Gaining 3 levels at once was great. The combination of the boar’s higher level, his lack of safety, and his talent had given him a large boost overall. Levels wouldn’t come that easy again. He checked his profile:

  Valerian hadn’t actually known the [Appraiser] stat progression. He couldn’t remember it in the Class Manual. Each track gave +1 to every stat on odd levels, and a class-specific bonus on even ones. Based on his new stats, the [Appraiser] had a +3 Mind, +4 Perception progression. That makes sense, he thought.

  Valerian considered this. For an [Appraiser] on the civilian side, this progression was great. Mind granted bonus skill slots when high enough and all sorts of useful skills scaled using Perception. His core [Appraise] skill scaled directly with both, letting him appraise more at once, at longer ranges, and with more detail. Many other skills useful for an [Appraiser] would scale the same way.

  It wasn’t horrible for combat. More skills were always nice and most magical skills scaled using Mind. It was the primary stat for most mages. It also increased the amount of anima he could hold in his spirit. With no Willpower or Stamina scaling, however, his innate anima regeneration would be unusually low. This was a common challenge with rare classes as they tended to be highly specialized.

  While he would have preferred to use swords for combat, his progression would make that difficult. If he was being honest, though, his preference for swords was more due to familiarity than desire. While skill items could give some level of practice with magical skills before awakening, they had long cooldowns and were expensive. He had still used them once a week but didn’t have the same daily practice as he did with swords. He would never be like his Father in combat style.

  He sighed. Perception was a weird one. It wasn’t common as a primary stat. Most of the classes that preferred it were stealth or ambush-based, like [Scout] or [Shadowblade]. And they tended to go all-in on precision stats with a secondary in Agility. That wouldn’t work for him.

  It was still a very useful stat. It would help him be more accurate, especially with magical skills, and detect enemy attacks as well as sense how they were going to move. For his combat style it would be vital and the early identification of threats would keep him alive. It also often increased the range of magical skills which gave him more flexibility.

  In summary, his class gave him the potentially for highly damaging and precise magical skills that could hit at long ranges, but no bonus physical stats and abysmal anima regeneration for continual skill use. He was starting to understand a bit why [Appraiser] was not considered a viable combat class.

  With no physical stats, melee combat was extremely risky. High perception means it isn’t instant death, but he would be entirely reliant on predicting and avoiding attacks. A single hit could end him if he were unlucky.

  And with minimal anima regeneration, his sustain would be terrible. Sure, he could use expensive and powerful skills, but only a few times before essentially being useless. Even worse, his [Exploit Weakness] was additive damage, so the impact of his trigger hit barely mattered.

  Wait. Valerian smiled. The System is fair. He was starting to get an idea of how his class was supposed to function on the combat side. He didn’t need big hits or flashy spells. The +3 Mind meant he’d have a ton of anima, and all he needed to do was enough damage to break through an enemy’s defense to trigger [Exploit Weakness]. And his massive Perception meant his attacks would usually land as long as he was careful. With low cost, precise magical skills, of which there were plenty, he could continually trigger vulnerabilities. And they had a stacking damage effect!

  It would be a difficult way to fight. He could sort of get why most [Appraiser]s would choose to go for the easy civilian route, which was always in demand, rather than focus on a fighting style that would heavily punish mistakes and require a ton of training.

  He had a path. It might not be the one he had planned on. But he was right. He could do this on his own. Steelwurth men didn’t cry. Valerian would never forget where he came from. The tightness in his chest was from success. I’m not a failure.

  Valerian had a problem. On one hand, he had a very delicious-looking boar dead on the ground in front of him. On the other hand, he had no flint. And if anyone were looking for him in the general area, a cooking fire would definitely draw attention.

  He sighed as his stomach growled angrily at him. He also had a headache. There wasn’t anything he could really do. He’d thought of this before he fought, of course. But there was a difference between a theoretical delicious boar and the sitting there, taunting him.

  He left the boar alone. Ideally he could have buried it or hidden it as a boar killed by a saber would be a giant “Valerian was here!” sign for any knights looking for him, especially off the road like this. But he didn’t have the tools or the energy.

  In [Bard] tales and books, the heroes would swing blades and run around for hours slaying monsters, taunting their enemies and giving rousing speeches to their allies. But they had skills boosting their energy, whereas Valerian didn’t exactly have high endurance stats in the first place. Even his saber felt heavy at his side.

  He didn’t fight the boar for its meat. He fought it for the bush, which he stumbled over to and began picking berries. Thomas scolded him in the back of his mind for not immediately cleaning his blade but Valerian ignored him. Eat first, clean boar goop later.

  He looked at the notification as he ate. The other reason he fought the boar was for levels. The first 10 levels went notoriously quickly; just about anything related to your tracks gave you XP and the total XP needed per level was low. Every 10 levels saw a big boost in the amount of XP needed for future levels. Outside the nobility or the most experienced members of guilds, most people would rarely hit level 60 in their lives due to the XP needed to level and the fewer opportunities to be challenged.

  The stat boosts were useful but pretty minor. It might seem like having 20 in a stat was twice as good as 10, but that wasn’t how stats work. It was more like a 10% bonus, maybe less. Stats helped, but without skills the effects were hard to notice without a massive numerical difference.

  That wasn’t why Valerian wanted to level. Every level unlocked a common skill based on what you did when getting that level. Normally, Valerian would have gotten skill shards from his family after unlocking his class. He would have worked with his tutors and parents to come up with the optimal starting build and found skills in their library that worked for him. Not like they would have had any combat skills for an [Appraiser] anyway, he thought.

  For commoners who usually didn’t have access to skill shards from rifts, however, leveling was the best way to get new skills. At least until he could join a delver’s guild, leveling was going to be the best way to get his initial skills.

  Rift delving was his best chance of following his path. Delving guilds, while patronized by the nobility and supported by them, were primarily operated and lead by commoners at the lower levels. Rifts appeared often enough that the nobility didn’t have he resources to consistently clear them out, and if left alone, a rift break could become a major hazard.

  Following Rowan’s path wasn’t really an option. The military was too organized and primarily led by the nobility. If he joined the military as an [Appraiser] they’d stick him in a warehouse immediately and he’d have no leverage to argue otherwise.

  Guilds allowed more freedom—and he wouldn’t be the first disgraced noble to turn to delving. In fact, such stories were fairly common, especially for bastards or noble children that embarrassed their family in some way. Like me, Valerian thought.

  Unlike the military, delver guilds couldn’t simply order him to focus on civilian track. They’d probably encourage it but he was confident he could work around it.

  Valerian finished the last of the berries that looked acceptable to eat. He was still hungry. Taking one last look at the boar, he cleaned his saber as best he could and continued on.

  As he walked, he slotted his new skills. [Footwork] went into his class combat slot. While [Slash] would deal more damage in a class slot, having [Exploit Weakness] meant his base damage was less important. Right now he needed to avoid injury, and [Footwork] was a passive skill that would improve his ability to both get in range with his saber and move out of the way of attacks. It would have terrible scaling with his low Body and Agility but it was better than relying on the base stats alone.

  [Slash] went into the general combat slot. It was a simple attack skill and would also have poor scaling. It could let him punch through defenses he couldn’t otherwise, though, so it was still useful. He’d drop it the second he could get an appropriate magic skill.

  [Hide] was interesting. While it had major penalties while moving, it was still a stealth skill. He assumed his maneuvering and ambush of the boar contributed to it. Valerian had wondered how his talent would interact with civilian skill offerings. He guessed he’d be offered skills that were related to what he was doing in combat. Good to know.

  It went in his class civilian slot. There was no reason to leave that empty. He could replace skills he knew in slots by putting the slot on cooldown for a day. So he could always swap if he got something better.

  He found the road again and kept it vaguely to his left as he traveled. Having [Hide] made him feel a lot safer close to the road. He practiced the skill and even gained a rank, increasing it to rank 2.

  When he found a spot to sleep for the night, he was hungry, exhausted, and his feet felt like they were made of blisters and pain. His heel was raw and bleeding, the left sock worn through completely.

  It was the best day he’d had since his awakening. And for the first time since he left, he slept deeply.

  * * * * *

  The next day, Valerian decided to examine his skills more closely. He already had a sense for how they worked, but a proper System breakdown never hurt.

  Valerian’s stats for both his combat skills were low, of course. He would need some more levels and stats before the System was likely to add a basic magic skill. All skills had a base value, however, so even at rank 1 they had some effect. But you needed to rank them up and have high stats to take full advantage of a skill’s potential.

  The next day, Valerian noticed a weight on the other side of the hill. It felt like a small whirlpool of anima at the edge of his senses. Could that be…?

  He activated [Hide] and moved very carefully over the hill, making sure not to crest the top and make himself obvious to anyone observing it. As he rounded the area, the feeling got stronger and stronger, and then he saw it: a rift was sitting between this hill and another nearby, nestled between some trees.

  Valerian had never seen a rift in person before. He had studied them, of course. Everyone had heard of the Eisenburg tragedy. Some duke had apparently allowed a rift to grow to tier 15 without closing it inside the city, farming it for artifacts and levels in secret. They miscalculated and the rift broke, instantly destroying the city and surrounding areas, and it took the entire Imperial army along with armies from Sajetar and the Republic to clear the ruin. Every noble child was told the story as a warning.

  Based on his reading, this rift didn’t have nearly enough anima presence to be a high tier rift. He was guessing it was a new tier 1, maybe 2. Still, it was exciting to finally see one; when he became a delver, he’d be actually going inside them.

  Outside of the obvious anima effects, the rift looked like a distortion in space, like the rippling turbulence you’d see at the top of a fire or along the road on a hot day. It was a vague oval about twice his height and hovering about a foot off the ground. Nothing at all grew within a few feet of the rift. It was somewhat subtle to see with his eyes but was so dominant in the local anima it was impossible to miss.

  He didn’t know if this was a known rift or a new one. He tried [Appraise] to see if he could learn anything more.

  [Appraise] gave him more information than he expected. Knowing the tier was useful. A tier 1 rift was generally delved by teams in the level 10-20 range. Each tier represented a range of about 10 levels. Seeing the risk was neat but not really all that helpful. He was alone and level 6; a more accurate risk analysis would be “suicidal.”

  The capacity information was unexpected but welcome. Every delver that entered a risk used up some of the rift’s capacity based on their level. Anyone who would push the rift over capacity couldn’t enter. Someone with a level over a tier higher than the rift would be generally unable to enter at all. So if he were level 30, he could walk right through this rift and nothing would happen. But if he did it right now at level 6 he’d be pulled in. He could leave without issue, and part of him was tempted to take a peek inside, but it was just too dangerous. There was no guarantee a monster wouldn’t notice him and be able to attack before he could get back outside.

  But capacity was measured in percent, not a solid number. That meant he was measuring the current capacity of the rift. Since it was at 100%, he knew it was empty. Knowing if a rift was empty or how many more people could enter was really useful information. No wonder delvers guilds would hire [Appraiser]s. As far as he knew, [Identify] only showed the tier.

  As neat as it was, though, there was no point in staying. He doubted he’d find a guild to be able to report the rift to them and didn’t have any mapping supplies or skills to lead them back here. There was no chance of entering the rift; solo delving was risky even for experienced delvers and he had never even seen one before. Nope.

  It was time to move on. He looked back at the rift longingly. He may not be able to fulfill his obligations to his family. But he’d still make a difference.