Stan didn’t say anything as he led Lucas back to their room. Lucas knew that he’d have to talk to his father about his skills. He wasn’t sure, but he didn’t think people normally got new skills from dreaming. He was actually pretty sure that his mom would have told him about that. She spent at least fifteen minutes every week telling him how important it was to clean his teeth with a Gava Root before bed so she would definitely have mentioned dream skills.

“It’s level five now,” said Lucas after the door was closed and his father sat on the edge of the bed. His resolve from earlier in the day began to wither under his father’s glare until he remembered the sensation of blood on his face and the feel of entrails on his wrist. He would never let himself be in the position where someone could do that to him or his family. The bandits were part of it, but Lucas knew there was dangerous stuff out in the world that could take away everything. The horned bear was just an example of a creature that would have no problem taking his father away from him.

Stan just stared at his son without speaking. His son had promised not to level most of his skills a year ago. The training that Stan gave his son was designed specifically to try to teach his son about life near a beast range without increasing skill levels. Some skills, like [Dagger Mastery] were unavoidable, but everybody had at least a few levels in those skills when they obtained their status.

“Why did you break your word, son?” Stan asked.

Lucas waited a moment before answering. So much like an adult in many of his mannerisms, Stan sometimes forgot that his son was only six years old, well seven years old tomorrow.

“I had a dream, dad,” Lucas replied.

“Must a’ been pretty scary to make you break a promise to me like that,” said Stan.

“It wasn’t scary, dad. It wasn’t like normal dreams,” said Lucas. “Well, not like my normal dreams used to be. Since last year I’ve been having strange dreams about the same people over and over again, but it’s always like I’m just watching something that’s already happened. This time, it was about a pirate named Lucasi. I watched him capture a ship, fight a giant barbarian with an axe, and kill a priest.”

“Sounds like your ma’s been telling you stories about the Pirate King. Don’t mean you need to run out and put yourself in danger cuz you heard about his duel with the giant of the Myriad Sea,” Stan said.

“Mum never told me any stories about a pirate king, dad, you can ask her when we get home. But that’s not all,” said Lucas. “When I was watching the fight, I could feel everything that the pirate was doing. I could feel him using his skills, and when I woke up,” Lucas paused and leaned close to his father so that he wouldn’t be overheard. “I’d learned [Swordsmanship], and [Dodge] had leveled up.”

Stan just sat there, stunned by the news his son had given him. Nobody should be able to learn a skill in their sleep. Let alone a combat skill like [Swordsmanship].

“So, what made you run out and level [Stealth]?” asked Stan.

“Dad, my skills aren’t slowing down. I’m learning new ones even faster than I was last year. Plus, if somebody finds out about me, they’ll try to take me away from you. When I saw what the pirate did to that priest, I wanted to make sure that nobody could ever do that to me,” Lucas said all of this with a burst of breath. With a quick inhalation and not allowing time for Stan to interject, Lucas continued. “Just like the bandits, if I didn’t have that skill then you would be dead. I can’t stop the skills, dad. They keep coming, and I think the dreams are part of it. This time, the pirate talked to me. Dad, he talked about the title,” the last part came from Lucas’ mouth almost like a whimper.

Stan could tell that his son was scared. Between the bandit attack and whatever he had dreamed about, he was on the verge of losing control. Stan didn’t doubt for a second that his son was having these dreams. His son was rambunctious, precocious, and too smart for his own good, but he wasn’t a liar.

“So, you went out and started leveling one of your skills, without talkin’ to me, without tellin’ me what had you so worried,” Stan stopped for a second, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath before continuing. “Look, son, I know that you aren’t gonna’ stop gainin’ skills any time soon. Me and your Ma’ talked about this. Leveling your skills randomly on your own ain’t gonna’ keep you safe. We can’t stop you from gettin’ new skills, but we can make it so that you have a good excuse for some a’ the things you can do. We can also try n’ pick skills that are gonna give you the most advantage. We don’t know if there’s a limit to what you can learn, but I aim to make sure you have the best skills available. I ain’t sayin’ you’re gonna get off free n’ clear for what ya’ did,” he continued when he saw his son’s excitement at his words. “You broke your promise. We’re just gonna’ move up our plan a lil’ bit.

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Stan stood up and headed towards the door. “You stay here, I’m gonna’ go see somebody. I want you to think about what you did today. Think about what woulda’ happened if anybody’d seen you and put together that what you were doin’ needed a skill. Think about what it would have felt like if I’d a’ had to kill poor Garth ‘cause he realized the only way he coulda’ pinged you with his [Perception] was if you had somethin’ like stealth.”

Lucas sat and stared dejectedly out the window for what seemed like hours but was in fact only about thirty minutes. Eventually, his father came back to their room with an older man. He was dressed in robes, instead of a shirt and pants like most people that Lucas saw on a daily basis. He was clean shaven with wispy white hair covering a head that was clearly losing the fight with time.

“Hello, Lucas,” he said after the door was closed. “I’m Randolph. I’m a close friend of your father’s and the town’s [Alchemist]. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you after so many years.”

Lucas didn’t know what to say to the man. He obviously knew who Lucas was and Lucas’ father was comfortable with him.

“Hello, sir,” replied Lucas. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“So, your father tells me that you’ve decided to try to level your skills,” began Randolph. “Don’t worry, your father told me about your skills shortly after you told him. We were planning to wait another year or two before beginning your training, but that was mostly to refine the path that we wanted to take and gather a little more information on obscure skills that you might be able to learn. For the most part, we’re ready to start now.”

“I don’t understand,” said Lucas. Lucas didn’t normally have any trouble understanding what was going on around him. Adults tended to forget just how much children heard, and Lucas was very good at inferring conclusions.

“He’s sayin’ that your gonna learn some skills. We’ve been plannin’ on having you start learnin’ skills at some point, but we wanted to make sure you learned the right ones. I went to Randolph when you first started talkin’ about the status windows. He’s someone I trust with my life. I thought you might be sick and had him take a look at you. He’s the one that came up with this idea and I want you to do anything that he says as if it was a command from me. Randolph here’s the smartest man I ever met,” said Stan.

“You don’t seem to be suffering from any side effects from learning skills,” continued Randolph. “Other than a somewhat unusual maturity, your father has reported nothing out of the ordinary for the past three years. Your parents have been watching you very closely. As far as we can determine, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with you. I actually wasn’t able to find any legitimate reference to your condition outside of tall tales and a few verbal records from older alchemists that came from their grand-master’s grand-masters.”

Lucas didn’t say anything right away. This is what he wanted. Maybe not exactly how he’d pictured it, but he’d still be learning skills and making sure he could protect his family. After a few moments he looked at Randolph and asked his first question of the meeting, “What skills am I going to learn?”

“Haha!” exclaimed Randolph, “that’s the spirit. Your father and I have a list of skills that we think will give you a true advantage. It will also likely open up some of the more esoteric or restricted classes. Imagine, learning to heal with a touch like a [Priest]. The problem is, these skills are normally class restricted, considered the personal legacies of powerful houses with the requirements hidden from the public, or require an obscene amount of points in the system to unlock. In order to get you to the point where you can learn them, we need a solid foundation and a large number of common and uncommon skills to be leveled up to a specific point.

“First, is the required reading,” said Randolph. He made reached into mid air and pulled a small sack out of nothing before handing it to Stan.

“Can I learn how to do that?” asked Lucas.

“That is the skill [Inventory]. It’s available to many second tier [Adventurer] classes and can be created by a [Space Mage] or a handful of magic classes with a focus on space or storage. It is one of the most versatile abilities in the known world and storage items that can replicate the [Inventory] skill with the most storage can cost more than the lifetime earnings of some wealthy merchants.”

Lucas sighed in defeat while Randolph chuckled to himself and then continued, “So, of course we are going to try to have you learn it. In order to learn that particular skill, we believe that you need to have a strong grasp of organization and spacial perception with a few other skills and talents. It will likely take the longest since most classes get it at a specific tier or after certain achievements.

“Now, as to you training your skills yourself. If you want to level up your [Stealth] in your free time, that is fine. I would discourage you experimenting with gaining new skills, since we don’t currently know if there’s a limit. I would actually recommend that you spend any free time that you have reading the material provided. Don’t worry, young man. I know what your thinking, ‘What if I read it all too quickly?’. Well, worry not, there is at least three times that many books,” he said pointing at the bag containing a dozen large volumes, “that we have selected already and many, many more that were removed because we weren’t sure if you would have enough time to read them all before you gained access to the system.”

Lucas was definitely not thinking about reading the books too quickly. All he could do was lament the fact that he had probably just lost his half a day to sleep in on Freedays.

“Now,” continued Randolph, ignoring the dejected look that still graced Lucas’ face. “tell me about the skills that you have already.”