Does not the [Blessing of the Gods] show our true nature?

It reveals more about us than we even want to admit to ourselves

to show your [Blessing], in it’s entirety, to another is one of the greatest signs of

trust that the races under the Gods’ authority can possibly give

or, at least, that is my belief.

-Musings of a Scholar

The sunlight snuck through the entwining pathways of the overbearing castle that sprawled over the city. It wormed it’s way down to the window of an inn and through the rotted shutters to shine on the face of a boy with black hair. Crimson cracked open one of his mercury colored eyes and slowly sat up.

He hadn’t got as much sleep as he’d wanted the night before, the excitement had burrowed it’s way into the deepest parts of his mind and made it ‘hard’ -nigh-on impossible- for him to sleep. He’d eventually passed out from sheer exhaustion, but it had felt like a long process.

He sat for a second, waiting. Unlocking a [Blessing of the Gods] was something that would occur ‘sometime’ on the person’s birthday. Based off the records he’d read it was probably after the TIME that the person was born. Off the head he couldn’t remember when his mother had born him into the previous world, so he couldn’t be sure when he would be ‘Blessed’.

He stood up stretching and reached down to pat his legs. Even after a month with his legs healed he still couldn’t get used to the idea. Never, in his wildest dreams, did he truly believe that he would be able to walk around like that, so his morning ritual usually included checking to see if he was dreaming.

He walked over to the corner of the room and dipped his hands in the cold water of the basin sitting on the table there, gritted his teeth, and splashed it on his face. The cold pierced his being and woke a hatred for water in him that swiftly died down as he shook like a dog. He grabbed the towel hanging from a hook set into the wall and dried his hair as quickly as possible. He kept it cut short, so it would dry quickly, but it was still cold.

He popped a Castus Leaf into his mouth from the basket on the side and bit down. It looked more like a pea pod than a leaf, but it’s purpose was very different from any food. It was the closest thing that this world had to oral hygiene, and while it was the only thing, it was extremely effective.

Crimson had done a ‘before’ and ‘after’ comparison and discovered that it had literally dissolved the plaque from his mouth. So, in a way, the dental care was better in this world than his old one. Kinda a weird thought.

After he’d finished his morning routine he sat down on the floor and began to meditate. It was something he’d started in his old world and something he’d kept up even in this one. He wasn’t sure how to ‘properly’ meditate, but he liked to focus inward on himself. He paid attention to his breathing, his pulse, the flow of blood through is veins, and the feel of his clothes and the air against his skin.

He swapped between focusing on these things in a rhythm and tried to ignore the discomfort of sitting on a wooden floor for half an hour without moving.

If pressed Crimson wouldn’t be able to tell anyone if what he was doing had any positive effects what-so ever, but it was a habit at this point, and one that he liked. It made him feel kinda cool.

After his time meditating he stood up and stretched his -now sore and sleeping- legs. He hobbled over to the dresser, quickly put on his ensemble and tried not to fall over during the process. After another quick glance in the mirror to make sure that there weren’t any details of his clothes that Verity could mock him for he headed out of the inn, waving to the elderly innkeeper and his towering body builder-esque son and headed into the winding backstreets.

If he went by the main and backroads he’d be able to reach the guild in ten minutes of walking, five with his knowledge of secret passages.

He walked over to the statue of the ‘Ladykiller’ troll and pressed the hidden button on the back of it’s ankle. The wall behind the statue wavered a little as Crimson walked through the illusion there, and the bricks melted back into place after he’d passed through, the illusion hiding the whole thing as he walked down the stairs into the passages.

He walked through the passages that were well lit with magic light and made his way to the adventurer’s guild. It had been hard at first to navigate underground, but once he’d started paying attention he’d notice little symbols near the ceiling. They were able to lead him pretty much anywhere once he remembered what symbol meant which location.

He’d had to skedaddle pretty fast the one time a passage had dumped him in the castle’s ‘archives’. He didn’t particularly want to end up in prison for exploring the passages.

One interesting thing about the passages that he’d noticed was how few people used them. It had only taken him a day to find his first passage so he couldn’t imagine that nobody else knew about them, but he’d never run into anyone in them. Weird.

He exited the passages as close as he could to the guild and strolled through the front door. Adventurers were an amusingly lazy bunch for the most part, the guild was almost completely empty despite having been open for about an hour. There was one party picking up requests and another was leaving, but aside from those two parties there were only the guild receptionists, and their guards.

The guild had an open main area with three ‘publicly available’ floors. The first floor had a few different request boards for Brass, Bronze, Silver, and Gold ranks. Brass rank requests were almost all chores of one kind or another. Crimson hadn’t looked too closely at the other three as of yet, but he knew that they contained ‘hunting’ and ‘retrieval’ requests, ‘capture’ and ‘escort’ requests wouldn’t start appearing till the higher ranks. There was a bar and restaurant area taking up half of the first floor off to the left after entering and the reception desks and request boards were to the front. Off to the right was a staircase leading to the upper floors, and a massive double door leading off to the guild’s training grounds.

The second and third floors were open to the main area and had balconies to keep anyone from falling to a lower floor. The second floor had three receptionists instead of the first floor’s seven, and the third floor only had one. It represented, in a way, the level of strength at the guild, with most of the members being Bronze, Silver, or Gold, and sharply decreasing from there.

The second floor had the library in the back in addition to the reception desk. The third floor had the Guild Master’s office and a room for ‘top secret’ records in addition to the high ranker’s sole -and bored- receptionist.

Crimson walked over to ‘his’ receptionist Sherry, don’t ever make alcohol jokes around her, and greeted her.

“Good morning Sherry, how’s business?”

She grinned and tapped her pipe out.

“A’m doin’ well, it’a just be rea’ quiet for da next ‘our.”

Her accent was one of the thickest he’d ever heard, it’d taken a few days for him to be able to understand her.

“Your prediction is better than mine, I was guessing it would be at least two hours.”

She tapped the side of her nose with her pipe in an ‘all knowing’ manner.

“‘at’s just a’cause you dinna pay ‘tention to which o’ us are runnin’ da desk on whi’ days. We got dat new girlie ‘Chime’ runnin’ a desk. Dese’ ‘ere mo-rons tink more with ‘deir lower ‘aves than wid ‘deir tinker.”

Barely following what Sherry was saying -she became harder to follow when she talked fast- Crimson was able to get that there was a new girl and the guys liked her.

Sherry’s mind, body, and actions were all completely opposing each other. Looking at her she gave the feeling of a dark elf seductress with her deep black hair, gently tapering ears, smoky grey skin, and love of the color red, but she had a ‘bit’ of a smoking problem. She didn’t smoke around Crimson because she knew he didn’t like smoke, and respected him enough to not, but she smoked every other second.

Based off the way she talked the other guild members thought she was a country bum, and she was from the county, but she was no bum, she was probably the best and most efficient receptionist. She remembered every person that ever entered the guild and could see through lies in a heartbeat. It was for her mastery over her job that made Crimson choose her over the other six, the fact that the male guild members tended to avoid her leading to her line usually being shorter helped things. They were attracted to her pretty face, and scared off by how she acted. Her usual customers were parties made mostly of girls, she stood up for them.

“So these lazy bums come in earlier just to see a pretty face?”

“Ya got ‘dat right. See-in as ‘dese bums winna leave for a few ‘ours justin to ge’ a chance atta date ‘wid her.”

Crimson snorted, “What a waste of time. Do you have any jobs for me today?”

“Nah, ‘dake a day offa yur work boy. Yuh’ve made more workin’ ‘ard in da past month dan some of dese ‘pro-fess-ion-als’. Ya be needn’ a break boy.”

“Sure, thanks Sherry. I need to brush up on stuff in the library anyway.”

She threw back her head and laughed, “‘id’s a’most a shock wid you around boy. I dinna seen sumuns likea you dat iz so mo’ivated to work. Ah hey, beforins I forget ya should know dat dere main road should be ‘voided for de next liddle while. ‘Dere’ll be a royal ‘pro-cess-sion’ soon. ‘Dinna want ya to get crushed in da crowd.”

“Thanks for the heads up. Good luck with the ‘bums’.”

Crimson walked away as Sherry laughed mockingly and relit her pipe.

He headed up to the second floor and settled in to read more about classes. Since he’d decided what his primary class would be he would have to change his research focus to decide on a sub class. After some thought he’d decided to get a production class; being able to reduce the cost of being an adventurer by doing ‘something’ by himself would be a huge help.

After an hour of studying, comparing skill data, and the cost of different production classes he was interrupted by the blonde-long ear herself: Verity.

“Hiya Crimson! Sleep well?”

“Good Morning Verity. I slept alright.”

“Liar! I could see the bags under your eyes from five shelves away!”

“……”

“Don’t ignore me!”

“……”

“Crimson?”

“……”

“Hey, please don’t ignore me…”

“…….”

She went quiet for a few seconds before changing the subject, teasing him once in a while is fun, but it stops being fun when he gets like that, “What are you researching?”

“I’m looking into production classes. Since I’ve decided on a primary class I need to figure out which sub classes I’m going to get after all.”

“And a production class?”

“Yeah, I need something to do with my hands on a rainy day after all.”

“You sure it’s not about money?”

“Maybe a little.”

Verity burst out in a laugh that was quickly silenced by her own hands as the librarian could be seen a few shelves away. She’d already been thrown out 1, 2, 3, 4…many, many times. The librarian was confirmed to be at least level sixty, though her class was still unknown. Her existence was one of the reasons why a lot of the guild members stayed out of the library, aside from the afore mentioned ‘just kill it’ attitude, and she scared the living daylights out of Verity.

Crimson didn’t mind her much, but he didn’t cause problems and just read quietly for the most part, so he didn’t have much cause to raise her ire.

After giving Verity a death glare she moved on to other shelves, and Verity was left with her life after yet another life threatening visit to the library.

She let out the breath she’d been holding and slumped down onto the table across from Crimson.

“That was too close, I thought I was going to die.”

“She wouldn’t kill you, at worse she’d throw you out of the library like last time.”

“The only reason I wasn’t hurt was because I landed on top of that fat-passed out guy!”

“Yeah, good thing he was a [Defender] too, you couldn’t hurt him after all that.”

“It wasn’t intentional!”

“Keep it down. Are you some kind of M?”

“N-no, I’m not.”

“Why the hesitation?”

“The librarian is behind you staring me down.”

Crimson quietly chuckled, “Well, if you’re gonna hang out here then you can make yourself useful. Grab ‘Bang, Clang, and Clack by K. Boom’ for me.”

“Sure! He has a funny name.”

“Well, his name was Kalm, but his title was ‘Emperor of Bombs’ so he combined them for his pen name.”

Verity walked off between the shelves, she may seem stupid at times, but she had the library’s lay out as perfectly memorized as Crimson. It explained how she knew where the book he was referencing was.

They spent a good few hours in the library studying. Normally they’d be training, but Crimson didn’t want to be in the middle of a work-out when he got his [Blessing], so he turned to studying. At about noon they took a break to eat in the guild’s restaurant -expensive!- before getting back to work.

The annoying thing about Crimson’s work was that a lot of stuff about the [Blessing] was speculation, or hadn’t been backed up by evidence, so if he wanted to confirm any simple pieces of information he had to look in several places to double check any information before he could accept it as fact. In the end he spent a lot of time studying for little information.

The reason that information was so sparse was quite simply the secrecy surrounding the [Blessings]. He’d already had a first hand experience with what people would be willing to reveal instead of the contents of their [Blessing], and he didn’t want a repeat of THAT. Most of the people willing to ‘reveal’ the content of their [Blessings] would usually lie to make themselves seem better, or would do it for attention. Essentially, all the journals and quite a few of the books were written by a type of people Crimson couldn’t stand.

It was probably about three in the afternoon (as near as he could guess) when he heard a quiet *ding* in his head.

Blessing of the Gods

Bestowed to: Crimson Hokori

Witnessed by: Charity, Justice, Hope, Love, Luck, Knowledge, War, Fear, and Sloth

Recommended by: Raften

…

It looked more like a certificate than something cool.

“Hey Verity, what are these ‘Witnessed by’ and ‘Recommended by’ sections?”

Verity froze for a second, then squealed in excitement and jumped up and down before she ran around the table and hugged Crimson.

He could see the librarian inbound out of the corner of his eye, while a certain, ‘shark’ song played in his head. Crimson was unable to warn her of the danger, his lungs were too busy being crushed by her bear hug. Right as she was about to reach them Verity calmed down enough to talk again.

“You got your [Blessing]!!!”

Verity said a lot of other things, but for the most part Crimson couldn’t understand them because of how incoherent her excitement made her.

Glancing over he could see that the librarian had halted her advance and was quietly clapping her hands in approval. She gave Crimson a happy smile then went back off into the shelves. She had oddly let Verity off for the first time.

He was finally able to break Verity’s hold on him and fell back gasping for breath.

“Would you cut that out?! You almost killed me there!”

“B-but you got your [Blessing]!”

“Yeah? I was telling you that I was going to get one.”

She stared at him for a long moment.

“Aren’t you happy?”

“Of course I am! But your reaction is way to excessive, and you still haven’t answered my question.”

“Alright then, if you say so, you just don’t act like it…oh right, you’re the tough guy type who has to hide their emotions!”

“Just answer the question.”

“Right, right…what was it again?”

“What do these ‘Recommended by’ and ‘Witnessed by’ sections mean?”

“Well, to get a [Blessing] one of the Nine Gods has to recommend you to the other eight, and three of them have to witness it. We don’t actually know which of the gods recommend or witness it because it’s almost always blank, but we do know about this process from a revelation to the High Priest of the Favored given by the God of Charity.”

“Why was none of that mentioned in all the books I’ve read?”

“Because all the books you’ve read have numbers and facts in them, or stupid morons bragging! None of them are about the gods! Don’t you believe in higher power?”

Well, he had met Raften so, “Yes.” He was probably an even higher power than these gods.

“Right, well, I’ll leave you alone. Going through your [Blessing] for the first time is really personal, even if you don’t really get it.”

Verity slipped off through the shelves, and quickly found herself accosted by the librarian. The last Crimson heard of her she was pleading for mercy as she was dragged out of the library.

The screen from earlier had disappeared, but the second he thought about looking at it, it reappeared. There was a [Continue?] button on the bottom. He tapped it.

Registering Blessing…

…

…

Registration Accepted.

Administration over Crimson given to Raften…

…

…

Administration Accepted.

Calculating Data..

Calculating Titles…

Calculating Base Stats…

Calculating Skills…

Reading Affinities…

Registering Inventory…

…

…

…

…

Data Complete.

Titles Registered.

Base Stats Calculated.

Skills Registered.

Affinities Registered.

Inventory Registered.

Welcome to your Blessing!

|Start?|

Quickly hitting [Start] Crimson started to browse through his [Blessing].

Name: Crimson Hokori

Titles: Blessed Luck, Charismatic Prestige, Manasworn, Fiscally Tight-Fisted, Early Riser, City Mapper, Extreme Luck, {Blessings of Trans’Du Niir}

Class: [WorldWanderer] 0/0

Sub-Class: [Empty]

Sub-Class: [Empty]

Alignment: Good

Health Points (HP): 100/100 r/s 1.3

Magic Points (MP): 150/150 r/s 1.5

Stamina (STA): 130/130 r/s 1.1

Strength (STR): 13

Agility (AGI): 14

Constitution (CON): 11

Vitality (VIT): 13

Intelligence (INT): 15

Wisdom (WIS): 15

Perception (PER): 14

Willpower (WIL): 16

Charisma (CHA): 9

Luck (LUC): 90

Skills:

[Sword Mastery I]

[Calligraphy I]

[Memorization I]

[Secret Sensing I]

[Mental Mapping I]

Spells:

[Campfire IX]

[Fire Light VIII]

==[Worldwanderer] EXP: (0)

++Next: {NA}

==[Sub-Class] EXP: NA

++Next: {NA}

==[Sub-Class] EXP: NA

++Next: {NA}

There was…a lot more information on the [Blessing] than he was expecting. There was some stuff he wasn’t sure about, but it was all fairly interesting. Looking at STR and AGI he was fairly certain that if he’d gotten his [Blessing] a month ago they would be much lower than currently. It was only because he’d been training so much that the physical stats had gone up, or because Raften messed with some things. He wasn’t sure which.

His CHA being below average…wasn’t a surprise. It was based more off your ability to convince other people things than appearance, he wouldn’t be able to win an argument unless both sides were using facts and logic instead of just pure emotion. That little aspect of him lead to some long winded, and fruitless, arguing online. Too many people wouldn’t listen to the facts, and just wanted to shut him up and have him agree with them.

Looking at INT, WIS, and WIL made him feel a little proud, and he wasn’t too sure about PER, it seemed a little high.

LUC…yeah, he didn’t really believe that one, or maybe he did? He was born with a completely messed up body…but that was fixed when it should have been impossible…but he did die……after thinking about it for a while he just threw in the towel. No point in thinking about his LUC stat.

The standard value for all the stats -except LUC- was about 10, so for the most part he was above average, not on ‘genius’ level, but above interest. Except, of course, for CHA. While 10 was the standard value for CHA too it was a stat that was commonly seen at 15, or at least as far as the records he found were accurate.

The titles he had were really interesting, but he didn’t really understand what the point was in having some of them, and ones like [Fiscally Tight-Fisted] felt a little insulting. He was just careful and aware with money, there’s no need to make a big deal out of it!

Well, titles aside, it was good to see that he was able to start off with a few different skills, and his training with the guild landed him with the [Sword Mastery] skill, which made him happy that it paid off. As far as the other four, three of them seemed, in a word, useful. [Calligraphy]? It could be useful? He wasn’t too sure.

Brushing off the questions he had, he decided to look at his affinities, he could ask Verity about some of it later. What questions she could answer at least.

>>Affinities

>Elemental:

Advanced Affinity for [Fire]

Basic Affinity for [Water]

Advanced Affinity for [Earth]

Simple Affinity for [Wind]

Acute Affinity for [Lightning]

Extreme Affinity for [Metal]

Advanced Affinity for[Magma]

Advanced Affinity for [Ice]

>Dynamic:

Acute Affinity for [Purity]

Simple Affinity for [Holy]

Advanced Affinity for [Profane]

Insane Affinity for [Mana]

Advanced Affinity for [Life]

Advanced Affinity for [Death]

>>Antitheses

>Elemental:

[N/A]

>Dynamic:

Dislike of [Void]

Hatred for [Corruption]

It was actually even more interesting than his status page. Leaving aside his actual affinities it was rare to have ANY kind of Antithesis, they were definitely a bad thing, but they were rare.

Affinities made it easier to use [Spells] or [Skills] that were tied to that specific elements, the higher the affinity the easier it is. The reverse is true for Antitheses. They made it harder to use those elements.

Affinities were divided into two categories, Elemental and Dynamic. Elemental affinities were things that could be found in the natural world, and Dynamic affinities were concepts as the enlightened races understood it; enlightened races being any race that could receive a [Blessing from the Gods].

Elemental affinities were definitely far more common than Dynamic, and both were more common than an Antithesis.

The information Crimson had been able to find on Affinities was far more complete than most other things, if he had to guess the reason was because it was easier to speak broadly about Affinities. Everyone knew they existed and which ones existed, so people were more open with them than with everything else.

That aside there was one other page he wanted to check before calling over the stereotype breaking elf. The Inventory.

Currency: 2857G

Slot 1: [Letter from Raften]

Slot 2: [Empty]

Slot 3: [Empty]

Slot 4: [Empty]

Slot 5: [Empty]

Slot 6: [Empty]

Slot 7: [Empty]

Slot 8: [Empty]

Slot 9: [Empty]

Slot 10: [Empty]

Surprisingly, it wasn’t empty. Setting aside the gold he pulled out the letter.

Heyo Red!

It’s been a while hasn’t it? How’s the month been? No point in responding, I won’t get it!

Raften was the one who named him Crimson, couldn’t he stick to it? And why would he ask questions he knew he wouldn’t get a response for?

You’re probably wondering about how stuff works here.

Duh, he’d spent a month research a variety of topics to learn more. Why state the obvious?

Well, I’m the guy in charge of your [Blessing]! I get to decide when your hard work will reward you with a skill, and when you’ve earned a title!

As per your request I won’t be babying you, or making it too easy for you, but I need my entertai…you need my help! Don’t worry about it.

Anyway, the starter package I had for you had 2000 Gold, but I forgot that you wouldn’t get it for a month! That’s my bad ;P

Crimson…didn’t have any words for this guy. He felt the strong urge to punch Raften if he ever saw the faceless guy again, and the emoji, really? Wasn't this guy supposed to be something like a god? Have some class.

Anyway, to make up for it I included the currency feature in your [Blessing] as an apology. It’s super, duper useful! No need to thank me!

I also moved the money from your account here! You don’t need to worry too much about it being stolen from here. It would take a [Thief] with a level over 95 to be able to steal from you as-is! Praise me, praise me!

Well, that much at least was useful, and it explained why the 857G amount looked familiar. It’d taken him the whole month of working to earn that much, and no! He wouldn't praise Raften!

I bet you’re wondering what gifts I gave you! If you look on the main page of your [Blessing] you’ll see the titles: [Blessed Luck] and [Charismatic Prestige], those are from me! What do they do? Not telling! HAHAHA! BTW, that {Blessings of Trans’Du Niir} comes standard with the other world package, other people can’t see it even if they look at your [Blessing].

Anyway, I also gave you that [WorldWanderer] Class. Just treat it like an empty slot, it’ll give you some nice bonuses.

The last thing I did (that I’ll tell you about lol!) is that I lowered your affinity for [Mana] by a level. I think you’ve learned about Affinities enough to know that you should thank me. Go on, say ‘thank you’ to the ceiling.

Crimson actually considered thanking the ceiling. He had learned enough about affinities to know that his affinity for [Mana] was the second highest possible, and having the highest possible would SUCK.

The highest possible affinity for an element is [Bound]. Those who are [Bound] to an element literally have their bodies become that element. He hadn’t been able to find a record of someone who had reached the highest level of a Dynamic ability, so he didn’t know what would happen then, but needless to say, he would have felt stuck.

Those who are [Bound] to an element can’t use the element in opposition to the one they are [Bound] to, and they can’t have any other affinities. Powerful? Extremely. Limiting? Certainly. Worth it? Not to Crimson.

He decided to mutter ‘thanks’ under his breath instead of to the ceiling.

One last thing: I’ve included some sheets detailing [Skill Evolution] and [Class Evolution], I felt kinda bad because I knew that you wouldn’t be able to find any records for something so important. Consider this one a freebie from me.

See ya Red!

Your Monogamous Overseer,

Raften

Monogamous? Doesn’t he mean magnanimous? If he actually meant monogamous that would be…nope, just nope.

He quickly flipped through the attached papers and discovered that Raften was telling the truth, but he couldn't use that information at the moment, so he'd look more closely later, after he'd answered his immediate questions.

Time to call in Verity, she could answer those questions, and they might be able to visit a dungeon that weekend, he wanted to train his [Sword Mastery] a little before heading in.