Silver Spoon Series

Once again above ground, Alan studied his new class stone as the clouds released a light drizzle. The palm-sized diamond was similar to the last one he'd gotten, the Evoker class, but after taking out that stone he saw that this one was a little bigger. The symbol carved into the magical gemstone had a man in a robe holding a large unadorned staff.

Item: Diamond Monk Class Stone, rarity Rare. This stone can be used to combine and upgrade appropriate opal Scholar and Guardian classes to the diamond class Monk. This class uses both Constitution and Focus, and it mixes a love of learning with the ability to protect others who seek knowledge. Requirements: Any focus class and a synergistic constitution class that includes defending others. Also requires a talent that focuses on protecting others and a talent that has to do with learning.

These descriptions were starting to get pretty involved. Gone were the days of simple explanations. This stone was much more exciting than the last one since it was one of the upgrades that would combine two of his classes. It even seemed like it was one he could use now. Well, not now now, he wasn't anywhere close to hitting a hundred percent in even one of his classes. That made him take a look at his status sheet. It had been a while so he looked it over carefully.

Alan Taylor

Race: Human [W]

Class:

Custodian (34%) Opal

Dimachari (44%) Opal

Inquirer (35%) Opal

Learner (32%) Opal

Medicine Man (39%) Opal

Phantom (48%) Opal

Sorcerer (60%) Opal

Stalker (32%) Opal

Health: 516 (52/hour)

Stamina: 486 (97/minute)

Mana: 529 (53/minute)

Army Rank: Vice-Lieutenant

Stats:

Strength: 29

Dexterity: 29

Perception: 25

Focus: 25

Intelligence: 30

Wisdom: 28

Constitution: 26

Spirit: 22

Skills:

Alchemy: 33, Archery: 27, Aura Reading: 196, Blocking: 35, Blunt Weapons: 80, Cooking: 54, Daggers: 128, Dodging: 75, Farming: 40, First Aid: 31, Harvesting: 34, Herbology: 43, Identify: 78, Mana Drawing: 92, Mana Enhancement: 77, Energy Handling: 107, Mining: 3, Running: 64, Sneak: 67, Spears: 7, Swords: 28, Tracking: 46, Two Weapon Fighting: 97, Unarmed Combat: 53

Titles: [Apprentice], [Gladiator], [The Mayor], [Top Recruit]

Class Abilities:

Custodian: Absorb

Dimachari: Twin Slash

Medicine Man: Healer's Mark

Phantom: Fade

Sorcerer: Empower, Mana Lode II

Talents:

Custodian: Block, Hammer Blow I, Shield, Taunt, Thick Skin

Dimachari: Fury, Parry, Slash

Inquirer: Inspiring Presence, Sensitivity, Soul Block, Soul Mending, Soul Probing

Learner: Critical Hit, Fast Learner, Understanding

Medicine Man: Concocting, Cure, Eyes of the Healer, Mend

Phantom: Backstab, Dodge I, Quick Hands, Stealth, Light Steps

Sorcerer: Air Bender, Dark Spreader, Earth Mover, Fire Starter, Light Spinner, Mana Lacing, Water Weaver

Stalker: 6th Sense, Charm Animal, Predator's Focus, Track

Spells: Bramble Wall (Rare), Cone of Steam (common), Conjure Water (Rare), Exploding Missile (Rare), Fire Bolt (Uncommon), Gust (common), Healing Waters (Rare), Light Bolt (common), Light (common), Meteor (Rare), Minor Healing (common), Minor Regeneration (Uncommon), Prismatic Orb (Rare), Purify (common), Shadow Bolt (Uncommon), Stone Spear (common), Stone Wall (Uncommon)

He was making progress, but sorcerer was the only class that felt like it was steadily improving. The others moved in drips and drabs. He needed something to really push him if he was gonna get to diamond anytime soon.

"Hey Tamee, at what point should I be upgrading to diamond classes? Am I ahead, behind, doing ok?"

"I really can't tell you anything about the current tutorial, but it is rare for anyone to reach Diamond during the third challenge. Every tutorial there are usually a dozen or so that do so. They actually tend to be on the weaker side of competitors, since they most likely had fewer classes, making it easier to push all of their classes to that level. By the end of the entire tutorial you may get a handful of people who achieve red grade, but the vast majority will end at the top of opal or mid diamond."

Alan had a massive competitive streak, but he needed to remember that his growth was not the same as someone else's. Comparing his leveling speed with eight classes to someone like Lyonel who only had three was difficult. Still, the higher leveled he was, the more powerful, right? Maybe he should work on improving his classes again.

"Is there any reason not to try and level as fast as possible?"

Tamee let out a sigh. Not her "you're an idiot sigh', more like an 'it's complicated" one. "Well, it's complicated." Nailed it. "We've already discussed your Mentor's view on staying in the lower grades as long as you can. There are benefits to this as you can develop some skills easier. Achievements are also more impactful the lower the level you gain them. However, the stronger you are, the more risks you can take and the more you can grow. Both sides have an argument, but most people agree that it is best not to rush too much, as you might hit a bottleneck with too few achievements to advance, but you also don't want to take too long either."

"Thank you for that very informative, and yet ultimately ambiguous answer."

"That's why I get paid the big bucks."

Alan had to chuckle at that. She had learned quite a few colloquialisms from all of the pop culture she was consuming in between watching his actions. Her answer also told him that he really should light a fire under himself again. He had made a lot of progress in the tutorial, but ever since claiming Elstree he had been coasting a little. It wasn't all bad, he had gotten a chance to consolidate a lot of what he had learned, and he'd figured out how to make a mana shield, but his leveling had taken a hit. Good thing he was planning on clearing some dungeons now, anyway. This would just push him to do them even faster, clearing as many as he possibly could. He made it a personal goal to get all of his classes up to at least fifty percent before he had to go back for Thadrick's group. The Network didn't acknowledge his individual quest this time, too bad, he always liked free rewards.

Checking his map, Alan took off for the nearest indicated dungeon. On the way he ran into one he hadn't seen before. It was located on a small, circular stone platform, about as wide as he was tall. The center of it was a black circle that acted as the teleporter. Once inside he found himself in an arena. He had to win three fights against whatever opponents appeared.

The first was a group of ogres. They were young, and they were barely into the opal power level, but there were seven of them and it was a slight struggle for Alan. He was a much better fighter than all of them, but their numbers tipped the scales back toward even. Because of their crude melee style, he decided that the best way to overcome them was to get as close as possible. If he engaged them from inside their guard, it would be difficult for the others to attack him without risking hurting their comrade.

Going back to using his seax and pugio, Alan took them apart. His spewn was still considered a dagger, but it was a bit longer than the traditional seax. He needed to be as close as possible, so he was willing to sacrifice the quality of the weapon some. The tactics were simple, he simply rushed inside the reach of each ogre's wooden clubs and started slicing muscles and tendons. Once one had been properly disabled, Alan would move on to the next. He also threw in his spells from time to time. A prismatic orb to blind his target, or a fire bolt to keep an ally from getting in the way.

The second fight was against a large scorpion looking monster. It was at least four meters long, not counting the curled up tail. Instead of the distinctive pincers, it actually had large humanoid hands that held two giant swords. Each had a blade that was as big as Alan himself. The tail was the normal stinger and it had a drop of venom on the tip. That was going to be avoided at all costs.

For this fight Alan chose to use his spewn and the club he had gotten from Lyonel. The hard carapace of the giant insect would probably protect it from any cutting or stabbing attacks, unless Alan could find a significant boost to his strength, so he figured it would be better to pulverize the shell to break it open. It ended up being a winning strategy, but it wasn't an easy victory.

This single creature was mid opal in power and its speed and strength showed it. Alan himself was only slightly faster and significantly weaker. His spewn was still an incredible weapon though, and enough hits to the same area allowed him to bust a hole that was about twelve centimeters wide in the shell. Then he used his exploding missile spell over and over and started to blast chunks out of it. Eventually it succumbed to the gaping maw that its tiny injury turned into.

The last fight was more interesting. It was against an actual team of adventurers. They were no doubt getting some great reward for participating together in a Network dungeon, but it meant Alan had to go one on five against skilled, and intelligent, opponents. Fortunately, the overloaded state the dungeon was in couldn't really do much for the adventurers. That kind of energy had no way of boosting them.

The team was good, and they had a nice mix of classes. However, none of them had even a single opal version, so they were overmatched. Alan went for their healer first, moving swiftly around the attacks of the front line and dodging the shots from their ranger. They had a mage who was having a very rough time of it, as Alan countered every one of their castings. He didn't try to cause an explosion by hitting their spell form with a blast of his own mana, instead he practiced the skill he had learned before fighting Gaf and his old crew.

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Every time the mage tried to cast a spell, Alan yoinked their mana away from their control and let it dissipate in the air. It wasn't something he should really be able to do at his level, but his aura reading skill was insanely high level and he was able to identify exactly what they were trying to do, and then used his relatively new energy handling skill to steal the mana necessary for the spell. He hadn't had too many opportunities to compare energy handling to mana handling before this, but it felt a little easier to steal the other mages mana than previously.

Now the healer was in front of him, and she had cast a shield to try and protect herself. Not a mana shield, but the healer version instead which was more effective at blocking physical attacks. Thinking herself safe behind her shield, she then used some kind of curse. Alan's soul, boosted by his reasonably strong opal seeker class, laughed off that attack, and his spewn was able to penetrate her weak spell with little difficulty, allowing him to stab her in the chest.

A skilled healer, if she was one, could no doubt have healed that wound, but once her concentration broke, so did the rest of her shield and Alan stabbed her with his pugio, this time under her chin and through her brain. With the healer gone, the others had no chance against him. He still found himself pressed at times, but with his own healing class, he was able to deal with any small injuries he took.

The most interesting point in the fight was when one of the warriors tried to taunt him. Alan himself had used that against many non-sapient foes, and it was a good way of drawing their aggression. Against a sapient enemy it seemed to work almost as well. Alan had been about to cut down the group's hunter, but a comment he barely heard from their tank caused him to become unreasonably angry and turn to engage the larger man.

Rationally there was no explanation for it, but somehow the man had been able to influence Alan's aura enough to throw him off of his attack. Alan had been able to overcome the effect before he even took a step towards the well armored man, but it had done its job of spoiling his first attack. He was surprised that the man hadn't used it against him when he went after their healer, but Alan might have moved too quickly at the start for him to properly respond.

Resuming his attack on the hunter, Alan managed to kill the man after only a few moves. These adventurers were indeed skilled, but only when compared to amateurs. Alan was the master here, and his higher stats were just a cherry on top. At this point the mage had run out of mana, making him mostly worthless, and that left the two warriors. One, the tank, was slow and strong, while the other was a decent swordsman.

Alan took out the swordsman next, first he was disarmed and then de-armed. Leaving him to bleed out from his now worthless shoulders, Alan was able to overpower the larger guardian, and then the mage was almost an afterthought. The man had regained enough mana to cast a couple of more spells, but Alan continued to counter them before they could be formed.

His reward for completing the dungeon was more gold, and a collection of weapons. There wasn't really anything he planned on keeping, but someone back at the village would probably be thrilled to use them. Two of the items even had enchantments. One was a mace with an inscription for heaviness, and the other weapon was infused with earth mana. A few tests showed that the infusion caused the well made spear to hit harder and added to its durability. It also had a gritty feel to it that helped him grip the shaft.

The next dungeon he entered had a three to one time dilation, which was nice, but it was a labyrinth style challenge. Just to mix things up with this one, Alan went with the left hand rule. The whole thing had ended up taking almost a whole day dungeon time to complete. It wasn't because of the challenging nature of the monsters inside, or the few traps he found, it was more the size of the thing. The maze took up three floors and there were multiple staircases leading up and down.

Some of the dungeon creatures would most likely have proven a challenge for a high quartz or low opal adventurer, but Alan found them to be rather easy. He started challenging himself by limiting his weapons to his two knives, or his clubs. When that still proved too simple he started giving himself a specific goal for each fight. Some it was to kill the creature in as few hits as possible, which made him focus on landing critical blows on vital areas, and others he tried to bleed them to death, making him focus on small, fast attacks. That one also let him practice more with his twin slash attack.

Sometimes he also restricted himself to magic only, or no magic. He also tried to save any healing till after a fight, or when that had still been too easy, until he had completed a certain number of fights. His many abilities allowed him to prop up his weaknesses, but he would be better off eliminating those issues instead if he could. His medicine man class especially had allowed him to take hits to deliver his own strikes, but he needed to work on avoiding the damage all together, while still being able to land his own blow.

It made the battles in this dungeon more difficult, but it would make him a more efficient fighter in the end. He was still committed to using both might and magic in his battles, and he wanted to continue to be versatile, so the better he got at each component of his fighting style, the better overall he would be.

The loot for that dungeon was an opal class stone that he couldn't use, as well as the money and small items he had picked up from the lootnados. There had also been a few treasure chests, one of which had been trapped. There was a poison-tipped spring trap that Alan had actually managed to identify before setting it off, and then he disarmed it. All of his experience with traps in these last two dungeons had finally netted him a new skill, Trap Detection. It wasn't very high level, but it was nice to see a new entry.

The rest of the week passed by in a blur. Alan made occasional stops by his house to check on Akilatjin and TS (The dragon worm had convinced him that TS was easier than saying Two Socks). He was surprised to find them ranging farther away from the homestead than normal. Previously, TS had stayed within two or three kilometers of their home, but Alan had run into the pair more than five kilometers away one day. The wolf had shrugged off Alan's attempts to figure out what had changed.

Dungeon after dungeon was completed, and Alan's map got more added to it. By the time he was done, he had more than forty different dungeons listed in his area of the map, and he had cleared twenty-two of them. Some of the rest he had cleared previously, but that still left a bundle that would need attention. He had also learned that a bunch of the dungeons he had run prior to tier three opening up, could be done more than once.

He had taken to keeping notes on each dungeon, planning on sharing them with the villagers and two adventurer teams if they ever wanted to explore these more. Indiana's dungeon was a great opportunity for the newly classed people of Elstree to get their feet wet, so to speak, but if they wanted to become real adventurers, they would need to dive harder dungeons. His guide should help them with their confidence and survivability.

Now that it was time once again to meet up with Thadrick and his group to see how they had done, Alan finally checked over his own class progress. He hadn't wanted to look until now, saving the reveal of how he had improved until the end. For the most part, he wasn't disappointed with the results. All of the challenges he had set himself had not only helped him overcome some of his bad tendencies, but to also focus on some of his less used class traits.

Custodian (53%) Opal

Dimachari (58%) Opal

Inquirer (47%) Opal

Learner (50%) Opal

Medicine Man (56%) Opal

Phantom (61%) Opal

Sorcerer (72%) Opal

Stalker (50%) Opal

Alan hadn't quite met his goal. He had wanted all of his classes to reach fifty percent, and Inquirer had fallen just short of the mark. It nagged at him a little bit, but the overall progress was hard to argue with. Most of his classes had gone up more than fifteen percentage points. He had tried hard to work on his spirit based class at the end there to get it over the mark, but it really seemed like it was more difficult to pull up. Almost as if it was fighting him to level.

His skills had seen some dramatic improvement as well. Almost every skill had improved, especially those with combat applications. One noticeable change was his archery skill going up eleven levels. He had spent a lot of time working with his crossbow abilities, including both his accuracy and reloading speed. There had even been a short lived experiment with the bow, but he had apparently forgotten everything he'd once learned about using one, and his forearm still occasionally sent him complaints.

Another skill he took note of was aura reading. It had been sitting at one hundred and ninety-nine for a while now. He hadn't noticed a bottleneck at one hundred, but two hundred was proving difficult to reach. There was nothing to do about it except to keep using it, though. A nice surprise was that he had gotten another reading skill. While he had been focusing on his opponents' auras and trying to read their weak points and anticipate their attacks, he had sensed another set of channels running through their body.

After getting a feeling of it a few times in his foes, Alan convinced himself he wasn't imagining it, and started trying to find similar channels in himself. Eventually he was able to, and he had received the notification of a new skill, Qi Reading. It was only level seventeen at the moment, but he was hoping to be able to combine it with his aura reading skill and get something better, like what had happened with his vita and mana handling skills.

As far as he had been able to figure out on his own (his pride required him to at least try to reason it out before asking Tamee about it), Qi seemed to be related to the more physical side of the body and its stamina. It made sense considering what that word meant on Earth, but it didn't pay to simply assume things. Tamee had been able to confirm what he had discovered, and it had proven useful in anticipating non-magical attacks. He had hoped that using it would help boost his Inquirer class leveling, but either it went with a different class or something was holding his progress back there.

His favorite dungeon of the lot had been located in a small stone building tucked away in a corner of a forest. It had been an honest to goodness cooking challenge. He was up against a goblin, an elf, a golemoid, and a race he hadn't seen before, a celestial. That chef had shoulder length blue hair that seemed to sparkle, and very dark skin. The two different colors worked well together.

Each of them was given a basket with ingredients in them, and then asked to cook a dish. It reminded Alan of a cooking show he'd watched occasionally, but this dungeon had provided them with actual recipes they were required to choose from. This seemed like a similar challenge to the last alchemy puzzle from the earlier dungeon, in that it had the side effect of teaching adventurers another skill. It seemed like the tutorial wasn't just making them all bloodthirsty killers, but it also provided a path for the future crafters.

It was fun to cook. It wasn't a task that Alan had really invested any time in prior to the tutorial, but ever since his first pathetic attempt at goat kabobs, he had been driven to make better and better food. His cooking skill had even helped win the Corellians over to his side. While he had become a much better chef with the help of some kind tutors, he had been unable to clinch victory in the dungeon.

Second place was respectable. He had made it to the finals, against the goblin of all people, but he had been unable to properly cook the protein he had been asked to use. It was called Astral Leech strips and it turned out that they needed to be cooked not with heat, but with colder temperatures. Alan had a suspicion that the dungeon core had cheated and helped the non-sapient chef to beat him. Even without the grand prize, though, Alan was happy with his reward. He had received some nice cooking appliances and a spice rack, spices included!

The most dangerous monster he had fought in his dungeon blitz had been a giant in a jungle. He had faced a series of increasingly dangerous creatures, until the final one who was simply enormous. The guy was somewhere around eight meters tall. The creature had wielded a club that Alan suspected was simply a tree that it had ripped out of the ground. What the weapon lacked in elegance it made up for in simple size and mass.

It wasn't bragging to say that Alan was an expert fighter. Whether it was with his daggers, clubs, or even unarmed, he had the training and the talent to ruin someone's day. But that was against a relatively normal sized opponent. This thing was so much bigger than he was that no amount of stabbing it with a dagger was going to get the job done, and part of that was the fact that he could barely reach past its knee. His blunt weapons were even more useless.

Forced out of his usual spellsword fighting style, Alan had needed to get creative. He had switched his weapon to what his identify labeled as a bastard sword. Alan had heard the term before, but he wasn't an expert in what defined different types of swords. It was the longest weapon he had that fit even remotely his skills and style. This was a weapon that could penetrate farther than just past skin deep, but it wasn't high quality and it wasn't going to get past the monster's tough leg armor and its own rugged hide. Instead, Alan had led the giant into a trap.

The insanely long-legged man could make good speed in the open with its huge strides, but it had a more difficult time navigating the jungle's trees. Alan used this to his advantage and got a little separation from his foe before creating some bramble walls. Using the abundant nature mana in the area and all of the available foliage, he was able to get a wall that was fairly sturdy for its full three meters of height.

When the giant had come crashing through the jungle in pursuit, it had come up against the tough, but flexible wall and had tripped over it. Now with its legs being gripped by the vines of the wall, and lying prone, Alan could use his larger weapon against its more vulnerable neck. He had to use his second hand on the blade itself, and wielded the weapon more like an axe as he slowly chopped through the neck that was as thick as Alan was tall. The giant was unable to properly fight back as its club was too big to try and use in the tighter confines of the jungle.

Finally Alan was able to get far enough into the neck that he reached some of the serious blood vessels and he was soaked as the hot liquid geysered out. The giant wasn't going to go down with a fight, and it tried to smash him with its fists. All of Alan's work on improving his evasion and blocking proved their worth as he was able to avoid getting clobbered, sometimes by mere centimeters. Its violent thrashing soon slowed until the giant finally laid still.

His reward from that dungeon had been a class ability stone. This was the first Alan had seen of them, and it would unlock one random ability that he had access to. Tamee had warned him that if he used it and had no abilities available for any of his classes, he would lose the stone and gain nothing. They were also quite valuable, for obvious reasons, but Alan had decided to use it himself.

With eight classes, and only six different abilities so far, he had felt confident in being able to unlock one. Each opal class was supposed to have at least one class ability available, even if the adventurer never managed to earn it. The stone had allowed him to gain a perception based ability, Stalker's Sigil. It gave him the power to leave a magical mark on an unwilling target that would allow him to track it and get a better feel for its vulnerable areas, thus allowing him to increase his damage.

Alan would need to test out how it worked, and if it was easy to defend against or remove, but it sounded promising. It also didn't take much mana, so it was something he thought would be very useful. The only issue was that once he had marked something, he had to wait several hours before he could switch his mark to a new target. The skill description told him that at the moment he could only mark one being at a time, but the good news was that if the target was killed, Alan could instantly reassign the mark to a nearby target without having to worry about the cooldown.

If the tutorial up to now had been boot camp, this last week had been kinda like going to BUD/S. He felt a little grimy using the Seals' training as a comparison, but it in no way measured up to his own Q Course. That had been much longer and more involved than his week-long training session. Still, it had drastically improved both his level and his abilities as a combatant.

Now that it was over, he was going to find Thadrick's group and see how they'd done. Hopefully the party had already collected their rare stones and were ready to be escorted home. Alan had more plans to set in motion and he was ready to get to it. Arriving again at the passage to his tier one zone, Alan found the remains of a campsite, but no adventurers. He would give them a couple of hours to reappear, but after that he would have to go looking for them. He really hoped it wouldn't come to that.