> Chapter -2147483645 (No longer human)

“What do you mean ‘no longer human’?” asked Alex.

She and Ada were sitting at the back of the wagon, feet dangling out the back door as they watched the other eight members of Alex’s ranger team sweeping the area around the burned out farmhouse.

It took Ada a moment to respond. “It might be easier if I just show you.”

Ada stood up, hopped down off the back of the wagon, and took a couple steps away, then turned to face her new old friend.

“OK, I’ve only done this once, maybe twice, so far, and I don’t really know exactly how it works.”

Ada closed her eyes and thought about how it had felt when the goblin spear had broken and she had needed a new weapon. She then pictured the sword she had wielded against the goblins. Nothing happened.

“Huh, I don’t get it. Nothing’s happening,” said Ada.

Alex tapped her chin, thinking. “Maybe it requires some kind of stress trigger? Can you tell me about what you were trying to do?”

“OK, well, when I was fighting the goblins, I killed one and took its spear, and I thought I really need a shield or I’m going to die, and then one formed right on my left arm. Then after I killed a few goblins, the spear broke, and I thought about how I really needed a sword, and it would be great if I had one that was like the practice blade I use, er, used to use so much back home, and again one kinda just formed right in my hand. Then right after I killed the last goblin, I got this message pop up that said the [System] had enumerated a [Racial Ability]. That’s when the sword and shield poofed into this cloud of black sand kind of stuff and disappeared, and I guess I passed out because the next thing I can remember is opening my eyes and seeing your face.”

Alex was again staring at her friend, “Ada, that’s absurd. I’ve heard about higher level [Metal Mages] being able to rapidly form metallic weapons and armor, but no one should be able to do anything like that at level 8.”

“I don’t even know what I should or should not be able to do. I haven’t even been here all that long and everything is so fucking insane, Alex. Goblins? Like actual real goblins? What the fuck? I just woke up here today!” Ada was becoming manic, nearly on the verge of a full on breakdown. “I had to fight for my life from .. [System Query] how many goblins did I kill? 32! I had to kill 32 goblins, Alex! How long have you been here? Was it anything like this?”

Alex looked at her incredulously, “You said you were still on [Earth] yesterday? That’s not at all how it worked for me. I died, and then I was born here, a bit over 27 years ago.”

“Born here? Why do you.. no, wait, you don’t look the same. You had brown hair back home, didn’t you?” asked Ada. “And your nose is all different. How the hell did I know it was you?”

“I don’t know, but even before you opened your eyes, I thought I recognized you, too,” said Alex. “I couldn’t put a name to your face, for obvious reasons, but even aside from that, it felt like I knew you.”

It was at that point that 8 [Rangers] came running back to the wagon. Marcus called out, “Alex, get your friend inside, there’s a flock on its way.”

“Oh, shit. Ada, get in. I have to start priming the defense runes,” Alex said as she headed to the front of the wagon

Ada hopped back into the wagon and asked, “Why? What’s going on? Also defensive runes? That’s so cool! How do they work?”

Alex looked back as she placed her hands onto a circle etched onto the inside wall of the armored wagon. She replied, “I honestly don’t really know; it’s not really my area of expertise. I just have a particularly large mana pool, and I’m usually stationed with the wagon, so I’m the one who gets to recharge it in emergencies. Normally it recharges mana on its own, but it’s slow, and we had to use the defenses a few days ago when we hit some bandits on the road. Thus, recharging. As for what’s going on, Marcus said there was a flock headed for us. That means Ornithocheirus.”

Ada looked back with a puzzled look on her face and asked, “Ornitho.. What now?”

“Right, sorry, I keep forgetting that you don’t have the 20+ years of living with all this. Ornithocheirus are big-ass dino bird things. They’re a lot like vultures and sometimes show up when there’s a lot of dead bodies lying around. Usually it takes them more than a few hours, though. That could mean a few things that we’ll likely need to discuss as a team,” said Alex.

The other rangers piled into the wagon behind Alex, and Marcus, being the last one in, pulled the rear door shut, locking them all inside. He called up to the front of the space, “Alex, how are we doing?”

She replied, “Feels like it’s nearly full, at least 80, maybe 90%.”

“That should be plenty. Go ahead and activate the reinforcement. We spotted the flock a ways off, and I think they’ll probably be distracted by the goblins, but we’re probably going to have to take turns on the wagon in order to get back to town tomorrow.”

Everyone besides Ada groaned at that last statement. She asked, “Why would you have to take turns?”

The ranger sitting next to her spoke up, “Because the horses are definitely going to be eaten by the Orns. And Marcus already cut them loose and chased them off.”

Ada looked at him, a wave of sadness crossed her face. “Oh. I’m Ada, by the way.”

“Pliny,” he replied. “Sorry about the tunic. Marcus explained some things, and I think we can probably help you find something that’ll actually fit properly once we get back to Odessos. Let me introduce everyone. Next to me here is Atalanta, then there’s Tertius and Lucius, and then..”

Pliny continued, probably, but Ada was distracted by a loud thump on the roof which was followed by a loud screech, and then some scratching noises, and finally there was a ‘WHUMP” and the wagon swayed in one direction, and then back and forth a few times before settling.

“... and then all the way down at the door is Marcus, our leader. So, how do you know our beautiful Alexandra?”

Ada blinked. She had missed the names of several of the rangers, but decided that she likely wouldn’t remember any of them until she was told their names several more times. She was not good with names; heck, it had taken her several years and a few tries before she had settled on her own name.

“Ada? Are you ok? If you’re still messed up from the goblins,I don’t mind talking about what happened, or not if you don’t want to,” said Pliny. He had a sympathetic expression on his face.

Ada blinked. That’s right, she had been asked a question. “Oh, that, no, I just zoned out, sorry. I should probably talk to someone about all of this eventually, but I’m fine for right now. I’m just a bit scatterbrained sometimes. What was it you asked me again?”

Pliny nodded, “Er, right ok. I asked how you know Alex.”

Ada nodded back, “Oh yeah! Alex and I go way back. I sat next to her in..”

Alex cut her off, “We sat next to each other while our moms did laundry. Our moms were pretty good friends.”

“Right, yeah, moms,” Ada nodded, giving Alex a wink and holding up her thumb.

Alex rolled her eyes. “Nice one, Ada,” she said flatly. “Anyway, it seems that she’s been searching for me ever since I ran away to join the [Rangers], and it’s taken her this long to finally track me down.”

Ada nodded again. “Yep, that’s exactly what happened. I’m definitely not some kind of weird metallic sand creature from another world.”

Everyone in the wagon laughed at that. Everyone except for Ada and Alex, that is. Ada let out a nervous chuckle, and Alex just dropped her head into her hands and let out a groan.

The woman Pliny had introduced as Atalanta looked over at Ada and asked, “Why are you coming up as a child when I [Identify] you?”

“I don’t know, but I only just got here and hit level 8 after killing all those goblins,” said Ada. “I’m sitting on a pile of free stat points, and I honestly don’t know what to do. I don’t even know what my current stats are or how to spend the points.”

“And you’re how old? How did you manage to not reach level 8 like 20 years ago? Did your parents never take you to the system day presentation?”

Alex spoke up, “Her parents were really protective and kept her inside all the time.”

A voice called out from further down the interior, “I have something for that! Nyssos, move. You’re on my chest, and I need something from inside.”

There was some shuffling as a few of the rangers swapped spots in the wagon, and the one who had spoken up opened a small storage chest, pulling out a thin, crudely bound book. There was more shuffling as the ranger moved up to where Ada was sitting with Alex at the front of the wagon.

“Here,” he said, handing over the book. “I kept this after attending Flora’s School of Sorcery and Spellcraft. I figured it might come in handy one day if we met some kid who needed to learn the basics of how the [System] works. Give it a read and if you have any questions, I’m sure any of us here can answer anything for you. Er.. can you read?”

“Maybe? Let’s find out,” said Ada. She opened the book to the first page. The markings on it didn’t make any sense to her, but then she felt a twinge in one eye.

> [*ding!* Congratulations! You’ve unlocked a new General Skill [Cunning Linguist]!]

Ada blinked a few times. Surely that had to be a joke.

> [*ding!* Cynicism leveled up! 1->2]

Ada considered the skill, wanting to know more about what it did before swapping out one of her existing skills. A box popped up in front of her with text.

> Cunning Linguist: You know two languages. This skill will help you wrap your tongue around more. Also it’ll help you learn to read good and learn how to do other stuff good, too.

>

> Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

Of course it would.

> [*ding!* Cynicism leveled up! 2->3]

Ada sighed. She considered the rest of her skills and decided to drop [Resist Environmental Condition]. The skill had helped her cross the plains, but that had been unique circumstances that she had no intention of ever repeating. It also seemed to overlap quite a bit with [Basic Survival], and it felt like that skill would evolve and improve over time.

[Cynicism] oddly felt like it would improve significantly as it leveled up, and would help her recognize the downsides of a wide variety of things, which would help with both forming strategies and negotiations. This would likely end up being incredibly useful. She decided to keep it, at least for now.

Ada looked back at the book. She still couldn’t make any sense of it. The character set wasn’t anything she recognized, but she thought it somewhat resembled Greek or possibly Hebrew, but she wasn’t terribly familiar with either to say for sure. She knew some Greek letters from the advanced math and physics classes she had taken, but that had been nearly a decade ago. At any rate, she couldn’t read any of it.

> [*ding!* Cunning Linguist leveled up 1->2]

>

> [*ding!* Cunning Linguist leveled up 2->3]

Her head hurt a bit, but she still couldn't figure out what any of the symbols meant. Maybe Alex would be able to help her out later.

“Sorry, no, I can’t read this,” Ada said, handing the book back.

Lucius held up a hand. “Keep it, we can help you learn to read, and then you’ll have it for later,” he said. There was a loud thump on the roof of the wagon, followed by a loud screeching noise. “Seems that we have plenty of time, so for now, I’m sure we can answer enough of your questions that you can be informed enough to do your class up.”

“Sure, sounds good. I really don’t know anything, so just treat me like you would any child,” said Ada.

Lucius looked to Atalanta and said, “You want to cover the physical part and I’ll do magic?”

“Sure, that sounds fine.” Atalanta continued, “OK, you have 8 stats, four represent your physical body and the other four represent your magical body or something, I’m not really sure about how all that works. Anyway, you have Strength and Dexterity, Vitality, and Speed. They’re all pretty self explanatory, but I’ll go through them anyway.

“Strength is how strong you are. More of it makes you hit harder, lift heavier things, etc. There’s not a lot else to say about it. It’s important if you’re going to be a warrior, but mages won’t want to spend a lot of points on it.

“Dexterity affects how good you are at moving your body. Higher amounts of it make it easier for you to dodge attacks, get your spear into just the right spot, hit a bird on the wing with a bow from further away, balance on a rope -- that kind of thing.

“Vitality is how resilient your body is. Higher vitality makes your vision sharper, your hearing more distinct. It helps you shrug off wounds in combat, and recover faster from those wounds, but it also makes you more resistant to other people’s magic. Someone with very high vitality can walk right through a fireball that might otherwise incinerate someone with very low vitality.

“Speed is how fast you can move. It’ll help you react to incoming attacks and run away. It kind of ties into dexterity in that if you have too much speed and not enough dexterity to balance it out, you won’t be able to stop or turn very well, and if your vitality is too low, you won’t be able to see where you’re going, let alone survive when you inevitably crash into something harder than your face is.

“Additionally Strength and Dexterity have a trade-off -- for every eight points you put in one, you lose one point in the other.

“One last thing is that adding points into physical stats does have one very important factor. You are magically enhancing your natural baseline, and that costs mana to maintain. Each point allocated to a physical stat will reduce your hourly mana regeneration by one.”

She then waved at the mage, “Your turn.”

Lucius nodded, “Right, so you also have the four magical stats. Mana, Mana Regen, Magic Power, and Magic Control.

“Mana is the total pool that you have to work with for using active skills. The more of it you have, the more you can get done before you have to rest and wait for it to regenerate. Each point increases your total mana pool by 10.

“Mana Regeneration is self explanatory -- it affects how fast your mana pool fills up. Each point of regen gets you 10 points of mana per hour, minus what your different passive skills and physical stats drain. The more of it you have, the longer you can go in a fight, and the quicker you’re back in a fight after draining your mana pool.

“Magic power affects how much mana you can shove into a single skill, and magic control affects how precise the effect becomes. Just as an example, I’m a Radiance mage, and I focus on control. More power means my radiance beams deliver more damage to my target, but higher control allows me to focus the beams tighter, delivering that damage in a much smaller spot. That can mean the difference between giving someone a bad sunburn or vaporizing a hole straight through the heart. These two stats have the same trade-off effect as strength and dexterity -- every 8 points in one reduces the other by one point, so most mages end up focusing on one more than the other, but you’re going to want a bit of both if you decide to be a mage.”

There was another thump on the roof, then another loud screech, but it was quickly followed up with squelching noises, the sound of bones breaking, and what could have been something very large in quite a lot of distress. None of the rangers seemed overly concerned, but the ranger who had been identified as Nyssos let out a groan and pulled a couple coins from the pouch at his waist which he then handed over to one of the rangers whose name Ada had missed.

“OK, so after the stats, the other thing you should know about is elements,” Lucius continued. “If you open the book and flip over to page 8, there is a drawing that should help understand things even if you can’t read the words.”

Ada opened the primer book she had been given and flipped the over to the page indicated by Lucius. There she found what appeared to be something akin to a complicated mandala with 8 symbols around a circle at the center, and then arcing lines running between each, with more symbols at different locations. There were another 8 symbols that were larger than the rest around a circle about halfway between the inner and outer lines. It didn’t make a lot of sense, but Ada assumed that some explanation would help with that.

Lucius pointed to the ring of larger symbols and pointing to each one said, “These are the eight basic elements. Fire, Air, Metal, Dark, Water, Earth, Wood, and Light. Each element opposes another one. Fire opposes Water, Air opposes Earth, Metal opposes Wood, and Dark opposes Light. Then you have the advanced elements. Each element can combine with either itself or any of the 7 other elements. This results in a total of 40 possible unique combinations for advanced elements.

“Each element also has an associated stat, and every time you gain a level in a class with that element, you’ll gain a point in that stat. Fire is tied to Strength, Water to Dexterity, Earth to Vitality, Wind to Speed, Dark is Mana while Light is Mana Regen, Metal is Magic Power, and finally Wood is tied to Magic Control. Then when you evolve a class into an advanced element, you’ll gain two stat points per level, one for each of the base elements, but you shouldn’t have to worry about that for today.

“Again, just as an example, my primary class has the Radiance element, which is composed of both Light and Fire.” Lucius pointed to the chart where the lines between the Light and Fire elements intersected.

“So, thinking about what you’d like to do, there are better and worse elements for just about anything. Alex, for example, is dual healer classed, both of which have a wood base element, which is generally seen as the weakest element for healing. However, since they both advanced, she has two of the strongest advanced elements that are each exceptionally efficient. She could explain the intricacies of healing classes way better than anyone else here, I’m certain.

“Now, have you given any thought into what you’d like to do with your first class?”

Ada tapped her chin with thought. She really hadn’t had much time to consider anything, really. However, she had just been transported somehow to a world that had MAGIC and her first thought on the matter was there was no way in hell she would pass up the opportunity to be a mage and learn how to do real magic. Her second thought on the matter was that in roleplaying games, she always gravitated to a certain archetype -- a spellblade. They got different names in different settings -- Magus, Bladesinger, Mageblade, Warcaster, etc. -- but the idea was always executed similarly. You start with something like a wizard or sorcerer, and then add martial weapon prowess and combine the two in combat. Ada considered this. Why not? She already had the martial weapon ability, and could even somehow create a sword and shield when she really needed them. Her mind made up, she looked back to Lucius. “I think I have to be a mage. I just don’t know what kind would be the best.”

Lucius nodded. He said, “Well, that depends on what you want to do with it. Do you want to work with a team, standing back and supporting them, throwing out damage from long range, or being sneaky, disorienting and confusing the enemy?”

Ada shook her head, “No, I want to be up close, dealing massive damage directly into the face of my foes. I plan to be holding a sword in one hand and magic in the other.”

Several of the [Rangers] whistled. Marcus spoke up from the back of the wagon, “That’s a very difficult course. Most people who try end up dead at a young age, but I have heard of a few [Sentinels] pulling it off over the years. Having seen what you did to all those goblins with no apparent weapon, you might just have what it takes. We call it a spellblade, and usually someone has either one warrior and one mage class, or they merge a warrior with a mage class, and then have another mage class for their second. You’ll probably want as much Magic Power as you can get, with Vitality and Mana Regen as your secondaries.”

Lucius nodded at that. “That matches up with the recommendations we got at the School. There are a few elements that would go well with that concept as well, but I think Metal might be the best fit. You’ll likely get some abilities that would enhance your armor and weapons, and Metal skills can be incredibly fast and powerful at close range. Then if you combine that with a fire warrior class, you could get a magical metal element attuned to a specific type of magical metal, which can be quite versatile.”

Ada also nodded, liking what she was being told. “Is there an optimal way to assign my stats that would affect what classes I get? Also how do I see what my current stats are, and how do I actually get a class?”

“OK, so you’re probably going to want at least 10 points in Magic Power, and then also 10 in both Mana Regen and Vitality,” said Lucius. “As for your current stats, just think deliberately about what you want to see, like ‘status’ or something similar.”

Ada frowned at this. The system was so dumb and easy, and she couldn’t believe that hadn’t thought of that before.

> [*ding!* Cynicism has leveled up! 3->4]

The system was making fun of her again. She thought real hard, “OK you snarky bitch, show me my status page.” Suddenly, a blue window with white text popped up in front of her face.

[Name: Ada]

[Race: Outsider (Humanoid)]

[Age: 29]

[Mana: 130/130]

[Mana Regeneration: 120]

Stats

[Free Stats: 144]

[Strength: 13]

[Dexterity: 13]

[Vitality: 26]

[Speed: 13]

[Mana: 13]

[Mana Regeneration: 13]

[Magic Power: 21]

[Magic Control: 39]

[Class 1: [Newcomer] + ]

[Class skills not available for initial class]

[Class 2: Locked]

[Class 3: Locked]

General Skills

[Walking: 8]

[Vigilant: 8]

[Basic Survival: 8]

[Sneaking: 5]

[Cunning Linguist: 3]

[Observe: 8]

[Pathfinding: 8]

[Cynicism: 4]

She looked over this new popup window, confused.

“Hey Lucius, my lowest stat is already at 13, and I haven’t even spent any of the 144 free stat points,” she said.

The mood in the wagon rapidly shifted as everyone looked directly at her, very serious expressions on their faces.

Lucius very calmly asked, “Ada, what did you just say?”

Ada’s voice got very quiet. “Um, I said that I have 144 free stat points? Is that not normal?”

Lucius shook his head, slowly. “No, Ada, that is not normal. Humans very famously earn two stat points for each of their first 8 levels, and a bonus 1 free stat point per level for a grand total of 24 free points at level 8. Ada, what is your species?”

“It’s, um, [Outsider (Humanoid)],” she said, nervously. “But if it helps, I’m really pretty sure that I was a regular old normal human yesterday.”