Chapter 1: The Proving Ground
A black-haired girl brought her sword down on the kobloid’s neck, and didn’t stop watching it until she heard the telltale sound of its demise.
Lesser Kobloid Warrior (Lv 4) Killed. Experience Gained.
Basic Swordsmanship Level Up (2 –> 3)
She sighed. She was glad for the level up, and that she was getting better at her chosen profession, but wished she had a different skill to use. Warriors were respected in their society for keeping monsters in the dungeons and out of the cities, but everyone knew they were well below the magic-users, like the Archmages.
Risa had grown up hearing stories of how the Archmages had banded together 300 years ago, united by their use of magical spells that few others could obtain, and how they reversed the Collapse. From the single city humanity was left with, there were now dozens of thriving metropolises all over the Continent, and Archmage Aqueous was even now leading a crusade across the ocean to reclaim new lands.
Hearing these stories, Risa had been sure that she could be one of those mages. All she needed was for her first skill unlock to be even tangentially related to magic and she was sure that with her dedication, she could rise high in one of the magic academies surrounding the capital.
But to her dismay, her 15th birthday revealed that her first and only ‘free’ skill was Basic Strength Infusion. The skill was not that terrible if she wanted to be a warrior. Most warriors got it eventually, typically by pushing themselves in strength training for months. It was also completely and utterly non-magical. Body enhancement skills like that used a different resource pool, called Stamina.
It’s not like Risa had been expecting to get an Elemental Manipulation skill right off the bat, especially not for one of the rarer elements like Ice or Lightning. And sure, the Innate Skill was considered rather random by most people. But Risa had been certain that at a minimum, she would get Basic Mana Absorption. The skill was considered the most basic of all magic skills, an absolute requirement for all mages.
While the skill could be taught, same as how Risa learned Basic Swordsmanship, the secret of doing so was kept locked up by the magic academies. Apparently, it was somewhat dangerous to the untrained, although Risa had heard some people express doubts it wasn’t just to keep “elite” knowledge out of the hands of the masses.
If your free skill was anything related to magic, you could usually get a scholarship to one of the academies, maybe even have a choice of them if your skill was good. However, your free skill was, say, a Stamina skill, you needed to pay full price. The children of wealthy merchants or successful warriors could certainly afford such things if they wanted to learn the mystic arts. Risa’s parents were… not wealthy or successful.
Her mother had been killed when she was only 7, by a Blind Boar that had escaped the village’s most high-level dungeon. The town guards had of course apologized for letting something slip by and had even given Risa’s father a modest payment of silver, but silver didn’t bring back the dead.
Risa’s father, Johann, had never really recovered from losing his wife. In rather short order, he spent the silver coins on alcohol and sleeping tonic. Risa was able to do odd jobs in town for coppers, but soon realized that she had to buy the food at the market as well, lest all her hard-earned coins get turned into more drink.
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She had always promised that she would support him better when she got her scholarship, but then her 15th birthday came and went, and the letters she sent out to all the academies were responded to with a pre-printed rejection notice. If they were responded to at all.
Basic Strength Infusion as an innate skill was rather perfect for a manual worker. She could probably get a job hauling crates for merchants or something of that nature in short order. But after mourning the lack of a magic skill, she still wanted to do her part to fight monsters. She wasn’t terribly fond of the town guard, but independent hunters were allowed inside dungeons so long as they didn’t shatter the cores.
Ever since the Collapse was averted, one of the Archmages’ laws was that dungeons needed to be ‘farmed’ rather than destroyed on sight. The monsters they created were a valuable source of resources, needed for craftspeople to do their jobs properly. New dungeons were only destroyed if they were of some dangerous element like Plague or Undead, otherwise a guard post would keep them in check, and eventually the nearest city would expand in that direction.
Right now, Risa was farming the dungeon that put her village on the map, so to speak. The kobloids were little green lizard-like humanoid creatures that carried crude weapons and had minimal armor. It was quickly dubbed “The Proving Ground” after being explored, for it was perfect for new guards and hunters to get experience, both the practical kind and the leveling kind. These kobloids were not only weak, maxing out at level 6, but they had no magical attacks to speak of, nor did you need a magical attack to kill them.
The village of Jarthak’s Rest had 3 other dungeons: The Vast Savannah, a dungeon that was unusually large for its level, The Blind Forest, which had the rare Darkness element, and Ape’s Paradise, the newest dungeon nearby, which was apparently some sort of jungle with plants prized by alchemists.
Risa had not been to any of the other 3 dungeons yet, not in the 5 years since her 15th birthday. After resigning herself to her lack of magical talent, she looked for an apprenticeship with one of the local hunters. Most of them were drunken meatheads who liked to use maces or even their own fists, but she eventually found Morgin, an aging, semi-retired sword wielder. He had long ago gained the Basic Strength Infusion skill via training and knew some good ways to level it up. He also was the one who taught Risa her Basic Swordsmanship skill, after a couple years of grueling training.
Skills were not easy to acquire from training alone, not unless you had a teacher with the valuable Instructor set of skills. Even someone with Basic Instruction had a cushy career set up for them, usually teaching the children of minor nobles. As Morgin had no such skill, he said it was quite impressive Risa learned a skill from him in only a bit over 3 years.
Perhaps more important than sword skills, though, were what Morgin taught Risa about patience and restraint. He had numerous stories of overconfident fools who rushed into a new dungeon only to barely escape with their lives, if that. The old warrior even had two different occasions where his entire hunting party, save for himself, perished. Risa thought he may have exaggerated a bit on how he personally escaped – could he REALLY break the neck of a Sabretooth Mauler whilst having a broken arm himself? – but overall, she took his lessons to heart.
And so, she has spent the last year working the Proving Ground. First with Morgin as silent backup, but eventually on her own. Some people her age mocked her a bit for staying in one dungeon for so long, but the older merchants in town took the kobloid claws and weapons without complaint.
Still now that she had leveled up her sword skill yet again, she thought she was getting close. Today she would attempt to increase her main level, and tomorrow… tomorrow she would attempt the Boss Monster at the center of the dungeon.
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Name: Risa
Level: 5 (94% to next level)
Health: 98%
Stamina: 92%
Mana: N/A
Skills:
Basic Strength Infusion Lv 5
Basic Swordsmanship Lv 3
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