> Today I take my turn before the grotto of ascension. It's such a strange name, "ascension". Nobody actually goes anywhere, at least not that I ever saw. Also, why is our ascension place a "grotto"? I get that it's in a cave, but Mykhal says that they had an ascension tree in the village they used to live in, before the village died.
>
> And what a strange thing to call it when all the villagers -- villains? -- No, villagers? Well, when they all leave. Mykhal says monsters got into the fields and our Lord, Cyr Wendynhelm, may-we-be-blessed-that-he-live-forever, decided it was just easier to "kill" the village by moving all the villagers to new places.
>
> Mykhal thinks that our cave is niftier, but I say a tree would be amazing. Also, I think an ascension tree would give out more animal and plant centered classes than a grotto. We get a lot of [Miners] and [Masons] and sometimes an [Assayer], but only rarely get a [Farmer] or [Herdsman]. You need something animal focused to get the [Beast Healer] [Tamer] type class, though I guess I wouldn't mind being a [Healing Novice]. I've done what I can to get that class from the grotto. I've practiced making bandages and putting them on anyone who will stand still long enough, and I've maxed out my Basic Cooking, Basic Cleaning, Basic Herbalism, Basic Tailoring, and Basic Leather Craft. I have the Basic Blade skill almost to Max, and Basic Butchering is halfway there. I had to mostly practice on mice and rats that I caught, and this last year mother let me start cutting up the roosters we've cooked.
>
> Mykhal snuck me the paper for my journal and showed me how to make ink from fine char. That got me a skill in Basic Scribing, and then he taught me letters and how they mean sounds that make up our words. I nearly wanted to become a [Scribe], but Mykhal said they're all servants to nobles or merchants and I would have to learn "soft manners". Mother says "soft manners" means "bed-warming", and the way she says it I think it may be as bad as when Mykhal's dad comes home from the mines and Dad and the other neighbor fathers have to drag him off to the stocks to "cool his head". The day after, Mykhal gets quiet and when he does talk, he says a lot of things about running away and joining the Free Lancers.
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> Well, today I go to the grotto and tomorrow Mykhal does. Maybe it'll be like he says and I'll be a [Healer Novice] and he'll be a [Warrior Novice] and we can find a [Scout Novice] to join us and head off to join the Free Lancers. Mykhal won't make me learn "soft manners". He was as squinty-eyed about it as Mama.
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Cerise carefully set down her writing stick. She couldn't afford a metal nub, but she could carve pretty well. Half the reason she hadn't maxed her Basic Blade skill was because she split most of her skill experience with other skills like Basic Woodworking and Basic Butchering. Oddly, carving the softer stone that she found around her village gave her Woodworking experience. Her parents thought she was joking, but that was the truth.
Cerise had learned to make paper, and sacrificed some of her best made gauze to the form frames. When her mother learned that all she had made came from Cerise's own gather, from the ground wool and linen she mixed to spin the threads to the frames that she carved, and even the grinding rocks she had found to use for pulping the waste parts of her herbal gatherers, Mama had thrown up her hands and said, "Fine! Children! Don't waste money!"
Mykhal knew a lot of fun things, like how to make paper, and read and write, and how to play games with numbers. His mother was from a merchant house. When their village died, she went back to her mother's house, but her marriage vows meant Mykhal stayed with his father. He told Cerise his dad was nicer before his mom had to leave. Cerise thought, only in the privacy of her mind, that maybe Mykhal's dad had just been nicer to Mykhal and mean to his mother.
After the ink had a chance to dry, she put her journal page in her book box, along with all the other pages she had written since starting her journal, two years back.
That seen to, she did the stretches Mykhal showed her that one of the guardsmen who helped his old village relocate had shown Mykhal. They were supposed to be [Warrior] training, but Cerise found them relaxing, and she was nervous. She didn't want to admit it, but this was a very big day in anyone's life.
Gaining her first class would set the course of her life. She would have to level this class for 20 levels before she could gain another, and all of her options were based on the skills she had worked on before her ascension.
She was lucky she lived in the nation of Druerjan and that here every citizen, no matter their birth, had the right to enter the holy places. Even the Xylines that had fled from Fashriyan. The elves in the Arltare archipelago only allowed other elves to enter their holy places, and the Osmurgians were rumored to tax all access to the holy places so heavily that only wealthy merchants and nobles could use them.
Cerise dressed carefully. This was not a day for her good tunic. Many people, especially the new [Miner Novices], returned from the grotto as dirty as they would be from a day of laboring at their new class.
No, this was not a day for her good clothes.
Cerise donned her rougher set of clothes. She only had three sets, and her good ones were fresh made this last winter. Her rougher set was not her oldest, either, but the set she had made herself to raise her Tailoring skill.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
She packed up the bandages she had made and the packets of herbs she had prepared into a leather sack she had made from the rat skins she had tanned. She added some trail loaves she had made, encased in wax from the wild beehives she had found at the end of the growing season. She had only taken half of one after smoking off the bees, and her mother had praised her find.
People said you did not need proof of your skills. The holy places knew. Still, Cerise felt better for having these things coming along with her.
On impulse, she added her book box and the jar of char ink she had made, along with both of her writing sticks.
Now, she just had to wait for her mother and father to return from their own ritual preparations.
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Cerise's mother hugged her and kissed her cheek, then handed her over to her father, who smiled a blubbering big smile, tears spilling over his cheeks.
"My baby's almost all grown up!" He wailed with joyful melancholy, hugging her close enough to squeeze the air from her lungs.
"Dad!" She wailed back, embarrassed. "I'm thirteen! I have to reach level twenty before I'm an adult. Stop this!"
He laughed and ruffled her hair, releasing his squeezing hug. Like always, as soon as Cerise started blushing, her father relaxed. "You will be fine! Whatever happens, we will love you no matter what."
Cerise's shoulders slumped and she turned flat, dead eyes to her parent. In a voice to match her expression, she said, "Oh. Thanks for your confidence."
Tears still leaking from the outside corners of his eyes, Cerise's father just grinned at her.
Mykhal stood a few steps back from them, shifting from foot to foot. He waved an encouraging hand her way and Cerise waved back.
Then, it was time. She straightened, slung her bag made from rat leather over her shoulder, and entered the tunnel that led to the holy place, the grotto of ascension.
Cerise needed no torch or rush light to make her way, even past the edge of the light shining in from the tunnel entrance. Veins of luminescent rock lined the tunnel, casting dim light that was sufficient to illuminate the path tread by thousands of feet before Cerise.
She wanted to stop, to study the walls, but she knew her parents were still watching. They would snark at her, if nothing else, and probably tease her about being afraid if she stopped where they could see. With that in mind, Cerise waited until she reached a curve in the tunnel before glancing to see if she could still be seen from the entrance. She couldn't so Cerise took a careful extra step deeper into the tunnels before she turned to the walls.
[Basic Stealth] advances to Beginner-9.
The notice surprised Cerise. She must have been right on the cusp for her simple deceit to tip the scale over to maximum.
Before gaining a class, a person's soul could only handle Basic skills up to the top of the Beginner skill rank. Each skill rank had ten divisions, starting from zero (0) and ending at nine (9).
After she got her class, each level of her class would strengthen Cerise's soul, allowing her to handle another rank division. That is, until her next full rank level was in reach. That would require five class levels. So, she would be able to become Practiced in her skills up to class level 10. After class level 15, she would be able to gain Intermediate skill ranks. A lot of people waited until they were class level 25 to take their next class just so they would be at Intermediate-9 in their primary skills and hopefully able to unlock better second class choices.
Cerise pushed thoughts of skills and levels from her mind. To everything there came its time, and now was Cerise's time to study the walls of this tunnel and the blue tracings illuminating her path.
She ran her hands over the rocky walls, flakes of gem-bright dust clinging to her fingertips. The walls were unlike regular rocks. There were no striations, no veins of mixed in minerals. If anything, these walls appeared made from rock dust that had been compressed down to an ever more solid form. The organic seeming veins of light were odd in that they seemed like they should have been no different from the rest of the walls, and yet they glowed.
No matter how hard she looked, Cerise could not figure out what caused the glow to happen at all, let alone in the places it showed up. The puzzle frustrated Cerise enough that she stalled even longer, until out of frustration she tried what she did when hunting rats for her skill practice. She quieted her body and unfocused her gaze. She sank into a waiting stillness, turning her thoughts toward her senses.
[Basic Hunting] advances to Beginner-5.
An odd mist moved just over the light veins. In the brief moment before the Voice of the World echoed in her mind, Cerise saw the mist and wondered, "Is that mana?"
[Mana Sensing] learned! Comprehension assessed at Beginner-0.
That was utterly unexpected, and for a few moments Cerise seriously considered leaving now and returning after she maxed out this new skill.
But, then she thought about all the opportunities she would not have to advance the rank of the skill. There just wasn't a lot of mana to sense in her village, and so Cerise decided to continue forward, while attempting to return to that mind space as she walked. It was difficult, and she mostly got nothing, but a couple of times she saw the mist again. The second time came just at the cusp of the grotto of ascension, earning her an advancement to Beginner-1. Cerise decided that meant walking and sensing were very, very difficult things if a mere two successes, and fleeting ones at that, made such a difference.
She paused on the threshold and tried to sense mana while standing still. She wasn't sure how long she had delayed already, but this was important. Surely her parents would understand!
[Mana Sensing] advances to Beginner-3.
The number was wrong, and that jolted Cerise out of her trance. She just gotten to Beginner-1. Where had Beginner-2 gone?
She was also very thirsty, and that made Cerise guess she had trained through the notice of skilling up to Beginner-2.
Which meant she had been in here for a significant length of time. She sucked in a steadying breath and stepped into the grotto.
From the threshold it had looked like a cave room perhaps as wide as two tall men laying head to toe, and about as tall of a ceiling. The oddly uniform rock walls of the tunnel became more natural rocks with the coarse grains of granites, only mixed with a lot of quartz bits. The blue light-ways all converged to a central point in the ceiling, a quartz spike about as wide as her spread hand and twice that long extending from the brown-tinted granite ceiling.
Once she stepped over the threshold, though, she wasn't Cerise anymore.