Isla took a moment to review her notifications. “There are three notes; one says that I gained two levels of persuasion, and another says that I gained one. The last one is a level-up prompt; I made level three. The timestamps are very close together, but I wasn’t paying attention to the time during the meeting.”

“That makes sense,” Taloc said, “and congrats on the level!” They all congratulated her. “I would assume that one notification was for your success on Gelum and Svelta, and the other was for Ewt. Maybe you got two levels for succeeding on the pair of Anurans and only one for our resident Asian. It’s also possible that you were nearly at a level at the start of the meeting, and each success got you just over a level, causing the first one to give you two. There’s no experience bar for skills, so it’s hard to say. Wait, I remember you saying something about the triggers to improve in a skill level, so it might be a percent chance to level. You got two with one shot, though.” He paused while he thought things through. “I don’t know; it still could be experience. At any rate, where does that put you now Isla? 15 persuasion?”

“Only 14,” she corrected.

“That’s still over ten more than anything that I have other than my language abilities that only go to ten, and the languages work differently anyway.” Taloc projected his skill sheet so that Isla could see it; the only skills above level one were long blades, which was at level two, and listen, which was up to level three. “That adeptness ability of yours is excellent. My abilities, heightened senses, and see invisible are useful, but gaining skills more quickly seems to trump both of those.” He paused to think for a moment before continuing. “When we went over what abilities we had at the start of all this, I remember thinking that each of us had one ability that seemed to enhance their specific class taken, and the other seemed more random. Both of mine are useful to a Ranger, but they are sort of redundant.”

“Didn’t Maroftis get like five abilities?” Vultressant asked.

“He did,” Taloc agreed, “but they all sounded like they might be due to his race. We’ll need to find others of his kind to verify if that’s the case. Vanya has an extra ability as well, but I assume that night vision is probably an Elf thing.”

“Yeah, I saw that in the Elf description during creation,” Vultressant said. “I have an idea.” He went over and opened the lone window in the room. “Hey!” He called out to the guards below. “Can one of you come up here for a minute?” He closed the window, and a small Anuran with bright orange coloring entered the building and came up to the second floor. “Thank you. Could you tell me your abilities, please?”

“I have many skills,” the Anuran began hesitantly.

“Not the skills,” Vultressant interrupted. “Do you have anything that is called an ability?” He stressed the last word.

The Anuran looked more confident now, as he clearly understood what was being asked of him. “Yes, water breathing.”

“Is that it?” Vultressant prodded.

The Anuran nodded in the affirmative.

“Do others here have water breathing also?” Vultressant asked.

“Of course, all Anurans can do that naturally.”

“Do any of you have any other abilities?”

“We have all sorts of abilities. I have track, swim, hide—”

Vultressant cut him off before he could go any further. “Those are all skills; do you have anything that is listed as an ability?”

The Anuran paused for a moment before answering. “I do not,” he said simply.

“Do any Anurans have a listed ability other than water breathing?” Vultressant pressed.

The guard looked thoughtful but finally appeared to shrug, which seemed like an alien gesture to Vultressant. “I am not certain, but I know of none with another ability.”

“Thank you for your help,” Vultressant said, dismissing the guard, who looked to be a little baffled by the encounter. But he took it in stride and made his way back out of the building. When he was gone, Vultressant continued. “So it looks like there are racial abilities, and I’m guessing that in addition to those, we all received two other abilities. My two abilities are enhanced mana regen and language sense. The power one is certainly beneficial as a Wizard, but the other one is more neutral, as any class could benefit from it. Why don’t we go over our abilities and test out the theory?”

Vanya was the first to reply. “If the theory is correct, then commune with nature is likely my class ability, since that is super useful as a Spiritualist. Locate ore doesn’t seem class-specific, and as you both said, my night vision ability is a racial thing; I remember it being listed as an ability during character creation, too.”

“I don’t know about either of mine,” Ewtain said. “Mental wall would be great for any class, and I can’t see anything about it that would be specific to a Night Stalker, and the same goes for prescient reflexes. All classes can benefit from a better ability to dodge.”

“If I had to put one of those to your class, it would be mental wall,” Isla said. “An Assassin type that could be mentally controlled by his target wouldn’t be very effective. Also, you had said before that it prevented scrying, and in a world where magic can potentially be used to see what happened after a crime or find the criminal, that would be invaluable. Think of it as wiping the security cameras of a place that you rob or kill in your case, I guess. My abilities are born leader and adeptness. I was trying, as you all know, to roll a Bard type, and while ‘Skirmisher’ doesn’t sound very Bardy, it seems to fit the bill. If I had to guess, I’d say that adeptness is the Skirmisher ability. Bards are supposed to do a lot of things well, and leveling skills faster than normal is perfect for that. Who’s next?”

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“I can go,” Taloc said. “Both of mine are great for a Ranger, but heightened senses does seem more geared towards the class. See invisible is a great skill for any class.” He turned to Maroftis. “Your turn, big guy.”

Maroftis reviewed his display and then projected his list for all to see. “Immune to fire, regeneration, slow metabolism, heat sense, and prehensile tail.”

“That’s quite a list,” Vultressant commented. “Well, clearly, prehensile tail has to be a race one, but frankly, all of them could be. None of them seem to be specific to any class at all. He’s a fighter type, so maybe the regen? I really don’t know on this one.”

“You’re trying to make the abilities fit your hypothesis,” Taloc remarked, and Vultressant nodded, conceding the point.

“Maroftis, can you use the help feature to get info on your abilities?” Vanya asked.

Maroftis spent a few minutes researching, and he finally said in Koraken, “There was nothing when I looked into the abilities themselves, but my race info lists the tail, metabolism, and seeing and feeling heat as common abilities for my race.” Vultressant had to translate this as Maroftis’ attempt at Common had gone poorly.

“And night vision is listed as an Elf ability,” Vanya confirmed, having checked her race info as well. “Although I don’t think that it listed that anywhere in the help system that I could find before…” She trailed off. “This interface is bogus!”

“Regardless,” Taloc said, “we all have two non-race abilities, so that part of the theory checks out. I don’t know that we have definitive proof of the other claim, though.”

Vultressant held up a hand in protest. “I didn’t expect proof anyway, as there are only five of us. If we find any others who we can verify are actually player characters, we can check with them.”

“Provided that every group was treated the same,” Vanya said. “What if our group got special treatment for being first?”

“Awesome!” Maroftis exclaimed. “We rule everyone.”

They all had a good laugh at that, but they decided to table the discussion for the time being. Tollaisa arrived shortly after, and Vultressant went downstairs to practice the language skill with her to avoid distracting to the others. It was late into the night when he finally reached the tenth rank in the Anuran language, and he received a notification: ‘Congratulations for achieving mastery of the language Anuran! Your Intellect has increased by 6 points.’ He promptly checked his character sheet, and his Intellect had indeed increased by six points and was now at 33. The Intellect boost brought his MP up to 330. He now felt eager to leave this village since he would have little chance of picking up new languages here. With the mandatory one point per level that being a Gnome gave him and the six points per language at rank ten (provided that the rate was the same for each language), he could focus on other stats to increase as his level increased.

Vultressant considered his future stat allocation; he had used his four free points that he had received upon reaching level two almost immediately after leveling by putting another point into Intellect, two points into Vitality, and the remaining point into Psyche. He had briefly pondered just dropping them all into Intellect, but with an easy way to boost that stat, it seemed prudent to do something about the other stats as well. He had no real idea as to what to do with them, so he decided that future points would be stashed until he had further knowledge. He’d be able to keep pace with the rest of the group as long as he was able to find access to those who spoke other languages, since there had to be several in use in this world. He also liked the idea of hoarding resources until he had a path to optimize them. The games that he’d played had some stark differences in how he decided to use resources, but they basically fell into two types: burn through your resources as fast as possible to get to the higher levels and get the good stuff faster, or save the precious resources or points that you received along the way until you determined the best use for them. Without more information, he would be unable to determine which method would be best for this world.

Well, they would be leaving tomorrow, and there would no doubt be some opportunities to get experience. The rest had been nice, but he had not really needed the time to recuperate physically, as Isla had; his need had been more a mental one. Vultressant was bothered by the radical change to his life, but instead of dealing with his thoughts on the new situation he found himself in, he instead focused on progressing in this game, or world, or whatever this was. That was something that he was comfortable with, so he felt safe immersing himself in thoughts of playing a game.

Vultressant went upstairs searching for a distraction from his thoughts, but when he made his way upstairs, he found that the others were already either asleep or attempting to do so. How long had he been talking with Tollaisa? He sat down at the table and found that there were still two eggs in a basket there, which appeared to be ones that Vanya had boiled; she had probably left them out for him. He munched on the eggs, savoring their rich flavor, as he pondered their situation.

He mostly felt helpless and afraid, so he decided to divert his thoughts from his problems.

He activated his HUD and brought up his mapping feature. Vultressant had been allowed access to some of the maps of the Anurans, and their resident specialist on the subject, a small male named Goral, had done the best he could to help. Vultressant had been able to add notes and images to his existing maps, and his cartography skill had even gone up twice by the time he had taken in everything that Goral could show him. The Anuran had projected a map of the surrounding forest using his interface in the same fashion that Vultressant had done for his party. Goral then displayed one that showed mountains and a river to the west. Vultressant already had a clear map of everything that he had explored himself, and he had added a mental image of the two maps that Goral displayed that he then merged with his other maps. He had no way of knowing if the scale of the new maps was the same as the one that had been created by his cartography skill, but hopefully that would be revealed as they traveled.

He opened one of the books in the book room and focused on a map within it. Nothing happened. Vultressant didn’t know the reason for the failure. Maybe his cartography skill was just at an insufficient level to do that sort of transfer. Another possibility was that the map transfer from Goral had been easier, or possibly Goral’s own cartography skill had been responsible for the uploaded new maps in his interface. He studied his virtual map and explored the interface until he was ready to try to sleep.