Sam woke up to darkness, the last glimmers of starlight just beginning to fade into the soft light of dawn. He held his body still and his breathing steady, listening carefully. When he heard nothing but the chirping of birds outside, he let out a soft sigh of relief and got up. His room was a small space up on the second floor, well lit by the circular window facing Winterwards. He kept his living space bare, furnished only by a simple bed, a dresser, and a brown, single-strap satchel resting on top of the latter.

Almost reflexively, as he stretched, his mana pooled into his hands, the lack of an attribute causing it to feel like a cold gel, the feeling of raw power tingling at his palms. In the five years since his baptism, his skill in magic had advanced by leaps and bounds, aided by his [Scholar] Class, and nothing had advanced more than his Dark Magic skill. Now up to Medium Dark Magic Lv. 8, he scoffed at the crude attempts at magic he had made as a child.

The non-attributed mana, in a long familiar process, turned to Dark Mana, its potential condensing into a more limited yet easy to manipulate state, and he began braiding it, mentally twisting threads into strings and strings into ropes, weaving them all together into a single, invisible tapestry. With a mental effort, he released the spell from his control, the mana dispersing into a cloud of darkness hovering around his body, muffling sounds and turning him nearly invisible inside the unlit room.

You have cast Shadow Cloak! You have gained experience in the Medium Dark Magic dynamic skill!

Even muffled by the effects of a tier 3 spell, he took care to avoid the creaky planks on the floor, tip toeing his way over his dresser. Looking at his options, he frowned. There was a hand me down set from his father; a linen tunic and pants that had been patched and repaired so many times they looked like a quilt. Even at fifteen years old, the clothes hung loosely on his wiry [Scholar]’s frame, making him look like a child. Normally, he would pass over that set without hesitation, but for the recent issue with his second set.

After he had picked his class five years ago, the [Research Librarian] who was the sole proprietor at the local library had taken him on as an assistant, giving him a small salary. His first purchase had been a simple brown robe from the town’s tailor, a clear sign to any onlooker that he had taken a mental type class in contrast to his father’s farming class and profession. Unfortunately, after five years, it had finally run out of hems to let down. Already, he had pushed it to the limits of its wearability; it hadn’t covered his shins in a year.

With a sigh, he moved onto the last set of clothes, a new set of lightly colored formal wear. It was a complicated, frilly mess, with three layers of silk fastened with silver-plated buttons and topped with a heavy overcoat. In the unchanging, sunny climate of the Spring Belt, it was a torture device of sweat and dust. It rode up in some places, and was too loose in others, uncomfortable when sitting or standing.

Still… he thought, imagining the alternatives, I guess I can drop the coat and one of the layers? It shouldn’t be too fancy to be a problem. With another sigh, he began getting dressed, fumbling awkwardly with a lace that had to be wrapped around two different buttons, before giving up and dropping it, leaving his left sleeve to hang over his shoulder.

He gestured with his right hand, conjuring a mote of Ice Mana and stacking layers on it, grabbing the disk of flat ice out of the air as it materialized.

You have cast Hand Mirror! You have gained experience in the Medium Ice Magic dynamic skill! You have cast Faint Illumination! You have gained experience in the Medium Light Magic dynamic skill!

“Hm,” He said, muttering to himself, “I guess that works.” He looked carefully at his face, frowning as he saw more pale blonde hairs poking through on his upper lip. “Maybe fire…? There’s gotta be someone who wrote down how to shave…”

He whipped his head towards his window as he heard creaking from below him, cursing softly as he saw the soft light of dawn illuminating the wooden planks of his room. Already weakening from the passage of time, the morning light dissolved the remnants of his Shadow Cloak spell.

Cautiously, he peeked his head out of his door, looking down the rickety staircase separating the upper and lower parts of the house. On the ground floor, a black bushel of hair emerged from a room near the front door, straightening up to reveal Sam’s father, a tall, bearded man whose thick eyebrows drew towards the center of his face in a perpetual scowl. Muscled and tanned from decades of working under the sun, his class was as imposing as his figure. [Crop Lord], his fifth class, was a rare and powerful evolution of the [Farmer] class.

Orphaned before he ever knew his parents, Robert, never Bobby or Bob, had been forced to beg for food before a passing [Priest] took pity on the boy and baptized him. Rather than take the [Urchin] class that the System had offered him, he had taken the more common and rather weak [Worker] class, finding employment on the very same farm which he now owned. Through sheer grit and determination, he had leveled over and over, gaining stat points and skills. He had risen to become one of the highest leveled farmers in the entire belt, attacking the level 100 barrier that separated the common folk to the elites of the world, the Rankers. To reach that level as a non-combat class, without killing a single monster was rare, though not unheard of. Had he reached his [Crop Lord] class twenty… no, even ten years earlier, he would have been considered a prodigy, likely to approach divinity at level 200.

Sam grimaced and ducked back inside his room. I wasted too much time. If I try to walk out past him, he’ll drag me to help dig up potatoes or something. What to do…

Sam walked over to his window, on the opposite side of the house from the front door, looking out over the fields. Maybe if I just wait until he and Mom leave, I can leave after them? No, that’s no good. They’d see me. He took a deep breath, then gathered his mana again, changing it to the heavy, unyielding Soil attribute. With effort, he began shaping the mana into four thick, donut-like rings, each slightly smaller than the last. Once each was finished, he stacked it on top of the last, creating a tapering column of Soil Mana. Dropping the column of mana out the window, he felt it fall and impact the ground, though the mana itself remained invisible. As it hit, it melted into the ground and churned the earth, shooting up a pillar of packed dirt several feet wide.

You have cast Rock Tower! You have gained experience in the Medium Soil Magic dynamic skill! Your proficiency in Medium Soil Magic has increased from Level 3 to Level 4!

He raised his eyebrows in surprise as a column of dirt silently rose from the ground. It finished its ascent a few feet below his window, just as he had intended. The tier 4 spell had taken over a third of his mana pool, even with the cost reduction from his Medium Soil Magic Skill. Customizing it to be silent and exactly the height he needed it must have been a sufficient enough challenge for the System to recognize his advancement. He shrugged. I’ll happily take it.

He pushed open the glass window, the hinge at the top creaking slightly. He winced, then paused. Hearing no reaction from downstairs, he grabbed his satchel from the dresser and swung it over his shoulder, jumping out of the window and onto the pillar. From there, the packed dirt platform was close enough to the ground for him to jump down the rest of the way without injuring himself. Out of the twenty attribute points he had gained over the past five years, he had put only two in END, bringing his total to 11, ever so slightly above the average for a baseline human. Even that slight increase helped immensely, allowing him to easily act with a level of athleticism that would have had him winded before his baptism.

It was, he rued, still not enough from stopping the leather straps of his sandals from digging painfully into his feet. He waved his hand and the rock tower folded in on itself, leaving only a patch bare of grass or plants.

His stealthy egress completed, he began jogging towards the town. Today I’ve got to… let’s see. Check for a book on shaving. Maybe one of Naelee’s travelogues? He tends to ramble. Yes, I’ll check there first. Then, I think Martha asked me to catalogue the new shipment we got. I can wrap that up fairly quickly, then I should still have some time to work on my theory. If there’s anything from-

“Hey! Kid! Sam!”

A gruff voice shook Sam out of his musings. Without him noticing, fifteen minutes had passed and he had traveled the mile separating his father’s farm from the main town. Sam found himself in the center of Gulwich’s central business district; a long, cobblestone-paved road lined brightly colored brick and wood shops. Even just a few minutes after the break of dawn, the street was bustling with activity.

The man who had called out to Sam was the town’s sole baker, a fact made clear by the signboard above his shop, featuring the man’s face on a stylized pastry. Sam furrowed his brows. Oh, crap, what’s his name? I know Robert and Mom have had him over for dinner a couple times. I’ve met him! Without making outwards movements, Sam gathered his mana. Instead of changing its type, he willed it forwards in a tentacle of non-attributed mana, reaching out and touching the man’s chest.

You have cast Basic Appraisal! You have gained experience in the Medium Divination Magic dynamic skill!

The tier 1 spell was the most basic and iconic spell in the entire Non-attributed Magic school, easily blocked by anyone with sufficient mana sense and control to intercept the tendril with one of their own. All it did was interface with the System and pull up part of the target’s status information, making it a rare case of a spell that required both the caster and the target to have been baptized.

Name: Phyllo Race: Human Affiliation: Gulwich Town Council Class: Pastry Chef Level: 72/12 Class History: Not Visible Attributes: Not Visible Highest Dynamic Skill: Advanced Pastry Baking Lv. 3

“Oh, Phyllo, sir,” Sam said, tipping his head politely. “Good morning.”

“Morning, Sam,” the baker said, grabbing a muffin off of his counter and tossing it through the air. Sam caught it, looking surprised. “I’ve got a job for you.” Sam looked at the man suspiciously as he continued. “Tell your boss that I said, ‘The kindling is ready’ and that’s on the house. She’ll know what I mean.”

Thoughtfully, looking between the baker and the baked good, Sam dug into his bag with his empty hand, grabbing a couple of iron disks.

“I can pay, thanks,” he said, dropping the coins onto the counter. “I’ll let Martha know.”

He turned and jogged away, taking a bite out of the muffin, failing to notice the baker’s expression sour behind him at the slight. Maybe I should have taken the freebie, he thought, wincing at the feeling of lightness at his side. Nah, he definitely wanted something else from me. Just carrying a message isn’t worth this.

The Gulwich Library was near the center of town, a large building of mismatched parts. Its core was a simple brick house, once the getaway retreat of a rich mage. After his death, his collection of tomes and histories had been opened to the public, collecting other books from donations and purchases. Over the hundred years since the mage’s death in the year 9897, multiple new wings in different styles had been added to contain the books, creating a structure that was more like four buildings mashed into a single, barely coherent whole.

It’s eclectic appearance was in sharp contrast to its neighboring buildings. The town hall, where the oldest, highest leveled, and most respected members of the town met to decide local affairs, was an impressive working of marble. Only three years old, the town had commissioned a Ranker, a soil mage cum architect, to raise the building in a single night.

On the opposite side was the Adventurer’s Guild hall, the only guild large and pervasive enough to bother making an official outpost in a small town like Gulwich. For many years, the multi-level wooden building had been the largest structure in the entire area. It had acted as the default meeting place, as a combination tavern, restaurant, government building and of course, center for all adventuring-related needs and organization. Until the Church of the Five had established a real presence, it had even served as a school, making for strange and amusing scenes where Duril, the guild worker, gave drinks to the council with one hand and taught their kids how to read and write with the other.

Sam unlocked the door to the library, leaving it unlocked but firmly closed behind him to preserve the cool, dry air. Reveling in the relief from the humidity, he took a deep breath, drinking in the crisp smell of paper and the utter silence of the building. Almost regretfully, he ran a current of non-attributed mana through a plate next to the door, activating the magic lights on the walls.

The balls of glass cast a soft, orange glow on the inside of the building, illuminating shelves upon shelves of books. Mass-produced copies were shelved together with hand bound and written tomes, papyrus scrolls in cubby holes next to maps, posters, and drawings of weapon movements. At the front of the library, facing the door, was Sam’s post, a simple desk, wide enough to be used as a counter with a lockable cabinet taking up the entire bottom half.

Sam sat at his desk for a moment, throwing his feet up on its surface. Taking a bite out the muffin, he thought for a moment. I’ve probably got another hour or two before Martha comes in. He reached under his desk, unlocking the cabinet in a practiced motion and reaching in, pulling out several notebooks. Each was filled margin to margin with messy scrawl, Sam noting various pertinent pieces of information along with the author, date, and work he got them from. Reading through the most recent one, he stopped on the page he had been writing yesterday. His mouth half full, he mumbled to himself, reading from the page. “Year five thousand and… thirty six, a [Fire Mage] invents the tier 6 spell Conflagration. Six years later and he’s over level 150? No, that can’t be right.” He grabbed another book from under his desk, a heavy, well-worn tome titled Hamish’s Guide to Classes Sixth Edition.

The [Scholar] flipped through it, muttering. “Warrior archetypes, no. Scout archetypes, no. Tank archetypes, no… there. Mages. [Fire Mage]. A basic class that provides strong bonuses to training the Fire Magic dynamic skill and often provides skills related to Fire Magic, serving as both a gateway to true mastery of magic and a strong offensive side class to those with enough points in intelligence to take it. Requirements vary, but often requires Medium Fire Magic proficiency and an intelligence score of at least twenty-five. Generally taken directly after [Mage] or [Elemental Mage]. So, a second or third class.” Sam closed the book and sat back.

“This is big,” he muttered, running some quick numbers through his head. “Even if he took [Fire Mage] as his fourth class, that speed shouldn’t be possible.” A broad smile rose to cover his face.

Heralded only by a soft tapping sound, the door to the library swung open silently, revealing a woman, the sun’s backlight turning her silvery mane into a burning halo. “Good news, Sam?”

Over the course of her sixty-odd years of life, Martha the [Research Librarian] had put a single point in STR, enough to bring her up to the human baseline of 10. Every other point, without exception, had gone into INT and WIL. The result was a tiny, frail woman who needed a cane to walk without pain, yet who could cow people twice her size and level with a glance. Despite her stern, no-nonsense demeanor, everyone in the town seemed to like her in a way that Sam could neither understand nor replicate, had he been inclined to try. Instead, he was content to stay under her wing in the library, shielded from the gossip by Martha’s reputation.

Under her harsh glare, Sam’s grin wilted, and he brushed the muffin crumbs on the desk into a trash can. Her gaze unwavering, he sheepishly gathered his scattered notebooks, stacking them and returning them to the cabinet below. At that, she finally relented, sighing and placing her forehead in her palm.

“What were you smiling about?” She asked, hobbling over to the desk and looking over his shoulder. She wrinkled her nose. “What in Icharsus’ name is that supposed to say? ‘Bog Muck’?”

Sam looked at where her finger was pointing and frowned. “[Fire Mage]. Are your eyes okay, grandma?”

She snorted. “If you don’t fix your handwriting, I might gouge them out just so I don’t have to see your scribbling anymore.” She paused, then added, “Whippersnapper.”

He chuckled, then pointed at his notes. “This guy, Frederik, was not a gifted mage. He was somewhere between level 20 and 79 when he invented Conflagration, in his mid thirties. Probably somewhere around the higher end if he was experimenting with tier 6 spells, that’s a lot of mana.”

Martha shrugged. “So? What’s weird about that? He was about average, and then he got lucky and the System canonized his spell.”

Sam’s grin returned as he pointed to the second part of his notes. “Six years later, he was somewhere over level 150. Confirmed and witnessed.”

The older woman’s eyes widened as she went through the same math as Sam had a few minutes before. “That’s impossible. Rankers average about a year a level. I can believe that a genius with a lot of luck might be able to get from level 50 to 100 in six years. Might. But to get that, and then another fifty? Impossible.”

Sam shrugged. “Or… my theory is right.”

Martha tapped her chin. “It has some more credence now, but it’s still just circumstantial evidence.”

Annoyed, Sam closed his notebook. “I know, Martha. I need more info than this library can get me.”

She walked over to an armchair, tapping her cane all the way, then sat down with a sigh of relief. “Sam, you need to relax. I’m not ordering you to do anything, I’m not commenting on your capabilities. What is it that you kids say now? Chill out?” She grinned and raised her cane above her head, gesturing at the shelves she was sitting by, two of the most frequented spots in the library. “Maybe try reading some mysteries, eh? Or...” She paused dramatically, “Perhaps a romance?”

The boy huffed, then stood up. “I’m going to go look through the new shipment of books we got yesterday. Feel free to read that garbage by yourself.” He strode away, stopping just before he reached the back of the central room. “I forgot to mention,” he said, “Someone wanted me to tell you something.”

“Oh?” She asked, “would you care to give me some information? Who, when, and what? Or shall I attempt to divine meaning from ‘someone’ and ‘something’?”

“It was this morning,” he replied, rolling his eyes, “Um. Mr…. The baker said something about kindling being ready.”

“I see,” Martha said, nodding sagely. “In that case, I have a job for you at lunch today. No running off to see your buddy next door.”

Sam groaned.

“Hey! You can’t just sit and read all day! I don’t pay you for that!” Martha shooed him away, gesturing animatedly with her free hand. “Now git! Those books won’t label themselves!”