The following morning, Myra and Peggy waited to rush off until Owen had woken up. Owen was interested as this was the first time in a while they had waited for him to wake up. He sat down at the table full of anticipation and Myra shared a system screen with him.

*You have successfully upgraded your Guild. The city of Rochester has been claimed by your guild, upgrade your city to unlock the system store and auction.*

Owen stared blankly at the page not sure if he understood. "So, I assume we now need to focus on somehow upgrading the city?" Myra grinned and shared another screen.

*Turn your home into a safe haven, to upgrade your city.

Clear out any and all hidden monsters in your home base.

Successfully hand out 3 quests, and

find a way to protect your base from outsiders.*

"We have progress bars for these options as well, but it looks like we need money to create quests, since there needs to be a limited reward." Myra said as she made the quest screen disappear. "Can you put up normal items for the quest prize?" Owen asked, thinking about the extra short sword he still had. "No we've tried that already, it looks like we need real money, but dollars aren't working either." Peggy complained and it gave Owen pause. "Is there somewhere is says to get money then, or are we stuck until we can find where to get money?"

Myra shook her head, before pausing to think, "Well, I didn't get any from killing any monsters so that's probably not it, but maybe you can get money from selling things in this system store thing." Owen groaned, "So, essentially in order to make money we need the store and in order to get the store we need money? That just sounds like how companies hire for entry level positions, need experience to work, but need to work to get experience."

Myra let out a sad chuckle, but leaned back further into her chair. "The other thing I wanted to ask you about is where Lucas is, I haven't seen him in a couple days now and I'm not sure where he is." Peggy agreed, saying she hadn't seen him in a while either. Owen groaned, he need to go find Lucas anyways and see if he could learn any of his skills to try and expand his own Polymath skills. "Alright, I'll go looking for him later today, my plan for tomorrow is to try and clear a tier 3 gate. There aren't any new tier 2 gates forming since the break and their was finally a tier 3 gate that appeared about a hour or so away."

Myra grinned wide and Peggy sighed. "Yeah, I suppose we can try it, Myra is already practically a high enough level for it, but I'm struggling to keep up, I feel really far behind not being able to help clear out the monsters during the breaks." Peggy said, but she didn't sound disappointed she had fallen behind. "Cool, then tomorrow we will go and clear out a tier 3 gate. In the mean time, I'm going to go find Lucas and see if we can't start training in earnest."

It didn't take long to find Lucas, Owen had already assumed that since they had the same teacher, Lucas would be training himself to try and get every single free stat point possible before reaching level 20. He found Lucas training in the pit that Briar's explosion had created, using the free space to move around less obstructed while practicing. Owen watched feeling impressed as Lucas's control over his own movements far surpassed Owen's. Lucas's spear flowed easily through different movements, though it seemed like he was getting stuck at some part, as he tried a couple movements as if to try and see what fit into the movements.

Eventually he opened his eyes to see Owen watching him, "Dude, that's creepy as hell, next time just announce yourself or something." Lucas said, though he didn't seem bothered. Owen nodded and beckoned Lucas out of the pit. "We are going to walk around a bit, apparently there are some monster stragglers hiding out somewhere in the city and we are going to find them." Owen said and Lucas groaned. "You know as a future member of the zodiac, I expected there to be a lot more fun when training and less risking my life, you know?"

Owen shook his head, that idea was ridiculous, there wasn't a good way to avoid combat unless you had gotten a class that was specific to something noncombat. Getting a noncombat class as your first class was extremely rare and much more common when unlocking your second class. Your second class was unlocked through the system trying to shore up your weaknesses. So, unlike when he got to pick his first class, he would need to accomplish certain things if he wanted any chance of being able to pick a second class rather than just being awarded one.

As they walked throughout the city, Owen caught him up on their plans, though he didn't get more specific than what they were planning on doing rather than where and when. It wasn't that he was suspicious of Lucas, but he was worried that Lucas while not being against wasn't necessarily aligned with them either. He hadn't shown any connection to them other than trying to learn from Owen which wouldn't work until Owen himself unlocked more polymath skills.

After some time and finding less than 5 monsters, Owen pulled them to a stop and asked. "So, what was it that you were practicing when I found you, it looked like you were trying to practice the flowing waters spear technique that master had shown me." Lucas nodded but with a sour look on his face. "Yeah, but since I haven't seen the full form, but I found out one of the easiest ways to upgrade my spear mastery is to try and practice the forms and build upon them."

"So, what's you mastery level then?" Owen asked hoping it would be higher than his own. "I just unlocked mastery level 4 the other day and apparently it upgrades after the next level." Lucas said shrugging. Owen was shocked that it was twice over what his own mastery level was, but it did make sense. He had mostly switched to his bastard sword and only really used his spear against bosses for the boost it gave.

"So, I have been trying to come up with a plan for us to help each other with skills, I barely have been able to unlock skills and it has gotten even harder to get skills after the tutorial, so if you have any other skills related to your inheritance, I want to see if they would help me get more Polymath skills, then hopefully once I have figured out how I am supposed to unlock them, you'll be able to learn the news ones form watching me." Owen said hopefully. Lucas seemed to give it less than a second of thought, before nodding and sharing his skill screen with Owen.

*Lucas - Level 18

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Skills:

Deft hands

Jeweled Monkey Emperor's Fortitude

Jeweled Monkey Emperor's Spear Mastery: Level 4

Polymath's Keen Eye

Self Creator*

Owen immediately felt a surge of adrenaline rush through him. Lucas had a skill that hopefully Owen could learn and add to his Polymath skills. "Can you show me how your fortitude skill works?" Lucas nodded and Owen waited with baited breath but didn't notice anything. So, he used Keen eye and waited. Several minutes went by as Owen continued to watch, trying to look for any clue to learning the skill, but even with his keen eye skill, he wasn't able to see how the skill worked and didn't get a prompt for learning it. Feeling slightly disappointed he had Lucas stop.

"Do you think you could show me one of your skills? Maybe I can learn it with Keen Eye?" Owen obliged and activated relentless fury at it's lowest power, but Lucas opened his eyes wide. "Can you keep that going for a second, I'm trying to understand the mana flow." Owen was confused but let the skill run for a short while longer. Owen got a thumbs up from Lucas and cancelled his skill, he was about to ask how it went but a system screen interrupted him.

*You have gained the skill Relentless Fury*

Lucas stood triumphant and Owen couldn't help but grin, but he quickly was interrupted by another screen, assuming it was something sent over by Lucas again, he looked at it and felt his adrenaline start to pick up again.

*You have gained the skill Polymath's Expertise. This skill allows the user to learn and teach skills more efficiently. Learn or teach skills with 6% more efficiency. (5% adjusted to 7% due to luck stat)*

*Your class Polymath's apprentice has leveled up. you gain 1 stat point in mana, strength, perception, agility, dexterity and luck*

Owen felt a wide grin spread on his face, turning to Lucas, he took a chance to share his own skill unlock. "Can you teach that to me?" Lucas aske voice full of excitement, but Owen shook his head. "We will have to wait until I have more skills to teach you, otherwise I'm not sure I can activate it." Lucas insisted so Owen tried using it while teaching Lucas his Silent Execution skill, but just as he thought, they weren't in a position that it would be that easy.

They continued walking through town, but didn't find any more monsters hiding anywhere they looked. Deciding to split up from there, Owen started walking back towards the clinic building that was quickly just becoming a regular office. Lucas stayed behind to try and get his spear mastery to level 5, so Owen wasn't too worried about him and decided the last thing he wanted to do before tomorrow was to infuse mana into his body.

The office was empty when he got back so he sat down against one of the walls and made himself imagine his core space again. He had barely a wisp of experience resting against his core and after a moment of focus, it got absorbed into his core. Trying his best to remember how Aesona had described it to him, he focused on circulating his mana as quickly as possibly, just like when he would absorb the experience fully into his core. He immediately began to hurt as his fiery green core spin faster and faster. He fought back against the pain and began slowly pushing the rushing energy into his meridians and forced it to stop moving while in one of the stars that connected his meridians together.

It didn't take long before it felt like his hand was getting split in half as the coursing energy cause his flesh to blister and flake off, but after several seconds, the star had been burst wide open. He tried moving to the next closest intersection of meridians, but it felt like all of his energy had been wrung out of him. A quick look at his status page, made it make a lot more sense.

*You have 1400 out of 1400 health points. You have 314 out of 3300 mana points.*

It had cost him almost a full 3000 mana to open just one of the stars that was interconnected with his meridians. He wasn't sure what else to call them other than stars, but since when he looked at the system as a whole, it looked like a constellation, he had decided to call them stars and Aesona hadn't corrected him.

He focused on recovering his mana and by the time he had finished Peggy had made it back to the office from whatever she had been doing. "You look like you just cleared a tier 3 gate yourself, what happened?" She asked as she got a closer look at Owen, but he just grinned back at her. "I started the process of upgrading my body by infusing it with mana, but I ended up using just under 3000 points of mana to unlock just the one." Peggy cringed back and looked closely at his hand he had gestured to. He hadn't channeled his vitality to it yet, so it was still blistered. Without pause she used her heal skills and Owen just sighed.

"Thanks, you didn't need to do that, I just hadn't channeled HP to it yet." Owen said. "So, what did you get up to today?" He asked mostly curious, but also to buy time until Myra got there so they could plan for tomorrow. "I spent some time throwing together a website for our guild. I spent sometime online and found out more and more guilds are popping up by the day. More and more of them are advertising membership, so I thought we'd jump on the bandwagon." Owen smiled. He agreed with the idea, they needed more strong people, though his and Thomas's group could currently clear most threats that would appear nearby, unless there was a tier 3 gate break.

Myra showed up not long later as Owen and Peggy continued to talk for a while, him also updating her on where he had found Lucas in case she needed anything from him. She had rolled her eyes when he told her, but she thanked him anyways and not long later Myra had made it back with a large grin. "We finished clearing the city of the last of the monsters it looks like. All we need to do now is figure out how to make money. Apparently, I should be able to create some defenses for the city through the system, but I would still need money for that, but despite my best efforts looking online no one has leaked how to get a currency that works yet." Owen nodded as Myra finished talking and proceeded to tell her about how infusing his body had went and she scowled.

"So, I have to spend time collecting mana in order to progress? Am I supposed to be a cultivator or something?" She asked looking slightly annoyed. Owen thought about it for a second but realized she was right, he had become someone who spent a lot of time meditating to regenerate mana faster, but also to increase his mana stat. "Yeah I guess so," he said laughing somewhat. "I suppose I should try cultivating for a while then, and try and gather as much mana as possible before we try our hand against the tier 3 gate." Owen nodded seriously.

"Between levels 20 and 30, we are supposed to have access to earning 30 stats if we don't have a class." Owen went to continue explaining, but Myra growled. "So, you're saying I am missing out on all of these stats since I got a class? Was I suppose to just wait?" she asked and even Peggy frowned.

"Thankfully, this was something I did get an answer to. As your class levels up, it starts to give more total stats points per level. If you wait too long to earn a class, even if you end up earning more stat points early on, you'll end up with a bad class that will give maybe 1 or 2 stats per level up. Earning a bad class is also more likely the longer you wait. So, getting a class as early on as possible is good, but you do miss out on a lot of stats early on, but you'll pretty quickly begin to earn even more than you would've had you never gotten a class."

Myra didn't look like she quite believed him, but just nodded her head for now. "As I had been saying, you should be able to earn a total of 15 stats before level 30, 20 before level 40 and finally 25 before level fifty, where it becomes impossible to earn anymore free points." Myra nodded and Peggy seemed to get lost in thought. Peggy eventually spoke up, looking slightly hopeful at Owen. "What about trying to raise your affinity stat?"