“She’s been looking for bachelors suitable enough for her younger sisters since inheriting her father’s estates,” Elvethor said, Noa laying his head in an open book on the table. They were back in the library, thankfully, but only after a long day of work, and rough hours of swordplay at Mini Buckingham. At least he’d gained one level in [Lesser Restoration] and one in [Lesser Mend] since.

“Why did you leave out so much pertinent information about this chick?” Noa groaned. “Do you even know which sister she’ll try to marry me to?”

“Nope. Her younger sisters are a matched set. Triplets.”

Hell.

“So, essentially, I have to get out of indentured servitude for a theft I didn’t do and an arranged marriage when I’m not even a noble?” Noa asked. “She has to know I’m not a noble, right?”

“I’m afraid she might not actually care, and it’s because you’re not a noble that’ll make it almost impossible for you to get out of.”

Great. Just great!

“Is it too much to ask to have the opportunity to make a better life for myself?”

“Pretty much.”

“How did you manage to ditch her the first time?” Noa shifted his head, looking up at Elvethor.

“I just didn’t show up. Went to the warfront,” Elvethor shrugged, flipping a page in the book he read.

Narrowing his eyes, Noa sat up and crossed his arms. “If your reputation is so good to get you nobility, why haven’t you used it to make money?” he asked.

Elvethor raised an eyebrow, then snapped his book closed as his looked at Noa. “Because I don’t care about money,” he said flatly. “I care about what my job means. That’s why I changed my class━couldn’t stomach the killing any longer.”

“So did you become a noble before you went to war, or after?”

The elf placed a hand on the table, tapping his forefinger slowly for a moment. “After,” he said.

“So you got roped into a marriage arrangement with her... how?”

“Childhood dreams made possible when her father passed, giving her control of all of his households and her future,” Elvethor said.

“Her dreams, or yours?”

Elvethor shrugged.

Noa sighed, then picked the class book up, deciding it might be better to move on. For now. “So, I have to master three base classes first,” he said, previewing [Mender], [Comforter], and [Invigorator], each with three denominations, physical, mental, and spirit respectfully. Or, in Elvethor’s words, Somatacy, Mentality, and Aethery, because calling things by their more obvious names would simply be too easy (cough, cough, aether for mana). “Then I can take the intermediate classes, which combines two of these?”

“Yes. Be wary, however. You can’t master more than one class at a time. There’s a hefty exp penalty to doing that.”

Noa nodded. “So, the base classes only have 25 levels, and the intermediate classes have 50 levels.”

“So the book says. I’m glad you can read,” Elvethor said, picking his book back up. “Keep at it.”

Right, then I have three base classes and three intermediate classes to go through before I can select a grand class, Noa hummed, then slammed the book closed, smiling when Elvethor jumped at the action. “What are we waiting for? Let’s get to work.”

“Finally, newb,” Elvethor said, tossing the book he was reading over his shoulder, which miraculously didn’t hit any of the book stacks. He probably should have taken up baseball, if they’d been on Earth. “We gotta find something to heal first.”

“Something? not someone?” Noa asked, following Elvethor out of the library.

“Derhur. Menders can heal anything that has a body. People, animals, monsters, you name it.”

“Monsters?”

Elvethor stopped midway down the stairs, and looked up at Noa. For once, they were at eye level. “Trolls? Goblins? Never heard of those? Manticores?”

“You have manticores? Dragons? Do you have dragons?”

“I don’t have anything, but yeah, dragons are out there. Somewhere,” Elvethor motioned with a hand, and continued down the stairs.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“Is this like one of those things where you get exp for killing monsters?”

Elvethor stopped so abruptly that Noa slammed right into him. He would have knocked the elf over too if the man wasn’t so firmly grounded. “Exp for killing monsters?” he asked, the idea seeming novel to him. “That would be barbaric to get exp for killing things! Do you have any idea how many murders would happen if that were a thing? Besides, most goblins are sapient and quite nice.”

“Huh,” Noa said, moving to walk beside Elvethor. Don’t I feel dumb now. Newb, he called himself. “Why are they called monsters, then?”

“Because monsters don’t class, they evolve.”

“Oooh, like a goblin into a hobgoblin.”

“Precisely,” Elvethor nodded as they exited the church and started down a dirt street.

It was going to be really, really hard to not start referring to monsters as “pokemon”. Noa just had to remind himself that they probably wouldn’t be all that pleased to be squished inside a pokeball.

“So, I think I only have enough aether for one more spell today. I don’t suppose you happen to have any aether stones?” Noa asked, then furrowed his brow. “How do you get aether stones?”

“You can make them. Well, maybe not you. Generally requires some time in a location with a high density of spirits, and since you’re Yana’s shitboy...”

Noa cringed at the crude name. “Right, I won’t have time, especially not with a second person training me either,” he said.

Elvethor gave a curt nod, then shuffled his hand into a pocket, pulling out two aether stones. He handed them over, and Noa immediately “ate” as much energy as he could from one before pocketing them in his oversized pants. “Yeah, but at least we can probably get a mentor out of Lila,” Elvethor said, stopping at the edge of town. The dirt road here stopped abruptly. Beyond it was a sloping set of plains that ascended towards a rocky, mountainous pass, trees intermittently scattered over it. “Which, as you don’t know, newb, will give you the mentor exp bonus.”

Noa started the slow climb beside the elf. “How many classes do we have to master before we can get accepted into this school you keep talking about?”

“Two base classes. Basically, be prepared to be schooling alongside a bunch of sixteen year olds.”

“Noted.”

“Noted?” Elvethor looked at Noa’s hands, then up at his face. “What notes?”

“These ones,” Noa tapped his head.

“Uh huh. Anyways...” Elvethor trailed off, looking up towards the stars, foreign to Noa. He was really going to miss Orion’s belt━about the only constellation he could actually name. “We shouldn’t be too loud. Ideally, it’d be better to sneak up on trolls to heal them.”

“Oh?” Noa asked in a higher voice. “We’re going to sneak up on trolls. That’s not dangerous?”

“Uh, sure. At least something always needs healing around them,” Elvethor shrugged, giving a sly smile. He placed a finger to his lips as they made it up to the pass, which looked less like a pass and a whole lot more like the mountain had discarded itself in the form of boulders here. This was not a climb Noa envied.

About an hour later, panting as they climbed over the ledge of a small plateau, Noa was really beginning to doubt Elvethor’s planning. If they could heal anything, why not chickens? Or cows? Surely someone in town kept livestock. His chowder was made with milk, wasn’t it?

Noa felt sick. No, no, he did not want to know what his daily servings of chowder was made of.

The plateau effectively cut off as it stretched up into a mountain, a cave entrance sitting like a blackhole in front of it. Elvethor pulled an aether stone from his pocket, but wrapped his entire hand around it, dimming its silver glow. Noa followed suit, leaving them mostly to darkness as they entered the mouth of the cave. He placed a hand on the damp cave wall as a way to keep himself moving forward. On the other hand, his hiking companion was unnaturally relaxed. How many times did he do this?

The cave opened up into a complex━options. There were three new openings before them, and towards the end of the center path was a dim yellow light. Elvethor pointed that way, and Noa raised his brow. Going towards the light did not feel like sneaking up on trolls. He followed nonetheless.

The place opened up, a stony archway leading into what looked to be a... bar? Damn, Noa could really go for some white rum right about now.

Elvethor pulled Noa behind the archway, and pocketed his aether stone. Noa copied, then peered into the bar room. There were round wooden tables spread out like a cafe setup in front of the marbled bar. The bar itself was quite stacked with urns of whatever it was trolls drank. Behind it was such a beast, and not exactly like Noa had imagined.

He envisioned a green creature with massive teeth sticking out of its mouth. Instead, he saw a behemoth with white marbling for skin, almost hard to differentiate him from the bar. Another in front of the bar, however, had black marbling, and a third, blue. Under all of that marbling was pure muscle, which was flaunted by way of minimal clothing. Case in point, pelts for loincloths. Other notable features were large noses, strong brows, and rigid boning over their cheekbones. Almost all of them had some variant of horns that looked like a collection of miniature mountains. None of them had hair.

More importantly, none of them had visible injuries, far as Noa could tell. Yet, Elvethor pointed at the black marbled troll, then focused. A moment later, Noa spied the slightest shifting in the gray marbling over the troll’s black skin. It reconnected, becoming smooth.

Huh. Neat. Squinting, Noa looked for a spot on the blue troll, his... hers? Their white marbling stood out just as well. He found an inconsistency, then pushed aether towards it, starting with [Lesser Examination], which gave him the sense that the wound there was superficial.

System [Lesser Examination] level 4 → 5.

After mending it, Noa grinned as the marbling smoothed out. What an oddly satisfying creature to heal!

System [Lesser Mend] level 11 → 12.

“What are you doing here?” Noa started, whipping around to look at the source of the rumbling voice, just as a massive hand reached for him.