Julia looked on in amusement as Braden’s mouth opened and closed like a fish. She hadn’t seen too many fish in her life—just a few in the nearby stream occasionally—but they always did that stupid ‘glub glub’ motion with their mouths—just like Braden right now.

  “That…that piece of shit sold me out!” Braden exclaimed once he recollected himself.

  Julia snickered at his betrayed tone. “I take it that this ‘Higher Being’—the ‘piece of shit’ is talking about—is you?”

  Braden looked like he was about to comment on her use of profanity, but (wisely) thought better of it. He deflated a little and sank back into the couch cushions, sighing.

  “I’ve only heard the System use that phrase a few times. I think it’s referring to individuals with a level of at least 75—or the equivalent. It’s not really about the number, I don’t think. It’s more about the weight of one’s existence.”

  “What does how heavy someone is have to do with anything?” Julia inquired.

  “When you reach a high level like that, the actions you take in the world bear more metaphorical weight—more gravitas. Every action you take has greater consequences on the world around you. I think that’s what this ‘Higher Being’ business is about.”

  Julia nodded. That made some sense. Someone that strong would surely—wait.

  “You’re level 75!? You’re a Grandmaster!? You!?” Julia practically shouted. She was briefly stunned. No wonder the Guild was always asking him to do things.

  “Hey, that stings a little! I am something like a Grandmaster or equivalent. Yes—me…among other things,” Braden said, trailing off as though he meant to whisper the last part unintelligibly.

  “So, I was offered this class because you were instructing me? Isn’t that what the description implied?” Julia asked.

  “Whoa, don’t discount the work you’ve put in. I just taught you things I thought would be useful or you’d like. I wasn’t trying to like…raise you into a weapon or anything. If you showed no interest in magic, I wouldn’t have tried to teach you. If you showed no interest in Adventuring, I wouldn’t have decided you should learn to use a weapon.

  “This class was offered to you because—as the description said—you have a diverse foundation without a firm goal in mind to make use of it. the foundation you have consists of everything you’ve asked me to teach you or shown interest in learning. It’s all you, Julia. All I did was respond to your will.

  “Honestly, I think that bit about a ‘Higher being’ instructing you was just added for flavor to your specific situation. It’s not unheard of for System descriptions to be tailored to an individual. I doubt it had anything to do with the Class itself.

  “I’m reasonably sure that if all it took to acquire a Rare starter Class was anyone at level 75 or equivalent teaching someone young, I would have heard about it before. Our situation is uncommon, but certainly not unique. You can surely imagine that there are parents over Level 75 that teach their own kids.”

  Julia basked in the praise for a brief moment before it brought another of her questions forward. “That word—you and the System both used it. What does it mean, this ‘foundation?’

  “I don’t think it carries some lofty meaning within the System like Strength or Class does. It’s just a sort of catch-all term for your skillset. Well, your skillset and your Skillset.

  “For example, I would say you have an excellent magic foundation based on the different aspects of magic you can use, as well as your mana Skills. See what I mean? Foundation just means the base on which you’re going to build in the future.

  “The System sometimes latches onto a term like that and starts running with it. If you begin seeing references to the ‘house’ you’re building on your ‘foundation’ later, it’s just the System continuing the metaphor,” he explained.

  That made some sense. It was a new side of the System that Julia hadn’t seen, but she’d also never had a Class before, so there were likely many sides of the System she hadn’t seen.

  “Ok, well…what do you think about the Classes? Actually, do you know anything about Seeker—like whether it provides boosted experience to any specific Skills or anything?” Julia asked.

  “I’ve not heard of Seeker before, no. I’ve only heard of a few instances of Rare Classes being offered at Level 1, so it’s not too surprising that I’ve not heard of this specific one.

  “If I had to guess, I would wager that rather than any specific Skills, it gives a small boost to experience gained in all Skills. The class doesn’t even seem to discriminate between Combat and Profession Skills, so I would guess that literally every single Skill gets a small boost.

  “It almost certainly wouldn’t be as large a boost as Fledgling would give to physical Combat Skills or the boost that Shock Mage would give to Lightning-based Skills. However, boosting every single Skill is a pretty big deal—especially at low Levels—even if the boost isn’t as large as the more specialized ones.

  “The first Level in a Skill is one of the most difficult to acquire because you’re trying to acquire the Skill itself. Having a boost just to get a Skill onto your Status sheet would be tremendously beneficial, I think. After all, once you have it, you have it.

  “There can be benefits to having Skills even if you don’t use them much. Remember what happened to your Physical Training Skill once you started working on magic?” Braden inquired.

  “Yeah. I got the Mind Training Skill and they fused automatically into the general Training Skill. You said it was better because it incorporated both Physical and Mind Training Skills into one. It boosted the Mind Training Skill’s level up since it merged with my Physical Training Skill, which was already at a higher level,” Julia replied.

  “Exactly. Just having a Skill can open possibilities like that in the future, even if you’re not expecting it. The worst that will happen from having many Skills is your Status screen will become a little cumbersome, but you can just reorganize it so it’s easier to read.”

  Julia nodded along, a decision forming in her mind. “So, Seeker is the best bet, then. It would help me in pretty much everything I’m going to do up to Level 25,” she reasoned.

  “Definitely. Even if it didn’t give any actual benefits, I would argue it’s still a no-brainer. Your first Class will be active for 25 Levels, meaning that you have 25 instances of gaining Attributes. Common Classes will assign 1 Attribute Point automatically and grant 1 AP to allocate at will. This means a Common Class will have gained a total of 50 APs by Level 25.

  “You, however, will gain a total of 150 just from picking a Rare Class. Even without any other benefits, that alone is worth choosing.

  “Individual APs make a much more significant difference in the early Levels compared to the higher ones. The difference between 400 and 450 isn’t that large, but the difference between 50 and 100? That’s extreme. A Strength of 50 will be roughly half as strong as a Strength of 100. It’s just math.

  “The choice is yours, obviously, but I would strongly encourage you to take Seeker.”

  Julia nodded in agreement. She had already been tentatively ready to accept it, but with Braden’s encouragement, she was now completely sure.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  Julia flinched as a warm feeling washed through her. It felt similar to when she drank a warm drink on a chilly night. The feeling started in her core and radiated outward all the way to her fingertips.

  “Eep!” Julia yipped as the warm, pleasant feeling suddenly sharpened to a slight jolt. It was similar to the feeling of getting zapped by static electricity—only across her whole body and inside it. It was most prominent in her head, though. Ouch.

  “Ah, that’ll be the Attributes from your first Level being applied. Your Stats are relatively low right now, so gaining an extra AP feels more significant than it will later.

  “For example, if you gain 1 point in Strength when you have a total of 10, you just increased your muscular strength by 10%. That will feel 10 times as strong as if you gained 1 Strength when your total is 100.

  “In other words, that feeling will get less and less noticeable until you eventually stop feeling it completely, so don’t worry too much about it,” Braden reassured.

  That was a relief for Julia. It wasn’t the worst pain she’d ever felt, by any means, but it certainly wasn’t comfortable.

  As she was settling from the sudden jolt, she got one last System message.

  Julia had forgotten that Classes generally offered Skills at significant Level milestones. She activated Truesight to try it out.

  The world around her lit up like the sun had suddenly come out from behind the clouds. Now that she had it, it was strange that she could see at all when not using the Skill.

  The world was so vibrant. She could see the slight haze of air mana around her as well as the stew of different mana aspects that she was familiar with. These occurred wherever mana aspects mixed and merged, which was most places.

  Julia looked down at Trixy in her lap and gasped. Trixy was glowing! She was giving off a white light like the sun itself! She looked at herself and was surprised to see she was glowing, too! Hers was a green glow compared to Trixy’s white.

  The biggest surprise was that when she looked over at Braden, he just…wasn’t there. He was, of course; she could see him with her normal vision, but it was like he simply didn’t exist to all her other sight.

  “...what?” Braden asked when he noticed Julia staring.

  “Why are you not there? I can see you with my eyes, but none of my other sight,” she said, bewildered.

  “Oh, you got some kind of advanced sight Skill from your class? That’s an excellent first Skill.

  “I only appear to the senses I want to. I could make myself invisible to your eyes as well, but that would be a bit inconvenient for us,” Braden explained.

  “Can you teach me to do that? To disappear?” Julia asked hopefully. The potential for disappearing from others’ sight was extremely appealing to her. Not because of social anxiety, though—definitely not.

  “Hmm. Not yet, no. I could maybe teach you how to make yourself invisible to normal sight. It’s possible with magic that Trixy uses, but also with—relatively—simple light magic. However, disappearing from something like Manasight would be difficult at your current Level. Let alone more advanced sight Skills.

  “You’ll get there, though. You just got your first class, so don’t be discouraged that you can’t suddenly learn all of a Grandmaster’s Skills immediately,” Braden chuckled.

  “Now, I think I’ll go get started on dinner. Unless you have other questions?” he asked.

  He got up and headed toward the kitchen once Julia shook her head. She spent some time just staring at things with her new vision and getting used to it. She couldn’t keep it going forever since it seemed to use her mana actively. It wasn’t excessive, but it was enough to overcome her natural mana regeneration. She would be actively losing mana while it was engaged.

  She shut it off and decided to check all her gains before heading into the kitchen. She called up her Status and reconfigured it slightly to show the things that changed since she gained her class as well using a few abbreviations.