Drip-Fed

Apexus heard Reysha before he saw her. The sound of audible sniffing followed by a giggle was all the indication the slime needed to identify the redhead. A few moments later, her hand appeared over the edge of the cave entrance. The rest of her soon followed.

“I could smell slime semen halfway up the climb,” the tiger girl shouted out the reason for her amusement. “And my senses suck right now!”

“We…” Aclysia ashamedly cleared her throat, “were killing time.” The approaching silhouette laughed some more as she blocked out the nightly darkness of the forest behind her.

Apexus had no shame whatsoever. Currently occupied with refilling his water reserves by sitting in one of the many ponds, all the slime felt was the nice mellow satisfaction of the sexually fulfilled. That and a rather intense curiosity.

The metal fairy had the same feeling and asked the obvious question, “You have good news?” The tiger girl’s mood indicated that she had learned something about her condition that gave reason for hope.

“You could say that,” Reysha answered and quickly summarized the events of the day to her unorthodox partners. “I wonder how having a special class will influence my Art,” she finished her explanation.

‘Art?’ Apexus thought. The way she said that made it sound special and he doubted she had taken up painting recently. Turning to Aclysia, he poked her a bit to indicate he had a question. Attentive as always, the metal fairy realized quickly what he wanted to know.

“An Art is a special ability, each adventurer finds one around level 50 and another one around level 100. The level 50 one is common, multiple people can be found wielding the same Art, even if they are multiples per class. For the level 100 Arts… I would say they are unique, but as there are technically an infinite amount of adventurers across time and space, overlap is possible. It is almost a certainty that you will not meet two with the same Art, let us put it that way,” she explained.

That sounded positively amazing. Apexus wanted access to these whole classes or to know if being a fully sapient slime technically counted as its own one. Only one of those Scribes with their Analyse Adventurer spells could tell him and he didn’t see himself running across one of those anytime soon. Still, a note for the future should be made to look into it when the opportunity arose.

“Anyway, you seem pretty okay with your condition,” Aclysia noted down.

“Hey, if I know what it is then I can work with it,” Reysha shrugged. “No use worrying about it. Time is better spent rending some flesh off the bones of whatever monster I can eat.” Right with her on that one, Apexus moved out of his pond and crawled up to extend a tentacle as something approaching a thumbs-up.

Aclysia hummed in thought, “If we are to explore another dungeon, we have to tread lightly.” The remaining dungeons on the leaf where all within easy travel distance from the main city, making them frequently visited places for every normal adventurer around. It was difficult to enter them unseen. Once inside it would be a bit easier to dodge other groups, thanks to their superb senses being able to take notice beforehand.

Reysha and Apexus both looked at the metal fairy anticipatingly as she pondered. Eventually, she noticed their stares and blinked in confusion. Before Aclysia could ask, the group’s redhead was already presenting the answer. “You are basically the brains of this group, Aclysia, so you plan this stuff… Although, while we are already speaking about Arts and stuff, what class even are you?”

A justified question. The metal fairy was able to use healing and attack magic. While not unheard off, many healers decided to at least spend some of their time perfecting basic means of offense to be able to do something else aside from waiting for someone to get hurt, it was certainly unorthodox at their current level. Particularly, because Aclysia’s healing and attack magic were about the same.

“I am a Guardian Angel,” Aclysia answered simply. It was a class exclusive to divine creations and thusly a bit above the normal strength level. Like other classes, it evolved into more specialized versions later on. “It is true that am capable of attack and healing in equal measure,” she finished her explanation, “but I lack the skill to increase attributes of party members.”

“So, you don’t have buff spells,” Reysha translated it into adventurer-jargon. Typically speaking, each healer had access to a buff, as did most defensive classes. “Well, trade-offs happen everywhere, so that makes sense,” Reysha giggled for a bit and then began straight-up laughing. In the small cave, the shrill sounds that left her bounced around loudly. Apexus put his sensitive ears flat on his body to not bear the full-brunt of that. “Ridiculous anyway. We have a Noir Rogue, whatever the fuck that is, a Guardian Angel and a… let’s call Apexus a Primordial Drop,” the slime liked that name, “so our group is already a cut above the rest.”

“Class advances should put adventurers on equal footing as we go along, so there is no justification to be this self-assured of supremacy,” Aclysia scolded, giving Apexus yet another run down, on his confused-looking request, in this ongoing series of explanations he needed.

Class advances were simply the phenomenon of a base class, such as Warrior, going into a more specialized direction, such as Berserker, Guardian, Towershield or an array of others that people had given names to over the years. This was done to prevent adventurers from learning spells they didn’t really need. All Warriors needed basic weapons skills, but not all of them needed to know how to throw axes the size of wagon-wheels.

People could attempt to learn several specializations, but generally such attempts to go wide gave rise to limited success at best. Berserkers were usually not known for their love of hiding behind shields, for example. Even if they, against all odds, mustered the patience to learn it, it was never used in their usual fighting style. It was a mindset thing.

The people that did manage to pull it off were the strongest in their level bracket, but while they spent years perfecting other classes on the current level, everyone else simply got better at that one thing they were already good at and continued tackling harder challenges. When a person who had stopped to learn more classes fought against a person who continued striding forwards in the same timeframe, the latter won almost every fight.

Building tall rather than wide was the common way to success in the adventuring world. As such, most people concentrated on one or two classes and their advancements. The now deceased Hemle, for example, had let his students (one of which had been Reysha) know quite often that he was a Battlemage, a class that was a combination of a Warrior and a Mage.

They were worse at both the things a Warrior did, due to having lower Strength and Dexterity, and a Mage, due to sacrificing spell power and mana capacity to have the physical strength to wear plate, but they did both satisfyingly, making them a versatile solo class. Adding the skills of Priest to that would have made them a Spelladin, a class that was as goofy as its name as people of that specialization were forced to tackle challenges below their actual levels because of the long time it took to get all of their spells down to a satisfying degree.

People who made that mistake of overestimating themselves had the great way to fix their path by simply ditching whatever they didn’t need and saving themselves the time going forward. Like a smith who had started a carpenter’s apprenticeship earlier in their life, only to admit that wood wasn’t the material for them, those skills didn’t just vanish, but they never flourished any further and became rusty with time.

“That is the rough of it,” Aclysia finished the immensely lengthy explanation. “It is a convoluted topic, simply due to the many ways people can choose to fight. It is no wonder people try to put a label on everything to make it easier to categorize,” the metal fairy sighed, “but reality isn’t quite that simple when everyone puts their unique spins on their fighting styles.”

“Too long, didn’t listen, classes are drawers, not set characteristics. Don’t try to be in many drawers, unless you want to be a torn piece of paper,” Reysha scrambled a surprisingly functional word-salad together. “Torn paper is weak paper, be a stack instead! Anyway, where are we going?!”

The question was still unanswered, so Aclysia finally decided. “We will head to the Birshia dungeon.”