"I want to come with you."

Slowly, Cayden lowered the hand holding a half-eaten apple back to the table.

He'd known this was coming. Ever since his apology and Tiana's promise that she wouldn't make any agreements with the princess without first talking with him about it, he'd been waiting for the other shoe to drop. This was their first major fight since she'd joined the fateweaver compound, but they'd had more fights than he could count in the years before. She wouldn't promise something like that unless she knew she could get something else out of it. He didn't know exactly what form it might take, but he knew that, eventually, she'd want a concession from him in trade for her own.

The joke was on her, though – this was something Cayden would have given her, regardless.

"The delve, you mean?" Cayden asked, carefully keeping his face neutral. "You want to come along?"

"Yes. I think it's time I developed some combat skills. Especially if you won't agree to let me get a job that can protect me..." Cayden consciously kept his mouth shut, not eager to re-open that argument. "...then I need to have the skills to protect myself."

They, along with Elise, were sitting together at one of the tables in the dining hall. Elise was helping him to plan his delve 'homework', a delve that was looking to be very different from any of his recent dungeon visits.

"Are you sure you're ready? You remember what I told you about Elise and my first delve, right? How close we came to dying?"

"Well I'll need to learn sometime. I can't stay at Delver's Academy forever, not without learning some serious combat skills or...I don't know...becoming an attendant for some powerful noble."

Cayden winced at the reminder. "Fine. You can come, but there are some ground rules you'll need to follow." Truthfully, Cayden was glad Tiana was pursuing combat skills on her own. The world was a dangerous place, this world even more so than his previous, and she needed to know how to defend herself. He doubted she'd be nearly as amenable if he were the one to suggest it, and this was about as ideal of a 'first delve' as he could think of. With him blinded and without Delphia to heal, he was already planning on choosing the easiest dungeon he could find. If worse came to worst, she could just run while Cayden did his best to draw the monsters' attention. "First: you have to promise to obey my orders."

Tiana gave a dramatic sigh, before scoffing and letting out a dramatic, "Fiiiinnneeee."

But Cayden was having none of her joking tone.

"I'm serious. We make a mistake in a dungeon, and you could die. This is non-negotiable. Regardless of what happens outside the dungeon, within I am the delve leader. You WILL follow orders, or you won't be coming."

"I understand," Tiana, suitably chastised, replied.

Cayden waited a moment before nodding. "Second, you'll need to share your status with me. And if it's not up to snuff, learn at least one combat skill."

"Fair enough. Can we wait until we have a bit more privacy for that, though?"

"Sure," Cayden nodded. [Dual-Speak] should've been enough to ensure privacy, but sharing a full status was deeply personal – he could understand how doing so in such a public place might feel a bit awkward. "Finally: you'll carry some of Elise's old enchanted items with you. Both her shielding and BFG enchantments." He paused, turning to where he knew Elise was sitting. "If that's okay with you."

"Of course," Elise quickly answered.

"Wait, hold on," Tiana cut in. "How am I supposed to grow if I'm just relying on Elise's enchanted items to survive and kill everything? What's even the point of the delve? No offense, Elise, but it's not like you were trying to get stronger when you went on delves."

"None taken," Elise responded, and Cayden could hear the smile in her voice. "I didn't want to use those enchantments, either. Crafting them took time from my other projects. Cayden wouldn't let me come if I didn't, though."

"Don't encourage her," Cayden said, before turning to his sister. "And you don't have to use them to clear the dungeon. Just have them on you – just in case."

"Fine. I suppose I can agree to that."

"It's settled, then. Now, we just have to figure out an appropriate dungeon."

----------------------------------------

"You already know my three racial skills: [See Fate], [Strengthen Fate], and [Weaken Fate]," Tiana began, and Cayden nodded. The fateweaver skills were unique in their effects, but none of them would be particularly useful in a dungeon. "My general skills really aren't that impressive. Mostly social skills. Nothing that'll help me in combat."

"That's fine," Cayden replied with his own borrowed [Dual-Speak]. "List them off anyway. It's best we know everything you're capable of. Just in case."

Elise was nearby, listening in to Tiana's mental communications despite being unable to respond in the same manner. As Tiana rattled off her general skills and their effects, Cayden heard the familiar scratching of Elise's pen in her soul notebook, the girl likely already planning the best ways to optimize Tiana's build.

Tiana's general skills were exactly as she'd described: social skills that would allow her to remain unnoticed and aid her in politicking. They were somewhat interesting, just by the fact that none of them were skills Cayden had ever been offered and it was fun to theorize how they might combine into tier-two skills, but that was about it. Cayden was unlikely to ever choose any of the skills; they belonged to someone whose battlefield was noble courtrooms and back-room dealings, not to someone who fought monsters.

"We'll have to get you at least one combat general skill, I think," he suggested after Tiana finished. "You have to have something that will at least boost some of your physical stats, and I can't imagine [Attendant] has anything for that." One of the most useful abilities of [Inspect], at least for Cayden, was how he could use it to identify who was around him without having to first hear them speak, and doing so also revealed their class. Tiana's [Attendant] class was common enough that he'd already learned the skills that typically came with the class in his Class Progression lessons, and though he couldn't remember the specific skills off the top of his head, he knew none of them were combat-oriented.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

He paused. "Wait. Where does your [Dual-Speak] skill come from?" He may not have been able to recall [Attendant's] skills, but he would've remembered if [Dual-Speak] had been one of them.

"About that..." Tiana responded, her hesitance conveyed through her mental voice. "[Attendant] isn't actually my class. My real class is [Spy]."

Cayden waited for her to continue, his claws very consciously not flexing by his sides.

"It has four class skills: [Dual-Speak], [Act the Part], [Look the Part], and [Secret Record]. [Dual-Speak] you already know. [Act the Part] allows me, by touching a class stone, to take the class skills of another class I qualify for, at seventy percent efficiency. [Look the Part] allows me to display another class to any analysis abilities, and [Secret Record] lets me record up to one hundred hours of audio and one hundred different images from things I hear and see." Suddenly, Cayden’s mind was filled with an image of himself and Elise sitting next to each other on the couch in their dorm from Tiana's perspective. "I can also send the images and sounds through [Dual-Speak]."

"That's...interesting," Cayden calmly replied.

"Yeah, the class skills for [Spy] aren't especially powerful. But it makes up for it by the fact that I basically have two classes at the same time."

Elise tapped the table, and Cayden could feel her bouncing in her seat next to him on the couch. She clearly wanted to say something that shouldn't be repeated out loud, and Cayden sighed. The level of paranoia they were maintaining was exhausting, especially since they had no idea if any of it was actually necessary. But since it was Tiana's skills and not his own they were discussing, he was fine with it.

It was Tiana who figured out what Elise wanted to say first. "Oh. Oh! Yeah...do you think you could [Borrowed Power] my [Act the Part] skill?"

Despite his distracted thoughts, Cayden's eyes widened. That would be extremely powerful. An entire extra set of class skills from a single [Borrowed Power] skill? And if, with it, he could acquire another class with a similar ability, nesting classes inside of each other?

But after a moment of thought, he tried to calm his suddenly racing heart. "Some skills I can't actually take with [Borrowed Power]," he cautioned, tempering expectations. "It only works on skills that can be 'used' on me. [Conduit] helps with some of that, letting me gain certain passive skills I can’t otherwise get. But it doesn't work for everything."

But he could still hear the excitement in Tiana's mental voice, and Elise had yet to stop bouncing. "Well, there's an easy way to find out. Should we go test?"

Cayden sighed. He wasn't in exactly the best mindset for testing out a potential new skill. On top of that, he was frustrated with the fact that he'd further corrupt any data of how switching skills versus leveling saved skills caused [Borrowed Power] and [Save Progress] to level, though he supposed that was already a lost cause, at least for this level.

He gave a nod and pulled himself up out of the couch. "Let's go."

----------------------------------------

Twenty minutes later, Cayden walked out of the building housing the academy's class-stone to Tiana's disappointed mental voice. Try as they might, [Act the Part] never appeared as a valid target for [Borrowed Power], regardless of how Tiana tried to use her skill through [Conduit] while Cayden touched the class stone.

Cayden frowned as well, but he couldn't bring himself to be too disappointed. He knew Elise had stated that every class skill also existed as a general skill, but she also constantly reminded him that there was no such thing as an absolute when it came to skills. [Act the Part] seemed intrinsically tied to the [Spy] class, and it was overpowered enough of a skill that Cayden had a hard time picturing it existing separately.

Plus, his thoughts were distracted by...other things.

"Should I check if I can change my [Act the Part] class to something more combat-oriented while I'm here?" Tiana asked. "If I'm not going to work for the princess or another noble, the [Attendant] skills won't see much use."

But Cayden shook his head. "Keep it for now. Any class you grab would likely be a temporary one, anyway. Better to earn a class that will fit you for the long-term than something that doesn't work with your combat style or you'll dump in a few weeks."

"Okay," Tiana agreed, and Cayden was somewhat surprised with how easily she was accepting his instruction. He was the combat expert of their group, even moreso than Elise, so it was appropriate...but it still was a pleasant surprise for his sister to be so agreeable. "You want me to get a general skill, then? Which one do you think I should get?"

"I was thinking [Dagger Mastery]," Cayden replied, dropping [Dual-Speak] so Elise could more easily participate. While Tiana could project her higher-leveled [Dual-Speak] to both Cayden and Elise at the same time, Cayden had to repeat everything twice if he wanted to include his friend. "It should work well with what you learned in the compound, it's easy enough to learn, and it helps train your combat ability separate from skills."

"Works for me," Tiana replied. "How long do you think it'll take? Should we start working on it now?"

"Eh, not right now. I want to get some...personal training in first. In two hours at the normal arena?"

"Sure. Need guiding with your exercises to make sure you don't crash into anyone?"

"I should be good, thanks," Cayden answered, struggling to keep his voice even.

"Okay, I'll see you at ninth bell, then. What are you doing right now, Elise? Want to..."

But Cayden was already walking away from his friend and sister, his tapping spear haft leading the way, and he breathed a sigh of relief when they were finally out of earshot. He'd been struggling to keep it together ever since he'd learned of Tiana's actual class, and he considered it an accomplishment that neither of them seemed to notice anything amiss.

Classes weren't quite the same as skills. Both classes and skills could be acquired by performing specific actions with a certain mindset, but classes were more of a...long-term effort. Skills generally only needed the required action to be performed correctly once before they were offered by the system. Classes, on the other hand, required weeks or months of focused dedication to their requirements. Of repeating the actions that earned the class over and over and over before a class-stone would offer the respective class.

[Spy] was a class for those alone in a hostile environment, surrounded by opposing forces, their only support from those who could only be communicated with via [Dual-Speak]. And even that, Cayden noted, was one-way – the [Spy] was meant to provide information to others, not to receive any aid or communication in return.

How long did it take for Tiana to realize the situation she was in? For her to see her instructors and fellow fateweavers as her enemies, her only hope coming from letters from friends and family that never arrived? How long did she act as a [Spy], a lonely agent in a foreign land, before the system recognized her actions via the corresponding class? Time when Cayden was happily delving and pursuing his own strength and happiness, oblivious to his sister's plight?

There was nothing he could do to change it, and little he could think of that he might've been able to do differently, given what he knew at the time. But that didn't stop the guilt that filled him, and his muscles burned with pent-up energy from the knowledge. He planned to exercise himself to exhaustion over the next couple of hours before teaching Tiana [Dagger Mastery].

It wouldn't help his guilt, he knew; he knew of nothing aside from time that might banish that feeling. But it would give him something else to focus on for a few hours.