Effervesce - 1.2
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I already knew what I was supposed to do, but the strangeness of a menu inside my head, not that anyone I knew would phrase it like that, was strange. With an effort of will, I focused on the [Create New Profile] option.
[Creating new profile…]
[Loading Initiate classes…]
[Please select your Initiate class.]
From what little my siblings could tell me, even Maric, this was the beginning of it all. Nobody ever had an Initiate class worth something because what could a child do to qualify? Yet, I knew that was because of us barely being able to live. With no safety, no power, no adults, no resources, and no opportunities, what could a poor orphan from Stonegut achieve before age ten other than survival?
Still, I went through the list of Initiate classes, of which there were many. They were nothing but a name and a brief description, though, so it wasn’t as if I had a lot of information to sort through.
[Dirty Survivor - As long as there is dirt, there is a way to live.]
[Lost Child - What you lose in direction you gain in opportunity.]
[Nimble Runner - Being fleet on your feet.]
[Mudpie Baker - Even mud is edible with enough heat.]
Really, I wanted to roll my eyes at some of these before realizing that the world would literally warp itself by granting skills to make these classes work. Would I truly mock being able to live off of mud if I were just slightly poorer, or didn’t have my family?
Yet, these were the bottom of the barrel even by Initiate class standards, in my opinion. I dismissed them in my mind and they vanished from the list. That made me blink in surprise, but when I willed for them to be brought back, they reappeared.
“Hmm.” That was neat.
Still, I dismissed the ones that didn’t interest me, sounded insane, or weren’t useful. After that, I read the list over again and pruned some of the worst options again, but nothing was really eye catching.
The problem was that I didn’t have a good choice for what I wanted to do.
Sure, I had tried to imitate and mimic what I thought I should be doing, but not even Maric, who was the oldest of us all, had any idea what I wanted. Maybe it didn’t exist except in my dreams, but I just knew if I could do it, all our lives would be so much better.
After a third round of going through the classes, I had it narrowed down to five.
[Scurrying Grabber - As quick as a critter, you take and scurry away.]
[Good Girl - Do as you're told, and do it well.]
[Trash Diver - One person's trash is your treasure.]
[Grime Cooker - A little dirt is healthy for you.]
[Quiet Scamp - Softly you scamper.]
“Ugh, these are worthless sounding,” I complained.
Helen looked up from her animal carving. “You unlocked?”
I groaned. So much for my excitement.
“Which ones are you thinking?” she asked in her quiet monotone.
I listed off the five I managed to squeeze it down to, and she listened attentively. When I finished, I asked, “What was yours?”
Typically asking someone their class was rude because it was so core to their being. Even as family, I didn’t know their current classes, but I was asking Helen’s Initiate class, and she likely didn’t care either way.
“[Steady Sprinter],” replied Helen. “I like to run.”
Jorge had been angling for me to pick up something like what Helen currently had, which was why he took me for a meat theft mission. It wasn’t like we stole huge slabs of mystery meat often, but it was a risk that we all decided on to help me qualify for better classes.
And it did, because I had a lot of classes that had grabbing, taking, or fleeing. All the other things I had done over the years didn’t give me any good options, but was it because they weren’t worth noticing, or another reason?
I mentally willed myself backwards, and I felt myself get taken out of my menu. With a second thought, I tried to go back into it, and felt the class selection get brought back up.
So my pruned class selection didn’t undo itself, which was good because I dismissed it from my mind.
“Hey, Helen.”
“Hmm?” Helen had gone back to focusing on her carving, and while her eyes weren’t on me, I knew I had her attention.
“What does the [Delete Profile] option do?” I asked despite being able to guess.
Helen hummed for a moment as her eyes unfocused slightly. “Delete’s current profile. Lose everything.”
“But you can create a new profile? Start over from the beginning?”
“Yes, but can just reset class too.” Helen went silent. “...Pierre did that. Said he had better choices.”
Ah.
Right.
I had forgotten about that since that was three or so years ago, and as a younger sibling my entire world was the few rooms on our first floor. Even if Helen was only a few years older than me, this would’ve been just around she got her own class.
Now, I didn’t know the exact details, but I do vaguely remember Pierre and his ranting about bigger and better things. He was always optimistic, looking on the bright side of things, and he got torn apart by the things in the alleys because he wasn’t as strong as he normally was.
While I didn’t realize what that meant at the time, now I know it was because he didn’t have his usual class and skills. “So you can reset your class even without deleting your profile?”
“Mm, yep.” Helen eyed a detailed part of her current work with a level stare. “Part of capping your class. You’ll see.”
Hmm, did that make sense? I wasn’t sure.
Still, if I could for sure reset my class, and that made me more qualified for better classes, I didn’t have to ponder too hard on the class I picked now. With a single thought, I chose.
[Initiate class chosen.]
[Class gained.]
[Trash Diver - One person’s trash is your treasure.]
[Combination Skill Slot gained.]
[Trash Diver 1 / 5 gained.]
[Please select skill.]
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
And so it begins, the dreaded skill selection. Nobody knew why it gave what it gave, and skills were one’s literal trump cards and lifelines, but Jorge had explained that each time you progressed in your class, it would give you three choices.
There were many types of skills, according to Jorge, but you could generalize them at least into active or passive. Simple, but as with all things, came with a dozen nuances.
[Repair Trash - Make your treasure less trashy.]
[Dumpster Detector - Sense when treasure is nearby.]
[Rotten Luck - Chance to find something good in treasure cans.]
An easy pick, barely worth consideration.
[Skill gained.]
[Repair Trash - Make your treasure less trashy.]
I touched my dress, which was just a disgusting, bloody, filth-stained old shirt of Maric’s that was touched up to fit me more comfortably, and thought of my skill. While you could use skill’s silently, speaking them aloud for some reason made them more powerful.
“[Repair Trash],” I said, my voice reverberating with a tiny amount of power. In a span of two seconds my dress, which was black-brown in its filth, turned dark brown as the blood and a single layer of dirt and stains vanished.
Inside myself, deep down where I assumed my profile resided, I knew roughly how long it would take for [Repair Trash] to go off cooldown. “Half an hour?”
Helen had been watching and gave me a slow applause in her own stoic wonder. “Useful.”
“I don’t plan on keeping it,” I said. “I mean my class, [Trash Diver]. Just something to do while I work on trying to qualify for what I want.”
“Which is?” asked Helen. While her monotone might have made someone else think she wasn’t that interested, I knew her well enough to know she was indeed curious. Maric didn’t get me a copper pot for nothing.
I bit my lip. It wasn’t as if it was a secret, but since nothing even related popped up, I didn’t want to get my hopes up. “Do you know what a potion is?”
Helen cocked her head sideways, first left, then right, as she tried to recall. “No?”
“A magic drink,” I said as if it explained everything.
“Magic?” asked Helen in her typical monotone, her face remaining unexpressive. “What’s that?”
“Nevermind,” I said. I’d either get it, or I wouldn’t.
And to get it, I had to gather a few things. If this system required me to do things, to achieve results, or even risk life and limb… I was prepared to do it. I hopped off my stool, the exhaustion of staying up to gain my class finally hitting me, and made my way to our stone couch.
I threw what blankets I could find around onto one spot, double and triple folded them, then curled up to try and find the softest position I could. My life was finally beginning, or at least was finally open to change, and I was determined to see it through.
Sleep came quickly, and before I knew it I was dreaming.
Familiar dreams that I began having a few years ago, dreams of a city of steel and glass, of electronic systems, more people than I even knew existed all living in a single compound, and of fantastical devices that housed worlds inside them.
Of a girl living her life, from childhood to her death at sixteen, repeated as memories as if viewing a television show from her own world. I knew her, watched her life go by in days or weeks in only a single night’s dream, and experienced every success and failure of her life as if it were my own.
But she was not me.
This girl I dreamt of, whom I loved and hated at times, dominated my sleeping mind for years. If I went by her own logic, she would be my past life and I her reincarnation, but she was not me, and I was not her.
Yet there was no doubt I was influenced by the girl of my dreams. I experienced months in a day, and years in a month. Learned things Evadne would never have known, and one of them was the concept of magic and fantasy. Of games and numbers, of skills and systems.
Concepts I was betting my entire life on.
I had never heard of magic, but there were things that the girl of my dreams would definitely call magic. Terms she would use that made sense to me, but sounded weird on my tongue.
But, out of all of these magical concepts, the idea of drinks that could just… heal you, grant you powers, or even enhance you? Wasn’t that just like creating skills? If… if I could make those, wouldn’t my younger siblings be able to drink them?
Not to enhance them, but to heal, to cure?
I became enamored with this idea, but I simply had no way to test it. To manifest this concept into my reality, if it was even possible.
Almost every night, without fail, I dreamt of this girl of another world. Recalling a part of her life as she lived it, and by now I had seen it all. I was sure I would be dreaming of her for the rest of my life, learning from her life at all ages.
As usual, the dream came and went. While I always remembered my dreams, for they were days with a day, they never consumed me. When I woke up, no matter how vivid it was while I was sleeping, it faded to the back of my mind like the dream it was.
My right shoulder burned as I had pinched it between the couch and my body at a bad angle, and it annoyed me as I got up.
As my brain refocused on the fact that it was my birthday, I touched my dress. “[Repair Trash].”
Another layer of stains, grime and blood vanished from existence while the cloth fixed a few bad holes. My first skill and it was so useful. Nearly half an hour cooldown, but that was plenty of uses per day!
If only I could use it on myself.
Wait, no, not that I meant that I was trash, but if I could clean myself up with just a skill? Haha, just the thought made me giddy, although I doubted I could waste a skill on something that frivolous.
If it did other things, though…
Oh well, no point in daydreaming.
I wandered downstairs in order to grab something to eat and drink, which really was just cold soup, and stepped around my scattered younger siblings as they laid about everywhere. Some waved at me, said my name and wished me ‘happy birthday’, or were sleeping.
It wasn’t as if they had anything else to do.
I greeted them back, gave a couple of them a quick hug, and grabbed myself a bowl of leftover soup for breakfast. As much as I wanted to go out and do things, the reality was that without help from anyone older, it wasn’t safe.
Besides, today was my birthday! I was lucky as I was one of the few young ones who actually knew it, and that Maric tracked the days passing. There were no big celebrations planned, no events or special treatment.
No, the only thing on today’s agenda was waiting for Jorge or Helen to be free to go with me to scavenge around. If Tommy came back he would be good too, but that was a gamble on a good day. Eventually he would finally bite off more than he could chew.
If nobody had time, though, it was a day of deciding on what to use my new skill on. Testing how much it repaired, what it could be used on, and such. As far as I knew, nobody else had a repair skill.
It was always simpler to steal something new if needed.
As I finished my cold soup, my mind wandered to the meat we had stolen and used in it. Mystery meat was mystery meat, and wise words always told me to not question the mystery.
Still…
Nope! Not thinking about it.
Alright, with some food in my body it was time to see what was in dire need of a little care and repair. Well, I say that, but that was basically everything.
I brushed some of my long hair out of my eyes. “Alright, let’s see what I have to work with.”
It took barely ten minutes to find enough things for an entire day’s worth of my skill, so I sat around and chatted or played with my siblings between uses. [Repair Trash] was an Initiate skill, lower than even T-0, so it wasn’t exactly reality-warping magic.
Still, as I played dominoes with Rufus and Molly, I had used it on both their clothes, ragged things that they were. It was interesting in how it was repaired, rather than the fact it did it.
As far as I could tell, it simply vanished an amount of filth from the clothing, then used whatever fabric or hide it was made of to repair holes from itself. No conjuring new stuff from the ether, or reversing time.
Nothing someone couldn’t do with care, time, and actual skill, except that it did it in a manner of seconds.
It was maybe after ten uses, or five hours, that I got a notification inside my mind.
[Trash Diver 2 / 5 gained.]
[Please select skill.]
[Repair Trash - Make your treasure less trashy.]
[Dirty Fighting - The dirtier you are, the dirtier you fight.]
[Inspect Junk - You know what trash might be treasure.]
“Eva? It’s your turn,” said Molly because I had paused on my turn.
While the first few uses had attracted attention and had the other kids asking me questions, once they found out it fixed stuff, they all had something they wanted repaired.
It was useful, and while the idea of an analysis or fighting skill sounded great, they likely weren’t going to be the skill I kept. That [Repair Trash] had appeared again? I didn’t know you could take a skill twice.
[Skill gained.]
[Repair Trash - Make your treasure less trashy.]
Oh, that was what it did. There was an instinctive knowledge of your skill, but it was pretty basic. Yet, even that was enough to know that the cooldown of [Repair Trash] halved itself to maybe fifteen minutes or so, and that it repaired ‘more’ per use.
I put a domino, crude stone rectangles with lines carved in them to denote numbers, down and used my refreshed [Repair Trash] skill on my dress once more.
Grey-brown, not faded, appeared as all the stains, dirt, and blood vanished quietly into the void. Faded color, but actual color, that I hadn’t ever actually seen my dress look like.
It looked… clean. Every hole and tear had sealed itself, only the telltale sign of the fabric scrunched up a bit where it cannibalized itself for repairs showing it was once damaged.
“Wow, it’s pretty,” said Molly as she pointed at her own shirt. “Do mine next!”
Rufus huffed. “No, mine next!”
That soon brought attention from our other siblings, and now everyone wanted me to help them. Obviously nobody liked living in dirty clothes and sleeping in grimy blankets, but water was sparse, used for drinking or food only.
Beatrice might have a cleaning skill of some sort, maybe, but if she did I doubted she’d ever use it on anyone else. Either way, it wasn’t a luxury skill we normally had, especially the younger kids.
“Alright, alright, everyone will get a turn. Don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere,” I said with a laugh as we got back to our games. Nevermind that I hadn’t seen Helen or Jorge yet, and wouldn’t bother Maric, with my cooldown reduced my priority now was making sure our home was in better shape for when they came back.