Demon World Boba Shop: A Cozy Fantasy Novel

As Arthur knelt over Karra, her eyes suddenly fluttered.

“No, don’t call the medic,” Karra said, still laying on the ground. “It’s something system related.”

“Maybe, but that was a nasty hit. You are getting checked out.” Arthur waved off the worker, who sprinted back towards the town to find medical help. He looped his arm under one of Karra’s, helping her sit up as she wobbled dizzily back and forth.

“Whew. That was really something,” Karra said.

“And you said it was system? New skill?” Arthur asked.

“I’m checking that out now. Just as soon as my eyes focus.” Karra looked down in front of her chest for a few moments before taking in a sudden, sharp inhalation of air. “Oh, wow. Arthur, you have to see this.”

“What?” Arthur asked.

“Just look.”

Karra made a quick hand motion and a series of windows opened up in front of Arthur.

Class Advancement - Foreman

You have taken on a leadership role in your community, not only participating in jobs but actively determining the direction of projects. You’ve organized work crews, coordinated different aspects of ongoing work as performed by large groups of people, and have established a reputation as someone who not only knows what to do but the best ways to go about doing it.

Your previous class assumed you’d always know what direction you were moving in because someone would tell you what to do and where to go. You’ve grown past that now. You’ve accumulated expertise and judgment that come not from your class, but from your own mental acuity and comprehension.

As a Foreman, you will retain most of the abilities you had in your previous class. Like before, you will be stronger and faster when participating in some kind of heavy work. But rather than progressing in a direction that absolutely maximizes your ability to do work, your class will now grow in a direction that splits the difference between labor and leadership. You will have an easier time comprehending the details of plans presented to you by others, relaying information to other workers involved in the same project, and will provide small buffs to workers under your direct authority.

Most importantly, the end results of any project you have headed will be slightly enhanced compared to an identical structure built without your leadership.

Your previous class skills will be rolled up into a slightly weakened amalgam version of their previous functions. You may refuse this advancement within two days of this time with no penalty. Any works-in-progress at the time of the awarding of this class will be retroactively enhanced in this fashion.

“I guess that explains why you took such a hard dive. If that whole wall was drawing majicka at once, that’s a lot. But I guess it could have been worse,” Arthur said after reading the system description.

“If you felt this headache, you wouldn’t say that.” Karra rubbed her temples. “I don’t really see how it could be much worse than feeling like you have a nail in your brain.”

The next few windows were about what Arthur would expect given the class description. There was an overall communication skill, a few passive skills related to improving the work of others, and not many details explaining things outside of the main system window. Worker classes, as he understood them, were get-the-job-done types, and this class was no exception despite being significantly more complex than what Karra had before.

“So do you think I should keep it?” Karra asked, scratching the side of her head in a mannerism she must have copied from Karbo. “I don’t have that much time to decide.”

“Sure you should. Why not?” Arthur asked.

“I never really expected something like this. I was going to… you know. Spend my whole life lifting things. It was fun. And simple. It was fun because it was simple.”

“Ah.” Arthur hadn’t really considered the personal side of it. Karra was about the most straight-forward person he knew in a land where almost everyone was frank and direct. She fit her old class perfectly. On the other hand, Arthur was always glad when his class picked up extra aspects, but he was a guy who appreciated complexity and got bored easily. He could understand it feeling a lot different for someone who had spent their childhood dreaming of lifting the biggest bricks possible and was now being told they needed to stop lifting as much and coordinate with other people more.

“I won’t pretend it wouldn’t help the town.” Arthur pointed at the wall. “It probably already has. That’s a class-built wall now. If that buys an extra minute, then that’s one more minute of safety. But in the end, it’s… it’s a difference that also affects you more than anyone else. If there’s one thing I know about the system, it’s that it doesn’t seem to give people things that they don’t want or need.”

“That’s what I’m worried about.”

“And I can’t answer that question for you. I don’t think anyone can.” Arthur rocked back and forth a bit on the ground, thinking. “I know from what people have told me you’ve been moving in that direction. Leading people, directing them, all that. Unless you forced that, it can’t be completely unnatural to you.”

“It isn’t,” Karra said, then grabbed her head. “This headache is killing me. It makes it hard to even think about.”

“Then don’t think about it. Can the work go on without you today?”

Karra looked at her crews, all of which were hard at work already. “Yeah. It probably can.”

“Then come to the shop. I’ll make some tea for that headache, you can get checked out by the medic, and then you can take your time thinking about what you want to do.”

The medic found them halfway back to the shop, professionally annoyed that Arthur had let Karra walk before he got there. After a few short minutes, he gave her an all-clear to walk around, but reinforced Arthur’s day-off order in the strongest possible terms, both for her safety and the safety of anyone else she might drop a big rock on.

A half-hour later, they were halfway through a bowl of meat and vegetables and a hastily-made migraine tea that was just enough to take the edge off Karra’s majicka-drain headache. As Arthur worked the morning rush and picked at his food between orders, Karra devoured her late breakfast and used him as a sounding board for her concerns about her new class.

Once they realized they were circling around the same concerns again and again, Arthur fetched a pencil and paper and started writing the issues down, which simplified things a bit. There were about five distinct things Karra was mulling over and none of them were silly. She really was a good worker as it was, and she really would be slightly worse both now and in the future at her current work with this new class. Things were already going just fine without a foreman, so far, and they wouldn’t be without a construction-leadership class forever as the town grew.

And it really was a big change. Arthur wasn’t willing to tell her outright which way to go in any case, but it turned out the problem was big enough that he wasn’t confident about even his own opinion on the matter. It took Lily showing up to check on Arthur to move things forward. Once Lily heard what had happened, she commandeered the list, scanned it, and set it down.

“All these worries are the same thing, right?” Lily said. “You have it as a list but they are all the same worry.”

“What do you mean?” Karra said. “What does she mean, Arthur?”

“I don’t know either. We thought it was pretty distinct, Lily.”

“It’s not. This is a list you make when…” Lily looked for the words. “When you are worried you can’t do a new thing. I made a list like that in my head when I went to work for you the first time.”

“You did?” Arthur asked.

“Yeah. It was like… do I really know how to wash dishes? Can I trust him? Is it fake? The only reason I kept doing it was because you really didn’t seem to be able to do it alone. I’d show up and you’d be too busy, and when I helped, you’d be a bit less busy.”

“I’m not sure that’s the same thing,” Karra said.

“It is. I knew I could do it because I was already doing it. That’s you, too. The system didn’t give you this class because you were begging for it. I know what that’s like. It gave you this because it was looking at what you were doing and figured this would help you do it better.” Lily walked around the counter and made herself a drink as she talked, sipping on it as she finished up her monologue. “Think about it. If you were someone else, just arriving at Coldbrook, who would you replace you with? That would do a better job, I mean.”

Karra’s eyes lit up as she reflexively tried to answer, then darkened as her brow dropped in thought. “There’s… Hmm.”

“That’s right. You’re already in charge,” Lily said triumphantly as she puffed up as big as she could. “I know from working with them that the rest of the workers are good at what they do. But you’re the only one who can do this.”

And then Lily passed out too, almost taking out a tray of drinks as she fell.

—

“What in the skies is going on today, Arthur?” the medic said. “Try not to go anywhere else, for the gods’ sake. I’m busy enough without whatever’s going on around you right now.”

“Yes. Sorry.” Arthur brushed off the flack and moved towards the important bit. “Lily’s fine?”

“Yes, she’s fine, as you can see.” He nodded towards Lily, who was being all but held down by a very concerned Karra. “She just overdrew her majicka. It’s very normal and not at all dangerous in general. What’s odd, if you need something to be odd, is that she could do it at all.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning that her skills, as she explained them to me, are either a very slow-draw skill which can’t overdraw her majicka in the first place, or else a skill that empties out her majicka to transfer it to someone else. But skills like that have built in safeties. She shouldn’t be able to get it to give that much away in the first place.”

“She wasn’t doing that, using her skill, I mean,” Arthur said. “Both me and Karra were full on majicka and didn’t need any more. She was just giving advice.”

“Does she have a skill for that?”

“Huh.” Arthur paused. “She does, actually. Something that gives her insight when she’s helping someone with something. But that should only be when they do a job.”

“Hmm.” The medic looked at Lily, shrugged, and started loading his gear back into his bag. “Skills are odd, Arthur. I’m not going to pretend to know what went on here. But if I had to guess, it was that whatever advice she was giving was very close to what the system wanted to be heard, close enough that it shoved something into her skills that didn’t quite fit. And that might explain why it drained her so badly.”

“If that’s true,” Arthur said, standing as still as a statue, “it means she was speaking with the voice of the system.”

“Maybe. If the system has a voice it wants heard, that is. And that’s a bigger question than I can answer for you.” The medic shouldered his bag and waved over his shoulder as he left. “She’s fine now, anyway. Same orders as before. She’s not allowed to go back to work today. And Arthur? Please stop knocking people down if you can. I’m trying to keep an eye on the warriors and this really isn’t helping.”