“Hey, can you spar with me?” Kay asked Eleniah when a free moment came up. He’d been chatting distractedly with Darten and Vened, the cheerful dwarf who’d been injured in the explosion. He was a Novice Fisherman, a very rare class in the landlocked area controlled by the Weathered Clans. They’d been explaining to Vened that, no, they really hadn’t tried to fish in the lake; yet, they’d had other priorities, especially since they didn’t have any fishing gear. He’d run off looking for Devon to make him a pole.

“Sure.” She followed him over to the open area they’d set aside for sparring.

Kay glanced down at the dirt. Maybe we can get Darten to make an actual arena. Well, more like a ring, I guess. But would this be the best place for it? I’m not sure what other buildings we’d need, and… “Dammit, no! I haven’t even made a decision yet!” He growled to himself, “I’m focusing on me right now!”

“What’s up?”

Kay growled wordlessly at himself and looked up at his teacher. “I started thinking about city planning. I’m focusing on my advancement right now, not a decision I haven’t made yet!”

He watched her expression turn into a strange fusion between a frown and a smile, “That sounds like you’ve-”

“I’m focusing on me!” He insisted, cutting her off.

“Alright,” She laughingly replied, “Any plans for yourself?”

He held out his hand and gathered a mass of blood there before shaping it into a rough approximation of his sword. Eleniah watched with wide eyes as he refined the details down until he was holding a pretty good rendition of his sword formed of solid blood. “I need to work on three things with blood weapons. Forming them, keeping them stable, and actually fighting with them.”

“Kay, that’s fantastic!” She suddenly appeared in front of him in a blur of speed, closely going over his weapon. “This gives you so many options! As long as you’re alive, you’ll never be without a weapon!”

“Or armor.” A slow crawl of the blood from the sword covered his fist and made a rough glove. “I need a source of blood that can’t be taken from me, but I’ll be ready at any time. Hypothetically.”

“Your body. That’s why I said as long as you’re alive.”

“Sure, but I have to have a certain amount of blood in me to stay alive and losing too much to make gear will fuck me up in combat. So I either need a different supply that can’t be taken off me or to get skills that remove or lessen those weaknesses. I have some ideas, but those are later. Right now, I’m working on getting better with blood weapons. I need to make them faster, make them better, keep them made, and fight with them.” He reiterated his current goals.

Eleniah smiled widely at him, pride shining in her eyes. “I am so proud of you!”

Kay chuckled, “Thanks?”

“You’re doing so awesome!” She did a little dance, and Kay laughed. “Shut up!”

“You’re ruining my initial impression of you. You aren’t some stoic badass; you’re a shy lady who does little dances when she’s happy.”

“We’re as much friends as we are teacher and student now! I can drop some of the personage I have to put on!”

Kay laughed again and shook his head. “I think we’re more friends and adviser to my fledgling whatever I am, and then a little bit of teacher to student left over. Let’s fight, though.”

“Right.” She swapped her expression out for a serious one. “I’ll limit myself to tier three levels, and I’ll focus on taking your weapon out more than anything else.”

“Good.” Kay stepped into a ready position, the blood blade held out in front of him with a two-handed grip. “I’m not going to try anything interesting or flashy like reshaping it on the fly or floating blood weapons around yet. For now, it’s all basic weapons play. Complicated stuff comes after I get the basics down.”

“So proud!”

“Go!”

By the time two hours had passed, Kay had made, broken, and reformed dozens of blood weapons. After the first few bouts with the sword, he’d switched it up and made a blood halberd, and he’d made a blood punch dagger once or twice. He’d found that the larger and more complicated weapons were obviously harder to create and sustain.

“It’ll get easier with practice.” He reminded himself quietly while he glanced at his status during a break.

[————————————————————]

Name: Kenneth “Kay” Davis

Race: Outworlder Human

Age: 24

Highest Tier: III

Total Tiers: 13

Class Slots: 9 Combat Class Slots/5 Non-Combat Class Slots

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

Classes:

Combat:

- Blood Manipulator: Tier III -

Skills: Manipulate Blood - Level 24

- Swordsman (Bastard Sword): Tier III -

Skills: Swordsmanship (Bastard Sword) - Level 22

- Apprentice Polearm Wielder (Halberd): Tier II -

Skills: Polearms (Halberd) - Level 19

- Blood Shaper: Tier III -

Skills: Shape Blood - Level 14

-Empty-

-Empty-

-Empty-

-Empty-

-Empty-

Non-Combat

- Bloody Healer: Tier II -

Skills: Blood Transfusion - Level 10

Healthy Blood - Level 11

Blood Regeneration - Level 15

-Empty-

-Empty-

-Empty-

-Empty-

Non-Class Skills: Identify - Level 2, Appraisal - Level 4, Inspect - Level 3, Punch Daggers - Level 5, Writing - Level 5, Reading - Level 5, Running - Level 5, Sprinting - Level 4, Blood Domain - Level 1, Cartography - Level 4, Drawing - Level 4, Leadership - Level 3

Titles: Class Line Progenitor, Class Creator III

[————————————————————]

Nice! He fist-pumped. Lots of levels in Shape Blood! And I’m only one away from getting Polearm Wielder! He did a quick glance through the rest of his levels, stopping at two points. When he noticed what level his Punch Daggers skill had gotten to, he pulled up his notifications, which he’d just noticed were blinking. He dismissed the level-up notifications since he’d already seen what he’d reached and focused on the other one.

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

New Class Available!

Class: Dagger Wielder (Punch Daggers!)

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

“Hey, Eleniah?”

“Yeah?”

“I got Punch Daggers to five, and I don’t know if I should take the class.”

She stopped stretching and looked at him with a pensive expression. “Do you want to take the class?”

He snorted a laugh. “I’m not sure; that’s why I’m asking you. Part of me wants to take it so I can add it to my repertoire, but I also don’t use it that much. I started using it because you recommended I get a small weapon I can use if I lose everything else, but we’re working on making me always having a weapon. So I’m not sure.”

“If you’re not sure, I say don’t get it for now.” She ticked off thoughts on her fingers. “It’s only a tier-one class, so getting it offered again is a lot easier than getting a higher tier class offered a second time. You just have to work with punch daggers as hard as you did to get the Skill from four to five, not nine to ten, or even higher. And it’s a lot easier to get a class you turned down than to get rid of a class you realize later you don’t want. And you won’t reach tier five anytime soon, so you have time to make choices.”

“Cool. I’ll go with that then.” He mentally dismissed the offered class, and the notification disappeared. “I got Shape Blood to fourteen and Polearms (Halberd) to nineteen.”

“Awesome!”

“What’s with the names of skills?” Kay suddenly asked, looking at his status again.

“Huh?”

“Why is it Swordsmanship (Bastard Sword), Polearms (Halberd), and Punch Daggers? Those are all set up differently. If they were the same as Punch Daggers, it would be Bastard Swords, Halberds, Punch Daggers. If it were like Polearms (Halberd), the other two would be Swords (Bastard Sword) and Daggers (Punch Dagger). I’m not sure what they’d look like if they were all like Swordsmanship (Bastard Sword). There isn’t really a verb for the wielding of the other two in English that I know off.” He looked up from his status to see her answer.

She shrugged expressively. “Don’t know. I don’t think anyone does. There are lots of questions about the World or the System and Skills and Classes. There are lots of things that don’t seem to work together the way you’d think they would. I’m sure some of your confusion is coming from translating into your original language since you said that you don’t have verbs for some stuff, but there are lots of inconsistencies in names in every language I know. It’s a big discussion in every group of scholars and researchers that focus on the World.”

This can’t be a VR game; technology isn’t, or wasn’t this good back home! This is definitely a real world. But could the System be someone’s creation? After sitting there for a bit, Kay shook his head and dismissed the thoughts. “Whatever. I’ll make a note of that to talk to a scholar if we ever meet anyone that knows more about it. For now, it’s time to test blood armor.”

“Oh, so you’re going to play punching bag?” Eleniah teased him, “That’s my favorite kind of training.”

Kay rolled his eyes at her smirk and stood up. “Later, I want to go roaming and try and make a good map of the whole valley.”

“Oh?” Eleniah pushed herself to her feet in an inspiring show of acrobatics, doing a little spin after throwing herself up with one hand.

Kay golf clapped. “If I do decide that we’re making a place here, a map of the area will be invaluable. And even if we don’t, it should get me to five in Cartography, and I’ve decided I want the class.”

Eleniah gave a small bow. “Great. Now, make with the armor. I’m going to hit you a lot for calling me a ‘shy lady’.”

“You are!”

“Make with the armor!”