Avan firmly and precisely walked forward. "Sto-...!" Cried out a wide-eyed Milan, but stopped himself after seeing Avan unharmed walking through the tunnel without any traps triggering. The other group stood there with furrowed brows, and wide eyes, while the air mage rubbed the nape of his neck in disbelieve. They witnessed how Avan and Yue just marched through the tunnel as it was the most normal thing in the world.

"H-how... did you do this?" Milan stammered with a tilted head. "Don't tell me any horse-shit now! Eve here had to cleave through all of the traps, and you just walked by?"

Upon arriving in front of their group, Avan smirked at them and just simply answered. "Professional secret"; and waggled his eyebrows at them and clapped his hands. "Let's continue, shall we?" He strolled past them with a smug look on his face.

Soon, they reached the staircase leading higher and out of the dungeon, where the rogue corpse was lying at the side on the ground. Avan turned his head around to look at the adventurer party. "What do you wanna do with your deceased friend here? If I have not misunderstood, then his death doesn't seem to have troubled you. Why?"

Eve answered for them, while the others mostly had trouble maintaining eye contact. "Ye, this guy here we picked up at the guild. Had the hunch he was here to observe us. His death is nothing we care about. At all. Was a strange and creepy fella anyway. We will leave him here for now. If someone wants to retrieve his body, they can do it later themselves." She kneeled down in front of his corpse to fiddle with the rogue's neck until she held a simple necklace in her hands. "We just need to bring back this adventurer token as proof. And that's it. We can move on." Eve said, simply laughing, and gestured towards the exit.

Eve in front, Avan and Yue behind, with the other three guys following after. Reaching the second floor, Eve glanced back over her shoulder while she walked through the burned-down Kobold settlement. "So, this carnage was your doing, too? Avan?" She asked him with a grin.

After receiving a nod, she looked around and gave him a thumbs-up, and continued walking. Avan, just now remembered to actively check their status, used identify on all of them. Everyone was in range of his Celestial Sphere, so he didn't need to look at them.

[Air Mage - 36]

[Healer - 40]

[Ranger - 37]

[Bladewalker - 51]

Interesting. As I thought, only Eve is at the bronze tier, while the others didn't reach the threshold at level fifty yet. And Bladewalker... Huh. Some special class? The other guys are just plain descriptions, but she got something else than a simple warrior class. How's that? Goddamn, I should have asked Yue about the world system and classes. I'm an idiot.

"Hey Eve, how comes that your class isn't just warrior?” He asked the woman bluntly. “If you don't mind asking."

She held her left arm with a dismissive hand-waving over her shoulder. "Trade secret!" She answered with a laughter. "Just kidding. It's the same with your class. You are tagged as a [Battle Healer] . Not a simple healer, too, huh? You know? Would have thought you knew that already." She answered and simply shrugged.

Around an hour later, they were finally back at the entrance hallway when Milan tapped Avan on his right shoulder and a question in his eyes. "Avan, do you by any chance know what the door there behind the crack means or what's behind? Because when we found it, Eve had tried to open it by force and was shot by a lightning strike while an angry voice yelled at her to fuck off."

Avan snickered, had he heard the story the second time. "Yeah, don't fuck with that thing. I can assure you, it's very resentful." He answered and shook with laughter, which earned him a puzzled look from all the others, including Yue.

Ah, yeah, nope. Forgot to tell her. Maybe later? When we are back, and alone again. Don't wanna anger Wormy anymore, for now.

They marched through the tunnels, and at the first fork, Avan could see how Yue was sadly glancing in the direction of the cave where her friends had been slaughtered a few weeks ago. With a tender squeeze of her shoulder, he tried to give her some reassuring thoughts. We got the bastards, Yue...

Yue turned her head around and smiled. Then mouthed a silent Thank you at him.

They soon walked out of the cave entrance above ground where just a black burned grass spot had been left behind as the sole witness of Yue's burned friends. With a short glimpse at the place, Avan swung his right arm around Yue's shoulders and hugged her for a few seconds while they walked by. He could see a slightly red cheek but also a single tear running down her face.

"Sorry about all that happened, Yue... Even as we don't know each other that long, I am proud of how you handled all of this. I would be devastated if I were in your shoes..." He whispered to her and let her go to avoid any awkward thoughts from her or the others.

Hugging someone in your boxer shorts only. Some hidden awkward achievement unlocked. For sure.

Finishing his thoughts, he realized a huge mistake. He looked around and locked eyes with Milan and Seff. "Hey, just something I remembered, you know." He glanced down at himself to point at his half-naked self. "I need clothes. Or no one would talk to me or even let me into Cyntha. Got any spare for me?"

Like they had rehearsed it perfectly before, they both raised their right arm to scratch at the back of their heads simultaneously. Noticing their shared behavior, they shortly looked at each other and chuckled.

This time it was actually Seff who answered him while he swung his backpack from the shoulder to sift through his belongings. "Of course, Avan. Sorry, we didn't think about it earlier. I... should have some spare clothes somewhere in here... Ahh, there. Pants. And... this? No, underwear.... Ah here! A spare robe. Sorry, no shirt. I only wear robes. Much more comfortable, I swear." He pulled out some pants and a brown robe to throw at him. "Should be all in the proper size, too. We are similar in height. But I would like to get those back."

Eve had noticed their short talk and exchange of clothes and waited with crossed arms in front of them. Avan quickly put the pants and the robe on. With a thumbs up in Eve's direction, while nodding thanks to Seff, they continued walking through the forest. Some minutes later, they emerged from the woods and stepped onto the road leading to Cyntha.

Avan motioned with his right hand for Seff and Milan to walk by and signed to Yue to wait for a moment. "Sorry, lads, just wanna ask Yue a few things before we reach Cyntha. No secrets are involved. We just recently met, so I hope you don't mind us talking in private until we reach the gates?" The ranger, Dunkin, was already walking behind Eve.

Seff just nodded while Milan answered for both of them. "Don't worry, man. We need to talk, too. The job description was strange, and we need to figure out how we approach the situation at the guild at its best. And in the proper order."

After they had some distance between them, Avan sheepishly glanced at Yue while motioned to continue their walk. He started talking. "Yue. I need to confess something." Seeing how she blushed and looked at him in shock, he quickly corrected himself. "Ahhh! Wrong wording, sorry! Not like that! I mean something about myself! Nothing else!" He nearly stumbled over a small mound on the path they followed. "Where I'm from, we were... kind of secluded, you know? We had no monsters to fight with, and no one in my village knew much about stats, skills, and classes. So... Can I ask you some things? That's why I wanted to talk to you in private."

And the award for the dumbest beginning of a sentence goes to... Me! Hey, congratulations!

Yue smiled at him like she had figured him out and nodded slightly. "Avan, I already told you before. I owe you my life. Not once, but even twice now as it seems. So far, I am alive because of you. So let me tell you this again. Thank you." She said and bowed her head a little bit. "And if I can answer some questions you have, I'll gladly do so. I'm only at level nineteen myself, but I heard some things every now and then. So, what do you wanna know?"

"Thank you for not digging any deeper. So, you know I leveled up to over fifty. It was all thanks to the dungeon floors and the monsters I had killed, as you have seen. Will everything rank up to the bronze tier at skill level ten?"

She tilted her head upwards and thought about that. "Hm... As far as I know, and as far as the guild tells us, yes. Everything should go into the first tier, the bronze tier, when reaching level ten. But that's only for your passive skills, Avan. Your active abilities are bound to your class and, therefore, to your personal level. Your class will rank up, as you have seen for yourself, at level fifty. That's the threshold to bronze. After that, I only vaguely heard about the silver rank. If what I heard is correct, your classes will reach the silver rank at one hundred. While your passive skills will rank up around level twenty-five. Every time you reach a rank with your passives, the rank increases, but the level resets to one. And each time your skills or class ranks up, your skills are evolving. Most of the time, they grow stronger. But sometimes, rarely, they even evolve. But this is just a fairy tale, in my opinion. And for the matter of gaining experience, there are a few ways. You can either do things your class stands for, like healing as a healer, or by killing monsters and absorbing some of their life energy. The only other method besides these two are quests. You can accept quests usually at the adventurer's guild. After you have fulfilled your part of the job, the world system recognizes it as finished." She explained to him for some minutes while gesturing and waving wildly with her hands. As if she tried to visualize everything for Avan while explaining.

With a hand running over his hair, Avan thought about her words as he watched the other party quietly talking amongst each other, too.

"Thank you. That explains a lot to me. I figured out some of it by myself, but now I know that for sure. Now... Something you can't tell anybody else, Yue." He glanced at her with a stern look. "Everybody identifies me as a [Battle Healer], right? But shouldn't you identify me by my main class instead of my subclass?"

He could see her facial expression slipping very quickly. And then it was gone again. She just glared at him. Cleary in deep thoughts, Avan could see her gears spinning and almost fuming. And then she just nodded to herself. "Alright, alright. I'm done questioning you and your abilities. You are you. That's gonna be my explanation from now on." She shook her head. "To your question. YES! Avan. NORMAL people are identified by their class. I never heard someone being recognized by their subclass. Maaaaybe... at a higher rank of identify. But I never heard of such a thing. You being you. I think I can soon invent a new saying if someone does the unexplainable."

He laughed at her antics and pulled her in a one-arm hug once again.

"Thank you, Yue. For accepting me as I am. I swear, I will explain more later. For now, you helped me out a lot. You are awesome, thanks!"

With Yue having an even deeper red blush, hugged by Avan, they eventually reached the east gates of Cyntha.