Peeking out from underneath the covers of his bed, Merlin managed to see the sun almost all the way above the horizon from the window by his bed.

He rolled back onto his back staring up at the ceiling. Despite his best attempts and promises to Arwen he was unable to fall asleep last night. Deciding to get his chores done with before the others woke up, he rose up from the bed.

After swiftly getting dressed in his clothes he grabbed a bucket from the kitchen and walked towards the lake behind the orphanage. Yes orphanage, he was an abandoned child. Though not by choice in reality. The reason was that Merlin was an elf. Amongst all the races they were ranked last for almost any job or position. This caused a great deal of elves to try and become adventures and fight the monsters for money, yet the only classes easily available to them were magic classes.

Remembering to last night and how Arwen said that magic was lacking and it truly was. For magic users rising above level 60 was hard enough. This caused many elves to perish when they tried to encounter higher level monsters, just like his parents.

He snapped out of his thoughts as his foot stepped in a puddle near the lake. Looking down at the puddle what reflected back at him was a 10 year old elf boy with white hair with eyes being a light blue seemingly possessing an intelligence beyond his age.

Looking back up he filled the bucket from the lake and returned to the house. Unlike other kids, some even younger than him, he had terrible strength and his stamina was low. What some needed 10 minutes to even make a few trips with water he had take a half hour to do it.

This morning however he took things a little slower than usual due to waking up so early. While he would never admit it, he was more daydreaming about unlocking his status than doing his chores.

When he finally finished the rest of the kids were getting up and started to come to the kitchen were some of the older ones started making food for them. Merlin looked around at the 30 other odds kids that stayed their with him. In most other eyes it would seem that they are one happy family, though a large one at that. However for Merlin they were merely people who stayed at the same place.

Unlike most of the kids here who could potentially become a craftsmen or warrior, Merlin was the oddball out with being an elf.

Seeing him come inside, 12 year old human girl, named Mary, called out to him, “Merlin can you wake up Miss. Arwen? We can’t get her up again.”

Looking and seeing how busy they were, with Mary and others her age all looking after the younger ones and cooking Merlin nodded in response. Seeing the response and acting like it was normal she yelled a quick thanks before resuming attention to the food she was making.

Walking to the end of the hallway Merlin opened the door that led to Arwen’s room. Like him, Arwen was also an elf choosing to help the children instead of other jobs she could have. She had one flaw when it came to taking care of children, she liked to sleep in. Most often the kids would have to do everything and wake her up afterwards.

Merlin had been doing it recently and managed to get a good way to wake her up. Locating one of her feet, Merlin began to stroke the bottom of said foot. Almost immediately afterwards Arwen feel onto the floor laughing hysterically. Snapping out of the daze she saw Merlin at the foot of the bed with a large smile on his face.

Yawning, Miss. Arwen rubbed her eyes and looked at Merlin, “Thanks *yawn* for getting me,... getting me up again Merlin. Now hop on out so I can get dressed.”

With a smile still on his face he walked out of the room responding to Arwen, “As long as you don’t go back to bed, got it Miss. Arwen?”

“Yeah, yeah,” she responded. After he left she muttered to herself, “Just how in the world did he find out I was ticklish there so fast?”

After breakfast, the older kids streamed outside to do their chores or get to their masters as many took on in order to get used to and learn skills for their classes. The younger ones stayed inside as they went to a large room near the front and arranged themselves into their desks, not fully awake yet making the process easy for Arwen.

As she prepared for the day there were a few knocks on the door before it opened up to reveal a few villagers with their own children. The children ran inside to their places where they greeted their friends for the day.

Beside just housing orphan children, the orphanage doubled as a school for the locals where they could get together before going to learn various bits of information not said by their parents.

Merlin was about to head out when, he heard Arwen call out to him, “Merlin could you help me with class today so I can take you to the temple right afterwards?”

As a bit of a loner with the other children he had no reason to disagree.

Walking into the classroom behind Arwen he saw the 30 odd kids that were under the age of 10 and could still enjoy a bit childhood. Ignoring the stares he got from them he looked towards Arwen to see if she would tell him what she wanted done.

Without even turning around she said, “Please pass out the slates please Merlin along with utensils for them.” She proceeded to head up front in order to look over what she would teach today.

Nodding, despite knowing she was not looking at him, he passed out the slates with a few younger ones grouping up due to there not being enough. Once Merlin finished he took a seat by one of the windows and stared outside.

Moments later Arwen started her lecture.

“Now as a few of you are already aware with the creation of monsters the gods implemented a leveling system. Now write down on your slate the different class groupings, please” After waiting a few moments She asked them to raise the slates with their answers towards her. “Very good most of you got three of the groupings, which are warrior, craftsmen, and unique. Starting with unique they can represent a wide variety of jobs however they are only offered by the gods or as successors to a current unique class holder. Warriors are those fight directly against monsters or even protect the peace in cities such as the local watch. They use Ki to enhance themselves with a variety of weapons to do what their jobs. Craftsmen is the group that covers everything that does not fit in the others. Now despite its name it can include jobs such as Chef, Scribe, or even my own class of Caretaker.”

Hearing the description one girl raised her hand and shyly asked, “Would daddy’s lumberjack job be a Warrior class? He uses his ax like a weapon.”

Hearing the question Arwen smiled answering, “No, his would be under Craftsmen. Craftsmen actually has the most of any grouping as most people do not have other class types. Now despite this there is one grouping that none of you mentioned. It is that of Mage. At the moment this has the least classes as no one has managed to reach past level 100. The highest level recorded is level 82. The ability of this group is the ability to manipulate Mana to create spells with high power for that level.”

“Moving along, now classes under Warrior are a bit special. At certain levels there are opportunities to advance their class and gain more power and specialization along a path. Now write down on your slates what levels you think the advancements happen at.” After a time she had them raise the slates again. “This time most of you were off by quite a bit. Those of you who remember I hinted at a level earlier. Well for those who don’t know the levels are 100 and 200. It is speculated that Mage classes are also able to do so, however no one has reached high enough to do it.”

One the older kids raised their hands asking, “Why do people choose a Mage class if no one can reach high levels?’

“Very good question. The reason people do it is for the chance of becoming a champion.” Upon hearing the word champion reverence and awe appeared in their eyes as their parents had long since told them the story of the first champion of the gods.

Seeing the look in their eyes Arwen smiled and continued speaking, “It has long been known that out of all the gods only Vigilem has not yet ever crowned a champion. Custos is known as half of the King of the Earth that took the Master in as champion. Who would not want to be a champion of the King of the Earth.” Hearing this the children excitement riled up causing Arwen to have to wait until they calmed down to continue talking.

Once they did so Arwen continued. “Now as part of classes a person gains skills related to the class. Each skill has five tiers with each tier consisting of Low, Middle, High, and Mastered levels. It should be noted that Mastered only appears if you max a skill at High when you are not yet ready for the next tier of the skill.”

Speaking up suddenly Merlin called out, “Miss. Arwen it is almost noon time.” She looked out the window to see what time it was and nodded her head agreeing with Merlin. Looking back at the class she told them, “Alright class is over today your parents will pick up you up soon so I hope to see you tomorrow.”

About an hour later the last of the non-Orphanage kids had left with their parents. Calling out to the older students done training for the day, “Watch over the young ones. I need to take Merlin to the temple for his status awakening.”

Voicing their consent Arwen smiled and turned back to Merlin, “Now that is done let us get you to the temple, Merlin.”

Merlin merely shrugged at her words and started walking out the door. Following the path they headed into the center of the village.

Now calling where they live a village might be slight understatement of the sheer size of it. A more accurate description would be a town. However the large reason for its size was it was a border town. It was one of the towns that were near the edges of the known kingdoms.

While, not on the edge it was where almost all warriors passed through in order to reach the edge to expand the various kingdoms. The total population would vary on the number of adventures staying there, but the lowest it would reach was about 2,500 of permanent residences.

Due to the skills of priest and priestess of Caeli for healing and proximity to fighting they had a permanent temple set up near the center of town. Unlike some of the inner temples this one was more low key in terms of scale or materials just in case it needed to abandoned due to a monster swarm. Though in reality most of the temples were identical with them always in fixed patterns. It was just a matter of how pretty it was.

It was a temple that despite being on the low side still had plenty of activity with groups of coelum tending to the temple. Spread about were paladins looking for any that would dare to cause trouble. In reality they were here to help protect the town in emergencies along with protecting the holy people.

It was this scene that Merlin and Arwen walked into. Seeing Arwen, one child who was training to be priest notified the local head who was in charge of such things. Merlin stared around the temple in awe as it was one of the largest buildings around with the only one surpassing it being the keep where supplies and soldiers for the town’s defense were kept for emergencies.

He soon noticed a person approaching them. He studied her as she approached. She was a coelum that possessed a third eye on her forehead who was in her elder years as he could see the wrinkles on her face especially around her mouth, indicating she spent much of her time with a smile, with hair greying unlike his own silver hair.

She approached them and spoke first, “Ah Arwen, it has been a while since you have visited. You really must come more often.”

“Oh, I really want to I just can’t seem to make time while caring for all the children. You know that don’t you Diane? I say this almost everytime.”

“Hehe, I know, I know. I just hope to loosen your mood you seem so tense all the time.”

It was at this comment that Merlin muttered, “Really she justs wants to sleep more, hehe.”

The child who notified the head heard Merlin and tried his best to not laugh in front of Diane, but she caught onto his smile. She looked at Merlin and winked with a knowing smile on her face. Arwen just stood with a confused look on her face on what was going on. Merlin just put on a wry smile and stayed quite.

“So this must be the boy who I am to awaken a status for? An elf eh? Even I do not see many of your kind around often, and I am almost 200 years old!”

Shaking her head to clear it from what happened earlier Arwen responded, “Ah, yes this is Merlin. We do not know his exact birth date but my skill indicated he was ready for it. Also could we hurry a little I have quite a few little ones at the orphanage still.”

“Naturally. Follow me then.” Pausing for a moment she turned to the boy who called her, “And you may return to your duties.” The boy bowed slightly before running off to where he stood watch observing a priest doing his duties.

Priestess Diane led them to a side room where on the floor was a complicated mess of symbols and runes, that separated seem weak, yet with all of them together were powerful.

“Stand in the center please Merlin so we may begin. I assume you know what to do Arwen?”

Nodding to Diane, she looked down at Merlin and gave him an encouraging smile with small wave of her hand to gesture him forward.

Standing in the center Merlin turned to face where the priestess and Arwen stood and saw them standing in two more circles near the edge.

Diane had her eyes closed when Merlin felt a rush of power surge out her body into the floor, and instantly the room was filled with a white light.