I took in the room and my classmates. While some, mainly a couple of girls, were visibly anxious at the thought of fighting, only one person raised their hand. It was one of the girls, though she wasn't one of the ones carrying an anxious expression. Her name is Whitney Hellebore, a rather quiet girl, though she didn't shy away from talking if needed. She had long, dirty blonde hair and gentle eyes that carried a slight touch of green in them. Her friends around her didn't seem surprised at her opting out. They had probably already talked about this.
"You, Whitney?"
"Yes, at least for the beginning. My class is entirely unsuited for direct combat, with neither offensive nor any defensive abilities. It's a rare graded class called [Vivomancer]. It lays a strong focus on direct healing and curing ailments like poisons or diseases. I asked one of the guards yesterday evening, and they told me that it is basically a better variant of the [Healer] class. In this world, while healers can earn experience from participating in fights and slaying monsters, they mainly gain experience from using their abilities to heal. Thus, I will not be going to participate in any direct fighting anytime soon. At least not until I gain abilities that let me survive being near active combat."
"I see, good thing to know. Also good that we have at least one healer among us. That already reduces the overall risk we will have to face in the future. Apart from that, we will be going to meet the instructors they prepared for us right after breakfast. They are going to teach us the basics of fighting and everything there is to know about the system. If you've finished breakfast, please come out to the practice field. You can reach it by asking one of the guards to show you or simply going down that hallway," Ms. Edelwei? pointed to the hallway we came from when we were first escorted here, "and taking the second turn to the right. Please don't take longer than thirty minutes from now; we don't want to make them wait unnecessarily."
With that, Ms. Edelwei? left the room. By now, I had almost finished eating my breakfast. I had sat myself down on the far edge of the long table, as far away from Blake as humanly possible in this room. Some of my classmates were already finished as well and slowly made their way after where Ms. Edelwei? had gone. I followed them.
The practice field was more just a field of grass and dirt than anything else. After we had all gathered, we finally got to meet the rumored instructors we were told we would meet.
Three people came out to the practice field. The first one had short blonde hair and was built like a bear. He towered over our group with a height of at least two meters to his name. Identifying him got me [Human, Lv. ???], not very helpful. The second one was a woman with bewitchingly red hair and a calm smile. Identifying her got the same result as the first one, only showing [Human, Lv. ???]. The last of the three was a lanky, older-looking man with grey hair and a hell of a beard. Surprisingly, using [Identify] provided a different result than on the first two. Instead of showing three question marks for the level, it only showed [Human, Lv. ??]. Wonder what that means.
"Greetings, honored group of heroes." The burly blonde guy began speaking to us. "I'm Austen Berkell, level 211, and highest-level warrior of the Kingdom of Astelios. I'm going to be your martial arts instructor, teaching you everything there is to know about physical combat."
The woman to his right continued. "Greetings, heroes. My name is Carmelia Seyvin. I'm level 189, the highest-level mage this kingdom has. I will be teaching you everything about mana and magic."
The guy with the two question marks spoke last. "Greetings, honored heroes from another world. I am Wyn Lorinth, record keeper, researcher, and librarian of the royal library. My class is titled [Recordkeeper of the Library], and I have achieved level 104. I am going to teach you everything you need to know about the system, as well as other unrelated general knowledge you may need to know."
He paused for a second, inspecting us. He was of a way lower level than both Carmelia and Austen, maybe that's why [inspect] only showed two question marks instead of three for his level. Nevertheless, his presence had something unsettling about it. He felt way more dangerous than the other two instructors did. After finishing his scan of us, he surprisingly made his way over to Blake until he stood right in front of him.
"You must be the [Hero] then, nice to meet you. I have always wanted to meet a living one, the last one disappeared ages ago."
Shit, really!? Blake? The [Hero]? The legendary strongest class there is? It doesn't make any sense; his personality should be opposite of what is required of a [Hero]. Aren't heroes supposed to be righteous and selfless, going out of their way to protect everyone, no matter how poor or different they are? There is now way that asshole Blake fulfilled any of those criteria.
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"Oh?" Blake narrowed his eyes at instructor Wyn. "And how did you know that? I didn't tell anyone about it yet, so nobody should have known."
Instructor Wyn chuckled at Blake's response. "Don't worry about that young man, it's a quirk of my class. One of my abilities gives me more insight into others than what the general skill [Identify] does. My class is a bit special in that sense, it's the only known class to ever have abilities that directly interact with the system."
Although he still felt a bit unsettling to me, for some reason, he was really open about his class, level, and abilities. He even told us his class right after introducing his name to us.
"Now," instructor Wyn clapped his hands once to focus all of our attention on him. Kind of unnecessary, we were all already focused on him anyways. "It's time for our first lesson. This lesson will be one of the most important ones you'll get, so listen carefully. As some of you might have noticed already, using [Inspect] on me provides a different result than when identifying Austen or Carmelia over there. While their level should be obscured by three question marks for you, mine should only show you two. The reason for that is our own level, more specifically our tier. The question marks show you how many tiers someone else is above you. Someone one tier above you will display one question mark for their level. If you [Identify] something in or below your tier, you will see their exact level instead. That information alone should be enough to determine both my tier as well as the one of your other two instructors."
Ah, so I was basically correct in my assumption that it correlated with the level somehow. Since we're all probably in tier one currently, instructor Wyn should be in tier three, while instructor Austen and instructor Carmelia should both be in tier four. The boundary between those tiers must then be somewhere between level 104 and level 189, provided that they really are the level they said they were.
"Tiers change at fixed level boundaries. Tier one goes from level 1 to level 25, tier two up to level 75, tier three to level 150, and tier four from 151 onwards. If there exists a tier five, nobody has ever reached the required level for it yet."
"With every change in tier, your power will spike drastically. Your class will undergo an evolution in which you can select your new class from a list of options available to you. These classes will be at least of the same rarity as your current class. To successfully transcend to a higher tier, you need at least a class of the respective rarity. Common classes are only available in tier one. You need an uncommon class for tier two, and at least a rare class to reach tier three. To reach the esteemed tier four, you need at least an epic class. As you can infer from that, as beings of tier four, both Austen and Carmelia are holders of an epic class. Whether or not you qualify for a class evolution depends on your previous class, your skills, your achievements, and every decision you have made on your path. If you don't qualify for a higher-grade class, you are stuck at the highest level of your tier until you train or otherwise progress to unlock a higher-grade class evolution."
Great, so with my uncommon class, I will be free to progress until at least level 75, the peak of tier two. If I don't qualify for a rare class until then, I'll be stuck. Fantastic.
"As a rule of thumb, class names get longer the more unique or higher tier the class is. While it isn't unusual to have a class like [Mage] or [Warrior] in tier one, it would be really unusual to see such general names or generally really broad classes in the higher tiers. The vast majority of people tend to specialize in at least a couple of aspects. Most people are currently stuck somewhere in tier two. On average, one is expected to reach tier two by the time one turns eighteen. Leveling up slows down after that. With many people not willing to take unnecessary risks in their lives, most never progress past that tier. For you all, however, I expect that to be different. Most of you have rare classes from the start anyways, so you shouldn't face any evolution barriers anytime soon."
"The grade of your class is also extremely important in everything you do. Every level you advance, your body, mind, and soul will be strengthened. The distribution of strengthening across the aspects solely depends on the nature of your class. More physical classes like [Warrior] focus on strengthening the body with only marginal improvements to the mind. In comparison, a [Mage] would instead experience major improvements for their mind while their body often lags behind. Every major aspect is also split into sub-aspects. While both [Warrior] and [Archer] would focus on the body, warriors will mostly grow in strength and speed, while archers have a more even distribution with a focus on dexterity and agility. After the distribution of the strengthening is where the grade of the class comes in. How much every aspect strengthened in total depends on the grade of the class. A rare mage class will always be stronger than a common or uncommon mage class across basically all aspects. In the same tier, higher-grade mage classes can even approach or surpass warrior-level bodies when compared to common physical classes like [Warrior]."
I wonder, is there a way to view the distribution of those improvements somehow? Now that I think about it, I don't think I ever actually used [Inspect] on my class; I only really identified my skills. Though from how vague the skill descriptions were, I doubt I can expect much clarity for the class description either.
[Firefly (Uncommon)
May your light shine even through the darkest times.]
Yup, just as expected, a bunch of nonsense. To think I actually expected something different. I guess I'll just have to wait until I actually level up to see where this class takes me. The skills all seem to relate to magic though, so I guess I will end up with mage-like stats in the end. Magic is way cooler than physically fighting up close anyways. Why would you want to fight something with your fists if you could just sling death at them from afar?