Kay rolled his head to the side to dodge the incoming blow, but he wasn’t fast enough. He watched in what felt like slow motion as his face was about to be pulverized, when Eleniah pulled her punch.

The shockwave of the blow still sent him on his ass, and as he tumbled he felt that same bit of lingering shock that came every time she did this to him. The force of one punch that didn’t even hit him was enough to make him fall over? No wonder tier fives were scary.

As he lay there in the dirt Eleniah walked over and held her hand out for him to grab. “Not bad. You’re getting better at dodging.”

He grabbed her hand and got pulled to his feet. “You say that, and yet you manage to come right at my face every time.”

“I am quite literally exponentially faster than you both in moving and my senses. Actually dodging an attack from a tier five is way beyond a tier two. No matter how close you are to tier three, you don’t get that boost until you tier up.”

Kay grabbed his training halberd off the ground and looked it over for damages. There weren’t any, so he placed it back on the weapons rack. He’d started practicing with it more and more after running into monsters that his sword just couldn’t get through. The halberd gave him the same slashing and stabbing potential as a sword, but with greater reach and the added advantage of a big spike on one end that was great at punching through armor. He wasn’t going to give up the sword or the punch dagger, since there were circumstances that made longer weapons a detriment, but he was moving more and more to the polearm being his main weapon, with the other two as backups. It wasn’t like he didn’t have the class slots for it, so he kept the Swordsman class too.

His status was now a bit more filled out.

[————————————————————]

Name: Kenneth “Kay” Davis

Race: Outworlder Human

Age: 24

Highest Tier: II

Total Tiers: 7

Class Slots: 8 Combat Class Slots/5 Non-Combat Class Slots

3 Combat Class Slot Used/1 Non-Combat Class Slots Used

Classes:

Combat:

- Apprentice Blood Manipulator: Tier II -

Skills: Manipulate Blood - Level 17

- Apprentice Swordsman (Bastard Sword): Tier II -

Skills: Swordsmanship (Bastard Sword) - Level 19

- Novice Polearm Wielder (Halberd): Tier I -

Skills: Polearms (Halberd) - Level 7

-Empty-

-Empty-

-Empty-

-Empty-

-Empty-

Non-Combat

- Bloody Healer: Tier II -

Skills: Blood Transfusion - Level 7

Healthy Blood - Level 5

Blood Regeneration - Level 4

-Empty-

-Empty-

-Empty-

-Empty-

Non-Class Skills: Identify - Level 2, Appraisal - Level 3, Inspect - Level 2, Punch Daggers - Level 4, Writing - Level 5, Reading - Level 5, Running - Level 5, Sprinting - Level 4

Titles: Class Line Progenitor, Class Creator II

[————————————————————]

It wasn’t a huge amount of classes or skills, but Eleniah said that for the amount of time he’d put into it, his status was pretty damn good. Since she was the only other person who knew the whole thing he couldn’t really disbelieve her.

His skill leveling was finally starting to slow to a noticeable amount. He’d had Swordsmanship (Bastard Sword) at nineteen for weeks now, and he hadn’t been able to get Manipulate Blood up a level in almost the same amount of time. Focusing on leveling his Polearm (Halberd) skill recently hadn’t helped, but he’d been almost entirely training with Eleniah recently, as opposed to going on jobs.

Alice’s Harem, Kay couldn’t stop calling the group that after he’d heard Eleniah call them that and Korz kept getting really annoyed, was off on a longer job they hadn't brought Kay on. The job had a really good payout if they completed it on time, and they wanted to use the whole thing to make their party stronger.

Kay understood. He wasn’t actually part of them, even if they were friends who helped each other out. His secrets made it so that he couldn’t join them now, and when he reached the time when it didn’t really matter who learned he was a Class Line Progenitor he had no idea what his or their lives would look like.

“Right.” Eleniah patted him on the back. “I’m hungry. Want to go find something to eat?”

“You don’t want to cook?” Kay asked with a grin.

She scowled at him. “No, I really don’t, and yes, I know this doesn’t get me out of my turn.”

Kay chuckled at her and she whacked his arm. They’d settled into an easy relationship living together a few months into their cohabitation. Eleniah wasn’t hard to live with, and they’d become friends pretty easily. As she taught Kay more and more about life in Torotia, as well as politics, history, and other topics, she’d slowly become less and less his teacher and more a mentor. He’d recently gotten to an “acceptable point in your knowledge”, and they’d shifted to mostly physical and magical training, putting away the books. Eleniah didn’t have any magical classes herself, but she’d been around enough of them to give good advice. She’d seen Water Manipulators do the water saw idea he’d had, and she’d confirmed that it was basically impossible before hitting tier three levels in the skill.

One of the nice things about going up in tiers was the lack of sweating. Well, the lack thereof in Eleniah’s case, Kay was still at the level where he just sweat a lot less. You body getting reinforced by mana also helped how much heat it could deal with, so the more tiers you went up the less you sweat. It didn’t take long for him to wipe himself down with a wet cloth, and they walked out into the city.

Kay ignored the various looks that passersby shot him as they headed over to one of Eleniah’s favorite food places. There were a number of sit down restaurants in the city, but they tended to be in or around the richer parts of Tumbling Rapids. In the less prosperous areas most options for purchasing something to eat came in the form of stalls or merchants with moving carts.

One such stall that Eleniah loved set up shop in a small market area nearer to the docks. Eleniah was originally from a nation to the west that was situated in a large archipelago, so she loved seafood. She insisted that the freshwater fish caught in the lake weren’t the same as ocean fish “from home”, but she ate them with relish just the same.

They purchased their lunches and found a random low wall to sit on and eat. Right as Kay took a bite of his fried fish wrap a small voice piped up from next to him.

“You’re the evil blood magic guy that wants to take over the city! Right?”

Kay choked on his lunch as he glanced down and saw a small human boy staring up at him with wide eyes.

“I heard you want to make the whole city into your puppets and turn all the pretty ladies into your concubines! Are you going to turn my mommy into a concubine?” The kid paused for a moment, a distinct “thinking expression” crossing his face. “What’s a concubine?”

Kay bent over as he started choking and coughing even harder, and Eleniah burst into laughter next to him. He managed to clear his throat and he took a few deep breaths before looking back to the kid.

The child was staring up at him with brown eyes wide and bright with interest.

Kay suppressed a chuckle at the innocence of the kid. “I am not an evil blood magic person. I don’t want to turn anyone into puppets or concubines.”

“But what’s a concubine?”

Eleniah laughed more as Kay awkwardly replied, “You should really ask your parents that.”

The kid frowned like he didn’t want that answer. “I heard that you were an evil blood magic person!”

“What exactly did you hear?” Kay asked.

The kid proceeded to recount one of the more… interesting versions of the rumors that had been spread around about him. It was pretty obvious that this was something that had been deliberately spread to smear Kay, since it came with an exacting description of him. Also, hearing a child that couldn’t have been older than six repeat a series of strange sexual practices Kay was supposedly into, all without understanding a single thing he was saying, was a bit surreal, and to Eleniah, absolutely hilarious. She almost fell off the wall they were sitting on laughing.

“Look, kid. None of those things are true.”

“Why should I believe you?” The kid asked, showing a good bit of intelligence as he stared up at Kay with suspicion.

“Captain Armis from the guard can vouch for me and the Adventurer’s Guild can too.”

The boy gasped. “I know Captain Armis! He works with my dad!”

“Nolan!” A woman came out of the small crowd of shoppers. “I’ve told you not to run off like that!”

“Mom!” The boy ran over to grab her hand and started chatting incessantly about how Kay wasn’t really a bad blood magic person because Captain Armis said he wasn’t and the food Kay was eating looked good could he have some and also what’s a concubine?

The mom shot Kay an apologetic look and Kay just waved it off with a smile.

“Nolan, I know that he isn’t a bad person, because your daddy talked about it remember? You really need to stop listening to the neighbors gossip.” She told her son.

“But they say fun things!”

The woman muttered disguised rude things about her neighbors under her breath.

Nolan broke free from his mom and ran over to Kay. “Can I have some of your food?”

Kay shook his head while laughing. “Sure.” He tore a piece of his wrap loose and gave to the kid, who munched on it happily.

Nolan’s mother came over and chatted for a bit, mostly about her husband’s work in the guard, and how Nolan wanted to be a guard like his dad when he grew up.

“No, no, no!” An obnoxious voice cut into their conversation. “You need to stay away from that man! He’s dangerous!”

Coultron walked over to the group and put himself between the family and Kay and Eleniah. “Haven’t you heard? He’s in league with the Blood Mage tearing up the countryside!”

He took a breath to continue his bullshit when Nolan peeked out from behind his mom, where she’d pushed him away from Coultron. “But Captain Armis from the guard says he isn't!”

Coultron smiled in what he probably thought was a friendly way. “You can’t always trust what the guard says. Not at all, at all, at all.”

That was not the right thing to say to a kid whose dad was part of the guard. “That’s stupid! You’re stupid!”

Coultron’s smile became brittle, and he wrote the boy off as a lost cause. He turned to the woman. “Now, ma’am you really-”

“Go fuck yourself.”

Coultron jerked back.

“You racist Nelamian pricks need to take the drivel you spout back to your own shitty country and leave our city alone.” The woman spat at him with venom.

Nolan decided that was a good prompt to jump in. “Yeah! You shitbag fuck-monkey! Go gargle troll dicks you puss ridden waste of air! Your mother likes to get double teamed by forest giants! Your dad pays sewer rats to nibble on his junk!”

Everyone stared down at the boy in silence. Even a few people walking by had stopped to stare at the kid.

Eleniah burst into laughter, and did fall off the wall this time, holding onto her stomach as rolled off.

“Nolan!” His mother scolded him. “Where did you hear that kind of language?”

“The neighbor found some guy in his house yesterday and shouted a bunch of stuff at him as he chased him! Then daddy came home early!”

She dragged her son off, chiding him not to say those kinds of things. They completely ignored Coultron as they left.

The Graceful Success member slowly turned to glare at Kay. Kay just laughed at him, and he spun and walked off with a wordless snarl.

Kay smiled to himself. Today hadn’t been so bad.

He glanced down at Eleniah, who was still laying on the ground laughing. “Are you going to finish your food?”