“Student Astorius, go!”

I lunged forward with my spear, letting the momentum of my body add to the thrust. Then back. Spin to the side. Jab high, jab low. Block, turn, block. Each motion, endlessly rehearsed until it was second nature. I let myself run on autopilot, muscle memory allowing me to perform each of the moves as perfectly as I possibly could. When at last I sent the final attack out, a new voice repeated the previous call.

“Student Astorius, go!”

As fluidly as I could manage, I dismissed my harpoon spear and summoned up my knives, moving through the various forms I’d been taught. Sharpened steel swished out in front of me, cutting into the air. As if attempting to gut an invisible foe, I followed up on the slash by stepping forward and stabbing the air before me. After a few more exchanges with the environment, the knife kata ended, and a third voice called out.

“Student Astorius, go!”

From knives to my pickaxe. I swung forth over and over, some tightly controlled, others will all the might I could muster. I pictured imaginary enemies standing before me, and I brought my pick into and through them, not letting myself stop for even a second.

“Good!” The three instructors all glanced towards one another before nodding their heads in unison. “You pass! Good work Astorius!”

Muted clapping sounded from the rest of the class, and I rejoined their ranks to watch the rest of the students demonstrate the weapon masteries they’d achieved throughout the class. I paid as best attention as I could, but surreptitiously, I brought up my stats, smiling to myself at my semester’s worth of progress.

Axes: Level 11

Spears: Level 13

Small Blades: Level 12

The familiar auditorium seating surrounded me as the worried silence of countless would-be dungeon delvers filled the room.

You are in a dungeon, in the middle of a fight. Your healer is knocked unconscious. Your ranged support has fled. You are at half health. Read the following descriptions of the enemies in the room, as well as the list of skills you have access to. How do you defeat the enemies and win the fight? Justify your answer.

Dozens of stats and skill descriptions filled the remainder of the page, and it was all I could do to keep my eyes from glossing over. Eventually though, I was pretty certain I’d realized the trick of it. I started to scrawl my answer in the space provided.

“I don’t,” I began.

Who tried to carry on fighting when the healer was down and people were already running away? Clearing the room was hardly worth dying over. Plus, it wasn’t like it was some boss fight where the room was locked — the ranger had run away, so clearly running was an option.

I scribbled down a few skills from the list I could use to rally and reposition the remainder of my party before grabbing the healer and hightailing it out of there. Not particularly heroic, but I’d pick living coward over dead hero any day.

As I worked, I cast Sense Minds over and over again. With my obfuscation bracelet and without Warram around, I had nothing in particular to worry about, and it had become second nature by now. In the middle of my answer, my mindless casting finally paid off, too.

Sense Minds has reached level 9!

I grinned, dismissing the notification as I put the finishing touches on my answer. With it completed, I turned to the next page of the test, only to find that it was over.

I was done.

I checked over all of my answers before determining that, yes, I really was completely finished, and with that, I walked up to the front and handed the test in.

A disinterested teaching assistant glanced up at me. “Taking any of the role tests?”

I nodded. “Perception-based.”

She grunted and pointed her chin towards the door. “You know the way.”

Unlike was true for most of my other classes, grades in Intro to Dungeon Delving were posted publicly. The idea was — ostensibly — to help solo students to prove their worth to other classmates when forming parties for the second semester.

As part of that, there were also some role-specific tests. Passing them wasn’t required to pass the class, but it would be nice to point to your score and say “Look! I’ve been vetted as a really good scout!” for instance.

The one that I was most interested in was the Perception-based test. Just as had been true back in Drawgin, finding someone with high Perception and detection skills who also could defend themselves was a rarity here. I was hoping that if I showed I was a strong enough asset, then Alara and Emin and I would have an easier time filling out our party with competent members.

I made my way to the training rooms, entering the familiar door to the water room where we’d had a few classes earlier in the year, including a more recent trap-finding exam which I’d passed with flying colors. Surprisingly enough, despite there being a fair number of role-specific tests, it was the instructor herself who greeted me.

“Welcome! Not many who take this one, so you can get started right away. Rules are simple. Tell me everything you can see. If there’s some sort of treasure, extra points if you can get it. Test’s over after thirty minutes, or if you “die” to any of the traps in here. If you don’t have any questions, timer starts now!”

I started by jumping up and flaring some water mana into my feet. I strongly doubted I’d fall in any sort of pit trap or accidentally hit some hidden switch below the water, but it was best not to risk it.

From there, I made use of Arcane Vision to enhance my eyesight. I called out everything as I saw it.

“Lots of pit traps. I’m counting… seven?” I pointed them all out. “Ground looks weird there and there. Guessing it’s a pressure plate. Underwater tripwire over there.”

Detect Trap has reached level 8!

Nice. Relatively certain that I wasn’t missing anything in the near vicinity, I relaxed and looked for treasure or secrets.

Before bothering to switch to other types of mana vision, I called out the easy ones. “That rock is lighter than all the surrounding ones. There’s a little piece of silver sticking out of the ground over there. Suuuuper tiny hole at the base of the wall over there. Not sure what that’s for, but looks like a mouse or eel or something could get in there.” When I was done with what immediately came to me, I started to get serious, moving through all my various vision variants and walking around.

It was surprisingly Wind Sight that found something first. While I was still getting used to interpreting what it showed me, it was clear that there were a few spots in the room where the air patterns weren’t normal. I focused on one of them near the perpetual waterfall walls, and watched as air was sucked into the wall.

“Some sort of weird cave behind the waterfall over there?” It was just high enough that I’d probably be able to explore it, but I wanted to make sure I’d found everything else first.

Water Sight helped me out next despite the fact that I nearly turned it off instantly. There was, after all, water everywhere.

I’d tried it out due to one of its secondary features however: Can discern how pure water is on sight. I hadn’t expected much from it, but surprisingly, it bore fruit. One small patch of the ankle-high water looked just ever-so-slightly less pure than the others, leading me to believe something was buried there.

Tremor Sight soon verified that and ended up being the most useful of the bunch. The pitfalls I’d already seen now stuck out even more intensely, and any buried items or pockets of strange densities in the earth were made instantly clear to me. Its range wasn’t as good as the rest, though, so I had to do a once over of the room to make the best use of it. As I did so, I spotted a number of odd markings and small details as well, which I added to my list. By the time I made a full circuit, I’d found enough to level another of my skills.

Detect Secret has reached level 9!

I eagerly looked forward to it eventually hitting level 10, as it was one of the skills I enjoyed using the most.

At last, not immediately seeing anything new, I turned back to the instructor. “You said extra points if I actually go explore all this stuff and bring things back?”

She nodded. “Yup. And you have about, oh, twenty minutes left?”

I winced at how much time I’d already used up, but there was nothing for it. Hopefully I was already ahead of the pack in terms of how much I’d been able to find.

From there, all that was left was to enter some tunnels, dig through some mud, and maybe even solve a puzzle or two. As I dismissed my water boots and got down on my knees to start to uncover what I thought was a chest of some sort, I sincerely hoped that what I’d found ended up being treasure and not a hidden trap.

Rows and rows of bulky metal cauldrons were lined up just outside of the forest. Each sat on an enchanted heat plate, with various gems to control exactly how hot they would get.

Currently, every one of them was turned off. After all, there wasn’t anything to put in the cauldrons yet.

“Okie doke, folks! Just to recap one last time.” With the amount of times I’d gotten yelled at by various men with military cuts this year, listening to the frazzled woman with her comically large glasses was always something of a relief.

“You’ve got two whole hours. Any herbs you want to use, you pick ‘em yourself. After you’ve gotten everything you want, head back here and pop a squat. Unless you come take some of my other classes — did I mention I teach a mean mycology course? — then these will be the final potions we make together, so try to make it something good!”

With that, she fixed us all with one last goofy smile and shouted out: “Go!”

I shot Emin a thumbs up, wishing him the best of luck, and he did the same back to me. This time around, barring younger kids and those who wanted protection, it was a solo test, so he’d be fending for himself.

Knowing that I had a significantly higher Dexterity and Endurance than most of my classmates, I decided to start running further out. True, I probably could have beat everyone else to the nearby herbs before the area was picked clean, but why bother? Everyone else would need them more than I did.

Once I deemed myself to be significantly far enough, I switched into search and harvest mode. The very first thing I did was activate Vitality Sight, channeling some life mana into my eyes.

As to be expected from using it in a forest, it was kind of overwhelming, almost to the point of being more of a hindrance than a help. Everything here was living.

Still, it helped to draw my eye to any of the smaller plants I might have otherwise missed amongst the cluttered forest floor. More than that, it also cut through a few meters worth of solid material, meaning I could see a glow from the various root systems beneath me. Through judiciously switching between Vitality Sight and Tremor Sight, I could occasionally get lucky and find truffles or tubers that were otherwise impossible to find without assistance.

All in all, despite the time limit, it was relaxing, in a way. I just took a nice stroll through the woods, stopping to pick anything I thought could be useful.

Brush moss. A coarse patch of green grew at the base of a nearby tree, and I stooped down to collect some. It had a pitifully low stamina recovery effect, but mostly it was used to slow the absorption speed of a potion down. For something like a low-grade health potion, that wasn’t always wanted, but for ingredients which tended to put a more serious strain on the body, spreading out their effects tended to help.

Sage’s cap. A bit of a misnomer, there. It did look like some poofy hat stuck atop a stick-like body, but far from giving bonus Intelligence or Wisdom, it would mostly just upset your stomach. It had a small handful of uses if mixed with other plants that would neutralize its weak poison, though. While I doubted I’d be making use of it, I took one just to be safe, gently twisting it off from the base so as not to damage the mycelium below.

Belatedly, I recalled that Herbalism was, in fact, a profession. Chiding myself for not thinking of it earlier, I started harvesting what I came across with my Gloves of the Arcanist activated. The basic gloves were unchanged, but figuring herbalism was pretty much as life-oriented as it got, I channeled some life mana into the gloves and tried again.

Quickly, I was rewarded for my efforts. The gloves puffed out, with little stylized mana ferns and herbs embellishing them. Thankfully, it wasn’t just a decorative effect.

Synergy detected! You have discovered a new aspect of your gloves!

Hands of the Harvester (Life variant)

+5 to Herbalism

While harvesting any plants, fungi, or other living reagents, increases the quality of all gathered materials and triples the time it would take before they go bad.

Any materials harvested in this manner have a small chance to upgrade to a mana-infused variant.

Additionally, protects the wearer’s hands from any toxic substances encountered while harvesting.

“Neat!” It didn’t sound like some super cheat skill that would let me pick up a fern and have it turn into some legendary, thousand-year-old reagent, but I liked it! I made sure to use it moving forward, and I was eventually rewarded with a single mana-infused truffle. Seemingly pleased with my find, the system granted me another win as well.

Herbalism has reached level 5!

Considering I’d had a semester to work on it, it was one of my lower skills. Then again, it was a decent trek to get from the city out to the surrounding forests, which meant we only managed it once every few classes.

On and on I went until, judging that I had more than enough, I made my way back to the original gathering point. I passed a few of my classmates still busy foraging for their own reagents, and I gave a little wave.

Despite having ventured further out than most of the others, by the time I got back, I found I was one of the earlier ones to complete my herb gathering. I briefly considered heading back out, but in the end, I was confident I had enough. After grabbing one of the open cauldrons, I laid my bounty out before me, trying to figure out what I might want to make.

Um. Headache medicine? A stamina drought? I was pretty sure if I combined a particular four of my finds, I’d end up with a low-strength fantasy viagra, but that wasn’t exactly the note I wanted to go out on.

Oh! A little unconventional — I’ll have to sub in some of the truffles for the usual golden fiddleheads — but that’s allowed, isn’t it? I was pretty sure, anyway. It wasn’t something I’d done before, but the books said it worked.

Plus, if I failed, I still had plenty of time to make something else. I was probably going to either way, honestly. No sense in letting everything go to waste.

Not wishing to repeat my previous mistake, I activated my Gloves of the Arcanist from the getgo this time. Unfortunately, nothing immediately popped out at me. I cycled through the flame, water, and life mana, thinking that those were the most alchemy-related, but if anything was happening, I couldn’t see it yet.

I shrugged. It would probably take some time to suss out every last secret from the skill. In the meantime, I decided to carry on while using the life gloves, just in case some part of the brewing process triggered something.

All right. Step one. Water. There was a nearby river, and the teacher had also brought some distilled water for those who absolutely needed it, but I had a faster option, directly casting Conjure Water over the cauldron.

Step two. Low simmer. Finely mince and then lightly grind the truffles before throwing them in. I chuckled as I went through the motions, enjoying the close parallels between alchemy and my cooking class. While this time around, I wasn’t aiming for anything edible, for all that I’d done so far, I could be making some sort of truffle butter. While not entirely sure what it would do, I decided to throw in the mana-infused variant as well.

Chop, grind, heat, mix, strain, shake. Each step had its own predetermined time, which I altered slightly based on the scent, color, or texture of the mixture in front of me. Outside of having a skill dedicated to it, it was never easy to tell exactly how potent your ingredients were, and even different leaves from the same plant might be slightly different from one another. Alchemy, as I’d learned, was partly about precisely following a recipe, and partly about learning to wing it as you went.

By the time my creation neared its completion, more and more of my classmates had started to filter in. Curious to see what I was up to, the teacher also came around at one point, peering over my shoulder. As focused as I was, I didn’t see what sort of expression she made, but eventually she walked away, leaving me to it.

I would have liked to say that the end of the brewing process was some appropriately melodramatic, climactic feat. That I, with sweat streaming from my brow, strained my mana core as I controlled the chaotic energies which raged against one another in the cauldron before me. And then with a final heroic surge of willpower and raw talent, I brought the energies to heel, combining them into something more.

In reality I pretty much just stirred stuff until it was ready.

That was, after all, kind of how Alchemy worked under level 10.

Congratulations! You have crafted an item: Liquid Euphoria

When released into the air, this potion greatly relaxes all who come in contact with it, loosening tension and giving off a feeling of safety.

Quality: Great (upgraded from Good)

Note! This potion was made with mana-infused reagents. Additional effects have been added:

All effects strengthened

Soothes strained mana cores

Quality increased

Alchemy has reached level 7!

It was a sort of milky, amber-colored liquid which I hastily bottled up. I’d had my eye on the recipe for a while now, as it was essentially an instant massage in a bottle. Fortunately, despite the somewhat questionable name, it was theoretically non-addictive as well.

Quickly realizing that I’d finished, the teacher rolled around once more, gesturing for me to hand her the recently bottled concoction. She brought it close to her eyes, no doubt using some sort of identification skill, perhaps an alchemy-specific one.

“Beautifully done. Not something most people go for, but the quality is high. Although, is that mana-infused?” Her glasses slid down her nose as she tilted her head down at me.

After a brief back and forth where I hastily convinced her that, yes, all of my ingredients had come from the forest, and, no, I hadn’t brought my own mana-infused plants with me to cheat, she left.

I turned back to the cauldron, intent on making some more potions while I could, but ultimately, I was done! Another class well and truly finished.

Not all of my finals were equally intense. Or, at least not in the same sort of way.

Case in point: Cooking. When one student had asked the teacher if there’d be any sort of final, he’d nodded with a sort of gravitas reserved for those who used words sparingly.

“Make a meal. Share it with others. You pass.” He offered no further clarification on the matter.

Something told me that it was the kind of assignment that was, strictly speaking, optional. I didn’t expect him to magically keep tabs on all of us to make sure we did it, after all. With teaching-related skills in play, I supposed that such a thing could have been possible, but even so, it felt a bit far-fetched. Even past that, how could you fail an intro-cooking class in the first place?

That didn’t mean I was going to blow the assignment off, though. What was the point of taking cooking classes if you couldn’t show off to your friends?

Thus, in the very serious name of my education and final exams, I had no other choice. It was time for a dinner party!