As the chariot started back, Amelia started.

“Now, you’re no longer beginners. You’ve taken your first steps across the Labyrinth. You are growing in your Profession. Time to get to know your potential and the Labyrinth.”

She leaned back in her seat.

“You don’t have a Milestone yet, but I need to prepare you before your first. If you remember your Interface and your Profession, you’ve seen the Labyrinth gave you a tier 1 one. I’ve already mentioned I have a tier 4 Profession.”

Silas raised his hand, “what’s a Lightswinger?”

She smiled.

“An Agility and Fortitude-oriented Profession. All Professions have pre-requisites. That’s how you need 18 in a potential to get your tier 1. Now guess what? Higher tier professions have higher requirements in potential. The higher, the harder those are. Lightswinger requires 85 in Agility and 40 in Fortitude.”

They all gasped.

“Sounds harsh, right? The tier 5 Professions typically require at least 145 in a statistic, most of them. And the tier 6 we’ve seen so far are over 235. Me, I want Lightwaltzer. I hope to get it in two years, maybe, because it’s not an easy path. I’ll need another Profession’s Milestones to qualify.”

Rowan raised his hand.

“And tier 2?”

“Reasonable, are we? That’s only 25. If you have 19 in your main potential, that’s only two milestones. Of course, it could require a bit more levels if you’re not up to snuff, and that’s pretty much the case for most of you.”

She saw his stricken look.

“Don’t worry. We do have a plan for you. We spent the last few days drawing a good progression path to tier 4, which covers your two years contract. Then, if you want to renew the contract, we’ll work with you for the next steps.”

“Now, the real reason I’ve mentioned Milestones is that Milestones and Professions go together in many ways. Each Profession has a sphere of skills associated with it. Rivers, right now, you have Equipment/Defence, meaning you can unlock Equipment/Defence specific skills. Let’s say… you get 1 Milestone, and your Strength is now 18. You’re still short of 2 Milestones for a tier 2 Profession, but now, you qualify for the tier 1 Breaker. So, in the hypothetical case you’d want to, you could go back to the Plaza, get to the centre, and change your Profession.”

Ada gasped, “you can do that?”

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“You can change to any profession you qualify for. You need the appropriate Plaza, and you simply switch. However, there are a few catches.”

Seeing Luther’s frown, she shrugged.

“The first is that each Profession you’ve picked at one time counts for XP, but you only gain levels in the last one. So, if you change to Breaker, then you need 2000 XP for your first Breaker level instead of 1000. And if you get Smasher next, that one will cost you 3000. And so on.”

“Why would you change professions then?”

“Because when your next level costs you 46,000 XP for just a dozen stats, while the first of another profession gives you more for 2000, it becomes a more interesting proposition.”

Rowan realized the principle behind the idea.

“The other… Keeping on with River’s change to Breaker, Breaker is a Profession of the Physical/Offense sphere. All of its skills lie in that area, not the Equipment/Defence sphere his current Shieldbearer uses. Which means that every one of his rank 0 skills will simply disappear if he switches.”

Rowan blurted, “what’s the point of learning them?”

“That’s the second point where Milestones are important. At each Milestone, you can rank up one of your skills. Right now, they’re all 0. At level 15, you can choose one of your Equipment or Defence skills, and raise it to rank 1. Which will improve its efficacity.”

She threw a meaningful glance at Rowan.

“And if you were to change Professions, then you would keep your rank 1 or bigger skills.”

She quickly added, “as a bonus, you can keep your rank 0 skills if their sphere overlap your new profession. Like, if you switched to Defender, which is the tier 1 Physical/Defence, you’d keep your Shieldbearer skills since they’re also Defence skills. It’s only if you switch to a completely separate sphere that you lose them.”

She nodded at him, “but we’ve got plans for your progression, and almost nobody picks a second tier 1, unless they absolutely have to. So, right now, Zacharias wants you to go through a Stamina-based Profession path, which means the Shieldbringer as a tier 2, once you have three Milestones. It’s still Equipment/Defence, so you won’t lose any of your unranked skills. Speaking of plans…”

She glared at all five of them.

“Zacharias will give you all a build. That’s a list of Professions and Skills you need to get. There are some Skills that are good, and you should raise them in rank once per Profession if you can. There’s a common temptation among Professionals to try to lock as many skills as possible, so they never lose them. We call that the jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none path. That’s good if you want to be some kind of lonesome mighty explorer of the Labyrinth, but it sharply limits you, in terms of where you can safely go at a given level.”

Silas asked, “what’s to prevent you from alternating between Professions to raise every skill?”

“Well, you can’t redo a Milestone you’ve already done. So it’s stupid to pick the same Profession twice. You get bumped back to level 1 when you change to a Profession, even one you already did, and you don’t get a new Milestone until you’ve surpassed all your old ones. And you can’t raise a skill twice with the same type of Milestones.”

Ada raised her hand.

“Yes, Marsh?”

“You said we’d need to go the Plaza to change Profession? Is that why we should keep that Recall ability?”

“No. All zones of the Labyrinth have a tier, like Professions. Grailburg is a tier 1 zone, as you’ve probably seen. So the only Professions you get at the Plaza are the tiers 1 that you already got. To get your tier 2 Profession, you’ll need a tier 2 zone Plaza. Which means traveling from Grailburg to the appropriate zone. Going to a tier 2 zone will require you to be stronger than you are right now, but don’t worry. You’ll soon be good enough.”

“After all, you’re now level 2, within an hour.”