And what would you know of humanity?

You fuck silently in the dark, speak in hushed tones out of sight of others, build entire houses for your dead so none may watch you mourn, and I have not once seen you or your kind laugh in public. You wear masks to hide your visage and show disdain for us when we scrabble in the mud for our coin.

You brand us barbarians when we act like humans in the open, but why should we hide what we all claim to share? My people mistake your aloofness for restraint, but I wonder if there is any instinct for you to even strain against anymore.

Tell me civilised one; when you take off that mask at night, is there anything beneath it?

- Excerpt from 'The Folly Of Questions' by unknown playwrite - recovered from the grand library of Salakresh by Altinian explorers, circa .155

We took our time packing up the camp, eating a slow breakfast and deciding to walk for a few hours rather than run. We didn't want to catch up to the herd or the people following it, after all. This gave us all more time for the general banter of travelling, with inane chit-chat to ward off the boredom and silence. I found myself next to Jorge and decided to ask further about his training philosophy.

"I know I have a lot to learn here, but can you tell me where I'm headed with all of this training? My Skills aren't geared towards wielding normal weapons, and from what you've said previously, I thought I was supposed to stick with what I have and lean into it to find a style rather than trying to change direction with my class."

He looked over at me, handing me a piece of chewy cured meat as he replied. "I'm not searching for a style for you to take on, I'm searching for your style. There's a difference, lad; an emergent property to it. You can train to follow the path of someone else all you like, but you'll never be as proficient as them with it. And say you do one day get to the point of parity… you'll have to design your own way forwards anyhow. So what's the point, aye? You're predisposed to fight in a certain way, and I'm just trying to figure out how to limit your weaknesses and make the most out of your strengths. In time, you will adapt it as it adapts to you."

He spoke as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, but I had no frame of reference to know if it was nonsense or not. He continued on before I could decide either way, though.

"But anyway, back to the question of your class. It's a point of discussion, and everyone and their nan's got an opinion on it, but here's the gist of it. You can either steer or build. The builders; they plan from the start. Think of the noble scions that strut around the big cities and empires of this world. They train from birth to gain certain Skills, and they already have a class mapped out ahead of time. Not always exactly, but definitely the shape of one at least."

He gestured up ahead where Nathlan walked side by side with Vera, deep in discussion about something I couldn't quite overhear but had no doubt was fiendishly complicated. Vera seemed to be keeping up without trouble though. Appearances could be deceiving, and I'd quickly learned that she was as smart as she was dangerous.

"Nathlan there is probably the single most talented ward-crafter I've ever met. In fact, he definitely is. Lad's got a knack for free-form magic like you wouldn't believe, and while he's handy in a fight even without the wards, it's due to a lifetime of training rather than any benefits from his class."

I nodded along, having seen for myself that the gangly scholar was good with a blade. It was interesting to hear that he lacked any class Skills to help directly with combat, but not entirely surprising. My physical attributes were higher than his from what I could tell, and I had a movement Skill that he lacked too, hence why he was the slowest member of the group despite his greater level.

"So he's an example of someone who built his class?" I asked.

"Aye, lad, exactly that. From the ground up. Contrast that with Vera," he said, gesturing over to the big woman. "She stumbled into her class by accident during a… difficult time in her life, shall we say. It's taken nigh on a decade for her to learn to control the Skills she earned, and most of that time has been spent removing certain sub-Skills from the merge, or at least reducing their emphasis and on the flip side she's been adding a whole host of small Skills to help balance the class."

He chuckled to himself. "Now she's a terror on the battlefield, and handy off of one as well. You've seen her pebbles, aye? They're not the only trick she's got hidden up her sleeves, and no mistake. Anyone who treats her as a simple meat-shield is in for a hell of a surprise."

I could see the pride shining in his eyes clear as day. I didn't know the details of their history with one another, but that soft smile as he talked of her accomplishments was heartwarming to behold.

"Anyhow, point is that I can't imagine anyone sane setting out to earn a class like hers, and certainly not once they learn what they'd have to sacrifice to get there. But she took her class as it was, and moulded it into something that could suit her rather than build it from the ground up."

I hummed in thought for a few moments, considering what I knew of their lives and how that had influenced their classes. "Seems like you're implying I should take the steer rather than build approach," I mused.

"I'm saying no such thing, lad," Jorge replied. "That's your choice to make. But ask yourself this: does your class as it currently stands seem like it fits? Sure, there are things you might change, Skills you might add and remove. But does the core concept of it call to you?"

I nodded without conscious thought. It did, and it was as obvious to the old man as it was to me. "Aye," I confirmed, sounding an awful lot like the man that walked beside me.

He laughed. "As I thought. So now you're wondering what that means for your original question, right?" he asked, with a prescience bordering on the psychic.

I nodded. "Why have you got me training with a normal spear and shield and not weapons that I've made myself? Improvised Weapons has proved one of my most useful Skills so far. Why am I not training with it?"

He sighed. It wasn't a sad sound, or a weary one. More of a release of breath before a lecture. I braced myself.

"I like your class, and I believe you should lean into it. You've got your Skills, and while they might not be optimal, they are what they are. Focus on learning all they can teach you, build them up into a coherent toolset.

"That being said," he continued, "there's no reason you shouldn't add to that toolset as you grow. Just because Guerrilla Warfare contains an Improvised Weapons precursor that feeds you innate knowledge on how to use those improvised weapons doesn't mean you only have to use improvised weapons. It doesn't mean you shouldn't learn how to use normal weapons first."

I nodded. Sensible, but not necessarily answering my question. I wanted to be, if not fully optimised, then at least more efficient with my training. Jorge's next words settled things though.

"In fact, I'd argue that the Skill requires you to learn the basics first. The spear is clearly a good fit for you, lad, and I don't expect you to go into battle when you eventually get there with a manufactured spear. You'll be wielding something you harvested and forged for yourself. But if you know how to fight with a spear, you can ignore all the general hints and tips dropped by your Skill about spear-fighting and focus only on the most important bits. The bits relating not just to the type of weapon you use, but the specific weapon you have. When your skill teaches you how to thrust a spear-"

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He gestured wildly as we walked, miming the movements as he discussed them, "it will nudge you in certain ways. If your general form is terrible, the Skill will be telling you how to correct that form. How to create momentum with your hips, how to spring from your back foot properly, and all that good stuff that any self-respecting warrior should know. If you already know how to do all that, the Skill will instead be nudging you in more specific ways. Dropping your shoulder a hair to account for the crooked haft, so that the tip will pierce where you're aiming. Using a different part of the haft to deflect a strike as the imperfections in the material make a certain section weaker than another."

I nodded with him at that, conceding his point. "So how best do I train then?"

"Train with a spear and shield – it's a solid combination and one well-suited to your defensive leaning – until you've got the basics. Weapons technique is only one part of fighting, Lamb, and we'll be focusing on other aspects while we travel as well. I'll let you know once you're ready for more, but spend your time now learning from us rather than your Skills. Given your combat class, they will level best while you're in danger, so use this time to shore up the weaknesses that rapid growth inherently brings with it."

He turned slightly, slapping me on the shoulder as he did so. "Oh, and we need to focus on your physical situation too. Your stats have grown quickly, and you're not used to them yet. Don't worry though, lad. This is the fun bit!"

At my slight look of suspicion, he laughed. "Why are you looking at me like that? I'm not saying that as some sort of sadistic elder who will make you run till you throw up blood. This will genuinely be fun."

My suspicion redoubled. "That was a very specific simile."

He recoiled, making wide innocent eyes as he replied. "Come now, lad, who do you take me for? The safety of my charges is my top priority."

Now I was sure he was having me on, so I squinted at him and activated Indomitable Prey. He laughed and held his hands up in mock surrender.

"Alright, you got me, enough fucking around." His laugh petered out into a faint smile, and he got a wistful look in his eye as he continued, "in all seriousness though, take the time to enjoy this phase of your growth. There's a lot of fun to be had in this life, especially at your age. Don't let it breeze by without recognition, you hear?"

"You don't know how old I am, Jorge," I reminded him.

He snorted. "Please, Lamb. You're a baby, sure as sure. I bet you've got little more than thirty winters under your belt, especially so considering that shoddy excuse for a beard you cultivated. Disastrous," he muttered.

I wanted to be offended at that, but he wasn't wrong. Even I didn't fancy trying to defend my previously rugged appearance. "Training isn't all fun and games though, surely?" I asked, getting us back on track.

Jorge seemed to disagree, though. "I still remember this phase of my growth, Lamb. I'd go back if I could, I tell you that for free. There's something… joyous, in the discovery of what you can do. The breaking of barriers previously thought absolute. Trust me, you're going to love it."

I was about to ask how exactly we would be training when Jorge turned my way again as we strode through the trampled grass. He winked at me then and whistled, catching Vera and Nathlan's attention from where they were a dozen paces ahead of us.

As they turned around questioningly, he shouted over, "I'm going to take the little lamb here and get him used to his physical stats. You alright taking the lead, Vera?"

The solid woman simply nodded at him and turned back to Nathlan and whatever conversation the two had been having before the interruption. Jorge then turned to me and stopped. I stopped as well out of reflex, bewildered and staring back at him expectantly.

"Well? What's the plan?" I asked.

He stared for a few more seconds, dragging out the silence, and just as I was shifting from my weight from one foot to the other and about to speak again, he darted forward and slapped me lightly across the face.

I gaped – not in pain, it had been an incredibly gentle strike – but more at the sheer audacity. That was fighting talk if I'd ever seen it. Fighting action?... I guess it's just fighting at that point.

Before I could retaliate, he leaned in and whispered, "tag," before sprinting off. I continued my impression of a fish for a few more moments until my inner child re-surfaced and I booked it after him.

I was dimly aware of passing a bemused Nathlan and thoroughly unsurprised Vera, but I blasted past them in an instant and was after the retreating figure of Jorge. Before he could get too far out of sight, he turned and taunted me. I couldn't actually make out exactly what he said – it was something about a sheep and my mother with the exact details lost to the wind. The point was obvious, however, and I pushed everything out of my mind except the singular goal of catching the smug prick.

Jorge had explained his philosophy behind attribute training to me later over a meal, the others already being aware. Nathlan had yet to experience it fully, since his attributes had hardly changed since travelling with the team, but both Vera and him were familiar enough with the concept.

The problem with gaining attributes was that it expanded a person's potential, their maximum threshold. They wouldn't accidentally break a table when leaning against it despite their enhanced strength, because they weren't trying to. It was based on intention and effort, and so if a person wanted to truly understand what their enhanced attributes were capable of, they needed to push themselves.

Traditional training - focused on progressively pushing harder and harder – was all well and good for straight line sprints, endurance runs, and calisthenics. A person could start hefting boulders around, even particularly well-made temporary buildings if they were strong enough, but that didn't much help with the gradient of their new strength.

Sure, they could gain a feel for how strong they were at their limits, but would they understand how that strength could be leveraged whilst moving? Did they gain a feel for how much strain it took to control a small moving weight versus a heavy static one? And how the movement versus the weight affected the intensity of the exercise?

Ultimately, the answer to all the above questions was probably 'yes, if they trained carefully and thought it through', but those were only the most visible effects of strength and possibly endurance. There were a million ways that attributes influenced the body, and it was nearly impossible to design a training program that would isolate each attribute in all the ways that it needed training.

Jorge's philosophy was to focus less on isolation and more on synergy. Don't train specific attributes, instead train specific movements. The exercise wasn't supposed to move too far from the goal it was being trained for. If a person wanted to train to fight, they should practice fighting. It seemed like an alien concept to me in many ways, but in a world where levelling up increased attributes so dramatically, I supposed it didn't make sense to grind away with physical training to increase them.

That thought had surprised me and gave perhaps the first decent insight into my life before I came to this world. It implied I had lived without levels or attributes, and that strength or agility must have been trained.

I'd queried Jorge about this, and he'd confirmed that while training could help somebody make the most of their attributes, they could only do so within the limits that their attributes proscribed.

My hypothetical question of 'who would be stronger out of two farmers with identical attributes but one worked out like a madman and one sat round at home all day' was met with confusion. Apparently, absolute strength, even in something as simple as lifting objects, still relied on skill. The lazy farmer may have an identical limit to their strength as the other farmer, but they would lack the connection to their body, the awareness of how to move and maximise their potential that the other farmer could bring.

It was 'ultimately a useless made-up situation' as Jorge had said, since the more driven farmer would be much more likely to level up anyway, enhancing their attributes and so surpassing the lazy one. I might have disagreed about the validity of my thought experiment, but the point being made was that attributes were important, and proscribed an absolute limit above which a person could not reach. However, it was essential to train in a way so that your body would be used to the movements you required of it, and you would understand the new limits of your body in turn.

So, how to push yourself consistently as hard as possible, without falling into the trap of training only isolated movements? Either put yourself in danger or do something fun. Since putting yourself in danger to train kind of defeated the whole point of training as a preparation for danger itself, fun was the way forward.

Jorge had beamed with pride when he revealed his philosophy of 'fun training'. Children, he'd explained, spent their time sprinting around, constantly pushing their limits in every dimension of movement. They didn't just run, or jump, or climb in set patterns, repeating over and over until they gained experience. No, they galivanted around as fast and free as possible, pushing their bodies to their limit without conscious direction.

Their goal was not self-improvement, even though that was undoubtedly the outcome. Their goal was always something more tangible. Catch the ball, chase the person, climb the tree.

Which was why I spent most of the afternoon chasing the short little bugger all around the grassy plains of the Wandering States, flitting past Vera and Nathlan with whoops and cheers, skidding around shrubs and leaping over small streams in the mad pursuit of catching just a hair of the man who never ceased his taunting.

By the time he called it, I was dripping with sweat. I had swerved and ducked, leapt and skidded to a halt. I'd made mad dives after my prey, and pushed my agility, strength, cognition, and perception to their absolute limits, without even mentioning the endurance.

Whenever I was starting to lose enthusiasm, he would slow his place, dodge a hair slower and give me just a bit of hope. He even allowed me to catch him on occasion, and our roles would be reversed for a time.

I was mildly surprised to find myself pushing my limits for a game, but Jorge was just insufferably smug when I gasped the thought out between heaving breaths as we finished.

"Joy is just as potent a force as hatred, Lamb, and one that is rarely harnessed."

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