Chapter 639 - Interlude - Sara - The System Unlocks II

Sara jumped when Artemis kicked the door in.

“My turn!” The bombastic Ranger announced.

“Artemis!” Elaine yelled. “The door!”

The Lightning [Mage] looked at the splintered remains.

“What door?” She asked innocently. Elaine was already putting her head in her hands.

“Why did I think this was a good idea?” She moaned.

“Because I’m awesome?” Artemis suggested. Elaine glared at her, and Artemis relented.

“Alright, alright, I’m sorry. I thought Iona was around, and the house was being reinforced. It’s my fault, I’ll fix it.” Artemis said. Elaine shook her head.

“No, don’t worry about it.” Elaine said.

Sara spent the whole time looking back and forth between the two, before chiming in.

“Auntie Artemis! Mom said something about training?” The elf said.

Artemis smacked her head.

“Training! Yes, let’s get right on that.”

“Fleeing the scene of the crime?” Elaine’s tone was endlessly amused.

“Not at all.” Artemis dropped her voice, going all serious and professional. “Actually ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you to remove yourself from the premises. This is an active crime scene, and we can’t have civilians in the area.” The Ranger didn’t even twitch, but a fence of pure Lightning zapped into existence, crackling around the house. “You’ll be clear to enter when the investigation is complete. Never fear! We will catch the vandal.”

“Oh, and pray, tell me, when will the investigation be complete?” Elaine asked. “Do we arrest the vandal again?” She asked pointedly.

“We’ll be done by the winter solstice.”

“It’s summer.”

“And I’ve got a bunch of work to do, like whisking Sara off and making sure she’s properly trained up.” Artemis teased, striding over to where Sara was. “Hey little one, ready for some wilderness fun and survival?”

Sara bounded over to Artemis as Elaine made a disgusted snort at the outright betrayal.

“Yes please! Can we go now auntie?” She glanced at Elaine. “Mom, I can go, right?”

Elaine waved her off.

“Go! Shoo! Get all the levels!”

A second wave fixed the door, and a flash of Celestial darkness killed the Lightning.

“Come on, mini healybug! We’ve got skills to level! Elaine, you’ve reduced your healing to more manageable levels, yeah?”

Sara started to run out the door.

“Yes, but I’ll be pulsing a full heal every eight minutes or so. Your books!” Elaine shouted after Sara, hefting a heavy backpack. She skidded to a halt, and ran back to Elaine. She opened it up to check what was inside, only for a half-dozen [Mage Hands] to come flying from across the cottage, each one holding Auri’s steaming hot pastries. They stuffed the top of the bag, squishing them slightly, before snapping it back shut and putting it on Sara’s back in a whirlwind of Fire.

“Thanks Auri!” Sara shouted across the cottage.

“Brrrpt!” The phoenix replied from her domain.

“What have I said about shouting across the house.” Elaine muttered to herself, resigned to having lost the argument years ago. “You’ll bring her back to class up, right?” She shouted to the retreating pair.

“Same as I did with you. NOPE!” Artemis cheerfully shouted over her shoulder. Sara decided to try and [Memorize] the colorful swears from her mom’s mouth. The words flowed smoothly into her mind, and she was promptly rewarded with her first skill leveling up notification.

[*ding!* [Memorization] leveled up! 1->2]

Artemis and Sara started to slowly walk down the mountain, the elf looking around at everything and trying to commit it to memory. From the shape of the clouds in the sky, down to the dewdrops on the trees, everything went. 

[*ding!* [Memorization] leveled up! 2->5]

“What skills did you take?” Artemis asked.

“[Medicine], [Learning], [First Aid], [Elven Essence], [Elven Enchantment], [Memorization], [Bedside Manner], and [Healer’s Oath].” Sara immediately rattled off.

“Hmmm.” Artemis hummed thoughtfully. “Going for a full set of general skills to merge into your first class?” Sara nodded, and Artemis stopped, forcing the girl to pause.

“Are you absolutely sure being a [Healer] is what you want, not Elaine?” She asked. “I know Julia wanted Elaine to pick a particular class, and a little shielding from me let Elaine pick her own path for herself. Look where that took her! Is it hero worship, an expected path you feel you have to take, or is it what you want?”

Sara stopped and thought about it for a few minutes, giving the question the solemn consideration it deserved. She could practically feel her thoughts twisting down a new path, down new ways of thinking. Still new enough to her curse that she could tell she was being influenced. In time, the ways of thinking would become ingrained, impossible to tell from her usual thoughts.

“I think it’s what I want.” She slowly said, doing her level best to consider the idea. “Even if I’m wrong, I’ve already taken the [Healer’s Oath]. I’m committed.”

[*ding!* [Elven Essence] leveled up! 1->2]

Artemis briskly nodded.

“Well reasoned, although there’s no need to be so stiff! Congratulations on the level.”

Sara did a double-take.

“Wait, how could you tell?” She asked, sure that Artemis couldn’t see her floating blue box notification. Artemis snorted.

“You went all cross-eyed on me, and started staring at something right in front of you. I’ve been doing this a long, long time, and I’m good at it.”

Sara meekly nodded, and the two continued hiking to the training spot. Artemis talked the entire time.

“You’ve got a much better skill set than Elaine did when she started.” The Ranger said.

“Yeah?” Sara was practically itching from curiosity. It was virtually impossible to imagine Elaine as a kid. Like… she was mom. How could mom have been a kid? Like, sure, everyone said it, and Sara knew it was true, she just couldn’t imagine it at all.

“Yeah. We knew a lot less about the System back then. A lot more ‘well, just go for it’ without the prior planning we do now. There was a lot of ‘grab what skills you like, find a class you want’ without the same degree of planning. Elaine had [Knives] as a skill, could you believe it?”

“With her [Oath]?” Sara could hardly believe it. Artemis went quiet for a moment.

“She didn’t have it yet.” She softly said.

“Ah.” Sara had heard the story recently, and awkwardly didn’t know how to carry on.

“We know more now, and I’m familiar with the skills you’re taking. What’s nice about a focused set of General Skills like what you’ve got is only a few activities are needed to level all of them up, although at different rates. Here’s the starting plan. I’ve got a few Ranger volunteers and Iona together. We’re going to beat each other up, then you’re going to treat us to the best of your abilities. We’ll take some breaks to have you read your books and level your other skills up. [Elven Enchantment] is going to be the hardest one for you to cap. It’s all about magic, and as a kid before your first Class, doing or manipulating any sort of magic is hard. Won’t be the first time I’ve had to help an elf out with that skill though. Once everything except [Oath] is at level 8, we’ll have you class up.”

“Why not [Oath]? Wouldn’t it be better for that one to cap out?” Sara asked.

Artemis slightly grimaced.

“Yes, it’s better, but it’s really hard to level.” She said. “Ignore your mom’s level, she blatantly cheated to get it that high. Did Elaine discuss what you’re doing with your general skills after you class up?”

Sara shook her head.

“No, not yet.”

Artemis rolled her eyes.

“Honestly. I’d have words with her if she wasn’t smart enough to hand you off to me for some training.”

Sara felt she needed to defend her mom.

“Hey!” She protested.

Artemis raised her hands.

“Whoa, easy there tiger. As important as it is to know your stuff, it’s more important to know when you’re not the expert, and to go find one to listen to. I don’t think I’m the expert on medicine, your mom knows she’s not a teaching expert.”

Sara mulled it over a bit and nodded.

“Oh, yeah, that makes sense. General skills after I class up?”

“With a bit of luck, you’re going to have a large number of open skill slots. Best case, everything except [Elven Essence] gets merged into the class you’re taking. We’ll target six skill archetypes, then rank them from most important to least important.”

“Why six? Not seven?” Sara interrupted.

“[Identify] is the last skill you’ll take, and there’s no sense in merging it around this early. Now let me explain.”

Sara shut up.

“Let’s take the moving skill archetype.” Artemis paused, eyeing Sara with an amused glint in her eye, expecting the elf to interrupt and protest that she didn’t need a skill like that. “You’re Immortal, you’ll probably need to run for your life at some point. Or urgently get to the medical tents. Or run into a fight to save someone’s life. You could just pick up [Running] to start with, along with the rest of your general skills, but that’ll be harder in the medium term. Long term it can even out, but that can be a crapshoot. Instead of just [Running], take it along with [Walking], [Sprinting], [Rolling], [Leaping], [Climbing] and [Jumping]. Then merge them all into one mega skill, like [Freedom of Movement]. You might get a unique variant at that point, and while a hair slower at the start, it pays off. Then we move onto the next skill archetype. One skill slot will be occupied, so instead of merging seven skills together, we can only merge six. So on and so forth, until we grab [Identify] and you’ve got six other beefy general skills to start your life with. It’s an extra pain to drop any of them at that point, but hey, that’s life.”

Sara thought it over. It mostly made sense, except for one part.

“Why don’t we do that for the first eight skills for my first class? Wouldn’t that be even better?”

Artemis waved off the idea.

“Takes too long to merge skills with a cap at level 8, before your first true class.” She said. “It’s been done, but smarter people than me have worked out that it’s just plain better to grab the first class earlier. If anything doesn’t merge in, we’ll do them first. No sense in letting them block a slot without optimizing. Let’s talk about which general skill archetypes we’re looking at for you. You’ve got [Elven Essence], which is the great ‘Elves are extremely capable and do everything’ skill. We’ve talked about a movement skill. Now let’s talk about social skills…”

Artemis and Sara went back and forth on general skills, but had only about half the list done by the time they made it to the clearing. A movement skill, a social skill, an appearance skill, and an experience skill were all on the list.

The Ranger shot a [Lightning Bolt] off into the sky as she entered the training field. None of the Rangers there flinched, and Iona just rolled her eyes.

“Okay you lot! Today’s a special day! Iona’s agreed to help spar with us, mostly because we’re leveling her kid. Who thinks they can land a single scratch on the impressive [Knight]?”

Nobody raised their hand, and Artemis cracked a grin.

“Right answer! Sara, you should start working on your books, we’ll get back to you in a minute. You’ll have a few terrible injuries to work with about half a second after I say go.”

Sara dutifully nodded and unslung her bag, starting to remove items and taking stock of what she had. Pastries from Auri, the volume and the next two of the Medical Manuscripts that Sara was working on, and some basic first aid supplies. Rolls of bandages, needle, thread, and a few herbs. Her other mom came over and squatted down.

“How are you doing?” She asked softly. “It’s going to get fairly violent and fairly bloody. Are you sure you want Artemis’s high intensity training? I can ask her to tone it down, I think it’s going a bit too far.”

Sara tried to keep her hands from trembling as she tried to straighten out her supplies. She bit her bottom lip so hard a single bead of blood welled up.

“Is this the way to getting the best class?” She asked.

Iona couldn’t lie.

“Yes.”

“I’ll be okay.” She choked out. “I’ve got to do this.”

Iona didn’t protest Sara’s decision, instead wrapping the girl in a hug.

“I’m here for you.” She said. “I’ll always be here for you. You want a pause, you want this to stop, you just tell me. Alright?”

Sara nodded jerkily.

“I need to do this.” She repeated. The whole time, Artemis was talking to the Rangers.

“Alright, come on in. Let’s plan this out, like Rangers do. Here’s the scenario. We’re arriving at a village, and there’s a big, mean, blonde [Knight] who likes to chew nails for breakfast. She’s terrible news. How do we handle her?” 

Nix raised a hand.

“Well, we’re dealing with an intelligent person here, why don’t we try to reason with her?”

Artemis threw the man the stink-eye for undermining the scenario, but they carried on, working out all the ways they could try to fight Iona. Sara cracked open her books and determinedly tackled them.

Most of the skills were done within two hours, and the rest were pushed as far as possible within a week, before the returns simply stopped happening.

[*ding!* [Memorization] leveled up! 3->8]

[*ding!* [Medicine] leveled up! 1->8]

[*ding!* [Learning] leveled up! 1->8]

[*ding!* [First Aid] leveled up! 1->8]

[*ding!* [Bedside Manner] leveled up! 1->8]

[*ding!* [Elven Essence] leveled up! 2->8]

[*ding!* [Elven Enchantment] leveled up! 1->7]

[*ding!* [Healer’s Oath] leveled up! 1->6]

=====================

Sara opened her eyes in the world of her soul, unsurprised at the bloody grimace that met her eyes.

Her guide was herself, a hundred bloody gashes over her body crudely stitched up, some blood still oozing through. It was impossible to tell if her clothes had ever been a color besides bright, fresh red.

“Welcome! You’re finally here!” Her guide said.

“I am.” Sara calmly agreed. Why would she be frightened? She knew she was hurt, she knew she was healing. Everyone had shared their experiences with her, shared what the inner world of her soul could look like. Sara looked around, a thousand and twenty-four scenes right out of the corner of her eye. 

“Potential places your soul world can turn into.” Her guide clarified without being asked. Sara focused on what she currently had, tilting her head slightly to the side.

“A… dollhouse?” She asked, looking at the toy building a little taller than she was.

“Yes.” Her guide agreed, opening it up for her. Inside were hundreds of little painted dolls, each playing out different roles. One was burning brightly, painted orange, next to a toy Auri. Another blue doll wielded a sword and a shield, with a toy Iona watching with crossed arms, nodding approvingly. Lightning and cooking, running and surviving, hundreds of little painted figures were running around, enacting their roles in life.

Sara spent a few hours studying them all, curious as a bee, simply enjoying the experience in the timeless realm of her classing up space.

“Where’s the one I want?” She finally asked. Going in, knowing what she wanted, made it easy in many ways. Her guide plucked out a figure riding on Elaine’s shoulders. The yellow figurine was holding on tight to Elaine’s hair, laughing at the ride as she hopped and skipped around.

“[On The Shoulders of Giants]”