“He’s waking up. Everyone shut up!” A muffled voice came through the haze of unconsciousness as I struggled to sit up on the golden throne.
I held my head as it pounded. “Did someone get the name of the dragon that punched me?”
“No such luck, Starchild.” Grandpa’s voice cut through the noise of my family and family friends chatting. “Take a few deep breaths to settle yourself and let us know when you’re ready to tell us how things shook out.”
He whispered in my ear. “I’m proud of you.” I felt the warmth of his love and it helped me shake the fog from my mind.
Opening my eyes, I found Mom and Dad sitting with a couple of their former party members. Arlo the pantherkin was holding his stomach as he laughed at some joke my dad told and his human wife, Megara, sat on the arm of the wide stone patio chair. The pair of them had been around as long as I could remember, but they were the last members of my parents’ party still living in the mountain community. The rest left between my tenth birthday and my System day, citing the need to travel, even if they weren’t going to work as adventurers.
I gripped the arms of the [Throne of Kantor] tightly. “Alright, I think I’m ready.”
Everyone gathered went silent the moment the words left my lips. The results of someone’s System Day help inform the path they’ll travel the rest of their lives, and everyone around me was invested in my results.
I grinned. “Thanks for coming, everyone. Let’s get this started.” I held up a hand despite knowing I didn’t need to, sometimes the theater of it all was worth the effort. “[Status].”
A rolled up piece of parchment appeared in my extended hand before unrolling to reveal the events of my system integration.
[Name: Arthur Bajbub Neilson
Class: Suzerain - Unique - Rank ???
Level: 24
HP: 230
Mana: 529
Stamina: 344
Stats:
Might: 13
Agility: 101
Toughness: 65
Charm: 75
Wits: 115
Perception: 91
Arcane: 199
Divine: 199
Active Skills - Mastery:
Rapid Strike - 70%
Dual Chop - 64%
Backstab - 94%
Mana Slide - 20%
Arcane Armor - 63%
Magic Missile - 97%
Elemental Bolt - 48%
Lockpicking - 79%
Trap Finding - 95%
Trap Disarming - 91%
Arcane Sight - 74%
%&)(*)!!$_!#$ - 1%
Passive Skills:
Essence Reading (Analyze Evolution)
Evasion
Linguist
Light Armor Training
Medium Armor Training
Small Blade Training
Bow Training
Code Cracking
Spelunking
Cartography
Herbalism
Ritual Magic
<>?:”$%^&*]
Shit, those stats are off the charts from what Mom said I’d have. She said I should be happy to have a single stat over 100 and I have more like that than I have under 100. It has to be Suzerain giving me a boost. It must have applied all the level ups I had stored up with its stat multiplier by default. I didn’t even get to put those points where I wanted to… How the hell am I going to show this to everyone? They’ll freak out.
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Analyze evolved into Essence Reading, I wonder what that’ll let me do with it? Also, what’s with those two skills I can’t even read? One active and one passive. I’m guessing they’re related to Suzerain, but I can’t be sure. Grandpa will be able to help.
I clenched my fist and the scroll disappeared. I reached out a hand and grandpa pulled me up.
“Can you take me somewhere private? I have questions.” I got up on my tippy toes and whispered in his ear.
“Of course.” The air around me blurred and a moment later I was seated on my bed in the manor. Grandpa was sitting next to me with a broad smile plastered on his face. “What kind of questions?”
“This kind.” I summoned my [Status] with a thought and this time it showed up with the normal partially see-through blue screen I’d always heard of and I gave Grandpa permission to view it in the settings. The scroll was reserved for System day and learning new Skills most of the time, though some people liked how it looked and used it exclusively.
Grandpa’s jaw dropped. “Grandson, this is something.”
He was dumbstruck, but my eyes were locked on the pair of skills whose names had unscrambled from what was on the physical incarnation of my [Status].
[Active Skills - Mastery:
Skill Dominance - 1%
Passive Skills:
Chosen of Dominus]
“So that’s what those were. I wonder why they were hidden on the scroll? I was among friends, so the system shouldn’t have been trying to protect me.”
Grandpa spun me around roughly to place his hands on my shoulders. He locked his golden eyes on my own cerulean orbs. “You saw her, didn’t you?”
For a moment, I debated playing dumb, but I’d never been able to get one over on my grandfather. Not even once, so I told the truth.
“If you’re talking about… her? yeah. I did.”
His eyes bulged. “Did she talk to you? Did you agree to do anything for her?”
“Yes and not really? She asked me to help good people and take out evil cults if I happen to find any. Seems pretty standard for someone like her.”
He got up and started pacing. “No, no, no!” Fractured beams of light poured off of him as he paced. He muttered to himself. “She can’t have another of us, we’re so few as it is.”
“What do you mean? Is this not the first time our family has encountered her?” I flicked my [Status] window away. “Come on, tell me. I need to know what I got myself into.”
If Grandpa is this worried, I might be in for more than I bargained for.
“It’ll be fine, with a Class like his, he’ll be plenty strong to protect himself. He has more health than his mother does, for the gods sake and he’s fifty levels lower than she is.” Grandpa whirled around and stopped in front of me. “We can work with what you have here. I think.” He chuckled.
“What’s so funny?” I glared at him. I was worried and he was laughing at me? Rude old man.
“Your Class is [Suzerain], which means ruler of rulers. You’re basically a walking coup. If a noble ever sees that? They’ll have you killed. However, I can help with that, and with stats like yours? You’ll be fine. I’m sure of it.” He pulled a scroll from the spatial ring he always wore and handed it to me. “Learn this now and I’ll explain how to use it.”
I dutifully took the scroll and started to read, but a box appeared before me with a question in it.
[Learn Status Shield - Y/N]
I mentally tapped the yes option and, a moment later, the scroll glowed brightly and a new window appeared.
[Active Skills - Mastery
Skill Dominance - 2%
Status Shield - 50%]
I spun the window around to show Grandpa and he nearly fell over. “Fifty percent!? You should be at ten percent at the most, more likely five in that little amount of reading.” He grabbed my shoulders and shook me a bit. “Do you know what this means?” His eyes were glowing like a pair of suns.
“That I’ll be able to hide my stats from people I don’t choose to show?” I was confused. “Why are you so excited? You gave me the scroll.”
“That was a Rare [Skill Scroll]. Not only does it teach the skill, it also imparts the knowledge the crafter has of the skill into it. I made that scroll and my mastery of Status Shield is 50%. You learned everything I know of the skill through the scroll.” He tipped his head back and howled with laughter. “My grandson is going to be a,” his voice lowered to almost a whisper, “monster!”
Grandpa started hauling scrolls out of his ring and shoved them into my lap one by one. “This one is [Wingbind] for fighting dragons and other flying creatures. This one contains [Synthesis] for self healing.” He smirked. “And this one is [Sunny Side Up] for frying eggs perfectly around the campfire when you find a lady who needs to know her man can cook!”
I nearly did a spit take before laughing out loud. “You have a Skill for cooking eggs? Where did you find that?”
He beamed. “I didn’t find it, I established it. Do something perfectly enough times and the System will acknowledge your hard work and convert it to a Skill for you. That way you don’t have to keep pouring hours into the same thing for the same amount of payoff. It’s good that way.”
“Why did you need to learn to make fried eggs?” I probed as I used the scrolls he provided to learn the skills within.
[Active Skills - Mastery
Skill Dominance - 5%
Wingbind - 75%
Synthesis - 94%
Sunny Side Up - 100% - No Evolution Available]
Huh, I thought all skills could evolve. Interesting.
Grandpa didn’t answer my question, getting me to turn back to see him crying.
My eyes went wide. “I’m so sorry Grandpa, I didn’t think about–”
He dried his eyes with a bright yellow handkerchief. “It’s alright Starchild, you never met her, so why would you think of her?” He clenched his fists so tightly his knuckles went white. “If I ever see one of those–” He started coughing and little flecks of blood soon marred his handkerchief.
He turned to me and sighed. “System Oaths aren’t to be taken lightly. I hope you never have to make one outside of your wedding vows someday. I just hope I get to see that happen.”
Grandpa can’t talk about what happened to Grandma because of a System Oath? I know he can’t say more, but that makes me even more curious! I grinned internally. Maybe Dominus can tell me more about what happened? She’s a goddess who knew who my grandfather was, so she might. That’s one thing to make sure I ask her next time I see her. She said I’d see her again soon, so I wonder if it’ll be the next time I go to sleep and level up?
According to what my parents had told me, leveling up a Skill could happen at any time, but leveling up a Class was much more involved. You had to go to sleep and navigate those menus with your subconscious. For most people, that was a good thing. Most people’s subconscious minds were more adept at figuring out what they needed than their conscious minds. For me? I… didn’t know.
With my elven heritage, I didn’t really sleep. Instead, I would go into a trance for a few hours and wake up refreshed. I could still go to sleep, but I only had to do so once a week instead of every night like most races. Because of that, I would have full control of my stat distribution, which meant I would have to make decisions, unlike most other people. It was a blessing and a curse for elves, they didn’t have the benefit of passing their level ups to their sleeping selves. Instead, elves planned their entire first century on what build they would proceed with. I kind of drew the short end of the stick as far as that kind of thing went. I was only twenty-five and I also didn’t sleep, so I got the worst of both worlds. My mom and dad did their best to give me as much information as they could on what stats to raise at each level up for different builds, but in the end, it would be all up to me to make the final call.
Each Class has a number of different ways it can be used, called builds. For example, I had my build for [Eldritch Warmaster] all picked out. I was going to go with Agility over Might and Wits over Charm, I’d have thrown a few points into Arcane and Might eventually, but those were never going to be my focus. The build leaned into the training from my parents and it was perfect for me. Now? I had no idea what my level ups would look like.
Grandpa literally shook me out of my funk with a hand on my shoulder. “Starchild, it seemed like you were a thousand miles away just now. Are you OK?”
“Just thinking about how I need a new plan for leveling up now.” I didn’t bullshit my grandfather, he was ancient and would see through any thin attempt to dissuade him from worrying. “It’ll be fine. Even if I managed to level up this week, I’d still have a few days to make a plan before I go to sleep.”
“If you’re sure? I won’t press, but don’t be afraid to ask me or your parents’ party for help. We all have your best interests at heart.”
He didn’t appear to want to let me go based on how he was wavering, but we’d already been away from the party for too long. “Don’t worry Grandpa, I’ll make it work.”
“I know you will.” He ruffled my hair. “Time to go back to the party.”