Choosing Violence (Part 3)

Even Eana hadn’t expected to be able to advance to a tier two healing class. Conrad was right about the lack of tier twos in Irondale. Gendra was the only other Healer and, while she had mastery of all the healing skills she knew about, she had never advanced to the next tier or even dual classed.

“To begin with,” Conrad continued, and for once Eana didn’t mind that he was only speaking to Idris - it was all old news to her - “there are two main types of skills. General skills and class skills. General skills are typically accessible at any point in your progression, but the knowledge Order gives you of them and their appearance on your skill tree is also dependent on your real life knowledge, your class skills, the other general skills you’ve acquired, and dozens of other small things. Sometimes just hearing about one is enough to open up the possibility to acquire it.”

Idris nodded, intent on every word. Eana scuffed around in the dirt with her shoes and staff.

“For example, are you able to see the Identify skill?” Conrad asked.

Idris’s eyes glazed a moment as he checked his interface and Eana too took a second to check hers.

To her mind’s eye her interface opened up and she mentally focused on her path of progression, her skill tree.

The web of interconnected glowing stars spread before her. Some of them had small icons - these were skills she knew about but had not invested in - and some of those glowed brighter and in full color. These she had learned, and in the cases of the brightest full colored ones, mastered by reaching level five proficiency. All of these were contrasted against the gray glow of the skills she hadn’t invested in.

Something she knew she saw that Idris didn’t was the glowing constellation of her Healer class - a set of skills, both known and unknown, that related and interconnected only with each other. These stars, connected together, were set apart from the velvety darkness around them and formed the rough shape of a hand.

If you squinted a little.

She glanced around at the various stars. Finding something she knew about usually only took her thinking of it so she tried to focus on Identify, but as she expected, she didn’t see anything pop up.

Looking closer at Assess though, she saw a dim star faintly connected to it but with no icon or label.

Idris too responded in the negative.

“That’s what I thought. Identify is a useful skill for adventurer’s because it lets us take stock of the loot we manage to find. Sometimes that loot spawns as rewards for quests or destroying monsters, and knowing what’s worth taking and what’s worth leaving is valuable. Identify can tell you the basics about an item such as material, durability, attack or defensive strength, and if you’re proficient enough, even some magical properties.”

As if on cue, a notification popped up for Eana.

Skill Discovered

Name: Identify

Classification: Magic, General

Description: Gives general knowledge of inanimate objects and materials.

Higher levels of proficiency increase the amount of available information.

Investment Cost: 100XP

She watched as the star adjacent to Assess brightened and became one of the grayed out icons representing a skill she knew about but hadn’t yet learned. A quick look at Idris told her he was seeing the same thing she was.

“I had no idea it could be this easy,” Idris said, “I mean, we could all just get together as a town and tell each other about all the skills we know and let Order fill in the blanks in our paths for us.”

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“Sure, sure,” Conrad agreed, “Or, you could, you know, read a book. You can read, can’t you, Light Bringer?”

Idris and Eana both nodded. Their father had seen to it that, despite the relative uselessness of reading in Irondale for most people, they had read and reread every book they could get their hands on.

And they had found a few skills that way. But in reality, it wasn’t often that even when you heard about a skill - like just now with Identify - that the person went on to explain exactly what it was that it did, including what it was useful for and to whom. Which might be the exact trigger in this case for Order to reveal the skill to her and Idris.

“I’ve never seen a book of skills, but Gendra shared a few scrolls with skills she knows about with me,” Eana said, trying again to be part of the training.

She saw the look of envy on Idris’s face and added, “I’ll share them with you if you want. Maybe there’s something that could be useful to you.”

“Maybe so,” Conrad interjected, “But don’t get too excited. In truth, XP is unlimited as you can earn it for doing practically anything, but as you both know you earn less of it for repeating the same thing. Investing in a bunch of random skills is more likely going to limit your progression than it is to give you some insight that takes you to the next level.

“A major pitfall for many people is getting too excited about some random skill. They invest their XP and never build toward anything meaningful or useful and so, gaining further XP becomes progressively harder without the advantages of a true foundation.”

“Like I haven’t heard that before,” Idris said, rolling his eyes and looking at Eana.

“It’s like I told you before,” Conrad replied, “Your dad’s heart is in the right place, but he’s out of touch. Anyway, we don’t need to worry about that because, as somebody who has traveled the Warrior’s path myself, I can grant you insight into the class so you won’t need any prerequisite general skills or to go through any sort of ordeal to discover it.”

“Traveled?” Eana said, “You mean you’re not a Warrior now?”

Conrad smiled and opened his mouth to speak but Idris cut across him excitedly, “Conrad has a tier three class! He’s a Battle Leader!”

“Whoa!” Eana said.

Outside of random encounters with adventurers, Gendra was the highest level person she knew personally, but even she had gotten stuck at the Healer class. She never explained why but Eana figured she was missing some requisite skills to unlock the next rank and in her old age had just sort of given up.

“But what’s a Battle Leader?” she asked.

“It’s like a Warrior. I have all of my Warrior skills still, of course, but Battle Leaders take a focus more on their team than on improving their own prowess in a fight. Don’t think that means I’ve lost my edge though,” he said, shaking a finger in mock warning, “It’s actually a specialty class that’s available to me due to my mastery of the Mentorship general skill. With the right knowledge more specialized or even rare higher tier classes can be earned.”

“I bet Battle Leader is rare,” Idris said excitedly.

“Ah, well, it’s actually only uncommon. Order grants the knowledge of the Knight class, which is a common tier two class, to every Warrior that masters the majority of his skills. But There are numerous other combinations.”

Idris turned to Eana and asked, “How come you haven’t ranked up to a tier two healer, whatever that’s called?”

Eana made a ‘how should I know?’ face and held her hands up, then looked to Conrad, hopeful he might have an answer.

“Healer is a rare class,” Conrad said, “and one of the drawbacks of a rare class is that knowledge of how to progress to the natural ranked up class, like Warrior to Knight, is not automatic. Rare classes tend to require some kind of ordeal, trial, special skill, true insight into the arts, or genuine need that results in a breakthrough. That, or knowledge and the process of breaking through is given to them through education or mentorship.”

“Which is why my dad wants me to save my XP and go to an academy in Confluence,” Idris said, nodding.

Eana thought it over a second before asking, “What’s a breakthrough?”

Conrad sighed, clearly not having expected them to be quite this ignorant. It turned out that, like with just about everything else, there were levels of mentorship and Conrad was higher than Gendra.

“The process of figuring out skills and classes for yourself is sort of like… feeling around in a dark room for a doorway,” Conrad said, “Whenever we choose a skill to acquire, we invest our pooled XP into it and Order grants it to us in return. ‘Breaking through’ is what we call it when we find a door in the dark room and don’t know what’s on the other side, then throw XP at it until it opens up. Academies or mentors can coach you through finding the ‘door’ and tell you how much XP it will take to open it. But true breakthroughs are leaps of faith. Sometimes the skill or class gained is useful, and sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes the amount of XP required to break through is so high that people drain their entire savings into it and never manage to break through. So most folks prefer the sort where they know what they’re getting and for how much.”

It all made a lot of sense. And although she hadn’t tried it, she bet Idris had done plenty of feeling around for ways to do more with his Light Mage class and had never broken through.

It had to be pretty difficult.

“Do you think that it’s possible,” Idris said, “I might have some special Warrior classes open up to me because of my Light Mage class?”

Conrad sighed and shook his head, “Warrior and magic user classes are rare. There are some, like the Spellsword, but breakthroughs in that area are especially rare because of the harsh limits on mana accumulation Order imposes. As you no doubt have noticed, your mana pool rarely grows, and so dedicated magic users usually rely on mana stones like your sister’s charoite stone - and those don’t come easy or cheap.”

“Figures,” Idris said, disappointed.

“Well, it’s not impossible. There might be some in Confluence who know and can guide you,” Conrad said, “but given the greater need for XP for a breakthrough, the mana requirements of supporting a magic based class, and all that compounded by the wealth requirements to get the stones to support that mana… I’d say you’d be better suited focusing on Warrior and leaving the rest of it to dwell on later.”