Chapter 17: Death of the [Windfist]

Tension rushed through the guild main hall and the whole space reeked of body odor from the nervous sweat people were letting drip down their faces.

Crimson sat at the bottom of the stairs leading to the loft as he let his eyes rove around the space, alighting on different people to gauge their reactions. They ranged anywhere from confused to concerned, scared to denial, and one or two who actually seemed excited.

All of them were waiting for the announcement of what [Level] the Natural Dungeon, the time until it breaks, as well as the type. It was very important to establish those things to know what they needed to do.

If the [Level] was low enough then those driven by greed would try to raid it regardless of the danger since the rewards for even a few hours in a Natural Dungeon could beat days or even weeks of effort in a Godmade Dungeon.

If the [Level] was high then cowards would immediately begin trying to desert Falst to avoid the possibility of getting killed, the same would be true if it was close to breaking.

The uncertainty of it was what scared everyone to the point of ignoring their usual behavior and habits. Even the Harem Squad was affected as the five of them stood at the back of the space.

Abel had his head in his hands and seemed to be mumbling to himself while the elf was sitting on the ground with her arms around her knees crying. The dryad just seemed shell shocked and the red-haired cat-kin was comforting her blue-haired sister.

Crimson couldn’t help but sigh to see all this.

These were supposed to be people used to living on the edge between life and death, who faced danger everyday! Yet the second an incident happens they all go to pieces. It was sad.

That wasn’t to say that Crimson was completely removed or didn’t care – he did! It was just that he felt the reactions of everyone else to be off-putting and disappointing. He knew the danger just as well as everyone here; he knew that there was a chance he could die if the place broke open, but he refused to cower like the rest of the guild seemed to be content doing.

He also had a better idea of what the [Level] was than anyone else as well, [Cliff] had been the party summoned after all. It stood to reason that the flag Emma had planted earlier might actually be waving.

Discontented to sit there without doing anything, he set to work on his mana and spent the next hour trying to increase his range from 17 to 18. Progress was slow and was measured in fractions of an inch which was annoying for him, but it made sense that things would slow down and become harder and harder. The fortunate thing was that he could freely control his mana within a 14 foot distance from himself, so it was worth it to keep pushing his maximum range.

After that hour, the sound of heavily stomping boots came out of the hallway to Crimson’s left and he looked down it to see Lars approaching the main area.

While there wasn’t much sound to begin with –mostly crying or low moaning- the second Lars stepped into the guild’s main hall the entire space went entirely silent. The only sound was his thumping boots as he went to stand in front of the reception desks.

After a moment, he spoke heavily, “For those of you who don’t know, there was a Natural Dungeon found a few days ago by a foraging farmer who got lost in a cave looking for mushrooms. He did his best, but it still took him a day to find his way out of the cave where he informed us immediately.”

By “us” Lars probably meant everyone with ears in a hundred yards of this guy, only then had the information had made its way to the guild. They wouldn’t want information like this to spread freely under most circumstances, but if you don’t control the source stopping the spread of information is severely difficult, which was probably an understatement.

Lars continued his speech, “After receiving this information, I went personally with Mars to inspect this dungeon today.”

The entire guild gulped and leaned forward with their breath caught in their throats.

“The Natural Dungeon found is Lv. 45. It has about 6 weeks until it breaks open, which is plenty of time for the competent team –who has agreed to undertake the task to clear this Natural Dungeon- to prevent any external loss of life.”

Lars probably didn’t want to be telling everyone this, but if he didn’t after the information became public knowledge he’d have a riot on his hands.

The Guild Master did his best to project confidence as he spoke once more, “The party that has been selected is the [Black Gold] rank party: [Cliff].”

The lack of options make a selection easy. The Overlevel Penalty would guarantee that Lars and Mars wouldn’t be touching that dungeon, so there was literally no one else but [Cliff].

Technically, the Overlevel Penalty wasn’t too bad. It just reduced the stats and [Level] of a person who was more than 10 [Levels] stronger than the main boss. The reduction just restricted the stats to what they would be if the person in question’s [Class] [Levels] were within the max range. It didn’t affect [Skills], [Titles], [Affinities], or stats gained in other ways, but people still refused to subject themselves to it since the loss of strength felt “like having a piece of my soul ripped out.”

Crimson just thought they were babies, but he hadn’t experienced it in person, so it might be a little unfair to say that, which was why he just thought it instead of saying it.

Regardless, that was the main effect of the Overlevel Penalty, but the secondary effects included preventing XP gain –which felt like a given- and increased difficulty gaining [Skill Levels].

All the factors combined meant that people didn’t usually raid dungeons too far below their [Level].

Crimson still saw the value in it: almost all dungeons had specific loot and there was no reason to lock yourself out of it for some penalty. So why not go get some good loot?

Crimson let the thought go and focused on the rest of the guild.

The news had a different effect for different people, some reacted with hope. Since there was already a party to challenge the dungeon, plus the long time until it broke, left them with some measure of hope that they wouldn’t be in danger, but there opposite side was equally prevalent – the side that focused on what [Level] the dungeon was.

The second group were teetering on the edge of a full scale panic induced melt down, which made Crimson want to throw his hands into the air in exasperation. They had six weeks to worry, if they front load all the panic then their little hearts won’t be able to take it.

For himself, Crimson’s reaction was more in line with “how can I help?” since sitting around being useless wasn’t exactly his style, not since he got a functioning body.

“Because of the importance of the Natural Dungeon we will be assisting [Cliff] in whatever way we can. The Guild will be providing support in the form of repairing the weapons and armor of the party as well as providing funds for them to reoutfit themselves. If any here could offer additional support it would be greatly appreciated.”

Crimson put his head on top of his interlocked fingers and slowly surveyed the guild. While it wasn’t surprising, it was saddening to see no one step forward. He even took a long hard look at those who he knew could help in someway, but didn’t. Selfish to the end, even with the threat of death they couldn’t be swayed to sacrifice something replacable.

Crimson snorted silently and moved soundlessly down the hallway Lars had just vacated – he wasn’t interested in calling attention to himself, so he’d talk to Verity in person.

Crimson walked up the stairs and found [Cliff] waiting in the hallway outside the Guild Master’s office speaking in hushed tones. They all looked a little depressed and a cloud of gloom completely overshadowed them.

“Oh hey, it’s Verity’s little friend! How are you doing kid?” Nayre asked, completely pale in the face, but pretending to be fine.

Verity looked at him with confusion, “What are you doing here?” She didn’t look any better than Nayre.

Crimson looked at the team for a long moment. Then removed a slip of paper and a pen from his belt pouch, wrote on it, then pressed his guild card against it.

“Here’s my contribution.”

He handed the slip to Nayre who took it looking confused.

“Contribution?”

He waved to Verity then walked away as a long drawn out shout echoed from Nayre as he read what Crimson had written on it.

It was a little frustrating to be out 13,000 Royals in one move, but this was more important – he could always make more money. He still had a bit left over so he would survive until he could make more, but it was still annoying.

He returned to his spot on the stairs without another word as Lars continued his plea to help in any way to the crowd of adventurers. Some at least had the decency to look a little ashamed as his desperate eyes roved them.

From what little Crimson knew of Lars, the bear-kin would probably be angry to be the Guild Master right now. The position put handcuffs on him to control the actions he could take – even if he wanted to help more than he was, he just couldn’t.

From his time helping the guild during his first week in Falst, Crimson knew a lot about the guild’s policies and rules on the administrative side. In this situation, the Guild Master would be capped at giving 10,000 Royals from the guild – giving any more would interfere with favoritism laws. IF he did want to give more it would have to be unofficial and out of his own pocket. For such a high ranking adventurer the general public would think that they were rich, but most of an adventurer’s wealth was found in their equipment – not their bank account. Even Lars –for his almost unheard of high level- probably wouldn’t be able to give much. If Mars helped then they could probably give a decent amount. Even so…

Looking to his left, a stunned [Cliff] walked out of the hallway and Nayre approached him holding the slip of paper tentatively.

“Um…”

Before he could continue Crimson pointed at the door, “You can cash that at the Merchant’s Guild.”

Nayre slowly closed his mouth and, with a stunned expression, walked slowly out of the guild with a shocked party following behind him.

Feeling the pressure of eyes, Crimson glared at the rest of the guild with an annoyed expression as the whole of the room stared at him with a confused expression.

The attention was unpleasant.

After the majority of the adventurers had dispersed Crimson privately approached Lars.

“What can I do to help?”

The bear-kin looked at him in surprise, then responded, “Would you be willing to do some work as a scribe? We’d have you take care of the logistics for this dungeon raid: securing supplies, organizing the craftsmen to help us uphold our side of the deal, and handling the finances of this operation.”

He nodded, “Sure.” He then looked Lars dead in the eye, knowing he wouldn’t flinch even with Crimson pushing with all of his intent, “My pay will be fair, yes?”

“Of course.”

He got to work immediately, performing his duties as outlined, as well as mediating between the [Smiths] and the adventurers who were helping out.

Apparently, there was bad blood between the groups because the adventurers thought that the [Smiths] were Royal grubbers who overcharged their prices by an unrealistic amount. The [Smiths] were insulted by the idea of charging any less for their work.

There was a whole sense of pride on the [Smiths]’ side that Crimson didn’t really care to understand, but caught on to it fairly quickly which made it possible for him to mediate between arguments. Since he was a “Scribe” he was seen as a neutral party, which made him the only choice around to mediate.

Annoying, but whatever.

At the end of the first day raiding the dungeon known as [Nature’s Retaliation] the party left bearing grim tales of the monsters to be found inside.

Crimson listened, then went to work researching those monsters.

The Forest Golems and Treants were dismissed immediately, so his focus went to the Aulrine, Weeping Willows, and Forest Nymphs.

What his research turned up was pretty depressing:

Aulrine were a nastly lot that focused on mental debuffs and when they perceived danger they would release a poisoned pollen and call for back up. Their normal pollen wasn’t something to laugh at either, the mind control effect was one of the worst kinds Crimson had found in all the books he’d read. Even Damus’ [Skill] was a child’s toy to a man’s greatsword by comparison.

That was just for Aulrine, for Weeping Willows, they were a bit more straight forward: they just used their razor leaves to hack apart anyone who got too close to them. The interesting thing to note with them was that [Rotted Sap] could be found in them, IF they were killed without using [Fire], and the body was left in place for a few days. It was an extremely nasty paralytic poison with a cruel health drain and a chance to inflict [Blindness].

Armed with that information, Crimson turned his attention to the Forest Nymphs. They were tricky stealth based enemies that could sink into the wood of living trees like water. They had a host of nasty poisons on their claws that would ruin anyone’s week: [Paralysis], [Drain], [Blindness], [Confusion], [Slow], and others. Fortunately, they wouldn’t ALL be applied at the same time if a member of [Cliff] was hit, maybe just one or two – three if they were unlucky.

Well, they certainly were unlucky, they were in a dungeon that made [Fire] magic practically useless, so they needed to find an alternative to that.

Crimson found the answer after Verity bragged to him about how she’d stacked her [Skills] to damage a Weeping Willow like he’d suggested. Once he’d heard that they could kill one, he had suggested that they use the [Rotted Sap] to combat the Aulrine.

The best way to do that would be to keep it from releasing it’s poisoned pollen or calling its fellows.

After watching [Cliff] argue amongst themselves for a good minute after telling them that, Crimson had suggested that the most effective way to deal with that would be to distract it then hit it from behind before it had the chance.

From there, he’d had the idea a few days later to use the Aulrine pollen with [Rotted Sap] to lure out the Forest Nymphs and kill them.

Everything went relatively smoothly after that with those strategies for [Cliff]. Apparently, they had a few close calls, but since everyone was still alive Crimson was content. Though, it was hard to stay content.

All of his research, talking to [Cliff], managing the costs of repairing their weapons, all of it drove home how nasty a Natural Dungeon was.

The three biggest threats of the Dungeon were all relatively stationary and extremely territorial, but the Forest Golems weren’t under the same restrictions or instincts, so their presence could drive the unwary into the territory of an unexpected monster.

Top it off with a wave or two of Treants after every encounter and it drove home the fact that the the whole dungeon was designed to force you into a nasty situation and wear you down to nothing.

The experience made Crimson appreciate the power of a good scout – he’d need to make sure he got a good one for his party…or just be the scout himself. Options…

Setting aside the thought for later, he continued to do his best to aid the work from his side, but after the first week of intense labor, there was just nothing for him to do since he had all the budgets made and the shifts and laborers managed, so he spent his time at the guild on call for anything that went wrong.

He spent his time training and reading to combat the frustration he felt from not being able to do anything more, but it didn’t do much, just drove home his weakness all the more as Mars was holding back less than usual because of the same frustration, and his lack of progress on [Resonance] became all the more clear.

He spent a month stuck in that loop, the entire time he didn’t get to meet with Rhinese, so he was pretty sure that she’d be furious when he did show up, but leaving when he might be needed at any moment was hard, so he’d have to accept her anger and beg for forgiveness.

----

One Saturday afternoon, just about four weeks after the dungeon had been found, he was in the guild library studying as per usual. He had a book that he’d brought with him from the Astral Library a while ago and was completely fascinated by trying to understand it. Key word being “try.”

It was a completely different language from any other he’d knew or had come across, and that was saying something! Crimson was passibly fluent in: Elven, Dark Elven, Druidic, Catanese, and several archaic forms of the Common Tongue. He also knew a few words from several other languages like Kibear, Uluuin, and Humango.

Shockingly, there was a language specifically for humans, but he barely heard it because most humans just spoke the Common Tongue for convinence. What was more shocking –to them- was that he didn’t know how to speak it, but he could only blame that on his low exposure to it.

Considering how comprehensive his knowledge of languages was, it was shocking that he had come across one that didn’t even bear a passing resemblance to any other language he’d found.

To put it in terms that would be familiar to the people of his old world: it was like Japanese.

Japanese had three different character systems and it was possible to find all three in a sentence, the same was true for this language, and the character systems correlated fairly well too. For example, with the first character system: Hiragana.

Hiragana was the most simplified form of the written Japanese language, it was phonetic in nature which actually made it simpler than English in that regard, but the fact that you had a word that could have different meaning without a different spelling made it sometimes difficult to understand with just Hiragana, so Kanji was used as well.

Kanji were the complex characters, that the Japanese actually took from the Chinese, able to express the difference between words with the same spelling, but which made written Japanese infutiatingly difficult to learn how to read, that was before adding Katakana onto the mix, but it was just used to express foreign words in a written form for the Japanese.

Crimson had tried to learn all of them, but in the end had waved the white flag. If he’d been truly motivated he would have stuck with it, but it had just been an impulse, so the desire was easily quashed.

That was, unfortunately, not true with the characters he was looking at. He’d already identified and could understand a few of the most basic characters, but that wasn’t much, and he was far from understanding any of the more complex words or ideas.

The way this language differentiated from Japanese was interesting. It also used three character systems, but while two of the three were fundamentally similar –if not synonymous- the middle of the two was different.

This language didn’t have its own version of Katakana. Instead, it had something more similar to cursive in the English language, but the fascinating thing was that even if he found a character he knew used in it, the meaning of it was fundamentally changed by the connected and surrounding characters.

To top it all off, his ability to comprehend languages using whatever [Skill] or ability he had didn’t function as well for this language. He actually had to spend a decent amount of time studying each character individually to parse out its basic meaning. It was annoying, not the challenge, but the fact that he was so driven he couldn’t just move on from it as a waste of time.

Well, he had to set it aside for the moment anyway. He’d gotten a letter from Damus earlier that day and he needed to draft a response. It was a request from the [Priest] to release the information Crimson had given during his interview with Rhinese a few months back.

Apparently, he’d waited so long to ask so as to conduct the experiment himself to test the voracity of Crimson’s words, which he personally applauded since taking the words of a 15 year old kid as the gospel truth would be the sign of an idiot for this kind of thing.

Well, Damus had confirmed that Crimson had told the truth and wanted to buy the information from him so he could “disseminate” the information. He was fairly certain that he’d be selling the information off to the highest bidder before sharing it – the man was greedy in the extreme after all.

Crimson didn’t have any issues with the request: he felt duty bound to share the information, but didn’t want to be tied directly to it – that would just be a hastle. He could also use it as an opportunity to bleed Damus dry since the [Priest] had abruptly stopped relying on him to spread rumors after the visit with Rhinese – his pride had taken too much of a blow.

That had abruptly cut off Crimson’s access to new spells, so he’d use this as an opportunity to get at least one spell outta the man.

Crimson smiled in amusement to himself as his eyes traced the penmanship of the letter, it had been written by Damus himself and the hand writing was not only poor, but the frustration the [Priest] had been grinding though as he wrote it also bled through. Being forced to ask permission from Crimson probably felt like letting a dog bite him on the butt and leaving it there, but Damus couldn’t dodge around him since Rhinese would definitely stand up for him if he tried to share the information without Crimson’s permission.

Rather than deal with that fall out, Damus was doing everything properly and almost certainly hating every moment of it.

It brought Crimson no small amount of sadistic pleasure to know that. He hadn’t really like the [Priest] before, but hanging around Rhinese and getting hit with wave after wave of her opinion on the man had only made that opinion sink to the depths of distaste and disgust.

In the end, his final thought was: a pig may be dirty, but cooked properly it becomes delicious.

The sound of the library door opening gently brushed past him and his ears twitched with strain to hear the steps of the person walking in. After a moment, he smiled. Verity! Those were her steps! But…

Crimson’s proud smile slid to a ferocious frown, the tempo was wrong. She didn’t normally walk like that, her steps were more even, and she certainly didn’t drag her feet, did he make a mistake?

Looking behind himself, he was surprised to see that he was correct about the person, and horrified to see the condition she was in.

Verity, with her gold blonde hair and green eyes, was usually the picture of beautiful vitality and burning emotions, but the Verity he was looking at was the opposite on every account. She was pale –like she’d suddenly become part Uluu over night- her long ears had drooped, her face was devoid of all emotion, and all of her movements were lazy.

A sense of doom overshadowed him and gloom rose in his heart – if she was acting like this then she’d certainly lost a party member or more to [Nature’s Retaliation].

Crimson abruptly stood and helped her into a seat without saying anything. What could he say? No words he could say would be able to comfort her. Maybe someone else would know what to say, could lift or share her burden, but he didn’t know how to do any of that. The only thing he knew how to do was…be there.

He felt helpless: Verity, one of his few friends in this world, needed help, but he couldn’t offer anything meaningful.

Unsure, he stood next to her chair as she sat there with a dead expression, her hands neatly folded in her lap, then he slowly reached out and placed a hand on her shoulder.

She flinched, and Crimson swiftly started to remove his hand in response, but quick as a viper lunge she grabbed his hand and squeezed it so tightly that he could almost hear his bones creaking.

He tightened his grip in return as the expressionless mask she was wearing started breaking down. First with one sniff, then with a second, then she started sobbing.

Crimson reached out and gently placed his left hand on the hand she’d used to grab his, and waited while the sobbing continued.

Feeling a little awkward, he also crouched down to be at the same level as her. It turned out to be a good thing for her as she was able to more easily hold his hands, but a mistake for him as he got to watch the gut wrenching expression she was making.

After a few minutes of crying, Verity slid to the floor and pulled him closer to cry on his chest. It wasn’t a romantic action, but one that was a pure expression of despair seeking solace in another. Even as her tears whet his shirt, all he could wish was that he could help in a more tangible way. He’d do everything he could, but if he couldn’t do anything…

Well, there was something he could do. He wrapped her in a hug and gently began to rock back and forth. Her sobs became a little more choked, but her grip tightened so he continued doing it.

After a few minutes of this, the door to the guild library opened once more and Crimson felt a surge of bloodlust that allowed no mercy.

HOW DARE SOMEONE INTERFERE WITH VERITY’S MOURNING!!!

He gently pressed a hand to the back of her head to keep her from looking up as his face twisted into an expression of pure murderous rage was he glared with all of his intent at the the person who rounded the bookshelves.

It was Lars, who had opened his mouth to speak, but for the first time he flinched when he met Crimson’s gaze, and took a few steps back.

Crimson mouthed two words at him with all the force of his rage: GET OUT!

The bear-kin Guild Master nodded slowly, then walked out without any hesitation.

After he left Crimson was able to calm himself and he refocused on Verity.

After an hour of her crying she spoke for the first time, “They’re all dead. Nayre, Amos, Ruth, James, Nathan… They’re all dead. If I had just moved a little faster… If I’d just been a little stronger…”

He didn’t know if his words would help, but since she’d come to him for comfort he’d try to help despite his uncertainty, “I would advise that you never say 'if' like that.” He looked up and remembered something he’d long repressed, something he now let bleed through in his words, “'If I’d just trained that one [Skill] a little more. If I’d raised my [Level] a little higher. If I hadn’t hesitated. If. IF IF.' Stop. Just stop. You’ll never be able to sleep again if you keep saying that. Your friends wouldn’t want that.”

Verity’s grip had started to tear great holes in his shirt while she quietly listened, but he couldn’t bring himself to care.

He just continued, grinding out a thought process he himself had had once before.

“Instead of staring at the “Ifs” and becoming trapped in the past, look for a source of strength that will help you as you move forward… I am sorry this happened. I am so, so sorry. I don’t know if what I said helps, but if there’s anything you need, please let me know.”

She nodded, her tears continued unabated for hours beyond that though her sobs had long stopped, and eventually she fell asleep using his lap as a pillow.

He chuckled a little at that, “Isn’t it usually the girl who gives the guy a lap pillow? Well,” he looked at her face, then brushed her hair off her forehead sadly, “I’ll let it slide this time. You need it.”

----

From that day, three months flashed by, which left three until his birthday. Verity had attached herself to him for two weeks, then completely disappeared for over a month before showing up again. She collected the reward for completing [Nature’s Retaliation], then disappeared once more.

He’d spent his time doing what he usually did: training, reading, learning magic, teaching Rhinese, and making money as best he could. He also started taking apprentice requests to try out different crafting trades to see what fit him the best.

He’d reached a few conclusions during those three months: the first being that he couldn’t train with swords or magic all the time – he needed something else to break it up, especially when he hit a wall. For all the scribing requests he did, it was possible that he could do that, but he didn’t find it satisfying even if he was good at it.

He did find making things with his hands satisfying, so he directed his focus there to gain a basic understanding of the different kinds of production [Classes] that were out there to see which one he wanted. He’d found that he enjoyed pretty much all of them –not talking about leatherworking- so he’d been forced to start narrowing down his options in a different way. He’d thrown out any and all [Smith] [Classes] because of the facility required. He planned on moving a lot and he didn’t exactly have a way to carry a forge around with him, so that was no dice.

That pretty much left things he could train on the road while traveling with materials he could find with decent ease. That meant there were pretty much three production [Classes] that really caught his eye: [Alchemist], [Tailor], and [Enchanter]. Of the three, [Enchanter] didn’t really fit his requirements, but the art was so fascinating to him that he was having a hard time eliminating it; he had the same trouble eliminating [Alchemist] as well. It had some similar issues with a facility and tools.

It was something to think about as the rest of his training moved at quite a decent clip as he refined his fighting style further and further.

As far as his magic went he was still considered a breathing impossibility, and that was before he’d started his current experiment.

He’d had the idea to try pushing his mana out of the veins in his body and control it within his body. The idea had been mostly a curiosity experiment, but as the mana had started settling into his body in an unusual way he’d kept doing it. It was a long and slow process, but one he was curious to see the result when he was finished, which about covered what had progressed with his magic, but as far as other things. Well…

In terms of pure skill, he was first place by a margin the size of the Grand Canyon.

Even Lars and Mars weren’t as skilled as him even if they could beat him without twitching a finger. It had only served to reinforce a simple fact: people focused way too much on stats here. They neglected [Skills] and skill in a way that boggled Crimson’s mind, so his position as first wasn’t actually a difficult one to obtain and keep.

The only real contender for second place was actually Abel since he’d gotten down on his knees and begged Crimson to teach him how to fight. The kid had a high talent and could possibly outstrip him at some point, but his work ethic wasn’t high enough to do so, and that was after having the best work ethic in the guild after Crimson – Mars and Lars not counted.

Abel had ended up getting his [Blessing] not long ago and had selected the [Knight] [Class]. Since he’d also met some of the extra requirements the [Class] had even advanced to be mid-grade and became the [Regal Knight] [Class].

The rest of Abel’s party –now dubbed [Everwood]- had solicited Crimson’s help as well, and they all had at least mid-grade [Classes] with Midori actually getting a high-grade one – she’d spent more time listening to him.

He had face palmed when they confused correlation and causation. They were all attributing their [Classes] to the mercy and blessings of the Gods and almost completely discarded the idea that their own efforts were what allowed them to gain those [Classes].

The most annoying thing was that Crimson couldn’t technically say that they were wrong since Abel had said, “The Gods have seen our efforts and have decided to bless us for them!”

Technically correct, but wrong. Their efforts allowed them to complete the requirements for higher grade [Classes], the Gods hadn’t done anything, they were [System Administrators] – so they wouldn’t be so directly involved unless there was an issue or if they wanted to give a quest.

Midori had been the only one to listen when he explained that, but she wasn’t doing a good job UNDERSTANDING, so he’d given up. He had been able to impress her with the idea that the harder she worked the better, so he’d been forced to walk away content with that.

It really was hard to dig out something that was so deeply ingrained into the culture. That didn’t stop him from trying, and with his new-ish job he was in a good position to do so.

With his high skill level and knowledge he’d actually ended up as the [Brass] rank teacher after that last guy –whose name and face he couldn’t remember- had left.

He’d done his best to help them with their chosen weapons and had done a good job acquainting them with the theoretical knowledge as well. He knew his short comings, so he also had experienced adventurers come in and share their experience.

Overall, he was very happy with his class’s progress, the fact that he had some [Bronze], [Silver], and even a few [Gold] rank adventurers attending was something he calmly ignored. He got paid extra for it anyway, what did it matter?

It was one Thursday after he’d finished teaching for the day that he went to the guild library where his stack of books and notes were waiting. Since he was the only one who ever went in there it was pretty safe hiding his notes in the check out desk, so he grabbed them and made his way back to his usual spot when a familiar face surprised him.

“Verity, what are you doing here?”

She looked good, she actually had color in her face this time, was thinner than in the past, but no longer looked emaciated from lack of food –force feeding her had not been fun- and she had a serious expression on her face.

“Hey Crimson, how are you doing?”

His eyes bored into hers, “I’m fine, the real question is: how are YOU doing?”

She nodded firmly, “I’m fine. I took your advice: I decided to think about the future. I asked myself: how could I stop everyone around me from dying again? I thought about it long and hard, too hard actually! It’s obvious: I need to get a healer [Class]!”

Crimson looked at her with a bemused expression, “Don’t you already have three [Classes]? I don’t think-“

She responded firmly, “Don’t worry about it, I already reset my [Blessing]. I want you to help me get a healer [Class] and in exchange I’ll be the healer for your party!”

The smile on his face was replaced by a look of shock, “You did what?”