Chapter 5

“So this is real? We’re really in some kind of other world?”

Janet was biting her lip, but she seemed thoughtful, not concerned. Jason thought she seemed surprisingly calm for someone who’d just been told they were trapped on an unknown world, with unknown inhabitants, for an unspecified period.

“Im afraid so. Best we can determine anyway,” Lumiriel said.

“And that was really magic you were using earlier?”

“Indeed it was.” Lumi conjured a tiny ball of fire and held it in her palm. “Courtesy of whatever strange RPG-like system holds sway over this place.” She snuffed the flame out by clenching her fist.

“Good,” Janet said firmly.

“Good?” Jason scratched his head. “How is all that good?”

Janet looked away, staring into the fire. A bitter note crept into her voice.

“My life was shitty anyway. Maybe a new start isn’t such a bad thing.”

Jason sat there awkwardly. He wondered what you were supposed to say to something like that. From the look on her face, he didn’t think he wanted to pry. He’d seen that expression before, on people with problematic home lives that left them deeply unhappy.

Who knows, maybe she is better off here, he thought.

From the thoughtful look on her own face, Lumiriel seemed to be thinking something similar to Jason.

After a brief moment, Janet shook herself, and looked back at them. “Anyway, so what stuff can you two do? I mean, obviously you can do that water thing, and I guess fire too, but what else?”

“Well, we’re both new at all this like you,” Lumi replied. “but I’ve got a full range of basic elemental magic that can produce small stuff, like fire, ice, lightning an so on. It’s not strong, but it’s useful if you know a little bit of science. I started off as a Knight, but got some magic too and liked it. Now I’ve changed my class to ‘Spellblade’ but I dont really know much about it. From the description, it sounds like I’ll get to learn how to channel magic through my sword, maybe be able to enchant myself. I'm still unclear if any of that is actual spells, though. The system doesn’t actually tell you much, sometimes.”

“And currently, I’m kind of a survival specialist” Jason interjected, “because I’ve picked up ranks in a whole bunch of different skills. My actual class is called ‘Alchemist’ though; It lets me make potions and stuff. That’s how I was able to cure you. We got lucky and had the right stuff on hand, and I managed to make an antitoxin to give you.”

“Wow. Those are some weird class names." Janet commented. "What kind of skills?”

“A whole bunch," Jason replied. "I can craft clothing, weapons, and tools, identify and harvest plants and animals, have general survival skills, cooking, and so on. I’ve done a lot of that back home too; I was in orienteering in highschool, so I already knew some survival and navigation stuff, as well as a lot of first aid.”

“So, what? Your the rogue type? The skillmonkey? And she’s the tank?”

Jason laughed. “I guess. It wasn’t my intention, but it’s saved our hides in multiple ways. Between my skills and Lumi’s ability to provide us heat, cold, and water, we’re pretty well set for surviving out here if we need to. And we’ve already seen combat once.”

“The… frog thing we were eating?” Janet stuck out her tongue, making a face. She hadn’t been especially pleased to learn that Jason had given her cooked frog-monster meat. Though she had still eaten more of it anyway, since it was actually quite flavorful.

Jason nodded. “Yeah. That’s where we met. That was only yesterday.”

“Oh. So you two aren’t, like, together or anything. I wasn’t sure.”

Lumiriel covered her mouth, eyes sparkling. She giggled. “No, no, nothing like that. We just met. We’ve not seen anyone else and decided to stick together. You should come with us too!”

“I’d like that”, Janet said shyly. Then she made a thoughtful noise. “Hmm. What should I be?”

“Be all that you can be!” Jason said over-dramatically in a sing-song voice.

Lumiriel slapped him lightly upside the back of the head.

“Ok, I deserved that.’ Jason said, completely unapologetic.

He rubbed his scalp briefly. “Seriously though, choose whatever you want. It’s not like you can’t change. You can even change the name the system registers you as.”

“Yeah. I did that.” Lumiriel raised a hand halfway. “My real first name is actually Alice, but I figured hey, I’m free to be whoever I want while I’m here and nobody can tell me otherwise. So I used one of my old online handles so could have a more fantasy-ish name.”

"A new name for a new life, yeah?" Janet replied. "I like the sound of that. I guess 'Janet the Magnificent' just doesn't have a very good ring to it, you know?"

"Let’s see…” She trailed off. She cocked her head to one side, thinking. Then she nodded. “Yeah. I’ll do that one.”

She extended a hand towards Lumi. “Hi, I’m Kerali. Nice to meet you, Lumiriel.” She grinned. “You can call me Kera.”

Lumiriel grinned back. “Nice to meet you, Kera.”

“So uh, how do I change it all official-like?”

“You do it through the Interface,” Jason said. “First though, you’ll need to unlock a class. Then the system should recognize you and you’ll get a message asking you if you want to equip it, and after that you can access your status screen. You can only change your name twice, though, so just be sure.”

“Wait, system message? Status screen?” Kera looked back and forth between the others. “You mean like, a game menu?”

Jason looked surprised. “Yeah. Didn’t you get a message shortly after you first showed up?”

Kera averted her eyes. “I. Uh. I may have spent the first few hours, um, well, mostly just freaking out in the dark. And then I got chased by that.. whatever... and...”

She trailed off, embarrassed.

“...I wasn’t very brave."

Lumiriel put a hand on her shoulder. “Hey,” She said softly, “It’s fine. Neither of us are going to judge you. It’s pretty freaky waking up in the woods at night without knowing how you got there. Right Jason?”

She gave him a look over the top of Kera’s head.

“Um, yeah, definitely.” He said.

“A-Anyway,” he continued, “whatever the reason, I guess you just missed it. I did notice my messages didn’t actually stick around until I got my class. They all just faded away after a bit, except the confirmation box.”

Kera seemed to find some resolve , and straightened her posture. “So, how do I do that? Unlock a class, I mean,” she asked seriously.

“I’m not really sure, exactly,” said Lumi. “I sort of unlocked my first one completely by accident. a little while after the initial notification.”

She explained about finding her sword on side of the road and how she’d earned the achievement, [Tilting Windmills], by pretending the trees were ogres. Jason, for his part, explained how he’d gotten a whole slew of notifications and his class all at once, mostly thanks to his phone and lighter.

“Your phone came with you?” asked Kera, eyebrows raised.

“Yeah, it’s in my bag,” Jason gestured. “I’ve kept it off as much as possible, because there’s encyclopedias and science-textbook apps on there. I might want them.”

Lumi looked at Jason oddly. “Why would you use those and not just google questions?”

“It’s kind of a long story.” Jason replied. He briefly explained about his luddite-ish teachers.

“That’s dumb.” said Kera.

“I don’t disagree,” he laughed, “But its helpful now, so.” He shrugged.

“Anyhow, I’ve been thinking,” he continued, “that it’s a combination of actions mixed with a certain element of intention, or state of mind, when it comes to your first class. I mean, so many of them seem to have skill requirements, but you can’t get new skills until you unlock the UI. And yet Lumi and I were both able to get one without having purchased skills. Well, I guess I’d been awarded some, for some reason.”

He paused. “Huh. I wonder if it just auto-paid for my skills or something because I didn’t have a class yet?”

Lumiriel shook her head. “No way, can’t be that. Otherwise random kids would be unlocking dangerous skills and accidently summoning a horde of demons or something, just by playing around.”

“How do we know they don’t? It’s not like we’ve seen anyone,” Jason countered.

“I don’t know about you,” Lumi replied with a grin, “but I’ve noticed a distinct lack of nightmarish hellscape around here. If what you’re suggesting was the case, I’m sure by now someone would have accidentally conjured up some kind of world-ending catastrophe, just because their mother sent them to bed without dinner.”

“Maybe they just can’t use their skills until their old enough?” suggested Kera.

“No, we know kids can get classes,” Jason replied. “Or at least, you tend to get your first class while you’re still a minor. You’ll see what we mean later.”

‘‘At the very least” Lumiriel said, “I guess we’re not really sure exactly how to unlock specific initial skills or classes, but they seem to have requirements. Picking an idea and just trying some things might work. Oh, and you have to spend something called ‘Class Points’ to unlock them, but apparently your first one is free.’

Kera frowned. “What if I try something and get the wrong one?”

Jason shook his head. “Actually that’s not a problem. I think. I don’t know how it was for Lumi, but it didn’t just give me the class. It kept on asking me if I wanted to accept it as my first, until I gave it a yes or no answer. I think you could just keep on saying no until you got one you wanted.”

“Oh. That’s not so bad then.” Kera said. “Experimenting to see what I can get might be interesting.”

“What are you interested in?” Jason asked. “I can give you some examples, the names at least. It won’t show you anything you don’t have the points or requirements for, but I haven’t spent the one I got last level, so I can look through what’s on my list.”

“And I remember a bunch of the magic ones I had,” said Lumi. “It also sounds like all three of us have a lot of gaming experience. We could aim for something off-the-wall if you wanted.”

“Hmm I dunno. If she’s the tank,” Kera said, gesturing at Lumi, “and youre the rogue, maybe I should try and be a healer? Though that’s not really my thing.”

“Nah, pick something you think will be interesting,” Jason said with a dismissive wave. “Don’t choose something based on party roles. This is your actual life we’re talking about here. Besides, it’s not like we have any idea if that sort of thing would even matter. Maybe adventuring parties and dungeons and stuff aren’t even a thing here.”

Both of them just looked at him silently.

“Ok, maybe that’s extremely unlikely,” Jason conceded, “but we shouldn’t make assumptions.”

“Besides,” he added. “I’ll probably be support in the long run anyhow. I have some ideas where I’d like to take things, but at the very least I’ll be shocked if I can’t figure out basic healing potions pretty fast. I’ll be more like the bard type rogue, you know? Secondary support with lots of skills and weird gadgets and some healing and buffing, if I guess correctly. Not like the stealthy kind.”

Jason paused. “Huh. I wonder if different classes get extra skill points?”

Lumi shrugged. “Who knows. If we ever find anyone, I suppose we can just ask. Someone had to have made this road.”

Kera ran her fingers through her hair again. “Well. I kinda want to maybe learn some magic. I don’t know if I’d stick with it, but it’s be kind of cool. Or maybe I could be a monster tamer! I always like pet classes.”

“What about a summoner?” Jason suggested. “The sky’s the limit right now, as far as we know. The list of basic classes is huge, and from Lumi’s [Spellblade] class, we know there are hybrid classes. Some kinds of summoners are both magic and pet related.”

“That might be how we got here in the first place, now that I think about it,” commented Lumi. “A summon spell gone wrong? Though who knows how it reached into our world.”

Kera rested her chin on her palm. “Hum. I dunno. Summoning demons or whatever sounds like it would get me in trouble.”

“Why do demons?’ Jason asked. “There’s all sorts of different kinds of summoning. Take Dungeons and Dragons for example. Druids in that game have a spell called ‘Summon Nature’s Ally’, which can do anything from calling up plain old animals, to summoning swarms of giant insects, and beyond. Depending on the edition, high level druids can even summon dinosaurs, of all things. I never understood why. I mean, I guess they’re ‘real animals’ so to speak, but still.”

“There’s plenty of other examples, too,” he finished. “That’s just one.”

“And how you get them widely various too” added Lumi. “Demonic contracts, ritual spells, befriending.”

She paused, and then grinned. “Cramming them into small plastic balls.”

Jason burst out laughing. “Yeah, I guess Pokemon is kind of like playing a summoner in an RPG, huh?”

Kera laughed as well. “Yeah, I don’t think that’s the route I’d want to go. How would we even get plastic? Still, a pet class might be fun, if I could have something cute and not all gross like a skeleton zombie or something.”

“A skeleton zombie?” Lumiriel raised an eyebrow.

“You know what I mean.”

She chuckled. “I do. Still, maybe you should be careful. Many a fiction story starts off with someone calling up dark powers in their basement accidentally, and getting themselves cursed, eaten, or possessed.”

“Right.” Kera said firmly.

“You hear that, system?” she yelled, shaking a fist at the sky. “No summoning Cthulhu. I want something cute and friendly!”

“How would we even do that, anyway?” asked Lumi. “Spontaneously summon something, I mean. It seems like the sort of thing that you’d need specific instructions for. How do you choose a class if you don’t know what the prerequisites are?”

“I’ve got an idea about that, actually” Jason said. ‘“It’s really just a hunch, but that initial UI tutorial seemed aimed at kids. I mean, it even used the phrase ‘ask an adult’. But you don’t just hand a 10 year old a sword when he decides he want to be a soldier like his dad. You give him a practice sword and lessons.”

“But I did that. Sort of, anyway." protested Lumi. "And I didnt end up with like Squire or something.”

“Right, but you’re leaving out two things," Jason said. "First, you have a real sword, even if it is badly damaged. Second, you’re already an adult, so you might have bypassed any kind of apprentice phase or something.”

“I guess. It seems a bit of a leap, though.”

“Right. Thats why it’s just a hunch,” Jason said. “Anyhow, I’m thinking maybe Kera should just improvise and try to summon something, kind of like how you went around yelling about hadokens and magic missles.

“Maybe take some precautions of course, sure. Like make up a fancy ritual calling on whatever shes hoping for. Make a circle with related ‘nice’ stuff. And well, try to make it clear you want something very harmless to start with.”

Kera thought to herself for a moment. “Ok. That makes sense to me, anyway. I say let’s try. What’s the worst that could happen?”

Jason and Lumi both groaned.

Despite Jason’s half-hearted grumbling about Kera jinxing herself, the trio decided to go ahead and set up an improvised summoning circle. It was getting late in the day, but they’d already eaten and it wasn’t actually dark yet so they went ahead with it.

Kera decided to just set up her circle in the middle of the road. After all, it wasn’t like any of them had seen anyone around to make a fuss about it. Meanwhile, Lumiriel and Jason stood back and made suggestions but didn’t do any of the actual work. Jason had explained briefly about how he thought the system didn’t care where the ideas or tools or whatever came from, that it was whoever was performing the action that mattered.

This had to be Kera’s show, so to speak.

Lumiriel did stand by with her sword near at hand though. None of them were sure what Kera might end up with, and there was always the chance that control spells were required, spells that they didn’t have. Mostly everyone suspected nothing would happen, but it was better to be safe. As an additional precaution, Kera promised she would forgo any kind of animal blood, dead bodies, or creepy looking runes that tried to crawl out of the floor. Not that they had any of those things, but they really hoped the thought counted.

Jason was fairly impressed by Kera’s efforts. Their summoner-hopeful managed to make her circle look pretty nice in the end. Even just wielding a sharpened stick and some ‘paint’ Jason cobbled together using conjured dirt, water, and berries for dye, Kera had managed to construct a passable, relatively evenly-drawn ritual space that looked like it was actually meant to do something.

The ritual was composed of a series of concentric circles, with vaguely-runic geometric designs inside them. Kera had also drawn diamond-shaped boxes at the cardinal points to stick improvised ritual objects into, and she had placed a bit of the last remaining uncooked frog meat onto a ‘plate’ in the center space. She claimed it would do as an offering.

Jason personally felt that frog meat might count as dead animals, but Lumi pointed out that it was harvested with the idea of being used for food, rather than a sacrifice, and it was just a small bit of minced meat rather than a whole corpse or a big bloody hunk of flesh. So Jason conceded the point. He felt that what Kera thought it meant might actually matter more, anyway. Symbolism was how ritual magic usually worked in games after all, and symbolism was what they were going for here.

So Kera had placed her ‘offering’ in the middle, and then added her ‘symbols’: A clump of freshly-picked flowers, to represent ‘being nice’ (Jason thought this was a stretch, but sure); one of the frog hide pouches, now filled with grass, for ‘soft’ (definitely questionable); a small chunk of ice that she’d asked Lumiriel to conjure, to represent ‘magic’ (less questionable, if unusual); and finally, one of Jason’s Iparea plants, still packed roots and all in a dirt filled bag, to represent ‘alive’ (this one he thought was pretty good).

Jason felt it was pretty solid for a first try overall, and saw Lumi visibly cross her fingers behind her back. Jason just prayed to anyone who happened to be listening that it worked how Kera wanted. If he was being honest, he wasn’t even sure what exactly she was hoping for, or if she was just rolling the dice with some qualifications tossed in. It was the offering of meat instead of something else that was throwing him off. Maybe she wanted a friendly magic dog?

I guess there are Pokémon like that, after all, he thought.

After a final touch-up, Kera went over everything three times to make sure it was ‘just right’, because ‘we all know how bad it is if something goes wrong.’

Finally, she stood back with a nod.

“Right. I think that’s everything. Lumi, can you light the, uh, candles, now”

Their ‘candles’ were twigs stuck into the dirt.

“If summoning rituals require actual precise measurements,” Jason quipped, “we are so screwed. Why did I suggest this, again?”

Shaking her head ruefully, Lumiriel did as instructed, and then moved to stand well back. Jason joined her.

“Ok. Here goes, then.” Kera moved to stand directly beside the circle, just outside it.

She struck a pose, hands in the air, which Jason thought was supposed to be dramatic but just looked silly. She shouted some hastily improvised lines.

“Oh spirits of the great beyond, heed my will.” She intoned.

Jason winced. What kind of games does she play? That was a terrible line.

“Send me a companion, loyal at heart but fierce in tooth and claw”

What.

“Oh, and cuddle-able.”

Jason sighed inwardly.

Real smooth, there.

Kera bent down, and scooped up some ‘magic dust’, which was really just dirt Lumiriel had used some kind of light-based cantrip on to temporarily make look like glitter, from the pile at her feet.

She threw it overhanded into the middle circle next to the plate.

With a thunderclap and a flash of light, some kind of small, winged, blue-hued lizard appeared in the middle of the circle. It gave a confused-sounding mewl, spotted the meat, and then immediately started wolfing it down.

Lumi and Jason stared, jaws slack. They turned to look at each other. And then they stared some more.

Before either of them did anything else, Kera squee’d and stepped into the circle, scooping up the creature. Horrified that it might attack her, Jason started to step forward, but it turned out to be unnecessary.

Instead, Kera managed to shove a piece of meat in front of it’s face before it reacted, and it accepted the piece instead of taking off a finger. Kera then sat down right in the middle of the circle, and started feeding the… lizard, for lack of a better word, by hand, one piece at a time. She scratched its head gently with one finger and started making cooing noises.

“Welp,” Jason commented, “Nice, soft, magic, alive, and cuddle-able. Shows what I know.”

Lumiriel laughed and lightly punched him on the arm. “Aww, don’t be jealous.”

“I’m not jealous,” he grumbled.

Ok, maybe he was a little jealous.

“Let’s leave them to it.” Lumi said. “They’ll want to get to know each other a bit I suspect.”

The two picked up their weapons, sat back down at the campfire, and waited to hear what Kera had gotten.

Jason and Lumiriel didn’t actually end up hearing the final results until morning.

Kera ended up taking first watch, saying she wanted to comb through her UI for awhile before making any final decisions. Lumi took the second watch, and she wouldn’t tell Jason anything when he awoke for the third one. He thought Kera did look awfully adorable though, sleeping propped up against a nearby tree with her new pet curled up in her lap.

During the early hours of morning, Jason made himself useful. He wanted to try out an idea he’d had thanks to his cooking skill: breakfast sausage. First, he used some of his flat stones to mash up a bunch of frog meat with some mushroom paste, the last of the onions, and more of the pepper fruits, which they still had plenty of. Then he compacted the resulting mix into flat patties as best he could, and stuffed it back into the cooler-bag with the ice. It wasn’t ideal, of course, but the idea was that by working the mushroom, onion, and pepper into the meat and letting it sit for awhile, the meat would absorb some of the flavor, producing something similar to breakfast sausage. His mother had used to do it at home with ground beef and seasonings when he was young, and he hoped it might work here.

The others made appreciative noises a few hours later as they awoke to the smell of breakfast. Jason had to admit his 'ground sausage' had turned out better than expected, just like the previous afternoon’s stuffed kebabs. Even Kera’s winged lizard, who’d she proudly declared was named ‘Ceri’, short for ‘Cerulean’, seemed to like the stuff, onion and all.

Kera’s new friend wasn’t actually cerulean in color, though. Jason supposed that with all things color-related, it depended on who you asked.

Ceri was technically blue, but instead of a bright blue, most of his main body was an extremely dark navy, dark enough that Jason thought most people, himself included, would just call it black. What was really eye catching though was his ‘highlighting’ pattern. All of the keratin on him - his claws, the small spines that laying flat along his back, and his wing tips - were an almost electric blue. That same coloration also lightly striped his tail and the backs of his wings.

Jason found it fascinating. Ceri was designed to be seen, rather than blend in to the environment like most predators, and Jason wondered why.

He found out pretty fast, when Kera demonstrated one of the skills she’d chosen. As Jason said later, 'In the words of the esteemed Admiral Ackbar, It’s a trap.'

While they ate breakfast, Kera gave Jason and Lumi a rundown on what she’d gotten.

“So, apparently I fulfilled a whole mess of stuff doing things that way.” She began. “First, I was flat out awarded [Basic Ritual Magic]. I don’t know why, but it looks like I never got awarded any initial stuff like you guys did when the system, uh, came back online or whatever it is you said. I’m wondering if maybe I just didn’t do anything worth awarding til now, so it just waited, but I guess we don’t know.

“Anyway, that’s not really a surprise, since we were doing a ritual. Incidentally, Lumi, you might think about picking that up. It opened up a lot of options for long term buffs and things which might interest you. We can talk about that later.

“I also got [Basic Ritual Summoning], which is somehow different, even though there’s a bunch of overlap. I’m not sure why I got both if they’re slightly different, but maybe it was because I was just winging it.”

Kera munched on a piece of sausage for a moment. “Further, I got [Basic Spellcasting]. My guess is possibly its sort of a prerequisite for doing any kind if magic in the first place. Which isn’t really all that surprising."

She shrugged. "Though I don’t know, Lumi doesn’t have it, so maybe I'm wrong on that.”

“Three skills at once?” Jason asked. “That’s pretty crazy.”

Kera grinned. “It gets better,” she said, feeding a piece of sausage to Ceri, who had started nudging her hand. “When I summoned Ceri, here, I got several pop up messages at once. The first of course was about me picking a class. Since I think I technically received [Basic Spellcasting] first, it asked me if I wanted to become just a basic [Wizard]. I didn’t take it, of course.”

She fed another piece to Ceri. “Thing is, I also had several different pop-ups asking me about different kinds of contracts. Apparently, it turns out ‘companion’ in the sense I was using it was kind of non-specific.” She shrugged. “So the system just asked. One was that kind of ‘wizardly’ summoning you mentioned. You know, like where they bring in creatures mid-combat on the fly. Then there was one that was referred to as a ‘Calling’, which somehow involved contracts and stuff. I skipped that, because it sounded too much like summoning angels and demons and stuff, if they exist here.”

“That’s always a double edged sword,” Jason commented. “In one or two games I’ve played, those were always the strongest summons but usually had huge drawbacks or required unpleasant payments in exchange for favors from really scary stuff.”

“Yeah, I got that impression, so even though Ceri doesn’t look like some super strong monster, I just said ‘No’ to that one right away. I don’t want to get mixed up in that. Anyhow, I had two others offered as well. One was a ‘Familiar Contract’, which I guessed was kind of like what witches have, like see through their eyes, possess then, and stuff like that?”

“Yeah, probably.” Jason said.

“The last one though I really liked. It was ‘Soulbound Summon’, which sounds kinda dangerous, but basically it just means that the summoned creature is permanently bonded to you, can stick around as long as you want, and anytime it ‘dies’ you can just re-summon it after awhile, and it’s automatically inclined to be friendly to you. You don’t actually mind control it or anything though, so you have to treat them nicely or they’ll just act out or run away.”

“Kind of like a Pokemon.” Lumi quipped, giggling.

“Exactly. Except right now I can only have one, because apparently that’s the rules.” She took a deep breath. “So, after picking that, I went and actually declined the [Wizard] job, and it started offering me others. You were right, Jason, about it just cycling through different ones you’d met requirements for.”

She laughed and shook her heard. “There were a whole bunch. I even got offered [Necromancer] and [Cultist].”

“Cultist?” Lumi asked, then grinned. “Let me guess, that one requires ritual summoning.”

“Yeah, apparently there’s all sorts of crazy stuff ritual magic opens up. Anyway, I found one that I liked that sounded like it was made specially for the contract I picked, and was magic related: [Beast-Bonded Mage]. It comes with a whole bunch of basic skills, apparently. Or maybe they’re technically spells, it’s hard to tell. They’re tied to the class though, it seems like I lose them if I unequip it. Some of them are pretty useful, like I’ve now got a skill that lets me check out a monster’s stats and potential skills from a distance. For instance, if Ceri here wasn’t already part of my character sheet, I could still tell you he’s a ‘Skydancer Drake’ and he’s got a pretty cool magical special attack. Which actually brings me to the two skills I spent my all skill points on.”

She stood up, and placed Ceri on the log she’d been using as a seat.

“I’ll demonstrate on you, Jason.” She grinned mischievously. “I‘ll tone it down though.”

“I’m not going to like this, am I?” he grumbled, but without any real protest.

Kera reached out one hand, and said loudly, "Ok, Ceri, go!" Ceri remained draped on the top of the log, but his highlighting suddenly shined an even brighter blue.

Kera then tapped at the air, using her UI. There was a brief shimmer in the air around her, and then she glowed in the exact same manner as Ceri. She reached towards Jason.

Ah, shit. This is going to hurt.

Jason had been tased once before, at a supposedly peaceful protest where it was the cops who had turned ugly. He knew what was coming, and braced himself.

With a loud zap, his mind caught on fire. Jason flopped over like a fish, muscles spasming. Thankfully, it was over in a brief instant, because Kera had merely brushed her fingers briefly against his skin, rather than pumped a steady pulse of electricity into him.

It still hurt like hell though.

Jason groaned on the ground, coughing, but the pain faded rapidly.

“Ohmygosh I’m so sorry.” Kera said, helping him up. “That was way stronger than I thought it would be, and I even toned it all the way down. If I’d known I would’ve just told you about it instead.”

Jason winced, but waved her off. “Its fine, its fine. It’s not like the system give’s us much detail. Just uh, maybe let’s not do that again.”

“I'm so sorry,” she apologized again. “I really should have just tested it on some monster first.”

“So what did you do, anyway? Borrow a buff from Ceri?” Lumiriel asked.

“Even better!" she said, bouncing in place slightly. "See… I earned a skill last night while I playing with Ceri, trying to think about what skills I wanted. I was just goofing around, copying his behavior to be silly, and I suddenly earned [Basic Mimicry]. I vaguely remembered there was some RPG where that was actually a combat skill, and it was only a single skill point, so I just thought, 'why not' and purchased it. Turns out I was right; playing around with that led to me copying Ceri’s ability, and that earned me an achievement, which unlocked something I just couldn’t pass up.’

She paused for effect. ‘[Monster Magic]’ she said.

“That sounds pretty cool,” said Lumi, leaning forward. “What’s it do?”

“It basically lets me copy the magic abilities of monsters I fight, or apparently also bond or summon, onto my character sheet. I can learn monster-only spells, like the one Ceri has, which charges his body with electricity like an eel.”

“You mean, like Blue Magic?” Jason asked, wide eyed. “That’s usually pretty good stuff.”

“I guess?” Kera replied. “I’m not sure what you mean by that.”

“It’s actually a term from the same game series you were remembering from the mimic thing from, if I'm guessing the right one,” Lumi said. “It's basically what you described. Blue mages learned specialized, often very strong, magic that was unique to monster species, but they had to get hit with it first and survive.”

“Oh.”

“It’s actually really awesome.” Lumi said. “You basically get free spells, and ones that other people can't normally use.”

“Well, at the expense of risking life and limb,” Jason countered. “But yeah, usually it was pretty really powerful.”

“Well, in this case it seems they only have to use them near me,” Kera said, “or at least that’s how it was for Cheri’s [Static Shock]. It’s still dangerous, but hopefully I don’t have to stand still and get hit with them. That would suck.”

“Still,” Lumi said, “I’d say our, well your, experiment was a rousing success, yeah? Five major skills plus extras, an unusual and interesting class, and a new friend all in one.”

“Well then,” she said, standing up, “I think that about wraps things up. Let’s get things cleaned up and get to finding ourselves some civilization!”

“Aye aye, cap’n!” Kera saluted.

“Wait, why does she get to be captain?” asked Jason, amused.

“Well duh.” She rolled her eyes. “Its because she’s the magical knight. That makes her a paladin, and theyre always the one in charge.”

Jason couldn’t really argue with that.