3 Days Later

Vey is beginning to become bored of experimenting with its ability to command its fellows, particularly because the bonus to its stats it receives from the initial success appears to be a one time thing. Vey understands why it is that way, if the system allowed for Vey to powerlevel his stats so easily, the system wouldn’t be very good at doing its job. This still leaves Vey rather grumpy about its lack of progress towards obtaining the wizard class.

Vey’s master still hasn’t returned, which is not unusual since the closest town to this decrepit crypt is over three days away. Vey took the liberty of rifling through all of its master’s possessions in his chamber, looking for any books that might help it with its goal, but came up with nothing but a few books on dark rituals, gods, monsters, undead, and wilderness survival.

Vey read them, moreso to see if it gained intelligence or wisdom points from doing so as opposed to actually desiring the knowledge. It didn’t, and nearly broke its master’s ritual dagger(which Vey had been using as a bookmark) in its frustration.

What had been more useful was idly flipping through all of Vey’s newfound system help commands. While nothing helpful to Vey’s goal was specifically listed, the stuff that wasn’t list gave Vey a few hints and ideas.

For one thing, since experience is a hidden statistic, and what actions grant what amounts of experience are thusly unknown, Vey had reached the conclusion days ago that forcing its fellows to kill rats for it(or Vey doing that same thing itself), wasn’t leveling it up any. The system help function did specifically say that actions that grant experience progress one’s class, not one’s level as a monster. Vey has thus concluded that trying to grind levels is a fruitless endeavor without a class.

This was bad news at first, but Vey then began looking for other pieces of knowledge hidden in the system’s omissions. This is what Vey was doing right now, as it sat upright, with its boney legs crossed, hand on its chin, mentally flipping through menus.

System Help

Subject; Acquiring a class

Acquiring a class requires the individual to have a certain amount of prerequisite knowledge and stats pertaining to the class desired. Classes cannot be acquired if an individual is not aware of that class’s existence, and some classes cannot be acquired by ordinary means. Acquiring one’s first class grants them a permanent +1 boost to all of that class’s relevant stats. For a list of all your known classes, use System Help-Subject; Known Classes for a full table.

Vey processed this information slowly, methodically, combing over every individual phrase and word choice, and came to four separate conclusions.

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Number 1: Vey does not believe itself to possess the prerequisite knowledge of arcane magic required to become a wizard.

Number 2: The system does not specify the exact method by which Vey could acquire a class, only the conditions that must be met to do so. Vey assumes this omission to mean that once the conditions are met, it will acquire the class automatically.

Number 3: The system does not specify how much a ‘certain amount’ is, and a brief glance at the help menus of all of Vey’s known classes reveals it isn’t listed anywhere on there either. Vey assumes that this requirement is likely somewhat subjective, or otherwise imprecise.

Number 4: The system does not specify what it refers to when it says ‘ordinary means or which classes cannot be gained by them, which leads Vey to believe that perhaps its existence could prevent it from gaining certain classes.

Vey begins to feel satisfied with its conclusions, and sets to work on correcting its first conclusion: Arcane knowledge. To do this, Vey steals one of its master’s many ink-quills, an inkwell, and a leatherbound notebook from the ritual room. Vey takes his stationery around with him throughout the whole dungeon, taking diligent notes of all of the magic it finds.

Vey documents the [Permanent Light] spell used to illuminate the ritual room, the hallway, and some of the more used chambers.

Vey marks down an unfamiliar spell used as a magical trap on the door to another one of the abandoned dead ends. Vey doesn’t know the name of this spell, but copies what it can of the visible glowing rune.

Vey marks down the runes on all of its master’s various ritual tomes, daggers, and on the altar in the ritual room.

Vey even manages to spot the [Alarm] spell on the dungeon’s mouth, something that Vey wasn’t even aware its master had placed there before.

There are other things Vey puts into the notebook in its crude common, enough to fill six whole pages, in fact. Vey decides to take this notebook back down to the crypt that was formerly occupied by many rats, maggots, corpses, and bits, but is much cleaner after Vey’s experimenting with commanding its fellows to exterminate its foes. As of now, it is occupied by all of the corpses in a neat pile at the far end of the chamber(a fair few rat corpses now join the humanoid ones), a copious amount of bloodstains on the floor, a stone table that had taken the better part of a day for Vey’s commanded small army to push in here, and a wooden chair it ‘borrowed’ from the table its master usually eats at. Vey hoped its master wouldn’t notice, since that table had at least five others, and its master only really needs one.

Vey sets down the notebook, as well as some other stolen stationery and supplies, and gets to studying. Vey’s first attempt at comprehending the arcane is simple: Vey wants to see if it can at least minimally understand the underlying workings of the [Permanent Light] spell, and maximally reverse-engineer it into the ordinary and hopefully far simpler [Light] spell. Vey begins with trying to interpret the runes from the altars and texts, trying to find the translation between the language and the magic they supposedly facilitate, and then trying to use that to figure out how one makes light.

Before Vey even realizes it, twelve and a half hours have passed, Vey feels as though it has made only minimal progress, it is out of paper, it is almost out of ink, and it feels no closer to understanding how a wizard’s magic works even a little bit. But Vey has learned something very, very, important:

If the rituals Vey has interpreted are anything to go by, its master isn’t nearly as powerful as Vey had initially thought.