Dix spent a couple of minutes searching through the rest of the Support book, but found nothing else that interested him, at least for his personal use. A lot of the Support skills were beyond what he had thought they would be. There was a class, called Siphoner, that was all about stealing stats, and even skills from enemies and giving them to their allies, which was rather interesting to read through. While the concept was fantastic, none of the debuffs or buffs lasted all that long, nor were they that powerful. The result was that anyone using the class would be working their ass off at all times to make sure the current party target was weakened in the correct ways to make the most of whatever stats and skills had been taken. Of course the other option was for the user to be incredibly intelligent and observant. With the right mentality and abilities, and the right party, it could be quite devastating. Most classes were like that though. Get the right person, the right party, and the right circumstances and anything could be a dominating class. Good luck getting everything to go that right all the time.

As Dix was trying to slip the Support book back onto the table surreptitiously, Error took note of his inattentive trainee. Perhaps if he hadn’t tried to be sneaky, and had just placed the book down normally, he might not have been spotted. Error had spent most of his life being very, very careful around very, very sneaky people after all, so Dix doing so was basically a cry for attention. With a bit of a smirk the elf spoke up in the commanding voice of a drill sergeant, causing Dix to instantly freeze, “What exactly are you looking for in those dusty old books that two brilliant men such as ourselves don’t know? Surely, you wouldn’t be insulting your hard working trainers, who have taken time out of their relentlessly busy schedules, and daily struggles to survive, to teach you everything we know about staying alive in the harsh world outside these walls?” By the end of his little diatribe, his eyes were alight with malicious glee. Across from him, Thunk had migrated from his originally slightly confused expression to one of stern disappointment.

For his part, Dix felt oddly as though he was being disciplined by his parents for being caught having a girl in his room. His eyes went a bit out of focus, as it brought back fond memories of the times before they were killed. As he leaned back into his chair, his smile was a strange mix of happy and painful, with a dash of wistfulness, one that confused the two men watching him. A moment later, he shook his head and smirked slightly at his trainers. “Well, despite the obvious uses of weaponized Tamer pet gas, you weren’t really covering the things I needed to know right now. Luckily, the supplementary reading Thunk brought along kept me entertained and helped me find a few things I might end up using. I do have a couple questions though, one of which may convince me to go a different direction than a hybrid.”

“Oh? What’s that?” asked an obviously excited Thunk. He had never been onboard with the hybrid idea. Whether it was an old prejudice from video games back on Earth, or the general distaste of the hybrid classes by the natives of Mantra, Thunk refused to believe that it was a good decision. Error, on the other hand, was taking a more wait and see approach, both to the general idea of a fully hybrid class, as well as to the idea that Dix might change his mind.

“Is there a limit to how many pets Summoners can have? Or Classless for that matter?”

The two men briefly glanced at each other, confused as to the drastic change in direction that Dix was expressing an interest in. Shrugging, Thunk motioned to Error who nodded and turned back to answer the question. “Like with most things, it depends. Mostly on how you count them. Do swarm pets count as the several hundred pets in the swarm, or as a single pet.” He opened his mouth to continue, but seeing Dix with a single finger raised, he smiled, nodded, and continued. “OK, one. The short version is that while I don’t know for certain, I have heard rumors that one of the main skills Summoners get from the class itself allows them to have more pets as the skill goes up, although they still need to get the skill for each new pet as well. If that is true, then it is completely dependent on that skill. That being said, the most I have seen is seven. As for Classless, well, the maximum is five. Any more than three is guaranteed to get you the Summoner class. Want to tell us why?”

“Five, huh?” Dix drifted off into silence, thinking. The trainers looked at each other again, curious about what the man had discovered that demanded the question, but willing to wait for him to finish his thought. Eventually, looking absently at the ceiling, Dix started talking out his thoughts, an old habit of his. “Hmm, I wonder if it’s possible to get that skill before The Assignment. Worst case scenario, presume it’s not. In that case, only five pets. Without knowing how hard The Assignment is, I can’t know for sure, but with a couple of the right passives, it should be doable. Now the real question, do I want to do it?” Once more his voice trailed off into incoherent mumbling. After a short time, the vacant look vanished from his eyes, and he once more sat upright in his chair.

When he didn’t immediately say anything about his decision, or even his reasoning behind why he asked in the first place, Thunk lost it. “Well? Tell us what the hell that was all about!”

“Uh, yeah, sorry. Didn’t realize you actually wanted to know. Summoners, if what I understand about them is correct, are probably the strongest base class out of all of them, and their evolutions won’t exactly lessen that strength.” He went on to explain what he had figured out by reading between the lines of the book. He enjoyed watching the two men’s eyes widen, and jaws drop, particularly once they realized the full implications. As the Summoner's class and skills evolved, the bonuses from the pets, in particular the bonuses from having the pet stored inside the Summoner, strengthen and widen. Widen to the point that they can overlap with those of another pet, where instead of being additive, they were multiplicatively totaled. It wasn’t a big difference at first, but much like with Dix’s combination of Empowered bonuses, and Enhanced attacks, it stacks up fast.

When he started explaining the changes to the abilities, and how shuffling the pets between different storage areas could change which ones you had access to, they looked like they had just seen the creation of the universe. When he went a bit further, and suggested a twenty elemental skill set, alongside basic skills like Empower and Enhanced Strikes, and passives designed to take advantage of certain combat styles, the two almost dog piled him to get him to shut up.

When he finally stopped talking, Thunk explained. “Never mention that to anyone ever again. Forget about it completely. Even knowing about something with the possibility of that much power can get you killed. If the wrong people ever discovered that there was a way to stack up that many bonuses, and that it only grows at higher levels, they would obliterate anyone with that knowledge, skillset, or even class if it was that easy to do. The power balance on Mantra is too precarious to allow someone to have that much power when all of the others don’t.”

Error took up the explanation at that point, “Everytime a tyrant has risen on the exponential power increase of their particular race, or build, the rest of the world banded together to see them destroyed. Normally it degenerates into people trying to capture the remnants of the tyrant’s family and friends to pump them for information as to how such power was acquired. As, in the past, it has traditionally been a racial ability or statistical system that, when utilized in a certain way, leads to a massive increase in power, geonicide has always been the answer. Entire families, clans, and even species have been eradicated to prevent the possibility of something like that happening again.” Error made and held a fierce eye contact with Dix, trying to force the younger man to understand, “Never speak of this again.”

At Dix’s answering nod, he finally allowed himself to relax, before a statement from Thunk made him seize up again. “You aren’t taking a Summoner class are you?”

Once more Thunk’s eyes went wide, and his head whipped around to stare at Dix, only to see him laughing. Sadly, he didn’t know Dix well enough yet to tell what the laughter meant, so he could only wait for him to stop and answer the question. “Gods, no. Why would I want that much power that quickly? It’s just asking for trouble. Either I end up complacent and dead, arrogant and dead, or bored and wishing I was dead. Nope, not taking any of those options. I’ll figure out how to make a nice hybrid of everything, give myself a decent enough challenge to not get bored, and run off to have as much fun as I can before I eventually die again.”

Error relaxed again, and Thunk actually smiled, a rare thing for the dwarven priest. With relief coloring his voice, Thunk said, “That’s good to hear. Thank you. And, for your information, you didn’t die to come here, you just kind of got kidnapped, or abducted. Normally Tuti explains all that, but since you killed her, I guess I should have. Whatever. But you definitely didn’t die.”

Dix had realized his mistake as soon as the words left his mouth, but before he even had a chance to worry, Thunk had provided him with the perfect cover for anytime he slipped in the future. All he had to explain was that he was a new arrival and his tutorial pixie died before it bothered to do anything other than annoying him. That meant that the only explanation for how he ended up here was that he died and went to Heaven, or maybe some sort of Limbo. He figured he could use it as a great pick up line as well. When a woman asked him how this could possibly be Heaven, he could explain that women as beautiful as her surely couldn’t exist anywhere else. It was cheesy, but just believable and crazy enough to work. If they argued that monsters wouldn’t exist in Heaven, he could bring his estimate down to Limbo, and explain the women as angels that came down to help guide people to the promised land.

Thinking about his horrible new pick up line, Dix suddenly missed his friend Elise. She would have laughed at the idiocy of his new line, then demanded he immediately prove its efficacy. The ensuing argument would eventually descend into a bet, and off he would go to prove he could bring a girl home, even with the worst pick up lines in the world.

Shaking off his melancholy, he decided at that moment that if he was in a new world, then he needed a new friend. It would be difficult to find someone like Elise again, so he decided to not even try. Instead he would try to find a different kind of person he could get along with well enough to form a friendship. Definitely not the priest or the assassin. Personalities aside, he wasn’t going to try and form a real friendship with such an uneven power dynamic. Not only were they significantly more powerful than him, they were also essentially his bosses for the foreseeable future, and being friends with your boss was a terrible idea. The other issue was that they were men. Other than his father, he had never really connected with another man. All of the people he had ever considered to even be acquaintances were women, yet alone the tiny number of people he had called friends at some point in his life.

Unaware of the thoughts running through Dix’s head, Error tried to get things back on track. “So, other than how to scare the hell out of us, did you learn anything else interesting in those books?”

“Oh, yeah. I think I’ve found what I want to try and get to fill up my magical damage and support skills. I hope to be taking two skills from Summoners, but only one of them is a pet, mostly for utility purposes. The other Summoner skill, and the last magical skill are both passives, but I think I have enough notes to be able to learn them on my own eventually. The problem is that I don’t have enough of the right spells to work with right now to get the skills made. Nor do I have the knowledge needed to get my pet, so I am going to need to speak to that mage friend of yours. As for support, I was hoping Thunk could help me out a little.”

Turning to the mildly surprised dwarf, he asked, “Do you know much about the skill Diagnosis?” Seeing Thunk’s nod, he smiled brightly, asking, “Two more things. One, can you help me get it, and two, can it be modified to work on creatures other than people?”

The dwarf scratched his chin through his beard a little. It was funny for Dix to look at the dwarf and imagine some guy from Brooklyn, although his New York accent helped. He just kept picturing one of those big italian guys from mob movies trying to squeeze into the dwarf like a tiny suit that wrapped around his body and shrunk him down. Oblivious to the odd pictures causing Dix to struggle not to laugh, the dwarf finally gave an answer. “Yeah, I think I could teach you the basics. Diagnosis is mostly a knowledge skill, along with some light mana scanning. Hopefully, once you learn the basics of Diagnosis, you can just use the scanning on other creatures to build your knowledge, but I would guess that you will need a different knowledge bank first. As for getting a knowledge bank that will work on creatures, well I think I have an idea. It may end up either evolving the skill, or combining with some others, but I know where to go for the help. We can do it in a few days after I make some inquiries. While I am doing those, I’ll talk to the mage as well.”

“Great, thanks. Error, I still need three tank skills, and five physical damage skills, assuming I can claim Enhanced Strikes as a tank skill. Any ideas, or should I dig through the books?”

Error studied the Folk in front of him. The young man had suddenly become almost a different person, driven and commanding. Before he had been more carefree, whimsical, although still very purposeful. No matter his mood, however, the fierceness was always just under the surface. It was an approach to the world that the elf could appreciate. A thin veneer of civility and laughter hiding the sharp blade just behind. They would need to find the right skills to match up to not only his personality, but also his other skills and combat capabilities. The most difficult part would be finding skills that he would agree to. He seemed to have a particular path in mind, but hadn’t yet explained his thinking on it, other than to be hybridized to the point of focusing on nothing. “What sort of things are you looking for? You seem to have a better understanding of what you are after than you did before, and if you can at least give me generalities, I should be able to help a bit more.”

With an appreciative look, Dix nodded his understanding. “Sure thing. I’m thinking that I want more skills along the lines of what I already have. Thunk over there called my skills basic when I told him about them. In a way he’s right, they are basic. They aren’t the biggest hitting, or flashiest things around, but everyone needs to start with the basics and work their way up. That’s exactly what I want, the basic skills. You guys keep telling me my skills will evolve as I grow in levels and power, so I want to start with the widest and strongest foundation possible. If my entire skill set is made up of basic skills, I should have exactly that.

“There’s more to it though. I want all the necessary skills of an entire party of adventurers. I’m not sure how many of the utility skills are locked into classes, but if they are, then I will want those too. I’m talking about things like lock picking, physical or magical, find and disarm traps, tracking, first aid, ritual magic if that’s a thing, and whatever else you can think of that a group of people would need to get through every type of dungeon imaginable. Remember that I plan to have a passel of spells too, so whatever can be covered competently by spells instead we can at least compare notes to see if we can leave off the skills.

“Listen, I know I am looking at a ton of work, but my life is here on Mantra now, and I plan to make the most of it. Any help you guys can give me on getting started I really appreciate, and I will do my utmost to find a way to pay you back in the future. Can you help me?”