Draft: 47 A Questioning Historian

Prof hadn’t enjoyed himself like he had in the Tutorial for a long time. Years maybe. And he felt a little guilty about it. After all, he had started it all with James. And she had seemingly disappeared. He had tried asking around about her after knocking on her apartment door and receiving no reply for two days in a row. But nobody knew where she was if they had ever even registered that she existed. It seemed that James’s ultimate goal of being known by practically no one was achieved.

Looking back, he should have gone to check on her a bit after entering the Tutorial Building and seeing that she didn’t follow him. But he was having so much fun! His workbench wasn’t even a workbench, just an armchair surrounded by libraries of books. And not just any books, history books detailing the Pact and its formation. How the Zaules had engineered an alliance between the other alien species and had agreed on basic rights. And, most importantly to him, how to treat newly Integrated worlds. That’s what they classified Earth.

Of course, he was a historian, he knew this wasn’t the full story. He was using the books provided by the Pact about the Pact. For all he knew, the Zaules wrote flowery words and policies in order to fall asleep at night and went ahead and did the opposite so they could work in the day.

But he was inclined to believe what he read, at least for the most part. First of all, the Pact spanned thousands of solar systems, and he imagined that distributing major disinformation across that many people would be hard. More convincingly, though, was that the information in the books he had didn’t appear to be overly censored.

Why else would they include how they recruited soldiers from Integrated worlds? And recruiting was the nicest term he could use. While Tutorials like his cultivated academics, others taught medicine, and yet others weren’t overly targeted at all, they all received direct Pact help. Many were taught Skills and even Permanent Skills outright in a bid to help them receive Classes the Pact deemed necessary for a profitable world.

Recruiting Tutorials? They weren’t like that. Instead of receiving help from the Pact, they would be left to pick up their abilities all on their own. All while being attacked my monsters. How they would be attacked and by what monsters was left up to chance, but the survival rates of such Tutorials were low.

There was a reason that the Pact authorized them, though. In fact, there were several. Several books were very adamant about this. First of all, while Recruiting Tutorials tended to have the lowest survival rates, their survivors tended to thrive once the Tutorial was over. Secondly, these Tutorials tended to have the most powerful individuals in them, those with the best Skills and Classes. And they would need to use that because lastly, there were monsters in a post-Integration world. Monsters that he and other Tutorial participants weren’t prepared to take on. Recruiting Tutorial participants had already lived in such a world. They were ready for it.

Looking down at himself, a slightly pudgy retirement age man with a Hawaii shirt on, he was glad he was in an academic Tutorial. He’d have had no chance in a Recruiting Tutorial.

Still, there was one main reason being in a Recruiting Tutorial, for all its potential benefits if you survived, was unfavorable. Once you completed it, you didn’t get to just go on with your life like everyone else. In the Pact’s eyes it let you experience something that would unlock your greatest potential. So, it would recruit the most promising people to its forces, be they law-keeping or the military. And by recruit, what he really meant was find a way to force them to join. Make them an offer they wouldn’t, couldn’t, refuse.

He didn’t know what type of offer they would have given him, and he didn’t want to find out.

He loved his academic Tutorial. Within the first three and a half days he had qualified for his first Skill: Historical Statistics, perhaps one of the most boring Skill names he’d read about. But one that he couldn’t be more excited for. If he knew enough about a historical event, he was able to retrieve the knowledge of any statistics related to that event. On the surface, the Skill was incredibly overpowered. Who didn’t want to know how many people lived in Rome at the height of the Roman Empire? Or obtain a manifesto of everything the Spanish pillaged from the Americas? Naturally, as a US history professor his first use of the Skill was to see exactly how much tea was dropped in the harbor during the Boston Tea Party.

So of course, the Skill had a couple of limitations. The top one being that it required an incredible amount of mana to cast. In order to use it he had to dedicate a part of his mana regeneration to it for a couple of hours as well as his whole mana pool when he was finally ready. That meant Prof had to be incredibly selective in what he looked for, as well as time his Skill usage, since being devoid of mana felt horrible.

Another drawback to the Skill was how it only worked on recorded statistics. This meant that if the Spanish never properly documented what they pillaged in the Americas, he would never know.

Nevertheless, the Skill was incredibly overpowered, and he’d been informed by the Zaure running their Tutorial that he was incredibly quick in achieving it. Prof had just shrugged it off, he had more research to do. More things to learn. More things to distract himself with and ignore where James went. Three days later, another big conversation.

“Jefferson O’Reilly.” His name rung out through the Tutorial Building again. Glancing up from his book, a bit belatedly because he was still unused to hearing his name, Prof went to one the nearby screens, knowing the Zaure would show up there.

Like always, the blue alien appeared all too suddenly on the white surface in front of Prof, sporting that same ambivalent face as usual. Prof could never read the Zaure’s expressions, everything looking decidedly alien with the absence of eyebrows and a proper nose or lips.

“Jefferson O’Reilly.” The voice was significantly quieter now, intended for him alone, and affecting that same unfeeling sound he’d become used to. Prof wouldn’t have been surprised to know that the voice was transmitted directly to him since Skill and Class nominations were considered private.

“You’ve qualified for the Class Questioning Historian. The Choosing Chamber is open to you. Note that if you choose a different Class, you might not qualify for Pact support.” The script was read off monotonously, and Prof nearly sighed and went back to his book which he’d left on his armchair before he registered what the Zuele was telling him.

Twirling his waxed mustache in excitement, he had set off in the nearest imitation his knees could do of a jog to the Choosing Chamber. Located at the back of the Tutorial Building, the door and where it led to was covered by the overview they received from their first workstation finding quest reward. In there, the Tutorial participants would be able to receive their Pact awards. Prof had been there one other time, when he got his Skill, and he looked forward to the experience again. Gaining a Skill felt nice, a weird warmth filled with positive feelings. It was almost addictive. And maybe there was no ‘maybe’ about it, and gaining Skills was truly addictive.

The small white room offered him Classes, but other than documenting what Classes he was offered, he didn’t give any of them a second thoughts. He was a Questioning Historian. Why even bother with anything else?