Level One God

Heart thumping, I read the list of new skills I’d just unlocked.

[Rare] Active Skill: Forge Echo. [Tier 1] Summon a spectral echo of your weapon that mimics your attack patterns.

[Rare] Active Skill: Elemental Projection. [Tier 1] Release a portion of your current weapon’s elemental aspect.

[Common] Passive Skill: Elemental Body [Tier 1] Become more resistant to negative elemental effects.

[Rare] Passive Skill: Chain. [Tier 1] Offensive “Active Skills” have a 5% chance to duplicate. Conjuration, control, and negative enhancement skills cannot benefit from this effect.

I may have been new to Eros, but I suspected my four new abilities were pretty awesome. Though I supposed the passives were slightly underwhelming at the moment. Still, the “Tier 1” designation implied I could boost them. If Chain doubled in effectiveness with each tier, for example, it would quickly become a hugely powerful ability. And “release a portion of my current weapon’s elemental aspect?” Did that mean I could spray poison out of my hands if I was holding my Alchemist’s Kit when it was loaded with rot poison?

“You’ll be able to read your new abilities if you put the stone on the prongs,” Lyria said.

I obliged by setting my class stone on the prongs. My hands were shaking a little with barely contained excitement. I wanted to get out there and try all these out. It was like being handed the keys to a new car and having to wait. The same description of skills appeared. Circa and Lyria leaned over my shoulders, reading and making appreciative sounds.

“Three rare draws?” Lyria whispered. “I’ve never even heard of that.”

“That’s a good thing?” I asked.

“Rare is the highest rarity of skill you can gain from common corestones,” Circa explained. “The tier indicates your mastery of the skill. Higher rarity abilities often hold more potential. Last of all, your level increases the potency of your abilities. Tier increases can sometimes increase potency, as well, but it varies from skill to skill.”

“How do I increase the tier?”

“Practice,” Circa said. “The practice method is up to you, but the strongest steel is forged with heat. You would be wise to keep that in mind.”

“I don’t feel like I have abilities.” I turned over a hand, examining it like magic might suddenly spew from my palm.

“No,” Circa agreed. “You won’t. Learning to use their abilities for the first time can take some months. Possibly years. You’ll need to learn to touch the mana stream itself. This is no light feat. Your corestone is also an extension of your spirit. The way one individual accesses their abilities can be entirely different than another. Instruction is possible, of course, but it can be most effective to… experiment. You’ll tend to find the most natural method to your talents that way, which will increase your potential.”

“Plenty of people never learn,” Lyria said, almost sympathetically. “No shame in it, by the way. People can do plenty of helpful things even if they can’t manipulate mana. The army always needs more weapons and armor, and even Ithariel can’t afford to magically bind reward tokens to every piece of armor or weapon. That’s what my dad did, anyway,” she said. “Worked as a coreless blacksmith.”

Their warnings would dampen my spirits if I didn’t already know this body could reach the highest heights of power. Maybe there was a mountain of hard work and suffering ahead if I wanted to return to that point again, but I knew it was possible.

I nodded my head as if taking their words in stride.

Missy wandered over from behind the counter and noticed the stone in the prongs. “Oh, um. You were supposed to sign before you attuned to a stone. Sorry, I should’ve said something. Let me just get the papers…”

“He’s not signing,” Circa said. “I gave him the stone.” She pushed the box of common corestones toward Missy.

Missy counted them quickly, then nodded. She put on a smile, but was clearly confused. “So we’re not signing you up? I like the helmet, by the way. Where’d you get that?”

“It’s not your concern,” Circa said. She lifted the stone from the prongs before Missy could read the text and handed it to me.

If Circa was going to be hanging around with me, we really needed to work on her manners.

“But thanks for your concern all the same,” I added, thumping my fist on the table cheerily.

Circa touched my back and started guiding me toward the door. Lyria had to jog to catch up.

“Hey,” she said as we stepped outside the building. “My job is to keep an eye on him. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t drag him away like that.”

“He’s not a puppy,” Circa said. “I will do as I—”

I gave Circa the slightest nudge with my elbow. I expected her body to feel soft, but it was like elbowing a brick wall.

Circa gave the slightest bow. “Apologies,” she said.

Lyria bulged her eyes a little. She had obviously expected a fight, not an apology. “Well, thank you. I think.”

“Not to sound impatient,” I said slowly, “but I’ve got these tokens I’m dying to turn in.”

“Allow me to see them,” Circa said.

“That’s not a good idea,” Lyria said.

It probably was better to avoid flashing my tokens, so I rattled off the list of rewards I had waiting from memory.

“So many?” Circa’s voice was hushed with awe. “You’ve earned several very powerful tokens. Dangerous, but powerful. You should claim the beds first. I believe the furnisher in Riverwell only works up to rare quality, correct?”

“Yeah,” Lyria said, almost sounding defensive. “But it’s not as if you can find furnishers better than that in other towns this size.”

Damn. That was disappointing. If I could only claim up to rare here, that would mean my epic, legendary, and cursed bed tokens would have to wait until I reached a larger city.

“Let’s see this place, then,” I said.

“It’s this way,” Lyria said, guiding us through the town. We eventually stepped inside a large, wooden building.

The entry room was a cramped little shop with rows and rows of long, wooden boxes. A cheerful young boy who might have been thirteen or so greeted us as we came in.

“Welcome! Please let me know if you need any information. You’ll find information cards describing what we have in stock within each box.”

I nodded absently, pulling out a box at random that was labeled “Room Size.”

Inside the box, I saw there were quite a few variations of size upgrades, from things like “ceiling height increase [2 feet]” all the way to “expand dimensions [2’x2’].”

“Are there higher rarity room size increases?” I asked the boy.

He smiled. “Yes, Mr. Helmet, Sir.”

“Brynn,” I said quickly, smiling.

“Yes, Mr. Brynn, Sir. But those are hard to come by.”

An older man emerged from the back. His gray hair was wild and tangled, sticking out in every direction. He had a bit of the “crazy inventor” look about him. “Eh? Customers?”

The boy nodded, bowing slightly and backing away. “Yes, Sir.”

“You want higher rarity room size upgrades?” he asked. “I know a girl. She gets them from time to time. I could ask… Might be a couple months. It would cost you, too. Ten gold.”

I cleared my throat. “Sorry. I was really just curious.”

He pulled a sour face and stalked into a back room, apparently deciding I wasn’t worth his time.

“Ah,” the boy said. “Anyway… commons are easier to come by because we can make them with monster bits and the help of a naidu. For things like a room size increase, you can only apply it once to each room. Something like a chair, though, you can buy as many as you can afford. After common rarity, you’d be dealing with upgrades. And each higher rarity voucher only upgrades one item or room. Oh, and the upgrades must be sequential or it won’t take. No upgrading a common straight to epic, I’m afraid. Common, Rare, Epic, and then Legendary,” he said.

“What about Cursed?” I asked.

He laughed, smiling wide. “Right, yeah. If you ever got your hands on a cursed piece of furniture, you’d have to work your way up to that.” He laughed again at the idea. “Anyway, was there something I could help you folks with?”

I gave all the drawers a longing look. Part of me wanted to linger and dig through them. I wondered what types of upgrades were available for personal spaces.

“We have a couple of bed tokens to claim,” I said.

“Ah, right, then. You’ll want to head in the back and my grandfather will get you sorted out.”

Circa and Lyria followed me through a door and into a larger room.

Inside, there was a strange, rectangular box the size of a single-car garage. It was made of wood, and one end was covered by a movie-theater style curtain. It almost looked like the idea was for fantasy vehicles to dramatically drive out from behind the curtain.

The old man collected my Common and Rare bed tokens, then moved to the side of the box. There was a small window, just large enough for his arm. He reached in deep, like he was fishing around for something. After a few seconds, his eyebrows raised, and he pulled his arm out and waited.

A moment later, the curtain bulged.

With a creak of wood on wood, a simple bed slid out from behind the curtain, as if somebody inside was pushing it.

When the curtain moved, I caught the slightest glimpse of what was within the rectangle. It looked like an infinity cube—like an endless expanse of stars. I also saw white fingers on the headboard for a split second before they slipped away, disappearing behind the curtain.

What the hell? I craned my neck for a better look, but I’d either imagined it or the finger had moved.

“This one works without a naidu?” I asked.

“Not precisely,” Circa said. “The naidu from the Arcanery will have to perform regular upkeep on this doorway.”

“They say you shouldn’t ever try to look past the curtain,” Lyria said. I noticed now that she was standing a little awkwardly as if trying to face away from the curtain.

“Childish rumors,” Circa scoffed.

“I’m not about to be dragged through the curtain by some freakish dimensional beast, thank you very much,” Lyria said.

I raised a calming palm toward Circa, who closed her mouth instead of saying whatever she was about to say to Lyria.

The old man pointed to a viewing glass Lyria and Circa could look through that showed them the bed’s stats. I took a turn, leaning in and looking through the glass for show, even though I had my helmet on.

[Bed (Common)]

Huh. No stats, I guess?

I felt a touch let down by the lack of real benefits, but I supposed it made sense. A common level bed was just a bed. I wouldn’t expect stats until it hit higher rarities. Some stuff like dressers and cabinets were just nice to have like they’d be in the normal world, stats or not.

“Do we carry this to my room?” I asked.

“No,” Lyria laughed. “The furnisher takes care of that. Just leave it here, and it’ll be in your personal space next time you visit.”

The old man gave a weary nod as if she was simplifying a process that was a great deal more complicated than that.

Her words made me wonder, though. “Why do some tokens need to be claimed here and others can be claimed in my personal space?”

The old man surprised me by answering. Apparently, I had finally raised a topic he found interesting enough to engage with. “That’s the question, isn’t it? I once got a naidu drunk enough to give me a few hints. He told me they said it had to do with a ‘complicated mistake.’”

Circa actually leaned forward at that. “He said that?”

The old man wiggled his bushy brows, nodding. “That’s right. I remember it like it was yesterday. Though, I suppose with the way my memory has been going on me, I shouldn’t say that. I remember it like it was twenty years ago. ‘Cause that’s when it was.”

Suddenly, I wasn’t sure this guy’s information would have survived a great deal of scrutiny. “‘They?’” I asked. “Who did he mean?”

“Whoever is on the other side of them curtains,” the old man said.

“You mean you don’t know?” I asked. “You’ve never just… pulled it back and looked inside?”

He laughed suddenly. “Just like I never stuck my pecker in the Red River and hoped it wouldn’t be bitten off by the Blood Hosts?”

I couldn’t say I was familiar with anything he was talking about, but I gathered his meaning all the same. “It’s that dangerous?” I asked.

The old man seemed to be bored of my questioning, though, because he waved me off and went to insert the rare coin for my bed upgrade.

A moment after he put in the coin, the first bed flaked away in the same manner I’d seen Jinglefoot’s knife disappear. It was like it turned to dust and was carried away by unseen wind.

As soon as it was gone, the curtain bulged again as another bed emerged.

This one was a little nicer than the first bed. The blankets looked softer, and the wooden legs were thicker, with some designs carved into them.

I inspected it.

[Bed (Rare)] “Full Night’s Sleep” gained 25% faster when sleeping in this bed.

[Benefits of Full Night’s Sleep]

You will be fully rested.

Wounds up to [Minor Level] healed.

Immune to headaches.

I pretended to need the looking glass, holding it up to my eye before I reacted to the stats.

“Well,” I said, pursing my lips. “I do hate headaches. And the healing and need for less sleep seems really useful.”

“Less sleep is more time you can train,” Circa agreed. “Buying something like this with coin would cost you more than five or ten corestones, by the way.”

“Less sleep is more time you can train,” Lyria muttered. “What do you expect him to train so hard for, exactly?”

“Training is the key that opens all doors,” Circa said.

“Yeah?” Lyria asked. “Can it open the door to my personal space? Because I’ve always needed a key from an innkeeper for that.”

Circa glared.

I cleared my throat, which was enough to get Circa to drop it. She gestured to the door leading out from the building. “You said you were anxious to turn in the rest of your tokens. Shall we? I would advise leaving the guard behind for this. Low-ranking townsfolk have been known to try all sorts of mischief in the privacy of a personal space.”

“My Captain told me to keep an eye on him while he’s in Riverwell,” Lyria said. “I’m following you. Like it or not.”

“It’s fine,” I said, cutting off Circa before she could protest. “She can come.”

Lyria glanced my way but said nothing as we headed back outside and toward the inn.

“Very well,” Circa said. “If she tries anything untoward, I can simply burst the veins in her body.”

With that cheery note, we headed to my personal space for the loot party.