I immediately canceled my Illusion. There would be nothing worse than to look like a flying bird the glitched forward as I walked. The last thing I needed was to have the cops called on me. I was trying to hide, after all. Looking like a teenager was the best defense I had—especially when I got away from the property I’d landed on and out into the street.

  The first thing I had to do was get from the dock to that street. The dock had an impressive speed boat tied to it. The end opposite me transitioned into a gravel pathway that snaked its was up a steep hill. Many stairs stood in my way, but there was no way around it. Not without Flight—something I wanted to avoid this low on blood.

  I climbed the stairs to the top, where the path opened into a large deck. I looked for the exit and found it off on one side. That took me along a path that went to the driveway. All the while, my heart raced. Luck was on my side, however. The owners of the property were elsewhere. The route to the road was clear.

  The road was a county route—with one lane of travel in each direction and no sidewalks. I quickly crossed the road as the other side was wooded and had more room for me to walk safely. Cars still passed uncomfortably close. But it wasn’t like I had much choice in the matter. Going farther into the woods would slow me too much from getting into the town before it got too late to find a safe place to sleep for the night.

  Running was faster, so that’s what I did. It was easier to run for long distances than it would have been without my increased stats. That didn’t mean it was easy, though. I didn’t have the training needed to run like I had the first time I’d returned to the past. And I still disliked running—but I wouldn’t let that prevent me from getting to the town as soon as I could. I was spiritually exhausted, and would be physically tired soon enough.

  I ran for almost an hour before I finally reached the town proper. What looked like a couple miles was—in reality—much farther. That was the difference between distance on a road and as the crow flew. Evening was now fast approaching, and I needed to find a bed sooner rather than later.

  The town was about as old as towns in this area ever got. That meant relatively narrow streets, lots of shops, and an upscale hotel from the time when car was a shortened form of the horse-drawn carriage, and not the kind powered by ancient sunlight. The town was larger than the one across the river had been, and that meant is had two streets worth of a downtown rather than one.

  After wandering up and down both parallel streets, I found the hotel. It was a large white building with a circular driveway in the front. The styling was that of an old plantation house—something this area was not known for. Maybe the original owner liked the classically-inspired design, or maybe they had moved north after the war. I couldn’t say.

  I opened the front door and walked inside. The place felt as old as it was. The interior design, the colors, the materials… they all echoed the opulence of the era in which the hotel was originally built. There was an area for dining through doors to one side, a grand staircase in the middle, and the reception desk near the entrance.

  I wandered over to the desk where a young man was standing there looking rather bored. I stood there for a few moments before clearing my throat to get his attention. I didn’t want to be a Karen, but if that’s what it took for him to acknowledge my existence, then so be it.

  “How can I help you?” he finally asked with a disdainful voice like I’d interrupted his doom scrolling or something.

  “Any open rooms tonight?” I wondered.

  “Yeah. Just one night?”

  “Mhm. One night. Breakfast or dinner come with it?”

  “Breakfast, yes. Dinner’s reservation only, and they’re booked tonight.”

  “Right. How much?” I asked, pulling some cash from my backpack.

  “One-twenty.”

  “Damn, that’s expansive.”

  The man shrugged as he took the money. It was most of what I’d been able to pack away. Dad hadn’t had much on him, and he could always go get more—lottery winner and all—while I couldn’t. I was dead as far as the rest of the world was concerned. My money wasn’t mine anymore. That didn’t mean I wouldn’t follow up on the investments I’d made in a year or two—at least from a distance.

  Eventually, the man handed me my room card for a room on the second floor. I made my way up and found it. The inside was spacious, with ceilings that were ten or twelve feet high. I tossed my backpack on the bed and immediately took a shower. After such a long day of flying and running, I was pooped.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  After my shower, I went back downstairs with a little money in my pocket for dinner. The town had several restaurants, but most of them were too pricey for what I had on me, so I went with the diner. It was a mediocre meal, but it was cheap. Positively stuffed, I wandered back into my room and lay on the bed.

  I stared at the ceiling as I thought. I still had another day of travel before I arrived in the area I was planning on staying. That meant one more day of exhausting flying, where I was unlikely to have a warm and dry place to sleep. There was a remedy for this, and it was the thing I’d put off for far too long: my profession.

  I understood professions to be the non-violent mirror to classes. That is, a class might suggest a cohesive group of skills to do one violent thing very well—like flinging fireballs at monsters. A profession—in contrast—would suggest skills to make you a smith or a weaver. I was stuck with my class—both in the sense of having already picked it, and that I couldn’t figure out how to make it do what I wanted.

  My profession would be incredibly powerful—as long as I chose the right one. What I needed was a way to survive. The biggest hurdles to that would be shelter and food. Food I could gather by stealing, foraging, or hunting. Those were things I had some confidence in doing. Shelter was what I needed help with.

  I had several options for my profession that met the criteria. The more specific the choice, the more narrow the choices of skills. I made a mental note that this should come with some sort of bonus to make that narrow choice more powerful. All classes and professions should have a set of bonuses tailored to what they were supposed to do, I decided. For now—though—I was content to keep things the way they were.

  The first option was Survival. It centered around surviving—it was right there on the label. This meant anything from finding—and rendering safe—fresh water to making rudimentary clothes from animal skins to survive a harsh winter. It was a good generalist option, but not one I would be happy about taking. I knew a lot of the theory—and some of the practice—so having skills to do it all slightly better wasn’t what I needed.

  The next option was Construction. Like Survival, it did what it said on the tin. The skills there would boost my ability to construct things. It was also fairly broad. I doubted I would be using concrete and steel to build my shelters. This option got a hard pass from me. It was less useful than Survival would be.

  Another option was Camping. Its skills centered around a subset of what Survival did. Starting and keeping a fire, making a shelter, etc. It was much closer to what I needed, but it still suffered from being broad—including a bunch of tent-related skills. Useful if I had a tent, but I didn’t. It was still a good option, and one I would have taken if I hadn’t picked the next option.

  Shelter Building was precisely the narrow kind of profession I needed. I could muddle along with the other things—hunting, cooking, firekeeping—but this was the area I was least trained in and the one I needed the most help with. Maybe a few years of doing it would get me to a level where I wouldn’t need the profession in the future.

  While I didn’t take any of the skills it offered right away, I read through them all. I wanted to get a good idea of the boosts and help I would be able to get. There was some overlap between the various options—like the five different ways to make the same sort of building—but there was enough variety among them that I could pick whichever I had the materials nearby to build with.

  After picking my profession and looking over its skills, I turned in for the night. I would have a busy day coming up. I would need my sleep. That didn’t mean falling asleep was easy. I ended up casting Sleep on myself after a while. I really hoped it wouldn’t become a habit.

  I awoke in a cold sweat a few hours later, with tears streaming down my face. The nightmares that had come days earlier were back in force. I had thought me being busy wouldn’t give my mind the time to contemplate what I’d done. As it turned out, I was wrong.

  The newest dream showed me burning corpses walking like zombies. They chased me for miles. As soon as they caught up, they talked to me. I would have expected them to set me alight or attack me. But no, they had words for me.

  “You killed us,” one said as it melted into ash in front of me.

  “Murderer,” said another.

  “Terrorist.”

  “Evil.”

  “We will make sure you never forget,” said the final one.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered back right as I shot awake.

  I had a feeling these dreams would continue. I wanted to do something to stop them, but I didn’t know how. As much as I needed shelter, I needed to heal my mind as well. I wondered if I should have taken a profession related to the mind instead. Since I hadn’t, I’d need to do it the old fashioned way—ignore the problem and hope it went away. Minus the alcohol and drugs, of course.

  I hit myself with Sleep again. I slept marginally better this time. No nightmares, but I woke feeling restless. There was an itch that I could only scratch by moving forward. In a way, I was excited to be out on my own and away from people for a while. It sucked being a child with an adult’s mind. There were so many restrictions preventing me from doing what I had to do. Out there—in the wilderness—I would be much freer to experiment.

  I rose and showered one last time. I didn’t know the next time I would be able to, so I took advantage of the room I had paid for. After dressing, I went downstairs for breakfast and then to check out. The brunch options were mediocre, but I was able to snag a few baked goods for the road.

  My belly satisfied, I walked through the town. My destination was any place where I could take off from. Specifically, I needed privacy. As I didn’t know the town beyond what I’d seen from the air and from wandering around yesterday, I elected to find a piece of private property that had a dock. Provided no one was home, that would give me a quiet place to launch from. All I needed to do was to find that place.