There weren’t a lot of Delvers who were Mages. Perhaps fifteen… maybe twenty. Twenty-five would definitely be stretching it.
The Class was one of the rare classes, and it had the least known information, right next to a class called Unbound.
People loved the Mage class because most Mages turn out to be the strongest and most versatile Delvers. In fact, there was no known Mage below B-rank. And there was no known Mage that was not at least a Delver.
There had been a point, maybe ten years ago when the government passed a law that mandated all with the Mage class to register as Delvers either with a company or under the employ of the government.
It was easy to know that the law played a part in making people not want the class. There were, after all, a lot of people who despite how much power they were given, wouldn’t want to risk their lives.
“So do you have any idea what I love most about the Mage?” Delano asked Eroms with a cocky smile.
Eroms shrugged. “I don’t know. You’ve only told me that it’s powerful and rare.”
Melmarc snickered over his food and Delano shot him a glare.
“He has a point,” Melmarc defended himself. “You’ve practically told him nothing.”
Delano let out a defeated sigh.
“Alright,” he conceded. “The way it was supposed to go is, you make a random guess, obviously wrong, then I tell you that you’re wrong, then go ahead to tell you how beautiful it is as a class.”
He wasn’t wrong. Not about the first part, the beautiful part. Mages, unlike other classes, made being Gifted look like an art.
Delano settled back into his chair and broke down the entire process of what a Mage was.
“First thing you have to know,” he said, “is that Mages don’t use skills.”
Well, that’s a quick way to confuse him.
“But they’re Gifted.” Eroms scratched his head. “All Gifted have skills.”
Delano raised his fork as if to stall their friend’s confusion. “No, I didn’t say Mages don’t have skills. I said they don’t use skills. As Pullmyfinger2008 likes to say, ‘Mages don’t use skills, they cast spells.’”
Eroms looked from Delano to Melmarc.
Melmarc smiled. “He’s trying to be poetic. Let him. It’s not every time he gets to shine.”
“I’ll have you know that I shine a lot. Thank you very much.” Delano placed his fork back on his table and forgot his last slice of pancake for a moment. “Here’s the thing about Mages. They say all the Gifted start off with two skills, but anyone who’s really paying attention knows that a Mage gets four. The only problem is that they are difficult.”
“Four doesn’t sound very difficult,” Eroms mused. “It sounds better than two.”
“Maybe. But it’s difficult. When you see a Mage fight, it looks beautiful and amazing. And that’s how you know it’s difficult. A juggernaut,” Delano shot Melmarc a quick glare, “just runs into things and breaks them.”
“Don’t forget high physical damage resistance,” Melmarc interjected.
“They are slow tanks. Glorified boulders. Anyway, back to the important Delvers. When a Mage fights its colorful, beautiful. And powerful. They get four skills that give them what we in the community like to think gives them total mastery over mana.”
“But all Gifted have mastery over mana,” Eroms said.
Delano was losing him and he knew it.
“Gifted have mastery over mana. Yes. But a Mage potentially has total mastery over mana. All this is because of one type of skill they all have in common. They are called World skills… And don’t ask me what world skills are. No one knows for certain, not even the Mages.”
“All we know about them is that they are skills with the word ‘World’ in them,” Melmarc helped.
Delano picked his fork and pointed it at him. “My story, not yours, Juggernaut.”
“You’re really not going to forgive me for that, are you?”
“Pay for my meal and we’ll talk.”
Melmarc chuckled.
Delano hated the Strength classes.
Well, hate was a strong word. He just didn’t like them. He said they reminded him of jocks. They were all muscles and no brains. It was a public stereotype, and Delano happily subscribed to it.
He didn’t discriminate against the individual, though, just the class. They were useful… for breaking things only.
On the other side of the table, Delano continued to explain the beauty that was a Mage.
“Another thing you should remember,” he was telling Eroms, “is that all Mages have a World skill, but not all Gifted with a World skill are Mages.”
Melmarc watched some of Eroms confusion alleviate. Which was odd. If he was being honest, that explanation didn’t do anything.
It only mattered in context.
“And World skills are tricky,” Delano continued. “They are powerful, all of them, but not always for fighting. The community I’m in speculates that just the way people get one skill and one supporting skill, World skills serve as the supporting skills somehow. Take for example, Nezu in Tokyo. He has the World skill Fate of the World that grants him clairvoyance. People go to him to try and divine outcomes.”
“Divine is a strong word,” Melmarc muttered.
Delano shrugged. “It’s the word I’ll use. As I was saying, when he was younger, companies in Japan and all over the world would invite him to join their delving team anytime an A rank or S rank portal opened. He had the ability to see a possible future. According to him, it wasn’t a certain future, only a possible one. And it wasn’t always clear. Back then he could more like feel the outcomes.”
Eroms had regained interest in his food since some of his confusion had left him. He picked up his milkshake, then dropped it. He picked up his other drink instead.
He took a good gulp. “If he could see the future, why would he have to enter the portal. He could just tell them what was happening.”
“Because—and I’m just paraphrasing Nezu here—the other side of the portal is another world. Or at least they stand on the principles of other worlds. There’s always been knowledge that the portals lead to other worlds but there were people who argued they were like pseudo worlds, fake imaginations slapped together by mana phenomenon. Nezu put all that to rest with those words.”
“Some guy came and said ‘the portals are other worlds’ and everyone just believes,” Eroms said. “Sounds stupid.”
“I agree.” Delano stabbed the last slice of his pancake with his fork but didn’t eat it. “But that’s how much they trust Nezu’s skills. Apparently, he couldn’t see the future of what happened inside the portal because it was another world. To see the outcome, he needed to be in that other world.
“So he would go in with the team and see their future. But we all know you can’t come out of a portal until you’ve cleared the portal’s quest or failed it outright. Those are the only ways the portal quest can be handled.”
Or you die.
Melmarc didn’t say it out loud. There was no reason to.
“There are other ways.” Delano made a dismissive gesture. “But they are not important. So what Nezu did was that he entered with them, felt or saw their outcome and worked with them to prevent any negative ones.”
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“So he couldn’t fight?” Eroms asked.
“Not with the skill, not in the beginning. He started out as an A-rank, but now that he’s an S-rank he definitely knows how to fight with it. No one knows what his other skills are, but back then he could only see the fate at the end of a situation if he took some time to use the skill. But now he uses it when he fights. He uses it to predict what you’re going to do next and counters.
“Personally, I think he has Let Me Dance Again. It’s a skill that’s known to max out your agility. It’s the only explanation for how he can react so quickly, even when he’s fighting someone of an equal rank.”
“I’ve not heard any magick-y thing yet,” Eroms said. “Is he not a Mage?”
Delano shook his head. “Nope. He has the Seer class. It’s a non-combat class. They usually play team support. But the class has draw-backs. Any Seer will tell you that their prediction ability is fifty percent. It’s kind of like a disclaimer. That’s why Nezu’s so sought after. He’s got around a ninety percent accuracy.”
“So that’s a World skill that’s not a Mage. What of Mages? And why do they have skills but use spells?”
“They use spells because they tap directly into the mana in the world. So they can manipulate it to some extent. Inevitability said that for a Mage, their body is like a container they can expand to contain more mana, and their World skill gives them the ability to manipulate the mana of their choice. For example, if a juggernaut wanted to get into a room without a door, they’d run into the wall and burst out of the other side. But a Mage would make the wall disassemble. Then they could just reassemble it when they get to the other side.”
“Sounds powerful, but why is it complicated?”
“Because their skills are all designed around each other,” Melmarc answered before Delano could. “They are the only Class that never use only one skill. A juggernaut,” he stuck his tongue out at Delano, “could just use a skill like Body of Stone and break through the wall. But a Mage would need at least two skills to do it. Maybe he’ll have to use one that makes things have a lighter atomic structure somehow, then use another to unbind their physical integrity, then disassemble it with some disassembling skill for a finisher.”
“I’d just break through the wall,” Eroms said blandly.
Delano shot Melmarc another glare.
“What?” he said with a shrug. “I wasn’t a part of the conversation, and I was getting bored. Besides, you told him it was a complicated Class but you weren’t telling him why. Almost all their skills are dependent on each other. If a Mage has a skill that pushes things, you can almost be certain he also has a skill that pulls things.”
Merlmac twirled his pasta with his fork. “What makes them truly amazing is their high intelligence stat. It allows them do all these things in the blink of an eye so you don’t know how much they put into it. And they have a lot of mana so they just go on and on.”
If he was being honest, despite how powerful they were on an average, they weren’t really all that. What gave them their fame was the mystery and the number of skills in the beginning. There was a blog Delano had shown him once that speculated that they had more than four skills because the World skill somehow didn’t count as a skill.
The same blog also claimed the actual world gave them the skill. So he wouldn’t go quoting the blogger anywhere. According to the blogger, since skills were people’s manifestation of what they were capable of, being given a skill didn’t count.
And since the world gave World skills, they didn’t count.
Personally, he found the Unbound class more interesting, and mysterious. There were only two known Gifted with the class. And one of them was the highest ranked Delver.
No one knew how many skills it started with, and no one knew what skills it had. It was a complete enigma, and the two Delvers who had it said nothing about it.
All the world knew was that it was an Agility type.
His friends were still talking, and Melmarc had all but gone back to his meal with his full attention while Delano educated Eroms on the intricacies of being a Mage. He told him of a Mage who had been happy to tell the world the name of his world skill Name of the World. Apparently, it gave him mastery over all inanimate things as long as he could figure out their name.
It was a weird thing since the name of a rock wasn’t ‘rock.’ And a rock on the ground wasn’t very likely to have the same name as one on a roof. It was all too complicated when you went into the deeper intricacies of it. But it worked well for the Delver so that was something.
“What of Faker?” Eroms asked suddenly, mid-way through Delano’s explanation.
Delano paused. “A Faker’s a glorified road side magician.”
That was putting it too harshly.
Melmarc’s opinion on it must’ve shown on his face because Delano sighed and corrected himself.
“Alright, not necessarily a glorified road side magician. It’s an okay Class. Sure. But it’s a bit of an odd Class. Some people call it a low budget Mage. Like the Swordmaster Class is to the Knight Class.”
Eroms simply stared at him.
Melmarc looked between the both of them. “You might have to expand on that, D. I think you lost him.”
Delano shrugged. “There’s really not much to explain. The Swordmaster’s main thing is mastery over the use of swords. The Knight class has that, too, as well as mastery over shields. And increased strength. Basically, it’s the Swordmaster plus more.”
“And the Faker and Mage?” Eroms asked.
“They’re basically the same thing. Faker’s are…” Delano snapped his fingers as if he’d just remembered something. “That’s it! Fakers are just glorified mimics.”
Melmarc wanted to object to that, too.
“No.” Delano pointed a warning finger at him. “You can’t refute that.” He turned back to Eroms. “A Faker is exactly what the name says. A fake. They’re like mimics that just go around learning to do what other people can do and forgetting. Because of that they kind of have that similarity to Mages in the way they use a lot of skills when they fight.
“But there are downsides. They can’t fake just any skill. Strength based skills are tough for them because a Faker can’t just fake a Juggernaut’s skill and run through a wall like its paper. They aren’t very mysterious either, and there aren’t that many of them, definitely more of them than Mages, but they do have their uses. They’re good in a team fight, that’s for sure. But then, they become useless if they are matched up poorly.
“Take it from me. If you get a Class and its Faker, you’re basically in deep shit.”
Melmarc didn’t entirely agree.
“Don’t listen to him, Eroms. It’s really not that bad.” Faker wouldn’t be Melmarc’s first pick but it wasn’t like it was horrible as a Class. “The reason he doesn’t like Faker is because people who are secretive like him don’t like Faker.”
“Why?”
“Well… For starters, it’s more of a support Class. A Faker can’t necessarily lead their team, per se. Copying skills isn’t the only thing they can do, some of them have a skill that helps them survive on their own, even if it’s not a skill that will help them excel. People just don’t like them because people don’t like seeing other people using their skill.”
Eroms still looked confused.
“Okay, look at it like this,” Melmarc said. “Imagine you join a company, or the government, and they put you in a team. Now imagine you’re the type that likes to keep his skills a secret. Let’s say some of your skills aren’t very obvious, and you’d like to keep it that way. Then boom, there’s a Faker on your team. Depending on how their skills work, and how yours work, they might be able to copy your skill. Which means they now know your skill and your secret is out.”
Delano nodded. “It’s part of the reasons Mages don’t like Fakers.”
“And a Faker is only good for group battles, and they’re only as useful as how quickly they can make the skill their own, and for how long.”
“Again. The wrong matchup pretty much makes a Faker useless.” Delano picked up his last piece of pancake and ate it. “For me, you might as well go with a Mage. Why take a cheap knock off?”
With their conversation basically summarized, they made quick work of what was left on their plates.
Following Delano’s advice, Eroms took his milkshake to go.
When they asked the waitress for the bill, Delano had another fit over people’s love for giving Eroms food when the waitress charged them for theirs and told them Eroms’ meal was on the house.
“It’s just not fair,” he complained as they left the diner. “He basically ate thrice what we ate. Combined.”
Melmarc didn’t necessarily see any reason to be worried by it. It was certainly a mystery, but not a problem. It wasn’t like Eroms was getting unhealthily large or anything. He still looked the same as usual. And it wasn’t like people were literally endangering themselves to feed him.
I did give him my pasta even though I was hungry, though.
That was something.
But we were literally in a diner, and it wasn’t like I was starving. I could’ve just ordered another plate.
Rather than take a cab, they walked the rest of the journey.
They talked about mundane things as they did. Delano’s dad was going out of town for the weekend for some work, and Eroms’ family was going to some nudist camp. They were a bit on the eccentric side, but they didn’t make their children join in.
While they had an all vegan diet, their kids were free to choose. When they took kale or some all vegan beverage, Eroms was right beside them biting into some juicy piece of meat or something.
It was the same way with his siblings. If you wanted to join in on their eccentricities, they had no problems with it. But they did have limits.
For instance, occasions like their nudist camp getaway was non-negotiable. None of their kids could join. They had a standing rule for those. Their children could only willingly engage when they were twenty-one.
“We’re still going for the school excursion, right?” Eroms asked as they parted ways.
Melmarc thought about it. He wasn’t one for excursions, but he was one for opportunities to hang with his friends.
But with Ark getting a Class it was likely that the house might get a little busy once their parents came back.
“Remind me,” he said. “When’s the trip?”
“In a week.” Delano was holding Eroms by the back of the shirt as if the boy would wander off if he didn’t hold on to him. “We’re going to the African museum in Boston. We’ll be staying at some guy’s famous mansion, and I’m really looking forward taking a look around the place.”
Melmarc didn’t understand the emphasis on the word. It wasn’t like his friend was an enthusiast for such things. Well, he was more interested in something different.
“Is it really in Boston or are you saying Boston because you can’t pronounce Massachusetts correctly?”
“Bite your teeth.” Delano flipped him off with his ring finger, and he laughed.
“But yeah,” Delano continued. “It’s not Boston, but it’s close to Boston so it’s a win. And a win’s a win. So we’re going, right? All three of us.”
Melmarc shrugged. “I’ll ask my uncle. If my parents aren’t back in a week, then it’s here or there.”
Melmarc’s parents didn’t like him or his siblings traveling while both of them were away. Because, for one thing, they couldn’t call them to get permission. But uncle Dorthna had some authority over such decisions so Melmarc found himself calculating how best to convince his uncle to agree.
“See you then.” Delano waved. He turned away and Eroms followed him after a wave of his own.
“And don’t go running into buildings without doors,” Delano added over his shoulders.
Beside him Eroms asked, confused. “Are there buildings without doors?”