HP, health points, a way to tell if he’s dying. MP, mana points, a way to tell how much magic he can’t use. Strength is how much of a big boy he is. Agility represents how fast he can run away from enemies. Endurance will be how long he can hold onto a ledge when dangling off a cliff along with HP regeneration. Dexterity is how flexible and nimble he is when he needs to twirl a plow to more accurately dig ditches. Intelligence is for how much of a smartypants he can be and also regenerates MP.

The class level should be obvious. The higher the level, the more skills he would have if he had a class. Affinity level is how strong your affinity is. For example, let’s say two people with fire affinity have the same level of class of mage. They both shoot a fireball. The lower level affinity shoots plain old fire, but the higher leveled affinity shoots something closer to the origin of fire that is more powerful. The origin of an affinity is a law of the universe. The origin is the first of its kind and often the strongest, which set its law to be followed.

Right now, he was using all his smartypants levels to try and figure out what this tall ladies deal was.

She walked toward the village while he was standing in the field outside of the entrance to it. She took very balanced steps, like a ninja on a tight rope. He saw her stop in front of the entrance, a gust of wind blew past, making the excess cloth flutter in the wind.

…. Looks like no eagle cry was going to happen.

Hoot

What the hell was an owl doing hooting around during the daytime? Wait, he can see it. It was in a pine tree a distance from the village. Very colorful for an owl, it looked like a tie-dye T-shirt. Its eyes looked to be closed until they weren’t. It had opened one eye and was glaring at him. It looked like it was saying “come at me bro” with its eye.

He began to laugh maniacally in his mind when-

Crack

“What the fuck are you looking at, get back to work.”

He got whipped.

He took one last glance at the tall woman, shrugged his shoulders, and got back to work. Plowing away, digging ditches to plant a weird grain-like crop called Boonce, for the spring. Boonce was a staple part of any villager’s diet, people make Boonce flour that is used in a variety of things ranging from bread to pasta. It’s just used instead of wheat. But Boonce has a very peculiar color to it. It is metallic gold in color. Loaves of bread are often mistaken for bars of gold by people.

It does not snow in Zola, or the entire Sertrace kingdom for that matter. This country was near the equator, so he had been told, but this whole world just seems cooler than earth. Maybe it was just getting out of an ice age. It wasn’t boiling near the equator, weird.

When he finished his day, the sun had set. He had five fresh whip marks on his body. He used the moonlight to illuminate his way towards his shack. The old decaying thing was tilted to one side after Jack kicked it. Lily and Jack, who had gotten stronger over the years, would both be leaving for the capital in a week. Good riddance, he says, they had gotten bored of tormenting him after he had started laughing at their attempts. Like, throwing poop at a person? Your hands will get dirty too, at least use a shovel, like come on, is this amateur hour?

He shook his head, chuckling as he walked through the door frame. When he was through, he dropped to the ground and started pounding the ground with his fist.

“Why, why, why? I was supposed to be the hero, everyone should love me.”

He began to cry as he nursed his bruised hands. Bemoaning about how unfair it was and why he was even here if he was just going to rot away.

Creak

He shot his head up. He saw the tall lady, sitting on a box by the wall that he used as a chair

He stared at her for a few seconds thinking of what to say.

“Hello there, may I ask what you are doing in my humble abode?”

He had stopped crying and put on a smile. In hindsight, it might have been a bit creepy to switch emotions so fast.

“Uhh, yeah…. I’ll just leave, I did not realize that this shack was occupied, sorry”

He instinctively grabbed her hand as she was about to leave. His hand slid under the fabric and armor to touch her skin, it was rough. She quickly jolted her hand back, as if she had been burned.

“Sorry, sorry. But if you want to, you can stay, I don’t mind. This tiny shack is big enough for two.”

The tall lady rubbed the spot where she had been touched, then bound the cloth around the hand tighter. He never caught a glimpse of any skin. She seemed troubled but eventually nodded.

“Alright then. Mind if I stay here for three days?”

“No problem. As long as you can ignore my snoring that is.”

He chuckled and she began to relax.

“My name is Zelhaut, may I have yours?”

“My name is No-.. Anon.”

He sat on the ground with his legs crossed, getting drowsy from exhaustion.

“So what brings you way out here in the boonies.”

“Just passing through”

He could not believe it. Here was someone escaping, a real live fugitive on the run. Get her an orange jumpsuit, and it would be perfect.

“Soo, what are you doing living in this shack? It doesn’t even have a door.”

“Why are you in this shack and not in the inn just down the road?”

She seemed surprised by the rapid response.

“You have a manaless class, I don’t know how you got tricked into learning that class, or how you may have found a book to be able to learn it, but I don’t care. Just identify me, you’ll be able to tell.”

“Anon” leaned forward, he saw a glow from within the mask. She sucked in a quick breath and leaned back.

“Perpetual? Never heard of that one before. What does it do?”

“If I use any mana at all, it will continue to drain out of me until my eventual death from lack of mana. So I need to ask, do you have a master’s level?”

A master’s level is a high enough level that they are considered a master. Usually, around level one hundred, they gain a skill that allows them to offer knowledge to others, allowing them the chance to attain the master’s same class. Master’s can do it directly, or, transfer the knowledge to an object, most of the time this object is a book. Someone opens the book, rudimentary knowledge about the class is transferred to their brain, and they now have the class. The book would disintegrate into ash after one use.

“I am not at a master’s level, and I don’t have a class book.”

She didn’t have a master’s level or a class book. He didn’t ask for a book, but she must have predicted his next question. Well, this was a bummer, he was butt hurt.

“Really? That sucks ass.”

He had decided that tonight would be butt-themed.

“Would you like some butter?”

“Why, yes, if you could spare some”

“Sorry, I don’t have any”

“But you just said, “Would you like some butter?” did you not?”

“I did say that. That doesn’t mean I have any, look at me, I live in a shack and am treated like the butt-end of a joke.”

“....”

“Oh come on, no laugh?”

She turned away as if thinking. Then she turned towards him again.

“I wouldn’t want to butt in on your comedy routine”

“Haha, hihi”

He sounded like Michael Jackson at the end of the laugh which just made him laugh harder. He laughed and laughed until he started getting faint from lack of air. He then went unconscious.

When he woke up it was still nighttime. He was lying on the dirt floor in a spread-eagle position. There was a scraping noise coming from the other side of the room. “Anon” was turned towards the corner, sharpening something judging by the noise. He slowly got up into the crouching position and tried to sneak up on her. He wanted to know what she was hiding.

Before he managed to get close enough, she stood up and turned around, no sign of what she had been sharpening anywhere in sight.

“Would you like something?”

“Hmm… Why don’t you tell me about your travels?”

He was disappointed that he didn’t get to see what she was sharpening, but whatever.

“What do you want to hear about specifically?”

“I want to know more about the geography of this continent and interesting things about other continents.”

“Mmmh, ok. But you have to promise not to tell anybody else, or else they may wonder where you got the information.”

“Mums the word.”

“What does that mean?”

“Oh!.. It’s just something people around here say. It means that I’ll stay quiet about it.”

“Alright then.”

She sat back down, crossed her legs, and leaned back against the wall.

“The continent we are now on is shaped like a lower case n, all the countries and empires are on the left side of the n. The length of the left side of the n is split with a big river. It is split widthwise in the upper section as well. All of these big rivers originate from a huge lake called hard water lake, which is located in the upper-left portion of the n. For the sake of convenience, just imagine a lower case L that is split into two sections on the right side and three sections on the left side. Are you following so far?”

“Barely, this is so confusing and boring.”

“You’re the one that wanted it. Whatever, I’ll just say some simple stuff. Three continents are uninhabited. The Undra continent is the central continent and houses most races, with the majority being human. The Glowinsiar and Alpindwa continents house the strongest empires in the world. In Glowinsiar there is the elven Artaipoll Empire. Alpindwa houses the Dwarven Hargarveer Empire. The three uninhabited continents are called, Tunjiard, Ingrandia, and Pilontsar. Happy?”

“Yes, that was very interesting”

He thought about asking “Anon” if he could go with her, but he knew she would just turn him down. She was a fugitive on the run at a high level, he could never keep up with her.

Drip.

“What is that? It’s so black.”

There was a growing puddle of a very black substance. It looked so black it was like the night sky with no stars. Blacker than black. He quickly swiped his finger out and touched it. Then he put his finger into his mouth because that was the most normal action to take when faced with a mysterious liquid.

“Noo! Spit that out, now!”

He spits it out onto the ground.

“What?”

“That is a dangerous liquid. Did you swallow any?”

He looked up at “Anon” who had just yelled at him. That black stuff was dripping out from under her mask. She sounded very angry that he had tried to eat it, so he did the logical thing, he lied.

“No, I didn’t swallow any, I spit it all out.”

The black substance had stopped dripping from her mask.

“I’ll clean this up, you go stand outside or something, and don’t follow me.”

He went to stand in the doorway to see what she was going to do.

She pulled out a shovel from somewhere, must have a spatial bag. She continued to dig a huge hole and throw all the dirt that touched the black substance into her bag. Not a lick of the black stuff could be seen anywhere, she was very thorough.

He smiled at the joke in his mind.

She walked past him in the doorway and disappeared into the night. He waited. She walked back into the shack five minutes later. She filled the hole with dirt, it seemed to be a different color than the dirt around it.

He wondered what it could have been. It was just so black it was unbelievable. He had no idea what it could have been. But he is already treated as a slave and stuck here, so death might not be so bad.

“Well, I’m tired. Goodnight, don’t let the bug buts bite”

He laid down on his new dirt floor. He looked over to see “Anon” also laying down, the moonlight streaming down through the doorway. He heard the grinding of teeth. She must be a teeth grinder, weird, he wouldn’t have imagined her as a teeth grinder. The grinding sounded slightly off from the teeth grinding he had heard. Sounded like metal grinding together, weird. But he was too tired to care, he had a full day of slaving tomorrow, it’s very important to get sleep when slaving. So he silenced his mind of tonight’s events and went to sleep.