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“Are you feeling okay?” she asked. “You were asleep for a while. We don’t need to call a Healer, do we?”

“No, no, I’m fine,” he said, taking a step toward the door to leave. His plan was to go to the library today to do some research on all of this unknown Class stuff, so—

“I still haven’t been able to ask you, what happened?” his mom asked, interrupting his movements. “You said you were stuck in that cave-in?”

He stopped and turned to her. “Uh, yeah, that’s pretty much it. I eventually found my way out through a natural cave.”

“There weren’t any monsters in it, were there? I’ve heard closed-off cave systems often have portals naturally form within them, so the guild has to call in soldiers to fight off infestations all the time.”

He shook his head. “No. I guess I got lucky.”

He still hadn’t gone in-depth about what had happened in the cave, though he had told them the basics. But talking about the specific details…What could he even say about the Blood Magus Class? He didn’t know the first thing about it, and didn’t know if he’d be executed upon speaking his first word regarding owning it, either.

“But…” She frowned. “Turin, when he came to get me and your sister, he said you were delusional. You wouldn’t believe you’d been gone for so long. What was that about?”

That, too, was something he’d have trouble explaining without talking about the ritual. Even if he didn’t admit to owning the Class, if word spread about someone in the guild conducting rituals in the tunnels, the mage would know Zeth was alive, and would come to silence him. As well as anyone he gave the info to.

He took a breath, then told the lie he’d come up with that morning. “Mom, it’s kind of embarrassing, but I hit my head pretty hard during the cave-in, and I think it messed with my mind a little. I got really dazed and confused, and from there…I don’t remember much else. I think the thirst and hunger started getting to me, too. So by the time I got out and drank out of the river, all I remembered was getting hit, then walking through the cave and toward the outside. I just…I guess I couldn’t believe I’d missed so much.”

Her eyebrows knit together. “That sounds serious. Are you sure you’re okay now?”

“Yeah, I’m sure,” he said with a wave of his hand. Technically, what he’d said was a half-truth to begin with. When he’d gotten out of the cave, he remembered jumping into a river or something and hitting his head. And his memories were fuzzy about what’d been going on when he’d jumped in. There had been some sort of monster, or something? But he’d gotten away from it, so there was no danger now. “If my memory starts acting up again, I’ll let you know right away.”

She nodded slowly. “Okay. Because Turin really made it sound like you were out of it. He said he would come by today to check on you, actually, so maybe you can talk with him when—”

Just then, a knock sounded on the door. Before either of them could even walk over to see who it was, it swung open and Turin walked in.

“Miss Valerian, Zeth’s still okay, right? I—”

He stopped when he saw Zeth standing in the room.

“Oh, hey,” Turin said. “Glad to see you’re alright?”

“Why do you say that like it’s a question?”

“I mean, I dunno, I hadn’t heard you talk yet. You could’ve been some ghoulish mindless creature walking around with no soul.”

Zeth nodded. “Right. Should’ve guessed that was your assumption. Well, no, I’m feeling fine now that I’ve gotten some rest. Thanks for checking up on me, though. And thanks for helping me yesterday. I honestly was a lot closer to death than I’d realized then, and may not have made it without your help.”

“You’re not making me any more confident in you being fine, talking like that. I mean, how did you think it’d only been a single day since you were gone?”

He took a breath. “Take a walk with me and I’ll explain?”

It took the whole walk to the library for Turin to finally stop questioning Zeth’s well-being and accept that his memory loss story was not, in fact, a sign of extreme brain damage that spelled his imminent death.

Once they arrived, Zeth nodded to his friend. “Okay, if you’re satisfied, I do need to go inside now.”

“If you start experiencing any further symptoms, please tell someone immediately.”

“Sure,” he said, reaching for the door handle to head inside.

As he did so, his sleeve rode up his arm a little, revealing the scabbing cut along his arm that he’d given himself to power the Hellfire Ritual in the cave.

“Oh gods, what happened to your arm?” Turin said, immediately reaching forward to look more closely. “I thought I saw blood on you yesterday before you washed off, but I hadn’t expected a cut that bad.”

“Nothing, it’s fine,” he responded, drawing his hand away. “I just scratched myself on a rock on my way out.”

“Are you sure? I’ve been doing a little bit of studying while you were gone, and I think cuts like that can bring infection.”

“Studying? So you’re serious about Healer’s school, then?” Zeth asked, desperate to dig himself out of this conversational hole. He knew that as he Leveled Up and increased his Endurance Stat, he’d be protected from mundane disease, but if he mentioned that, it’d just bring on yet more questions about how he expected to get so many Stats like that so quickly.

Turin nodded. “Hopefully I can get in soon. I’ve even purchased one of the Skills needed to unlock the Class.”

“Healer’s got a Rarity of C, right? So you’d need to max out that Skill plus eight others in total?”

“Yep. Some of the ones required are pretty expensive, so it’ll take a while, but at least the first one was pretty cheap. Medicine, which only cost thirteen Skill Points.”

“Nice,” Zeth said. He’d gotten his own Class in quite the unconventional fashion. Typically, a Class had a list of Universal Skills one would need to purchase and bring to max Rank before it’d become available to take—the number of Skills required going up as the Class’s Rarity went up. All Classes with a Rarity of E would have a list of three Skills you’d need, D would need six, C would need nine, and so on.

But there were some specific circumstances that would allow one to obtain a Class without getting the Skills required—and sometimes certain Classes could only be obtained through these unordinary methods—and it seemed like Zeth had stumbled into one of them.

He nodded to Turin. “And then you’ve just gotta scrounge up the funds to pay for school, huh?”

“And to pay for travel to get to a city. The guild doesn’t pay much, and the monsters in the surrounding wilderness have only gotten worse in the past few months you’ve been gone, so finding Classers to escort you through the roads is getting more expensive by the day. I don\'t have a clue why the town hasn’t invested in a proper military to clear them out already.”

Zeth bit back a comment about the guild’s pay and how it was all you needed to see in order to know how much they cared about their workers. “Well, if I ever need medical attention, I’ll be sure to come straight to you, I guess. Thanks for walking with me.”

Turin nodded. “See you, man.”

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Once Turin had walked off, Zeth turned and went inside the shabby library and greeted the librarian—he knew most of the people who worked there, since he often came in to buy books for Sophie. But today, he was interested in some different literature. You couldn’t take the books out of the building unless you were willing to pay a fee, but reading inside was completely allowed, as long as you didn’t stay too long. He intended to utilize that policy today as much as he could.

To start with, he grabbed a tome from the front of the System information section that listed every known Class and some basic information on each one.

They were listed in alphabetical order, so all he had to do was flip to the ‘B’ section, follow down, and…Ah, there was Blood Mage, so directly under it would be…

Zeth frowned. Blood Mage was there, but Blood Magus wasn’t listed at all.

He glanced back up at Blood Mage, reading through the listed info.

“Blood Mage - Rarity: B

OBTAINING THIS CLASS IS FORBIDDEN BY THE OBERIAN EMPIRE UNDER PENALTY OF IMMEDIATE AND UNCEREMONIOUS EXECUTION.

(Note: information available to the public relating to forbidden Classes has been limited—particularly information relating to the Skills needed to unlock the Classes and the Exclusive Skills they offer.)

Blood Mage is known for its ritual magic and its ability to summon demons under its user’s command. As a combat Class, it grows more powerful from killing, and seems to gain extra power through killing humans in particular. Unclassed individuals SHOULD NOT ENGAGE.

Blood Mages require a large amount of time to draw their ritual circles, and the Skill that allows them to draw ritual circles automatically erases said circles if the surfaces they are drawn on are moved. As such, they are most easily defeated when forced into an environment they have not had time to prepare beforehand. However, due to said restriction, their Skills are EXTREMELY POWERFUL when used to their full extent.

It is HIGHLY ADVISED to avoid the lair of a Blood Mage AT ALL COSTS. Even at double a Blood Mage’s Level, an individual can still lose a fight against one that has been given enough preparation time to layer the battlefield in their ritual circles beforehand.

Due to their ‘Fire Ritual’ Skill and their ability to summon demons, any sort of resistance to fire or heat is especially useful against them.”

As expected, it was mostly advice on how to beat a Blood Mage. Ironically, Zeth also wanted to know how to do that, but even then, it didn’t really tell him anything he didn’t already know.

It was good to have the information of its Rarity, at least; his own Class’s Rarity was S, but the basic Blood Mage Class was Rarity B—two steps below. That meant he’d be getting significantly more Stats per Level, and more importantly, it told him that whatever changes this new Class made to his Skills would likely lead to an insane increase in power. He’d already seen one Skill that said it was exclusive to Blood Magus—that absurd ‘Forbidden Knowledge’ one that opened up a link between himself and the Eighteenth Realm. What else would he get? And even if Blood Mage had versions of the other ones he had, how were his different?

There was also that interesting tidbit about the fact that his ritual circles would automatically be erased if he ever moved them once they were drawn. It was uncommon that a Skill would have such an extreme restriction without ever saying anything like that in the description itself.

He hadn’t really thought about putting a circle on an object and then taking that object around with him, but it was good to know that wasn’t an option ahead of time.

Actually, it would probably be a good idea to test something like that, in terms of its restrictions and allowances. Zeth glanced around to ensure the library was empty, then subtly began drawing a tiny circle on the current page of the book with his thumb.

After a couple minutes, it was finished. So then, if he tried to move the book or turn the page, that would count as moving the object and the circle would be erased?

He tried giving the book a gentle shake. The circle stayed. Then a more intense shake. It stayed.

Zeth frowned, stood, and started walking. Step after step after step, the ritual circle stayed planted on the corner of the page, until he was all the way across the room.

He glanced around again, then erased the circle with his finger. How had that not counted as movement and erased his circle?

He thought for a moment. Maybe, the Blood Mage version of the Ritual Circle Mastery Skill’s description did include that bit about not being able to move them around, and the reason his didn’t have it is because he just…could? Blood Magus didn’t have the same restriction that Blood Mage had? That was certainly interesting.

Then Zeth got an idea. A terrible idea. A terrible, horrible, awesome idea.

Hellfire Ritual, once armed, would activate and engulf someone in flames the moment they touched it. Only, it didn’t have to be that they touched the circle. It could be that the circle touched them.

If Zeth put the circle on something like a plank of wood, then slapped something with the wood…

It was clearly dangerous. He’d already seen how powerful the Skill’s flames were, and being so close to someone he used it on would likely burn him. But it probably wouldn’t kill him. Maybe he could get some basic fire resistance Universal Skill to avoid getting second-hand burns from being so close to his opponent when he caught them aflame. That could work, right?

At the very least, a strategy like that would eliminate the main weakness of Blood Mages that the book claimed they had—he could bring his ritual circles around with him. It would be like everywhere was his ‘lair.’ And if the book said that nobody under any circumstance should enter the lair of a Blood Mage…

I wonder what other nuggets of knowledge I could find in this place?

Once he was done reading up on Blood Mage, Zeth moved on to searching for two specific things: Skills that could profit him Skill Points, and Skills that could let him resist fire. That meant Universal Skill compendiums, which meant a lot of reading.

Unlike the ease of finding exactly what he was looking for out of that Class book, finding the right Universal Skill was a matter of brute force. First off, there were a whole lot of them. And second, he didn’t have any particular name to search for. So the alphabetical ordering was much less useful. There were technically books that sorted the Skills differently, like books consisting exclusively of profit Skills, or of Skills that had a specific use, but those all cost money to access.

So, opening the massive tome of Universal Skills, he went straight to the ‘F’ section, looking for any Skill that began with the word ‘Fire’ or ‘Flame.’ Unfortunately, he found nothing particularly useful. But next, he went to the ‘H’ section, looking for ‘Heat,’ and hit exactly what he was looking for.

“SKILL AS WRITTEN IN SYSTEM:

Heat Resistance - Cost: 14 Skill Points

Unlock requirements: Endure severe burns.

When you are dealt heat-based damage, treats your Endurance Stat as though it were 25 higher for the purposes of reducing said damage, plus an additional 5 for each Rank in this Skill.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION FROM AUTHOR:

Heat Resistance requires one to endure burns that cause significant injury, not just ones that cause pain. Additionally, they are decided by how much damage they do to your body, not how much damage they would do to a typical person. Therefore, those with a higher Endurance will need to endure more severe burns to unlock and Rank up the Skill (and, since the Skill itself increases resistance to heat, more and more severe burns will be necessary to acquire higher Ranks.)”

So, at max Rank, this would effectively give an extra seventy-five Endurance worth of heat resistance for the cost of four Skill Points, after counting the ones he’d get back for Ranking it up. Considering the cost of purchasing seventy-five points of Endurance outright would be twenty-fiveSkill Points, this would be very worth it, as far as Zeth was concerned.

Only, he would have to Rank it up. Which would require him to get severely burned a bunch of times. That was probably why the cost was so low.

Speaking of low costs in return for harming oneself, Zeth also found some profit Skills worth considering. There was Breath Holding, which would require him to almost drown a few times over in order to unlock, there was Dirt Eating, which would require him to eat a “significant amount” of dirt to unlock, there were a bunch of other resistance Skills for different poisons and venoms, which would require him to repeatedly subject himself to a specific poison for each one…

Most of them sounded pretty horrible, to be honest. And for the most part, they all cost seven, eight, even nine Skill Points. He’d only get a tiny bit of profit for Ranking them all the way up to full, so it would simply be more efficient to purchase something like Vile Focus for now, anyway.

But one did catch his eye.

“SKILL AS WRITTEN IN SYSTEM:

Self-Destruction - Cost: 3 Skill Points

Unlock requirements: Cause life-threatening harm to yourself.

Increases the speed at which you recover from injury by 300%, plus an additional 60% for each Rank in this Skill.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION FROM AUTHOR:

‘Life-threatening harm’ could be an injury that is close to hitting a vital organ, or it could be a more long-term threat to life, such as an injury that becomes infected by a potentially deadly affliction. Causing it to yourself requires you to be the primary one taking action, and to either willingly or by accident cause that harm to yourself. Something like standing in front of another man’s blade would not count; you must be the one swinging the sword.”

That one was cheap, profiting seven Skill Points after Ranking it to max, and even had a seriously beneficial effect—uncommon to see in profit Skills. At max Rank, it’d increase his healing speed to ten times what it would normally be.

The thought of an injury that would normally incapacitate him for an entire week suddenly needing less than a single day to recover from was certainly tempting. Only, its unlock requirement…Talk about a downside. Oh, just bring yourself to the brink of death, no big deal. And continue doing that over and over again to Rank it up. That’s all.

So maybe not now. But if he could find a way to unlock it, that would certainly be beneficial.

Zeth’s stomach grumbled. Had it been that long already?

He didn’t want to leave, but also wasn’t about to voluntarily skip a meal—not after feeling such voracious hunger yesterday. So he headed home. He’d gotten what knowledge he could from the library, now it was time for action. He didn’t anticipate being left alone by his enemies for very long, so it was time to get that “butcher’s workshop” going, do some rituals, and prepare for a fight.