Untapped ~ Chapter Three!

Before Joe could ask for an explanation, a small head poked around the cheese wagon and caught his eye. He stared at the small-statured person, who scanned him in turn with a bored gaze before vanishing once more. “There are more people!”

“Don't worry about her.” Mak shook his head and briefly rolled his eyes up to the sky as though looking for patience. “That’s just Beth. She’s… well, she sells fairly useless goods. She's been following me around for years, though I intentionally go out of my way not to pick up strays-”

He stopped at that moment, wincing slightly as he glanced back to see if he’d been heard. When Beth did not appear, he let out a soft sigh of relief. “Anyway, give me just a few minutes, and I‘ll put together some instructions for you to find your individual towers.”

The merchant vanished behind his cheeses, but Joe couldn't contain his curiosity. Walking alongside the wagon, he squeezed through the narrow gap between the wooden surface and the wall built around the Formations tower, blinking in surprise as he found a dozen small, rolling cart kiosks set up behind the cheese shop. “All right, let's see what Mak considers ‘worthless goods’. Hello, Beth is it…?”

His words trailed off as he stepped close, his eyes lingering on the cat ears poking through the long, orange hair of the bored-looking woman's head. All of a sudden, Mak’s discomfort over calling her a ‘stray’ made sense: though she looked like a young human, Beth was clearly a Nyanderthal. Seeing him falter, she inclined her head slightly and gestured at her shop. “Hello. Welcome to my little shop. I have flowers, chocolate, and coffee. Feel free to browse. If you need something, I guess I'll be here.”

Immediately intrigued, Joe stepped closer, looking over the far-from-worthless consumables. His nose twitched as the scent of freshly brewed coffee wafted over him, and he slowly reached forward to grasp a cup… only to recall that he had no way to pay for it. Grimacing slightly, he stepped back, only to feel a moist prodding on his wrist. The Ritualist glanced down, meeting Mate’s wide ‘eyes’ as the elemental refilled his mug for the second time since arriving on Vanaheim. 

“Oh! Thanks, Mate.” He glanced up at the shopkeeper, a hint of apology in his eyes, “Sorry, I’m a little low on… cheese. Looks like I can't afford your coffee, mate.”

Beth’s eyes scrunched slightly, and Joe watched as she unconsciously bit the inside of her cheek for a split second. Then, as if resuming autopilot, she lifted her hands and adjusted her jacket with a fleeting motion. “Feel free to browse. If you need something-”

“You'll be here.” Joe finished for her, his estimation of the Nyanderthal dropping slightly. “Got it. Maybe another time? Listen, I have a few friends among your people I'd love to introduce you to if you'd like. I've never seen one of them walking around with cat ears before; they've always either been fully cat or looking just like a human child. Can all of you do partial transformations? Queen Cleocatra was following me around for a while, and even she’s never done that.”

Beth’s right ear flicked slightly, the only sign that his words had been heard at all. Joe cocked his head to the side and stepped forward to try again, when Beth looked up at him and met his eyes. “Welcome back to my little shop, customer. I have flowers, chocolate, and coffee. Feel free to browse. If you need something, I guess I'll be here.”

“Uhm.” Nodding slightly, he stepped away, confused over the interaction. All the way back, when he had first joined Eternium, Joe knew that the people there weren’t truly non-player, scripted characters. They all acted like real people, and as far as he knew, they were. But Beth? She might’ve been the first true NPC he’d ever encountered. “I wonder if whoever is controlling all of this is only making people with personalities as we arrive? Perhaps I'm just interacting with people too quickly for the world to keep up?”

“Got the map, Joe!” Heartpiercer called around the cheese wagon. Taking the opportunity, he offered a polite nod to the orange-haired cat girl and quickly walked away. As he got closer, the Archer saw his tumultuous expression. “What were you doing over there?”

“Just trying to meet some locals. It was a, humm, confusing experience?” He reached out and took the paper written with careful, detailed instructions, impressed by Mak’s meticulous work. He walked around to the front of the wagon, flashing the merchant a smile. “Thanks for the help, Mak. I'm looking forward to bringing you exotic cheeses in the near future.”

“That's what I'm here for!” Mak beamed back at him, tapping the counter and waving at an oversized wheel of parmesan. “There's other cheese stores out there, but make sure not to give them your business! I'm the nicest, friendliest, most going-out-of-the-way-ing-est merchant out here. Now, I've been parked here for too long already; I need to get moving, or my wagon is going to start melting into the ground.”

“Hold on.” Joe firmly stated, his smile fading slightly. “I need you to explain what you meant about the Ritualist class being a trap?”

Mak’s expression turned somewhat pained. “Look, my apologies, I shouldn't have said that-”

“But what did you mean by it?” The Ritualist pressed, not breaking eye contact until the merchant let out a sigh and showed he was ready to talk.

Even so, the merchant didn't stand idly, pulling down the awnings and compacting the wagon slightly so as to more easily navigate along the roads between towers. He seemed to be chewing on his thoughts, so Joe waited patiently as the man started hooking up his harness. Finally, he began to explain, “It's not so much that there's anything wrong with the people who take the class, Mr. Joe.”

“Mister?” The Ritualist recoiled slightly at the honorific. “Are you about to call me ‘sir’ as well? You're older than me, right?”

“Respect knows no age, sir.” Mak chuckled at the disgruntled look on Joe's face. “As I was saying, the people who take the Ritualist class are arguably among the best in their original classes. They’re the go getters, the extra people. You know… the kind of person who wants to be able to grab cross-class skills without having to put in five times the effort to learn them. It doesn't matter if they started as mathematicians, alchemists, blacksmiths, farmers, or whatever… there's always a place for them at the Tower of Rituals.”

“Sounds pretty great so far,” Joe deadpanned, waiting for the other shoe to drop. “Accurate and succinct. They sound welcoming. My kind of people.”

“Oh, they are! In fact, I'd even go so far as to say they have the most varied and accomplished Masters of all of the towers, which is certainly the reason they have such an… err… impressive structure.” Mak tossed his shoulders as he finally got around to his point. “The problem is, it seems like the class itself is a trap. Of all of the towers, only that one has never produced a Sage. Not a Skill Sage and certainly not a Class Sage.”

“That's the second time you've brought that up, but can you explain what the difference is? I've only ever heard of ‘Sages’, as the natural progression from Grandmaster to the next tier.” Joe fell in step alongside the merchant as the cheese seller began slowly moving forward, dragging his wagon with surprising ease. “You're saying it as though there's a large distinction-”

“Ha!” Mak belted out a laugh, startling the Ritualist enough that he nearly jumped head-first into the wall behind him. “That's putting it lightly, Mr. Joe. Come now, there can't be that much of a divide between our worlds? You must know that a Skill Sage is someone who’s broken through the Grandmaster ranks with one of their skills?”

“Right, it's the next step up after Grandmaster.” Joe repeated himself with a trace of heat in his words. “That's what I just said.”

“Then you should be able to hear yourself as you speak.” Mak shot back without missing a beat, utterly unfazed by Joe's disgruntlement. “You can only ever become a Sage in one skill if you become a Skill Sage. It's right there in the name, isn't it? If you pick something to specialize in to the exception of all else, that's what you become. Certainly not a bad thing, but it means everything else is locked in at peak Grandmaster, or Grandmaster nine if you like, forever.”

The merchant waved a hand expressively, “A Class Sage, on the other hand, is someone who has brought each of their class-related skills to the peak of Grandmaster, which brings the class designation skill up naturally, and bound the Class with a Mythic core. This allows them to bring each of their other core class skills up through the Sage ranks as well.”

“That's… that's a lot of skills. You know, actually I do think I've heard some of this before. Who was it that—right! Cleave mentioned some of this in passing a long time ago.” Joe glanced at his skill sheet, trying to estimate how many Sage-ranked skills he could have. “Mak, I gotta know why anyone would ever take just one, when you could have… what, ten, fifteen of them?”

“Of what? Sage-rank skills? What, do you think they grow on trees by the roadside, and you can just pluck them as you walk along? ” Mak shot Joe a half grin, though his eyes were slightly narrowed as though the Ritualist were being intentionally obtuse. “I'm not talking about general skills, I'm specifically calling out the class-specific core skills. As to why someone would only choose to become a Skill Sage?”

He shook his head, plodding around a bend in the road completely unconsciously, “Think about the sheer immensity of investment in time and resources you need to raise even one of your skills that high. Look, it's been fun chatting with you, but if you want more information about your specific class, you should go to your tower. Then again… maybe my guess would be as good as theirs, since they’ve never managed to produce a Sage. Which, again, has the entire world convinced your class is a beautiful trap.”

With plenty to think about, Joe murmured his thanks once again for the directions, though his words were muted as he pondered the concerning bit of news. He fell back, stepping onto a side street with Heartpiercer as the wagon trundled along, the rolling cart kiosks trailing after it like little lost puppies—or, in Beth's case, a lazy kitten following a dangling string.

“How much of an advantage do you think we have, since we’re here before pretty much anyone else?” Heartpiercer suddenly questioned her bald companion, pulling Joe out of his contemplations. “In a real way, think about it… according to him, there’re so few new recruits right now that the towers are offering enormous signing bonuses, essentially. What does that look like? I bet there are skills I've never even considered possible before, just waiting to be handed to me on a silver platter.”

Perking up significantly at the idea of expanding what was possible with his class, Joe nodded eagerly and followed the Archer as she set off, following the instructions on the map Mak had given her. Since the tower she’d be entering was on the way to his own, Joe accompanied her until they arrived at yet another skyscraping building that had no distinguishing characteristics compared to the others around it. He glanced around the area, dubiously staring up at the black and silver spire. “Are we sure this is the right place?”

“This is absolutely, positively the right place.” The conviction in Heartpiercer’s voice drew Joe's eye, making him wonder how she was able to speak with such complete confidence. Yet, before he could ask for her reasoning, she pulled an arrow from her quiver in a single, fluid motion. The shaft twirled in her fingers before being nocked to the string with the casual grace of long-practiced mastery. Not once had she taken her eyes off something in the distance, yet even tracking her pupils, Joe was unable to find what she had locked onto. “There’s highlighted critical hit points… if you have the skills to see them.”

Adjusting her aim slightly, Heartpiercer loosed the projectile, which hurtled toward her unseen target almost too quickly to track. A soft sound echoed back, and a nearly invisible disk lit up, previously so well camouflaged that Joe could have stared directly at it hundreds of times and never even noticed that it was different from the rest of the tower. Thin, glowing lines sparked outward, capturing his entire attention as he wondered what the magic meant—though the Archer never hesitated. Another shaft was in the air, *thunking* against the tower, then another and another, so impressively quick that Joe’s head was spinning.

The ground trembled slightly beneath their feet, yet the massive double doors set into the wall surrounding the tower slid open without so much as a whisper of resistance. Heartpiercer let a cocky half-smirk show on her face as she glanced at Joe with a look of signature superiority, “Well, that was easy.”

Unable to come up with a reply, Joe simply walked along behind as the Archer strolled into the courtyard around the tower as though she owned the place. Joe couldn't help but grin as well, honestly somewhat envious at how she was able to move into every situation with effortless confidence. 

Unfortunately, just as he was about to step into the courtyard as well, an arrow *thunked* into the ground just in front of his toes. Another one approached, clearly designed to release a piercing whistle as it flew. He shuffled backward, as shaft after shaft seemed to sprout from the ground in a line following him until he was fully outside of the gates—which immediately began closing. 

“Guess this is where we split up.” Heartpiercer tossed him a jaunty wave. “Send me a message if you want to meet up again.”

“Or just to check in.” Joe quickly added, to which she shrugged and offered a conciliatory nod.

“If you're really that nervous about this place? Sure, buddy.” Then the gates closed firmly, a scraping of metal indicating they’d been barred from the inside.

“Haah… alone again.” Joe stared at the closed entryway, swinging his foot back and forth and scuffing it against the ground while softly grumbling, “I put together a team and everything… why’s it so hard to keep a group together? Maybe it's just-”

He paused as a thought struck him and turned on his heel, marching toward the Tower of Rituals somewhere in the distance. “Birds of a feather flock together. That's got to be it, right? I just haven't found the right community to be a part of yet, but there’s no better place to try again than right here.”