There were a few things that we learned from Anna. The first was that knowledge about how the system worked was a very private affair, and that it was taught only through your family or if you had the luck of going to the noble schools of the Cities. This meant that the families who had a good grasp of the system had greater advantages over families that didn’t know as much. That made our [Help] something very precious…and at the same time useless, considering it wasn’t giving very detailed explanations and that most families had another type of Innate Skill.

The second thing was the class system. My sister had taken the lead over the discussion about it, as I didn’t understand half the things she was talking about, but looking at the middle-aged woman, Anna didn’t seem to fare any better.

“There are three ways to learn a class.” This wasn’t really an answer to L’s overcomplicated question, that I hadn’t even listened to fully. “A Class Book, another person with the Class at level 100, or through sheer luck and hard work. The third is very rare, and the first is so expensive it can only be bought by Lords. Is it any different in the Cities?”

“Erm…no. No differences. Very expensive, me and my sister never could afford one.” Answered my sister. It felt wrong to lie to the woman who had saved my life, but she and her husband’s misunderstanding about where we came from was paramount to our survival. We couldn’t reveal that we were a new race, that we had improved stats, and, also by the way, that we were actually from another dimension. We hadn’t concerted on the subject, but me and my sister were no fools. We knew it wouldn’t go well for us if we even tried to suggest we were something else. Maybe those two would be tolerant, but with the unknown skills and perception starts that could exist, simply talking about it was dangerous enough.

The conversation on the class took us well over into the night, we paused our chatter simply to eat a gruel of soup filled with indeterminate meat.

The meal wasn’t great, lacking salt, but at least it filled my belly. Our new bodies needed as much resource as possible, to permit our regeneration to kick in.

In the end, when we went to sleep, after being warned that Grognar would most likely come to wake us up before dawn, there were plenty of things me and my sister still needed to discuss. The candles had been extinguished, as they were precious, and Anna had warned us that light was attracting the [Dark Crow].

“Deactivate skill: [Speech: Common Overworld].” I said. My sister did the same.

We were sharing the same bed, which wasn’t the most comfortable thing, but close proximity with my sister wasn’t a bad feeling whatsoever. It was a bit weird, considering we were both in our underwear, but the two of us were well beyond prudishness.

“So, we learned a lot.” My sister began.

“Yeah. I expect you learned way more than I did.”

“Which is why I’m talking to you although I should be sleeping. Trekking in the forest surrounded by big and tall hunters isn’t the worst thing in my mind, but I like being not drowsy during hot orgies.”

“L…” I couldn’t see her expression in the dark, but I could guess the perverted smirk.

“Kidding, kidding. Anyway, we need to understand the levels. Apparently, we are low levelled, but no one is much higher than 130. It’s like there is a soft cap.”

“A what?” I was already lost.

“A…there is like a limit to your level, not an arbitrary one, but one caused by how difficult it is to improve upon it at a certain point.”

“…Yes. Considering the experience we gained and how little difference there is between our levels despite me gaining one-third more than you did, I expect that the experience cost is following an exponential curve. One hundred is reachable, but one hundred and ten is, two, three times what you would need to go from one to one hundred. I guess it all depends on how much experience you can gain at once.”

“…Huh. I forgot about exponentials.”

I grimaced. “L! How could you have studied economics and forgotten about exponentials!?”

“Cut me some slack. I remembered as soon as you explained it.”

I sighed. “So, basically no one is ever going to be super high level like 200.”

“That’s it.” I felt my sister nod. “So, levelling isn’t very important. Our basic stats given by our race is much more determinant in our strength. I’m still pissed about the stats going over to other worlds, I wouldn’t have gone magic had I known. Having enhanced senses everywhere sounds great.”

“Well…from what I gathered; it seems like mages are the real heavy hitters here. So if we want to get those child slavers, you made the right choice.”

“Yeah, yeah. But still. We can always go back to the US of A, buy guns, and come back here.”

I winced. “I don’t know how to use a gun, and neither do you. And that’s a question for when we actually manage to go back.”

“Don’t take me seriously.”

“Anyway, our levels are useless.” I continued.

“Not entirely, once we’re one hundred, we’ll be slightly better than everyone else, but it’ll never let us reach a real op status.”

“Overpowered, right?”

“Yeah, good!” I felt her tap my shoulder. “But there is one thing we haven’t tried yet.”

“Classes.”

“Those apparently have a hard level cap.”

“Which means that once you reach the limit you can’t go any higher?” Hearing my sister hum in approval, it seemed I had made the right assumption.

“The class gives you system skills. Like the purify one that the system gave us for free. That’s how we’ll unlock combat skills, defensive skills and movement skills.”

“Those are the skills that only work here, right?” I was pretty sure of myself, but I wanted to make sure.

“That’s what Bonnie told us.” Gaëlle added.

“Ok. We need those skills, so we need a class.”

“And we level a class the same way we do for ourselves, so the experience is shared. This is why people rarely take a class until they reach level one hundred. If they ever take one. Most people don’t need a class. They are very specific and usually battle-oriented. As she said with all the whole Blue business giving sapiens the power to fight against monsters.”

I turned to face the ceiling. “A class. It sounds cool, but we don’t even know what choices there are. Anna only knew of the [Soldier] and [Ascensus]. Her husband is a hunter, but that’s not a class.”

“But where did he get this [Identify] skill then? That really bothered me, but we were told asking about someone’s status was extremely…oh exit. Have to be careful with that word, the system doesn’t differentiate. Pops up in your face. In any case, we need to be on the lookout for someone who can teach us a cool class or find a skill book.” My sister sounded excited.

“Do you think there will be a Class Book in the lair?”

“Did you see one?”

“No books, not that I remember well. It all went pretty fast. By the way, great memory for the name of the drake, I mean [Ground Drake].”

“Ha! Don’t underestimate the power of someone who’s read the Silmarillion three times.”

“Uh uh.”

“Tch, you don’t know what I’m talking about, right?” My sister asked with a condescending tone.

“Not at all.”

“Peasant. You utter ignorant peasant.”

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“Mh mh. Sorry.” I said with zero honesty. “Anyway.” I changed the subject back to our plan. “We need to find the lair, bring them there, we try to get something nice from the treasure then leave through the door, right?”

“That sounds good. I’ll let you decide how we plan things, Nielle, I’m more of an action kind of girl.”

“I know.” I sighed.

“What was that sigh supposed to mean?”

“That I love you.”

“And I love you too… shithead.”

Being woken up before dawn was not fun. Getting ogled at by a big wolf man in the dawn of the morning was especially unpleasant. He had closed the curtains in a hurry when seeing us bunched up together in bed, but still, it put me in a bad mood. Gaëlle didn’t really care about that, her murderous look was entirely due to being woken up early and having no coffee. We did get some tea, which was perfectly fine in my book, but clearly my twin didn’t agree.

It was to the point that she didn’t make any comment for the first two hours of our trip to the [Ground Drake]’s lair, despite being surrounded by three tall and muscular hunters. Well two of them weren’t exactly tall, but well above my diminished height. There was Grognar, who hadn’t spoken much except to present us to his crew. Torgal was a younger man, in his twenties, well-built with brown hair. He had been even more taciturn than the wolf man, his expression staying troubled and dark. The third man was the smallest of the three, close to our size. He was dressed in the same hunter garbs as the two others, except that he wore a scarf like a mask, that he had a slightly different bow hung over his back, and that his ears were clearly elf-like. I almost hoped he would be named Thiriudil or something equally fantasy-like, but Grognar presented him as Rik, which felt a bit anticlimactic.

The elf was the one talking to us the most, but he was also the one leading in front, apparently the scout, so he wasn’t around enough for a real conversation. We had been positioned between Torgal and Grognar, the latter closing the march.

My sister, in her grumbling, annoyed self, had missed a lot of things. I was pretty certain she would have fawned over the elf under other circumstances, and the gate of the village protected by two [Soldiers] would have piqued her interest as well. Not considering the Ascensus, the two men were the first people with classes that we had met. Nothing differentiated them from the others, except for their mail armour and all-around pristine-looking equipment. Having a class was probably a testimony of success, but then again, if the classes only served for specific battle-related functions, merchants and nobles would not need them. Maybe class-holders were middle class?

I was asking a lot of questions to myself, but there were no answers I could give back.

After an hour of pulling my sister through the woods, it seemed she finally came out of her post-bed-mortem stupor.

“Is the scout an elf?” She asked out of the blue. She hadn’t activated the speech skill, and as such, I was the only one who could understand her.

“Welcome back! And I don’t know. He has the ears, but I didn’t have the courage to ask. What if saying the word is a capital offense?”

“What, elf?”

“Yup.”

“Why would…” She sighed. “I see what you mean. But we’ll have to learn one way or another, you know. Better ask Grognar, I think we can trust him to overlook our lack of manners.”

“Fine…Grognar, is Rik an elf?” I turned around to ask our guide.

“Yes, of course. He’s a [Wood Elf]. His race never went to the Cities, I suppose it makes sense you never seen one like him before.”

“Never went to the Cities?”

“By the Blue, what do they teach you in school? Two thousand years ago, after the rise and fall of the orange [Mountain Dragon] Almut, the system implemented hydrology to evolve Sapiens and let them live in peace. As you know, the [Ascensus] class was then quickly discovered, and permitted us to ride the Turns up to the Upperseas. Most Sapiens decided to build and live over to the Upperseas. And so the Cities were created. But some didn’t want to leave, despite the danger, and with time they became their own race. [Wood Elf] is one of those races.”

“Oh, I see, thank you for the explanation, Grognar.” I had the feeling Anna had explained pretty much the same thing the previous evening.

“You’re welcome. But I must ask not to talk too much, as even during the day, the forest of Redtrees is a dangerous place.”

His expression had softened a bit when teaching us, but it was now back to concentrated.

“So they call humanoids Sapiens? We’re in the overworld and there are cities built on the ocean over our head, which is called the Upperseas. And there was a legendary dragon that fucked everything up 2000 years ago.” My sister resumed softly.

“Deactivate the speech skill please…” I whispered to the system. It was barely audible, but the system seemed to understand me perfectly well. It was quite an improvement over Bonnie. I then talked to Gaëlle a bit more freely, not worried about being overheard: “And the Ascensus isn’t a fighting class, but one that lets you climb the waterrises. That’s badass.” I added.

“…But not really of import to us. We’re not here to become Charon 2.0, ferryman of the inverted waters.”

“It sounds epic. Scrap the 2.0 though, that’s cringy.”

My sister ignored me. “And I don’t believe [Soldier] is any good. Aren’t there things like [Space Mage] or [System Administrator], come on, where is the op class here…”

“Maybe we’ll find something cool in the drake’s lair.” I tried.

“We would need to be able to take it to the door with us, I don’t think our new friends will let us.”

I received a mean look from Torgal in front of me, clearly annoyed at our chatter.

“Let’s talk once we’re back on the station. No unnecessary risks. We go back on the station, and we’ll plan our next move there.”

“Agreed.”

We continued our walk in silence, only talking to Rik when he came to report to Grognar. We learned a few random facts about [Wood Elves] but nothing that really mattered.

It didn’t take us very long to reach the poisoned gravity-defying river, but it became harder to move forwards as the dirt road ended there.

I didn’t like wearing a skirt, or skort, but that became doubly true once we started walking through the tall grass of the Redtrees forest.

“I hope there aren’t any ticks or some kind of deadly crabs in there…”

“Yeah, but at least your butt is protected.” My sister countered. “Imagine how it felt for me yesterday.”

Less than two hours later, we reached the cliff.

“So, it is this cliff, you are certain?” Grognar asked us.

I checked that my Speech skill was activated before I answered him. “Well, it’s over this plateau, I’m sure. I don’t recognize the cliff; I remember it as more like dirt and roots. This is rockier. In any case, the lair is on the very top of the cliff edge, we need to get up there, then follow the cliffside until we find the lair.”

“Couldn’t we follow it from underneath?” Rik asked.

“I’m not certain we would be able to see the lair from down here, and we won’t be able to recognize it from underneath.” I explained to him.

He nodded, seemingly satisfied.

Torgal spoke for the first time in three hours, and his expression wasn’t nice.

“So, just follow the cliffside and we’ll find it. We don’t need the girls with us then, they are noisy and slow.”

Grognar shook his head. “No, if we don’t use the girls, our Ascensus could claim that their debt was not paid. I do not want to give these two young women to him, would you?”

Torgal lowered his eyes. “Of course not. But we don’t need to tell him that…” The young man countered.

But once again, Grognar shook his head.

“And who would make sure they are safe while they wait here? I need both you and Rik in my team.”

The young man scratched his right temple, his bitter look giving place to a shameful look. “Yeah, makes sense. Sorry boss, I didn’t…”

“Don’t apologize, I know how you feel.”

Torgal simply nodded, the argument closed.

“We’ll climb a bit further ahead then.” Rik interceded. “I saw a good rock face further north.”

He pointed to the right.

So there were cardinal directions, and north was over there. Considering that the sunset had shined down on the cliff, this meant that the light went from east to west, just like on Earth. I was still very curious to know how the crystals in the Upperseas could recreate a sun, but asking about it would definitely look too suspicious.

The rocky wall where Rik brought us was less a wall and more a steep slope, created from past landfalls. As such, even though the climb was tiring, it wasn’t anything difficult.

As we arrived up top, Rik still whistled at us in admiration. “You two made it look so easy. And I remember you…” He pointed at Elle. “…running almost as fast as the chief. Do you both have more than a hundred points in constitution and strength? That’s impressive for women, especially as young as you two.”

Grognar growled lowly. “Rik, stop being nosy.” He told him.

Me and my sister smiled uncomfortable at the whole exchange, but fortunately, it was quickly forgotten, and we went on to search the lair of the [Ground Drake].

“Having a hundred strength and constitution is high? For women? What the hell does that mean, isn’t that the basic stats for humans? There wasn’t anything related to gender having an effect on stats, right?”

“Shh. Later.” I stopped my sister, from the looks of the hunters, right now was not the time to talk.

Unfortunately, traversing the cliffside was more difficult than we thought, often having to cut through the forest for a few minutes to then come back on another part of the cliffside only a few meters ahead. But we couldn’t afford to miss the lair, so our advance was slow and meticulous. Rik was always on the edge, looking down. Grognar was in the middle, behind us, looking to the skies on our left, and Torgal was on our left, always on the lookout for something to come out of the forest.

I was starting to doubt we were on the right plateau, which was a bit ridiculous considering I didn’t think there was more than one, when me and my sister finally recognized where we were.

“We’re here. That’s the view we saw when we came out of the lair.” I said to Grognar as I looked at the horizon. Night was falling, and the reality of it was astonishing. The ocean above our heads was moving, dragging the crystals away. As such, every time a row of crystals disappeared over the forest, the light diminished and took a redder and redder hue. It was beautiful, but deeply unsettling. We had lived our whole life with the sun and its rules, and something breaking these so completely, truly hammered the strangeness of this world, to me at least.

My sister looked at the sky as well, but her expression was a mixture of awe and confusion.

“It’s the crystals.” I said to her in English only. “They’re setting, one row after another.”

“Wow…”

“We’re cutting it close, only two Linus Krist’s left.” Rik noted.

Grognar nodded. “We’ll mount camp at one. It’d be best if we could sleep in the lair, that would most likely be the safest.”

“If they told us the truth…” Torgal sarcastically added.

The wolf man didn’t say anything to that. Maybe he too, was starting to have doubts about our truthfulness.

“There!” My sister exclaimed.

“Shh.” Rik gave her a wink as he put half a hand in front of his already covered mouth.

“Sorry…” She whispered. “That the cliffside. The lair is there.”

“Perfect timing.” Grognar had a big smile. “I see it now. It is very well hidden; we would never have found it without you.”

“Let’s not wait around. I don’t want to be out in the open during the dark.” There was worry growing in Torgal’s voice.

“Agreed.”

And like that, our group descended in the [Ground Drake]’s lair.