When Maggie had told Faye that she was needed in the Hall’s lobby and why, she had groaned. Loudly.

The adventurers had laughed and told her that it would actually be a valuable experience. Arran had even said that now the Guild recognised the need to train her — “About time!” Ailith had added — Faye would be remiss not to take everything they were offering.

Faye agreed. But to have to spend time with that arrogant teenager… she wasn't sure that it was worth it. Most of her problems seemed to stem from her encounter with him.

She shuddered as she shouldered open the door to the lobby. Near the centre, the Guild’s newest crested member was standing across from a Guild official. He was wearing an expensive doublet that looked like it doubled as armour, and his belt sported a sheathed sword.

If not for the look on his face — a perpetual sneer that she could see and hear in his voice — he would have looked quite imposing. As it was, Faye couldn’t help but think of him as a spoiled brat.

Standing at his shoulder, as ever, was the manservant. His blank face as usual gave nothing of his inner thoughts away.

She had no idea what the official was saying to Rían, but the way that his eyes widened when he caught sight of her walking towards them, she had a good idea he had just learned the same thing she had been told.

They were the only two registered Swordfighters in the town.

Faye couldn’t help but wince internally at the look Rían was sending her way. She rolled her neck a little to try and relieve some of the tension that had crept into her posture. There was no way to really feel truly comfortable with the experience, so she was hoping to get it over with as soon as possible. A seed of thought in the back of her mind told her that meeting Rían in the training ring would be a good excuse to beat the snot out of him without the repercussions of doing it outside.

By the time she reached the middle of the lobby floor, where Rían and his servant were standing next to the Guild official, she had taken a few deep breaths and thought she could get through this.

“There is no way that this girl is a Swordfighter.”

She came to a halt a few steps in front of Rían. His voice had come out loudly, enough for the whole hall to ring with his voice. She gritted her teeth and attempted a smile.

“I can assure you that I am a Swordfighter, as the Administrator herself confirmed. Would you like to tell her that she was mistaken?” she said. The Administrator had been an arse to Faye, which meant she probably had a reputation for it. She was leaning on an uncertainty, but the way Rían's face flickered told her she had scored a point.

“Ríoghnán An Bradáin,” the official spoke into the silence, using an officious tone, “that assertion is correct. Are you indeed calling into question the Administrator’s verdict on the class given to this young woman?”

At the man’s words, the teen’s eyes narrowed at Faye and she just smirked at him. She wasn’t sure what it was about her that annoyed him so much but she knew that if she had suddenly elevated herself in most other people’s eyes, she probably hadn’t in his.

“Of course not,” Rían said. “I misspoke.”

The official nodded, then gestured with his hand. “Very well. Ríoghnán, you are hereby appointed Faye’s trainer in matters related to her class, Swordfighter. Faye, this is your class trainer, whose instruction you should listen to intently and, with the correct diligence, you should find yourself on a track to improving yourself. The instruction of someone of a higher level in your class is a rare thing, here. Be thankful for this opportunity.”

Faye nodded; the words were probably supposed to be encouraging, but held an air of a warning to her ear. She would have to ask the others what the trainer-trainee relationship was like, and, more importantly, whether there were rules she had to follow.

“Thank you. Is there anything else we need to do here?” she asked. “I have something I need to get back to.”

At her words, the official shook his head, “No, the paperwork is to be completed by the Guild. I will leave you to arrange yourselves.”

He turned and strode away without another word.

“So,” she said, “if we are to train, I guess we’re to meet regularly?”

Rían’s eyes narrowed. She caught the fact that his hands immediately clenched into fists. Though, when he saw her eyes drop, he quickly crossed his hands behind his back, as if he were some regal scion of a royal house.

He cleared his throat.

“I will see to your training when it is appropriate to do so. I have matters to attend to today, so we shall start tomorrow. At dawn. In the training rooms. You will not be late. If you are, I might forget to activate the training fail safes.”

She nodded. Without waiting for him to say anything else, she spun on her heel and walked back the way she had come.

Faye wondered what she had done to deserve this. The universe was surely laughing at her.

“You do have to listen to him during training,” Arran said. “He’s your training master. But the moment you step outside that room, he goes back to being a fellow Guild member. If he knows what's good for him, he'll treat your training like the chance it is for him.”

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"Well, advancement in the Guild is mostly supported by your level, as most things. But, like in most places, your ability to do things that the Guild needs is valued almost as highly. More, in some cases."

She nodded, but couldn't help but grimace at the idea of him using her as a step to promotion.

Faye took some comfort from the fact that her friends didn’t look too pleased at the development.

“Aye, it’s common practice. Much more common in the larger Guilds, though,” Ailith said. “I had some training when I was younger from other Guardians. Lóthaven doesn't have enough members suited to ranging the wilds for it to happen often.”

“It’s a shame,” Maggie said, “that we don’t have more people appropriate for training purposes.” She sighed. “It’s partly my job to help the Administrator find more opportunities for our people to train. It’s hard when over three quarters of the people in the town have non-combat classes.”

“Three quarters?” Arran said. “Surely it’s more than that?”

Maggie shrugged one shoulder, keeping her writing slate still with her other hand. “It is. I was generalising. But the truth is, amongst those of you with combat-focused classes, there aren’t enough similarities to warrant pairing up trainers and trainees. And there are those with classes considered combat capable that have no interest in adventuring."

“So,” Faye asked, getting the conversation back on track, “I have to listen to what he tells me?”

She wrung her hands. The energy from the healer's spell was slowly bleeding away the more she moved. Her leg wouldn’t stop bouncing and for a moment she recalled the way her mother used to tell her off for “never sitting still”.

“Yes, as long as it has something to do with training," Maggie said.

Faye blinked and came back to the present. Right, training. She nodded. At least it was only training related. He wouldn’t be able to control her whole life.

“Back to this, though,” Maggie said, indicating the sheet she had been writing on. Faye nodded.

“Okay, you were going to tell me about the stats before I was called out.”

“Yes. Now, officially, they are attributes. This is because they are what make up your person, your physical, mental, and spiritual aspects. Plus, there are other people with systems that label them as such.”

Faye shrugged. Attributes, stats, it was all the same to her.

“We start, typically, with the physical aspects: toughness and strength. These correspond to your body, both how much damage it can suffer and how strong you are,” Maggie explained. She held up a hand and waved it back and forth. “Of course, there are scholars that debate the true boundary between the attributes, but this simplification works for most purposes, so that’s what we teach people.”

“Makes sense, toughness and strength. Okay.”

“A higher toughness score indicates that you are harder to kill, less likely to succumb to wounds, and are hardier in general.”

“Aye, it’s the most important attribute,” Ailith chimed in. She waved at her bandaged legs. “These would be gone if my toughness was lower than it is.”

“The Guardian isn’t too wrong,” Maggie said, with a wry twist of her mouth, “though, there are plenty of others that might disagree. Strength, when raised, is tied almost directly to how much you can carry, lift, or otherwise move with brute force.”

“Sounds fairly straight forward,” Faye said.

“Next, we typically list reaction and agility,” Maggie said. Here, she pointed at Arran. “The Duellist is more reliant on these attributes than a Guardian, so I’d wager good money that the class has some focus on these.”

Arran just gave Maggie a strange look, which she responded to with a grin.

“Of course, members of the Guild aren’t required to undergo the tests that give us clear indication of what the growth pattern is for their class—”

“So stop asking, then,” Arran interrupted.

“It’s my job, Arran.” Maggie said, primly, then she coughed lightly and turned back to Faye to continue. “Reaction is a measure of your ability to react quickly. Sounds obvious, but there it is. It is classed as a physical attribute because people who have a high reaction attribute are able to literally react faster than those with a low score. Of course, this is where the simplified explanation breaks down a little.”

“Hmm,” Faye murmured. “You said that attributes are broken into physical, mental and spiritual. But how do you physically react to something if you mentally don’t react to it?”

Maggie beamed at her. “Exactly!”

“Oh gods, there are three of them,” Ailith muttered, throwing her head back against the pillow dramatically. Arran grinned but Gavan rolled his eyes, nodding at Faye.

“This is the problem with the classical model,” he said.

Maggie held up a hand. “Hold it, don’t go confusing things now. She needs the basics. That’s what this is.”

Gavan had already closed his mouth. Faye was sure that he’d be willing to tell her more, eventually, if she needed it.

“Yes, Faye, you’re correct. However, reaction governs your physical ability to react in a direct way. It’s best to think of it like a purely physical thing for now. Agility, on the other hand, is often thought of as the graceful attribute. If you have a high agility, you are able to weave between people in a crowded room without hitting them or pull on the fibres of a loom much easier than your low-agility counterparts.”

Faye nodded, that made sense too.

Dexterity, in old money, she thought.

“Next, we move into what are traditionally thought of as the mental attributes. Listed first is logic. This is best thought of as your ability to think through things quickly and make leaps between facts accurately. A high logic is useful for those that work with numbers, or who want to command people in battle, for example.”

“Good for magic?” Faye asked.

Gavan didn’t say anything, looking to Maggie instead, who sighed and made a so-so motion with her hand.

“That depends on who you ask,” she admitted. “Some people are adamant that it does help. Others say that it bears no relation. However, we do know that quite a few magic-based classes place a focus on logic, at least in a small way. This is all the argument some need.”

Faye nodded.

“After logic is intuition. Where logic is the ability to think through problems, intuition is often thought of as your feeling your way through them. A high intuition score will heighten your sense of danger or determine if someone is lying to you perhaps.”

“This is the attribute often linked to magic,” Arran said. He shrugged. “Of course, there’s a good argument for swordfighters to use it, too.”

Faye narrowed her eyes at Arran, who grinned. Intuition sounded like her gut instinct, which had been honed through practice and, more importantly, fierce competition.

Pulling herself back, she turned to Maggie.

“Next up is willpower. This is your strength of mind. Most people think of it as growing your mental muscles. This isn’t the worst visualisation I’ve heard of, either,” she said, and chuckled. “But it’s more than that, lots of testing has shown that a high willpower not only makes your magic stronger, but it makes it harder for some mental and magical effects to affect you.”

Gavan nodded here. Faye figured that Gavan’s willpower was his main attribute, then, if magic was his focus.

“After this, charisma.”

“Oh, really?” Faye exclaimed. “You have a stat for charisma too?”

Her expression made Maggie pause.

“I thought you didn’t have a system…” she began, hesitantly, but Faye interrupted her.

“Oh, sorry, no, it’s from a game. Don’t worry about it. So, charisma, it’s how good looking you are and how much people like you?”

Arran and Ailith both burst out laughing. Gavan shook his head, but Faye could tell he was smirking inside.

“What did I say?” she asked.

“Well,” Maggie said, with a grin, “it’s not the worst I’ve heard when telling someone new to the Guild about the attributes, believe me. But, no, charisma doesn’t make you look better.”

“Which is a shame,” Ailith said, “because there are some ugly people that would really benefit from a boost in charisma if it were true.” She started laughing again, Arran laughing with her.

Maggie smiled. “What you were correct about, in a way, was charisma governing how people react to you. This is a tricky attribute to explain because there are some people that believe it has a more magical affect than most, but it is accurate to say that a high charisma score is likely to result in a stronger personality. The important thing to remember is that this doesn’t mean that person is more likeable. Some of the stronger charisma-focused classes rely on the opposite, in fact.”

Faye gulped. Charisma based classes that wanted you not to like them? She could imagine…

“And, finally,” Maggie said, “the last attribute is that of magic. It’s a special case. It doesn’t grow at the same rate as the others. In fact, there’s not an awful lot we do know about the magic attribute other than it is linked to your magical ability. Our mage might know more?”

Gavan didn’t say anything for a moment, and when he did, he spoke in measured, precise tones.

“The magic attribute is as mysterious as magic itself. Unknowable, and yet knowable if you focus on it long enough. There are many questions that we have about it. We know that the lack of a magic attribute means you cannot access magic at all, for example.”

“The hard part,” Maggie said, when it was clear Gavan was no longer adding to his vague phrases, “is that it’s hard to know whether the lack of a magic attribute score for those people is something their class did, or something that they have personally. Studying this in any depth is considered a… complex and complicated subject.”

“I can imagine,” Faye said. “If there was a way to improve the magic score of those without one… that would change the world.”

“Exactly,” Gavan said, his eyes staring into her own. “People have tried.”

Faye grimaced. “I guess those experiments went badly?”

Maggie nodded. “In practically every case of extrajudicial experimental procedures being performed on human subjects, the subjects suffered greatly.”

“Which is a fancy way of saying they died awful, awful deaths and the mad experimenters were put down like rabid animals,” Ailith said. There was a quiet heat in her words. No one was smiling.

“Okay, so I’ll take ‘experiment with system attributes’ off my to-do list then,” Faye said.

A second later, the others chuckled.

“Sorry,” Arran said, “it’s a little heavy handed. Usually, when someone’s being told about the attributes you make sure they know the consequences.”

Faye smiled at them. “That makes sense. Don’t want to inadvertently create monsters.”

“Now,” Arran said, “about your training. You should really do your best to learn from him. He should have something useful to show you at the very least. Come on, let’s go to the training room now, I want to show you some things before he gets his hands on you.”

After giving Ailith a pat on the head to get better, Faye slipped out of the room with Arran and the others, skipping down the hallway to bleed excess energy away.

A good spar was exactly what she needed.

Faye, Maggie, Arran, and Gavan trouped into the training room one after the other. As they passed the barrier across the threshold, Faye remembered something Rían had mentioned.

“Oh! Maggie, is there a magical field around this room that can be turned on and off?” she asked.

Maggie frowned, then shook her head. “No, not in the sense of temporary removal of the field. It’s more of a permanent change. Maintenance would rarely require the field turned off, for example… uh, why do you ask?”

“Something Young Master Rían said, that’s all,” she replied, shrugging.

Arran snorted. “Ah, don’t worry about it. It’s something some training masters try with apprentices. More effective on the impressionable.”

Faye nodded, bouncing from foot to foot.

“Man, that healing spell really perks you up.”

Maggie looked concerned. “It wasn’t really supposed to do that, you know. It must be the same as the cooling potion and heating room. Mana overload.”

Here, Maggie hesitated.

The others shared a look.

“Uhm, Faye?” Maggie asked.

Arran grinned, nudging Gavan who simply shook his head.

“Yes?”

Maggie looked at the others, she was clasping her hands, but she kept her head up.

“You mentioned something, earlier. About… your system. And. About our world?”

Maggie’s voice rose at the end of the sentence, making it a question, but there wasn’t really a question there. Faye understood what she was getting at, though.

“I’m surprised you kept the questions at bay this long…” she replied. She shook her head and looked up at the ceiling. “Taveon told me not to tell anyone I didn’t trust, and I just blabbed about it in front of that woman.”

She quickly looked back down. “Not that I don’t trust you, Mags. I…” she sighed. “Okay, I might as well. Yes. I’m what Taveon called an otherworlder. I come from a place that doesn’t have a system. It’s all very new to me.”

Maggie’s eyes lit up. “Oh, that makes so much sense! Your level, the mana poisoning, and the lack of basic knowledge.”

Faye harrumphed. “You don’t have to sound so happy that I’m dumb, here.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Maggie said, waving a hand, “we’ll get you up to speed in no time.”

Arran chuckled. “Enough, the time for talk is over.”

Maggie held up a hand. “Wait!”

They paused.

“Faye hasn’t got access to her system?” Maggie asked, “is that what you meant?”

“It’s intermittent,” Faye said. “No idea why.”

Maggie nodded. “Then we should test her, make sure she knows what her attributes are ranked as.”

Arran looked thoughtful for a moment. “It might be worth it, Faye. If you don’t want to talk to the Administrator about them.”

“I concur,” Gavan said.

“But,” Arran said, “know that you do not have to. In fact, I have not subjected myself to the tests. The Guild files the information away in their archives. Some people do not want anyone to have that information. I would understand if you did not, either.”

Faye shrugged. “My attributes are going to change as I level, right?”

“Yes.”

“Then what does it matter?”

Arran opened his mouth, but clicked it shut again. Maggie, however, stepped in.

“You said that you were going to sell your class’s growth pattern to the Guild. Technically, someone else could access that information, and your current attributes, and easily calculate your growth somewhat accurately.” Maggie shrugged. “It is possible, though unlikely. And, if you were to talk to the Administrator about it, she would be duty bound to never reveal that information if you requested her not to.”

Faye thought about it. In a world that quantified everything like that, she could see where hiding your attributes, growth, skills, level… anything would be powerful. Equally, it meant that if there were skills and classes out there that excelled in gaining that information that person would be incredibly powerful.

Those people were often dangerous.

Heading off that kind of attention at the pass was possible by giving people even a slim chance of gaining that information for ‘free’.

Plus, Faye had no intentions of standing still. There was only upwards to go from here.

However, she could only assume that her system would respond more the more she levelled. Eventually, she wouldn’t need the tests, or the Administrator’s ability.

“I think we’ll leave the tests, for now. I don’t need to know the attributes. I’ve gone my entire life without boiling my body and mind into numbers, I can go another little while until the system decides to kick into gear.”

The others nodded.

“I’m glad we got that settled,” Arran said. “Also, something to point out about the training room. Whilst it is not powerful enough to make everyone who enters on the same level, it does its best to even out the discrepancies.”

Faye cocked her head to the side. “What do you mean?” she asked.

Instead of replying, Arran shot forward, his sword somehow in his hand. The tip of the blade gleamed in the low light of the training room, the orange light reflecting along his slender sword.

Faye shifted her body so that the tip swept past her shoulder, then solidified her stance and darted forward to throw her closed fist into Arran’s stomach.

The blow connected, and Arran’s exhalation of breath sounded almost like a real hit.

“Good!” he called, spinning away from Faye.

Faye drew her own sword, the wooden blade with its magically keen edge.

“Don’t worry about using the blade,” Maggie said, “it won’t hurt him in here.”

Faye grinned, then darted forward and started an assault that she had never had the courage to try in their courtyard. It was a rare thing, being able to go full tilt against a friend in a scenario where you were assured you couldn’t hurt them.

Or that, if you did, you were literally unable to severely injure them.

Later, both Arran and Faye were sweating and grinning. Faye was sitting on the floor, holding her knees so that she didn’t collapse. Even Maggie had joined in on one spar, the two women teaming up against the duellist.

He had beaten them.

Just.

“Alright,” Faye said, “I think I get what you were trying to say, earlier.”

“It seems like you got the hang of it,” Arran replied. “Training in here is vastly different to the real world. But it trains our apprentices to make the real cuts.”

Faye nodded.

Gavan stepped forward. Faye looked up at him from her seat on the floor.

“We shall begin training magic, if you still wish to. Tomorrow.”

With that, Faye let out a scream of joy. The last vestiges of the healing spell’s energy wrapping itself around in her chest.

“Magic! Hell yes! Let’s do it, Master Mage!”