Backlebutt’s loud snores filled the silence in the enormous, empty cavern. Milo glanced at the man reproachfully. The man would quiet down every so often, breathing easily for as long as a couple of minutes. Milo would get his hopes up, thinking he was done, before he’d suddenly rev it up again. It was truly obnoxious.

Milo was on watch for now—unlikely as it was that anything would bother them as things stood—so it wasn’t like the man was keeping him from sleeping. Still. It made it hard to concentrate.

He currently had a melon-sized rock sandwiched between his textbook and his binder. They were floating in the air overhead. He hoped his aim was right this time. It was getting harder to find rocks that weren’t submerged underwater.

Here goes.

He accelerated the whole sandwich up briefly before removing the bottom slice of bread—his binder—out from underneath the rock. Once that was done, he immediately pressed hard with the top slice of bread—his textbook—accelerating the rock downward as hard as he could before pulling the textbook away to let gravity do the rest of the work. Splash.

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Congratulations! You have slain a level 5 Zombodile. You have gained 50 experience.

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Ah. Zombie crocodiles. No wonder they’re so messed-up looking. Also, yes!

That had been his fourth try, second hit, and first kill. Fortunately, the beasts were too stupid to head for deeper waters in self-defense. Probably another feature of being zombies. They didn’t seem to notice he was trying to kill them, which was only slightly emasculating.

He glanced over at Backlebutt, half-worrying and half-hoping that he had disturbed the man’s sleep. The splash had been pretty loud, and Milo had even gotten a little wet from it, which meant that Backlebutt probably had as well. However, as with each of Milo’s previous attempts, the man seemed completely unperturbed by the ruckus.

Can’t remember the last time I slept that well.

Milo checked his status screen, finding that he needed to kill three more of the zombodiles to reach level 6.

After taking four tries to kill the first one, it took him only five more to get the next three as his technique improved. He had to leave the little cave and head back into the tunnels for rocks at one point, which had him feeling guilty for leaving Backlebutt unguarded, but he justified that it was only for a second; Skim made finding appropriate rocks a breeze, and he’d loaded several into his emptied backpack in no time.

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Rank up! You are now a level 6 (Elite) Scholar.

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The first thing he did was put another point in mana regeneration, bringing it to 10.5/hour, or slightly faster than 1 per 6 minutes. Next, he checked for new skills, finding only one this time:

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Copy Text: You may choose a selection of text that will be copied with conjured ink onto a surface of your choosing. Active, 1 mana/use

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It was an easy pass for Milo, which meant he could pursue his current plan without compunction.

He’d continued talking with Backlebutt for about twenty more minutes after learning that he would need to spend a thousand mana in order to earn a mage fusion option. The man had begged off after that, claiming the need for sleep, but Milo had learned quite a bit of important information in that amount of time.

Ten skills slots. That was how many everyone got, once they reached a high enough level. Well, ten plus the legacy slots. New slots would keep coming every two levels until he reached that limit.

Also, he didn’t need to worry so much about filling up those slots; whenever a new skill became available, he was allowed to replace an existing skill with it. However, once he did that, the skill he’d replaced would be unavailable until he got a new, empty skill slot to put it in.

The upshot of that was that he now felt somewhat freer about experimenting with skills.

And so…

He scanned his list of skills until he found the one he was looking for.

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Just One More Chapter: Allows you to temporarily ignore your body’s need for sleep. Active, 1 mana/10 minutes.

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Milo figured he’d spent around 100 mana thus far. At his new rate of 10.5 mp/hr and assuming he was consistently spending mana, that meant he could expect the mage option to show up in about 85 hours or 3.5 days...if he didn’t sleep. Given that he wanted the option yesterday if not sooner, he was going to try to pull out all the stops to make that happen.

There was just one little issue, which was that he’d heard a person could literally die from lack of sleep after a few days. He didn’t know if that was true, and it honestly sounded kind of unlikely to him, but he didn’t exactly want to make himself a guinea pig. His plan was to keep the skill active and stay awake for two days, which every college student knew was doable. He could check in with how he was feeling every so often after that.

He also had some hope that the slightly ambiguous wording of the skill meant that he wouldn’t be building up more need for sleep while it was active. It was a long shot, but magic could be weird.

He chose the skill, filling up his newest skill slot, then looked for modifiers.

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Just One More Chapter:

-Your body and mind are slightly rejuvenated by the skill, as if you had actually gotten restful sleep instead of just putting it off. 2 modifier points.

-Improve skill efficiency to 1 mana/20 minutes. 1 modifier point.

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The first modifier made his eyebrows raise. It was a steep cost in terms of modifier points, but...

With that modifier, at just my current level of mana regeneration, I can literally never have to sleep again. Eight hours of extra time, every single day. That’s like…

He quickly did the math. His gut estimate said that the skill, over the course of his life, would basically give him 33% more time to do whatever he wanted, since 8 hours was one third of the 24 in a day. After actually running through the numbers, though, he realized that it was 8 plus the 16 waking hours he normally got: 50% more time.

That didn’t even mention saying goodbye to the frustration of tossing and turning on nights when his brain just wouldn’t turn off, or spending the next day in a bad mood after a night of restless sleep.

He was reminded of an amusing meme he’d seen that talked about how roleplaying games allowed people to experience things impossible in normal life: waking up feeling Well Rested.

Milo had three modifier points to use. If he spent two now, he’d have two to spend next time he got a look at a new skill, at level 7. Backlebutt had confirmed he would always receive a modifier point with each level. He’d also mentioned that refunding skills would also refund the modifier points used on that skill.

He considered whether the second modifier was worth investing in, but ultimately decided against it. At 10 minutes per mana, he would need to spend 48 mana per day on the skill to get the recommended 8 hours of sleep. He would be producing 252 total mana per day, and even more when he leveled again. More than plenty to do everything he needed. Just getting the first modifier would do.

Eventually I’ll probably want the skill slot and modifier points back from this for whatever build I wind up going with, but for now...yes freaking please!

Milo spent the two points for the first modifier, then immediately tried out his new skill.

It was hard to tell the time deep underground, but from how his body was feeling, he was nearing the end of a long day. When he used Just One More Chapter, however, he immediately felt extremely refreshed. His shoulders were still sore from lugging around his backpack, and he had various other bodily complaints, but he nevertheless felt significantly more energized and motivated than moments before. It was a starker difference than he’d expected, from just ten minutes of sleep.

After ten minutes, he realized why; his energy level faded noticeably, which meant that the skill was still putting off sleepiness in addition to giving him the actual ten minutes of rest.

Cool. He immediately spent another mana to feel tip-top again. It was like miracle caffeine on tap.

In the meantime, Milo had finally unwrapped his textbook and had begun studying it again for the first time since…

Man, it feels like weeks ago but I guess it was just like, what, two days? Crazy.

Backlebutt had informed him that there was a fusion point waiting for him if he managed to get twenty-five class options, so if he unlocked another class by reading the medical book it could help him even if it wouldn’t fuse with his scholar class. Milo was currently sitting at 13 class options, so he needed 12 more.

He’d hit a dry spell on acquiring new classes the minute he entered the dungeon, which was probably due to the fact that he was mostly just fighting and exploring. He’d already earned the explorer and warrior class both.

Backlebutt also mentioned the possibility that trying to get classes might play a role in actually achieving them. From the man’s own experiences and others he’d talked with, it seemed the system was more willing to throw you a bone if you had the mindset that you were looking for a class. Milo was skeptical about that, wondering if there was some kind of selection bias going on, but he didn’t bother challenging the man on it. He was the one with real experience, after all.

Milo skimmed over chapter 1, refreshing himself on the concepts that he’d covered previously, before moving on.

He spent a few hours studying, covering several more chapters at an enhanced speed thanks to Improved Cognition and possibly Polyglot; he had a suspicion the skill was helping him learn new vocabulary words much faster than he was accustomed to.

Milo had decided to dub Just One More Chapter as ‘Power Nap’ instead. The skill was a godsend, sharpening his attention to a razor focus once every ten minutes. Instead of his mind wandering and causing him to reread dry, uninteresting chapters multiple times sans comprehension like he often had in the past, he was able to devour the text rapidly and retain a great deal of information.

And finally, halfway through Chapter 6, his efforts were rewarded with a system message popping up in his field of view.

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Congratulations! By studying and understanding human biology at a higher level than 99% of the world’s population, you have gained access to the (Elite) Medical Doctor class.

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Wow. Magical medical degree in what, three hours?

And it was another Elite class. Milo knew from Backlebutt that ‘elite’ didn’t exactly fall in the progression from ‘basic’ to ‘master’ classes, or however high up it went. Rather, it was a modifier that increased the quality of a given class by a single tier. Essentially, it turned his scholar class from ‘journeyman’ to ‘advanced’.

He mentally clicked on his new class to read its description.

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(Elite) Medical Doctor: Sure, high level healing mages can bring back a man from the brink of death in the blink of an eye. But do they understand? No. That’s where you come in. You can sit next to a man and explain to him exactly how and why his body is failing him before he slips into the great beyond.

-Gain skills and knowledge for understanding and treating a wide variety of maladies. (Elite) Medical Doctor is an Advanced class. Advanced classes award an additional two skill slots and modifier points at level 1 and an additional two Legacy Skill slots. Class fusion available.

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Ooh. Fusion. Wonder which class?