Micah stretched up, back, and forth over the table just to make his bones pop and wake him up a little. “How I hate exams.” His complaint was swallowed in the expanse of the Registry.
“We know,” Mason said across the sea of books.
“Who doesn’t?” Lisa added.
They were gathered in their little school section again to do homework or study, and though he knew he was just repeating himself from last time, there was a difference.
“I mean, I hate essays.”
That got him a few grunts of agreement. Lisa looked up, though. “Really? I thought you would like them considering, y’know, you’re you.”
Myra frowned. “This will be your entire ‘studying versus learning’ argument all over again, won’t it?”
“What? No … Well yes, but that’s not all. It feels kind of dwarfing, being here.” He looked around at the endless rows of books surrounding them. “Essays are supposed to be about contributing, but I don’t feel like I can. Especially not in a topic I didn’t choose.”
Assuming he could find a topic to choose. He was looking for one and stuck between options. So many options.
She shook her head. “You’re such a cliché.”
“This is just meant as practice,” Ryan mumbled without looking up, “it’s fine, Micah. Just do your work.”
Anne looked up from her own notes and put on a smile. “What he said. What are you writing on, anyway?”
“Social Studies.” He was only in the basic course, unlike her. And she and Ryan shared theirs. “On the [Worker] Classes. Basically, I’m supposed to make an argument for them, I think.”
“You think—?” Myra said, but Anne interrupted her.
“Oh, that’s easy! Just find a few good points for it. Like, how [Worker] and its variants can consolidate into nearly anything.”
“I already have that,” he said before she could go on and tapped the page with the back of his pen. He didn’t want her to think he couldn’t do this on his own. He was pretty far along.
“They can consolidate into nearly everything as long as you turn that into a fixed profession, so you can level [Worker] if you’re unsure about which Path you want to pursue. If you level in the meantime, it’s like you’re leveling your future profession by doing anything you want.”
Ryan looked up with a pained expression on his face, making him hesitate. Was he wrong?
“What?”
“Is that how you’re going to word it?”
“Well, no. I’ll make it sound nicer in the essay. This is just for summarizing it in my notes.”
“The argument doesn’t ring completely true either, though,” Anne said. “You don’t level your future Class by doing anything you want. When you level [Worker], you obtain Skills related to what you do and those carry over into your future Class with their added levels.”
“Fewer levels.”
“But still levels. Levels that you might have gotten a Skill better suited to your future profession from.”
Ryan spoke up, “So if you somehow consolidate [Worker] two with [Basic Cooking] into your [Mage] Class and it adds a level, that’s still a level in [Mage] that gives you nothing but [Basic Cooking].”
“Exactly.”
“Oh, uhm …” Micah considered for a moment, then asked, “Do I strike that argument then?”
“No, just the part about doing anything you want,” Anne said and leaned forward as if she could reach his notes herself.
Two seats across, Ryan nodded. “Keep the consequences in mind, but focus on the benefits if you’re supposed to argue for it: the consolidation, the sheer breadth of the Class, giving people universal Skills, lessening the pressure of choice in young adults getting their first Class, being able to level earlier and more in total because of it, and so on.”
Micah quickly followed him by making notes as he spoke, suppressed a smile, and looked up with a confused expression on his face. “So that’s it?”
“It’s also super common,” Anne said, trying to help the poor Micah who was confused by his assignment. “So there’s a reliability there.”
“That could be attributed to the promotion of the Chores’ Offices, though,” Ryan said to her.
“I meant for employers?”
“Ah. Right, then.” He actually agreed with her.
“What? Employers?” Now, he was getting genuinely lost. “And what would the problem with the first thing have been?”
“Circular argumentation,” she said. “You can’t say both, ‘It’s good because it’s common,’ and, ‘It’s common because it’s good’.”
“That’s not to say that you couldn’t use the Chores Offices as an example at all,” Ryan added. “Just to clarify. You just need the points to argue different things and not each other.”
“Yeah, you could actually use the city as a sort of ‘character reference’ in that case, with the funds they give them.”
Micah cocked his head and tapped his lips with his pen. “So I frame it like, ‘If the city’s promoting it, it must be good?’” He already knew that was wrong, but Ryan jumped in to save him.
“Less obvious. Less blindly trusting the city. Maybe research why they give the offices those funds, quote other publications, or summarize them, and then throw both of them in as references.”
“Alright.” He made a doodle on his page, because he’d already planned on doing that but didn’t want them to know. He wondered how much of this Anne was picking up on. “And that other thing, with the employers?”
“They have lots of Skill lists for the Class,” she said, “so they can gauge which ones you might get from your next level up. Also, having the Class shows workplace experience. Or, if they’re not looking for trainees, being a high level itself can show that you have a good work ethic.”
“Even without the actual Skill.”
“Right.”
“Even then,” Myra joined in, “if you’re a high-level [Worker] and looking for a place to settle, there is a good chance you will consolidate in your final job, if only partially, which can give you the opportunity to level again in your old age. You might get Skills to suit your new needs or prepare you for a leadership position.”
It still surprised him sometimes how much she could say when she had something to talk about.
“This is all best-case scenario, though?” he asked, frantically taking down notes. Because he hadn’t thought of everything.
“Yeah, so you shouldn’t use it as a main argument,” Ryan said. “Not sure if you should even mention it at all because you’re probably only going to have to write a short essay, right?”
“Basic course.”
“Right. Rare case examples like that could be getting off-topic and distract from your main argument.”
“Okay?”
Myra shrugged as if to say, Fair enough.
“So that’s it,” Anne said. “Start with its strengths as Ryan mentioned, go over to the numbers, how common it is, mention its support, and get some statistics and lists to cite, maybe quote some publications about the funds going to the offices and voilà! You’re done.”
Ryan nodded at him. “Easy.”
“Thank you.”
A lot of that had helped … or was at least reassuring. He still had to scour the Registry for two different sources to cite but—he smiled. Because neither of them was scowling at the other.
“Both of you,” he added. “You helped a lot.”
“We did, didn’t we?” Anne asked with a grin, glancing down the table. “We’re so smart.”
She said it with a subtle sigh, seemed to freeze up, and glanced down at her notes. The expression slipped and she melted chin-first against her hand with an actual sigh. Her elbow pushed a book into another. It was the same expression she’d had before she had helped.
They all had their own things to struggle with, Micah guessed. Exams were just around the corner so they had nothing better to do than be here.
He would have offered to help, but she had to be struggling with something he could actually help with first, in order to do that. She was smarter than him and he still catching up.
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But then, Micah remembered something else and said, “Oh!”, before bending down for his pack.
Fortunately, he was an [Alchemist] and could simply brew solutions to his problems. He brought out two bottles of minty yellow liquid from his backpack, which shimmered with a faint blue sheen whenever they moved.
“Focus potions.” He held one out to her. “Do you want one?”
“Did you make those yourself?”
“Yeah.”
He smiled. She considered for a moment, shrugged, and took it, which only made him smile more.
“They’re not full lesser, though,” he quickly remembered. “They’re ‘least’. That’s easier to make and I actually prefer it because they don’t rip your attention away and make you weird, y’know?”
He remembered afternoons sitting at Lisa’s and staring at things, or people, as his mind fixated on them.
“There are people who get [Lesser Focus] from their Classes, you know?” she said in a tone like she was joking. “[Students] at this very school.”
“Really?” Myra asked.
“A handful.”
“Someone must have screwed up. That’s not part of the ‘perfect plan’.” Everyone liked to make fun of how much the school’s plans had gone awry.
“I’m just saying, you shouldn’t be disparaging.”
Micah actually envied them a little, [Students], because the Class brought Skills with it that made school life so much easier, like [Miller’s Sleep] to fall asleep the moment you hit the hay.
Instead of saying something, though, he nodded and said, “And that’s good for them. I’m sure they learn to deal with the stat, but I would like to keep my sanity.”
“As if you have any to lose,” Ryan mumbled.
Myra flashed him a smile. “Nice.”
Micah looked at the two in bewilderment and Anne mirrored the motions across the table, but they just kept on working.
“Well, no potions for you, then.” He was about to offer to the others some to drive the point home when Mason spoke up.
“So that’s what you were making yesterday. If it’s only ‘least’, why not just drink coffee though?”
He shrugged. “I like focus more, I think. But really, I just want to make new things to level and I’ve already made alchemical coffees before.”
“Oh, but there’s lots you can make with coffee. I have some more good recipes, if you want?”
“Sure! I’m always looking for new and useful things to make. It’s hard to justify not just going through books and making everything you want in the hopes that you’ll level, but it’s all so expensive.”
That was why he stuck with things like perfumes, detergents, hygiene products, and weak healing salves—things he could actually use in his daily life.
Not that he didn’t like them. He would just rather do more. For example, he was trying to figure out ways to work alchemy into his fighting style among other things. Making potions for more than just ‘fog breath’.
Anne paused with the bottle hovering in front of her lips after his statement and looked at him. He needed a moment to catch on. They both spoke at the same time.
“If—”
“No—”
“I just mean, if—”
“Drink. Really, it’s fine—”
“Because—” She groaned and gave him a look. “Let me finish? If you made these to study, I wouldn’t want to take them away from you.”
“I made them to level,” he corrected her. “I can do that better by making things for other people, too.”
“But need to pay for other things, too, right? Like preparations for the exam, your armor— Oh, or those glasses you wanted?”
Micah shook his head. “I can get the materials at a third of the cost—”
“That’s not factoring the time you need to make this.” She pointed at the bottle in her hand.
And the time it takes to buy the ingredients or find the recipes, he thought but shook his head. He would rather have made the recipes himself, but that was fine, too. “It’s all experience,” he said. “And besides, I can save up for that other stuff. I’m not repairing my armor yet.”
“You’re not?”
Mason looked up and echoed her, “You’re not?”
Next to him, Ryan sighed.
“No. It was too badly damaged and too small. It doesn’t fit me anymore. Getting it repaired would be like buying a whole new armor at a slight discount.”
And there was no way he could afford to do that and not live off scraps until the exam was over.
He could see the confusion on their faces and raised a hand, “But, it’s better this way. I can use the money I saved from not having to repair it to make these”—he raised the bottle—”or other things, and level quicker in [Alchemist].
Almost everyone else on my team went in with worse armor and they didn’t get as hurt as I did during the exam. Maybe if I do, it’ll teach me to be more careful and help me level in [Fighter] as well.”
Two birds, one stone.
“He does have the annoying habit of letting monsters nibble on him while he focuses on other stuff,” Lisa said.
“You knew about this?”
She nodded.
Micah had told them a day after her birthday, when he’d realized he really wasn’t doing all too well in the communication front.
He would just spend one expedition as well-equipped as everyone else; what could go wrong? What else was he training for if not to stand beside them as they did?
Anne mulled it over out loud as she glanced at him, but didn’t try to give the potion back anymore.
“What, are you considering it?” Lisa asked.
“Huh? No armor?”
She nodded.
“Oh, no. My parents would kill me. I’ve done enough unarmored training with hired [Summoners].”
“In a safe environment.”
“Yeah,” she grumbled, somehow taking the statement as sympathy instead of teasing. “But besides, I’m a [Paladin]. Wearing armor is good for me.”
Micah couldn’t stop himself then, because he had been meaning to ask this for ages. “So that slim snowsuit you wear …”
She chuckled. “The best armor my family could find, that someone actually made instead of finding in the Tower. It could stop an enchanted arrow with ease.”
“Wow.”
It certainly didn’t look like it.
She must have noticed, because she said, “It’s like a super thick version of a climbing shirt. It’s made with layers of Garden sheep wool and has these plates inside of it. It’s better than enchanted armor because we can have it repaired if it’s damaged, you know?”
“Sounds expensive,” Ryan grumbled.
“Like you’re one to talk, Mr. Yellow Fleece.”
He scowled and shut up.
“I’m going to add it to the list of things to save up for, one day,” Micah said.
She smiled. “Sure.”
“But for now …” He raised the potion a little. “Anyone else?”
He got a round of rejections and couldn’t know why. Because he had made the potions and they didn’t trust him; because they didn’t want or need them; or because of a misplaced sense of politeness?
Mason took one, though, despite his coffee preference. That was nice. “Did you forget you had them,” he asked, “or why are you only now bringing them out?” They had been here for almost two hours, now.
“I wanted to save them until I absolutely needed them,” Micah said.
“Ah.” He frowned at the dried layer of plaster on the bottle, but was familiar enough with it not to ask questions.
“You shouldn’t rely on focus potions to get over your procrastination,” Myra commented.
“Would you rather I keep on talking?”
She smiled and shook her head a little, but mumbled, “Maybe consider why you’re avoiding your work next time.”
He already knew why, Micah thought as he set the bottle to his lips. If he was being honest, he felt a little rudderless.
He had his project with saving on the repair costs of his armor to level quicker, and there was something he could cling to. It was familiar, something he’d done for years—leveling.
And then there was trying to find more lenses for his Path by searching for essences and practicing with the enchanted glasses the school had. Eventually, he might even get an appraisal Skill from that.
He had his project with his spirit veins he was growing throughout his body in order to make use of his [Essence Path] more—and he really hoped he would get a Skill from that someday, too.
Similarly, he had his pseudo-[Aspir] skill that he used to reave affinities from other people’s mana or items, and which he could no doubt use on monsters’ spells as well. He knew he could use it on their bodies to breathe them to death.
He had his alchemy and the projects he was looking for there: his perfumes, glues, and trying to find a way to make something more permanent—though he’d only done some rudimentary research on that.
He also had his school life, trying to do well during the exams, catching up in most his courses, doing well in the tournament in combat training, doing well enough to maybe earn a scholarship. The Tower exam.
He had his job in the mornings, doing paper runs to earn money in case he didn’t get a scholarship, and the chores he had to do at school—his laundry, keeping his room clean for inspections, and working out to stay fit despite the pain in his leg, and—
And he had his friends, whom he wanted to hang out with in the afternoons or on the weekends to have fun, and school life to give everything order. Routine: Get up in the morning, get ready, go to work, go to classes, work out or go to the workshop, do homework, study, hang out, eat in-between it all if he could find the time, maybe snack on a flesh crystal if he couldn’t, do some chores in the evening, get ready for bed, wait until he could finally fall asleep …
He had so much. Too much. He actually kind of missed his parents, because he had to organize it all.
Sometimes, he just didn’t want to do any of it. Most of what he had to do was actually things he liked. This practice essay in a basic course? Less so.
And for what? Then what? He wouldn’t know if anything he did would pay off until months after the fact—if he would level, get a Skill, get a scholarship, and all those other thing.
He wanted to level, and succeed, and go back into the Tower as often as he liked, and climb with his friends, and make progress in his alchemy, level, find a project he could throw himself into, improve, explore the Tower, make discoveries about the changes, get to higher floors, reclaim what he had—
He stumbled.
Help me.
Micah took a deep breath and replied, Shut up.
He wanted to earn his license so he could sell what he made, become a professional climber good enough that he wouldn’t have to worry about the things he did now, find a place where he could be stable and confident, where he could hone his tools, his trade, his Skills for all eventualities, and finally ask Anne out and go on a date with her, and keep on going on dates with her, and finally be happy.
Forever.
Yes, forever. And to get there, he drank the lemon-y focus potion until the last drop and felt its effect take hold, drain his exhaustion away, and refocus his mind like honing a blade.
One step at a time. Just don’t think about it. It was like he was still climbing up that rubble wall.
He smiled at Mason and Anne across from him, got a thumbs-up from the guy in turn—on the taste?—and went back to his work. It really should be easy.
Besides, even if he couldn’t see the results of this until a few months later, there was another form of instant reward he could look forward to: The Sport’s Festival.
In the afternoon, they would get to go all-out. Oh, and he would have to make some alchemicals for that.