> “? Easy enough to handle, just attack her with multiple opponents, she’s best at solo fighting.”

* Torrag the Twice-Wrong

Stina Walsh stood on a bluff. She was ninety one years old, and had thirty pristinely honed levels to her name. She was easily in the top forty most powerful people in Esun, and in the top ten on Esultare. She was, also, profoundly bored, and tired. She had peaked, you could argue, around the age of 35, when she had gained her 30th level in her Class, and her 15th in her Class, and they merged into a level 27 , and then later advanced to . She hadn’t leveled in over three decades, and she considered herself semi-retired.

Of course, that was before that fool of a boy Stillbottums had gone and killed Brosian and taken his position, then decided to crown himself . She was honorbound, not by some , but by her own promises to her long-dead friends, that she would make best efforts to slay the fool.

Of course, as fast and as efficient as she was, walking briskly along, she was still human, and as such would take some time to reach her destination. It was about two weeks from Lakeside to Cardona by wagon, and it would take her about three at her current pace. As she walked, feeling the wind in her hair, seeing the grass sway under her feet, hearing the chitter and ambience of the world without the hustle and bustle of urban life, she felt free, and at peace. She reflected that she had let herself get cooped up in a sedentary lifestyle by the obligations of her job; she should have delegated more of her responsibilities. And fired a good third of the , for that matter. Ah, but hindsight is clearer than foresight, as they say.

She found the first little hamlet along the road on her third day of travel. She was welcomed warmly by the people there; their city council was made up of a bright older gentleman always hobbling with a cane, a quiet but dedicated-seeming young woman who she immediately took a liking to, and a broad shouldered middle aged man who seemed to look at everything with glassy eyes. She didn’t care to remember their names; not out of spite, but because, well…

Being as old as she was, and having so much time to train and get to intimately understand her Class and Talents had allowed her a great deal of understanding and knowledge that could only truly be understood by first hand experience. And one of the subtle limitations of the Archons’ gifts had become obtuse as time went on: Talents took up ‘space’ in your mind. It wasn’t noticeable for the vast majority of people, really, as most people never got above level 15 or so (and as such only had, oh, a dozen Talents at most). On top of that, the system seemed to love to condense and streamline Classes and Talents as much as possible. But she had rejected such amateur condensation attempts, besides the one that made her -- another trick that very few knew about-- because she had realized something early on.

Talents took up more and more space the higher level one grew, as they grew more powerful in tandem. At a certain point, they began affecting one’s short-term memory, altering one’s thought patterns in extreme ways, and otherwise fucking with one’s mind. There was this common conception that high-level people tended towards melodrama, hubris, narcissism, and becoming more and more… stereotypical, for lack of a better term. The truth was that that old bit of wisdom had a lot of truth to it: your Class and Talents, after a certain point, warped you in their image. She had realized this a long time ago, and had rejected-- through exercising great will-- every other level up that had come her away in the last several decades, though the opportunity had not come often, as high as her level was. She wanted to be as untouched by the Heavens’ machinations as was feasible; she wanted to be her, and not some caricature of herself.

Still, it made things like remembering names and faces very hard; not to mention her memory, at ninety-one, worked more like a sieve than the iron trap it used to be. She greeted the townsfolk warmly, sat in with their city council for tea, and observed that an air of nervousness had come over the town with her arrival.

Well, she wasn’t about to put up with being out of the loop. “Why’s everyone so tense?” She asked the shy-seeming woman, who let out something like a squeak, sipped her tea, and wouldn’t meet the older woman’s eye. “I don’t want to hurt anyone, or levy any kind of tax, and I’m long past my dueling prime.” She turned to the older gentleman. “From one old coot to another, what’s this all about?”

The old man shook his head. “Miss Walsh, we don’t wish to irritate you, but we’re sort of embarrassed. You see, we recently received a missive from the capital demanding your arrest; apparently your son and yourself have been traced back to some group of, ehm, ‘insurgents’, as the document put it. The only trouble is, I’m the highest level person in our little settlement…”

“And even you haven’t cracked level 20, let alone 30, right? Don’t worry, most don’t. You’ve been ordered to arrest me, but you don’t want to because you know you, practically speaking, can’t.” She smiled ruefully, and rose from her seat, tea unfinished. “You know, I’ve been thinking recently about power. I don’t consider myself a criminal, even if the highest authority in the country does. But, as things stand, it really doesn’t matter if I’m right or wrong, as long as I have the levels to defeat all comers, the personal strength to beat the law into submission. That’s not really justice. I’m a passable leader, I like to think. My people seem to like me for my blunt way of speaking and my legend more than my actual leadership skills. But it doesn’t matter if I was the worst leader in the world, because regardless, I have the levels to conquer a good chunk of this continent. Nothing’s stopping me except my principles.” Her eyes were dark and unfocused, seeing distant days long past.

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“So… Are you going to turn yourself in?” The glassy-eyed man asked after a moment.

She snapped back to the present, letting out something that bordered on a cackle. “No. Hell no. If my principles were different, maybe. But I have a mission. A very important one. But.” She became focused, still smiling, her smile turned fully mischievous. “It isn’t right that you all don’t have a strong warrior to defend you from higher-level ruffians that might chance upon you one day. Bring me your strongest swordsman.”

“You mean the highest level one?”

She sighed. “Sure. Let’s go with that.”

Their strongest swordsman was a level 10 who looked to be around 25. Sweating, posture amateurish and uncertain, he was dispatched, legs taken out from under him as he was squaring up. He scrambled to his feat, humiliated and angry, and, as he scrambled to pick up his sword, leveled.

His eyes widened in surprise, and he started to get it. He got to his feet more quickly, steadied himself, and said, a bit hesitant: “A-again.”

The old man who led the town council moved to intervene, but the young man waved him off. “I’m going again. Now--” and as he turned to the side for a moment, he was sent to the ground again, his breath knocked out of his lungs. The crowd cried foul play, but the got up, and, without missing a beat, leveled. The word came more confidently this time. “Again.”

This time, he lasted a hair’s breadth longer. His hair covered in dirt, his arms and legs aching, he got up, energy roaring through, practically hopping on his feet, as the newest level washed over him. And this time, he gained a Talent. “!” He yelped as Stina slashed out. Faster than humanly possible, he blurred, sidestepping the arc of the blade-- and then was promptly disarmed by her spinning and executing a quick slice. It was at this point that he realized she hadn’t used a single Talent throughout the entire exchange.

He was three levels higher than he had been a minute ago, but she still had a massive level advantage. Feeling irritation at the enormity of the gulf, he rose to his feet, this time colder, sharper. He didn’t speak, didn’t ask for another bout, but instead lashed out with his blade.

Stina Walsh stepped back, grinned, and said, smooth as frost: “.” Her blade and body moved as one, shifting with the grace and potency of a flowing waterfall. The lesser swordsman stumbled back… and looked in horror at the stump of a blade in his hand, the blade severed at the hilt. As he was processing what had happened, a strike from behind sent him to his knees. He shook himself, and the notification rang again, sounding to him like an arena bell, marking the end of a bout. And just like that, he had a second fresh, new Talent.

She circled him like a wildcat, looking truly joyful. “You didn’t speak, you didn’t prance around, you didn't flourish. You just focused everything you had on the moment, on each strike given and each strike taken. You’re learni--”

Before she could finish her sentence, he struck. “!” From the bladeless hilt he held sprung a blade of pale, translucent fire, roughly the width and length of the steel it was replacing. Stina sidestepped, spun, and sliced through his blade made from determination, dissipating it into nothing in an instant. Just as quickly, she struck him thrice-- once on the sword arm, once in the leg, and once in the side-- and sent him stumbling. “An above average level 15 Talent, and I’d know. Though anyone with, oh, ten or more levels than you will be able to break it easily. Or someone with a profound quantity of willpower. I, unfortunately for you, have both. Now, get a new sword.” The strode off, the crowd making way for him.

By the time the hour was over, the town’s had gone from level 10 to level 17.

“I can’t give you much more, son. You’ve leveled as much as you will from training with me. You’ll be able to take on any vagabond or troublemaker you encounter; if a level 25+ criminal assaults this town, that’s a whole different layer of problem then what you’re trained for anyway. By the way, what’s your name?”

“Wayne.”

A crooked grin. “You haven’t got a last name, Wayne?”

“No, ma’am. My pa always said we weren’t rich enough for it to matter.”

“Well, I might not be an . ”

Class Variant unlocked!

🠊

Talent earned!

Her good deed done for the day, Stina left the town before the sunset, striding off to find another town to give a spot of help too before the end.