Pondering how to spend a windfall of 10 core skill points, Milo trudged up towards the surface.

His smugglers' stash was full of things to sell, and he and Harry both needed supplies.

Harry's recovery and Milo's willingness to grind mycology and foraging had resulted in a large number of finished products and a lack of vials, bottles, salt, spices, flour, and cheese.

Harry had given Milo a huge number of items to go sell to the Alchemist guild, and a shopping list.

"Oh, and if they try to sell you any of my medicine, tell them I don't need it any longer.

Not that it really did much.""Medicine? For your ailment?"Harry stretched and rolled his shoulders.

He was getting back more muscle daily and looking more and more 'trollish' and he loved it.

"Yeah.

They tried to help me out.

They had an opening for a mycologist and I had been about to take the job when I got sick.

Thought it was a hangover at first since I'd been out drinking with the guild masters.

But I was getting sicker every day.

A total lack of earthen mana in my system, which is terrible for a troll.

They came up with a tonic to restore some of my earth mana, but it wore off pretty quick.

Eventually I just left the guild and moved downstairs where I had a better chance at kicking the disease.

They still sent down the tonics, and I still took them, but I don't think they helped a whole lot.

I was getting more mana from eating a handful of worms than from a bottle of their expensive medicine.

Glad to be done with it.

Just get the stuff on the list, and sell off the stuff I sent.""Oh, and if you can, deal with Bernard, he's ok.

Roulf, not so much.

Never got along with him and he likes to underbuy and overcharge, if you know what I mean."Once again, Milo was thankful for being able to haul so much up in one trip.

He was tempted...so very tempted!, to spend all 10 points on increasing the size of smugglers' stash, but he needed other skills.

He was a bit worried about the whole "They will hunt you." thing, whoever they were.

The first skills he bought were Silent Step 1 and unnoticed 1.

He hoped that more ranks became available.

Not being noticed by people hunting him was a good thing.

That used up 4 of his 10 points.

Breathless 1 and 2 were next.

He doubted very much he was going swimming soon despite suddenly being a fast swimmer.

How fast was an eel? But when you had to work around flowers that enslaved with their pollen, holding your breath was good.

It also meant less noise when you had to hide.

Disease Resistance as a secondary skill was 2 points.

He finished off with getting the first levels of Abundance and Skilled Provider to help with his mining and foraging.He was caught up in his thoughts about mining and hunting copperheads.

This cost him as he missed the small sounds that would have told him someone was lying in ambush.

You have been struck from ambush! You were attacked by someone using a weapon designed to knock you out.

This fails due to your Hard-Runed Skull.You take 30 points of damage, doubled for the ambush, and then halved from your mitigation.

Health: 330/360