As soon as Radgar finished speaking he hurried off into the training room looking like a man on a mission. Tsar stood there for a moment before Iggy interrupted his thoughts.

“Would you like to go see my collection now or would you prefer to go back and collect more sticks.” She asked.

“I would absolutely love to see your collection.”

Barely a second after he said that he felt a strange sensation and suddenly found himself elsewhere. He blinked and nearly stumbled at the disorienting feeling that Iggy had just somehow moved him.

“Ummm…” Tsar muttered as he nearly stumbled, “Did you just teleport me?”

“Yup! I can only do it to things inside my area of influence and it requires a lot of mana for bigger things. But you are small and very low leveled, so its not that hard.” Iggy spoke happily.

Tsar wasn’t sure if that was supposed to be a compliment an insult or a statement of fact. So, he chose to focus on the fact that a mountain sized tree could teleport him around at will, then he decided to stop thinking about it all together and concentrate on the army that was standing before him.

It wasn’t a literal army. But an army made entirely of wood. What he was looking at was several hundred acres of flat area covered by statues of people in armor surrounding a titanic dragon made of wood. Everything was so lifelike that he could practically see the battle taking place as the dragon breathed fire across whole battalions of men and women, arrows bouncing off its scaly hide as it tore into those who would dare face its wrath.

Tsar walked among the life-sized statues in awe of the detail, each face was different, down to the last little detail. Some had scars, others had pimples! The level of intricacy and detail in the statues defied imagining. They looked so lifelike that Tsar found himself touching them to make sure they weren’t real people.

“Iggy… this might be the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen in my lives.” Tsar said in wonder as he examined the wooden rendition of fire covering a group of soldiers. Even the fire looked real, as if it should be hot.

“Thank you! I spend a lot of time making them. It one of the many ways I pass the time when I get bored.” Iggy said.

“Well, if you do commissions, I’d love to order a piece or two.” Tsar joked.

“Sure, what would you like me to make? I’ll have to make it out of the scrap down in storage though otherwise you won’t be able to take it with you.” Iggy said excitedly.

“I was joking… But it you would like to make a few totems and talismans for me I wouldn’t say no.”

“What is a Totem? Or a Talisman for that matter?” Iggy asked, sounding hopeful.

Tsar really didn’t get the level of generosity that these two beings seemed to have. Maybe they were just incredibly bored and super happy to have something new to do and learn? Anyway, Tsar did his best to describe what his concept of a Totem, Totem poles, and Talisman were. Which didn’t take long at all. He also explained that he’d asked for those things because of his Shaman Class, giving her the specifics of the skills.

“It sounds like fun. I’ll make some and see how you like them. I already finished the training weapons Radgar asked for, so I’ll fiddle around a bit and see what I come up with.” Iggy said it like it was going to be a challenge. But with her artistic mastery Tsar felt like Totem poles and Talismans were something so beneath her abilities that it was practically an insult to even ask her to make them. But she seemed genuinely happy to do it so Tsar decided that he may as well benefit from it.

After that Iggy continued teleporting him around to different places where she had similar pieces of art to the dragon battle. One was a ship at sea the crew battling a Kraken that was attempting to pull the ship into the sea. Another was practically a story starting at the beginning you followed a group of five adventurers into a dungeon where they fought all sorts of monsters until they reached the last boss and two of them ended up dying in the battle. Another was of an unnervingly uniform town with creatures that looked like humans but… perfect? And all of them looked identical. It was strange but beautiful none the less. Another showed what was obviously a town of demons, completely the opposite of the other town. Strangely crooked and warped, its denizens all different shapes and sizes.

Tsar doubted that he’d seen all that there was to see here. But when Iggy finally teleported him back down to the training room, he was feeling tired. She guided him to a cot that was surprisingly comfortable, and he found himself falling asleep.

+++

“How long do you think he will stay?” Iggy asked Radgar as he gathered things from storage that had long been waiting for use.

“Not very long I don’t think. Probably only a few months, maybe a year. He’s a curious sort, and I think he’ll get bored after the novelty wears off. Add to that that he was once a human and desires to reconnect with society… Yeah he won’t want to stick around with us old farts for too long.” Radgar replied.

“That’s too bad. He likes my sculptures. And its nice to have someone new to talk to after all this time.”

“It is indeed. He’s a good sort. Maybe once he reaches the S Tiers, he’ll be able to come back without having to worry about me going frothing mad and accidentally killing him. If he takes my advice and grinds from the B+ Tier races up by the time he reaches my Tier I wouldn’t be able to lay a finger on him.”

“The advantage of starting at the bottom, I guess. What all are you going to train him in?”

“Well, all of the weapon’s skills of course. But were gonna aim to give him all the resistances I can come up with… Now don’t give me that look… His Willpower stat is higher than both of ours combined. He can take a little pain, and it will be beyond helpful to him. He doesn’t even realize what Fortitude being unlocked means either, let alone all the others he’s unlocked. The boy’s gonna be unkillable if he ever reaches the O Tiers. Actually, it’s inevitable with that Perpetual Rebirth skill of his. Once he is strong enough, he may even be able to help solve my problem. We could reopen the school. Breathe life into these halls once more. It may be as soon as five hundred years!” Ragnar was getting excited as he thought about the prospect of finally being rid of his cursed Berserker class.

“It would be wonderful to be able to invest guests into our halls again. Just don’t break him too much. He might run away if you go too hard.”

“Nah, the kids got balls of adamantine alloy. He’ll stick with it and come out stronger on the other end.” Ragnar spoke.

+++

Tsar really wished that a training montage in real life was like training montages in books, movies and tv shows. Because the reality of training for twelve hours a day was brutal. Especially resistance training. Resistance training was essentially just allowing yourself to take damage in certain ways. Tsar had drunk poison that left him groaning on the floor for literal days to acquire Poison Resistance. Held his hands over candles to get Heat Resistance, laid down in a tub of acid for Acid Resistance. Been impaled by roots conjured by Radgar to get Wood Magic Resistance. And the final Resistance he had gotten was so far the least fun to get but definitely the most helpful in getting resistances in the first place. Pain Resistance. Radgar claimed that there were literally hundreds of resistance skills that could be obtained. The thing about resistance skills and the reason why most people didn’t try to get tons of them was that they scaled off of a normally Locked stat. Fortitude.

Fortitude was the domain of Tank Classes. Or as Radgar called them Defenders. And they usually unlocked the stat after evolving their Class for the first time. Which meant leveling their Class to 100. Resistance Skills didn’t have levels they just increased your resistance to whatever it was by 1% per point of fortitude. It sounds like a totally broken thing but its really not. Your skins baseline resistance to being burnt may be a certain threshold. Increasing that threshold by 4x would still leave your hand melting if you stuck it in the oven. It would just take a little longer. Constitution and Toughness made the resistances even better though. So, reaching a certain point would make you practically immune to mundane fire. Tsar was still pretty far from being able to walk through fire like superman, but that was not an unattainable goal. He just had to level up enough and eventually it would happen.

The resistance trainings had taken nearly a month to go through. Radgar had broken out Healing potions and the like to increase the speed, but it still required a lot of self-damage then recovery to get the skills. After he’d finally gotten Pain resistance Tsar had asked for a week off of training so that he could practice a few of his skills at his own pace. Radgar had agreed, saying it was time to move on to weapons training when he was done practicing his skills.

Where Tsar now found himself was in the training room firing off Mana Bullet after Mana Bullet. He wasn’t trying to level the skill. No, he was trying to figure out how to control his mana. The skill naturally allowed him to alter the amount of mana he put into it, from 20 to 100. He was playing with that mechanic trying to feel how he was controlling the mana flow. If he could figure out how to control his mana. He may very well be able to teach himself magic.

He’d already spent three days draining his mana pool by using the skill over and over. Once he was done emptying out his mana, he would enter into Zen Meditation to review every detail of how it felt to use the skill and try to determine how to use his mana.

Five days into his practice he finally figured it out. He managed to overcharge the Mana Bullet skill and dump a little over a thousand mana into it before it fired. Blasting a hole through his target and leaving him drained as he was the skill mana bullet had jumped ship into the Spells category of his stat page. The second that that happened he saw the flash of notifications that wanted his attention.

Congratulations

Through hard work and a lot of natural talent you have gained the skill: Mana Control

Mana Control lvl.N/A

Take control of your own mana and wield it to fuel magic!

Congratulations

By learning to control your own mana, without instruction, and intuitively turning a Skill into a Spell you have been awarded the Title: [Sorcerer]

Effects: Gain the Class Sorcerer

Sorcerer

Requirements met: Has the [Sorcerer] Title.

Description:

A Sorcerer gains +5 Cha, +5 Int, and +5 Wis per class level and access to the Sorcerer skill tree.

Gains the skills [Magical Savant lvl.N/A] [Hey Mana! Look At Me! lvl.N/A] and [Casting Requirements? Lvl.N/A]

Accept Class: Y/N

Just kidding you don’t have a choice. You are a Sorcerer lvl.1 now!

Note: Being a Sorcerer disqualifies you from obtaining the Wizard Class or its derivatives.

Magical Savant lvl.N/A

As a Magical Savant just observing a spell, enchantment, or magical effect is enough for you to be begin piecing together how to do the same thing yourself.

Removes the need to maintain a personal grimoire to remember spell formations.

Hey Mana! Look at Me! lvl.N/A

Applies Charisma stat to MP Regen stat.

Casting Requirements? Lvl.N/A

A Sorcerer can forgo mimetic, mnemonic, and material requirements for spells that require them. Increases mana cost of the spell by 10% per component forgone.

Tsar was flabbergasted. He’d been hoping to learn how to do magic. He hadn’t been planning on getting a new class! This was the first time he’d had something truly forced on him that effected his development. He could no longer take any Wizard derived Classes and the Class had added a whole 10,000 exp to his race level requirements even with a 12% discount that still put his race level exp requirement at 10,030 exp needed per race level. And he had to get up to level 30 to Evolve. He was still race level 0 right now so that meant he now needed 300,900 Exp before he’d be able to Evolve again.

Aside from that the Class was damn good. Those last two skills were weirdly named but they were powerful. His charisma stat was now added to his MP regen stat the same as his wisdom stat. giving him an effective 1,412 in the MP regen department. And now he had spells! Well, one spell. But still he was on the road to learning magic. And unlike a wizard he didn’t need to lug around a grimoire to be able to cast spells. But he was going to look through all the stuff he’d gotten from the ‘junk room’ to see if there were any in there. It would be interesting to see if he could learn magic from them.

Tsar still had some mana left, so he decided to try out using Mana Bullet as a spell. Much to his surprise it wasn’t really all that different. The only thing that really changed was how much he could alter it. the minimum mana he could get away with using for it now was 5, but he could also do things like change its shape, rotation, speed. Spells were basically super customizable skills. It was too bad he couldn’t do anything to his stupid Mana Siphon skill. It had reached level five because of all his mana expenditures recently, but nothing about it had changed. No increase in regen rate, nothing.

Tsar emptied his entire mana pool then retreated to a couple of chairs in the far corner of the training room to look through his Soul Vault. He hadn’t gone through the stuff yet and now he was looking for magic books. He ignored everything that wasn’t a book and simply dumped the books out onto the floor. There were a lot of them. Over five hundred actually.

Using analyze on them one by one Tsar realized something about these books. They were all Grimoires. Every single one of them. Most of them were labeled by his skill as ‘common’ Grimoires. A good portion of them were ‘rare’. Then there were about ten of them labeled as ‘Epic’ and seven labeled as ‘Artifact’. The last three were labeled as ‘Timeless’. Tsar didn’t really know what the rarity tags meant. But the descriptions on the ‘Timeless’ Grimoires definitely said it all. Plus, the screens that showed up were gold whereas both the epic and artifact were purple boxes. They were also, curiously enough, the smallest of all the books there. They were pocket book sized, not even really large enough to be called books.

Grimoire of the Explorer

(Timeless)

This was the personal Grimoire of the great explorer mage Dianna Jones. It contains within it the knowledge of a bygone age and spells that any explorer will find invaluable,

Must be bound to an attunement slot to open and read. The Binding is permanent and cannot be undone.

Would you like to bind this Grimoire?

Y/N

Grimoire of Lightning

(Timeless)

This was the personal Grimoire of the mage Palpatine. It contains within it the knowledge of the darker side of wind magics, Lightning magic. Unleash your rage on those who would oppose you.

Must be bound to an attunement slot to open and read. The Binding is permanent and cannot be undone.

Would you like to bind this Grimoire?

Y/N

Grimoire of The Doctor

(Timeless)

This was the personal Grimoire of the famous/infamous mage The Doctor. It contains within it a vast collection of information gathering, divining, scrying, and escape magics.

Must be bound to an attunement slot to open and read. The Binding is permanent and cannot be undone.

Would you like to bind this Grimoire?

Y/N

To most mages who found these books it would be a difficult decision whether or not to bind them. Attunement Slots could be used for growth items that got stronger with time and adapted to the wielder. But most people only had four slots. Most bound items could be removed willingly but these Grimoires seemed to be special. Tsar had sixteen slots available, and his spirit bindings weren’t permanent, he could dismiss the bond with his spirit at any moment should he chose to. He hesitated for a moment before he confirmed all three bindings at the same time.

The moment he bound them Tsar understood why most Wizards needed them. It was like his mind expanded to encompass the contents of the books. The odd thing was that he didn’t actually get a lot of information from this expansion. In fact, he’d pretty much just gotten the information he already knew about the books shoved into his mind, it just felt like there was more room for it. Then he noticed the ever-present system flashing a notification at him again.

Congratulations

You have bound the Grimoires of the Explorer, The Doctor, and of Lighting.

These are growth Items that have previously grown to such heights that they were labeled as Timeless.

Your bond with these items will grow with time and effort. As your bonds grow new effects will emerge based on the individual Grimoire.

Bond effect lvl.1: Reading the information contained within will allow instant recall of that information so long as the Grimoire in question in your possession.

“Ohhfff, I think I should have warned you about not binding the Timeless Grimoires.” Radgar’s voice sounded out behind Tsar causing him to jump.

“Why is that?” Tsar asked while wondering if he’d just fucked up.

“Well, Grimoires have a specific Bond mechanic. It is incredibly useful, in many ways. But the specific way to grow that Bond is by not only reading the entire thing, but by also adding to its contents. Timeless Grimoires have had a great deal of information put into them already, so it takes a long time to read through them, but more importantly it is rather difficult add in new information on their specific subjects when, more than likely, their previous owners had put in almost everything there is to know on the subjects contained. The three who previously owned those Grimoires specifically were masters of their subjects. Also last I checked weren’t you just a Shaman? You need to be a Wizard to take full advantage of those books.” Radgar explained.

“I just got the Sorcerer Title. So, I am also a Sorcerer now.” Tsar said.

“Oh my. That one adds a whole lot to the EXP requirements for advancement if I remember correctly. But then having those grimoires is less of an issue. You don’t need the support effects that the bond gives. Certainly, they would be convenient, but as a Sorcerer you kind of cover those bases already. Though at the higher ends of the Bond Levels they start to give you some pretty good stat bonuses if I recall correctly. Most sorcerers tend to use them as diaries. Makes a sorcerers Grimoire useless to anyone but them because the subject matter is their daily lives. Can’t add to that when they have to be dead for you to get ahold of it.”

“Well, I should be fine then. Just learning the spells that they left behind will be more than enough for me in the short term, and I’ll probably end up learning enough to add to it eventually anyways. Long term growth is better than short term gain.” Tsar was just glad that he hadn’t accidentally bound himself to horcruxes or some crazy nonsense like that.

“Anyway, the reason I came was to ask you if you’d like to join me in a little excursion to see something Iggy has cooked up. She’s quite excited about it and wanted me to show you the way.” Radgar said with a smile.

“Alright, only thing I had planned was reading for the next few days anyway.”

“Perfect. Come along then.”

With that Radgar guided Tsar through a series of hallways, up a set of stairs and into a room that had a lot of Totems in it. A lot of them. Tsar’s mouth dropped open at the view. They were astonishingly gorgeous pieces of art. Each and every one of them was like looking at a real-life version of the animals’ or monsters’ face that it represented. Yet at the same time they were obviously totems. Some of them were even stacked into poles throughout the room.

“Do you like them?” Iggy’s voice sounded slightly nervous.

“Do I like them? Iggy this is amazing! I never thought you’d make so many.” Tsar spoke in awe.

“Well, I might have gotten carried away a little bit. These Totems are really fun to make. The Talismans are on the table in the back. I made a lot more of those… I hope you like them.” She said excitedly.

Tsar walked around admiring the straight up amazing beauty of each and every piece in the room. He used Analyze on one that looked like wolfs head and sucked in a short breath at what he saw.

Wolfs Head Totem [incomplete]

Material quality: (Legendary)

Workmanship quality: Masterwork

Description:

A wolfs head totem created by the grandmaster woodworker Iggy, The World Tree Sapling. Can only be completed by a Shaman.

Effects: +500% effectiveness when used by a Shaman to create totem.

+50 spirit slots to final product.

Tsar started glancing around using analyze on all of the totems in the room. Every single one of them was the same rarity and quality with the same effects. Iggy had made masterworks and was nervous that he wouldn’t like them?

He found the table filled with little talismans. There were probably near five hundred of them on the table and analyzed one just to see what would be different about them.

World Tree Talisman [incomplete]

Material quality: (Legendary)

Workmanship quality: Masterwork

Description:

A Talisman depicting a World Tree created by the grandmaster woodworker Iggy, The World Tree Sapling. Can only be completed by a Shaman.

Effects: +500% effectiveness when used by a Shaman to create talisman.

+12 spirit slots to final product.

The only difference was the spirit slot function. With such a small Talisman Tsar was sure he could string together a full 32 of them and wear them all. But that also meant he needed to get cracking on leveling up the skills, it would almost be a crime to use his low-level skills on these things.

“Well, are you gonna take them or just stare at them? I want to see what happens once they are complete.” Iggy said impatiently.

“Well, I’m out of mana right now… So, it’ll have to wait until tomor-” Tsar was interrupted by something falling on his which he reflexively caught.

“There you go Drink that and make the thing happen.” Iggy demanded

Tsar drank the potion and felt his mana pool fill up near instantly. Then selected the first Wolfs head Totem he’d analyzed and reached for the create Totem skill. He elected to go with the Nurture Totem and then dumped his entire mana pool into the creation.

The Totem glowed golden for a moment after he used the skill before it returned to exactly what it had been before. Notifications blared for his attention, but he ignored them to see what he had just done. He analyzed the Totem, and his eyes went wide.

Wolf Totem of Nurture

Material quality: (Legendary)

Workmanship quality: Masterwork

Description:

A wolfs head totem created by the grandmaster woodworker Iggy, The World Tree Sapling. Completed by the Shaman Tsar Bomba.

Effects: Increases the rate of plant life growth by 5000% within a radius of fifty feet.

50 spirit slots available.

Each Spirit bound to the totem increases its radius of effect by fifty feet.

If used as part of a totem pole effects stack up to four times.

Requires 1 spirit bound within the next 7 days or the totem will revert to an incomplete state.

If Tsar had a tribe this Totem alone would be a source massive prosperity. Crops grown fifty times quicker within a maximum possible radius of 2,550 feet by itself. He couldn’t even imagine what that would mean for people. And Tsar highly doubted that this was the maximum capability of this totem. It was just the maximum capability he could give it with his current skill level. And the effects of the totem stacked if used as part of a totem pole? A potential radius of over ten thousand feet increasing the growth rate of plant life by 20,000%? This thing would probably be considered a national treasure already though. It was insane.

“Now that is quite the creation there. Can’t say I’ve ever seen anything quite like it. Incredible effect. Especially since its stackable. Comparable to some of the national treasures of the old empire I’d say. Iggy what do you think?”

“I think that I have just experienced a 5000% increase in my growth rate. Which means that that things radius only needs to be touching part of the plant to have its effect… Also, I would appreciate it if you made three more and left these ones for me. We can verify its effects like this.” Iggy said

“Well, I’m out of mana aga-” another five mana potions smacked Tsar on the head, and he scrambled to catch them all.

Selecting three more Totems Tsar went through the motions and created three more totems of nurture stacking them atop one another.

“I’ll need to bind some spirits to them so that they don’t die on you guys.” Tsar said as he placed the last one down.

“Will wisps do? I have literally thousands of them floating around in my branches.” Iggy said as a wisp appeared out of thin air directly above the totem pole.

Tsar downed another potion then got to work binding Wisp after Wisp to the totems until he filled all of their slots. He analyzed the totems again and found that there was nothing he would have to do with them ever again. No maintenance requirements, nothing. It would just work until someone broke the totem.

“This is amazing!” Iggy practically squealed, “Twenty thousand percent increase to my growth rate Radgar!”

“It is quite incredible. That stack of wooden animal heads would start wars if people knew about it. I’d suggest keeping your totems a secret as much as possible Tsar. There are people out there that would commit genocide to get ahold these things, once you’ve figured out what the other ones you can make do I’m sure they’ll be just as valuable.” Radgar said with a slightly worried expression.

“I could only make these with the help of Iggy, material quality and workmanship quality effect the end result. And its probably not by a small amount. I’ll be careful not to reveal this stuff once I head out on an adventure though.” Tsar responded.

“Yes, that would probably explain how a C+ tier individual just created a legendary artifact that could throw kingdoms into bloody conflict.” Radgar chuckled, “Try out one of the talismans next. I must admit that I am curious now.”

Tsar grabbed the World Tree talisman and downed another mana potion. Then activated Create Talisman and selected Ward as the type. His mana bottomed out again as the talisman glowed before he analyzed it.

World Tree Talisman of Warding

Material quality: (Legendary)

Workmanship quality: Masterwork

Description:

A Talisman depicting a World Tree created by the grandmaster woodworker Iggy, The World Tree Sapling. Completed by the Shaman Tsar Bomba.

Effects: The wearer of this Talisman is immune to scrying, divination, an identifying type skills lower than the Divine Tier. The scryer, diviner, or identifier will see a false screen that the wearer can create and alter once a day.

12 spirit slots available

Each spirit bound to this talisman allows it to resist up to 1 Divine Tier scrying, divining, or Identifying skill per 24 hours.

Requires 1 spirit bound within the next 7 days or the talisman will revert to an incomplete state

Radgar whistled as he read the effects of the talisman. And suddenly another wisp was in front of Tsar. He quickly downed a potion and started binding the spirits to the talisman as they appeared. Radgar laughed as Tsar frantically went about it.

“You’ll want to wear that at all times. You have no Idea how valuable it is. The information you present to people when they use skills or spells like those can mean the difference between life and death. Now go get some rest. Using that many potions so quickly is not a good idea.”