Ginger opened the tutorial again, and this time focused on Skill Tokens.

  Ginger instantly started digging around in her menu. She couldn't find where to redeem her tokens until she used menu manipulation to force the button to show up in her rebirth menu. Eight little coins hit the table with little clinking sounds. Her old skills! She knew what they were, but she still studied them each and managed to bring up a description of what they were.

  With everything she'd accomplished in her first life laid out like that, it seemed a bit depressing. But, she had a start here. It had taken her years to earn all of these skills. But with some of them already learned, she could have a huge head-start. Maybe even get further into herpetology like she wanted. If she had all of the skills School was supposed to teach, she could lie and say she was doing the paths, while she actually was on a herpetology path...

  With her dreams so loud, Ginger reached for her favorite token first. Common Fond of Lizards. It was her only Tier One Token. She really wanted to start on it. But she remembered that line about higher Tier Tokens taking more merit, and she reluctantly put it aside. She'd start with Basic Learning. Just a Tier Zero basic skill. It would have been way better if she'd been able to take a crafting path when she was alive, but she'd needed the typing boost for her job. She'd make do with what she had.

  Ginger focused on the Token in her hand. Thinking about all her years at school. All her hours spent digging through websites to learn any scrap she could about lizards. Even, ugh, the hours she spent practicing her typing. Learning. The drive to know more, to be better.

  She let her Merit gather, and pushed those thoughts into is she drew out a strand of it. When it reached her finger, she pressed it to the token. The token greedily at up the Merit, to the point it started to worry her. But then it finished. She'd done it.

  She did it! That wasn't even that bad. Maybe making the Raw Tokens was the expensive part? Sure, coming back after a life cost 100 Merit, but surely she could- wait, how hard was it to earn more? It said she hadn't earned any Merit... Maybe she should be more careful with what she spent. If they were only given enough for fifteen lives and it actually took that long to reach the point they earned enough Merit to keep going, then she should be more careful.

  She'd have to assume that it would be tricky. Probably do Basic Studying, Basic Languages, and Basic Paths, and then go into the next life. Those four skills would be a solid base no matter what.

  With that plan in mind, Ginger used the Basic Learning Token.

  When she saw the Weight cost, her heart sank a little. That was right. Each skill would get her just a little closer to it costing more to come back here. If it was hard to earn Merit, that could make taking more skills really dangerous. She pulled up the Rebirth menu, planning to double check the wording, when she saw something she had apparently been too upset to notice before. Loadout. What was that?

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  That was huge. That meant she could keep picking up new skills, and just deactivate what wasn't as useful. She could refine things until she had the best start for how much Merit she was earning per life. Oh, and she could figure out how much the cost went up when she went up a tier safely.

  For now, though, it didn't change her plans. She still needed to save her Merit until she knew how hard it was to get more. And try to earn a crafting skill in her next life that would help here. Maybe if she could make Runes and Tokens for cheap, she could earn Merit off of that and not always rely on a life.

  Ginger put the extra skill tokens in a drawer that seemed built for them, then focused on the last three. It didn't take long to make them all up. She grimaced when she finally looked at her notifications and she how much it had cost. 393 more merit gone. At least each one had cost a little bit less each time, so she was getting better at it. But now she was down to 831 Merit.

  There was still one part in the crafting tutorial she hadn't checked yet, the locked section. She pulled up her menu and selected that option. As expected, it told her she hadn't unlocked that section yet. However, it did give her a hint. Telling her that it would unlock as she unlocked new skills or tokens. Seems the tutorial only showed what they already had access to.

  With all her crafting done, Ginger decided to go talk to her two new friends. She left her workshop, and waited for the two of them to come out. While she waited, she fiddled with her menu to see if she'd missed anything else important like the loadouts.

  Turns out, she had. There was another menu she'd missed, Friendship. She was so used to her main menu just being the option between Paths and Status and being able to skip it to open either one that she hadn't even noticed the extra menu she hadn't put there. She pulled it open.

  Ginger focused on the first option, hoping for an explanation.

  That could be useful, maybe. What about the party thing?

  That was much more useful. Being able to sync up with others meant keeping friends even when otherwise they could end up missing each other every time they ended up back in the Space Between. Though, one bit there made her wonder how she could understand the other two. Well, Silas might possibly be from the same area as her, but Kolvin had talked about bandits and his clothing looked very different. Maybe the Space Between translated? Hopefully her language skill wasn't wasted Merit.

  Putting that thought aside, Ginger focused on the two of them, and sent them each a friend request. That prompted both of them to look out their doors. Silas was the one to speak. "What was that?"

  "Friend request," Ginger said. "Apparently friends can form a party, and that'll let us be reborn together and come back together."

  "Oh," Silas said. "That's pretty brilliant. Then we can take skills that complement each other, and do way better in lives!" Silas looked to Kolvin. "I'm Silas, by the way. Nice to meet you."

  "I'm Kolvin. And likewise. Let's add each other, too. I like that we can keep friends with this."

  "That's what I thought," Ginger said. "Otherwise, it'd probably be way to easy to end up missing each other. I don't know. Maybe we'll end up spending a long while here. But if we didn't, then just one of us living an extra decade could completely set us out of sync until we rarely saw each other."

  "That's a good point," Silas agreed with a grimace. "Lucky we won't have to worry about that, then. By the way, what did you guys end up going for? For your builds?"

  "Builds?" Kolvar asked, confused.

  "You know, what skills and stats you got," Silas clarified.

  "I don't know how easy it's going to be to get more Merit," Ginger said. "I made a couple Runes just to see how it worked, and made four of my skills. Just a few basic ones from school, learning, studying, languages, and paths. I might still get body conditioning, it also seems useful."

  "I had to help with my parent's herd, I didn't get to do many learning paths," Kolvar admitted. "I've got basic learning and that's about it."

  "Oh," Silas said. "That's not... We'll have to help you get more. I filled my first hundred Weight. Went for basic learning, studying, paths, body, and language. I only did one rune, I figure better to wait until I can do a whole tier without bankrupting myself before doing those."

  "Probably a good idea," Ginger said. "I was just curious if I could make the second one cheaper. I did, but that might just be because I went for the Mind-Control stat. I don't know how much it costs to make a Raw Token, but if you want I can try to make you one, Kolvar."

  "What does that paths one do?" Kolvar asked. "That sounds like a good one. Paths are important."

  "Yeah," Ginger agreed. "It makes them go quicker. It's pretty good."

  "I'll pay for it," Kolvar assured her. "Can even use it to test out the shops."

  "Oh, good point," Ginger said. "Maybe if it's not too bad, I can make an extra and leave it in the shop when we rebirth. If more people end up here, that could help both of us. I guess I'll be right back after I do that?"