He didn’t want to be paranoid, but after hearing some of the council members calling for his imprisonment or banishment, the appearance of this door had him on high alert. Something about his posture must have alerted Simon. “Don’t worry. This isn’t a jail or anything like that. The guards, as you can see, are wearing the insignia of Caesar Febrius. This room is a training room, and it is the only room in the guildhall that is controlled by Caesar and the nobility. They keep a tight grip on the training rod as it serves to help balance the power of the guild.”

Tim simply nodded. After staring at him for a moment, Simon signaled to the guards, and they opened the door for them. Then Simon continued his description of the training rod. “The base cost for a common skill is 1 copper for slot one. The Rule of Fours applies after in that each slot costs four times more than the slot before it. The same applies to uncommon and rare skills. They have a base cost four times greater than the grade below them.”

He was running the numbers through his head when Simon said, “Oh, I forgot, you probably haven’t learned about the Rule of Fours. All children of Iocusinte learn about it early on.”

“No, it was one of the first things that I was told about.”

“Your Patronite friends told you about it?” Simon asked

Tim shook his head and simply murmured, “Uh-huh.” The question caused him to think about his friends, Atticus and Cecilia. They must think that he forgot about them, given how long his test took. He hated to feel like he had abandoned the only people in this world who had been kind to him so far, even if it was for their own weird reasons.”

“Then who?”

Tim raised his eyebrow as if to ask if Simon really wanted an answer to his question. The monk caught on and said, “Hmm, probably best to keep that to yourself. If you feel like you need more of an explanation, we can go over it another time. For now, we need to pick out some common skills for you. It wouldn’t do for you to be too deeply in debt before your adventuring career even begins.”

“Are common skills crap then?” Tim asked.

“No, they are just common. Some of them, like Dodge, are amongst the best skills that you can have. But many people have them, and both other sojourners that you might fight and monsters are experienced at dealing with them.”

“Makes sense. So, how do I see some options?” As he asked the question, he took in the room they had entered. There were two more guards inside the room. The ones outside had been in chainmail while these both wore half-plate armor and stared at every move he made.

A three-foot-high pedestal with a velvet cushioned top was the centerpiece of the room, and laying across the pillowy top was what Tim assumed was the training rod. At least, it was what had been described to him. Sitting in a chair, studiously ignoring them, was an older man, bald across the top with a ring of hair around the sides. Tim wanted to scream, “Just shave it already,” but he figured he didn’t know enough about the fashion of this world yet.

Simon coughed to get the man’s attention before saying, “Burke, I hate to pull you away from your reading, but I have a new probationary recruit who needs some skills.”

The man, Burke, stood up and smoothed his robes before looking Tim up and down. “Kinda old to be a probationary member, isn’t he?”

“He is a 1st gen and only just passed the test.”

“Ah, well, that at least is a little more interesting. So, this must be his first time with the training rod.” Burke ended his statement with a wicked little chuckle to himself.

“Don’t scare him. We all go through it.”

“Don’t scare me about what? You two realize that I am right here, don’t you?” Tim demanded.

Simon turned to him. “It’s nothing. The training rod simply downloads knowledge, technique, and muscle memory equivalent to years of training. The intensity varies by the level and rarity of the skill, but most people are, shall we say, breathless after their first go round.”

Burke said, “So, the brown books to my left contain descriptions of common skills along with the pre-requisites. You will find that the books are broken up by class. Common skills are often not restricted to a specific class or at most to a class tree. The red books on the middle shelf are for uncommon skills, and the black books on my right side are the rare skills.”

Tim looked around the room. The room was cut into a hexagonal shape, and the back three sections were floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. There must have been a few hundred brown books, at least a couple hundred red, and seventy or eighty black books.

Tim realized Burke must have seen him staring at the black books because he then added, “Probationary members are only allowed access to common skills and spells. That is unless you have special permission from the guild master.”

“Bummer. Well, let’s see what you’ve got then. Or do I pick up the books myself?”

“Most certainly not”—Burke managed to sound scandalized as he answered—“as if I would ever let a grubby steel slinger touch such precious books. No, you tell me what your class is, and then I will grab you one book at a time. There is, however, one matter that we have to determine before you are allowed to look at the books. I assume that Master Simon has explained to you the costs associated. Have you decided how many slots you want to fill and how much you are willing to pay?”

The gamer in Tim was too excited about the prospect of going through skill choices and forming his build to want to be bothered by this. In fact, he was rather annoyed. He simply reached into his soul pouch and pulled out stacks of 5 gold coins, and set 11 stacks along the edge of the pedestal. “I suppose this will be enough to buy a few skills.”

The magistrate’s eyes bulged. “I thought you said he was a newly arrived 1st gen.”

It was Simon’s turn to chuckle, and Tim got the sense that he had been used as a foil to get one over on the crotchety magistrate. “Oh, did I forget to mention that he was level 19? But seriously, I didn’t know that he had that much gold. Still, if he has paid for it, you better get him the warrior books. Looks like he will be going for all seven slots today. Well, besides the two that he already has.”

Burke said nothing further. He simply went and got the first book and brought it to Tim for his perusal. Tim wasn’t sure what to expect, but he took the tome and cracked it open. He stood still for a moment before asking, “Is there a place that I can sit while I go through these. This may take some time.

Simon answered before Burke could. “They won’t allow any extra chairs in here. Something about lazy sojourners spending all day looking through the tomes. You can ask me questions about skills, or I can provide some suggestions for you.”

Tim sighed but decided not to let it spoil the mood as he mumbled, “Maybe in a minute.”

The book was fascinating. The first two pages contained a single entry.

AssessRarity: Common

Pre-requisites: Sojourner, Acuity: 10

Mana: 1 per 4 seconds

Description: A general, multi-purpose skill that serves as a catch-all but inferior replacement to many other skills such as Identify, Appraisal, Enemy Sense, Find Trap, Microscopic Vision, and others. It will allow the user to gain additional information about a wide range of subjects.

“So, what can you tell me about Assess?”

“It is normally considered a junk skill only useful for beginning adventurers. I’ve never seen a level 19 with it, but it might be worth considering while you learn about Iocusinte. It will help you perform many tasks and is hard to explain until you actually try it out. Its description is vaguer than many other skills because it has such a broad range of uses. If you do take it, just make sure that you keep it in one of your lower slots so that it isn’t as costly to replace it.”

“Okay, one other question. Well, actually two. It has Sojourner and Acuity 10 as prerequisites. Are there sojourner-only skills and I thought everyone started with 10 in all the 4 primary stats before adding extra points?” Tim asked.

“Yes, many of the skills in here will be sojourner-only as they require mana to use. As far as the stat requirement, if you ever get a debuff and fall below 10 Acuities then you could not use the skill.”

Tim simply nodded and dove back into the book. At some point over the next few hours, Simon left the room with instructions for Burke to summon him when Tim was done. After going through maybe half of the common skill books, he had narrowed it down to a handful of skills that he wanted to choose from.

Burke answered questions only begrudgingly and as briefly as possible. That left Tim to rely upon his base of gamer knowledge, but he found that many parts of it carried over. He wanted to have some defensive skills as well as offensive, and he didn’t want to rule out general skills. It was hard because he didn’t know exactly what would be asked of him. It wasn’t like there was a Wiki that he could look up to see the best build. In the end, he wasn’t that worried about it. Tim figured that as soon as possible he would change at least some of the skills for higher-ranked abilities.

Even with all of his looking, there were still pages that were indecipherable to him. He knew that there was writing on the page, but the images were too indistinct. Burke had told him that those pages contained skills he didn’t meet a prerequisite for.

The other confusing issue was how some of the skills seemed to be for common everyday activities that he could have performed on his own. Two examples that stuck out in his mind were Hide and Sprint. When he asked the magistrate about this, the only answer he got was, “Sure you can sprint on your own, but you can’t Sprint.” The capital letter was obvious in the way he pronounced the word.

So, he had narrowed it down to Assess, Sprint, Leap, Power Attack, Shield Proficiency, Quick Slash, Dodge, Improved Critical Strike, Tackle, Courage, Blind Fighting, Dark Vision, Cleaving Slash, and Bow Proficiency.

At some point, he started to skip past the other choices. Tim realized that he already had more than he could fit in terms of skills. He also had no real way to determine how well these were going to work. What he needed was some newbie quests to test them out. That or maybe he could watch some other warriors in action.

He decided that the first he was going to take was Assess. He definitely needed to learn more about the world. Burke asked him three times if he was sure. Then verified twice more if he was sure he wanted to do it without waiting for Simon to come back. After Tim insisted, he finally told him to sit on the floor.

It seemed strange, but when he asked why he couldn’t just stand, the magistrate just laughed and said, “Do whatever you want, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”