Blood Shaper

Book 4: Chapter 13

Sitting in his private office with his feet up on his desk, Kay bust out laughing as he read the “primer” on how to get the Adventurer Class. “This can’t be real.” He held out the single piece of paper and waved it at Eleniah.

She looked up from her deep contemplation of the wall. “What?”

Kay stretched the paper out on his desk and started reading from it, “Step one: ’Imagine you’re in a VR environment but you’re controlling it with mouse and keyboard.’”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Step two: ‘Open a command menu and type in the following symbols’, which I can’t even read because they aren’t in any language I know, ‘then hit enter and wait for the process to complete.’ That’s it!” He grabbed the paper and tossed it behind him.

“Wait,” Eleniah looked confused and tilted her head at him, “Doesn’t your Outworlder stuff translate languages for you?”

“Right? This is so weird. Did the founders of the Adventurer’s Guild actually rip me off?”

“Have you tried doing what it says?”

“No, I’ve been too busy mocking it.”

She gave him a look, “Try it.”

“Alright.” He sat up straight and closed his eye, imagining a computer monitor in front of him and a mouse and keyboard under his hands. Wait, it said imagine I’m in VR. He shifted his mental image to have a headset on, with a virtual environment that looked like his PC’s desktop. Moving his hand the way he imagined it and clicking on the start menu he opened a command menu like the paper said and imagined using the Alt key and his numpad to bring up the unrecognizable symbols. Opening his eyes when nothing happened, he reflexively jerked back and almost fell out of his seat when the System window popped up in front of him.

[~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~]

Processing, Please Wait

[~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~]

“Something happened, didn’t it?” Eleniah asked smugly.

“How the hell did her dad figure this out?”

“What happened?”

“System window telling me to wait popped up.” He replied, still staring at it.

“So, it worked just like the paper said.”

Kay just blinked at the screen for a moment. “There’s a lot of background context that you don’t have about why this is so surprising, but I’ll keep the paper so I can show Cindy and she can agree with me.”

“Could you try explaining?” She asked patiently.

Kay threw his arms in the air, “You can’t just randomly type shit into a command line and unlock hidden things! Especially if it isn’t your computer and you aren’t logged in as an administrator. And where the hell did these random symbols come from? Did he just spam nonsense in his own head until something happened?”

“That clarified nothing,” She sighed.

“It’s… This brings up a lot of new questions about the System, or Honor’s family, or both, and I have no real answers. The potential answers that I can think of are all worrying, though. If this,” He waved his hand through the intangible screen, “Was always possible with zero security on it other than knowledge that its possible, it says bad things about the System and how safe it keeps itself, which is alarming since we’re currently experiencing enough corruption that the System sent another piece of itself here as a troubleshooter. If there’s more security on it than just knowing how to do this, how did Honor’s dad figure this out? What did he do to earn it or what has he agreed to as a price to get to this point? We haven’t completely thrown ourselves into their arms, but agreeing to the Adventurer’s Guild’s proposal and then fighting Honor definitely pushed us closer into alignment with them. Is this evidence that I made the wrong choice there? Now they have a fighter who is predisposed toward being stronger against me because I decided to fight her. Will they use her as a threat, as an assassin? When I thought I had a handle on them and their motives, it was worth it because the information we had indicated they wouldn’t be our enemies. But this new info potentially throws all of that out of wack.”

“Since I don’t understand most of what you were talking about, I can’t comment. But I can tell you that Honor doesn’t have the Class everyone thinks she does.”

Kay mentally moved the screen out of his line of sight as he turned to stare at Eleniah. “What?”

“She doesn’t have a Class that permanently makes her stronger against people she fights.” She tapped a finger under her eye, “High level Inspect, remember? I can’t see everything about her since she’s the same tier as me, but I can see enough.”

“I could feel her getting stronger during our fight.”

“During the fight, sure. I’ve been a little suspicious ever since I heard the rumors about her supposed Class, and I’ve been keeping an eye out since she showed up here. I hadn’t had a chance to watch her fight anyone till today, but now I’m sure, because I could see her boosts go away after the two of you stopped fighting. I saw that her armor wasn’t enchanted to grow, so she’s got a tier five that combines Classes that let her grow, grows her armor with her, and increases her combat power during th course of a fight, but she’s not getting any boosts against particular people just by fighting them. I don’t know if that’s something she or her parents started spreading or if they’re just taking advantage of the rumors, but it’s not true. Or at least not yet,” She mused, “That would be a good Class to aim for if you know what to combine for it. Even with just an idea that’d be something to work toward.”

“Why were you suspicious about it? It isn’t the most out there Class I’ve heard of.”

“Because she’s too young to have a Class like that,” She pointed a finger at him, “I get that it’s hard to grasp something when your individual experience contradicts it, but getting to tier five doesn’t happen in two and a half years except for anomalies like you. You have a lot of advantages being an Outworlder and a Class Line Progenitor that got you there significantly faster than the average person. If someone does nothing but train on getting to tier five while aiming for a Class that they already know what to combine to get there, they can make it in five years if they’re dedicated and get good opportunities. Most people don’t have a path already mapped out for them though, so it takes longer because they have to experiment with what they want. The average person who makes it to tier five gets there in somewhere between thirty to forty years.”

“What? That’s-“

“That’s average. Most people don’t have the drive or a reason to achieve higher and higher tiers as fast as they can. A lot of people are fine with getting stronger little by little in safer ways. The mana infusions that come from getting to each tier increase your lifespan enough that you can afford to take time to level your Skills and carefully consider what Classes to take. Being able to make new Class slots basically as you like gives you a lot of freedom to sprint up the tiers because you don’t have to worry about filling up every slot and getting stuck.”

“Okay,” Kay said, understanding what she was getting at, “But what does that have to do with Honor? She seems to be driven enough to tier up quickly and with who her parents are I’d think she’d have the opportunities to do it.”

“True, and if the Class that everyone says she has was at tier five strength I’d believe it, but I don’t think it is. Tier five Classes can be all kinds of strong, but a permanent buff against a specific person, or depending on the rumors potentially against an entire Class, just from fighting someone once whether she wins or loses? Personally, I think that’s too strong to be a tier five Class. I’d believe it if they said she had a tier six Class, but not tier five. And there’s no chance she’s gotten to tier six and is only in her forties.”

Kay gaped at her like a fish, “She’s in her forties? She looks like a teenager!”

Eleniah rolled her eyes at him, “And I’m hundreds of years old and only look your age. You’re probably going to look just like that for hundreds of years.”

He blinked at her before responding slowly, “I guess two and a half years isn’t enough to completely get it through my head that outward appearance doesn’t match with people’s age, at least consciously. I know I think of you as my more experienced mentor, but its not part of my thought process that you’re hundreds of years older than me.”

At that moment the floating wait message vanished and a new one appeared.

[~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~]

You Have a new Class Available! Class: Novice Adventurer

-Prerequisites: Error!

This Class will take up a Noncombat Class slot if accepted.

Do you accept this Class?

[~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~]

“That’s weird, it overrode some of my settings for when I get offered new Classes. It’s using the default notification settings for it. And the prerequisites are ‘Error’.”

“We have long gone beyond my knowledge of things in more than one subject. How you got offered the Class was weird, so why wouldn’t accepting it also be weird?”

“I guess you’re right. Should I take it?”

“IT gives you spacial storage according to Honor and her family,” Eleniah replied with a shrug, “Even if you can store lots of blood inside you, having even more storage for things that aren’t blood sounds useful. And you’ve got slots to spare.”

“It’s a Noncombat Class too, which are the empty slots I have the most of. …Yeah, alright.” He mentally accepted the prompt.

[————————————————————]

Class: Novice Adventurer

- An adventurer is someone who adventures. Going off to explore distant lands, hunting for buried treasures or forgotten temples, or even uncovering untold secrets of the world, going on any of these kinds of adventurers could make you an adventurer. This isn’t that kind of Class though. This Class is much more similar to the video game and fantasy story type of adventurer, someone who goes and kills monsters and finds treasure in the search for glory and power.

[————————————————————]

[————————————————————]

Skill: Inventory (Level 1)

-Open a temporary pocket space to store physical items at the cost of mana dependent on the size of the opening. Constantly drains an amount of mana from the user in order to maintain the pocket space while it contains items. Mana drain is based on mass and volume of store items. Higher levels in this Skill increase the size of the pocket space and moderately lowers mana drain over time while maintaining the pocket space. This Skill cannot store living organisms. Microscopic organisms will be killed, macroscopic organisms will be rejected from the pocket space.

[————————————————————]

Kay read both descriptions as per usual, then reread the Class description. “You know what? I’m ignoring the questions this just brought up, because I have enough to be worried about right now. If there ever comes a time where we can figure out what’s going on with this then I’ll deal with it then.”

“More stuff I won’t understand?”

“I can take a few hours and give you all the details if you want, but short version is it’s referencing stuff from world’s like my Earth. I’ve sort-of explained video games before, right? It talks about those.”

“Yeah, I remember some of that. Technology we don’t have here to make stories into interactable games that are more complicated than board games.”

“Right.” Kay shook his head and dismissed the screens. “Whatever. Like I said, we’ll deal with it if it comes back up. Want to experiment with my new Skill?”

Eleniah popped out of her seat with a grin, “Always!”

Someone knocked on the door at that moment.

“Yes?” Kay called.

Meten walked in holding a sheaf of papers. “I just got a report that you’re going to want to see.”

“What’s up?”

“Remember those dungeons you found where one was open and let you travel between its two entrances and the two other closed ones? Apparently some of our people over there think they can open one of them up. Fancy another dungeon delve?”