Novels2Search

Interlude: The big book of jobs

"Marcy! Marcy!" I try to yell-not-yell below the window of my best friend to call her. It is already night, and I was not supposed to be out, but this is very important. Why doesn't she show up?!

"What is the password?" Her voice comes from the other side of the window. Again with these games. What is a password?

"I want the book!"

Some time passes but she opens the window, "Right password!"

With a sigh, I climb into her room. Marcy's room is tight. There is only room for the bed, a closet and a writing desk. There is a footlocker trapped between the corner of the room, the bed and the desk but that is it. You can't even open the door if there is someone sitting at the desk.

"Here is your book. I must return it before Master misses it, or I will be in deep trouble. What is so important about it?"

I look at the book. It is an old book with iron corners and vellum pages. The letters at the cover spell "Job Compendium." I asked Marcy to borrow this book from the adventurer's guild library. In this book are listed all the jobs humanity has ever discovered! I am very excited. I sit on the bed and open the old tome. It stinks and my nose itches, but I'll endure it.

"Villager, Apprentices. Magician, Scout, Warrior, Merchant. Four of the five pillars of the job system." I read aloud the information at the first pages of the book.

Marcy shoves her head between me and the book, her pretty red hair covering the pages, "What is the fifth pillar?"

"I don't know! But I suspect that is 'healer'. You know how healing magic is not granted by any job? It is the only basic magic system that doesn't follow this pattern! There must be a secret healer job that nobody ever heard of!"

"You are crazy. Give the book back, Helen. There is no way this book missed one job. This book is a treasure of the guild and has been mantained and updated for over two thousand years!"

Afraid she would yank the book from me, I grab the cold metal bindings and clench the book against my belly. "No! Let me read it. You promised!"

Marcy pats my head and smiles. I normally don't mind her teasing nature, but sometimes she hits where it hurts! But she is still my best friend.

"Keep reading."

"To attain each job, the use of the job crystal is paramount. It will write the job information on the status of the adventurer's card... But what if the person has no card?"

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

"Then it is not an adventurer! It costs one silver coin to issue a new card."

"Expensive! You can buy over twenty loaves of bread with a silver coin! And good white bread, not the brown hard stuff!"

"Guess, I learned how to issue guild cards today!" She makes a littlle victory jiggle.

"Marcy, you are awesome. You will be a guild master one day, I am sure of it!"

"No! I want to be the guild master's wife!"

"Silly. That man is your master and he is too old!"

"But he is so handsome and charming! And all the girls of the guild want him."

"Can I keep reading?"

"Sure!"

"Jobs have rankings. The higher the ranking, the hardest it is to obtain the job but the more powerful it is. It is always an advantage to get a higher ranking job. To unlock a higher ranking job, one needs to fill in the requirements. Usually it is just levels and skills related to the previous jobs, but the more powerful ones need other more difficult to fulfill requirements."

We flip the pages and the jobs are described with a pretty illustration. Elementalist, Wizard, Ranger, Sniper, Knight, Armsmaster. Those are the six fourth-tier jobs available at the guild. Then Archmage, Bowmaster, Sword Saint are the fifth-tier jobs. Still not what I am looking for.

I flip the pages of the book in a hurry, skimming the contents of each one. There are a lot of other jobs but adventuurers cannot obtain them. They are restricted to other organizations, or even banned forever. Like assassin. Nobody can be an assassin. Only evil people would want to anyway.

"What are you looking for?"

"The sixth tier job for magicians. I saw one picure in a book at my master's place. The 'Magus' job. The supreme wielder of magic. Master scolded and hit me when I asked. Said it was a legend. I must know for sure."

"Check the sixth tier job for scouts too!"

"Yes!"

We flip through the book looking at the jobs. Merchant, artisan, master craftsmen, enchanter, chemist, transmuter, monster tamer, thief, blade dancer, dervish, and swashbuckler. A few of the forgotten jobs that only remain as pages on an old book.

The last section belongs to the unconfirmed jobs. Even for the ones that wrote this book, they were not sure these jobs existed. Mentalist, Kensei, Ninja...

"Marcy, what is a 'Database Administrator'?"

"Oh, I think I know this, it must be a kind of master librarian!"

"And 'System Operator', what should it be? I can't read these characters well, it seems these two last jobs were something related to the ancient heroes."

"Someone that knows math really well? My guess is as good as yours for that one."

"Eew, math. Father forces me to recite the times table at least once every season!"

"But you can always become a merchant if you know the times table, Helen!"

"The rocking of the wagon makes me sick."

I flip a few more pages, and find what I was looking for. "Here! Magus. These characters here mean 'Magus' or 'Master of Magic'! It is real, Marcy!!!"

"Can you read the rest of the page?"

"No. I have no idea how to read these glyphs. They are too old! No, wait. I know this one. It means 'ultimate'. And this other one net to it looks like the modern character for 'spell'."

"If you remove some lines from this one, it looks like 'fifteen'."

"Fifteen ultimate spells? This is an awful lot! Master told me to never aim for a single one, they are dangerous!"

"But imagine, Helen! A sixth tier job has power comparable to a dragon!"

"I am not sure we will even reach the third..."