In any case, Joe prepared his corner before rising to easily crush another four jobs, rushing them all to level thirty just a bit after lunch. In fact, he was surprised to find he was able to hit thirty by midmorning, so swapped out his jobs once again, choosing the next set of jobs that had become available: Loki Bishop, mana doctor, squire spearman, and navigator. He found himself quite excited about the mana doctor, hoping he could get some form of magic healing that may be useful rather than triage, especially if they found themselves stuck deep in a dungeon. This beginner dungeon was already five rather large levels, although the only one that really took a significant amount of time was the maze. Regardless, the time to get out would be way too much to meaningfully save a life.
Once again, he was able to hit level thirty in his main job even before lunch. He’d been more careful to watch the levels as he didn’t want to waste time when he could just as easily swap out another job that could add to his stats. He was excited to see his new bishop job hit thirty so quickly, and as he looked at his stats to consider other jobs, he realized that his third subjob, navigator, was only at level twenty seven. When he looked at his second subjob, it was just over twenty eight and still a long ways to twenty nine, while his first subjob, the mana doctor job, was just shy of hitting twenty nine. It was… an interesting revelation, and Joe wasn’t able to really figure it out. But… experience is… lessened the further down?
He spent a bit of time on it but then simply went back to his fight and found that all the other three hit thirty, although the first subjob did faster than the second, which reached thirty before the third. There’s gotta be some kind of… penalty, then? To each subjob? The lower ones get less experience? Are there other penalties? But it’s not… functionally meaningful… it just… slows it down by a tiny bit of time.
Joe took out his notebook and jotted the questions down quickly but then turned back to the fighting as he could think about this back home. He did, however, began paying very careful attention to the job growth rates and found the same, with the last subjobs leveling the slowest. His last faith job, bishop, didn’t unlock another job at thirty, so Joe was stuck keeping the job so that he could continue being able to change jobs, not wanting to waste a char: change on it and having the space to do so. The job would level and open another soon enough.
Regardless, being able to plow through eleven jobs in a single day was pretty exciting while simultaneously becoming quite boring. Looking over eleven new jobs just wasn’t quite as exciting. He even considered, around the afternoon, to push on to level another four jobs as it appeared he was able to reach level thirty in a quarter of a day, but decided to not be too greedy and headed home. Besides, he’d left Kilniara back at the noble’s home, and he knew he needed to get back to make sure things were alright. He wasn’t concerned at all, but he did have a responsibility.
Besides, eleven new level thirty jobs and one thirty four job! Nice! Joe packed up his things and headed from the dungeon, prepared to take a look at his gains at the baths. Once he was settled into a nice warm bath, in a more secluded area, he flipped open his status to take a look at things. He had a ton of new skills and while some of them were interesting, he found himself less and less concerned with skills as they didn’t really seem meaningfully useful. He had leveled doctor, mana doctor, and magic healer, all exciting for him. The skills he gained were diagnose and heal, with the doctor, cure basic status, cure advanced status, and cure all with the mana doctor, and cure all and magic heal with the magic healer. That magic healer really enticed him.
With the partier line of jobs, he’d been able to level guide, navigator, and looter. They gave him the skills goal, dungeon finder, monster guide, seeker, party communicate, magic map, party locate, monster sense, share map with party, treasure nose, enhanced treasure guide, and treasure evaluate. Cool skills but not really what he wanted or was looking for as he really just wanted to get all of them in a party, although, being able to make maps and share them while also communicating really sounded interesting. Gotta teach reading and writing first, though… Joe grimaced at the thought
His spearman jobs were simple, opening spearman, squire spearman, and seasoned spearman. The first skill for all three jobs were the same, giving inherit *@#&$^, mercenary, #&$&*, duelist, soldier, gladiator, horseman, and warrior. Huh… two other … what… types of fighters… classes? Makes sense… interesting, but… then… Oh… huh… maybe one of them is the rogue from when Kilniara tried to get her specialized class? Then… the other… Joe’s grin grew. Interesting…
Joe turned back to his three spearman jobs, studying them carefully. All three also gave him inherit: staff warrior. Spearman specifically gave him spear, skill: poke, and skill: head crack. The skills actually brought a frown to his face. Squire and seasoned spearman also got the same skills, but seasoned spearman got those skills sooner by a couple of levels and gained one more skill extra. Squire gained the skill forward spin defense at level thirty while seasoned spearman got it level twenty instead. At level thirty, seasoned spearman gained one other skill: 360 attack. All seemed pretty straight forward although Joe found the skills rewarded both lacking and worrisome.
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The faith jobs, however, only unlocked twice today: abbot and bishop. Joe wasn’t sure if bishop was the end of the line or if it would take a higher level of bishop to unlock the next job in line, but if he were to guess, just going by the names, he was leaning towards the latter. The skills he gained were change main job a bit more, then sub job, then extra sub job, and a garbled skills at level thirty. The bishop was similar, but it got two garbled jobs at levels twenty and thirty. He wasn’t sure what to think of it, but when he saw the spearman job skills, he wondered if something similar was happening as the main job change skill had become a skill available earlier and earlier in the job levels with each job up the faith ladder he went. The chaplain got the change main job at thirty, while cleric was at twenty, and priest got it at ten and the abbot got it at five. It made sense if the garbled skills were just skills with ever lessening requirements. In the end, he found the overwhelming amount of information a bit much, and simply recorded and studied it dutifully but didn’t really excitedly look into it, although he did make a mental note of magic healing.
He took some time playing with some of the skills and used the guide’s skills of goal, dungeon finder, monster guide, and seeker. Monster guide didn’t really do much and neither did seeker and goal. When he used the magic map, his smile turned absolutely evil as a map overlaid before him which showed pretty much everywhere he’d been in the city. He smiled as he saw the map showed the streets and even labeled some of the places he’d visited and knew what was there such as the carpentry area he’d gone to earlier today. When he used dungeon finder, he first felt a pull towards four places, shuddering underneath their pull before two of the pulls disappeared and were replaced on the map when the advanced and beginner dungeons appeared. Joe’s grin only grew. Nice! I can find dungeons even I do not know about but when I find them, they’re automatically added. Joe chuckled at that, then re-evaluated the other skills available from the party line. They appeared to be immensely useful and immediately practical. He looked at goal, seeker, and monster guide one more time, using the help system.
Help. How do you use goal?
Apply the goal you wish to have.
Well… about as useless as I thought, um… any goal? Uh… I want to find… Garnedell. Oh, wait.. um.. My goal is to find Garnedell.
Joe waited, having chosen a goal, but nothing seemed to occur and after fiddling with it another few times, he sighed and moved on.
Help. How do I use monster guide?
Access monster guide while looking at the monster you wish guidance of. Seek the monster you wish to find.
Joe’s eyes rose at that, then smiled. He began nodding to himself slowly even as possibilities ran through his mind. Then he frowned as he realized if he wanted access to the monster guide, he would need to have guide as one of his jobs and if he wanted the map, then he would need navigator. Or waste my two chars… arg! He sighed, then went to the next skill: seeker.
Help. How do I use seeker?
Choose a goal and then seek it.
Joe blinked, then stifled some cursing as he realized that it was a two part skill, both useless without the other. It wasn’t that much of a problem with seeker as the guide job would already have goal, but that made goal a useless skill until he actually made it to level thirty. He wasn’t certain why the system was like this except to be as useless as possible. He stifled his frustration and put it to the test.
Seek … Garnedell? Seek my goal?
The skill fired with the second statement, and he immediately felt a pull in a specific direction. He frowned with some thought then pulled up his magic map but the map didn’t update to show where Garnedell was. He simply had a pull similar to the pull of dungeon finder.
Wonder what the limits are?
Joe’s thoughts scattered in a storm of ideas before he latched on to one of the most extreme of options, then grinned.
Let’s see if you can handle this one! My goal is to return to Earth. I seek my goal.
Joe felt nothing for a moment, a tension that seemed to take a hold of him as the very air around him seemed to still and the world held its breath. The tension grew and grew until he felt the very pressure of thousands of atmosphere pressing down upon him, but not physically… somehow. Suddenly, the pressure vanished and faded away without really causing him any harm. The feeling of power exploded outward and a shockwave that was visible and invisible shuddered outward in spastic movements as if the very world itself was lagging. The shockwave spastically shuddered until finally the world seemed to catch up with the calculations needed and the shockwave erupted outwards rapidly, spreading outward in three dimensions before rushing out of the bathing house beyond Joe’s sight. He looked around and found the people in the bath house looking around fearfully, all of them flattened on the floor. Joe looked at the people, wondering, but then was suddenly distracted when he felt a dozen or so ghost like tugs pulling in various directions all around him. One even pointed straight up, but appeared to be the faintest of them all.