Emily’s method of study was to quickly flip through a book to memorize it so she could study and consult it, even years later. Her eidetic memory had allowed her to rapidly earn degrees in her old life and so she set about memorizing the entire count’s library.
When she felt tired Emily would meditate with her legs crossed and her knees resting on her feet, the lotus position, allowed her to use her deep meditation skill to clear her mind and refresh herself. When the skill description stated clearing the mind of any negative effect, Emily found out this included sleep.
With just two hours of deep meditation she felt fully invigorated, more so than even normal sleep would have provided her. Not knowing when someone would return to the mansion Emily spent the days taking a book down flipping through it, setting it back into place, and taking another down without actively studying it just committing it to memory. If she had to flee the knowledge would be with her wherever she went.
Her traits worked even better than she imaged, Emily’s detailed memory become crystal clear and she could almost feel the books she memorized.
Basic Mental Constructs L1
Passive Skill
Allows a person to construct simple mental objects.
Through vague the skill synergized well with her knowledge savant and memory savant traits. The combined skills worked to make any object look, feel, even smell, real, as long as Emily memorized everything about the object she was constructing. It was not real and could not affect the real world but it did let her read books as if she was holding them in real life. Anyone seeing Emily using the skill would think she was miming. Another interesting effect of the skill happened when she tried to visualize the library as she was meditating.
Suddenly instead of thinking about nothing and just feeling at peace, Emily was in the count’s library mentally. Every detail down to the stitching on the coaches was clear as if she had her eyes opened.
Touching the chairs and fabrics felt real, going to one of the books she had memorized she took it down and slowing flipped through it. Every detail, the feel of the pages, the small of the ink, the weight of the book, it all felt real.
Emily sit down on her favorite overstuffed coach and read through the book again. As she finished she willed the book back into its place on the self and gave herself a mental command to wake up. Opening her eyes she looked at the runic clock standing beside the entryway. It had felt as an hour had gone by but seeing the clock only twenty minutes had passed.
Grinning at this new discovery Emily got up and went towards the kitchens to pull out another delicious meal form the trunks of holding.
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It had been a busy week for Emily, though she had not left the property at all, she completed memorizing the count’s 13,448 books. This world did not have a printing press but Classes made up for it. A high leveled Scribe Classer could copy a book by hand in minutes and the writing would be so neat and even it would look as if a printer in her old world had been used. An advanced mana scribe though could use magic to make an exact copy. With the right materials and high enough mana count the scribe could make a dozen copies at once.
This ran into a major problem form what Emily had read. Most people with a magic classed preferred a more lucrative or flashy job, why sit in a room coping books when you could be throwing fireballs around? Emily snorted at this thought.
In this world, called Terra interestingly enough, everyone gained their first class at 10 years old, well everyone who could afford an ascension crystal. The first class would be granted without going through any trials and would set the course of a person’s life. You had no control over what class you received and the majority received a noncombat class.
Anything form farmer, to seamstress, to blacksmith class, there were hundreds of production classes that you could receive. The downside was that you could never receive a combat class afterwards. There were vague hints about blood crystals that could give you a combat class but reading between the lines such a thing was evil. Emily would not try to find a blood crystal even if she received a production class.
‘Anything named blood crystal is not something I want anything to do with’ Emily thought.
Production classes were weaker than combat classes and they lived shorter lives. Based on her reading combat classers received more vitality stats then noncombat classers and vitality slowed aging. If combat classers survived they could live hundreds of years. This did not include elves for they naturally lived for hundreds of years. There were descriptions of high level elves living over a thousand years.
There were very rare and prestigious classes that were hybrid classes, noncombat and combat combined, one main example of such a class was the Tier 1 Ax wielder, both a production class that could focus on cutting down trees, and one that could focus on using the ax for combat.
After leveling a Tier 1 class to level 25 people could take another class. This time they would be required to take a trial to receive a second class, for a blacksmith it could be something as simple as forging a metal spoon, for warrior classers it could be battling a monster. The recorded trials were numerous and barely coved a fraction of trials people want through.
People could chose to take another Tier 1 class or opt for a Tier 2 class. The decision depended on what class someone wanted; some Tier 2 classes required you to have another Tier 1 class. If you wanted to become a Tier 2 knight you needed a Tier 1 warrior class and a Tier 1 Squire class. You could opt to advance straight to a Tier 2 class, a Tier 1 blacksmith could become a Tier 2 advanced blacksmith.
For Tier 2 classer you had the option to level your class to level 50 and receive a unique skill and then take another Tier 2 class or chose to take another class at level 25 forgoing the unique skill. A good example of this was someone wanting the prestigious Tier 3 Elementalist class. You needed a Tier 1 mage class then 4 Tier 2 classes in fire, wind, earth, and water. Most people trying for the Tier 3 Elementalist class decided to change their class at level 25, only needing a total of 125 levels to acquire the Elementalist class. Some people ridiculed this decision stating the Elementalist was not a true Tier 3 Elementalist class holder.
To reach Tier 3 you needed a combined level of over a 150 to ascend with at least 1 Tier 1 class, and 2 Tier 2 classes. Tier 3 classes leveled up to level 100 and you had the option to change your Tier 3 class after level 50. You needed at least 2 Tier 3 class with a combined 350 levels to ascend to Tier 4. Tier 4 classes leveled to 200 and you could change classes at level 100. 2 Tier 4 classes and a combined 750 levels were needed to reach Tier 5 and only a handful of people ever reached that level.
One thing that become clear form her reading was that to have a good chance to receive a combat class you needed skills in fighting. For most nobles and wealthy commoners they sent their children off to special schools to train and level their skills before they received their first class.
Children of nobles went to special knight academies that trained young nobles in swordsmanship, horse riding, leadership, and politics; it was no surprise that nobles and the wealthy attained better classes for themselves and their children.
Finishing memorizing the entire library and packing a bag in case she had to flee with some food, fine clothing she had found in one of the bedrooms closets, and some money she had found in a small office that was probably the butlers, Emily set about to try to hack into the locked double doors that she had been wanting to hack since she first broke in.
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Standing in front of the locked double doors Emily activated her programming skill. The rune work on these doors was slightly more complex than the ones in the rest of the house. Emily got the sense of more active scanning than the more passive ones used in the outside fortifications. Digging deeper she could feel several layers of security, not just scanning for unique mana signature but also looking for a security chip. It was double security, if someone duplicated Count Swift’s mana signature or stole his security chip the runic golems would still activate if they only had one and not both.
Emily had to deactivate the security chip function and add her mana signature to the approved list. Concentrating hard Emily raised her hand and placed it center were the doors joined. The runes all branched off form this point and was the focal point of the runic security system. Willing the first level of security to deactivate took more effort than when she first hacked the system in the alleyway. The minutes creeped by as Emily fought the system, her will against an inanimate object. It was not a contest. In just over eleven minutes the first level surrendered and deactivated. Adding her mana signature took another five.
Smiling in triumph Emily grasped both door handles and flung the doors open. Walking confidently into the room Emily found herself in a spacious and luxurious office of Count Swift. One the left was a bookcase filled with more books, on the right wall was a beautifully carved hutch cabinet, the cabinet doors inlaid with stained glass murals. There were two comfortable looking chairs and a small round table in front of the cabinet but what took up most of the room was the oversized desk facing the doors.
The chair behand the desk looked more like a throne than a normal chair. It was all calculated to intimidate anyone meeting the count. Shaking her head Emily started to walk towards the desk.
‘Men with small penises’ Chuckling Emily sit down on the throne chair and started to go through the Count’s desk drawers. Finding the normal office stuff, paper and parchment, ink blots, feathered pens, in one drawer Emily found a large leather bound book. Taking it out Emily flipped it open and found an accounting ledger. Not interested in the count’s finances Emily still flipped through it, who know if the information would be useful in the future.
Placing the ledger back into place Emily went through the rest of the drawers without finding anything of interest. Not discouraged Emily felt under the desk, not finding anything, Emily pulled out the right hand drawer again and felt around; with a click a compartment fell open under the middle of the desk right into her lap.
Laughing at such an obvious hiding spot, Emily pulled out another ledger and a bag of holding. Going through the second leger she saw bribe payments, income from shady deals, payments to brothels, all the count’s dirty transactions. Looking into the bag of holding Emily’s eye widened as twelve large gold coins and nine large silver coins fell out.
This world used base 10 on currency for ease of counting and had three metal types with each having two sizes. The smallest coins were a small copper, ten small copper got you one large copper, ten large coppers got you a small silver, ten small silvers and you had one large silver, ten large silvers got you a small gold, and ten of those got you one large gold, there were special larger coin sizes like the Emperor’s gold coin, but were not used often. In effect Emily had over a million small coppers.
‘Yes I am a millionaire!’ Giggling Emily put the money back in the bag.
This changed Emily’s plans significantly. With the amount of money in the bag of holding she could enroll in one of the academies and train for her first Tier 1 class. Without being a noble or having connections school chooses were limited but Emily had read about the perfect academy to enroll at.
The founding of this city, even before the founding of the Empire, started as a dungeon town. Dungeons in this world were the life’s blood of commerce producing renewable recourses for generations. Metal, wood, even weapons and armor, all could be extracted form dungeons. It was also the primary way for combat classers to level up. Go in, kill monsters for experience and loot, then repeat.
Dungeons came in all different shapes and sizes form low level dungeons that only had ten or so levels to super dungeons that had hundreds of levels and thousands of monsters form Tier 1 to Tier 5. Hatfordian City’s dungeon itself was a hundred levels ranging from Tier 1 monsters at the top to a single Tier 5 monster as the final boss of the dungeon. The boss had only been defeated a handful of times, the last instance was the current Emperor, with help of two dozen knights, and had pushed the Emperor to Tier 5.
The dungeon town was now a city and basically a city within a city. Hemmed in form the south and west by the mountains the dungeon was inside of, to the north was the Emperor’s court district and the east was the noble district, land and housing prices would have been astronomical accept for the fact that the Emperor owned every building in the district and subsidized the costs for new adventures. If the Emperor did not do this no one would have been able to afford to stay in the dungeon district. The Emperor would lose too much money if adventures stopped diving into the dungeon to allow this to happen thus the help for new adventures with the adventurers guild given complete administrative control over the district.
What had stood out to Emily was there was an adventures academy, Havardr Academy, specifically to train commoners. The academy history went all the back to the founding of the dungeon town when they needed every able body person available trained and ready to fight in the dungeon. That legacy of training everyone, no matter what their station in life, stood to this day as the cornerstone of the academy and had the support of both Empire and the adventurers guild.
All this to say that, although expensive, it was drastically cheaper than the noble or mage academies and far cheaper than the twelve large gold coins she had found.
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Before Emily left she went through the bookcase. Eight thick tome were a detailed genealogy of Count Edmund Swift’s family lineage, forty-eight were individual journals of past family member’s time in the dungeon, and the last thirty-one thick tomes were the most interesting, detailed classes the past Swift’s had and a brief account of their ascension trails. Interesting the current Count Swift was not listed but that made sense for if an enemy knew your class they could more easily counter you. The detailed classes showed how wide and varied classes were, though there were many repeating classes.
The Swift’s seemed to lean more toward fighters and knight classes. This made sense because only one could inherit the count title and the rest had to find their own way. Also complicating matters were the spare children were usually the first ones sent off to war, no one wanted to risk the heir on the battle field.
Another interesting statistic was less then eleven percent (10.6788%) of the Count’s ancestor had received mage classes. That confirmed mages were a very rare class to Emily and her chances of becoming a mage were slim despite her large mana pool, traits, and skills.
Emily quickly checked the hutch cabinet and verified her hunch that it was stocked with liquor. Completing her investigation Emily walked out and closed the doors. Emily reactivated the security system and deleted her mana signature form the system.
Emily having finished all her goals when she first broke in and now, with a large sum of money, had a new goal, set off.
Leaving the mansion behind, Emily again deleted her mana signature, this time from the main security system, and emerged from the alleyway wearing fine noble clothes, clean form a luxurious bath, hair shining form special soap the noble’s used, a large sum of money, and a clear plan for the next five years.
It was a far cry from the last alleyway Emily had left when first awakening in this new world, bloody, beaten, and dying.
This time instead of heading for palace road she turned south and started walking. Palace road ended at the gates of Emperors’ court district, the roads leading to the adventures guild district where the two south roads that paralleled palace road.
These roads were mainly used by adventures and caravans going to and from the adventures district, moving loot and finished products. The dungeon’s first floor was a massive forest producing enough wood for a large majority of the Empire. Special carriages were made that had the spatial enlarging runes curved into them allowing them to hold a truly massive amount of wood. Other resource found were herbs and metals, the herbs used for everything from food to elixirs, and the metal made into a whole verity of items.
After the forest level the dungeon become a maze of tunnels people still got lost in, despite detailed maps available, this went on for thirty levels, then large caverns started to appear that had mini forests in them, which got larger and larger the further you went down. The last level was said to be a forest a third the size of the first level with an ancient pyramid in the center holding the last boss.
Monsters ranged for wolves to goblins to huge trolls, the trolls hard to take down because of the regenerative skills. The best way to take down the trolls was magic, the fighters holding the monster’s attention as mages shot magic bolts at it. Trolls were very susceptible to magic.
Musing on the dungeons properties, Emily weaved through crowd and found the correct street to turn on. The street was filled with adventures going to and from the adventures district. Long time adventures sometimes bought houses in other districts to live and raise family at and basically walked to work.
Emily grinned at the thought of dungeon diving as a 9 to 5 job. ‘I wonder what euphuism someone’s title would be? Pest control? Pest sanitation engineer? Center for Monster control professional? Instead of the cdc professional, center for disease control, it is a cmc professional taking care of all the worlds’ monster problems.’ Laughing at the thought of making a badge with her picture on it and a bold logo with CMC superimposed over it, Emily finally arrived at the gates to the adventure district.