The first class Dix actually attended was Guild Basics. It covered the rules and regulations of the Guild, most of which were common sense, as well as the main purpose of the Guild. According to the instructor the Guild existed to protect civilization. They did this by using the classical form of real time strategy games. Explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate. Explore to find new areas for civilization to expand into, and dungeons to exploit for power and wealth. Any monsters found were exterminated, then studied to make further extermination easier. While efficient, it was also rather disturbing to Dix to hear.

As time passed, and he learned more and more about the world he now found himself in, Dix couldn’t help but think back to Crossroads telling him how much of the world Humanity had screwed up. For him, it wasn’t about how much they had or hadn’t screwed up, and more about how much they had influenced things. So much of what he had learned about Mantra was similar to the things he had learned from reading and playing video games. It had gotten to the point where he was having trouble deciding which came first, the System of Mantra, or Gygax the Godfather of modern RPG’s. Was the 4X model always how the Guild had operated, or was it a change brought about by transfers? Maybe they just brought the more efficient naming sense, but it was still something from Earth that was, perhaps, better forgotten.

To help empower their members to overcome any challenges in the safeguarding of civilization, the Guild also had a number of other services that were available. Discounts with preferred vendors and craftsmen, dedicated training cities such as Pursue, and easily accessed information on monsters, dungeons, roles, and classes. To help facilitate the growth of its members, the Guild also offered the service of Oracles on site at each branch. Oracles were purported to be the most knowledgeable people in the world when it came to skills, although Dix wasn’t convinced. He’d have to talk to Thunk and Error about it later.

With the end of class, which was only held a single time, and had only lasted about an hour and a half, Dix headed over to his next one. When he arrived quite early, Dix decided to go over his gains from the last couple weeks. He hadn’t looked at his status in some time, preferring to work on improving it, rather than watch it do nothing. Settling into a seat a couple rows back in the middle of the room, he pulled it up.

Name: Dix

Level: 0

Race: Runeborn

Visible Race: Folk

Class: None

Titles: Touched by Death, Pheremonal

Traits: Adaptation

Body 11 Strength 11 Vitality 13 Agility 11 Mind 8 Intelligence 8 Mana 13 Control 8 Soul 9 Focus 9 Spirit 13 Will 9 Luck 8

None of his basic information had changed, but his stats had seen a fair bit of growth, almost entirely in the Body section. Surprisingly, he also had some small changes in his Soul stats, although he had no idea how that had happened. Dix was also upset that he hadn’t had any changes to his Mind stats, although he hadn’t done any work in that area so he wasn’t surprised. He vowed to make the time to get some practice in more often. Error had explained how important it was to maximize his statistics before he started leveling. One of their original concerns had been figuring out how to raise his Soul stats, which was half solved now. The numbers had obviously gone up, but he wasn’t sure why. It would take more attention to solve that mystery. The fact that he could check his notifications for information on when, exactly, his Soul stats had risen never occurred to him. His subconscious wasn’t worried because it already knew why the numbers had risen, and plans were in place to continue that work.

Racial Skills:

Runic Memory

Mana Seed

Mana Flow

????

????

There were no changes to his Racial Skills, although one had a few changes to its description. Runic Memory now had an expanded section that detailed the runes he knew. Once again seeing Mana Seed on his Racial Skills list reminded him to check on the growth of the Seed he had implanted in his Dantian. Tugging on the mana in his body, he guided some into searching out the strange space in his chest. For the most part it was unchanged, but the seed was located in the exact center. It was held in place by a number of thin roots that had branched out from the seed to grip the sides of the mystical organ. Dix would have loved to have known how much it had grown, but to his dismay he realized it was actually the first time he bothered to check on the seed. He hadn’t paid more than a moment's notice when he first got it. He was so used to relying on his subconscious that he always forgot that it never bothered to check the results of its decisions, a side effect of never second guessing himself. Shaking his head at his own idiocy in forgetting something so simple and important, he moved on.

Knowing that there would be a lot of changes in his Skills, Dix decided to work his way up from the smaller sections. He checked his resistances first, finding them with only minor changes. Pain and Force were the only two changes, as he had mostly been beating himself up with physical things, as opposed to magical. He did have a new one, which was a bit of a surprise. He hadn’t even noticed the differences it made during his training. Or he had attributed it to something else. As for his Skills towards Class, the only changes were the increase in the number of skills that Devouring Stride had eaten, and Mental Connection.

Resistances:

Fire 1

Mana 1

Ice 1

Lightning 1

Earth 1

Water 1

Air 1

Force 3

Pain 4

Impact 2

Skills towards Class:

Enhanced Strike

Enhanced Throw

Enhanced Shot

Devouring Stride (59) 2

Channelling 1

Overload 1

Return 1

Raise Dead 2

Touch of Death 1

Empower 1

Mental Connection 1

Smiling to himself, Dix decided that in the future he would check his updates each night before falling asleep. He was actually a little worried about the number of skills he had gained in the past while. It wasn’t that any of them were all that strong, or even changed much, it was just that there were a lot of them. All of them were passives though, which simply meant that he had gotten a little bit better at a particular activity. Even the skills absorbed by Devouring Stride were just passives, so they weren’t huge changes to his abilities. Despite the small increase in capabilities that each passive gave him, he was still grateful for learning them. With a deep breath, he triggered his status for his general skills.

General Skills:

Meditation

Mana Sight

Mana Sense

Mana Manipulation

Advanced Martial Weapons: Humanoid

Advanced Magical Weapons and Tools

Appraisal: Alchemist

Lock Picking

Trap Sense

Disarm Trap

Magical Trap Sense

Cooking

Bartering

Skinning

Butchering

Dismantling

Mana Extraction

Blood Extraction

Cartography

Measuring

Surveying

Drawing

Pathfinding

Tracking

High Line Tracking

Thick Skin

Hardened Bones

Looking over his list, he was quite pleased. None of the things he had learned were overpowered, either alone or all together. None of them were groundbreaking, or even high level. Most were still only level one. What they were was useful. These skills were simply utility skills. They were things that everyone should know, but due to the reliance on roles, most people didn’t bother with them. Most groups would only have one or two people who knew any one of the skills he had acquired. He wouldn’t be replacing a Thief in any party soon, but with practice and time he would be able to hold his own. More importantly, he would be able to loot his own kills and dungeons, make his own maps of those dungeons, and track his own prey. He could skin, butcher, and dismantle his kills for food to cook, or loot to sell or hand off to crafters. He wouldn’t be the best at any of these things, but he wouldn’t have to rely on someone else to do it for him.

Looking over the rather long list, he focused on how it was displayed, running options through his head until something stuck. The next time he had to pull up the whole list it would be organized like the sub skills. That is to say, mostly invisible. He didn’t really need to know most of the levels or names of his skills all the time, so they didn’t need to be displayed when he pulled up his general status. More importantly, most of the time he wouldn’t have the time or attention available to parse through the whole list to find the few things that he actually needed to know. He even managed to shuffle a few of the skills off into a whole different category, crafting skills. When he finally learned Strip, the number of visible skills would drop again, as six skills combined into one, dropping the others into sub skills.

Contemplating his next step, Dix didn’t even bat an eye when a voice next to him said, “You are in my seat.” He simply grabbed his things and moved to a seat diagonally towards the front from the one he had vacated. His focus on his internal debate wasn’t even disturbed when it happened a second time. What did take notice, however, was his subconscious. With no real interest in social niceties, the logical portion of his mind did what it does best, threat assessment. His eyes quickly flickered around the people nearby, and came to the conclusion that the repeated request was an intent to bully him. Dix’s response to bullying was never proportional.

The finely dressed young Human and his two hangerons slash bodyguards, along with all of the other people in the room, were shocked when Dix lashed out. They had all seen the Folk get up and absentmindedly change desks the first time the question had been asked, and had expected the same behavior to assert itself several more times, until the obviously wealthy bully and his sycophants had managed to chase Dix from the room. None of them were surprised by the behavior of the bully, and were simply happy he had chosen someone else. Sadly, for the teenager, Dix was long past tolerating these games.

Consequently, the snap kick to the side of the wealthy scion's knee caught everyone unprepared. Particularly the boy and his guards. With a crumpled knee, the bully started to collapse towards Dix, only to be brutally slammed face first into the desk surface. Before his stunned guards could come to his aid there was a blade at his throat, and the point of another dagger almost touching his eye. The shocked silence of the room allowed the quiet words Dix used to be heard across the room when he spoke into the boy's ear. “I don’t care who you are. I don’t care who your family are. If you attempt this shit within my notice again, you and your butt buddies die. These classes are for those dedicated to protecting civilization, not subjugating it. As you obviously don’t belong, I imagine I will have no difficulty explaining your execution as being for the betterment of all people. Now get the fuck out of here before I decide one warning is more than you deserve.”

Judicious use of Enhanced Throw allowed Dix to fling the child at his minders like the trash that he was. The bodyguards barely managed to catch him before he tumbled into the next row of desks. Still shocked at the turn of events, the bully was dragged from the room without managing to respond at all. As they neared the door, Dix finally noticed something odd was going on. His subconscious sent a quick thought of cliche to him, clearing up the confusion as he spotted the trio leaving the room. Saddened at the needless posturing of yet another bully contributing to his slowly degrading joy at his new world, Dix finally made a decision he had been putting off. The faster he could gain his class and get the hell away from people, the happier he would be.

Looking around the room, he realized two main things. First, he was currently the center of attention. The looks he was getting ranged from terror to confusion to amusement. More or less what he expected after the previous encounter. It showcased that Crossroads had probably been right after all, the people of Earth were fucking up everything. He figured it was likely that bullying was commonplace before Humans were added to the mix, but decided to ignore the possibility and just mentally vented his irritation at its normal target. Perhaps in the future he could take the time to see if it was just Humans or all people that were assholes.

The second thing he noticed was that everyone in the room looked to be in their late teens, or a similar maturity for their species. He was guessing a little on the other species, but he was judging based on all of the ones he could actually interpret, as well as their social interactions. If this group was representative of the average group of people training to be adventurers, it was a younger man’s game. There were no middle aged or elderly people at all. Dix supposed it made sense in a number of ways. Earth’s militaries stopped accepting people at certain ages as they were no longer effective combatants. Add in a lifetime of gaining levels in a particular class, and it would be almost impossible for someone to change the entire direction of their life in their later years. His mind was about to roll off into debating the dissatisfaction rate of people towards their chosen class versus the possibility of respecialization when the door was opened by an older male.

While physical maturity of any of the lizard related beastkin was impossible for Dix to accurately judge, the one walking through the door gave the impression of being much older than the rest of the people in the class, Dix included. Other than the scales, teeth, and tail, the man could have been a professor at Dix’s own alma mater, complete with spectacles and tweed jacket. When the lizardman said, “Welcome to Monsters 101,” in a British accent, Dix was positive that he was a transfer. Most likely some absent minded Caimbridge professor that started studying monsters as a divergent biological evolution.

Whether or not he had mischaracterized the man teaching the class was never fully disclosed, but no matter where he came from or why he had studied the material he taught, the lizardman knew his material. The first day of class covered just the basic categorization of monsters before getting into the details on a couple of them. Future classes would cover an expanding number of categories, culminating in the students being linked into the Appraisal repository for monsters. It wouldn’t be of huge help, but it would certainly make it easier to figure out what you were dealing with without digging through a magical encyclopedia. The professor also recommended the class on Variants that Dix had signed up for as a way to expand on that repository, which led to nearly half the students making frantic notes to sign up for that class.

When class had ended, Dix gathered his things to head back to the temple as his school day was over. Still half in his head about some of the things he was thinking over, he was a bit surprised when a few people approached him. It was an eclectic mix of people, but they were all around the same age as he had become. The three in the front were all some form of canine based beast species, two males and a female. Behind them were an orc and a gnome, both female. Of the three canines, two seemed to share some features, possible evidence of familial connections. Both wore robes and carried staves, as did the gnome, giving the distinct impression of being casters of some sort. The other canine was in front, appearing to be in charge of the group, as well as their tank if the heavy armor and large shield were any indication. The orc, with her twin axes and lightweight leather armor, was obviously the damage. All in all a fairly well balanced group that could do very well, provided the people politics didn’t get in the way.

Dix had noticed them during class, easily assessing them as an adventuring party from how they had all sat in a group surrounding the female canine, herded together like buffalo protecting their young. From the body language of the group, they had all known each other for some time, allowing everyone to fall into their party roles, as well as their social ones. He thought the group was actually a bit of a joke, despite the balance it represented. The healer was obviously desperately in love with the tank, who was completely oblivious. Her brother, the tank’s best friend, was furious with his sister’s choice in romantic partners. The gnomish girl liked to sit back and poke fun at the entire situation, although her jokes went completely over their leaders head, and the orc was just the strong silent type. All in all, another stereotypical grouping of people. He sincerely hoped that this encounter went better than his last.