Chapter 24

Princess Rhinese sat on a stool by Crimson’s beside as he rested in the infirmary. It turns out that the undersides of his forearms were burned in addition to his chest, fortunately they had been healed easily before he’d been carried there. He’d been given a new shirt by the [Pure-Hearted] on duty, it was a poor fit. Not only was he taller than her, but he was also thinner; she’d been able to easily see his ribs earlier. His black hair, so dark it seemed to absorb light, was undamaged from the fire and was very messy for it’s short length. Overall he was in very good condition all things considered, especially for his low constitution.

Her gaze wandered around the room as she waited for him to wake and she looked at the [Pure-Hearted] again, well, glared. She’d wanted to get the [Pure-Hearted] Class, but it was more efficient to get a second [Priestess] Class.

“What are you doing?”

She looked down to see Crimson with his curiosity filled eyes looking at her.

“What do you mean?”

“You were glaring at that lady over there.”

“It’s nothing.”

“Clearly it’s not nothing if you were glaring at her. Did she do something wrong?”

Princess Rhinese sighed. If I don’t do something I’ll never finish questioning him, “When you tell me what happened in the library I’ll explain it to you.

He nodded at her, “Very well then; when I was leaving the library I saw a man in a dark robe-“

“Can you be sure it was a man?”

“Yes your highness, I checked. The stance and overall build indicated that ‘he’ was a ‘he.’”

“Continue.”

“Yes your highness. Right after I saw him he set a book on fire; I took note of how tall he was and his gender then charged at him shouting. When he heard and saw me he dropped the book, just missing the nearby pile of books, and ran out the front. He was too fast for me to catch so I put out the fire, burning myself in the process. After that I ran around the library to check for any more fires then made my way to the entrance of the library, where I passed out.”

“Anything else you can tell me?”

“Yes, he was human and he was about a head-and-a-half taller than I am.”

“Well, that’s better than we hoped.”

“You weren’t able to catch him?”

“No, we don’t have people visiting the library often enough. Nobody was close enough to properly respond to the situation.”

Crimson nodded at Princess Rhinese and sat back with a thoughtful expression on his face which quickly swapped to a grin before he cleared it, “Could you please tell me what was bothering you earlier your highness?”

She sighed again and nodded before she began to explain.

She explained to him that when she had been looking at Sub-Classes Princess Rhinese had actually heavily considered getting the class: [Pure-Hearted]; she’d ended up getting two [Priestess] Sub-Classes instead because of how high her [Holy] affinity was.

“The [Pure-Hearted] Class is way stronger with a high [Purity] affinity and I only have a Basic Affinity for [Purity], and an Exceptional Affinity for [Holy]. It really made the Class choice a no-brainer. The same is true for all magic Classes: it’s almost always better to go with the classes that you have high affinities with so you can become as strong as possible. Though no Class is objectively stronger than the other.”

“It is often possible to achieve the same thing in different ways with different affinities. For example there are three main types of healing classes and each rely on a different affinity for their spells and skills. [Priestess]es use the [Holy] affinity, [Pure-Hearted] use the [Purity] affinity, and [Druid]s use the [Life] affinity.

“But, affinities don’t affect anybody’s ability to get a class, most of the time. If I truly wanted I could have gotten the [Pure-Hearted] class without any difficulty, but I want to be as strong as I possibly can, and I never would have been as strong as I could possibly be as a [Priestess].”

Princess Rhinese waved her hand and used some [Holy] to create a list in the air.

“The Levels of Affinities are as follows:

-Simple Affinity

-Basic Affinity

-Advanced Affinity

-Acute Affinity

-Exceptional Affinity

-Extreme Affinity

-Insane Affinity

-Bound to the Affinity”

She read off all the levels of the chart.

“Each level provides different bonuses based on a few different factors. The first three levels-Simple, Basic, Advanced-only reduce the cost of casting spells or using skills that fall under that affinity. The next four have much better bonuses. While they do reduce the cost of using spells associated with the affinity they also have bonuses to learning and manipulation.

“The final affinity is the rarest and most mysterious. It has very strong bonuses and rules surrounding it’s existence. The first bonus is that having this affinity changes the Bound’s race. So if someone was born human, but they awoke the affinity: Bound to the Affinity of [Fire] then their race would change to [Blaze-Kin]. If this were to happen to a Wolf-Kin then their race would be: [Blaze-Wolf]. So on and so forth. This change in race would also change the structure of their body to BE that element. There are some advantages and disadvantages associated with this. If this hypothetical person was to take a bath there wouldn’t be any problems, but if the bath was made using magic then there would be problems. To be affected badly outside of combat requires the use of magic.

“The other bonuses are fairly obvious after the first one: there is no MP cost for casting spells of that element, the ability to manipulate the affinity is increased to 100%-as easy as moving an arm-, and the ability to learn spells of that affinity is increased to near instantaneously.

“The downsides and rules are many and complicated, but to summarize one of the biggest ones: it is impossible to have any other affinities. Any other affinities on the Status will be null after being Bound, and the affinity in opposition to the Bound one is set as an Antithesis.

“Antitheses’ are the opposite of affinities: they make using the associated affinity much more difficult and are arranged like such:

-Dislike

-Rejection

-Hatred

-Antithesis

“While there are half as many antitheses as there are affinities their effect is much stronger. Dislike increases the MP cost of associated affinities by 20%, Rejection doubles that cost, Hatred increases the extra cost to 60% and increases the difficulty of learning associated spells by 50%. Antithesis makes it completely impossible to learn or use the affinity.

“This is what I meant when I said earlier that affinities don’t affect your ability to gain a Class MOST, of the time. If you have [Fire] as an Antithesis level Antithesis then it is impossible for you to get the [Pyromancer] Class.”

Princess Rhinese began to pace around the room as she explained the rest of what she knew about affinities.

“There are two main categories of affinities. The first category is Elemental, the second one is Dynamic.”

She drew another chart in the air.

“The first category is the one most people think of when the term ‘affinity’ is mentioned it contains the following affinities:

+Fire

-Water

+Earth

-Wind

+Lightning

-Metal

+Magma

-Ice

“The positive affinity is paired with the negative right beneath it. These paired ones are direct opposites of each other. The second category of affinities, Dynamic, contains the following:

+Purity

-Corruption

+Holy

-Profane

+Mana

-Void

+Life

-Death

“The rules for Dynamic affinities are very different from Elemental; with elemental affinities it is possible to have all of them without any problem, provided there is no ‘Bound.’ Dynamic affinities contradict each other in a different way though. Having a very high affinity for a Dynamic affinity increases the odds of having an antithesis of the opposing affinity and decreases the odds of having it as an affinity. It is possible to have an affinity for both [Holy] and [Profane], but one will always be weaker than the other.

“Since I have an Exceptional Affinity for [Holy] the highest affinity I could possibly have for [Profane] is an ‘Advanced’ affinity.

“The same is true for all Dynamic affinities. It is theoretically possible to have an Advanced affinity in all of them, but that’s the best possible. Once one of the pairs rises to Exceptional and above it prevents the paired affinity from going any higher. But it is possible to have a high affinity for half of them.

“For example I could possibly have an: Insane Affinity for [Mana], [Death], [Holy], and [Corruption] without any problem, but if that is the case then I can never have the paired affinity be any stronger than advanced.

“I actually have a Hatred for [Profane] because of the nature of antitheses.”

Over on the bed she heard Crimson making a weird noise; she looked over at him and saw that he was trying to hold back a laugh.

Rhinese blushed and scowled at the same time, “Why are you laughing at me?”

“I only asked why you were glaring at the nurse over there, not a full explanation on affinities.”

Rhinese felt her blush, and scowl, deepen.

“Are you ungrateful?”

“Not at all! It was very helpful information your highness. I’m mostly amused because you acted like you didn’t want to tell me anything, then you explained everything.”

“Oh…I guess I just needed someone to talk to, and I didn’t want to put off hearing your explanation of what happened in the library,” the blush faded off her face.

Crimson nodded at Princess Rhinese and sat back with a thoughtful expression on his face.

“Well, thank you for explaining all that for me. I didn’t know any of it.”

She nodded back at him and turned around to leave before stopping.

"Why were you in the library?"

"I was studying a book of runes."

“Oh...Do you have a Class yet?”

“No.”

She turned and left. Sammy was waiting for her right outside the door.

“Inform Captain Ursidae that he is to assist DG Crimson in fulfilling the requirements for any Class he wants, and send him a book of runes.”

Sammy bowed to her, “Yes, your highness.”