Joe woke with a start, a wakefulness that was almost instantaneous without the common drifting awake he was used to. Joe lay for a few moments, gathering his thoughts before he stretched and woke, sitting up and dropping his legs over the side of the bed easily.
“This bed is killing me! Seriously!”
“What master?”
“Joe. My names Joe.”
“Yes, mas… Joe.”
The two quieted down as they prepped for the morning, although Joe took a couple minutes to do some stretches and unkink his back. Garnedell finished preparing and cleaning his bed before turning to watch Joe as he stretched. After a few moments of watching, Garnedell worked up the courage to ask a question.
“Master… Joe! What are those movements? Why do you do them?”
“Ah. Well, these are considered stretches. It is important to help protect from injury if you are going to fight or do strong physical exercise. I do them because this bed is killing me!”
“The bed… is killing you?”
“Oh. Uh… it means the bed is not very comfortable and hurts me. I really don’t like it!”
“Ah… yes, I see,” Garnedell immediately nodded his head in understanding.
Joe accepted Garnedell’s statement, then reconsidered his understanding, “What do you mean you understand?”
“You must obviously be used to much softer beds!”
“Ah, yes. You are right,” Joe acknowledged then dismissed the comments as the headed back down to the common room.
After the two ordered their breakfast, Joe decided to get to know Garnedell, “So, Garnedell. Tell me about yourself.”
“Ah. I… I do not know what you wish me to say?”
“Just tell me about who you are, where you are from, and anything else you want to tell me about?”
“Ah. I am not certain where I am from. My family came to the village where you found me only a few years before you came. I do not know where or why my parents left their home, but my family was very quiet about their past. I think they were afraid.”
“Dude! I’m so sorry to hear that!”
“Dude?”
“Ah… sorry… just another strange word from my people.” Where’s the auto-translate? Seriously, this thing is broken. Joe fumed a bit as he noticed his auto-translate seeming to fail once again.
“OK. Well, we lived there for a short time but then some people came to town and my mother told me to run and hide. Maybe those people did not care for me or did not know, but after that day, my family disappeared and I was alone. I had no family in the village and no one to care for me, although the villagers were kind and often found me work for a small payment or a meal. It was not easy, but they did well by me and kept me safe.”
Seriously? That was doing well by them? He was living under a bridge for a home! How… Joe schooled his face and simply nodded, accepting Garnedell’s judgment of the people and the society, if not the level of their social responsibility. Garnedell came to the end of his story and Joe moved on to a more neutral topic, not wishing to bring Garnedell down, although he seemed to take his dire past reasonably well. “Then, how is your job adventurer?”
“My father was an adventurer.”
Joe grimaced as he realized that he’d brought it right back to his sad past, but found a hint of something important, “So you can take on the job of your father?”
“Or mother. Children are given the job of their father or mother at birth. But you can choose at the day of Choosing.”
“So you can inherit your parent’s jobs. Huh. What’s the day of choosing?”
“It is the day when a child becomes an adult and they choose their life job and may invest their childhood years into that job.”
“What age is adulthood?”
“Fifteen.”
“And what is investing?”
“For each year of childhood, they gain one level in their chosen job.”
“Oh… right. I remember…”
“Yes. One per year for childhood. Then two years per level until level twenty five, then three years per level until thirty five, then four years per level until level forty five. Not many live long enough for forty five. Most die long before.”
“Oh! You remembered exactly how much!” Joe replied excitedly, flipping open a book to write down the details.
“Huh?”
“Well, last night, you just told me that they gain less and less as they grow. You remembered exactly how much today?”
“Ah… well… I knew last night, I just guess I didn’t tell you.”
“Oh. Well… like I said. Pretend I know nothing and explain absolutely everything to me, OK?”
“OK, mas… Joe.”
Joe smiled and turned back to his writing, pencil furiously scribbling over his notepad as it lay on the table, his food to the side forgotten. “Huh. That seems too easy, to me? The system doesn’t seem like it would make things easy for people,” Joe muttered to himself a bit, about to drop it, but then thought of how he might be able to ask the question. “Could you ask if any here have invested their years into their job and if they’re willing to show me their job status? I’ll pay them.”
Garnedell nodded quickly and went up to the waitress who had been busily wandering around the room. He spoke to her quietly before she came quickly to their table where she stopped and gave him an odd stare.
“How much?”
Joe felt his eyes flinch lower in some confusion, struggling to hear what she said until he grasped it. Huh… she has an accent. Cool. Wonder where she’s from. Joe focused back on the question and considered for a moment, but really didn’t know what he could say so he glanced towards Garnedell, seeking advice. Garnedell took his hint well enough and responded with a quick price, “Twenty tin.”
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
The girl frowned, unsatisfied but considering and Joe immediately upped his price. He didn’t want to throw around his money, but he definitely didn’t want to be known as stingy, either. “Forty tin.”
The girl’s eyes flickered, widening slightly as a hint of greed flickered through them and Joe replied quickly to squash it, “I offer it out of kindness. Do not seek to abuse it. Forty and final.”
The girl grimaced, likely berating herself for revealing her greed but accepted and flipped open her status. Joe looked over her status and asked her to flip the page to her current job page.
“Please show me your current job page.”
“What, sir?”
“Your current job page.”
“Sir. She does not know such things,” Garnedell interjected.
Joe glanced at Garnedell then grimaced as he remembered about illiteracy before pointing at her current job tab next to her status tab; she had no blessing tab. “Press here, please.”
The girl did as asked and blinked in some surprise when she saw her status page change a bit. He asked her to look at her available jobs page and her reaction was quite a bit more surprised but Joe was able to verify that she only had her waitress job leveled and commoner and metropolitan available but unleveled. Huh! And the name’s waitress for her. Joe sent Garnedell up to his room to bring down his old notebook but he quickly verified that the free gift was anything but! It actually cripples them! The girl had her level at twenty which made her around twenty one, maybe twenty two?
“Are you twenty one or twenty two?”
“I am twenty two, sire. I will soon be twenty three and reach my twenty first level,” she smiled proudly, “How… how did you know?” Her pride shifted to some fear.
“Impressive. Have no fear. I am a scholar studying the status pages. I was able to guess your year by looking at your … uh… digits and… and… your age,” Joe quickly offered, trying to down play his knowledge. Idiot. No reading! Gotta remember that.
She seemed to quickly calm at that, relaxing.
Garnedell arrived during their short conversation and he quickly opened his notebook to his old waiter stats, checking what he had had. Extrapolating out the numbers, they matched the data he’d written down regarding his own waiter stats; all except learning. She was level twenty, but her learning was still only one! Seriously! Talk about a poisonous apple! Every time they do this, they would cripple their ability to develop and become even more dependent on the free levels.
Joe pulled out the forty tin and offered it to the girl, thanking her kindly and sending her on her way before turning to Garnedell. He waited for the girl to leave before speaking, “Garnedell. Never take the investment! It destroys your future! Just like absorbing the cores! That’s why I told you not to do.”
Garnedell cocked his head to the side with some confusion and Joe tried again, “Remember I showed you about learning yesterday? And what is your learning?”
Garnedell nodded before replying, “My learning is fourteen, yes?”
“Yes, but I didn’t tell you. It should be fifteen!” Joe stopped speaking as the waitress returned, setting plates down before them before returning to the bar. Joe watched her leave before continuing, “You should be fifteen, but you used the core to go from level four to five, yes? You gained all your stats so it did make you stronger, but it did not grow your learning. Basically, you gained your power at the expense of future growth. It killed your potential slightly. Investing your years does the same! The waitress is level eighteen and has the strength of level eighteen, but she can only learn as well as a level one!”
The boy actually looked shocked, “It destroys one’s potential!?”
“Yes. If you are level one and you work hard, you can level in a single day with hard work. From level one to five, if you have one learning, you can level one level per day! But from five to ten, you will take twenty five days with only one learning! Remember when you were leveling from one to five, you were about one per day? It is because of your curse! You’re learning could not grow! You took one day per level from one to five, and five days to level until six! I was able to level from two to three in only half a day because I gained two learning points when I went to level two! You took five days to level to five. I took three days to get to five. You took five days to level one level from five to six. I took one day! If you would not have been free of your curse, to level from ten to eleven would take twenty five days; from fifteen to sixteen, one hundred twenty five days; twenty to twenty one would take more than a year! Learning is very important!”
Garnedell’s shock only grew as he listened to Joe’s explanation, “You’ve seen how quickly I can grow my jobs now, yes? I am leveling from one to twenty in about four or five days now! I can level from one to fifteen in only one day! The girl! She is level eighteen, but she only has one learning! Do you understand what this means?”
Garnedell’s eyes looked a bit shocked, his understanding obvious but the ramifications still not clicking, “What would it mean for her?”
“Her? She is… now basically poisoned. Trapped. With one learning, to level from one to five is one day. Six to ten would take twenty five days. Ten to fifteen would take one hundred and twenty five days! She is now level eighteen! To level from sixteen to twenty would take six hundred and twenty five days! Or one and a half years! To level just one level for her, she would need to fight in the dungeon for one hundred twenty five days as we have been doing, and she would gain one level! When she reaches twenty, she would take eight years to reach twenty five, and forty years to reach thirty! Forty years just to go from twenty five to thirty!
“You have fourteen learning. Only fourteen learning, but you could level from twenty five to thirty in only about three years! Only fourteen learning and now you can grow to thirty more than ten times faster than she can! I can level to thirty in less than a month! Can you see?”
By this time, Garnedell’s shock was replaced with excited awe as he listened, “Master! Thank you so much! I thought you were angry at me when you refused me the cores before.”
“Garnedell. I told you. You are my friend, and I will look out for you and help you. I promise!”
Garnedell’s smile was grateful, “I understand, now. Joe. Thank you.”
“It’s hard work, Garnedell. But if you do it my way, you will have amazing strength!”
“I want your strength!”
Joe smiled but said little, not wishing to quite reveal his past, “Well. It’s not all bad for the girl. She could switch to commoner and gain levels naturally that way, and then grow her learning, but…” Joe shrugged and left the conversation behind. Garnedell had been listening with fascination, but still eating. Joe took the time to eat and Garnedell began asking some questions.
“So learning is very powerful, but you are growing faster and faster. Are you choosing jobs with better learning?”
Joe smiled and laughed, “The jobs you and the priest led me to for learning to speak give me a lot of learning, but all the commoner jobs and other jobs, such as waiter and hunter, only gave me one learning.”
“But you were growing faster and faster? How?”
Joe quickly hushed him, worried that he would offend certain political powers he had no desire to and quickly replied with a hushed whisper, “Shh. Please. Be careful. This is my secret. Your people do not seem to understand it. Let us wait for the dungeon. I will tell you there, yes? But please keep quiet!”
Garnedell nodded quickly, keeping that for later while letting the conversation die, Joe eating his now slightly lukewarm meal quickly. They stood and left the inn, heading out and Joe went over the plan for the day, “Alright, kid. As I said last night, we need to figure out how to get to the library. We’ll stop by the tailor on the way back. I also want to hit the blacksmith as well to explain my weird asterisk… star weapons I’m asking him to make. Wanna make sure he does it right now that I can talk and explain some things. Let’s head to the library first then get our membership cards. Anything else you want to add to the ‘to do’ list?”
Garnedell began leading them towards the city center as he considered Joe’s request, “Uh? We could go to the guild and seek a partier?”
“A partier? I don’t really want another person in our group right now,” Joe frowned. Garnedell, he trusted. But there were too many secrets that Joe didn’t really want to have to explain, like how he killed sparks so easily or how he seemed to use weapons that his job shouldn’t let him.
“We could pay for a partier to put just us in a party.”
“That’s possible?”
“Yes, but expensive.”
“That might be a good idea. Anything else?”
“The bounty cards?”
“Right, yeah. We’ll do that after the other stuff.”
“Anything else?”
Garnedell seemed to fall in on himself, shrinking as he looked up at Joe. Garnedell did seeming to hide his worry, but Joe was able to easily catch it and quickly reassured him, “Hey. Kid. I’m not angry or demanding. I’m only one person. I need help to remember. If I don’t, maybe you will. If you don’t and I don’t, well… we forget. Heh. It’s fine. I’m not angry if you forget, OK?”
Garnedell nodded, still looking up at Joe.
“So, anything else, Garnedell?” Joe asked with a small encouraging smile.
Garnedell shook his head no, slowly and Joe then clapped a hand to his shoulder, “Great. It seems we got everything then. Let’s go!”
Garnedell smiled, relief showing as his shoulders straightened and they turned to head down the street before Joe glanced back at Garendell.
<continued - 1/4>