“Little Bird, stop that. It’s creepy.” Cat looked over my shoulder with a look of polite disgust. That look, thankfully, was suddenly replaced by one of clarity. “Aha~ we can use this. You need to focus more for training to work and you clearly haven’t gotten any action in a while so let’s do this~.” Cat looked at me with a very non-imagined twinkle in her eye. She then crossed her arms at her ribs and leaned forward until she was eye level with me. As I was curled in the corner furiously scribbling in my diary, she had to lean quite far. I swear on my pinkie toe I didn’t look down.

“Alright Little Bird~” Cat purred. No really. It was strange and frightening. “If you catch me with your wires, you can spend the night in my room~ How about it~?”

“D…do I count to ten or…?” I stuttered a little. Perfectly reasonable. Cat chuckled.

“Just do your best m’kay~?” With that, she strutted out of my corner and waited back in the center of the training hall.

Dear Journal of an Incredibly Manly Man:

I’m getting laid tonight.

Two months. That’s how long it took Cat to teach me the fighting style she envisioned. I’ll admit, it was a pretty clever way to combine sneaking, assassination, and magic training all in one. The style she showed me relied on using wires, which could be manipulated with the right tools, to make traps. It was neat because the wires could be coated in poison if one had enough time to prepare, or just surrounded by mana in a pinch. It took a lot of training to get to the point where I could make the mana sharp without breaking the wire. (Trust me, I’m still struggling with the concept.) But eventually, I was able to use it in actual combat.

It took another ten months on top of those two for me to learn everything she wanted to teach me about sneaking and assassination. Most of my training happened in the guild house, but Cat regularly took me out to test my skills on monsters we hunted at nearby forests and in the mountains. I’m honestly shocked at just how skilled Cat is. She let me see her status plate at one point as a sign of trust or something and I think I shit myself.

NAME: Cat ﴾Third Prong﴿

TITLE: Town Menace/ Slayer of the Rat King/ The Tiger’s Third Daughter/ The shadow/ The ghost/ Fleet-footed/ Master of the Third Prong/ Apprentice Magus/ Butcher of Men/ Butcher of Monsters/ Butcher of Animals/ Servant of the Dark

AGE: 28

RACE: Beast-Kin (Tiger)

LEVEL: 164

CLASS: Master Assassin/ Shadow Walker

STRENGTH: 620

VITALITY: 845

SPEED: 1253

AGILITY: 1060

LUCK: 219

INTELLIGENCE: 616

DEXTERITY: 1282

MANA: 412

SKILLS: ???

It seems most stats increase by about 3-5 when you level up, but by that logic Cat had over 300 speed when she was level one, which seemed a bit impossible to me. When I asked, she told me that you can also raise stats by training in that specific field, a weight-lifter, for example, would have a higher strength than an acrobat of the same level. Also apparently there are skills and items that you can buy that obscure parts of your status, like skills, stats, or titles, though I wouldn’t really need them anymore.

Anyway after a year of training I thought I’d grown really strong, only to see that Cat could still kick my ass. Really, the comparison is a tad depressing.

NAME: Jin ﴾Third Prong﴿

TITLE: Enigmatic/ Endless Sleeper/ Graduate of the Third Prong

AGE: 20

RACE: ???

LEVEL: 20

CLASS: Assassin

STRENGTH: 80

VITALITY: 131

SPEED: 178

AGILITY: 173

LUCK: -10

INTELLIGENCE: 91

DEXTERITY: 184

MANA: 122

SKILLS: Origin Lvl 2. Traveler (+lighten load/+quick travel/+distance travel). Enigma Lvl 4. Mental resist. Aura of Misfortune. Projectile weapon proficiency. Lock-picking. Silent movement. Treatment Lvl 8. Hide. Quick Climb. Bluff. Emphatic Cry (+increased tear volume). Pain resistance Lvl 2. Trap proficiency.

Every skill was a reminder of what I had been through. Ah such sweet memories.

“Ah~! Little Bird~! Over here~!” I looked up from my status plate to see Cat a bit further up the trail from me, on the peak of the mountain we had been climbing. “Good, you made it in time. Today, little bird, is that day you graduate from Assassin’s SchoolTM~! And you know what happens when a bird graduates? He learns to fly~!!” With that cheery cry Cat grabbed the front of my shirt and threw me off the mountain. I’m going to die and I never got to spend a night in Cat’s room. This is bullshit. Honestly I should have seen this coming. Cat and I agreed that to graduate from Assassin’s SchoolTM I should at least get my enigma level up to level 5. Unfortunately, the best way to train a skill is to either use it a lot, or get closer to the core of the skill. Using enigma is mostly passive anyway so using it actually doesn’t up the skill level at all, and to get close to an enigma I have to get close to something that doesn’t make sense or in another sense ‘shouldn’t happen.’ We learned how to do that when enigma leveled up after I got revived by origin about two months ago. Coming back from the dead generally shouldn’t happen, and it’s been exactly one month since I last got revived. Hence the shitty pun I’m sure that hairball coughing ass up there probably spent all month thinking of. Dammit. This is gonna hurt.

------

“Congratulations~!!!” Much like almost every other day this year, I woke up to the sound of Cat’s shouting voice. Sitting up, I found myself at a table in the cafeteria surrounded by Cat, Mari, Angela, Luan, Oak, and Henry -the guild house’s caretaker- all sitting on the same side of the table. I feel like Jesus. Actually, after this I’ll be rising out of the guild and into the world where the dark guilds are the right hand of the king so really I basically am Jesus.

“Hello everyone, I made it.” I said with a smile. There were cheers and handshakes all around.

“Welcome to the guild, Assassin Jin. Codename: Falcon.” Luan handed me a guild badge and clapped me on the back. “Cat’s idea as you can imagine. Hahh it was nice to have a fourth guy around here for a while.” Luan seemed a bit tired as he looked into the distance. The badge actually had an extra effect too.

Badge of the Third Prong

Bonus ::: Luck +30 when equipped

For most people this would be a boost of about 10%, which for a stat like luck wasn’t much. For me? This might actually save my life. Too bad it only worked when equipped.

“Thanks Boss! It’s good to be here.” I accepted the badge and slid it into my pocket.

“Alright kid, before we get this party started, we all have a few graduation gifts for you. Here’s mine.” Luan said, handing me a thin, black outfit covered in pockets and straps. “It’s standard issue for the guild with all the extra padding and slight enchantments to make you quiet, but this one’s been modified a bit to have more weapon holsters and to give you easy access to anything you need to fix, like your bones.”

“It’s perfect.”

Luan gave me a nod and I responded with a firm handshake. This would be really useful.

“My turn~!” Cat hopped in front of me and pushed a small package into my hands. Opening it revealed a pair of cat’s claws.1

Cat’s Claw

ATK : 2

Bonus ::: Increased climbing speed/ the spider’s web

The Spider’s Web

A spool of reusable and detachable steel wire that can be used for climbing and traps. Replenishes automatically using mana.

“Cat…this…”

“Shhh. No words my little bird. Just understand that I’m the best~” Cat said and haughtily hugged me. I was touched.2 In the end everyone gave me their own gifts: Angela, a low-level bottomless med kit; Oak, a bottomless flask; Mari, an identification plate that would let me get though most inspections; and Henry, Sir Stabbington Spike.

“Hmm? Henry, this?”

“Yes Mr. Jin. That’s your dagger. You liked using it already so I gave it a small enchantment. I hope you like it.” Hearing him I checked the dagger’s description and saw the added enchantment.

Sir Stabbington Spike

ATK:44

DEF:0

Weight:0.5

SPD: 5

Crit: 200%

Bonus ::: Doesn’t talk. It really doesn’t. I swear. [[ENCHANTED]] Mana use X 0.25

“Henry this is really cool!” I turned to him, making excellent use of my advanced cry skill.

“It was the least I could do after everything you’ve done for me Mr. Jin.” Henry too started to tear up as well.

“Henry!”

“Mr. Jin!”

We embraced with tears in our eyes. Ah yes Henry. What good times we had together: Me and Henry, that character that will absolutely come back, I 12% promise. With that we all partied and drank late into the night, and the next morning, I left.

1Lowercase ‘C’. It’s a weapon, not her fingernails.

2No. Not like that.