Soul repair unlocks the following skills:
Logic, Intermediate-3
Oration, Practiced-7
Research, Advanced-4
Cyphers, Beginner-7
Acting, Intermediate-9
Alchemy, Beginner-4
Natural Weapon Combat, Practiced-2
Drawing, Practiced-4
Basic Scribing advances to Scribing, Advanced-8
Basic Cooking advances to Cooking, Intermediate-3
Basic Identify advances to Appraise, Beginner-9
Warning! Skill proficiencies exceed soul structure reinforcement. Skill proficiencies will be reduced to current maximum rating for the supplicant's soul structure until supplicant raises soul structure above assessed ratings. Experience with skills may be negatively impacted during this time.
Assessing supplicant status for assignment of initial soul structure reinforcement ...
The following classes have been identified as significant matches to existing soul structure. Please indicate preference.
[Arcane Scout Novice]
[Arcane Healer Novice]
[Spy Novice]
Cerise felt like her head was stuffed full of too many thoughts. Worse, she had to make a choice -- the Voice of the World was demanding it, and right now!
She did not want to be a spy, Cerise knew that. For one, who would she spy for? For another, there were a lot of people who would kill her faster for having that class than the [Thief] or even the [Rogue] classes. Nope, she did not need those problems!
And she would rather be a healer than a scout.
Class preference noted. Applying class.
Evaluating experience ...
Assessing current skills ...
Identifying skill unlocks ...
Congratulations! You are now an [Arcane Healer Novice], level 6. The following skills will be advanced:
Basic Butchering advances to General Anatomy, Beginner-5
Basic Leather Craft, Basic Tailoring, Basic Woodworking, and Basic Tinkering combined advanced to General Craft, Practiced-6 (8)
Basic Herbalism, Alchemy combined advanced to Potion Brewing, Practiced-2
Please review your unlocked skills from your profile to fill your class specific skills slots.
Cerise felt the pressure to decide release her, only to be replaced by a nausea inducing shift somehow both inside her and all around her. She stumbled, fell to her knees, and then staggered upright.
Some sense, some pressure to go urged her to weave and stagger her way out of the grotto, down the long tunnel, and out the entrance. The sun was lower on the horizon, and considering she had entered during the morning, Cerise really had been a while in the grotto.
Mykhal was the first to reach her. He was a full head height taller than herself, but Cerise was curled up in on herself from the nausea, and he had to stoop to get a supporting arm around her.
"What happened to you?" He asked, his voice breaking as it had begun doing just recently.
Cerise wet her lips and groaned. "Memories? In my head? Skills, level 6 ..." She mumbled.
"I told you to ease up on all that bandaging practice!" Her mother scolded, moving the both of them to the side, where grass made for a more comfortable seat than the cobblestone pathway.
Holy places withered when people built around them, and faster if people tried to live right next to them, but adding small adornments to the sites could strengthen them. The cobblestone path led from the village's gate to the grotto, and each class-less supplicant laid a stone or fixed one back down, a symbolic rite of gratitude to the world for the granting of a class and the hope for a long and prosperous life.
The phrase jarred Cerise's mind, and she gave into the nausea, turning her head in time to avoid splattering anyone with her vomit. She didn't have much to throw up, but the heaving did help to calm her body. When she finished, her stomach felt fine and her headache eased from splitting down to irritating.
Mykhal pressed his water bag at her, and she took care not to put her lips to the pour spout. She rinsed, spat, and then drank, feeling even better yet afterward. She handed back his water bag with a smile and scooted away from her vomit.
They followed, her parents and Mykhal. Her mother fixed Cerise with a no-nonsense look and said, "Tell us about your class, now."
Cerise grinned. "[Arcane Healing Novice]," she intoned, emphasizing each word with a slight pause. Her parents' jaws dropped.
Mykhal asked, "How?"
"Remember how Cord taught us to stalk pests? Do that while you're looking at the lights in the tunnel, and that's how I got [Mana Sensing]. Go. Do it now. You have until tomorrow. Don't go into the grotto, but I got up to 3 in there from 0. You can do better."
Mykhal glanced at her parents. His dad wouldn't be back from the mines for another three days, and Cerise's parents were going to stand in for his family.
Cerise's parents exchanged considering looks before nodding. "You can overnight. When Cerise has her legs under her, she can go fetch us food and blankets."
He grinned and looked at a recovering Cerise with joy. "Alright!" He said, and went in just far enough to start examining the light veins.
"If we get too distracting, go around the corner," Cerise called out, getting a hand wave of acknowledgment from her friend.
"Now, tell us everything," her mother urged.
Cerise omitted her stealth skill up and being offered the [Spy] class path. She glossed over the skills she gained from her soul repair, and she did a terrible job trying to describe the world she vaguely remembered. Compassion and the desire to keep her parents from worrying for her kept her vague about the memory of dying, and the grieving she remembered for a sibling born to other parents in another life. Cerise could remember her mother miscarrying twice, and she vaguely recalled an older sister who left one day and never came home.
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When she was done, her parents exchanged speaking looks again.
Her father, his voice and tone unnaturally grave, said, "Don't tell anyone that you have a traveling soul. No one! At least, not until you have twenty levels over the king himself!"
Cerise started to ask why, but some part of herself that she hadn't heard before answered first. This world is violent, and knowledge is power. People in power kill those they cannot control. "Yes, father," she said, distracted by the dismay of that recognition.
"I mean this," he said.
Cerise focused her gaze on him, meeting his eyes. "I know. I won't even burden Mykhal with my secret, and I'm sorry I've endangered you by saying anything."
Her mother pulled her into a hug. "Don't be silly! We're your parents! Of course you did right by telling us!"
Cerise hugged her back, and did not speak for a bit.
After a few minutes of silence, her father asked, "What are your skill choices? Don't take any yet! But, what are your choices?"
Cerise projected her desire for her profile and the Voice of the World responded. She took a moment to get familiar with the changes, then skimmed over to her class skill choices.
"Mana Sensing is still a general skill that I can tier up into the class skill if I choose Sight, Hearing, Scent, or ... Proprioception." She sounded out the last word. Without prompting she said, "That's some kind of internal feeling thing, like how you can feel your heart beating in your chest, I think."
Her father frowned in thought. "Hmm ... I don't think anyone in the village knows about--."
"I got it!" Mykhal yelled, excited. "I got Mana Sensing! It's Beginner-0!"
Cerise laughed. "Good!" She yelled back. "Keep it up! You should get at least to four before morning!"
"Ha! Yes!" He crowed back, settling into his new skill practice with ferocity.
Her parents looked at each other. Her father, quiet seriousness, said, "We're going to wait until Mykhal classes before telling anyone what you discovered. That way, no one can stop him, or take his time in the grotto."
"If anyone asks, he's just eager and we're being happy to stand for him," Cerise said, smiling beatifically.
"Don't hold still long enough to be Identified," her mother said.
"I'll get things for tonight now then, while most people are working," Cerise said, getting her parents' nod to the decision.
Cerise hurried down the trail. No one actually guarded the gates. They were there more as openings in the palisade that protected the village from random monster incursions. She tried to be stealthy, and made it all the way home without being hailed.
It took only a few moments for Cerise to gather blankets and the pottage left warming by the hearth. A quick moment longer to put bowls for four and spoons into a coarse linen sack, along with some apples and onions and another full water bag, and Cerise was off again. She was most of the way back up the trail when she got the notice.
[Basic Stealth] advances to [Stealth], Practiced-0.
Cerise grinned, and kept the Stealth up all the way to the grotto. A bit of wisdom suggested she not show off that skill around her mother.
"You're back fast," her father said.
"I didn't run into anyone," Cerise said, setting down the blankets, pottage pot, and sack of foodstuffs.
The speculative look her parents shot Cerise made her question just what skills they had when it came to sneaking and finding out things. However, they declined to comment. Her father got them back to reviewing Cerise's possible class skills.
"Triage is a skill for identifying who I can and cannot help, and how badly they are hurt. It's got both active and passive uses.
"Diagnose looks similar, but it takes longer to use, but it tells me a lot more about the person I use it on, at least what's wrong with them.
"Stabilize looks good -- it's an active that helps people survive 'shocking wounds'.
"Greater Cleanse? Oh! If I get that up to Practiced I'll have a Cleansing Aura that will help fight off infections!
"Lend Vitality... I'm not sure about that one. It looks like I take on some of the person's wounds somehow. That sounds like a dangerous skill to take.
"Ah! Here are the [Healer] skills! Heal Wounds, Heal Toxins, and Heal Diseases! They're all combination skills, some passive intuitions and active Stamina use to apply mana to speed healing in the target person.
"I think I need to raise my Mana Sensing before I see any actual spell-skills."
They discussed Cerise's options and the situations where she could expect to use the different skills. The Heal skills were givens that she would take. At level six, she had six of her ten skill slots per class available to fill. The questions they debated centered on whether she should pick up both Triage and Diagnose. If she did, then Cerise would have to pick between Stabilize and Greater Cleanse. If not, she might still pick up whichever of the two she did not choose at this level.
And that did not broach what to do about any arcane skills waiting for the prerequisite rank in Mana Sensing.
"We have to stay out here," her mother said when she grew tired of the debate. "What's stopping you from holding vigil with Mykhal and working on your own sensing skills?"
"I got pushed out when I was classed," Cerise said.
"So sit at the entrance and sense," her father said.
Cerise bonked head into her palm. "Okay," she said and took her blanket off to the entrance. She settled herself into the "hunter's trance" as Cord called it. After a bit, she could feel more than see the mana misting about the tunnels, somehow released from the veins of light in the walls.
The first few skill up notices broke her concentration, but around Beginner-6 Cerise found herself relying less and less on the trance to notice the mana. The sun had set and the moon was rising by then. At some point in her distraction, her mother had placed a bowl full of pottage stew beside her and handed a similar bowl to Mykhal. Cerise ate the cold stew and considered how to push her senses to grow.
Mana was a legendary thing, at least to the common person in Druerjan. Arcane classes appeared every now and again, but [Mages] were rare, and mostly from noble houses. But, what if mana was like air? What if it was mostly unseen, but everywhere? What if it was just the knowing of how to see it that was rare?
Cerise finished her stew, and thought about taking the Heal Wounds skill. The sense of the skill was an intuition, one that came from the Voice of the World. What if the skills themselves were gifts of mana?
She opened herself up to her Mana Sensing skill and opened her profile. Normally, viewing one's profile overwhelmed one senses, like a big sign shoved in one's face, but that was precisely why Cerise decided to experiment thusly. She could feel as much as see the misty mana in her own body respond to her desire.
Mana Sensing advances to Mana Proprioception, Beginner-8.
General skill unlocked: Mana Sight, Mana Scent, Mana Hearing.
Cerise blinked. Her profile altered before her gaze as the general skill Mana Sensing was replaced with Mana Proprioception and bumped up two divisions.
She immediately looked at her class skill options. A new one appeared: Arcane Healing. It was a purely passive skill that allowed her to combine her Stamina and Mana Pools, to use them interchangeably, for all active skills. It also reduced the strain of infusing mana when using her Heal skills.
A headache slammed into the back of her brain. She glimpsed four skills writing themselves onto her class skill list. Apparently, her reflexive want reaction was enough to select the skills.
Well, if she was doing this, she might as well do this all at once. Triage and Stabilize soon followed. She would pick up Diagnose and Greater Cleanse during her class level ups, but if a mine collapse happened before then, those two would be the more useful.
Cerise adjusted the blanket around her shoulders, settled herself into a recline against the grotto's entrance, and let sleep claim her, worn out by the day's events.
Cerise
Race: Human
Age: 13, Youth
Total Level: 6
Class(es): [Arcane Healer Novice]
Social Strata: Commoner, Freeman
Pools:
Health: Low
Stamina: Low
Mana: Low
Attributes:
Focus: Moderate
[Arcane Healer Novice] (6)
Arcane Healing: B-0
Heal Wounds: B-0
Heal Toxins: B-0
Heal Diseases: B-0
Triage: B-0
Stabilize: B-0
General Skills
Slots: 1, Used: 0
Acting: P-6 (I-9)
Appraise: P-0
Blades, Basic: B-8
Cleaning, Basic *: B-9
Cooking: P-6 (I-3}
Cyphers: B-7
Drawing: P-4
General Anatomy *: B-5
General Craft *: P-6 (8)
Hunting, Basic: B-5
Logic: P-6 (I-3}
Mana Proprioception *: B-8
Natural Weapon Combat: P-2
Oration: P-6 (P-7)
Potion Brewing *: P-2
Research: P-6 (A-4)
Scribing: P-6 (A-8)
Stealth: P-0
General Skill Unlocks
Mana Sight
Mana Scent
Mana Hearing