After his chat with Kleeb, Adam swung by the library to grab the titles the man had suggested. He also managed a bit of stress relief in the style of beating up on some guards. It was rapidly becoming one of his favorite portions of the day, and he was certainly beginning to understand why Martin enjoyed “training” people so much.
He still had a few concerns about his upcoming education, but he was generally feeling more positive than he had before. Knowing he would soon need to make a decision on his Specialization, Adam decided to spend a portion of his evening in his mindscape.
The boy didn’t get much past patting his tiny table hello before Szellem showed up.
“What in the hells did you do, boy?!”
It was at that moment that Adam realized something. He had seen his spirit guide as a harmless irritation. Someone who was only sporadically useful, and often spiteful or stupid. Mostly jovial and goofy with a side of annoying and a splash of condescending. Not once did he ever look at Szellem and say to himself, “There’s a ghostly man that could be a stand in for divine judgement.”
Until that moment.
The man was so incensed he was incandescent. His anger had the man shaking so hard he was glowing. The normally lank hair had taken on a life of its own, having become mostly upright but thrashing around like the tentacles of a wounded kraken. The heavily lidded white eyes were now the portals to the heart of a star, and even the shabby beard was emitting sparks.
Wavering between impressed and terrified, Adam did nothing but stare.
The furious old man had to repeat himself, growling out between clenched teeth, “I asked, what in the hells did you do, boy?!”
“I… uh… I ha-,“ he stammered out until he broke into a cough. Szellem stared, arms crossed, while he waited. Adam eventually got himself somewhat back together. “I have no ide-“ He had to stop as the avatar of wrath shot forward until he was nearly pressed against him as he loomed larger in the boy’s vision than the Sky Tome at his back.
One arm slowly extended to point behind him. The bolt that crackled out from the extended finger would have deafened the boy had he been anywhere but his mindscape. The man’s voice was sepulchral, “That.”
Shaking a little, Adam leaned back and turned to look where the finger was pointing. In case he couldn’t figure it out, one of the entries in his Sky Tome was surrounded by lightning, and highlighted in fire.
Recognition dawned as he saw what was highlighted, but it was immediately followed by puzzlement. He blinked, followed by squinting his eyes at the value he was seeing, then blinked again. He even turned his head to either side in an attempt to reduce the glare in the hopes that what he was seeing would change. No matter how he looked at it, there were no changes.
Class Affinity: 6%
Over the next few seconds, he slowly relaxed, stepping back from the old weirdo playing at being furious. Happily smiling, he said, “You scared the hell out of me, old man. I thought something had actually gone wrong.” He looked at Szellem, but the man didn’t seem to be letting the joke go. In fact, he looked angrier than before. Attempting to salvage something from this annoyance, Adam said, “I gained another whole percent. That’s great, isn’t it?” As the man’s expression refused to change, Adam ended up a little more questioning over the increase being a good thing by the time he finished his statement.
“Yes, boy. A one percent increase is good, but it’s not nearly as good as the two percent increase you had.” Szellem leaned forward, his smile as cold as ice, “You lost a whole percentage point. There is nothing good about that.” With each emphasis the flames of the star his eyes opened into raged forth with his fury.
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Adam gulped.
“I, uh. Wha… what happened?”
“WHAT HAPPENED?!” the mam roared, arms raised threateningly. A sigh escaped him as his whole body slumped. Over the next few seconds he shrunk back to his normal size, no longer towering over Adam. The magical effects faded away, and he once more looked like a tired old man instead of the wrath of a god. Rubbing his eyes, he quietly said, “What happened, indeed.” With a groan, he flopped backwards, a large, overstuffed chair appearing behind him just in time to catch him.
A little startled at the sudden changes, Adam backed away a bit more before he tucked his legs up and let the air support him. He kept an eye on the man, still wary and ready to bolt. Calming down somewhat, he also managed to remember that it was his mind, and Szellem couldn’t actually hurt him inside the mindscape. Not that that helped much at the moment.
Another sigh escaped the man before he started talking, although he was still rubbing his temples. “Take this as a lesson for your future self. Kids don’t do what you think they will. They don’t listen, they don’t think, and they refuse to figure things out on their own. If you offer them two choices, one that is safe and guaranteed to grant what they want with a little patience, or the other which is dangerous, risky, and stupid, they will always, always, take the second option.”
His head tilted back a little, and he looked up at the Sky Tome. “Mother. What a ridiculous thing to happen.” He sighed again. “I’ve been a guide for a long time, helping children get over their mistakes and problems. Normally I make people think, force them to figure things out for themselves. All these years I have thought that was the best option, but I never had to stick around to face the consequences or disappointments. I apologize for my reaction. With me being stuck here until you get to evolution, I overreacted to a small set back of the learning process. A set back that I only have myself to blame for.”
He paused, considering his words. Adam shifted slightly, wanting to ask questions, but the raised hand of Szellem stopped him. In time, the man started speaking again.
“I still believe that people, particularly young people, need to figure some things out for themselves, but if that just means sending you off for someone else to teach, or letting your knowledge skill pump your skull full of things, I’m not sure how much you are actually figuring out. I’ll explain a few things, and we’ll see how it goes.
“You asked what happened. The short version is that you made a choice. I told you before that skills won’t change your Affinity. What I left out is that they can lead you to making choices that do. That was what happened with your two previous increases. You received or activated skills, and the feelings, knowledge, or understanding that came with that action caused you to make a choice that impacted your personality in a way that more closely aligns with that of a Mother. The measure of that similarity is your Class Affinity, but there is much more to it than that.”
He held up a hand, light forming a list above it. He used his other hand to point things out as he spoke on. “Affinity is actually how similar you are to an evolved version of your class, not the class itself. Take someone with the base class of Mage for instance. Their Affinity score is the highest similarity out of quite the list of evolutions. That doesn’t mean that that will necessarily become your evolved class, but the highest scoring ones will make an appearance amongst your choices for evolution. For someone with a hot temper and a Mage base, and they are likely to have some fire related evolutions. Not that that is all they will have, but you see the idea. If an Apprentice like that learns to control their temper, or just calms down as they approach evolution their affinity towards those fire evolutions will lower, but a different one will take its place at the top as its affinity rises.
“Now before you go off assuming that all fire mages are hotheaded idiots, this is just an example. The reality behind affinity scores is significantly more complicated, but this at least gives you the basics of what affinity actually is. That all make sense to you, kid?”
Adam nodded slowly. It made sense, but it was also a fair amount of information to digest. Szellem continued before he was through contemplating it.
“Keep in mind, just like there are things like light, fire, and water mages, there are also dark, blood, and death mages. That applies to all classes. If you’re not careful, your highest Affinity could end up being an evolution that functions similar to the mother of that street kid that was following you around. Even if you go the distillation route, those sorts of choices will still have a significant influence on your options.” He gave Adam a fierce scowl. “If you want to end up like that, keep playing at friendship like you did today. That’s a slippery slope, boy, and even if it didn’t affect your class options, it’s not a good way to enjoy yourself. Mutually assured destruction may prevent wars, but it's a cold way to live.”