“This should be far enough!” Verndan shouted as they made it to the edge of that particular forest. The group slowed to a walk and then stopped as they started to see more and more distance between trees.

“You sure?” Eduard asked, panting.

“Positive, they never come out this far.”

They all sighed in relief. Korz dropped the bag filled with honey and sat down to lean against a tree. “That’s a relief.” He pointed at Verndan who was doing the same. “Verndan, your studying of what we might have to deal with, and awesome leadership abilities have saved our asses once again. Thank you.”

He waved off the thanks. “Just doing what I told you all I would.”

“Who’s hurt?” Alice asked, glancing between everyone.

All four men raised their hands.

“Got slammed a couple times.” Korz said. “Going to bruise, no breaks.”

“Same, but from Korz saving my ass, not the monster. Thanks, by the way.” Eduard nodded at his shield toting party member.

“Eh, you save me, I save you, we all stay alive.” Korz glanced up with a slight frown on his face. “Although, I bet that counts for Guardian prerequisites.”

“What?” Kay asked, then looked over at Alice. “I got slashed across the back.”

“Cuts on my arms.” Verndan held up both arms showing the bleeding gashes there.

Alice started digging in her pack for bandages as Kay pulled some blood off his back and slowly dragged himself over to Verndan. He pushed his hands out and willed the red liguid into Verndan’s veins, replenishing what had been lost and giving a slight healing effect to the receiver.

The spearman groaned. “That still feel weird.”

Alice stepped up to Kay and gasped. “That’s a big cut. Take your armor off, I’m bandaging you up first.” She tossed a roll of bandages to Eduard. “Ed, you get Vern’s arms. Korz, keep watch.”

Korz sighed. “Right.” He hopped to his feet and started scanning around them as the others did some first aid.

Nothing attacked them as they patched themselves up, and the party started walking back to the city.

“Gains?” Verndan asked at one point during their walk home.

“I got to nineteen in Shields.” Korz replied with a smile. “One more and I can start aiming for real tank classes.”

“Nice!” Eduard reached over for a high five. “I got two levels in Archery.”

Korz’s powerful high five made a ringing smack noise. “Hell yeah! Now you’re at tier three!”

“Yup! Just took Archer (Shortbow).”

Kay mostly ignored the weird sensation of hearing parentheses. It made his skin itch.

Alice sighed, “I didn’t level. Maybe I should look into a different class.”

“Don’t mope!” Korz stepped back and bumped her shoulder with his.

“Korz is right.” Verndan said. “With the pay from this job, and the reward for reporting a Princess Bee hive splitting, we’ll have more than enough to get you a healing skill. Maybe enough to get Korz a taunt skill too.”

Alice’s face lit up with a big smile. “Seriously?”

”Awesome!” Korz fist pumped.

“And then we can start saving up so we can get someone to teach you a few new enhancement spells.”

“Or, we could save up for enough time for me to practice and learn some myself.”

Magic classes can be split into two different kinds, spell based and no-spell classes. Spell based classes use magic through pushing their mana into different “forms” and then releasing those forms to cause the specific effect. No-spell classes, like Kay’s Blood Manipulator, control mana directly and continuously to cause the effect they want. Spells are easier to use and require less concentration, but they’re less flexible, and you need to learn them from somewhere. You could get training from someone who already knows the spell you want, or you could practice with your magic to discover spell forms you don’t already know. Apparently finding brand new spell forms gave a title, but that was as hard as finding new classes. The title’s effects weren’t as good as Class Creator’s either, and it took a lot of work to figure out spells you didn’t already know without a teacher, so most didn’t try and just bought teaching, or agreed to other terms to receive the knowledge.

Alice’s Enhancement Mage class, like all other “Mage” classes was spell based, and Enhancement Magic spells were apparently much more difficult than many other kinds, making them more expensive to learn, and even more time consuming to try and discover.

“We’ll see what happens.” Verndan replied. He looked over at Kay. “Kay, interested in sharing? I got a level in Spearmanship. That puts me at twenty-one.”

Kay glanced at his notifications, debated a minute, then replied. “The skill that lets me give blood went up two levels, it’s at seven now. My magic skill with the blood attacks went up twice, it’s at fifteen, and I got Swordsmanship to sixteen.” He didn’t mention that his Blood Regeneration and Healthy Blood skills had both leveled to five during their walk.

“Nice! Those are good gains all around. Although I have to admit, yours are pretty damn fast, Kay.”

Korz snorted. “Of course they are! He’s an Outworlder, don’t they always fly through the first two tiers? They have some kind of bonus to leveling skills, right?”

“I heard that wasn’t true, it’s just that they end up in situations where they level faster than your average person.” Alice countered.

The pair bickered for a moment until Kay jumped in. “I definitely don’t have anything in my status that says I level faster. I can’t comment on the ending up in situations that mean I level faster, but Eleniah seems to agree with that.”

“You’re pretty damn lucky.” Korz muttered.

“I am?” Kay asked with a bemused tone.

“That's what Korz meant,” Verndan shot his fellow beastkin a glare, his green eyes flashing, “Is that while it sucks that you got sucked into a different world, a lot of people would want a tier five as their mentor. You’re lucky to have her teaching you.”

Korz nodded. “That is actually what I meant. I’d love to have someone like her teaching me.”

Kay laughed. “I am lucky to have gotten her as a teacher, but I don’t know how much you’d love yo have her teaching you. Her curriculum is almost endless and she’s a real taskmaster about getting it right.”

“What kind of stuff is she teaching you?”

“Oh, you name it. How to fight, and general monster knowledge, along with stuff that might help my classes and my path, the standard stuff, of course. Then there’s the world history, geography, analysis of current politics across the three continents, economics, trade, how to read people, battle tactics and strategy, she’s even got me reading about agriculture and city planning!” Kay shook his head. “She wants me to learn everything there is it seems like.”

The party shared a glance between themselves.

“That sounds like the kind of stuff a personal tutor would teach a noble’s kid.” Verndan commented.

Eduard nodded. “Yeah Vern, that’s exactly what I was thinking.”

Alice frowned. “Maybe…”

Kay turned back to look at her. “What?”

“Maybe that’s what she’s aiming for? Or, it’s the goal she has for you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, a lot of Outworlders end up being important or powerful in some way. Maybe she’s preparing you to become someone important because she thinks that’s where you’ll end up. Or, it could be that she’s directly planning for you to become someone important and is getting you ready for that.” Alice mused as she looked at him.

“I don’t think she’s the kind of person to push me into becoming some powerful figure.”

“There’s a difference between pushing someone into something and seeing it as an option, or even making it a goal. She isn’t forcing you to become a noble or something, she’s just preparing for it. Maybe. If I’m right…” Alice trailed off.

That topic dissolved as they reached a conversational impasse, with no real information about Eleniah’s goals, they couldn’t really say much.

When they made it back to the city gates they all pulled out their adventurer’s plates as they waited in the surprisingly short line. When he reached the gate and handed over his plate for identification the guard there gave him a weird look. Kay wasn’t really sure what to make of it, but he was waved through without anything other than a few more weird stares from the guard, so he let it pass.

The walk to the guildhall was uneventful. Their entry into the guildhall was not.

A few moments after they entered, Kay felt a strong hand grab his shoulder. He glanced to the side to see the vice-guildmaster holding him in place.

“Would you come with me please?” She asked. Her grip didn’t loosen as she looked at him, and there was a light in her eyes that made Kay nervous. An anticipation of violence.

“Sure?” He followed along as she practically dragged him upstairs and into a room that looked suspiciously like an interrogation room.

“Sit.” Jaira pointed at the only open chair, and he did as she ordered.

Across from him was an older human man with graying hair and a thick mustache.

“Adventurer Kay,” The man looked up from a few papers, “Have you ever been near the village of Burkonston?”

Kay stared at the man for a moment, caught off guard by the complete non sequitur. “I don’t know where that is.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

Kay furrowed his brow. “How am I supposed to tell you if I’ve been near this village if I don’t know where the village is? And how are you defining ‘near’?”

The man stared straight at Kay. “Have you ever been to the village of Burkonston?”

“No. I don’t know where that is.”

“Have you even been to the village of Kenzie’s Crossing?”

“I don’t know where that is either. Also, no.” Kay decided to pretend this was a weird staring contest. It made the older man’s gaze much less intimidating.

The man sighed, keeping his eyes locked. “Have you ever killed a member of the Tumbling Rapids guard?”

Kay’s slight sense of annoyance and confusion congealed into a much more pressing sense of confusion and fear. “No.”

“Have you ever attacked a child?”

“…No.” Kay wasn’t stupid, no matter the ribbing his friends gave him once upon a time about certain final grades, he saw where this was going.

Or what it could be related to.

The man straightened his papers, tapping the against the table. He still didn’t look away from Kay. “Are you working with any group or individual in any capacity that seeks, in any form, whether directly or indirectly, to harm the city of Tumbling Rapids, or anyone within or part of the city?”

“No. No, I’m not.”

The scary old man stood up with a fluidity Kay had only ever seen from Eleniah and the other higher tier people he’d seen or met. “Thank you for you time.” He nodded once at Kay in a perfunctory sort of way, and then again to Vice-Guildmaster Jaira, hers much deeper and with a sense of meaning behind it. He walked off.

Jaira turned to Kay, but her cut her off. “There’s a Blood Mage attacking people, isn’t there? Either that, or someone higher up decided I might be more of a threat than I looked like.”

She sighed. “Both. Yes, there’s most likely a Blood Mage attacking people. That, plus word getting around some of the city’s Councilmembers that you exist made certain powerful people nervous.” She waved her hand at the door. “That was one of the City Council’s best investigators. He’s completely trustworthy, hard to get around, and completely apolitical. So, you’re cleared, officially, of any suspicion of being involved. And he solved the problem of any of the… more timid Councilmembers being worried about you as a threat with that last question.”

Kay walked over to the door and paused. “So, officially I’m not involved. How long has the rumor mill been running?”

She winced just a bit. “Yeah… At least a few hours. Report of the attacks came in late last night, someone started making noise about you this morning right before you left, and they came looking for you around noon. Sorry.”

“Nothing you could do about it.” Kay stepped out and started walking.

“We’ll do the best we can to get things straightened out, but…” She shrugged.

Kay mirrored her. “Rumors have a life of their own.” He sighed deeply. “It’ll probably suck to be me for a bit here.”