Ranthia woke up with her heart hammering in her chest. It was real, wasn’t it?
[*ding!* Congratulations! You have upgraded your first class – [Shards of Reflection – Mirror (128)]!]
Yes, yes, very good, whatever! Ranthia ignored the rest of the notifications, aside from where it was necessary to accept or reject new skills, and pulled up her sheet. She was impatient and very near trembling with how electrified her nerves were.
[Name: Ranthia]
[Species: Human]
[Age: 14]
[Mana: 8760/8760]
[Mana Regen Rate: 3434]
[Stats:]
[Free Stats: 2]
[Strength: 269]
[Dexterity: 1049]
[Vitality: 554]
[Speed: 552]
[Mana: 876]
[Mana Regeneration: 864]
[Magic Power: 846]
[Magic Control: 618]
[Class 1: [Shards of Reflection – Mirror (129)]]
[Mirror Spirit: 129]
[Scattered Reflections: 129]
[Echoes Reflected: 1]
[Reflective Motility: 1]
[Persistent Imagery: 1]
[Mirrored Moves: 1]
[A Looking Glass: 1]
[Reflections of Reality: 1]
[Class 2: [Sudden End – Dark (79)]]
[Dark Affinity: 79]
[Knives & War: 79]
[Blades of Darkness: 79]
[Critical Strike: 47]
[Shadowed Steps: 79]
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[Class 3: Locked]
[General Skills:]
[Identify: 129]
[Ranthia’s Covenant with Xaoc: 39]
[Soups & Stews: 63]
[Dodging: 129]
[Boosted Reflexes: 129]
[Fast Learner: 68]
[Crafting Traps & Alarms: 11]
[Cute: 49]
[Mirror Spirit]: You embody Mirror to the extent your soul has practically become reflective. A perfectly clear connection has been established between the element and your skills. Additional resistance to Mirror aspected abilities. Minor sense for Mirror classes and Mirror skills around you. Increased Mana Regeneration when immersed within all that is Mirror.
[Scattered Reflections]: Create a perfect Mirror image of yourself in any pose or position you want. Your images will react realistically to wind and other weather, though extreme weather may cause the image to break. The maximum range and maximum number of images that can be simultaneously created increases with level.
[Echoes Reflected]: You’re able to speak through a Mirror image. Complexity, length, and clarity of spoken words increase with level.
[Reflective Motility]: Mirror images can be moved and adjusted. The percentage of your dexterity and strength that the images can reflect increases with level.
[Persistent Imagery]: Mirror images take slightly more punishment without breaking. The percentage of your vitality that the images reflect increases with level.
[Mirrored Moves]: Allows Mirror images to duplicate other skills you possess. No actual elemental or skill effects will occur, only the skill’s appearance will be mirrored. Efficiency and accuracy of recreation increase with level.
[A Looking Glass]: See through the eyes of your Mirror image. Maximum duration and clarity increase with level.
[Reflections of Reality]: A Mirror image of your choice becomes your real body, while your former body becomes a mere Mirror image left where and as you were. All items on your person will be transferred, to an extent. This swap is permanent and will not be automatically reverted. Swaps become faster and range increases with level.
[Blades of Darkness]: Apply darkness along the blades of any bladed weaponry you wield to erase that which you cut. Potency increases with level.
[Critical Strike]: You have an eye for weak points, exploit them. -436 Mana Regen Rate.
[Shadowed Steps]: Your steps are quieter as darkness erases sound. At increased levels, traces that you leave may be partially erased. -672 Mana Regen Rate.
[Soups & Stews]: You enjoy nothing more than a warm soup or stew, whether on the road or at an inn. Now make them edible.
[Crafting Traps & Alarms]: Perimeter alarms and hunting snares are the nicest things you can do with a little time and some materials.
It had to be a boon from Xaoc.
Her goals had… come to pass, in full. Somehow her level 128 class up jumped her all of the way to [Mirror Spirit], she had bypassed Authority and Mastery entirely!
Before she ever opened her eyes, Ranthia just smiled and studied her new sheet. How far she had come, in only 6 years. Surely no one else had ever achieved such feats so quickly, she convinced herself. Briefly she felt smug, until she realized that the pretty—mmm, so pretty, maybe even [Pretty]—Ranger [Healer] that saved her life so long ago had been about her age at the time, if not younger… and she had been over level 150. Worse, each level beyond 128 took significantly more effort than the prior levels.
Ranthia’s advantages were kind of absurd, but… Well, somehow, she doubted that the Ranger had been attached to Adventurers—or Rangers, for that matter—since she was 8. And there was no way that lovely young woman had the backing of one of the five major gods—though admittedly even Ranthia herself was aware that she likely attributed too many events in her life to Xaoc’s hand.
So, yeah, maybe the tasty-looking [Healer] had been more impressive than she was. That was fine!
Ranthia was very happy with where she was now.
Ranthia made use of her privacy and practiced her new tricks until she got the hang of them. There were quirks this time around. [Scattered Reflections] immediately earned the label of a ‘weird’ skill. It created mirror images of herself that felt passably real—and only passably—but only so long as she used a soft enough touch. Any real pressure applied revealed a firmness beneath that, with further force, just broke. Similarly, the mirror images wore her clothing and equipment—thankfully, she’d never have lived down a skill that forced her to flash everyone—but when she tried to lift the clothes or pull open a pouch on the image’s belt there was the same bit of give, then firmness, then the image shattered.
At least the skill promised that durability could be further enhanced as they leveled, so long as her vitality continued to grow. Also having weather reactivity was huge, the skill even by itself was better than her old kind of flat images even bolstered with [Image Anima].
[Reflective Motility] was a bit of a mixed bag. She swiftly discovered that she struggled to move more than one mirror image in an even remotely believable way; even small, idle motions took an alarming amount of focus. It was all too easy to lose the thread of control needed for minor, regular motions like breathing or blinking. [Mirrored Moves] made the situation even worse! In addition to the regular movements—which already took the bulk of her focus—the skill provided yet another thing she needed to micromanage. Still, the potential it gave her to fake out a smart foe with a mirror image that seemed to be attacking with [Blades of Darkness] promised to be invaluable, so it wasn’t like she was disappointed.
It just was a lot that she’d need to practice.
Of course, the real happy surprise was [Reflections of Reality]. The skill was the embodiment of everything she had hoped and dreamed to do with her build. It was her goal that she had created. And it took a ton of willpower to put off experimenting with it, because she knew she’d have glossed over everything else had she started with it. But, at last, she was… done enough with everything else.
Ranthia smiled and faced her image, close enough that they were almost touching since the fresh level 1 skill’s description mentioned that its range increased with level. This was it; it was time to embrace success! Ranthia triggered the skill and…
Nothing happened.
Okay, wow, it seriously required touch range at level 1? Eh, so long as it expanded from there, that was fine. Ranthia laid her hand on the image and activated the skill!
Yet nothing happened.
Something’s wrong. Something’s wrong. Something’s wrong! The unhelpful words flooded Ranthia’s mind as she rushed to try again and again, pressing her body closer and closer against the image until the image broke from the light force being applied. Then she just kind of stood there, staring dumbfounded for several seconds…
Then she finally took a (proverbial) step back and had to laugh at herself while she tried to release the tension that she had inflicted upon herself. She was being ridiculous! She needed to relax and work through it—it was a problem to solve, that was all. And she was great at solving problems! Her entire career path was about solving problems, after all.
Not that her knives would be all that helpful with this problem.
Ranthia created a new image a short distance in front of her. The System wasn’t a vacuum of detached functionality; there was feedback from skills. She usually ignored the feedback since she knew how skills worked, but this one clearly wasn’t quite so intuitive. So, she just needed to work through it, step by step.
The image was a valid target, that part was easy. The range was valid too, which meant her prior display was even stupider than it had presumably looked. The skill was trying to activate, but then it failed. That seemed odd. Ranthia tried to focus and parcel it out. The skill was trying to activate but her mana hadn’t even budged…
Oh.
Ranthia just kind of stared into the distance once it dawned on her. [Reflections of Reality] was trying to pull more mana than her magic power provided?! She had never run into that before! Sure, her magic power gated how solid and large her metal decoys had been, but she had been grateful for that; higher costs would have wiped out her mana pool far too quickly.
This meant that the System had given her a skill that was impossible to activate?! Ranthia was on the cusp of declaring that the system wouldn’t provide skills she couldn’t use… yet something told her it was possible.
Ranthia paused to vent a short tirade of obscenities until she felt better and had a (slightly) clearer mind. The problem was she had no idea how close or far she was. Was she a level or two away from being able to use the skill? She had no foundation to calculate from!
[*ding!* You have unlocked the General Skill [Mechanics Calculations]! Would you like to replace a skill?]
[Mechanics Calculations]: You wanted a skill, got it, and then realized you had no idea what you were asking for. This seems reasonable. To avoid these problems, take this skill and improve your grasp of math and mechanics with each level. -56 Mana Regen Rate when you manage to use your mind.
Ranthia’s immediate response was outraged bitterness, but she forced herself to consider the offered skill. Yes, the System was taunting her—incredibly unsubtly—but it was still tempting. Her chaos-given knowledge was a lifesaver, but there were clearly gaps, even in her System knowledge. The skill might help with that.
Though on the flip side, she had to ask herself how often a bit of math helped when her knowledge fell short. It was relevant here, but… But was it actually relevant? It was valuable if the question was how long she had to wait to level to cast it. But that wasn’t the real question.
When Ranthia turned her mind to how can I cast this now she unexpectedly had an answer. She could channel!
It was a realization that solved everything, but it was also a realization that solved nothing. She knew, somehow, that channeling was possible but that didn’t mean the System automatically offered it up. Still, it was a direction so Ranthia rejected [Mechanics Calculations] and started to try to figure out how to practice for a skill she didn’t even have.
Night had fallen before Ranthia finally had her breakthrough, one that was painfully obvious in hindsight. It was the exact same process most—insufficiently pious—people used while praying; she needed to parcel her mana and, instead of offering it to a god like someone might offer their damned dog a treat, she had to shove it at the skill. Nothing actually happened when she did that of course, but if she did it long enough…
[*ding!* You have unlocked the General Skill [Channel]! Would you like to replace a skill?]
[Channel]: Sometimes, for reasons that are never your own fault, simply unleashing a spell may not be an option. Take this skill and instead think really hard about using a skill until you finally get to! Increased control over the mana fed into the channel and marginally decreased mental effort required to maintain the channel per level.
Ranthia shuddered slightly while she wondered if she had managed to annoy the System. She had no idea how intelligent the System was, but if it could sass it could probably get angry.
“Thank you so much for supporting me through this.” Ranthia loudly announced.
She wasn’t crazy, she was just making sure the incorporeal thing that governed her existence and survival was content.
She ditched [Crafting Traps & Alarms] as soon as she finished expressing her gratitude and reassuring herself that doing so was completely reasonable. There was barely any nausea, not that she was entirely surprised. She had gotten very little use out of the skill, and it was seriously under-leveled. She had only taken the skill at her guardians’ insistence; it wasn’t like she needed it to make a passable hunting snare or string up some pots—she had done so for years without the skill.
Ranthia’s stomach had been growling for a while and her bladder was starting to get insistent, but she was so close! She promised herself she’d test the skill once, then attend to her own needs.
Mentally Ranthia tapped [Channel] and pointed it at [Reflections of Reality] while she faced the image she had left standing there for Xaoc alone knew how long. Her mana began to drop in chunks of 846, roughly every heartbeat or so. …Well, every couple, but her heart was beating a touch faster than normal.
Ranthia had been sure 2,000 mana would have been enough, but her mana pool continued to get funneled into the channel. Once she passed 4,000 mana she began to wonder if she was doing something wrong. The skill didn’t feel ready to use but surely 4,000 mana—almost five times as much mana as she had ever thrown at any single casting—should have been enough!
Her mana pool was oh-so-nearly emptied before the drain stopped. That was… less than ideal, but Ranthia released the skill the instant it felt ready. She’d worry about the rest later!
It was… amazingly intuitive. Something about [Reflections of Reality] seemed to remove the disorientation she had expected from an abrupt change in her position and stance. Everything felt so smooth and natural. The skill fit her like it was made for her. One moment she had been standing in one spot, and the next she was in her image.
And yet she still felt like herself! Ranthia whooped a delighted laugh and gleefully sent a prayer of thanks to Xaoc while she tested out the false body. It was exciting!
She seemed to still have her full range of motion and capabilities. Even [Blades of Darkness] still worked just as she expected while she was in the image’s body! Ranthia ran through some exercises, but no matter what she tried it felt just like being inside her true body.
It was everything she had ever dreamt!
Ranthia smiled happily. She was definitely going to test more, but first she was ready to eat something! She turned back to her true body and attempted to shift back to it…
…Not that anything happened.
“Oh godsdamnit, returning to my true body requires the same fucking cost?!” Ranthia snapped.
Even with [Ranthia’s Covenant with Xaoc] the skill took almost her entire mana pool. That was far from ideal. Mana potions were expensive, and it seemed she’d be as reliant on them as a purple flower addict was on their next hit. Still, it just served to highlight how incredibly powerful the skill was. She could only even use it by the grace of Xaoc!
…Wait, had He known? She honestly had no idea whether her [Covenant] was granted by Xaoc or the System. The vow was made to Xaoc, but while deities had some influence over classes like the [Paladin] one she was barred from taking… she had no idea at all if that extended to skills. It was an interesting mental puzzle, but—like questions about her prior self—it was one that Ranthia would never ask about. Whether Xaoc sent the skill or the System acknowledged her commitment to the deity was irrelevant: it had meant everything to her. And now it meant even more. It was as simple as that!
Unfortunately, this still meant she’d have to wait nearly two of her blocks of a twenty-fourth of a day—or almost a twelfth of the day—to get back to her true body. She was hungry and she had regrets about testing the skill before she ate. Oddly her bladder wasn’t protesting though, she hadn’t even noticed until she thought about it.
Of course, she had options. She could have gone downstairs in the false body and over to the tavern portion to seek food. But she hadn’t tested how far she could get from an image before it vanished—and she was reasonably certain there was a maximum range. She figured it was possible to carry her true body down, but her images were so fragile that it felt dangerous in the extreme. She was not going to take stupid risks, not with her true body!
Her stomach could wait.
At long, long last Ranthia was reasonably certain that she had enough mana and began to [Channel] again. It turned out that she was slightly premature, but it only took another few hundred heartbeats for her mana pool to regenerate the last bit she needed. It wasn’t that hard to maintain the focus required for [Channel], it seemed. She had been a bit concerned about that with how the skill described itself, but she was confident that she could manage that much.
And Ranthia at long last returned to her true body. Only for her bladder to immediately and insistently assert its urgency.
Ranthia ran, dismissing the image she’d been testing as she went.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
If anyone had asked, Ranthia would have insisted that she made it to the public outhouses without incident. Her visit to the well afterwards and her sodden state when she grabbed a bowl of stew—sadly it was creamy pork, no rabbit stew on offer—were completely unrelated.
Mercifully she never ran into Tatius or Pupius, and soon enough she was secure back in her room with a fresh tunic. Ranthia ran through her thoughts while she hungrily ate.
Her brush with the difficulty of returning to her true body had raised a major concern that nothing about the skill description addressed. What would happen if her real body was damaged while it was a mere mirror image? Would it shatter like the false images? The odds were high that it would; the description did state that her true body became a “mere” Mirror image. It was absolutely not something she was going to test, but realistically she decided that she just needed to be careful. She couldn’t imagine that she would be able to live forever as a mere image. If her true body was destroyed, in all likelihood she was doomed.
But she could work with that! Death was always a danger in combat, but now she had a way to minimize it, so long as she was careful. So long as her body was stashed safely, she was fine. She was more than fine, possibly.
Ranthia dreamt up new ideas for things to test while she slowly ate her stew—and the oversized portion of absurdly over-buttered bread she had bought to go along with it. Pupius would have given her crap for eating so much, but she was ravenous and fully intended to consume every last morsel. She needed time for her mana to regenerate, after all.
She was so not going to get any sleep that night, there was no way. There were just far too many things to discover about her kit, the kit she had wanted for years!
The next test was to confirm that she still suffered harm while she inhabited one of the mirror images, just like she would if it was her normal body. She escalated her experiments to make certain, but in the end the nasty gash across the forearm of one of her mirror images proved her initial results held true. It had hurt when she cut her entire forearm, but her real body was unblemished when she returned to it. There were no consequences when she dismissed the damaged image either. Though a smarter Ranthia would have waited until after her mana regenerated before she inflicted such a wound on herself.
If she wasn’t wearing all of her equipment the cost she had to [Channel] was reduced before [Reflections of Reality] triggered. It never became a cost she could activate without [Channel]ing, but it gave her an emergency option to reduce the mana she needed by an amount that might save her life.
Similarly, if she shifted to a mirror image and then undressed or set down her knives, when she switched back to her original body she was suddenly missing whatever item she had set down, even though her true body still seemed to have the item while it was merely a mirror image. Shifting back to it triggered the change. That was weird, but it was reasonable. It wasn’t like she really expected her Mirror class to hand her a way to generate limitless wealth, which both seemed like it fell afoul of the System’s rules and was definitely something someone else would have figured out resulting in the element being wildly illegal. Fortunately, that wasn’t the case.
The items did seem to be unchanged, though she still made a point of switching back to the mirror image and redressing or retrieving whatever items she dropped to recover them for her real body. Better to be safe than have something go wrong!
And yes, the mirror images seemed to be… entirely accurate under her clothes while she inhabited one of them.
Bizarrely—and she just chalked it up to magic being magic—her hunger persisted when she switched bodies. Similarly, if she held her breath, changing bodies didn’t remove the need for air. Which made no sense because she could injure herself while in a mirror image’s body, and then was suddenly pain and injury free when she switched back. Sure, sometimes there was a brief moment of phantom pain, but bodies did weird things sometimes when they were suddenly healed.
On a related note, she confirmed that any blood spilled from her mirror image body also vanished when the mirror image was dismissed.
Her range to swap bodies measured to be 15 paces and when she finally—after most of the night spent practicing—got a single level in the skill it increased to 16 paces. This was mildly frustrating when she was certain that she was able to put images a fair distance away from herself. This meant that, until the ranges of her images and her shifting caught up to one another, that it would be yet another thing she needed to track.
For not the first time she wished there were skills to handle some of the data tracking for her. Now she needed to keep the different ranges in mind—on top of the mental efforts of channeling and the constant focus [Reflective Motility] required. It was getting to be a lot, but unfortunately she had never heard of a Skill that would help with keeping track of everything. That hardly eliminated it as being possible, but the System had never offered her a skill like that either. Her knowledge was murky on whether or not it was possible, though she hoped that it was.
[Channel] could be held once she had fully charged [Reflections of Reality]. It wouldn’t activate until she was ready, which meant she could hold the skill ready for use before she started an engagement! She could even allow her mana to recover or—with some difficulty splitting her focus—use other Skills in the interim. That opened up some exciting possibilities.
By the next nightfall, Ranthia’s mana had regenerated, and her basic tests were concluded. She was ready to show Tatius and Pupius her new tricks! She had been impatient to show off ever since she had woken up from her class up, but it, tragically, was entirely sensible for her to take the time to figure the mechanics out for herself so she could give a better showing. Practicality was boring!
Ranthia’s attempts to locate the two men turned out to be a winding, roundabout quest that would have been completely averted had she actually just checked the first place she would have looked had she not asked someone if they had seen them. The men, as it turned out, were in the training ground beneath the Adventurer’s Guildhall, where they often were. They were not at the tavern, not still running errands around town, nor were they at the long since closed for the day apothecary, and they certainly weren’t hanging out at the mining guild’s offices for some bizarre reason.
Ranthia should have known better than to trust other people for information, truly. Her frustration did not help the background mental strain she suffered while she held [Channel] fully primed and ready. Had she known the process would be so ridiculous she wouldn’t have held it while her mana regenerated!
Frustrated or not, she was ready and eager to show off! Hurriedly, before she was noticed, she ducked behind an empty bin, created a mirror image, and at last released [Reflections of Reality] so she could inhabit it. Immediately she began to [Channel] again, draining her mana pool anew while she choked down a mana potion. It was a flagrant waste of money, but she was showing off, it was important! In her mirror image body, she approached the sparring area where Tatius and Pupius sparred and waited for them to notice her.
Tatius was the first to notice, which allowed Pupius to land several swift blows on his distracted opponent. This left the smaller man unjustifiably smug when they walked over to Ranthia. She was all grins, which had the men looking cautiously optimistic.
She had convinced them that her days of class ups that left her—temporarily—weakened were done.
“I want to show you both my new class, I think you’ll agree it’s been worth it.” She announced, completely cocky and confident.
“Alright, want to make it a spar?”
It was Pupius that offered, unfortunately. As a speedster he was much faster than Ranthia’s oddly balanced build was, with a reaction speed that still far surpassed her own. She was confident—or was just cocky—that she could have taken Tatius at that point, but Pupius would be a far greater challenge. …Not that Ranthia ever backed down from something merely challenging.
“Sure!” Ranthia answered, without losing her cocky grin.
She approached the ring and paused, mentally doing some quick math. Her true body should be fine where it was, but she needed to be careful not to let herself get thrown out of the far side of the dueling area. Tatius approached and handed her the weapons she preferred to use while training.
Ranthia accepted the pair of training knives—blunted metal, they were heavier but were similar in size to her own blades—and assumed a ready stance. Pupius had his own wooden short swords of choice ready and was clothed in the padded armor he used for training. It was bulkier than he liked, but it helped minimize bruising.
Both men had to independently get her to refuse padded armor, especially since she had left her leather cloak back in her room. She had to reassure both of them that she was fine before they finally, somewhat grudgingly, accepted her word.
Honestly, she grumbled inwardly. She was an adult; they didn’t need to look after her so much. By Remus’ (eternally terrible) logic she should have been married and, at a minimum, pregnant with her first child by then.
Pupius was at level 251, so very close to his next class up and, worse, she knew for a fact that both of his classes were roughly the same level. The hard life of an Adventurer had been good for him and Tatius, at least in terms of levels. Their wealth generation could still use more work though.
It was the curse of being an Adventurer—every time you started to pull ahead some expense always cropped up.
But she was done being an expense and burden on the men. She was determined that, starting with that spar, she was going to become properly independent at last.
It was time to pay the men back.
…In a good way!
Pupius came straight at her at speed, the instant Tatius called for them to start. Ranthia only barely managed to create a mirror image behind him and release the [Channel] so that she transferred into it with [Reflections of Reality] before the flat of one of his longswords smacked the shoulder of the body she had just left. His eyes widened as that body shattered beneath his blow and he turned just as the tip of the knife that she slashed at his back barely touched the padded armor.
Pupius barked a laugh—a tiny sign that she had impressed him—while he hopped away from her strike and faced her directly. Ranthia threw a new mirror image out, crouched at his side and had it jab at him with its knife. He reacted far too quickly, and casually blocked with his short sword before he kicked the image in the chest—shattering it—and swept forward at the real Ranthia.
So much for her plan to distract him!
Still, Ranthia grinned a smug, challenging grin at him while she parried his strike and backed away while two other mirror images were created on either side of her. Not quite surreptitiously, Ranthia drank another mana potion and started a new [Channel]. Fortunately, Pupius seemed content to wait for her until she was ready. The three charged as one—somewhat uncoordinatedly, admittedly—before Ranthia threw an image behind Pupius and shifted to it just before they reached the faster man. Someone whistled from the sidelines while she hurriedly drank a mana potion—again—just as the clash was joined again… however briefly.
Pupius’ short swords cleaved straight through all three images, which caught him off-guard. Ranthia took the opportunity to create another image at his side, and had it feint an attack while she tried for the man’s back again. She had done her best to keep the mirror image’s attack realistic, but either Pupius noticed something was amiss or he sensed her presence behind him; instead, he crashed straight through her mirror image while he dodged her new attack.
Pupius looked haughty when he turned to face her, but honestly Ranthia was still kind of elated. He was outperforming her, but she was actually—albeit just barely—keeping up with the man’s speed. It wasn’t enough to get an edge, but she still had a card she hadn’t played yet, [Mirrored Moves].
She simply needed to get the man used to what she was doing first, same as she’d weaponized against the dinosaur a couple of days ago! Then she had the tool to open up a real opportunity. Unfortunately, the trick would be somewhat marred by the fact that everyone knew that she couldn’t seriously use [Blades of Darkness] in a friendly match since the dark element would go straight through that padded armor as if it wasn’t even there. Still, she just needed to catch him off-guard and make him second guess—even just for a moment—which body she was in.
Ranthia pushed herself to be faster. She drove back in with an aggressive series of mirror images and alongside her own strikes as she tried to create an opening. Pupius, of course, was too quick and kept deflecting or evading her real strikes, even when she began to add additional mirror images to the training ground to sow confusion. No matter what angle she tried, her blades tasted air or met one of his own.
It was a strange sensation to fight all out with [Reflections of Reality]. Physical fatigue was relieved when she shifted to a fresh image (which would be wonderful once she could shift more frequently, mana potions were so slow), but the mental toll of how much she had to keep track of wore her down just as severely. Which was troubling since she wasn’t even using [Channel] yet, she hadn’t regenerated enough mana—though the thought reminded her to drink another expensive potion. Ranthia was already glistening with sweat while they maneuvered around the sparring grounds as she desperately tried to counter his speed with skill and trickiness.
Time was one thing she had no spare mental energy to track.
Once she felt as if she would soon grow sloppy if they continued much longer, Ranthia played her trump card, since she had just barely recovered enough mana for one last shift. She charged at Pupius and, at the last moment, stopped herself and instead rushed to throw out three new mirror images while he hesitated, one behind him and one to either side. At last, Ranthia activated [Mirrored Moves] for the image at his left and it drove toward his side with a blade enveloped in darkness. She also had the other two make the best normal thrusts she could manage, then, an instant, later made her own strike toward his front.
[Boosted Reflexes] screamed in her senses.
Ranthia never even saw the blade that came at her, but her other senses tracked it just enough to let her bring her other knife up into a defensive position. She kicked off the ground to throw herself backwards, but there was no time. The blow that [Boosted Reflexes] warned her about struck her blade with enough force that it smashed the back of the blade into her arm even as the force tore the knife out of her grip.
Pupius had his own trump card, [Dervish], which was named after the core skill of the several skills that made up the technique. It allowed him to spin in a full circle at an absurd speed, which drove his blades with an unholy amount of force. A single combat technique that let him punch up significantly higher than his level—briefly. He seldom used it in practice, though it let him shred through most defenses; the last time he had used it they had been forced to purchase new swords for him since neither blade had survived the impact.
And Ranthia had, inadvertently, forced him to use it against her.
Ranthia swore as she backed off, the knife had been sent flying and she’d completely lost track of it. She tried to shake out her arm even as an angry Pupius came to a stop, in an effort to get rid of the strange numb feeling. Instead, there was a disgustingly uncanny flopping sensation when she shook her arm.
The pain hit about then, the blow that she had just barely managed to block had still managed to snap—or worse—her forearm and her hand was clearly mangled.
Pupius was covered in sweat, but when he saw her arm, his mask of fury vanished. The short man paled and dropped his blades as he swore. She also heard Tatius calling her name.
Her mind wanted to go fuzzy, and the pain was excruciating. Ranthia shoved her willpower against the mental fog; she just needed to force herself to ignore the pain and hang on for a bit longer. Thank Xaoc she hadn’t wanted to risk adding the mental weight of [Channel] on top of her attack gambit. She stumbled back towards her true body as she tried to focus on the [Channel] through her aching arm—and head—each moment a struggle… Until at long last, she felt the bliss of relief as she slipped back into her own, intact body. Immediately, her body decided to soak itself in a cold sweat, but she shook her head and stepped out of her hiding place. This placed her a bit behind Tatius as he and Pupius desperately interacted with the image that she had abandoned.
She dismissed her gruesomely mangled mirror image just before either hesitant man could touch it.
“I’m… okay! I’m over here, that wasn’t my real body.”
Why was she so breathless? Her head throbbed and just calling out the reassurance had forced her to gulp air like she had just finished a particularly grueling training session. The men seemed to be momentarily puzzled, so Ranthia welcomed the opportunity to try to catch her breath on the stuffy air of the training ground while the men recalibrated.
“That was…”
“By the gods…”
“Geeze!”
Apparently, they had other gawkers, but Ranthia ignored them as she focused on Tatius and Pupius. The men’s faces had gone through a myriad of different emotions before they settled on grins.
“You about gave me a heart attack little lady!” Tatius chuckled. He seemed to have settled in on amusement.
“I can’t believe someone who just got their first 128 class managed to force me into a corner! What even was that?! I… oh shit, I could have really crippled you if…” Pupius started impressed, before his emotions returned to chaos.
She hoped he wouldn’t land back on his earlier anger, which was the only reason that she didn’t point out that she had reached level 128 twice before.
“It’s okay, I’m tricky, remember?” Ranthia tried to reassure him while she smiled something that was either reassuring or just obnoxious smugness. She had no idea where she had landed. She was so very tired and her head was a fog of agony, though not quite as bad as the shattered arm had been.
“That’s the truth, gods… Xaoc himself couldn’t make such a mess out of a spar.” Tatius grumbled.
Ranthia wasn’t exactly sure if that was praise or not, but the sacrilege grated more than a little even if it was meant as a compliment. It must have shown on her face because the man held up his too-large hands in apology in an effort to stave off her words.
“We need to talk to the Guildmaster, I know she’s still young but… I say she’s ready!” Pupius announced, rather loudly.
Which disarmed Ranthia’s annoyance better than anything else—even a promise of rabbit stew—could have.
“What, really?” Ranthia allowed her hopes to rise. For a brief moment, her headache was forgotten.
“Yeah, I agree.” Tatius nodded.
“And so do I.”
Ranthia jumped and let out a mortifyingly girlish little noise of surprise. She hadn’t even felt the man’s presence behind her!
The Guildmaster looked like a gentle wisp of an old man, at least if you were blind. For anyone who had a true eye for people, it was impossible to miss the signs that he was a level 389 [Ranger]. The man was, despite his advanced age, still absurdly stealthy and had an air of coiled danger about him, even if he preferred to sit in his office and handle menial management tasks so he could spend each of his nights quietly with his husband and their boyfriend.
He also took pleasure in startling people and Ranthia did not miss the mischievous, happy glimmer in his eye while she recomposed herself and stepped back to Tatius’s side.
She hadn’t spent much time with the man—all of her concerns about a solid first impression never amounted to much—but she was impressed by him. The man had earned his rank. He was an Adventurer who lived his life on the field until he was thrust into command by sheer merit.
It was too bad that she only met the man after he retired into a quieter life.
“You all saw the spar. This young Adventurer has been with our Guild—unofficially—for many years and proven herself again and again as a tagalong. Now we just witnessed the feats of this match. And one thing I want you all to bear in mind: she held back throughout the match, and, in the end, our Whirling Edge did not! She has fought one of our local best evenly, and I will not tolerate any who would disparage her for her age or sex. If you have problems with me making her an Adventurer, speak now!” The Guildmaster’s voice filled the training area and, for the first time, forced Ranthia to realize just how many other Adventurers and staff had come down to watch her match.
No one spoke out against her, several even called out in support.
Oh Xaoc, it’s happening! It’s finally happening! Ranthia sent as a prayer—along with the last dregs of her mana—while she struggled to keep her face proud and neutral. She was almost happy enough that it made the headache worth dealing with.
She just needed to play it cool.
“Then as Guildmaster of the Sardonia branch of the Adventurer’s Guild, I hereby welcome Ranthia officially to our organization! And, by luck, I even have the perfect first quest to issue her that I had yet to stick on the board,” he made a show of holding up and unrolling the scroll, “You are to head into the local wilderness and retrieve at least ten bunches of two different herbs that grow there!”
The Adventurers cheered, loudly, as she underwent one of the oldest traditions of any branch of the adventurer’s guild. The greatest honor that they could bestow upon any newly accepted member of their ranks. A boring job that barely paid enough coins to be worth doing if you had absolutely nothing better to do.
Ranthia had been assured that both herbs were still available, even though it was currently winter. Bright and early the next day (she was excited but sleep was not at all optional), Ranthia left Sardonia’s walls for the first time as a true Adventurer on her own merits.
The age requirements to be an Adventurer were loosely defined, at best. They required the potential Adventurer to be wholly independent, and that was all. Every other Guildmaster that Ranthia had met had refused to consider her a proper independent. Some branches required their members to be sixteen, others eighteen. Few of them had ever treated her poorly, but it was a massive relief to finally find one that truly seemed to see who she was and what she needed to be.
Ranthia was entirely unsurprised that she had to begin from the most basic ranks as an Adventurer, like any new member. She had expected as much. …A small part of her still fumed about it though.
The first weed medicinal herb was a grass that grew in small patches in rocky crags around the mining region. The second was, naturally, in the opposite direction, and was a moss that grew on the oldest trees deep in the woods.
A significant portion of the day later, with two of her belt pouches probably permanently fragranced from the plants, Ranthia made her way to the apothecary that issued the request. It wasn’t one that Ranthia or her guardians usually patroned. It was in one of the newer districts of Sardonia, those that Ranthia tended to largely treat as abandoned and uninhabited. Sardonia wasn’t quite as small as they’d been told by people that had never been there, but it was definitely nowhere close to being a large town.
Supposedly the apothecary was new—on occasion people still fell for the mining companies’ bullshit, apparently—so Ranthia made a mental note to check its prices and quality while she was there. Their usual potion dealer was decent enough, but Ranthia kind of desperately needed a cheaper source of mana potions.
And maybe, just maybe, the new shop was run by a peerless alchemist that had performed a miracle. A mana potion that didn’t make her tongue want to retreat down her throat and throttle her for inflicting such an offense upon it? That would have truly been miraculous, a feat worthy of the gods themselves.
Behind the counter of the tidy—if excessively aromatic—shop was a positively ancient looking man with milky, unseeing eyes. Wooden shelves were lined with tiny clay bottles and jugs of all shapes and sizes, stopped with tallow. Beneath the goods there were little wooden signs hung that showed the more-or-less standardized symbols for each type of potion, followed by neat script that, presumably, described their full effects.
Ranthia, like Tatius and Pupius, could read a few basic, fundamental things. Life as an Adventurer had, effectively, required her to learn a few select bits, but there was precious little contained within the descriptions of the potions that she could make sense of. Obnoxiously, there seemed to be no prices listed for any of the potions on display. It wasn’t unheard of, but Ranthia always hated shops like that. There was no reason to add hurdles to a transaction!
The man was [Artisan] tagged and 148. Uncharitably, Ranthia figured that could have been his age too. The Guildmaster was—no doubt—older, but he was in far better condition than the fading man behind the counter. More levels meant more vitality, and more vitality meant a longer, healthier lifespan.
“Good day! I’m the Adventurer that just completed the job you requested. I’m here with your herbs.” Ranthia greeted, with her best customer relations voice.
She might not be impressed with the man or his shop, but she was an Adventurer!
“Eh? What was that? Speak up boy!” The old man demanded.
Ranthia was… dumbfounded. She had literally never, in her life, been mistaken for a boy by anyone that got more than a fleeting glance at her from a distance. She kept her hair cut short, yes, but clearly [Cute] had always managed to power through, despite its paltry level (life as an Adventurer, even a tagalong, left few opportunities to truly be [Cute]). And her voice had always been quite feminine! It’d been girlish, but she was proud of her increasingly womanly voice.
She was caught off-guard—and insulted—enough that she literally had no idea how to respond. She wanted to protest, she wanted to correct him, but she also just wanted to get the money and go give the guild its cut. Ordinarily for most jobs she would have brought the herbs to the guild, and they would pay her before they handled the exchange. Unfortunately, first jobs usually made the Adventurer play the role of the middleman.
…Which meant the Guildmaster had taken the job ahead of time, planning to make her an Adventurer! The realization filled her with pride and did quite a bit to offset the annoyance she’d been struggling with.
“Grandfather, don’t tease the poor girl! She’s very lovely and isn’t even a little boyish.” A young woman with silky, long blonde hair—an autumnal shade that might be mistaken for light brown in a darker environment—emerged from the back area of the shop, exasperation writ plainly upon her face. She was attractive, in a muted way that made Ranthia suspect the girl hadn’t taken an appearance skill and was maybe a year or so older than Ranthia.
“Pah, I don’t even know why I hired you if you’re just going to ruin all of my fun.” The old man grumbled.
“You hired me because you knew you’d just run off all your customers again and have to move somewhere else. Again.” The blonde sighed and shook her head before she approached Ranthia.
The young woman gave her name—which Ranthia promptly managed to forget despite her best efforts—and apologized for her grandfather’s antics.
Ranthia was trying—desperately—to decide whether the young woman had been flirting with her defense of Ranthia. This left her more than a little distracted and she, belatedly, answered the young woman’s apology with what was supposed to be “it’s fine.”
“It’s don’t fine.” Ranthia managed to blurt out instead.
A moment later she went scarlet. The young woman giggled a wonderful little giggle in response.
Ranthia wanted to be angry with herself, but she needed to know if the blonde was flirting with her.
Unfortunately, all too soon, Ranthia found herself with the coins for the job in hand and found herself outside the shop, her pouches freed from the tyranny of the strongly scented herbs. She had been so enraptured with the potential for romance, at long last, that she had managed to completely forget to ask about the potion prices too, which she spent some time kicking herself over when it dawned on her just over halfway through her walk back to the guildhall. She was entirely too tempted to head back—it was a great excuse!—but, in the end she decided to play it cool and visit another day.
Ranthia was a mature, cool Adventurer. She was the one that women swooned over; she wasn’t some lovesick puppy in need of affection.
…Yeah, she didn’t believe her self-affirmation either.
The worker at the front desk of the Guild took the Guild’s cut of the coins Ranthia earned and stamped the quest, then told her that her father wanted her to meet him at the tavern.
Ranthia’s hormonal mind was so afflicted with thoughts of the nameless young woman that she met that she oh-so-nearly asked ‘who’ in response, but she managed to catch herself and thanked the man.
“The woman of the day!” Pupius called out as she opened the door to the tavern.
Ranthia blinked as her eyes adjusted to the comparatively dim indoor light. The majority of the men and women that made a living as Adventurers in Sardonia were scattered across the tavern. Even the tavern’s usual staff were seated, with the owners—the Guildmaster’s husband and their boyfriend—both busy in the cooking area in the back. Their kitchen was visible to the whole tavern, since they prided themselves on cleanliness and presentation.
A wonderful smell made its way to Ranthia’s nose. It was a scent she knew well and always craved.
“Please tell me that’s rabbit stew, I’m starving!”
The crowd laughed and Pupius motioned for her to join him and Tatius at a table. Moments after she sat, someone placed a positively massive bowl of fresh, hot rabbit stew in front of her, along with a generous portion of fresh bread and—surprisingly—a flagon of beer.
Ranthia quirked an eyebrow. Tatius had always stopped her from having anything that wasn’t heavily watered down, other than a bit of spiced mulled wine that was only tolerated during the colder season. …Not that Remus ever got extremely cold, but campsites were more exposed than home with a good hearth.
Tatius shrugged and muttered something about her being a full Adventurer now and how that was good enough. His tone made it clear that he had been bullied into it.
Beer was fine. It wasn’t exactly a taste that she immediately craved more of, but it wasn’t awful. She took sips here and there, but she declined the chanted urges to convince her to chug it. There was no way that she was going to get drunk beyond sense when the rabbit stew was that incredible. The meat had been perfectly cooked and flaked apart in her mouth, the vegetables were all cooked properly and were clearly fresh, and even the seasoning was on point. She had a new benchmark for her own attempts, [Soups & Stews] had never gotten her even close to such perfection.
In ones and threes everyone present made their way over to Ranthia to congratulate her while she enjoyed her dinner. The young woman that had stolen her hormonal heart was almost—but not quite—forgotten while Ranthia enjoyed the camaraderie. She felt truly and widely accepted in a way she had never felt before in her life.
Fortunately, at the moment, the sentiment just made her feel warm and happy. She could do without tears on the day everyone finally accepted her as an adult and part of their group.
She was proffered other beverages as well. Posca was just as terrible as ever and Ranthia threw the mug at the man that slipped it to her. It wasn’t even properly alcoholic! Honeyed wine and mead were both so overwhelmingly sweet that she struggled to tell the difference between them. Regular red wine in a couple of different strengths. Then there was even a small bit of white wine proffered to her, which immediately earned jealous sneers from the other Adventurers.
Ranthia plainly preferred the reds, but she made as much of a show as she could of enjoying the white.
Later that night Ranthia retired to her room, definitely not drunk. She had finally, properly, on her own merits, earned a place for herself. She had a full belly, a full heart, and a head filled with all sorts of thoughts and fantasies about the young woman that she had met.
Life was good and Sardonia was, without a doubt, the greatest place in Remus.