“So, you’ve memorized the name of the town we’re traveling to?” Tatius asked, and not for the first time, while the trio wandered down the road.
The roads out in this part of Remus tended to get a bit wild. There were still ruts where wagons and convoys traveled through, but traffic was minimal enough along the roads that nature struggled to reclaim them. Major roads got paved with stones. Nothing was major out in these wilds. No one had even sprung for fresh gravel in a very long time, it seemed.
“Jiaguo.” Ranthia answered after visible hesitation.
“Impressive, a couple of the sounds were almost right.” Pupius sneered.
“Sardonia.” Tatius repeated once again.
“Seriously, how is she so bad at this? I mean, I thought it was a bit for years!” Pupius complained.
The town—whatever it was called—was on the outer fringe of Remus’ territory, butted up against some badlands that were generally considered impassable. It was a long ways removed from other towns or significant transport routes.
There was only one reason it existed: the mines that were located a short distance further into the badlands. The companies that owned the mines had a camp dedicated to that, but in the first decent patch of space on the way from the mines they decided to build a mining town. Supposedly the companies periodically tried to lure immigrants and businesses in, but the town was minor enough that it was barely on any maps in spite of its age.
They were traveling there for her sake, as odd as it sounded. Shortly after she had classed up her second class to [Sudden End], a sneakier class that finally gave her a proper Dark attack, Ranthia rushed to the Adventurer’s Guild to tell Tatius and Pupius and, instead, ended up trapped in conversation with the Guildmaster.
It had been tedious in the extreme, but the man did share one fascinating nugget of information. The Guildmaster of the Adventurer’s Guild in… er, their destination town, had once been the Guildmaster of Ariminum and in charge of the Adventurer’s Guild as a whole before he retired to a quieter post. He was supposedly progressive and cared more about merits than the letters of rules.
In other words, it was the best shot she had at finally getting recognized as an official Adventurer and getting her own rank. She wanted to make a solid first impression, thus she was trying to memorize the name of the town so she could address him by his proper title.
“This is so much further than it looked. You’re lucky we like you, kid.” Pupius groused.
Ranthia rolled her eyes. The men had practically salivated at the chance to go to an out of the way, largely forgotten place. Whatever was going on in Remus wasn’t looking good. Town criers claimed that Remus was no longer a Republic—whatever that meant—and it had an Emperor now. There was unrest. There were people making dark mutterings about some nonspecific part of their life being upheaved.
There were rumors of active rebellions.
Ranthia, of course, chose not to remind the man of that while they prepared to set out for yet another day on the road.
“I’m already taller than you are, so you should lay off the ‘kid’. It just makes you look small.” Ranthia quipped instead.
Why make rational points when she could start problems instead?
Tatius just looked exhausted as he led the trio. Ranthia was still nursing a split lip, but she’d actually managed to give Pupius what had to be a nice bruise across his back when he overcommitted to a punch that she’d managed to evade.
They had enough sense to not arm themselves to brawl, but the scuffle was sort of a language of affection for them. Pupius had never really acted like a father figure to Ranthia—not even during the brief time that the two men had attempted to date, in deference to the situation they found themselves in because of her—and she appreciated the immersion into the culture of Adventurers. Now that she was older, Pupius was all too happy to treat her as a proper party member.
As an equal.
Tatius was exhausted, but Ranthia and Pupius were animatedly discussing their not-a-spar.
Then, after another bend in the road, they found themselves in view of Sardonia’s walls. It wasn’t the tallest or most impressive set of walls that she had seen, but the logs harvested from the surrounding woodlands with sharpened points were practical in their own way. The gates were shut, but even from there they could see the gong and the large pictographs that illustrated striking the gong and the gates opening.
“Guess they don’t get enough visitors to warrant posting guards at the gate.” Ranthia commented.
“I’m just focused on how wide these walls are. Isn’t this supposed to be a small town?” Pupius replied.
That… was a good point.
Sardonia’s walls stretched far. They had walled off a decent city’s worth of territory, yet everything they had heard suggested that the town had—at best—128 people, give or take. It was a strange incongruity.
“Could we have missed the city and found the mining outpost?” Tatius asked.
“No way, look at the terrain. We’re still in the flat area, this matches how…” Ranthia grasped, she failed. “…the town was described. The mining outpost isn’t on flat land.”
“Sardonia.” Pupius reminded her.
“Right, Sarconia.” Ranthia reminded herself.
“Closer, but swing and a miss.” Pupius muttered.
Tatius groaned aloud and put on a bit of speed, bound for the gong. He was determined to get them into the town before Ranthia and Pupius managed to start something again.
Ranthia and Pupius wisely chose to drop their fight before it began and followed.
The gong echoed through the morning air. The trio waited as its echoes slowly faded away. Just before Ranthia—the most impatient member of their party—decided to strike it again, they heard the sounds of the gate being unbarred.
The gates opened partially before a wary guard poked his head out and eyed the trio.
“Purpose of visit?” He asked.
“Adventurers, bound for Sardonia.” Tatius answered, while gesturing Ranthia back.
She and guards just didn’t get along very well, she was the first to admit it. It was instinctive. They mistrusted her and she tended to run out of patience swiftly with people that cared more about the structure of rules than they did the effects those rules had when enforced without conscious thought.
“What’s your ranking?” The guard asked.
That wasn’t a standard question. It caught all three of them off-guard for a moment, before Tatius answered.
“Both I and the gentleman next to me are B-Ranked, my daughter is currently unranked.”
Honestly, the sooner Ranthia bore her own rank the better. Ranthia’s face had absolutely zero resemblance to Tatius’ now that she had further matured. They always got a strange look when he introduced her as his daughter, at least when the other party was paying any attention whatsoever. Children that took after one parent for the most part weren’t unheard of, but the total lack of resemblance had grown too pronounced to ignore.
Ranthia could usually shut up anyone that made their doubt plain enough if she beamed brightly and boasted that she took after her mother, before she twisted her face into a sad and faraway look. …Which was easy, she just had to think of her real mother; the woman’s rejection still hurt, even after so many years. Still, she was ready to be done with the need to explain her presence.
The guard’s gaze swept to Ranthia and—after the all too customary dip down to check for curves that her cloak completely hid—seemed to focus on her split lip that still leaked a little blood.
“There was a bear.” Ranthia blurted out, having gone with the first excuse her mind came up with.
“A bear.” The guard echoed.
“Yup, but it won’t trouble the area anymore.” Ranthia continued smoothly, without a hint of hesitation.
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The man eyed her for several long moments before he sighed. It was one of those sighs that just radiated the fact that he wasn’t paid enough to deal with this nonsense.
“She needs to cast something to satisfy the rules, then come on in.” The guard announced, before he pulled his head back inside and started to push the gate open wide enough to admit them.
Ranthia conjured two [Images] and dismissed them before she followed the men in, grateful to have a guard that clearly wasn’t an absolute stickler for the letter of the rules.
There was no grand ‘Welcome to Sardonia,’ just a vast array of empty houses and boarded up businesses. Clearly the business interests that, for all practical purposes, owned the town had delusions of extreme grandeur. The town was sprawling, with prebuilt facilities both grand and humble.
And only its centermost space was more than sparsely in use.
The Adventurer’s Guild was easy enough to find. The Guildmaster wasn’t available, but they learned that the adjacent building was also owned by the guild and provided housing at a fair rate for Adventurers. …Actually, a downright generous rate, to Ranthia’s reckoning. The Guildmaster’s husband owned the inn and either he or their boyfriend could be found in the attached tavern selling warm food and alcohol any time it was open.
Tatius and Pupius sprang for two rooms, and they settled into Sardonia.
After an incident with a door that hadn’t been latched as well as Ranthia had thought, Tatius made the executive decision to get Ranthia her own room. In her defense, she had assumed the men were staying in the tavern and hadn’t noticed that Tatius had left his coin purse in the room. And, well, puberty hit hard and her interest in women was no longer abstract.
Ranthia was certain that the Guildmaster was testing her.
For days now, Tatius and Pupius had announced new jobs and then acted strangely deferential to her. They acted with her plans. They encouraged her to take more aggressive roles. She enjoyed the experience—and the levels—but the men weren’t quite as subtle as they seemed to think.
Then she was granted a few unofficial little tasks. She scouted for signs of goblins that one of the miners claimed he had seen. She was trusted to find some herbs on her own. A few little patrols.
Ranthia was a bit over halfway through her 14th year of life. She had reached level 124 in her first class, driven mostly by her use of her magic to distract the two [Mages] which had given them a chance to kill the duo. The System loved nothing more than a deadly clash between people, it seemed. Her second class had languished a bit while she assisted the men, though the recent days had brought it up to 76.
And she was invited to roam out and level until she was ready to class up.
[Megaraptor] was what [Identify] reported—after a strange delay—and it was level 157 given its pale red hue. The dinosaur was taller than she was—though not by too much, at least while its head was down—and she was giving serious consideration to whether she wanted to take it on.
The light breeze shifted oh-so-slightly, and suddenly the decision was made for her when the dino spun to face the bush she was behind, snarling.
She really missed having comparatively little body odor when she was younger. [Shadowed Steps]—her former [Silent Steps] had evolved into a directly superior Class Skill—didn’t help when things could smell her!
[Image of Self] sent an image of her next to the bush. [Image Anima], which she gained back at level 96, had made her images match her breathing and allowed the image to move when coupled with [Twisted Images]. The dinosaur followed the image, with its eyes, then turned toward it and charged.
Ranthia moved while she was out of the dinosaur’s line of sight. [Shadowed Steps] kept it from hearing her movement.
The first image dissolved as soon as the dinosaur snapped at it. But Ranthia had already sent out a second, which she used to reposition the beast.
[Sudden End] wasn’t quite the same class [Knives in the] had been. The evolved class encouraged a single, devastating strike. Rather than distracting or misdirecting her opponents, it gave her lethality. [Blades of Darkness] coated her blades in Dark, not to conceal, but to erase material that she cut. [Critical Strike] helped her find vulnerabilities, even where she had less familiarity with the anatomy of her foe.
Ranthia allowed her skills to guide her. Three images were created to distract her adversary, and she made her strike, clean into its side.
She received some sort of notification, but it wasn’t a kill notification. Ranthia hurriedly silenced non-kill notifications while she shifted to the side and left an image where she was—an image that the dinosaur promptly attempted to eat.
The only problem was that it spun in the opposite direction from what she had expected, and she had the tail coming straight at her. Ranthia made a snap judgment and decided to cleave her knives in a crossed slash while she activated [Blades of Darkness] again.
The impact nearly wrenched her left knife out of her grasp, but she managed to sever the dinosaur’s tail. It—unsurprisingly—noticed that and went straight for her, but she dodged and wove around the snaps of its mouth while she backed hurriedly away.
A final image, manifested beside the dinosaur, distracted it while Ranthia hurriedly grabbed two bottles of mana potions, bit the wax that sealed the fragile clay vessels off, and downed their contents. She had gotten dangerously low on mana.
The dinosaur was fixated on her again and she knew that it would be harder to distract from there on. It had locked onto her and wouldn’t give her up easily. For a brief time, Ranthia fought as a proper [Warrior]. She dodged and countered, inflicting shallow cuts across her opponent’s head. She wanted it used to how she fought, she wanted to establish a pattern.
After all, the easiest way to deal with a beast was to make it expect one thing and then do something else, especially if she managed to make it angry enough.
Finally, her instincts told her it was time. The dinosaur had just reared back from another miss, wary of her knives. So, instead, she created images on either side of its head, point blank.
Just as she hoped—she had plans for other movements, but it truly was the ideal act—the dinosaur reared back and raised its head. Ranthia wasted no time closing in and lashed out with two clean strikes across its neck with [Blades of Darkness], guided by [Critical Strike], then made a follow-up pair of slashes while she backed away.
The beast was too stupid to realize that every breath it heaved flowed out of the gash in its neck. Every move it made forced more of its lifeblood from its body.
Ranthia dodged the beast as it made several attacks in retribution until, at last, it slowed enough that she was able to put it out of its misery.
[*ding!* You have slain a [Megaraptor] (Wood, level 157)!]
“My proverbial empire for arcanite.” Ranthia grumbled when she checked her remaining mana.
The sound of clapping drew her gaze and Ranthia was more than a little annoyed to see Pupius standing a short distance away.
“Thanks for the vote of confidence.” She groused.
“Hey, I didn’t butt in, did I?” He replied with a smirk.
Ranthia ignored him and checked her suppressed notifications.
[*ding!* [Critical Strike] has reached level 46!]
Then, after the dinosaur died…
[*ding!* Congratulations! [Reflection of Chaos] has leveled from 124 to level 128! Per level: +1 Free Stats, +3 Dexterity, +1 Speed, +4 Mana, +4 Mana Regeneration, +4 Magic Power, +4 Magic Control from your class, +1 free stat for being human, +1 Mana Regeneration and +1 Magic Power from your element.]
[*ding!* [Mirror Affinity], [Image of Self], and [Twisted Images] have leveled from 124 to level 128!]
[*ding!* [Image Anima] has leveled from 43 to level 49!]
[*ding!* Congratulations! [Sudden End] has leveled from 76 to level 79! Per level: +5 Strength, +11 Dexterity, +4 Vitality, +7 Speed, +2 Mana Regeneration, +1 free stat for being human, +1 Mana from your element.]
[*ding!* [Dark Affinity], [Knives & War], [Blades of Darkness], and [Shadowed Steps] have leveled from 76 to level 79!]
[*ding!* [Critical Strike] has reached level 47!]
[*ding!* [Identify], [Dodging], and [Boosted Reflexes] have leveled from 124 to level 128!]
“How’d it go?” Pupius asked. It was kind of impossible to miss when someone’s eyes unfocused while they read notifications.
“I think [Critical Strike] is sulking that I didn’t manage to kill it in one hit. Only got a single level out of the skill.” Ranthia replied in a lilting tone that suggested that she knew well that she wasn’t answering the real question.
“Skills that have moods are the worst, my condolences. But seriously…?”
“Ready to class up!” Ranthia replied with a broad grin.
Ranthia and Pupius butchered the dinosaur and hauled its meat and useful parts back to town before he waved her off to hit her room and class up. [Soups & Stews] wasn’t going to get many levels while they lived in Sardonia, the Guildmaster’s family were excellent cooks and were all too happy to buy ingredients from the local Adventurers.
Ranthia just doffed her leather cloak and snuggled into her bed in her room—which was still so nice after years spent sharing a room with at least one man—before she triggered her class up and fell into the world within herself after a brief prayer to Xaoc.
Ranthia looked her older self in the eye and handed the guide her current Mirror class, hilt first.
“As far down the Affinity line as I can get, without sacrificing the class’s purpose.” Ranthia requested.
She wasn’t nervous. Completely not.
She definitely wasn’t trying to keep her breathing calm while her guide puttered around the colorful arsenal.
She wasn’t at all terrified that she’d get another class that was a bare upgrade, probably red, and still had [Mirror Affinity].
Gods, even Sardonia’s Guildmaster was nowhere close to unlocking his third class! Why was she so sure there were levels beyond 512? How did her former self know so much? Was it literally just god given knowledge? Was it all just…
“And how in Xaoc’s name did you manage this?” Her guide sounded almost accusatory as she set down the short sword with the orange-wrapped hilt.
Ranthia was snapped out of her introspection and quirked an eyebrow at her inner self. Slowly, she reached for the blade that was the path forward from [Reflection of Chaos – Mirror]. Almost immediately she gasped and released the blade with a start when she realized what had prompted the question.
“That’s… there’s no mistake, right?” Ranthia asked, almost breathlessly.
Her guide shook her head, as both aspects of herself stared at the representation for the class for a long moment. Ranthia then was seized by impatience and snatched the blade up eagerly. She had to see this in the real world, because her goals were no longer something she had to aspire to in the future. She sheathed the sword, without even the courtesy to say another word to her guide, and ran for the exit.
[Shards of Reflection – Mirror]. Their senses tell them you are everywhere, now it simply becomes true. +1 Free Stats, +3 Dexterity, +4 Vitality, +2 Speed, +7 Mana, +9 Mana Regeneration, +7 Magic Power, +7 Magic Control per level.
By what had to be a boon from the hands of Xaoc, her goals had come to pass. Somehow her level 128 class up jumped her all of the way to [Mirror Spirit], she had bypassed Authority and Mastery entirely!
Ranthia completely missed it when her guide turned back to the armory. The surprisingly colorful armory. Colors far beyond mere orange or yellow were present.
“Seriously, what did you do?” The guide asked pointlessly, shortly before she and her world faded from existence.