When Timur woke up the next morning, he had a headache and his stomach felt like it was trying to burn its way to the outside world. As good of an idea that a night of alcohol on an empty stomach had seemed, it was evidently not the healthy, balanced meal that Timur's body needed. With a groan, he swung his legs off his bed and landed on the dusty wood floor of his room.

Timur lived in one of the cheapest places that he could rent. For the low, low price of six silver a month, he received a private room in a building thought of as a shack, even by the lax standards of dungeon goers. When he was in a bad mood, and this morning he was, he'd call his dwellings a dump. But, living in that dump meant he had better chances of staying in the black while still sleeping under a roof, and he wasn’t inclined to introduce changes to that math just yet.

Timur sat for a few moments trying to will fresh blood into his head, hoping that he’d be able to flush out some of the pounding in his brain. Unfortunately, some things didn't get better with time. With a grunt and the better part of his willpower, he forced himself through the pain, onto his feet, and set for a course outside.

He didn’t have to stop and get dressed, at least. An unexpected benefit of sleeping drunk was that one could expect to wake up in last night's clothes and ready to go. Did they smell? Sure. Did they look wrinkled? Definitely. But could Timur walk out the door the moment he woke up? Also yes.

One step at a time, Timur made his way to the tavern. Like most establishments in town, it took into account the fact that there was no day or night in the dungeon, and thus was open at all hours of the day. By the time Timur walked in, most of the dungeon-goers who got started around morning time had already left, leaving the staff with mountains of dirty dishes.

Timur found his way to one of the tables and sat there, head buried in his hands. Judging by his still pounding skull, he had definitely overdone it last night.

Raja came over to his table. Somehow, she was still on shift. Rather than take his order, she took one look at Timur and said, “Timur, I think I know what you need.”

It made sense to let the person who had dealt with countless drunks over the years to find the right cure, so Timur just groaned in agreement. He would defer to her post-mistake-recovery expertise.

Soon, the smell of fish wafted into Timur's nose. Picking his head up, he saw Raja standing over him carrying a plate worth of baked fish. It was still hot enough for the water around the two-headed carp to boil and sizzle. The smell, however, was gorgeous, and Timur looked expectantly at Raja.

With a smile, she placed the dish on the table. And, unlike his mother, she didn't chide Timur for his poor life choices the last night. Instead, she showed a concerned expression, pulled out a chair, and sat at the table. This information registered somewhere in Timur's hung over brain, but was temporarily passed over in favor of the higher-priority hunger the carp had revealed.

He tore into the food with a vigor that resembled a [Barbarian]. In seconds, the plate was left just fish bones. Raja had been right. Timur felt better. Only then did his brain register the fact that there was another human being at the table. He looked up with a guilty smile.

“Do you want more?” Raja asked.

“No, no, thank you. This was exactly what I needed,” said Timur.

“Good,” Raja smiled. “Now I know you don't want to hear this but…”

“Wait,” Timur cut her off. “Can we possibly postpone this until later? I have to… I have to get started on the day and get into the dungeon. I promise I'll listen to whatever you have to say tonight.”

As Timur started to rise to escape, Raja placed her hand down on the table, stopping Timur in his tracks. “No. We talk now.”

“Raja,” Timur stammered. “I know. I need to drink less. But it's the only thing that I like doing.”

“That's not what I wanted to talk about,” Raja sighed. Her face bore an expression familiar to Timur. It was some mix between sorrow, concern, and, worst of all, pity. “I don't mind you drinking. It can't be healthy, but somehow all of our customers make it back the next day without fail. I wanted to talk about something else.”

“What?!” Timur snapped. He regretted his tone the moment the words left his mouth, but he allowed the unintended anger to hang in the air.

“I wanted, I wanted to talk to you about what you're doing,” Raja began. She blinked a couple of times, which Timur had come to understand as her being nervous. “Have you thought about what you want to do? Like, not just today, or tomorrow, but in the future. Maybe a couple of years from now?”

Timur didn't respond for a few seconds.

“A couple of years from now?” Timur asked. The fish had helped, but not that much. He was having real difficulty thinking of what he wanted to do a couple of minutes from now.

“Yes. Yeah. You've been here for a couple of years now. I remember when you came to Lyr, Timur. You were happy, and energetic. You talked to people. Now, you're here almost as often as Ryn. I'm concerned,” Raja said.

Timur also knew that the direction he was going in wasn't healthy. But the whole reason why he was drinking was to avoid his problems. If he had to start facing his problems, like being halfway broke and not having a future, he'd eventually have to face his larger problems. More specifically, he'd have to think about how he could avenge his father. And that was a problem better left for another day, when he was sober and ready to stay sober for a while.

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“I have. Trust me. It's just, I need some time. To think.” Timur didn't even sound convincing to himself. “Why don't we have this talk tonight? I have to… I have to get started on the day and get into the dungeon. I promise I'll listen to whatever you have to say tonight.”

With that, he ran off without looking back. It might have been rude, but Timur desperately needed to extract himself from that situation.

—

Timur didn't go to the dungeons right away. Even though the pounding in his head had subsided from a sledgehammer to an everyday run-of-the-mill hammer, Timur found himself aimlessly wandering the streets of Lyr.

The town had transformed since Timur first arrived. Instead of slapdash buildings, there were now real wood and steel structures. Some of the houses even looked nice, though they all clashed with each other design-wise. There wasn't anything like a building code, so the owners each built whatever their budget and aesthetic tastes allowed.

Raja's words earlier echoed in Timur's ears. Deep down, Timur knew that she was right. He had been wasting away his life over the past few months, just going through the motions, doing the same mundane things while having no choice but to accept the bitterness and futility of things. But there was little else that Timur could do. His [Loremaster] class hadn't progressed significantly in years, which meant that his stats were far below the average twenty-something person.

Unfortunately, stats were the foundation of Timur's world. It was just as true in Lyr as Timur's hometown. Each person had three stats; Body, Mind, and Spirit. Body was self-explanatory, it correlated with a person's speed, strength, and immune system. It was also the most popular of the three stats.

Spirit was a close second. It was an intangible quality that was primarily tied to mana. [Mages] and [Clerics] used Spirit as their primary stat, manifesting mana into tangible things like a fireball or healing spell. For [Loremasters], his Spirit channeled mana to amplify words.

The final stat, Mind was a relatively uncommon stat for most dungeon professions. A higher Mind meant more knowledge retention and faster calculation speeds. That was great for classes like [Scholars] or [Lawyers] or [Tinkers] who stayed safe on the surface.

Timur's [Loremaster] class required both Spirit and Mind. That was bad. The best classes were specialized to gain most of their benefits from a single stat and had clear advancement actions. Those were classes like [Warriors] who optimized for Body through battle, [Mages] and [Healers] who trained their Spirit with spells, and [Tinkers] and [Lawyers] who increased their Mind stats by honing their craft. Timur not only had trouble leveling, but had to split what little profit he gained between the advancement of two separate stats. It was twice the work for the same or less gain than everyone else got.

As Timur walked, memories of the past once again started to surface.

—

The light was shining through Timur's window. Morning. He gave a grumpy groan.

“Hey Timur, you better come,” yelled Rein, “It's your father.”

“Coming!” yelled Timur back, irritated. His father seemed to get into trouble more and more often. Ever since Timur had come home with the [Loremaster] class, his father's alcoholism had kicked up a notch, as if the man had decided to treat every day like there was no tomorrow. That meant he would often wake up in the morning to his father just then coming home from a night of drinking, collapsing on the nearest piece of furniture and burning most of the day sobering up.

Grabbing some clothes from a chair, Timur walked into the streets, where Rein was already waiting. The moment that Timur saw Rein's face, any sleepiness instantly disappeared. Rein looked at Timur with pity, the same look that people who had to give bad news would take.

“What is it?” Timur's mouth managed to say the words despite his mind screaming at him to stay quiet. To perhaps delay the inevitable.

“It's your father. He…” Rein paused. “He's not doing well.”

“Not doing well?” Timur pressed.

“He… he might be dead,” Rein admitted.

“Where?” Timur said with calm that he didn't know was in him.

“Over by the tavern.” Rein pointed to his right.

—

When Timur arrived at the tavern, he found his father was already cold to the touch. The obvious cause was the arrow sticking out of his body. Yet, the scene of the apparent murder was being treated with utter carelessness. The guards were letting others walk around his father's body. The sight of someone stepping over Timur's father's dead body shattered whatever calm he was still managing to maintain.

He rushed forward, screeching an incoherent curse at the idiot who dared to walk over a dead body, before turning to the guards.

“What happened here?!” Timur yelled.

“Best as I can tell? Suicide. We got the [Seer] here to check, she also confirmed it,” the guard replied.

It wasn't the words that angered Timur. It was the guard's attitude. He almost went to his fists but stopped himself at the last moment. To be a guard, you had to have a Body-based class and be over level 10. Timur could try to punch the guard, but he'd only end up breaking his hand instead.

“How, how the fuck can you call this a suicide? My father has a fucking arrow sticking out of him. How would he even do that to himself? How could he even do that?” Timur's words came out in seconds.

The guard shrugged and looked in a different direction.

When Timur replayed this scene in his head later, he could understand that the guard had probably drawn the short end of the stick in having to stand by a dead body while the proper authorities could come to clean things up. He could also understand that it wasn’t the guard’s duty to console the deceased relatives. He could even understand that his father was not a very popular man due to the debts that he racked up, which meant that there wasn’t anyone who was willing to stand up for Timur and his father.

What he couldn’t understand was how the world just seemed to move on when Timur’s whole life was crashing down in front of him. The people walking by, the guard, even Rein, who had come to find Timur. Everyone seemed to just be okay with things.

That infuriated Timur. And then his world went dark.

Over the years, bits and pieces of what happened slowly came back to him. Apparently, the shrug had triggered him enough to rush a guard even when his own Body stat was less than 10. And apparently, the guard didn’t realize that Timur was so weak, and so, he had countered with full force.

The end result was a couple of cracked ribs, organ damage, and being booted out of his hometown with a kill-on-sight order on his head. He spent the next few months begging his way from town to town as his body slowly healed itself. Every step was pain, and every breath felt like it was going to be his last. But somehow, he survived. The next time Timur had the wherewithal to open his stat screen, it was as if fate was mocking him. He had gained a new skill; Silvery Tongue.