Leon had finished getting the Carpentry Lore Title a few days ago but he’d held off on starting another one. Today he would be heading to Dungeon City #1, the largest city in the known world and home base of the Dungeoneers Guild. His official schooling would begin soon. His parents had already dropped him off at the Guild building where he was going to supposedly be using a teleporter of some kind to reach Dungeon City #1.

Their departure was still tugging at Leon’s heart strings, threatening to bring tears to his eyes once again as he fingered the wristwatch his mother had given him and eyed the pack in his Utility Pocket that dad had given him. Leon wasn’t sure what he’d ever done to deserve such a caring family. But he was damn grateful for it. His last childhood had been a miserable thing that had left scars deep in his psyche that only recently had begun to heal over.

Right now, Leon found himself surrounded by over a hundred people he didn’t know and a myriad of boxes and crates that were destined for Dungeon City #1. He’d been told that someone would be waiting for him on the other side. They would take him to the campus and introduce him to his mentor. As well as get him enrolled in the classes that he needed to be in. All he could do right now was wait.

While he was waiting, he decided to look over his list of skills, just to calm himself and take his mind away from his family.

Meditation+++ lvl 1

Utility Pocket+++ lvl 1

Mana Manipulation lvl 40

Mana Control lvl 22

Mathematics lvl 36

Identify lvl 28

Perception Filter lvl 23

Alchemical Stability lvl 25

Hammer Play lvl 25

Small Blades Mastery lvl 26

Cooking lvl 20

Speed Reading lvl 27

Reading And Writing lvl 35

Stealth lvl 23

Muffle lvl 30

Invasive Strike lvl 20

Double Strike lvl 24

Power Strike lvl 21

Reinforce lvl 26

The number of skills that Leon had access too and their levels were abnormally high for someone of his age bracket, let alone the world at large. Leon had learned that the majority of people could only learn about ten skills total before they were never offered a new skill again.

Titles were where most people gained their strengths and powers from. And Leon had never heard of people having Traits. He’d asked his parents about them, but they didn’t know. Apparently, Traits were either a secret that was well guarded, or an entirely unknown aspect of the world here. Leon doubted that it was entirely unknown. There were far too man sapient beings in this new world for that to be the case. From what Leon had seen, the Heavenly Spheres had a population that no doubts exceeded the quintillions. The first layer alone had more land mass than Leon’s old solar system could have even produced. It was tens of thousands of times larger than the circumference of his entire solar system. And that was all habitable land. Surely someone somewhere knew about Traits.

Leon jolted when he realized that the teleportation pad had begun glowing. The area under his feet alight with geometric patterns and mana was flowing like a river through all of those patterns. Leon could feel space itself suddenly shift when the Teleportation Array activated, and he knew that they were somewhere else. Somewhere very far from where they had just been. There had been now real sensation of movement, no indication that they had been moved. As where they had arrived looked exactly the same as where they had left. But Leon could feel how much distance he had just moved in an instinctual way. The distance that now separated him from his family was incredibly vast.

Feeling small and alone Leon followed the people leaving the teleportation pad and into another section of the building they had arrived in.

“Leon Crumbl!” he heard someone call out from the crowd. He quickly located the source of the voice and was slightly confused. The person calling his name was of a race he had never seen before. It looked male in build and the voice sounded male. But that was a difficult to tell thing with other races. The being that was calling for him looked like it was made out of charred wood, only four and a half feet tall, with four arms instead of two. Bark like hair sprouted out of its head and it had compound eyes like that of an insect, but it had a very human like mouth with similar teeth to a human. Leon stared at the creature not sure exactly what his instincts were trying to tell him about it.

“It’s rude to stare like that kid.” The creature said as it walked over to him nonchalantly. “But I guess that it is only natural if you’ve never seen an Ommatidia before. My name is Lark, Lark Henzon. I am here to guide you to the DGS campus and make sure you meet with your mentor. Your mentor will determine what classes you should be signed up for and provide you with study materials. Please follow me.” Lark turned and started walking away while Leon hurried to keep up.

Leon followed Lark out of the Guild building and into a City that was very different from what he was used to. Sure, the buildings were big back in the city his parents lived in. But this city seemed to have skyscrapers and high risers everywhere. The general layout seemed to be the same, but the scale was overwhelmingly bigger. Lark flagged down a passing carriage and flipped the driver a coin. Ushering Leon aboard and following suit.

The ride was quiet as they made their way through the bustling streets of the city. Leon taking in the sights and taking advantage of using Identify on everything and everyone he saw. He people with wings flying between the buildings and even higher up large flying vessels that were transporting people around the city to large structures that seemed like stops on a bus route.

After only about twenty minutes of riding the cart Lark and Leon disembarked and Leon found himself at the gates of a massive compound that seemed like it was a small city within the larger city. Over the gates in massive bronze lettering was “Dungeoneer Guild School” directly atop an ornate rendition of the Guilds symbol. Before the gates were several guards who verified Larks Identity and allowed them to pass into the massive campus.

Leon was right behind the Ommatidia, and after about fifteen minutes of walking through the campus they finally arrived at a building that reminded Leon of a military barracks scaled up to fit an entire army inside it.

“This is the dormitory for first years. Though I am unsure if you will be staying here. Where you stay will be up to your mentor. I was told to bring you to the dormitory first so that you would know where it is before we go meet your mentor. Your mentor will be at the training fields I was told.” Lark said as he gestured around, pointing first to the dormitory then off into the distance where Leon assumed the training fields would be.

It took another ten minutes to reach the training fields and then it took Lark another fifteen minutes to find out where Leon was supposed to meet his mentor there. The training fields were huge and there were hundreds of buildings that contained private training areas for the trainees. Lark led Leon to private training building number 93 and knocked on the door.

“Its open!” Leon heard a distinctly feminine voice call from inside.

Lark simply confirmed that he’d gotten the right place and left Leon to enter on his own. Shrugging to himself Leon entered the building and found it to look a lot like a modern free weight gym inside, with a large open area in the center that had wooden training dummies in various poses.

There was only one person in the training room, and it was a woman. A freaking huge woman. She had to be at least seven feet tall. Her skin was a pale shade of blue that looked almost like a white human’s skin color if they were frozen. Her hair was a slightly deeper shade of blue than her skin. Her eyes seemed like diamonds, and her ears jutted out in an angular fashion that Leon usually associated with elves. She wasn’t built like an elf though, no, she had a borderline bodybuilder physique and she was currently bench pressing what looked like at least 2000 pounds of metal like it was a warmup weight.

After the woman finished pumping the iron what seemed like a hundred times to Leon, she gently racked the weight and sat up. She looked Leon over for a moment before reaching out for a handshake.

“Hi! I’m Malorie, but you can call me Mal from now on I am assigned to be your mentor you are my first mentee and I figured that the best way to start this mentorship is to establish a baseline of where you are at so we can start working on maximizing your gains as soon as possible.” She said in a rush that was so fast Leon could hardly process it all as she nearly crushed his hand in her grip while shaking him vigorously.

“But before we start go switch into your uniform. All of your stuff is in that locker over there.” She pointed to a row of lockers on the other side of the room, “when you are done changing come back over here, I’m gonna finish off my last set before we start.”

Leon was very confused by what was going on. This Malorie seemed to be a bundle of energy with a Bro like personality. Was she about to make him work out? That’s what it sounded like. Leon was not sure he was going to like this, but he did as she asked and walked over to the locker where he found nothing but a satchel that appeared to be empty. He immediately used Identify on it and knew what it was. A spatially expanded bag. They were fairly common, and he knew how to use them. He also knew that he could store more inside his utility pocket skill than this bag could hold. Luckily, he could transfer the things inside of the bag into his skill as long as he made physical contact with the back.

Transferring the contents Leon’s eyes went wide. Not only were there several dozen uniforms inside. There were over a hundred books inside, and because Leon could see what was inside his Utility Pocket skill, he immediately knew that he’d been given something tremendously precious here. There were skill books in that mix, as well as magical Lore books that seemed to be aimed specifically at his flesh, blood, and Bone affinities.

Leon wanted to immediately dive right into the books but controlled himself and used his utility pocket to store the bag itself, then switch out his clothes. The uniform surprisingly fit him perfectly. It was a grey shirt with the Dungeoneers Guild logo stitched into it above the heart on his chest. And a pair of black loose-fitting pants with a brown belt. Leon had no idea what kind of fabric it was, but it felt nice and that was what mattered.

Geared up Leon walked back over to the She Hulk who was just setting her weights down and looking over at him.

“Ok so first we are going to see where you stand physically. Don’t feel embarrassed or let yourself get down about any of it. We are doing this just to see where you are at and what we need to do to improve you. After that we’ll go get you signed up for a few specific classes. Once we’ve got those out of the way you can decide on what Guild Archetype you want to aim for.” Malorie said hopping to her feet.

Leon frowned at her, “What is a Guild Archetype?” he asked, unfamiliar with the term.

“Oh, Archetypes are how the Guild designates you based on skills, Titles, and other factors. There are a lot of Archetypes. Rogues, Barbarians, Knights, Rangers, Mages, Healers, Crafters, and a lot more. Figuring out which one you want to aim for is how we will determine which classes to put you through. I myself am Mage Archetype.” She quickly replied.

Leon raised his eyebrows at that, with a physique like hers he had expected her to be a Barbarian or a Knight.

“Enough questions for right now, we’ll have time for that later. Right now… To the deadlifts!” she called and began pushing Leon towards a different section of the training room.

What followed… What followed next, Leon was pretty sure should be considered child abuse. Or at least borderline child abuse. Malorie ran Leon through a gambit of dozens of different exercises, each time pushing him until he hit exactly the threshold of where he could not lift any more. She seemed to be able to predict almost exactly how much weight he would be able to pick up and use for the exercises after having watched him do only a couple of specific ones.

By the time they were done, Leon was panting, sweating buckets, and feeling like a wet noodle. Malorie had a clipboard with her where she was taking notes of the exercises, weights, and number of reps done. It was like having a personal trainer back on Earth, but she kept frowning then tossing him weird glances whenever he finished an exercise.

The whole ordeal made Leon feel pretty good about himself though. He was Ten years old in this body. And he had just put any and all of the records he’d made in his past life to shame. He had never been a gym nut before, but he could feel the bug trying to crawl into his skull. Maybe there were Titles he could get for lifting weights.

Malorie FleshShaper

Malorie frowned as she looked at her charge again. The boy was ten years old, but he was definitely not the size of a ten-year-old. The average human male would be around four and a half feet tall and weigh in at around 70 pounds. Leon was five foot four inches tall and weighed in at nearly a hundred and twenty pounds. He was neither skinny nor fat looking. And from her analysis spells she knew that his body denser than it appeared. The boy was also moving weights that were around what someone five years his senior should be able to lift with skills that boosted their stamina and strength to boot, and she knew for a fact that he was not using any skills to do it. He was just abnormally strong for his size and weight. It was not something that his known titles would account for. She would have to build up some trust with him before she asked him to give her a full account of his Titles.

All in all, Leon would probably grow to be very strong if properly guided though. And that made her happy. He was her first Mentee, and she couldn’t wait to start really teaching him. Especially because he had her same affinity for flesh magic, and there was much that she could teach him on the subject. When Leon finished the last exercise that she had for him on the list and flopped like a wet noodle while panting hard, Malorie carefully noted everything down on her pad and graded his performance.

“Ok Leon, go get cleaned up and changed into a fresh Uniform. We are going to head over to the registration office to get you signed up for the Regeneration Skill class first and foremost. Once you’ve gotten that skill, we will move on to signing you up for all of the Resistance Skills. You can still receive Skills can you not?” she asked a little wearily. Removal of old skills was possible if they needed to do it, but it was expensive and very painful to do.

Leon just nodded, “I have a lot of room yet for skills…” he said as he started walking towards the changing room. She heard him mutter under his breath when he thought she couldn’t hear him, “pretty sure I could still get thousands of them with how much space I’ve got in there.”

Malorie’s eyes went wide at that little tidbit. He knew about his soul space. And he wasn’t concerned with it being small, but with it being large. This could change things. She thought to herself. If the boy could learn even twenty or thirty skills, that would put him in the top five percent of the population of the Heavenly Spheres. If Leon had enough space to learn fifty or sixty skills, that would put him on par with herself and the rest of the 1%ers out there. And if he could learn even more? She didn’t even have a frame of reference for someone that could reach those heights of power. For someone who could learn more than a hundred skills. The concept itself was just ridiculous. It would still take him decades to catch up with the level of power that Malorie and others like her had gained over many years of training even with an advantage like that though. Malorie just hoped that she could guide him well in that time.

Silvia MoonStar

Silvia looked over the report she received from Malorie FleshShaper. The boy Leon kept getting more and more interesting every time she learned something new about him. The boy’s level strength was frankly ridiculous for his age. And the number of skill classes that Malorie was suggesting for him was staggering. Hero Titled people could almost all learn between thirty and fifty skills. But on top of the Skill Books that Leon had been granted, the number classes Malorie was going to be signing him up for would put Leon at well over a hundred skills learned if he was able. Silvia figured that it may simply be to see where things would go and how many was Leon’s limit. But Silvia knew Malorie, she was far too intelligent to just be pushing Leon to fill up his available soul space.

Silvia sighed as she signed off on the Regeneration Skill class. Regeneration was a mandatory skill that the guild trained everyone in. being able to heal yourself could mean the difference between life and death in a Dungeon. Almost all members of the Guild actively delved Dungeons as a source of income. Which meant that having them all learn the skill regardless of their Archetype preference ensured that they retained more people. People who would then live much longer because the Regeneration Skill also helped keep the effects of aging at bay. At a High enough level, the skill seemed to halt the aging process entirely. It didn’t, but it extended lifespans into the thousands of years range.

Malorie’s goal with all of the skills she was proposing seemed to be pushing the kid into a Knight archetype. But along with the magical skill books and Magical Lore books the kid had already been give it was leaning into a more specialized Archetype like Arcane Knight. It was not Silvia’s place to try and push Malorie to get the boy to go full mage. She would definitely aim for that with the boy if he were her Mentee, but he was not hers to deal with.

But the new Hero was not the most important thing going on right now. The most important thing of Silvia’s plate at this moment was budgeting concerns for DGS. The school was enormous and required constant attention to the details to keep it from hemorrhaging money like a stuck pig. The school was usually solvent, but in the last several decades it had had a major lack of new attendees. Attendees who enrolled through the normal means were not like the Hero Titled individuals. Normal people paid their way through the school either through loot from Dungeons or they had absurdly wealthy patrons who put them through the school. Heroes were a future investment for the guild as a whole, the regular attendees were where the immediate returns were. And right now, there were very few. In fact, the school was only at about 25% capacity at the moment.

Silvia had come up with a solution for this, a devious one. She would start her own loaning service that covered the cost of going to her school in exchange for the new attendees giving up fifty percent of their loot from dungeons until the amount they owed her, plus interest, was paid off. And she didn’t even have to actually use any money to start doing it, she just needed to sign off on their entrance paperwork as the headmaster of the school. It would be pure unadulterated profit for not only herself, but the school as well.

Now all she needed was a way to start her student loans company without being caught doing it.

Leon Crumbl

Leon’s hands were shaking as he held one of the most valuable objects in this entire world. A skill book. Skill books were reusable, so it seemed like they shouldn’t be all that valuable. They were definitely a system reward. They, like the Lore books, were acquired in dungeons. But like with the Lore books, skill books that had anything to do with magic were mysteriously missing from the general populaces ability to acquire them. The skill book in his hands was one that seemed to come out of a D&D playbook. Magic Missile.

His day had been stressful in a multitude of ways. But he was happy that he hadn’t been forced to live in the dormitories. Malorie had decided that he should come to her home and use one of her spare bedrooms so that she could keep him closer to her in case anything came up. Now Leon was sitting on his new bed looking at the greatest treasure in all of the land.

What Leon had just learned however was that purely magical skills relied entirely on one’s magical affinities. And more specifically, Lore Titles tied to those particular affinities. To even learn magical skills, one needed to first have a Lore Title in one magical subject that correlated to their affinities. Leon wasn’t sure how that worked since every skill he had seemed like it was magical anyways. All skills used mana just like the specifically magical skills did. His new mentor had given him a bare bones explanation that boiled down to, “Magical Skills require knowledge, intent, and will. Other skills are just templates that get filled by mana to achieve an effect.”

“Take the basic Magic Missile for example.” She’d said, “As a flesh-mage my usage of that skill would launch a blob of flesh at high speeds. If it were a normal skill, it would always be the same type of flesh and do the same thing. The only differences in it would be power and speed of the projectile as it levels. But that is not the case. The skill isn’t like skills granted by the gods, it is actual personal skill. When I use the skill, I can… will, it to behave differently. How much you change it without making it useless depends entirely on your knowledge. I can make the projectile turn into a ranged bandage, or into a hardened arrow of meat that explodes by contracting too hard when it makes contact. Really, imagination and willpower are just as important for magical skills as having the skills themselves is. Now once you’ve decided on a specific form of Magic Missile, the gods will offer you a skill of what you are accomplishing through your own personal power. Taking that skill does not remove your ability to use the skill as you would without the official god given skill, but it provides a shortcut that does not require immense concentration and willpower to use. This is also the reason why magical Lore books and skills are kept out of the general public’s sphere. Magical plagues and other calamities have happened when someone who didn’t know what they were getting into tried using magical skills without fully understanding what they were doing. Also, they are ridiculously expensive to use in the mana department.”

Putting the Skill book back into his inventory, Leon turned to the Lore books. Specifically, The Lore of Magical and Mundane Bones. Each of the five tomes making up the series was larger than the entire series of the Tinkers Lore books combined. Leon had decided that he would start with the Bone magic, then flesh, then blood. Taking out the first book Leon began to read.