Sam

"Sooo… what are we hunting?" Sam asked, traipsing along behind Will in a lazy zigzag while he trudged doggedly through the forest.

"Small game, probably," Will replied. "But I'll take anything stupid enough to walk into a snare that isn't a grinner."

"We'll be setting traps, then?"

"That's the plan."

"Then heading back?"

"No. There'll be more work to do after that."

"What kind of work?"

"Babysitting the snares."

"Huh. Isn't trapping more of a… passive activity? What's the point sitting around staring at them?"

"You'll see." He didn't turn around, but she could hear a slight smile in his voice. As they carried on, he added: "You fought some monsters while you were away, yeah?"

"Yep."

"Was it hard on you? Killing them?"

"Kinda."

"There's a decent chance we run into some out here. If we do—"

"I'll deal with them," Sam concluded. "I can do that much, at least."

Will chuckled darkly. "Okay then, Miss Darling. Monster cleanup detail is all yours. I'll let you know if any get near."

"Okay."

They walked a little longer. Will was complaining of mosquitoes. There were a fair amount of them sheltered in the shade of the woods, but Sam neglected to mention that it seemed they couldn't actually pierce her skin, simply poking at her uselessly until they got tired of trying and flew off, so she wasn't in danger of getting any actual bug bites. It would probably just put him in a bad mood. She knew that he could use one of his skills—Repel, was it?—to get rid of insects, so the fact that he wasn't using it made it seem like he was trying to conserve his energy. After all, he was using skills constantly just to be able to see. She had no way of knowing how harsh that was on his system, but it couldn't be easy.

"We should talk about your specialization," Will said. "It's a big choice you'll be making. You only get to branch out into one extra Profession, so if you go for a second one now, Laborer and that one are the two you'll be stuck with. You should think it over carefully."

"All right—let's do it."

"We'll go through your options one by one, starting with the ones we can reject immediately."

"Which is?"

"Scholar, Physician, Artisan, and Cook. They're heavily skill-reliant Professions—also, they're not really your style."

Sam nodded along. "Fair, fair."

"You could always take the second tier in Laborer. This would give you the Immovable passive as a premier ability, along with Totality as your derived attribute. Both of these features are quite nice. Immovable allows you to increase your weight at will—ostensibly to keep you from being displaced by some outside force—but I imagine it could also be used offensively; say, by imparting extra virtual mass to your fist right before the moment of impact to increase power.

"Totality, on the other hand, is an attribute that allows you to gain greater control of your body, including parts that you normally wouldn't be able to affect. For example, manually constricting severed blood vessels to halt bleeding, or forcing nerves to stop firing to relieve pain. Obviously, the more points you put into Totality, the more finely tuned this ability becomes. Theoretically, you could even control hormone levels and neurotransmitters to directly affect things like your mood or your cognition."

"I like the sound of the first thingy," Sam said, hopping from one rock, to another, to the next. "The second thingy sounds slightly terrifying. It also sounds like a lot of hassle, having to keep track of my blood vessels and shit."

"Well, you're not wrong," Will admitted. "Since a relatively small percentage of people get to Level 10 I don't have exactly an abundance of data on the derived attributes, but just off the top of my head I think it would work best with at least a few points in Processing as a base. Awareness might work, too. But you don't have either of those, so using Totality optimally would maybe prove difficult for you."

"Sounds like a paaaaain. If it's gonna be like that, I'd rather just put my points in Strength or something."

"I see." Will motioned for her to stop, and got down on one knee in the undergrowth. He snipped off a good length of wire with the pliers he had brought and began tying it into a snare. "Aside from that, there's also anecdotal evidence suggesting that specializing further into one's original Profession rather than branching out as a synergist somehow makes it easier to level with that Profession, but it's hard to say for sure whether that's true since leveling doesn't scale linearly and isn't based on any easily definable metric.

"The downsides of continuing with Laborer is that you lose out on getting access to another Profession's ability list, and you also forgo the chance to choose your derived attribute more freely, along with losing the extra attribute that comes from branching out." He stood away to inspect his handiwork, rubbing his stiff right leg with the heel of his palm. The snare didn't look like much—more or less just a loop of wire tied around a tree trunk—but Will looked satisfied. Nodding, he moved on. "I think going with second tier Laborer is a good backup option if we can't find anything better for you, but I think a good branch pick would be more ideal."

"Okaaay," Sam agreed, giving the hanging snare a little poke as she wandered past, setting it lightly wobbling. "What about something like Builder or Farmer? I assume those go well with Laborer?"

"Sort of," Will replied, somewhat hesitantly. "But you're not very interested in building or farming, are you?"

"Not really. I guess building houses and stuff might be nice, but I think I'd find it a little technical. All this planning and all these measurements and bla bla bla. Farming is…" She shrugged. "...well, it's kinda like watching paint dry, isn't it? Besides, I don't think I've never been very good at keeping plants alive. I feel like they up and kill themselves the moment I turn my back on them."

Will turned his gaunt face half toward her so she could see his crooked smile. "Yeah, on paper it looks like either of those would be a good match since they both rely on a lot of physical activity and potential heavy lifting, but temperamentally it's a different story.

"Builder is fairly skill-reliant, so I think we can discard that with confidence. Farmer has some nice passives, but also a good deal of overlap with Laborer, so in terms of ability coverage it's not great. It also doesn't give you any passives for specializing into the first tier, just the Nurture skill, so that's kind of a bust."

"Neither of those, then," Sam said. "What do we even have left after that?"

Will held up three fingers. "Explorer, Trader, and Entertainer. Well, I suppose there's Mediator too, as we've recently learned. Maybe the Ghost would give it to you if you knew to ask for it, but my gut feeling says that's not how it works. Either way, I'll need to do some more research on the girl before I can say if it would even be any good for you."

"Right."

A little bit further along, Will squatted to set his second snare. "Branching into Trader or Entertainer might honestly not be that bad," he mused. "You're pretty damn outgoing, and you get along well with others, so in terms of leveling Entertainer might be a nice fit. Trader isn't as narrow as it sounds, either. It's not just about buying and selling, but diplomacy in general, so you could definitely earn some levels through that.

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"Entertainer would give what I would consider to be the best derived attribute for you—Haste. It's the same one I've got, and it does pretty much what it sounds like it would. Makes your body move faster, plain and simple, eventually allowing you to reach supernatural speeds."

Sam gave a small snort. "Yeah, you're always flying around like a damn monkey."

"A lot of that comes down to having a really good Dash, but yes, that's the general principle. For a melee fighter like you, closing the distance quickly is vital. Besides, despite your points in Dexterity, all the bulk from your Toughness and Strength is probably slowing you down a bit, so having something to offset that would be nice."

Will finished the snare and moved on. "The downside of Haste is that it doesn't increase your reaction time, so putting too many points in it might actually make it hard to maneuver at top speed. Luckily, Explorer would also give you access to Processing, so if you sink some points there—like I did—you might be all right. Only problem there is, uh…" He trailed off, came to a stop, and turned back to her with a somewhat sheepish look.

"What?" Sam asked. "What's the problem?"

"Remember when I told you about aggregated attribute scores a while ago?"

"Uh… kind of?"

"Basically, the amount of points you have in an attribute isn't the only factor that affects how much you actually get out of it in practice. You also have something called an effort modifier that can increase the benefits you get from investing attribute points.

"Now, your effort modifiers in Strength and Toughness especially are excellent, meaning you benefit much more from investing in those attributes than the average lifer. Now, I can't measure your modifier for Processing since you don't have any points in it, but…"

"My brain no work good?" Sam asked sweetly.

"Uh, it's not really like that. Well, I mean, you're not exactly on the high end of the bell curve, but it's more like… you don't really like thinking a lot, so your effort modifier is probably low, meaning that it would be kind of a waste comparatively speaking to throw a lot of points into it."

"You have such little faith in me, sir. I'll have you know I have a lot of thoughts rattling around in the ol' dome."

"Except most of them are about food."

Sam stuck out her tongue and gave Will's unfashionably bald head a good squeeze as she walked past. "Ya got me."

Will hobbled after, and she slowed her pace so he could catch up. "Now, as for Entertainer, it matches your temperament pretty well, and it gives you Haste for your derived attribute, but it's another Profession that gets a lot of its value from skills. You only get Glitter and Illusion for taking the first tier, and there aren't too many attractive passives you unlock by branching into it.

"Trader also suits your personality, but it's just not a very good Profession overall, especially for a fighter like you. The derived attribute is Presence, which—as far as I understand it—does something like make you more noticeable to others. Like, it influences people to pay attention to you. It doesn't do anything to improve people's opinions of you, though, so all it really does is make you a bigger target.

"It would give you access to Empathy as your extra pick, which I think might honestly not be too bad for you. I can only imagine that your modifier in that attribute would be pretty high, and being able to read others' intentions is useful both in fighting and social situations. It's either that or Appeal, and Appeal is pretty much useless unless you're some streetside prostitute, so yeah, Empathy it is."

He set a third snare in labored silence. She could tell his leg was bothering him, so she forced him to sit down on a rock and rest for a few minutes after that.

"The problem with Trader," he continued after a while, "is that it doesn't have a lot of relevant abilities for you. Cargo Hold might be nice, but that would require you to put a point in Inventory first, so it would be a bit of an investment. For the first tier, the only thing you get is Measured, which doesn't really do much of anything."

"Well, what does it do?" Sam asked with a low grunt. Since she wasn't tired, she was spending her break time doing some pull ups from a sturdy oak bough. It had been way too long since she'd gotten a good workout in. "Does it, like, make you calmer or something?"

Twelve, thirteen, fourteen…

Will shook his head. "Not that kinda 'measured'. It literally lets you measure things. For example." He bent down and plucked a fist-sized rock off the ground, held it up. "If you had Measured, you'd be able to tell me fairly accurately how much this weighs, or…" He flung it off into the woods, making a distant thud as it landed in a stretch of spindly shrubbery. "...how far I just threw that. Basic measurements of things—that kinda deal."

"But… I could already tell you that, pretty much." Sam looked off in the direction of the rock for a moment, then returned to her task, bringing her chin over the branch once more. Bodyweight exercises were becoming a bit too easy at this point. She thought maybe a nice big suit of armor might bog her down enough to make things interesting.

Eighteen, nineteen, twenty…

Will blew out his cheeks and shrugged. "Like I said, not very useful. It's supposed to make you be able to guess those things more accurately, but I couldn't really tell you how much of a difference it makes. I've never heard a Trader talk about whether or not they get any mileage out of it, but the fact that it's never a topic of discussion probably tells you everything you need to know."

Will stood up to leave, so Sam wrapped up her set at thirty pullups and dropped back to the ground. She rolled her shoulders, dissatisfied with how little strain she felt in them. "That's all the Professions, right?"

"Mmhmm," Will replied. He picked a spot just a handful of strides away from their resting spot to set up his fourth snare. "I think, all things considered, that you should go for Explorer. It fits your personality, it gives you a good derived attribute, and aside from giving you Dash, which you obviously won't be able to make use of, it also gives you a moderately useful passive in Orienteering. Even though you might not take advantage of it much since you'll be able to rely on my perception most of the time, if you ever need to—"

"I think I'm going to pick Trader," Sam cut in.

"What?" Will asked, spinning around on her.

"I think I'll pick Trader," Sam repeated, facing down the paradoxical stare of his two closed eyes. She hadn't really given it too much thought, and hadn't really meant to blurt that out the way she had either, but something about saying it out loud strengthened her conviction that it was the right choice.

"Why?" Will demanded, sounding more than a little annoyed with her.

Sam shrugged. "You said Traders are all about diplomacy, right? Like making friends and stuff?"

"Yes."

"And Presence makes people pay attention to me, right?"

"Yes."

"Which means they'll pay less attention to someone like you. Pretty good trait for a bodyguard to have, no?"

Will's temples bulged as he worked his jaw. He really did look strange without hair. "You're not my bodyguard."

"Of course not," Sam said with a bright grin. "Did I say that out loud?"

"Stop fucking around, Sam. This is serious stuff."

"Aaand…" Sam continued, ignoring him. "...spacing happens to be one of the most important aspects of fighting." To illustrate, she threw up her fist so that it hung a couple inches from Will's face, then shuffled just a little closer so her knuckle barely touched the tip of his nose. "An inch here, an inch there; it might not sound like much, but in a lot of cases, that's what separates a glancing blow from a clean knockout. I don't think I'd mind having an automatic yardstick in my brain at all." She let her hand drop, grinning wider. "Besides, I don't like the thought of picking Explorer and having to get a skill with it. I'd worry about using it on accident or something."

"You wouldn't use it by accident," Will sighed, and roughly batted her arm away. "That's not how it works."

Sam shrugged. "Pretty much all the other Professions sounded iffy to me, but I like Trader. Why shouldn't I pick it?"

"Well, I…" Will frowned, raised his right hand up to his chest to pluck pensively at the fingers. "...I guess you make a good point. I admit I hadn't really thought of Presence that way—not many people bother with it other than Entertainer synergists who don't need Haste—but there's a certain logic to the way you describe it. Getting Empathy on top of that, maybe it's…"

"Oh, I think I'll be taking Appeal, actually," Sam said.

"The fuck you are!"

Somehow, seeing Will's expression go sour was kind of satisfying, and made her grin wider to compensate. "Appeal makes you more attractive, right?"

"Sure. As far as I know it's a combination of a physical and mental effect, making subtle alterations to your physiology while also changing the way people view you instinctively. But Sam, that's all it does. It's pointless, just pure vanity—especially since you already look great to begin with."

"Thanks for the drive-by compliment; I'll take it. But…" Hands on hips, she stated proudly: "...a hero's gotta look their best, right? My goal is to be a person everyone can admire and look up to. And a big part of making people look up to you is making them wanna look at you, no? A hero can't just be strong—they've gotta be iconic, too!"

"Yeah, well, I…" He rolled his shoulders and shook out his right hand uncomfortably. "...I can never tell if you're an idiot or a genius with this stuff."

"Heehee. So you think it would work?"

"It's certainly unique, I'll give you that. And it's certainly very you, which I guess is a point in favor." He groaned and rubbed at his face with both hands. "Let me think about it for a bit, and then we'll discuss this again." Walking off angrily, he muttered under his breath: "Superhero build—what a fucking joke. This is what I gave up a kidney for?"

Sam trotted happily along behind him while patiently ignoring his lapse into childish melodrama.

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