“Did you give your reward to Thor?” Tessa asked as she examined the upgraded barrier.
“Yes, it’s an upgrade of one Tier for [Refreshing Lightning]. [Eternal Lightning] is the new name, and while I don’t have solid data on it, I can already tell that the stamina refreshing effect is much stronger than the original.”
Tessa and the others nodded. “It is incredible. I feel like I just had a good nap, and we’ve been through a whole dungeon.”
Ophelia laughed. “That’s because you didn’t even walk through it. You’ve been sitting on Thor all morning.”
The researcher picked up his pack and settled it back in place.
“I don’t suppose that I can lie about my class, can I?”
Karl laughed. “There should be a mark on your arm. If it’s somewhat ambiguous, you don’t need to give them the actual name that the System told you, just your skills and anything that you know about it.
If you try focusing on the words Interface, Status, or Skills, you might get a bit more knowledge.”
“Interface!” Lotus cheered, then began swatting at the air in front of her.
“Did we damage her? She seems a bit off lately.” Karl whispered to Tessa.
“I don’t know. I will have to monitor her snacks for a while. She might have started taking hallucinogens to cope. Lotus isn’t exactly the best suited person to high-stress situations, or the most mentally stable, you know?”
Karl raised an eyebrow, questioning that statement. “I seem to recall that she loves to pick fights, a little battle against Ogres shouldn’t be an issue.”
Tessa sighed. “Ones that don’t involve real violence. But she’s a nature priestess, they’re almost always stoned anyhow.”
If there was a chance that she was going to start screwing up because she was too high to function, they would have to deal with her. Doug was known to smoke a lot, but always after work. Not before.
“Interface.” Tessa mumbled, then blinked in surprise.
“You know, I’ve tried that many times before, but it never worked. I wonder if these last few instances have helped stabilize or unlock the System’s features?” She asked.
“I think that is right. I was seeing the interface flicker on and off when we were doing the dungeon. I don’t think we have everything that it used to have unlocked, but I think we’re very close to having a fully functional version of the system.”
The researcher was staring at the mark on his arm, which looked like an old man pondering his orb. Sage was a good name for it, but there was at least no negative connotation to the mark itself.
“When we get out, we should ask the Colonel if she knows about a mark like that. She might be able to tell you more.” Karl suggested.
“When I said skills, I saw that I have spells available, and they seem like normal mage spells.” The Sage whispered, just loud enough for Karl to hear.
“Good, then you’re a mage class. That’s easy. Now, you just need to know how to get points to buy the spells.”
The Sage frowned. “I’m afraid to learn how this class gets points. But I have fourteen right now, and that’s not quite enough to get three additional skills.”
Karl shrugged. “They normally come from accomplishments and feats. The more you challenge yourself, the faster you get them. I suspect that Lotus should have an awful lot of them. Nature Clerics tend to do crazy things. But Tessa should have a bunch as well.”
Tessa shrugged. “Nothing happens when I try skill as a command. Clerics might just get what their Gods give them.”
Ophelia came over with a frown. “It says that feature isn’t unlocked when I try. All I can get from the interface is a bunch of stat numbers that mean nothing to me. Except health and mana. Those show as a percentage.”
Karl hadn’t been paying any attention to those. He could see them as a pair of globes, red and blue, at the edge of his vision when he had the interface active, but they were just full, so he didn’t think about them.
Besides, it was usually pretty obvious when you got stabbed or beat with a club. Health was a relative thing. He didn’t need a globe to tell him when he’d been getting his ass kicked.
But more interestingly, there were greyed out functions. There was some sort of money counter that was translucent and unavailable, and another function that had no label.
Karl focused on pressing the button, and found that he was in his own mental space, the one where he had formed the focus to meditate when he was working on improving the beast spaces.
That was pretty cool. Useless, as it was faster to access it directly, but cool as a feature.
There were more locked features in the Interface, but none of them had labels, so Karl didn’t actually know what he was missing out on.
He had the important parts now, though. He could bring up a list of his skills and skill tree, he could see a bunch of numbers for his stats, which he was slowly learning to interpret, and he could see the contents of his storage bag.
He could even pull things out of the pocket of his backpack without taking the whole pack out, and he could put things back into the pockets. That was a huge improvement over accessing the bag directly in his mind.
“Should we head out and give our reports? They’re going to wonder what we’re doing if we linger in here too long.” Ophelia suggested.
The researcher sighed and looked at his new outfit.
“Alright, let’s get this over with. Please don’t tell them any other details about my class.” He pleaded.
“Don’t worry. We can tell them that you’re a Sage without any other connotations. But look at it this way, you have a more functional system interface than most Elites do, and you just awakened.” Karl replied.
Ophelia smirked. “Yeah, and it’s not like they didn’t know you were a virgin until the weekend after your thirtieth birthday anyhow.”
He sighed, and led the group out of the dungeon, where he nearly ran into a man in simple grey mage robes.
“Greg? Why are you dressed like a homeless mage?” The Sage asked.
“Dude, what the Dragon are you wearing? You don’t get to criticize my outfit when you look like a sleazy pickup artist. I will have you know that as a reward for being the first group to clear the dungeon, I was granted a class marking. I am now a Sorcerer.”
Karl’s researcher laughed and turned his arm to show his friend. “Like this? I’m a Sage.”
The other soldiers and researchers from the three study teams gathered around to hear the stories, and the rest of Karl’s team gathered to share their reports.
Bob smirked. “I will go first. I believe we got identical dungeons, so I will just detail the loot. The first boss had nothing much of interest, but the second dropped a spellbook for Dana. It’s hanging on her waist now. Apparently, it adds even more damage to her spells, when she already has [Destruction] as a skill boosting her output.
Then on the final boss, we all got scrolls, and the System Interface unlocked.”
Karl chuckled. “On our first boss, Tessa got a hymn book that boosts Holy Magic. Then on the final boss we got scrolls. I got one that advanced a skill by a Tier. So, Thor’s Refreshing Lightning is now Eternal Lightning.”
Bob visibly lost much of his enthusiasm. “Dammit, and I thought I had gotten the greatest skill. I got [Titanic Slash] from the same sort of scroll. Slash upgraded one Rank, and now it creates a massive sword up to twenty metres long for the attack.”
Ophelia smirked as she patted him on the shoulder. “Oh, he’s not bragging. The best gains in our group were for Lotus, who had a healing skill upgraded to [Revive].”
The other group, and all the Magic Knights, went silent as they stared at the little Priestess, who had been doing her very best not to just blurt out her good news.
Doug sighed. “You’ve got to be kidding me. The little troublemaker was blessed with [Revive]? She’s going to be completely insufferable once she gets back to the Cathedral.”
“What did you get?” Karl asked.
Doug’s face seemed to grow scales over the next half a second, and he pulled up his sleeves to show that they went all the way up his arms as well.
[Green Dragon Armour]
