The next morning, Jeb woke up and started his workout. After a slightly longer run than the day before, he saw the two Notifications he’d been waiting for.
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Congratulations! You have completed the Minor Quest Running First Tier “Run” You have outlasted your Endurance. Rewards: 1 Endurance, 20 EXP
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Congratulations! You have completed the Minor Quest Athletics Second Tier “Move” You have increased your Vitality. Rewards: 2 Vitality, 39 EXP
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This time, rather than stretching to play the lute, however, Jeb stretched his legs and arms out. After all, he hadn’t forgotten the advice his family had given him his whole life about the need to stay limber. Even after he opened the Notification, he kept stretching. After all, he was still tight.
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Congratulations! You have completed the Minor Quest Atheletics First Tier “Stretch” You have improved your Dexterity. Rewards: 1 Dexterity, 20 EXP
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It might have been his imagination, but Jeb did feel as though he could stretch slightly further after completing the Quest. Once he’d finished stretching, there was still some time before breakfast. Aunt Esther did say spending time with the bees is important, Jeb thought, grabbing his lute case.
When he got to the hive-to-be, Jeb sat down beside it. The Queen had been fairly lethargic the day before, so Jeb didn’t bother putting on the safety equipment.
“Good morning, hive,” he said, not knowing how else to greet it, “I need to practice singing and my lute. If it’s alright with you, I’ll do it here.”
He paused for a moment, then realized he had no way of interpreting the bees’ response.
“I guess fly out if it bothers you,” he finally said. Jeb pulled his lute out and started to tune it. For whatever reason, it felt like it stayed in tune better since he’d gotten the Lute Playing Skill. Then again, that might just be a coincidence. The weather had been more stable the past few days, after all.
As he started to run through scales, Jeb realized he’d never looked to see what Quests Lute Playing offered.
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Lute Minor Quest First Tier Learn a Piece for Lute What is a lute-player without something to play? Learn another piece of music.
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He wondered what the Quest reward for that would be. Jeb really hoped that it would raise his Statistics, though he wasn’t sure which he hoped most for. As he thought about it, recognizing how pointless it was, Jeb realized he most hoped for either Intelligence or Charisma.
He didn’t need any new Quests to help with Strength, Dexterity, Endurance, or Vitality. He still wasn’t sure what Presence was good for, but he doubted learning a song would help with that. The same was true for Mana Depth and Magic Affinity. Sure they were nice to have, but Jeb could see no way that the Quest would grow those. Willpower was also nice, but Jeb remembered what the Magic Primer had said about what each Statistic helped towards, and the Intelligence-based Classes seemed more like what he was hoping for.
Of course, Charisma would be the ideal Statistic to grow. It was lower than most of his Mental Statistics, and he had at least two Quests related to growing it. Plus, the Bard had implied that increasing his Charisma would help him learn Bardic Magic.
As Jeb finished thinking about that, he realized that he’d gone through all of his scales and picking patterns. Now seemed like as good of a time as any to start working on Singing. He plucked the first note for the scale that had worked the night before and tried to find it.
This time he found it faster, which was a little surprising. The rest of the scale went well, though Jeb did feel like he could sing slightly higher if he needed to. So, he started playing the next scale up.
It was strange using the same syllable for what was clearly a different note, but it also felt somehow better. He could understand where it would be helpful for him to be able to switch between scales without thinking once he got the Skill. After all, while the different notes on a lute required his fingers in different places, the different notes he could sing didn’t have any obvious differences between them.
Soon enough, his voice was tired. It was nearly time for breakfast, so Jeb quickly made his way over to the drying room. 160 pounds later, Jeb had another Quest Notification.
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Congratulations! You have completed the Minor Quest Lifting First Tier “Lift” You have grown your Strength. Rewards: 1 Strength, 20 EXP
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At breakfast, Jeb saw his Aunt Esther.
“I noticed that you visited the hive this morning,” she said, “good job. Even if you have other things to work on silently,” that felt targeted for some reason. Surely Jeb wasn’t that bad at singing, “spending time near the hive is a good idea. I’d like you to get Pollinating before we start on Brewing, just because Brewing will take all day for every day that we work on it.”
“Is there anything else that I can do to help the hive establish faster?” Jeb asked.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
“Other than spending time to make sure that the hive bonds with you, no.” his aunt replied. “But it shouldn’t take too long.”
Breakfast ended, so Jeb went upstairs. He was really curious to see what the Lute Quest would reward him with, so he took the Lute Method Book. He also took the Elemental Primers. Talking with the bees the day before made him realize that he wanted to complete all of his Quests, if only because he wanted his Statistics to be as high as possible.
Back at the hive, Jeb opened the Lute Method Book. If the text was to be trusted, there were musical pieces in it. Unfortunately, Jeb realized he had never learned to read musical notation.
Paging through the book, however, he found the scales he’d learned, with some guides for how to play them. Working from there, he had a vague idea of what the new symbols meant. The first piece it recommended learning was a folk song that he knew.
Jeb tried playing the piece like he thought the notation suggested. To his surprise, it did actually sound like what he remembered. The first time he played through the piece, he could tell that he was stuttering throughout it. As he kept going, though, it gradually grew smoother and smoother
Finally, with the sun high in the sky, Jeb heard the Notification. Beside the beehive, Jeb completed his first Bard Quest.
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Congratulations! You have completed the Minor Quest Lute Playing First Tier “Learn a Piece for Lute” Go forth and serenade. Rewards: 1 Charisma, 20 EXP
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Well that was nice, if a little unexpected. At least now his Charisma wouldn’t fall too far behind his other Mental Stats. Then again, Jeb thought, looking at how far the sun had moved while he learned the song, I don’t know if I want to put the time in to keep learning songs. In the time it took him to learn that single song, Jeb could have easily learned at least four or five First Tier Glyphs.
Speaking of that, Jeb looked at his Magic Primers. As tempted as he was to keep learning more First Tier Elemental Glyphs, he knew that the Quest Reward for learning a Mud Spell would be well worth it.
Jeb opened the Mud Primer. The first Glyph inside, he learned, was Least Create Mud. That could be useful, especially if he could make Mud that had nutrients in it.
He fed a small stream of Mana into the page, watching it light up so he could learn it. Learning it was more difficult than he’d expected. That made some amount of sense, since it was a Second Tier Glyph, but it also had more points than he expected. This one had 37 different points, which Jeb thought about for a moment. He could feel Improved Glyph Groking and Spell Glyphing both trying to tell him something, but he hadn’t trained either well enough to really know what they were trying to tell him.
Or, at least, that was what he assumed. That was another thing he should ask his family. Thankfully, with the help of Improved Glyph Groking, he was able to quickly see that the same patterns he’d learned before still held. There was a second level of Mana flow in the Glyph, which flowed to the square of the point it was coming from.
He was confused for a second when he saw that the sixth point didn’t touch multiple points but quickly figured out why. There were more points in this Glyph, so of course it would take longer to loop. After all, the sixth point only touched two because six by six was larger than twenty five.
As he then expected, the first point to start looping again was the seventh. It touched the final point and the twelfth point.
Feeling more comfortable now, Jeb started to connect the points of light in his mind. As he did, he could feel the strain growing, though it was still manageable. Though, a part of him was still noticing the passage of time. Maybe his guess that he could learn five Glyphs in the time it had taken him to learn the song was wrong.
Just as Jeb got to the final point, he felt the light snap back. Something went wrong.
Jeb’s Status Sheet at End of Chapter:
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Jeb Human Age: 16 Class: Least Mud Initiate Level: 1 Experience: 915/100
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Total Statistic Load: 141 Physical Load: 69 Strength: 17 Dexterity: 10 Endurance: 19 Vitality: 19 Presence: 4
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Mental Load: 72 Intelligence: 21 Willpower: 20 Magic Affinity: 15 Mana Depth: 3 Charisma: 13
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Mana: 260
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Glyph Attunement: 8 Least Conjure Water Tier 1 Spell Least Shape Earth Tier 1 Spell Least Hold Earth Tier 1 Spell Least Create Earth Tier 1 Spell Least Destroy Earth Tier 1 Spell Least Shape Earth - Efficient Tier 3 Spell Least Move Air Tier 1 Spell Least Create Fire Tier 1 Spell
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Skills: Least Mud Magic Meditation Mana Manipulation Spell Glyphing Improved Glyph Groking Gift of Gab Running Identify Soil Savvy Animal Handling Fertilizing Lifting Athletics Lute Playing
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Achievements: Focused Meditator Student of Magic
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Quests: Major: Slay the Dragon of the West (Progressive)
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