to get two in a row by the time they cleared the forest and marsh, but she had no luck with three. Plin grinned at her, "No use trying to run when you only just learned to walk. Boss sleeps above the guild, so let's head there."

  They had come back to town much farther north than they had left. In fact, it was the same entrance Shelby had left through when she was chased by rats. The plaza was already in much better shape, and Shelby saw the mother and children she had saved working on reassembling a damaged planter. The tiny daughter mouse was shoveling handfuls of dirt into it. Meanwhile, the son held a freshly painted board up between two metal rails while the mother hammered a square nail into a guide hole. Shelby waved at them and they looked up with tired smiles. Do... rodents not sleep? Shelby pondered as they exited the plaza and walked down familiar, winding streets. Before long they were back at the guild hall and squeezing between piles of various animal goods on their way to a hidden staircase behind the reception counter.

  Plin's boss was sleeping in a gigantic bed. Or maybe it's a normal sized bed and he's particularly small? He was a pika type Daizi, so he was small and round. He had patchy white fur and a bushy set of whiskers that lay over a tan and black base. His round mouse-like ears were set close together on top of his head and they had a troubling number of cuts and holes in them. He was resting under a lumpy quilt sewn with the kind of rustic animal patterns you see in old-timey cabins. Lots of trees and bears and elk silhouettes, although the trees had the twisted limbs and roots that were prolific in the area rather than a pine tree motif. Plin flopped down on the bed next to him and pressed her hand to his tiny forehead, and he jolted awake, "Plin, by the gods, I was resting for once!"

  Plin shushed him, "Save your breath, I've heard this one before," she looked concerned as she flopped her hand over to confirm what she was feeling, "burning up, I see."

  She crawled over him and opened a window, shoving a thin branch between the panes to keep it in place, then bounced back across the bed. The poor man was so small that her every step jostled him a few inches away from the pillows. He shuffled back up to them with a tired groan. Shelby got the impression of a tired grandfather with an overly energetic granddaughter. Plin slipped off the bed, opened an ancient cast-iron stove, and threw an armful of loose timber into it. She rustled around in a small bureau then lit a loose match and started a fire inside the stove. As she closed the heavy door, she flapped her hand at Shelby, "This is our new guild member. She brought medicine."

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  The old pika looked like he didn't realize anyone else was in the room, and turned his head towards the corner Shelby was hovering in awkwardly, "A new member, you say? Been a season and some since Plin brought one of your kind by. My name's Ocht. I used to run this guild, you know."

  Plin barked at him as she filled a kettle with water and placed in on top of the stove, "You still run it, you're just always laying around."

  Ocht laughed out a wheeze, "I passed it on to this brat a while ago now."

  "You're going senile," Plin muttered, "Why don't you just hurry up and get better so I can go back to hunting, huh?"

  Ocht looked at Shelby with small, tired eyes and gave her a soft smile, "What do you think of the guild?"

  Shelby shifted uncomfortably, "It's... I think it has everything that anyone could possibly want."

  Ocht smiled over at Plin, "You hear that? She's talking about your rat's nest, you little hoarder."

  Plin glared at him, "What am I supposed to do? Let it all go to waste? It's not my fault this building was made for an old pile of dust bunnies."

  Ocht laughed uproariously until he had to clutch his side, then he started coughing. When he regained his composure, he spoke with a rasp, "You help her sell some of that junk to someone who can do something with it, eh?"

  "I'll try," Shelby half-promised while smiling nervously at Plin.

  The mouse just looked irritable. Soon enough, the water in the kettle was boiling and Plin stuck out her hand for the roots. Shelby popped them out of her inventory and handed them over.

  Shelby gave the unusually short quest completion notice a quick glance before dismissing it.

  Plin started cutting the roots on an old wood counter, then shoved the chunks of all four of them into a large ceramic mug. A half dozen uneven lumps of root fell from the mug as she poured the boiling water into it and then walked over to sit next to Ocht. He arranged himself to sit up and cradled the hot mug, waiting for it to steep. Plin fidgeted next to him, clearly growing impatient. Shelby decided to make conversation, "How long has Plin been your student, Ocht?"

  He looked up towards the bare wooden rafters, "Oh, let's see now. Must have been about 20... 25 years now, I reckon."

  "Are all of your beans dried up in there? It can't have been 20 years, I'm 19," Plin protested.

  "Just about 19 years then." Ocht agreed, nodding to himself.

  Plin sighed, "He is my adopted father."

  "That I am," Ocht laughed, "this one is the little wild child that I decided to keep around. Best decision I ever made."

  Plin looked disgusted, "If you have time to spin sugar like that then you can drink your tea."

  Ocht nodded and took a sip, then spit it all over the quilt, "You have to WASH these and DRY them you mushroom head!"

  Plin barked back, "How am I supposed to know that?"

  Half out of wanting to turn in her quests and half out of wanting them to have their, uh, time together, Shelby quietly excused herself. She knew there was a job board somewhere in each guild, but she couldn't spot it in the Brushcoarsers' cluttered hall. Giving up, she wandered over to the Carillop guild where she knew the board would be in plain sight. She heard the steady ringing of a bell, this time about an octave higher, as she walked in.

  Shelby whispered to AIDAN, "We did it! What happens now?"

  AIDAN vibrated, "There should be an announcement coming shortly."

  Shelby walked back outside and looked around. There were a handful of people walking through the guild square but no major commotion. Shelby frowned, she was expecting, I dunno, fireworks?

  Shelby only had a moment to parse her achievement before the sky dimmed and a wave of gold and green sparks washed over the village, carried on a strong wind. Shelby's cloak whipped up around her as it passed by. Sparks landed on buildings and roads, all over, and the places they landed began to glow and change. Even the canopy of thorny roots that covered most of the town was enveloped in a soft green light. Shelby ran along the street to watch the tide of lights roll onward, but quickly lost sight of the wave of magic. Rabbits and mice all around her watched in awe as the transformations lit up their town. Then, one by one, the glowing sheens receded and left behind improvements. A weedy field was transformed into an elevated stone garden, broken shingles were replaced with colorful tiles blooming with moss, even the streets were improved, going from rough cobblestones to smoothed out stones with a trim of red brick. The biggest improvement had to be the vines. The town was still choked with them, but they had arched upwards significantly, giving the roads a cathedral-like feel. On top of that, they now were draped with the glowing lilies that Shelby had seen in the mayor's garden. They glimmered faintly in the morning sun. Shelby couldn't wait to see how they looked above the streets at night.

  Shelby jogged along, looking at all the new decorations and improvements. The training yard had been ringed in brick planters with tall hedges growing from them, and the mayor's plaza now had a beautiful ringed mosaic of multicolored bricks. She ran on to the inn, and the whole thing had nestled back into a hill by about 5 yards. A huge crest of interwoven roots holding dark soil and lush grass spilled out over the top of the inn like a wave, and every couple of yards the roots would link up and plunge towards the ground in spiraling pillars. New seating and tables had come from nowhere, including natural bench seating all around the edge of the new courtyard. Nisa stepped out into the newly formed area, looking around with wide eyes, and Pico came jogging up the street towards them, grinning.

  She clasped Shelby by the shoulders, "Did you do that?"

  Shelby bounced, "I think so!"

  Nisa had a wide, open mouthed smile, and wandered dreamily towards them as they chattered, "Wow. Just wow..."

  More and more people from the community wandered towards the inn over the next ten minutes, finding seating in the large courtyard, chatting and pointing. Shelby saw a slew of familiar faces over the next half hour, including the Carillop guild hare, Phion? Even the Quest Master came dawdling up, a glimmer of awe breaking through his grumpy demeanor. He stared at Shelby with a slack jaw, muttering in disbelief, "My whole shack up and changed..." before wandering off again.

  Eventually, someone started playing lively music on a stringed instrument, and then someone joined in on a flute, then a small drum and an accordion. The crowd grew so loud that it even attracted the attention of some non-Daizi passersby. The first Shelby had seen. Two people with huge packs strapped to their backs walked down the road towards the inn, pointing and cheering at the crowd. One was a cat person with a big black splotch over one eye, and the other was some kind of devil, with short, sharp horns, rising from her hairline, that were piled with golden rings and silver chains. They were followed closely behind by a mouse with shaggy black hair and a red cloak. He wore a sword on his hip and had a small round shield slung over his shoulder.

  As he cautiously wandered into the courtyard, AIDAN whispered to Shelby and directed her attention to him, "That's the character we advanced this region to find."