Peter let out an animalistic, hoarse holler as the system prompt that he had been striving for finally appeared in his vision. The one he had spent a total of three whole weeks trying to attain.
You have gained the [Active] [Class] skill: [Inferior] Runic Enchanting (Lvl:1)!
Description: Through careful mana control you can imbue objects with mana giving them, or strengthening already existing, magical effects.
Peter wasted no time and assigned a bot to upgrade his newest skill, saw the system prompt informing him it would take less than a day to upgrade, utilised 4 of his [6-hour Upgrade Time Reducer] tokens, and then assigned the bot to upgrade the skill again – but decided that waiting for this upgrade out would be fine.
Peter looked at the small glowing object in his hand and discarded it without a second thought. He was not a sentimental person, and he was honestly sick and tired of the living room in which he sat, as Katie – though she pretended to be all civilised – always made the place smell like crap as she often returned from dungeons covered in blood and gore and rarely cleaned up after herself.
‘I’ve known Slum rats cleaner,’ Peter muttered under his breath.
“What was that?” A knowing, smug voice rang out from behind him.
“Nothing.” He lied.
“Hmm, took you long enough to get the skill. Honestly, a whole month to learn basic runic enchanting – here I thought you said you were some kind of genius.” The girl said, not a hint of congratulations in her voice.
Peter simply muttered, “Oh yeah and how long did it take you to learn the skill?”
Katie smirked before saying, “Oh, only a couple of hours. Though, it only took that long because I made sure to take lots of breaks.”
Peter scowled in anger – not doubting in the slightest that the girl’s words were 100% true.
He had no idea how or why the girl knew what she knew, or who in the hell her parents were to have been able to teach her all that she knew, but Peter had come to realise that Katie was a monstrous individual with an impossible level of talent that he couldn’t hope to match as of right now – a fact that she never ceased to lord over his head to embarrass and deride him.
However, in time, Peter hoped, all gaps in power and ability between him and her would close and he would finally be able to show the girl up in something so that he could rub something in her face in his talent for once.
Oh, how he longed for that day.
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Over the next three weeks, Peter raised his [Runic Enchanting] skill to level 6 and whilst he had done so he had also finally managed to raise one of his core skills from the [Inferior] skill rank to the [Basic] skill rank.
Your assigned bot has completed its task!
Skill: [Mana Manipulation]’s level is now 10!
Skill: [Mana Manipulation]’s skill rank has been increased to [Basic].
Updated Description for [Basic] Mana Manipulation (Lvl:10):
By focusing your mind and applying your will you are now able to control and manipulate mana to a small extent.
Peter hoped that he wouldn’t need to upgrade his [Mana Manipulation] skill for a while now thanks to this skill rank upgrade, but he doubted he would be so lucky, and he had already learned to an excruciating degree just how important having a high [Mana Manipulation] skill level was to improving his [Runic Enchanting] skill. So, he would probably have to continue improving both simultaneously, or he would risk having to constantly play catchup with one skill or the other.
Peter caught in the glimpse of his eye the frame of Adrian walking closer, and he was brought out of his thoughts as he smiled as he could tell that the boy was eating well – judging by the fact he no longer looked so bony and frail.
It seemed that Mr Bobby had kept his promise and had been extra good to him, which was exactly what the younger boy needed as of right now.
Peter felt weird thinking of the other boy has someone he had to look after and take care of, considering the other boy was only probably a few months younger than Peter, but then again, he guessed that gaining his own system had matured him considerably and that made him feel responsible for his junior slum rat.
Upon walking through the now somewhat boarded up door to their shared squatting spot, Adrian seemed ultra excited as he asked Peter, “Did you see them arrive today?”
“What?” Peter asked, confused – not really knowing who the boy was talking about.
“I saw a merchant carriage earlier today; don’t you know what that means?”
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Peter shook his head.
The boy looked astounded at Peter before saying, “It means that it’s nearly springtime and that means candy!”
Peter had barely realised it – but yes, now that the younger boy mentioned it – the winter frost had been slowly fading away in recent weeks, though some snow could still be seen in the outskirts of the city where fewer people were milling about going about their daily lives.
Peter suspected that it was sometime in January, which though not exactly the end of winter, still was closer to spring than it was to the beginning of winter and so he could understand the boy’s excitement – though he wasn’t quite sure about the last part of the boy’s sentence.
“Candy?” Peter asked, curiously.
“You know the sugary chewy stuff that tastes amazing? Don’t tell me you don’t know about candy?!” Adrian exclaimed as if what he was saying was, or at least should have been, totally obvious.
Peter shook his head, but smiled as he remembered how shy the younger boy had been during their first meeting and how much the boy had opened up since then.
“If you don’t know about candy then we’ll have to go and get you some when the spring market open up properly.”
Peter laughed and agreed and then proceeded to chat with Adrian for a few hours until the sun set, and Peter then fell asleep – happy.
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“You want to know the date?” Katie asked, clearly amused by Peter’s sudden unrelated question.
Peter nodded.
“Well yesterday was the 18th of January, so today is the…?” She replied, condescendingly.
“19th.” Peter said, not bothering to get mad at the girl for teasing him about his lack of knowledge. He was just grateful to know that the date as now that he knew the date – so long as he kept track of days passing – he would be able to figure out the day of his birthday.
Though not important for most, Peter, and most other orphans, had very little clue about the day on which they were born, and it wasn’t as if one could very easily find out about such things either. Neither an adequately high-skilled system mage nor particular records of their birth were often readily available to orphans like Peter with barely a credit to their name.
So, opportunities to learn precisely when you had been born were non-existent.
That was, until the moment you reached the age of 10, and received your system as that always happened on your 10th birthday – obviously.
However, Peter had not known the precise date back when he’d received his system – only that it was in the middle of summer – but now, with the aid of his system, he could finally hope to figure out a precise day.
And, now that he knew the date, he could also help Adrian figure out when his birthday was as he was doubtless going to receive a system of his own in a few months.
Although the boy himself seemed quite nervous for that day, Peter was excited for the boy as he knew first-hand just how life-changing receiving one’s system could be.
Though thinking back to his system reception day, Peter remembered that he hadn’t fully paid back whoever had beaten him up that day.
Whoever had done it had, undoubtedly, even if inadvertently, caused all the misery that had followed – his thankfully illicit slavery to Sadi being the most wretched of the consequences from that beating.
Peter had initially suspected Fred and his goons as being the culprits behind his beating, but then his being dumped in some back alley afterwards to die made no sense. The thug had wanted Peter to run drugs for him, not kill him. At least, not at the time. Thus, Peter now suspected that the gang leader had had nothing to do with the affair.
However, that conclusion provided more questions than answers, and Peter grimaced as he realised that the path to achieving vengeance would be a long and meticulous one. However, that suited Peter just fine as it meant more time for him to consolidate his strength so that even if the person who attacked him had high status – it wouldn’t be a problem for Peter’s revenge.
All that mattered to Peter was that justice was served, no matter how long it took.
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Over the proceeding weeks, Peter focused exclusively on advancing his [Runic Enchanting] skill.
The money he would earn from selling his enchanted items would be the catalyst he needed to advance his [Rank] and thus improving the skill was his top priority.
However, that didn’t mean he didn’t do other things. While he waited for his bots to do their thing, he had taken to trying to unlock the [Stealth] skill.
Why?
Well, even with his new levels, the heavily armoured men who guarded the central plaza were not exactly lacking in suspicion as they glared at Peter.
Thus, if Peter wanted to even have the slightest chance of talking to some people and seeing if they knew who had attacked him, he would need to sneak past the extremely prejudiced guards.
Yet, once again, he was confronted with perhaps the only problem that his broken [System] perk couldn’t help him with – the acquisition of difficult to attain skills.
But no matter how many times he received strange looks from the other people going about their day, Peter was determined to attain the skill and thus hopefully get a bit closer to figuring out who had attacked him.
The daylight hours quickly slipped away, and the sun was already setting on the horizon and everyone, including clearly exhausted adventurers, headed home for the evening – no one liked to be outside when the monsters were at their strongest.
Which made the fact that a strangely dressed man was dragging a sobbing but bound child through the streets at such an hour beyond a mere eyesight.
The few other pedestrians out also seemed to think it was odd, but upon sensing the man’s aura – that of a [Iron] ranker – they quickly turned a blind eye and went about their day.
Peter felt his fists clench, and his teeth grind in his mouth. Instantly, he began to follow the man – unsure about what the hell he was getting himself into.
However, before he had even followed the man for a few kilometres, the man turned around blasted his aura and shouted, “I know someone is following me, reveal yourselves!”
Peter knew he was no match and so stayed perfectly still. He somehow purposefully reduced his heart rate. Minimised the space that he took up behind the building he was hiding behind.
A long few tense minutes passed as neither Peter nor the man made a move – the only noise either of them heard was the sound of the bound boy sobbing to himself.
Then, the man scoffed, and muttered something under his breath, before he staggered on with the boy firmly in his grasp.
Peter felt his heart begin to race in his chest – he had managed to remain hidden, the sudden flashing prompt in the top right corner of his vision confirming that fact.
You have gained the [Active] [Class] skill: [Inferior] Hide Presence (Lvl:1)!
Description: Through careful control over your physical body, you can hide your presence from others – making you a little harder to spot than others.
However, even after reading his new prompt, Peter felt nothing but a lingering sense that he’d failed that boy somehow.
Thus, Peter walked back to his squatting spot – the sound of that boy’s cries and the image of his face wet with tears playing over and over again in his mind as he did so.