When I turned 10 and Penelope was 11, we were about 19 months apart; Mathis finally decided it was time for us to learn more about the system. I had soooooo many questions but he had very doggedly ignored them until now.
“As a reminder, after you turn 12 but before you turn 13 your class will upgrade to Elven Adolescent.” Mathis began. “At that point you will restart from level 1, but you will get to keep your stats and skills. 10% of the experience you earned in your current class will be added to the Adolescent class granting you some initial levels, so your work now will still contribute to your new class. Skills that are higher level than your species class will stop leveling until your species class catches up, but they will continue to gain experience so no slacking on training.”
I raised my hand as a proper lady should and patiently waited for him to call on me. Mathis rolled his eyes, my constant questions and insatiable thirst for knowledge had long since broken the poor man. I wrung him like the teaching sponge he was. “Yes lady Alea?” His voice was utterly defeated.
“When our species class upgrades will we get more class skill slots?” I was desperately hoping the trend continued from Elven Baby and Elven Juvenile. 4 more skill slots go!
“Yes, if you had just let me continue I would have explained that…” Mathis stroked his forehead in obvious annoyance, the silence was interrupted when Penelope snickered at the man’s plight. “As I was saying. You will be granted two additional skill slots, and your options to fill those slots will grow considerably. Alea I know you will be taking a healing class, so I will be making a suggestion to Halcroft that you take the general Noble skill. As for you Penelope I know you and your grandfather are still discussing your future but if you don’t take a Noble profession class I suggest also taking the Noble general skill.”
My hand flew up in the air, Mathis’s face fell, and Penelope immediately burst into laughter. God, I loved her, despite not being of the same blood we were sisters. I would never have gotten through these years without her and her mother. They were our touchstones of basic human decency or elven decency as it were. “Oh… your face.” Penelope said between laughing fits.
Mathis grumbled. “That is very unbecoming of you lady Penelope.” He then entirely ignored my hand and just started to talk more. My mouth fell agape, he can’t just ignore me! “I believe it is time to explain elements and how they will affect your first class. There are 6 base elements and 15 advanced elements. The base elements are Fire, Earth, Air, Water, Light, and Dark. The advanced elements are combinations of the 6 base ones. Fire and Earth for instance is the Molten element.”
I began to wave my hand from side to side trying desperately to get his attention. Mathis just looked at me as my face became red with the effort of being noticed. Finally he relented. Mathis 0, Alea like 1000 or something. “If the advanced elements are combinations of two elements are there 20 triple element combinations?” I asked grinning ear to ear.
“Yes and no, it is believed all 20 triple element combinations exist, but only a handful of people in the entire history of the world have been known to get access to them. The only triple element combination I know of is Dragon Fire which is Fire, Water, and Dark. The only reason we know that one is because dragons have it naturally. Now back to my lecture!” He entirely ignored my hand up in the air for a followup question.
“The base elements are each tied to a concept and one of the stats. Water is force and is tied to Strength. Fire is change and is tied to Manipulation. Earth is stability and is tied to Vitality. Air is finesse and is tied to Agility. Dark is destruction and is tied to Magic. Finally Light is creation and is tied to Animus.” My hand remained up as my other furiously scribbled down notes in shorthand. Penelope just gawked at my scholastic feat.
Mathis paused and watched as my writing hand stopped a mere moment after his voice did. He looked at my hand still in the air as if it had been born there. He shook his head and just continued. My cheeks puffed up in annoyance and Penelope let a giggle out at my antics.
“All classes will have one or two elements attached to them, although it is nearly unheard of to get a dual element class before level 100 and still quite rare to get one before level 200. Each element will modify the class to suit the element to some extent. A light healer and fire healer will both be healers, but their classes will work in fundamentally different ways.” Yet again he paused and a moment later so did my scribbling. He looked from my notes up to my hand and let out a groan before motioning to me.
“Does that mean that each class-element combination specializes in different things? Like if a light healer is about creation can they regenerate flesh and if dark is about destruction they can remove disease?” I asked.
“No-” Then Mathis stopped stunned. “Wait… what? Did you read that somewhere?”
I shook my head. “No, I just inferred it based on your excellent lecture.” I gave him my best faux innocent smile. I had both read and inferred that actually, but it was fun to toy with the poor man. Penelope covered her mouth to desperately try to stop laughing.
Mathis’s cheeks redden slightly. “Well yes, that is exactly true. It is the reason Light healers tend to be the most sought after by the wealthy, whereas Dark and Water healers tend to be the most useful to the common people.” So that meant Halcroft was going to be making me a light healer at least at first.
I raised my hand much more sercenly with a serious look on my face. Mathis seemed to realize something was different and just nodded for me to speak. “I think I understand Earth and Water healers, but could you explain all 4 elements other than Light and Dark?”
He gave me a serious look and slowly nodded. “Certainly, Earth healers deal with the natural processes of the body, their primary focus is as sexual wellness practioners and midwives though they can enhance the natural regeneration of the body as well. Thus all earth healer classes are professional classes and not combat classes. I will get more into the difference between combat and professional classes later.
Air healers are not the strongest of healing classes, however they can create healing auras that can be very beneficial to large populations. Combining the air element with another will allow for healing from further than touch range, so it is more thought of as a way to advance a base healer class.
Water healers are often called alchemists, in that sense Lady Shalia is technically a water healer. Though since she focuses on more than just healing she gets the Artisan tag instead of Healer tag. Water is powerful in the fact that it can heal a wide variety of illnesses but it requires a lot of work making potions and finding ingredients and even still isn’t quite as powerful as a dedicated healing class of another element. Water is also a professional class rather than combat class.
Finally Fire is far and away the weakest of the healing elements. Given its element it is all about change, but the changes it can make are very minor. You could strengthen someone’s nails so they can be used like claws, but they will still be much weaker than an animal’s claws. You could enhance a person’s hearing only to leave them too sensitive to noise. All in all it is about making permanent changes to the body. However because it just isn’t practical very few people take the element. Thus little is known of its potential. They too are a professional class rather than combat, since it takes a very long time to use the power on another even if they are willing.” Mathis finished his long explanation and I immediately disagreed with him, but didn’t voice it.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Fire sounded incredibly powerful. Making a person well was all about changing their current condition. Even if it took time and the person had to be willing it was still amazing. You could potentially change someone’s immune system so that it granted them immunity to a disease they were fighting. The potential medical applications were limitless. However I decided that I wouldn’t discuss this topic with anyone other than those I trusted. I would just have to do my own research and see for myself.
For once my hand remained down and Mathis just shrugged returning to his lecture. “There are 12 base class tags as well as 10 advanced combat class tags. The base combat classes are Warrior, Ranger, and Mage. The base professional classes are Artisan, Student, Laborer, Noble, administrator, leader, and Merchant. Cleric and Healer can be both combat and professional classes. The 10 advanced combat classes are a merger of any of the 5 base combat classes, making for a total of 10.” He paused seeing my hand shot up. “And no, to my knowledge there are no triple combination classes.”
My hand slowly fell and Penelope snickered at me. I glared at her and she just stuck her tongue out at me. “I’ll have none of that Lady Penelope!” Mathis said sternly. The tongue retracted immediately.
“It is highly unlikely you will be allowed to take an advanced class, so I will leave those for another day.” His eyes glanced over to me but for once I didn’t have any questions. I mean yes I wanted to know what the advanced classes were, but he also just said he would leave them until later. Gosh I wasn’t that bad… was I?
“Well we have already gone through the healer class, so I will skip it. Many of these will be self explanatory. Warriors are all about physical fighting in pretty much any form. Mages utilize magical combat skills although they can have utility magic as well. Rangers are a catch all for physical focused classes that don’t fall into fighting exclusively. Rangers make for excellent hunters because they will have wilderness survival skills. A warrior can also be a hunter, though they will be much more focused on fighting their prey than finding it. Clerics are a group of classes that draw their powers from a god or set of gods they are specifically devoted to. Clerics can behave like healers, mages, or even warriors, the only thing is their power is tied to their faith.
Moving on to the professional classes. An artisan is anyone that makes new things from different ingredients, thus they can be carpenters, bakers, smiths, alchemists, poisoners, cooks, or any of another million professions. Laborers work with their bodies to produce raw goods or to provide services, they can be deckhands, maids, farmers, stylists, couriers, teachers, and so on. Merchants primarily sell things and that’s pretty much it. Administrators deal with maintaining the functionality of systems, be they manpower, trade, or societal. Leaders can be professions like generals, mayors, party leaders, and politicians. Finally students are anyone that is focusing on learning new things rather than actually doing those things. Sometimes a teacher's class can actually have the student tag. I am one such case, my class is split equally between learning and teaching.” I took that moment to identify Mathis since I hadn’t in quite some time and got back [Student 173]. I was slightly surprised I got his level, but I had been getting them much more often if they were lower than 200.
My hand shot up because I realized Mathis was missing a class I had seen before, specifically Taele’s noble class tag. Mathis put his hands up to stop me. “I avoided talking about noble classes because they work a bit differently. Firstly you cannot take a noble class if you are not a noble as recognized by a government.” My hand that had been falling slowly as he began to talk, immediately shot back into the air, but Mathis just continued. “How the system knows what a government is and is not is not exactly known. However any attempts to circumnavigate the system to get more people the noble class have thus far failed.” He paused and my hand went back down. “Noble class tags are broken down into either the catch all [Nobles] or to their individual rank if you have a specific title. If you do not have a specific title, because you have yet to inherit your family’s title, much like lady Taele and lord Isaac your class tag will be noble. However if Alea were to take a noble class it would be a princess class, and she would have the princess class tag. Noble classes tend to be a fusion of administrators, leaders, and merchants, they tend to be more powerful but less focused. Thus a person with two merchant classes will likely be better than a similarly leveled noble with a noble and a merchant class in that specific field.”
He paused to allow Penelope to catch up on writing notes. With my shorthand I was never far behind his lecture. I considered his lecture, if I had a choice what would I become? I mean despite being groomed to be a healer against my will I still wanted to be one. Healing had been my art and healing people was a glorious thing. I still wanted that. However I wasn’t confident I would take it as my combat class. I raised my hand to clarify something.
Mathis motioned to me. “I know people can have multiple classes but how many do they get in total?”
“Eventually you can have 5 classes, 2 combat, 2 professional, and your species class. You will be offered combat and professional classes when your elven class upgrades. Taking a combat class will delay your professional class start and visa versa. When your first class reaches level 60 you will unlock a second class which will have to be the opposite type of what you took in the first place. At level 150 you will gain a second combat or professional class you may freely choose between the two types regardless of what type of class you got to level 150. You will only unlock your final class at level 300 of your highest level class, 200 of your second highest level class, and 100 of your third. Your species class level won’t factor into unlocking your other classes at all. Considering level 300 is fairly difficult to reach in the average human lifespan it is uncommon to have all 5 classes unlocked. Most people never get much past level 200.”
I nodded synthesizing the data. So I could expect to have three classes fairly quickly. The other two might take a bit longer, but that seemed to make a lot of sense. I of course would take the next two years to study how to level quickly.
Of course all this knowledge was only useful if Halcroft allowed me any choice when it came to any of my classes, skills, or stats. Which wasn’t terribly likely. I suppose I would just have to find a way out of his thumb. For that I would have to have a member of his family other than Taele that would go against him. That would of course be Penelope, but I also knew she truly believed her grandfather was a good person.
Ugh plans to play on the emotions of a person I considered a sister. This situation fucking sucked. If I ever had the chance I would murder Halcroft gruesomely. I didn’t much like killing people, but Halcroft was a definite exception.
“The last important aspect of classes is the class quality. Single element and dual element classes each have 3 grades; low, medium, and high. There are some minor differences within each grade, but those are generally small. The highest grade single element class is weaker than the lowest grade dual element class. You should expect your first class offerings to be a base class that is low or medium grade and a single element.”
My hand went up with gusto. Mathis, seemingly done with his lecture and just gave me the floor. “How do you get higher quality classes?”
“There are a few ways, maximizing out your class skills before you class up, which occurs every 100 levels. Higher stats will give you better starting classes so your subsequent classes will always have a better start to them. Grand achievements rewarded by the system can also unlock very potent classes. However, getting achievements is rare indeed. We have never found a way to artificially create the circumstances for achievements the system simply knows when we are trying to game it.” He explained.
That was interesting, I had briefly wondered why rich corrupt nobles just don’t have their kids kill people to farm experience. It seems the system would know and stop that practice by lowering the reward to nearly nothing.
I asked a few more questions that didn’t really have interesting answers. I was just trying to see if there were any known holes in the system, and it seemed there weren’t. It made sense to some extent, the system knew me on a fundamental level. There was no way for me to lie to something that knew more about me than I did sometimes.
“Well I think that will be enough for today.” Mathis said, ending our system talk.
Alea Rothana
Age: 10
Unspent Stat Points: none
Mana: 156/156
Mana Regeneration per day: 177 (-105)
Strength: 10 (+1)
Agility: 13 (+1)
Vitality: 16 (+1)
Animus: 16
Magic: 15
Manipulation: 16
Elven Juvenile: Level 20
Main Skills:
Learning (level 20): -40 mana regen/day
Elven Heritage (level 20): -30 mana regen/day
Identify (level 12)
Class Skills:
Pretty (level 15): -15 mana regen/day
Medicine (level 20): -20 mana regen/day
First Aid (level 20)
Meditation (level 20)