Katie had walked straight to the Office for Social Advancement’s office upon exiting the dungeon, and upon the officers in the room confirming that she had been one of the registered party members on the raid – she had formally been granted the right to use and access resources and locations meant solely for the [Bronze] social class.
She had drawn some disbelieving glares from some of the Office’s workers as clearly, every single worker in the high-status office thought that [Copper] ranked people were worse than good for nothing. So even the notion of a person of such a humble class managing to defy the odds and be brilliant made them have to either requestion their entire world view or, instead, engage in the far easier option and try and downplay that person’s achievement as being not equivalent to their achievements.
Katie’s incredible physical stats naturally boosted her senses and so she was able to pick up even the faintest whispers from anywhere in the entire building.
“From lice to rodent. Big deal!” A man’s voice had said.
“How does this rude and vulgar girl even dare be in the same class as my sweet little Larken.” A woman’s voice had exclaimed indignantly above her.
Katie dismissed every insult as ridiculous – especially because she knew, literally better than anyone else in existence, the level of power that she would soon attain.
Then, a second later, she heard something she truly had not expected to hear – she was pretty sure that at the very edge of her ability to hear, she could vaguely make out a man paying her a compliment.
“To be able to beat a [Bronze] ranked monster who is also a [Raid-dungeon] boss whilst only being 11 years old. The girl is undoubtedly a true talent.”
Katie was somewhat taken aback by these words but let their meaning seep into her thoughts as she reminded herself that she had been sent back in time not to get revenge on all those who looked down on her, but to save the world.
Whoever this man was, he had unknowingly reminded her of her mission, and given her hope that maybe, just maybe, the ruling class could be redeemed so as to aid in her mission.
After all, Earth needed all the powerful people it could get if it wanted to even dream about warding off the descent of a [God].
Peter jolted forward upon waking up, breathing heavily – and let out a sigh of relief upon realising that his painful dream had all been nothing but a terrible nightmare.
He glanced over at the sleeping form of Adrian, who slept remarkably peacefully despite the winter evening chill, then looked out of the massive hole in the half-broken door and saw that it was now nighttime.
Peter only then recalled what he had done before he had passed out, and grimaced as he remembered the pain that had enveloped his entire body.
There was only one explanation for the pain he had endured: going up to the next letter grade in one’s physical stat hurt like mad. ‘Though’, Peter grumbled to himself, ‘that really should have been obvious from the start considering the benefits of physical stat increases.’
Peter now had 2 more stats in the [E] grade and that was what he had to force himself to focus on. He was making a lot of progress, and he smiled as he recalled that he still had a single [1-month upgrade time reducer] token left and after giving it some thought, he decided on a particular course of action.
Two system prompts appeared in his line of vision upon finalising everything.
You have assigned 1 system bot to increase Perk: [Genius], to [E] rank!
Time remaining until assignment completion: 26 days, 14 hours, 24 minutes
Your assigned bot has completed its task!
Perk: [Genius]’s rank is now [E]!
Updated Information:
Genius | Type: Mental | Rank: [E] | Progress to Next Rank: 0/6 | Description: Far from simple minded, you possess a nimble mind suitably capable of comprehending even the most obscure, inaccessible aspects of all of reality.
Peter felt a familiar deepening of his thoughts to the time when he had upgraded his [Genius] perk to [F+] rank, but this time the upgrade was doubly as profound.
Instantly, Peter lost any doubt about whether he had made the right decision, as his newly enhanced mind began to wholesale clear out all of the clutter from Peter’s mind – leaving him in a pseudo-meditative state after only a few minutes.
So profound was this new feeling of calmness that Peter didn’t even notice when his pseudo-meditative state transitioned into outright meditation.
Time lost all meaning as Peter simply sat in place and pondered about well, time. He had noticed from using his current class skills quite a lot of strange aspects of time, and though he couldn’t quite articulate in his head what those aspects necessarily were, nor what their impact was.
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His knowledge of time was like his knowledge of the sun and its rays – he didn’t quite know what they were, but he could certainly feel them. And, whilst in this meditative trance, he felt as though he was leaning into that feeling of the presence of true knowledge and thus it felt as though the secrets of time were being seared onto his skin.
Peter felt pure bliss as he pushed deeper and deeper until he felt like his mind was swimming in a lava bath of knowledge.
However, upon going a bit too deep, his mind screamed in pain and his eyes were forced open – his peaceful meditation was completely broken.
A single system prompt hurtled into his still somewhat blurry frantic vision.
Major Mental Feat Achieved!
Description: By whatever means, you managed to exit the merely physical world of appearance and driven solely by your pure desire for knowledge your mind managed to sneak into the eternal realm of the ideals and was subsequently scorched by knowledge beyond your capability to understand.
Reward:
* You have gained the [Active] [General] skill: [Basic] Meditation (Lvl:11)!
1. Description: When activated, your mind is ushered into the eternal realm of the ideals – deepening your ability to contemplate the universe and its many aspects and allowing you to come closer to a true understanding of the way of things.
2. Additional Effects: Whilst in meditation you’re Health and Mana Regeneration are boosted by 15%.
* Stat: [Wisdom], has been forced to become [E+] ranked
Peter stared at the system prompt in awe. However, he didn’t have that much time to thank the system for this new gift before a monumental thunderclap in the sky above informed Peter that there would be one hell of a storm tonight.
Looking over to Adrian, Peter noticed the boy was still asleep. He sighed.
“I guess I’ll fill in the holes in this door by myself then,” He muttered under his breath, before smiling.
He had always liked thunderstorms.
Peter hadn’t known what to expect upon entering the new [Bronze] ranked home of Katie for his first lesson since exiting the dungeon, but to be honest, he was kind of disappointed.
“This house looks almost identical to the ones in the elite [Copper] rank district,” Peter noted out loud.
Katie laughed appropriately and said, “Of course it is, silly. The [Bronze] social class is just the [Copper] social class with far more pretentiousness and pomp, so don’t go and get too excited to become a part of the [Bronze] class expecting some massive upgrade in your quality of life.”
Peter simply nodded, still dazed by this new revelation. It was almost comparable to being told that the sky was a couple hundred thousand metres higher up above you than you thought it was. In other words, it was extremely disorienting, especially to Peter who aimed to one day reach the sky as a demi-god.
“Speaking of quality of life, have you started making the necessary moves to acquire yourself a house?”
Peter froze, before shaking his head.
“Why the ever-living hell not?” Katie asked dramatically.
Peter collected himself before saying indignantly, “Houses cost a lot of money, and being a recognisable slum rat, I don’t exactly have a lot of earning potential.”
Katie cupped her face in her palms, before muttering under her breath, “Where would you even be without me?” and then speaking up and declaring, “Alright then, let’s figure out a way for you to earn money, and once that’s sorted, we can continue your regular education programme.”
Peter was a bit astounded by the girl’s words but didn’t start speaking as she had adopted one of those “thinking poses” that she always did whenever she wanted to be left alone to think.
Until, a few minutes of total silence later, she clapped her hands together and said, “Have you ever thought about becoming an enchanter?”
Needless to say, Peter had never thought about becoming an enchanter – primarily because becoming an enchanter required someone to teach you how to enchant things, a service that Peter was definitely unable to afford.
However, if the girl in front of him could teach him how to become one, then he simply couldn’t say no. After all, he knew that enchanters were a highly valued type of magician whose enchanted products often garnered extreme interest from the elite of society, and thus extreme profits for the enchanter – given that their work was considered good enough of course.
“No, but I’d like to become one,” Peter said, slightly nervous.
“Excellent.” The girl said, before summoning a dagger out of literally nowhere and saying, “I’ll only explain myself once, so listen up.”
Thus, Peter discovered to his great displeasure that there was a duller subject to hear being droned on and on about than the science of linguistics – that subject being, of course, the particular grammar rules of non-elemental rune-based enchanting.
Peter was now beyond frustrated. Everything about the enchanting process just never seemed to go right for him, and as that was the case, he was not able to unlock the skill and thus he had made absolutely no progress in it in the 2 weeks that had passed since Katie had began trying to teach him the skill.
He knew it was because he had neglected to increase the level of his [Mana Manipulation] skill so his mana control was just not good enough to properly pull off a successful enchant, yet, still, even after the skill had been upgraded thrice – bringing it up to level 6 – he still had yet to be successful in enchanting even the most mana conductive material.
To make things worse, in his frustration with this whole process, Peter had tried, and summarily failed, to assign both bots to upgrade his mana control to level 7 and now his second bot was disabled for the next 7 days.
The situation only got worse, however, as Peter had thought himself a true genius in thinking up a workaround for this bot time-out that had ended in him wasting a precious resource.
He had thought that because the time that the bot had been disabled had been determined by the upgrade Peter had started, if he used one of his two remaining [1-week Upgrade Time Reducer] tokens to instantly finish the upgrade, then he’d also simultaneously restore his second bot to full functioning.
However, it seemed that the system did not link the two things at all, and so whilst his [Mana Manipulation] skill was now at level 7 – his second bot still had a 6 and a bit day wait until it would be ready to be utilised again.
The filthy cherry on the top of the whole miserable shit cake?
Even with this upgrade in his [Mana Manipulation] skill, Peter had still failed over and over again to gain the [Enchanting] skill.
However, his overwhelming sense of pride would not let him give up on becoming an enchanter, as he needed the money that only becoming an enchanter could provide. Not only did he need the money so that he could stop leeching off of others for food and water, but also because apparently one of the requirements for being granted the chance to ascend via a system trial was that one owned a home.
Peter found the superfluous requirement imposed on people like him who wanted to ascend completely ridiculous, but he couldn’t do anything about it as of right now, and if he wanted to be strong, then he would just have to put up with them. At least, for now.
Thus, with future power as the goal, Peter took a heavy breath in and then out, and refocused his mind on mastering enchanting.