After Emily clicked on her choice, the VR helmet appeared again. Emily grabbed it and placed it on her head wanting the class change to be over so she could see if her gamble worked. A flash and she was in white room, another flash, and now Emily found herself in a small study.

In front of her was a desk and chair with an orb, a book, and a hourglass on top. On Emily’s left, wedged in between the wall and desk was a short bookcase filled with a good fifty books. Emily quickly read the titles on the spins and saw many had to do with basic education, math, algebra, calculus, history, reading, and writing. The books that most intrigued Emily were mana manipulation, mana shaping, mana spells, and the few books titled basic runes and runic scripts, and basic runic script repair.

Before she dove into the books Emily walked up to the table and read the title on the book there, Introduction to basic runic scripts, was the title. As Emily started to read the book the sand began to fall in the hourglass. Speeding up, Emily flipped through the book and then worked on the books in the bookcase.

Less than ten minutes later Emily had a good grasp of what runes where and how the runic code operated. With fifty minutes left, Emily sat down and focused on the orb. This time Emily knew what she was doing and activated both programming language and debugger.

The runic script seemed to enlarge as her skill magnified the runic script so it was clearly seen. Unlike the times before Emily could feel her mana start to drain out of her. Looking at her mana Emily started smiling then laughing, tears of joy streaming down her face, as the status screen clearly showed the massively inflated mana points begin to drain.

Emily stared at the draining mana and realized she could not finish the test without the numbers being lower then her regular mana points. Wanting to speed up the draining mana Emily activated a third skill circuitry, and saw the orb had intricate lines and mana threads that were similar to electrical pathways on circuit boards called traces.

It was similar to a city plan that had all the roads laid out for cars to flow through, these would be roughly similar to traces on a circuit board. Emily also saw the traces and lines were all in green meaning that this was the highest rated rune.

Form her reading Emily learned that runes and runic script came in five ranks, lowest, low, intermediate, high, and finally the pinnacle, highest. A rune with lowest rated rune but highest runic script would have the power of an intermediate rune, on the other had a lowest rated rune with a lowest script would be trash that barely functioned. On the opposite end of the spectrum a rune with a highest rated rune and a highest runic script would only be a fraction away from the next rank of runes. That was another fact Emily learned, runes were ranked from lesser rune, common rune, greater rune, and then grand runes.

A lesser rune having highest rating in both rune and runic script would have the same power of a common rune that had the lowest rating in both. So Emily was looking at an orb with a lesser rune on it with the highest rated rune and a script that was nonfunctional, with no rating, not even the rating of lowest runic script.

Almost forty minutes later her excess mana was drained out of her giving her just ten minutes to complete the test. Emily had to pass the test; she had a feeling that if she failed and used anther ascension stone the mage choices would be gone.

Emily had not been idle while waiting; she had been using the three activated skills to intently study the runic script of the lesser run. Debugger had highlighted the script in red, with blue script below each line. Emily could not see any green, if some of the runic script had been correct it would have been highlighted in that color. Emily quickly changed the script to the blue script that her debugger skill indicated. With a flash the script turned completely green.

Emily jumped up and shouted in triumph as the sand stopped falling with only a handful of grains left. The world faded away.

-----------

Tier Killer

A person that managed to kill a Tier 3 monster while in their first Tier 1 class. 30% to experience

Mana Survivor

You have survived immense mana saturation. 15% to mana.

You have attained the Tier 1 Runic Mage Scholar

Mana Bolt Spell unlocked Basic Mana Shaping skill L1 unlocked Basic Mana Regulation skill L1 unlocked Basic Incantation skill L1 unlocked Runic Scribe Scholar L1 unlocked Mana Sense unlocked L1 Basic Runic Scholar Mastery L1 unlocked

A slew of massages erupted when Emily came back to the real world. Dismissing the prompts Emily pulled up her status and saw ???? sickness was removed though her heath sat at a painful 71 points.

Laying back down Emily rested and started to meditate. For the next eight hours she was at peace within herself and the world around her.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

When Emily opened her eyes she still felt very weak but refreshed. Climbing painfully to feet, Emily was able to search for the bodies of the knights. The first knight she found was by, according to her memories of when she first entered the cavern facing forward, with the secret door at her back, the left wall; he had been dismembered form the force of the blast.

Emily leaned heavily on Tranquility as she searched through the burnt corpse that was just a head, torso and right arm. She found the bag of holding secured to a chain around the fallen knight’s neck. Pulling it out of where it was protected by his chest plate, he having the same idea as Emily to protect it behind armor, Emily quickly went through the bag. Coins, random potions, a runic device, some food, Emily discarded them all as she searched for a heath potion. Finally she pulled out four and quickly drank three of the greater heath potions.

Emily know it was probably overkill and there would be consequences form drinking so many powerful heath potion so close together but Emily wanted her heath to be full, after nearly dying so many times in such a short period she wanted the safety of full heath. The runic device turned out to be a water conjuring jug and Emily drunk and drunk, refilling it a dozen times, before her thirst abetted. Picking up the discarded food, Emily walk quickly to the furthest point in the room that was away from the bodies and sat down to slowly eat.

Eating the bread Emily found it was filled with nuts, seeds, herbs, and bits of carrots and celery. It was an odd loaf of bread but filled Emily and gave her a feeling of energy. Finishing up the bread, Emily saved the second loaf for later.

Sighing Emily stood up and with a groan started to take off her armor. Parts of the bandolier had fused with the armor and Emily had to cut through the thick weaving to finally get it free. The long sword that had been on Emily’s back was gone but the hand axes and boot daggers where in place. Emily started prying armored pieces off, first working on her armored gloves, than the vambraces, sating back down Emily took off her armored boots, then the daggers and greaves, then the hand axes, standing back up Emily took off her belt then took off the armored pants. Emily came to the hardest part, taking off her half melted chest armor. Working on the straps that secured her chest piece, Emily had to cut several, until finally the armor could be removed.

Sighing more deeply in relief, Emily dropped the last of her armor onto the pile of now useless armor pieces, leaving Emily in leather pants, and a padded gambeson. Emily had retrieved her smaller bag of holding and the new larger bag, and grabbing the load of bread, Emily went back to the body of the knight and started using his bag to repack it with the items Emily had dropped searching for a heath potion.

Adding in the nobles bag, Emily would have four bags of holding decided to give her bags a nickname to keep them straight, Emily named the first bag that she had stolen from the count, Shady, for it had been used to store money form shady deals. Emily’s larger one she decide to call Baggy, for the knights bag she debated calling it pieces but that seemed to cold and callous, she went with Nighty, the noble she wanted to call it stupid or clumsy but decide to go with Nobag for noble bag. Emily needed to see if the last knight still had a working bag and she decided to call that one Bagmor.

So holding Shady, Baggy, Nighty and Nobag, Emily went over to the noble’s body and picked up the bag she had gotten the lifesaving ascension stone form and repacked it with dropped items. Her gambeson had a few thicker leather cords that Emily used to tie the bags to her side.

Searching for the last knight remains, Emily found what was left of him on the opposite wall. The remains were in as bad a shape as the other knight, so Emily searched it as quickly as she could. Emily did manage did retrieve anther bag of holding and added Bagmor to her collection.

When she was searching for the knight she had noted two traveling packs past the cave’s entrance, leaning against the tunnel wall and out of the way, and a large chest. The chest was a reward for killing the boss and now Emily had recovered walked over to see what was inside.

Chest could hold just about anything and there was no way to predict what was inside. Emily was to emotional drained to get excited and flipped open the chest without much enthusiasm, what was inside changed that.

A grin slowly spread on Emily’s face as she beheld a beautiful silvery blue mithril suit of armor with runes worked in. This suit would cost upwards of 4 large gold or forty small gold to buy at a weapons shop.

As you leveled you needed more and more expansive items to keep fighting effectively. The other side of the coin was that, as you leveled, you could earn more and more money. It was vicious circle. Earn more only to be forced to spend more but untold numbers of adventures had died trying to be cheap and fugal, Emily’s near death was a good example.

A greater heath potion cost eight large silver while a lesser one cost one large silver and a common heath potion cost five silver. Adventures would feel that buying three lesser and one common heath potion was a better deal than spending the same amount on a grand heath potion, only to die when all four heath potions could not repair the amount of damage one grand heath potion could. They died never to have learned from their mistake.

Another unfortunate example, that was all too common, was buying expensive weapons but a cheap suit of armor. The weapons could kill monsters faster but if a hit made it passed your weapons it would tear through your cheap armor with ease.

Emily’s armor was a good example, it had been made with standard steel and the armor and weapons only cost Emily one small gold, the bulk of her spending was on the larger bag of holding at seven small gold. The other high costs were for the growth and strength elixirs, the growth elixir cost one small gold and the strength elixirs cost three small gold each. Emily had needed to buy two growth and four strength elixirs for a total of fourteen small gold. If Emily had spent the same amount on a deep steel or mithril suit of armor she would not have taken as much damage as she had.

What made armor and weapon drastically more expensive but more powerful were magic imbuement. Enchantsmith would enchant an armor for durability and weapons with sharpness, a runesmith would embed runes on the items for similar effects. Of the two magic schools runes were considered the best.

The suit of armor Emily was looking at had lesser shadow magic rune worked into the armor, thus allowing Emily to blend into shadows and teleport a very short distance, no more than a meter, but that would make for a devastating surprise attack.

Lesser Mithril Suit of Shadows [ High, Intermediate, Intermediate ]

Emily was puzzled at first about the three ratings, then remembered reading about item ratings, which had the same rating as runes, lowest, low, intermediate, high and highest. Form the description the armor was rated high with a lesser rune rated at intermediate and an intermediate script. Emily realized that most would not see the script rating, only rune mages.

“Lesser Mithril Suit of Shadows” Emily said out loud, it had a nice ring to it.

Emily thought she could upgrade the script to high or highest rating. If she could upgrade to highest then the rune rating would change from intermediate to high. Emily was not a runesmith and could not upgrade the rune also, even if she had the skills she did not have access to a smithery, still a high rating would make the suit more powerful.

Along with the armor there were a dozen mithril bars of metal, which was a nice bonus. Emily would have been happy with just the suit of armor.

Placing the bars of metal in Bagmor and Nighty, Emily gathered up the Suit of Shadow’s and went toward the entrance, to see what was in the knights’ travel packs.