Chapter 29: Wolven loss

Edward walked out of the adventurer guild and started heading towards the residential district wearing a worried expression on his face. His arm stopped burning but he could still feel a light itch even now. As he noticed the people around him started thinning out, he asked quietly: “Fenrir, can you tell me what that was?”

[It was me fighting off a soul probe. I couldn’t tell exactly where it came from but, considering everything, it must have been that old man… he failed in the end but he probably already suspects something.]

“Pry into my soul? Can someone do that?”

[… I don’t know, this world’s power system is still a mystery to me… for now, try not to have much contact with him. The fact that I repelled his soul probe is probably also the reason he accepted your request. He might be looking to keep you close so that he can investigate how you stopped his probe.]

Edward nodded and didn’t ask anything further as he reached a street that was a bit more crowded. Eventually, he reached the area Lara showed to him on the map and started looking around, searching for any house that met Lara’s description. It didn’t take long until he spotted a relatively large mansion that had a tree growing straight through it’s middle. The design was weird to say the least, Edward having never seen anything like this before.

“Well, that must be it…” murmured Edward as he walked if front of the main door. He lifted his hand to knock when the door opened by itself and a young man appeared in front of Edward.

The young man was quite tall and slim, wearing a green bandanna around his forehead that tied his free falling hair and at the same time covered his ears. His hair was white, the same color as the guild leader, making Edward assume he was the guild leader’s son.

The young man gave Edward a look over before his face turned from intrigued to indifferent as he asked: “A peasant entering the noble’s quarter? What is your purpose in coming here?”

Edward frowned, already having a bad impression of the young man, but still passed him the token and letter as instructed by Lara. ‘It doesn’t matter how high his nose is. As long as he is as strong as Lara said I must give it a try…’

The young man took the token and letter with a surprised look before breaking the seal on the letter. After reading it for a while, he looked at Edward once more with a frown of his own.

“Brother, who is it?” a bright and lifting voice came from behind the young man, followed by the appearance of a young lady. She wore a simple green gown with her pure white hair tied into a braid that fell over her right shoulder towards the front, reaching until just under her right breast. As she reached the young man’s side, she fixed her ravishing green eyes on Edward and tilted her head to the side with a confused look.

Her brother passed her the letter over his shoulder and said to Edward in an indifferent tone: “I understand that father agreed to add you to our party, so I will respect his decision and will at least give you a chance, but if you are not able to keep up, I’ll have to remove you even if I have to go against his word. In the end, it’s still my party. Understood?”

“Fine by me.” Replied Edward in the same indifferent tone. All he wanted was a party to go dungeon hunting with and, while he didn’t have many hopes of ever getting to like the leader’s son, as long as he was strong it was enough.

By the time the two of them had their little speech, the young woman finally finished reading the letter and fixed her eyes on Edward once more. “Penta-mixed class aptitude? This brat? Why do I feel that father has gotten tired of you turning back all the offers we get and now started recommending random adventurers just so we head to the dungeon? Brother you can’t really believe his bullshit.”

“Maybe not.. But I don’t think father will just send someone who isn’t even level three that has no talent. We must at leave give him a chance or we’ll never hear the end of it.”

“This is boring. I’m going upstairs to read. You deal with this.” Said the young woman before turning around and leaving without giving Edward another look. He soft falling steps and gracious walk gave her an air of nobility and paired with the air current slowing blowing on her gown created a mesmerizing sight, a sight that Edward was too pissed off to even notice. The entire conversation between the two did nothing else but grate on Edward’s ears.

The young man didn’t mind Edward’s displeased expression and turned around to walk inside before telling him to follow.

Edward sighed and followed the young man in. After entering the house, the young man took Edward through a long hallway that exited in what look like a spacious training area set up in the backyard.

The backyard was split into two equal parts, the left one having a lot of targets riddled with holes, some of them still having arrows stuck in them, white the right one had quite a lot of weird devices and mannequins filled with cuts.

The young man took Edward to the left side with all the targets and said: “How many spells can you use?”

“Three.”

The young man frowned and asked: “Only three? Show me. You can attack any of the targets here.”

Edward nodded and summoned a water ball and a water blade before throwing them both at the targets in the distance at the same time, hitting the bullseye with both of the them. After casting the spells, he heard the young man say from his back.

“The casting speed and control is indeed not that bad. Now show me the third one.”

Edward put on an awkward expression an created a round disk that hovered in front of him peacefully. The disk was not that large, around 15 or so inches while being completely transparent.

The young man looked at the plate and nodded before saying: “So a defensive spell. With your control and some well timed attacks you might be able to help even if you only have so many spells. Spar with me for a bit. I want to test your combat senses.”

As his words ended, the young man started walking toward the right side. Edward followed right after and saw him take two wooden swords from near one of the mannequins.

“Once you start casting I’ll also start attacking. You won’t need to hold anything back, you won’t be able to touch me anyway. Whenever you are ready.”

Even if the young man seemed quite rude and Edward didn’t particularly like him, sparring with a human was a great way to put his abilities to test. Also, he couldn’t say that the thought of maybe landing a hit or two on the young man wasn’t an exciting one.

With a deep breath, Edward summoned a water blade and just launched it at the young man to see how he will react. The moment the water blade left Edward’s palm, the young man dashed towards Edward, apparently with no intention of avoiding the attack.

As the water blade was close to hitting him in the face, he slid and bent down slightly, passing right under the attack and dodging it with ease. Edward was taken by surprise by the young man’s agility and launched a series of three water blades, trying to block his dodging locations, the same tactic that worked quite well on the lizards in the dungeon.

The young man surprised Edward once more by plunging straight forward, passing between all three of his water blades while contorting his body in a strange way, before landing with a roll on the ground and continuing his charge forward.

Since he was already quite close, Edward summoned two small Water Barriers and got ready to defend, but just as the wooden sword were about to come into contact with the barriers, the young man stopped his attack with the swords, bent down and leg swiped Edward off his feet in one quick motion.

The world did a quick spin for Edward and, before he finally woke up to his senses, he was lying on the ground on his back, looking straight up at the sunny sky with two wooden swords placed at both sides of his neck.

“You’ve lost.”

‘Damn, he’s fast.’ Thought Edward as he let out a sigh and accepted his defeat while saying: “I lost.”

The young man nodded and removed the wooden swords from his neck before saying: “Excellent casting speed, good mana control, sub-par attack and defense diversity, sub-par reaction time, sub-par dexterity, sub-par combat experience.”

Edward thought the young man was actually about to praise him as his words started, but once he started listing the things he was bad at, it was like each word stabbed straight into his confidence.

The young man didn’t care about Edward’s downcast expression as he continued: “Some might think that, as a mage, dexterity is not important, but I’m not the same opinion. If a mage only focuses in improving his mana and spell diversity, while indeed quite strong, all that will depend on him being protected in the back. If a fighter or rogue class gets into close range, the mage is simply done for. Now, you are not that bad, but I have to know, do you really have a penta-mixed class aptitude?”

“I have no idea what that means…” replied Edward, curious himself about what that meant.

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“It means that you have learning aptitudes for five different classes.”

“Then it should be so. I remember that I had aptitudes for each class besides cleric.”

The young man frowned and said: “But, there are only five basic classes…”

Edward also pondered trying to remember the exact results on the tablet before saying: “I remember being an unknown class also displayed there, but I don’t know what it is.”

“Oh, so one of those classes is an unique one. That doesn’t matter since activating your unique class is usually more of a luck thing. Now back to the main problems, you will need to pick a new subclass, preferably one that specializes on dexterity to obtain the mother tree’s blessing. The earlier the better, otherwise your potential will just get wasted.”

“Blessing?” asked Edward with a confused look.

The young man sighed and said: “Lara said that you’re missing quite a lot of common knowledge so I’ll explain shortly. Once you register a class or a subclass, it will also decide the way the life force is used in increasing your abilities. For example, as you only have the water mage class, all the life force goes into increasing your mana once you level up. Your strength, dexterity and stamina will also increase with you leveling up, but it will be a small increase brought by the raising of your level of existence and not a direct one. If you pick another subclass, for example swordsman, half of the life force you gather will also be used in increasing your strength and stamina.”

“But won’t that cut out of my total mana?”

“No it won’t. The way it works is quite different. Having two classes from different categories will also increase the amount of life force required to level up by at least half. That’s why having too many classes is also not really a good idea since it would decrease your leveling speed too much. This is not a problem for most people, since the average amount of class aptitudes is two, but since you have a penta-mixed aptitude, you have to consider what you want to focus on carefully. Magician classes will increase your mana, fighters will increase stamina and strength, rogues will increase stamina and dexterity, clerics will increase divine power and rangers will increase dexterity and strength.”

Edward didn’t know any of this and was already warming up to the guy because he took the time to explain some stuff to him. After pondering for a while, he asked: “So you would recommend I will also choose a rogue subclass?”

The young man nodded and said: “That would be for the best. Most magicians don’t really care about that or just don’t have an aptitude for a rogue class, but in your case there’s really nothing stopping you from choosing one.”

Edward nodded and figured that while the young man was quite insufferable, he had a lot more knowledge than him and what he was saying sounded logical enough.

“What classes do you have?” asked Edward with a curious look.

“My main class is Twin-Blade and I have two subclasses, Air Mage and Dancer.”

“Dancer?” asked Edward, having no idea what kind of class that would be.

“Dancer is rogue class that mainly focuses on fluid movement.”

Edward nodded, finding that his combination of classes was not a bad one.

“Do you have any recommendations on which classes I should pick and how many I should go for?”

“I would have recommended the cleric class for one, since it’s quite a good combination for a main class mage, but since that’s not an option for you, I think going a rogue and a ranger class would be a decent choice. You will have a dual increase in dexterity, allowing you to be constantly on the move while casting your spells.”

“Is it possible to change a class if I’m not satisfied with it latter down the road?”

The young man shook his head and said: “No, once you pick a class or a subclass you are stuck with it for life, at least to my knowledge. That’s why it’s an important decision to make.”

“All right, I’ll consider it.” Replied Edward with a nod.

“You should pick it early, since it will get harder to increase your level later on and you will be missing on quite a lot of dexterity if you don’t pick it early. The majority of adventurers only pick a class or two, but that’s only because they are limited by their aptitudes. You going with three classes, while it will delay your leveling speed, it’s….”

The young man’s words were cut short as his sister came from the back entrance of the house: “So brother, how is the kid?”

Edward’s eyebrow twitched at being called a kid by that girl, who looked the same age or even younger than him. The young man didn’t mind and said: “He’s quite weak and the amount of spells he has is pitiable, but his potential is not bad. Finding a person with more than two aptitudes that specializes in magic is quite rare so it would be a shame to not accept him into the party.”

The girl nodded with an indifferent expression before saying: “We’ll do as you say. So, are we heading to the dungeon or do you plan on waiting to find a cleric as well? I don’t think we really need a healer for the first ten or so floors.”

The young man turned towards Edward and said: “She’s right. What do you say?”

Edward pondered for a moment before asking: “Is it difficult to register for more sub-classes?”

“For a main class it is, since you’ll need to form master-apprentice pact, but sub-classes are a whole different story. You only need to head to the guild and pay for a token then register your subclass. You should be able to do it in a single day with ease.”

“Pay?” asked Edward with an awkward expression: “How much is it?”

“One gold coin per subclass.”

Edward had no money, but his thoughts went to Circe and he nodded before saying: “That’s all right. How about we go to the dungeon tomorrow morning then? This way I will be able to pick my subclasses as well.”

The young man nodded. “That’s good as well. We’ll meet tomorrow at first light in front of the northern gate of the city.”

Edward nodded and, escorted by the young man, he started heading towards the exit. Right after passing through the exit, he remembered something and turned around: “You never told me your name. I’m Edward Black.”

“I’m Ingvar.”

“All right, Ingvar. See you tomorrow.” replied Edward. He was curious how a man that was the adventurer guild leader’s son and definitely looked like a noble had no surname, but decided against asking about it.

The young man nodded in response before stepping back inside the house.

“Not a bad day. I learned quite a lot.” Murmured Edward as he turned around and started heading towards the magician guild. “Time to borrow some money from that master of mine.”

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