But for a Slime

“Right… ok… practical examples. Well… it’s a way of comparing the relationship of some numbers to show differences even if the numbers are wildly different. Um… for example, an easy one. Ten percent. Ten percent means for every one hundred… things… Here were are talking about scholars, right? So then we are talking about people. So, ten percent means that for every one hundred people, ten are scholars. But if you had a city with, say, ten people, then it would be one person who is a scholar. Can you see? A group of ten would make one scholar. A group of a hundred would make ten. A group of a thousand would make a hundred. And so on… Understand?”

The priest seemed to nod with some understanding and Joe decided to continue on, “Right, so… your population makes about a hundredth of a percent. So that means out of a hundred people, there are no scholars. Out of a thousand, still no scholars! It takes ten thousand people to make one scholar.

“My people, on the other hand, are probably close to ten percent globally but even higher in more advanced places and cities. But ten percent means my people make one scholar for every ten people. You have a scholar after ten thousand people. My people would have a thousand scholars with ten thousand people. That means that this city alone would likely have close to twenty thousand highly educated people, or scholars. You have twenty.”

The priest of knowledge stared, stunned at what Joe was saying, “Your people honor knowledge that much? No wonder I felt a great camaraderie with you! You and your people are truly followers of the god of Mimir!”

“Well, I…” Joe quickly shut his mouth again and shrugged, not wishing to argue theological semantics. Besides, we do place great importance on science, knowledge, and advancement, so… he’s not… exactly wrong. Joe then simply smiled at the priest and the two raised a cup, toasting one another.

The questions continued on for a short time, ranging from the occult: souls, gods, and spirits; to the bizarre: interracial species, the source of magic, and the essence of power. While Joe gave the former short shrift, the latter were interesting and Joe pursued them. The answers proved less enlightening than he’d hoped and he knew so little that he could offer little in return.

The conversation soon petered out a bit as the meal came to an end and Joe found himself yawning in exhaustion. The day had been quite long. The priest bid them good bye, and Joe asked if they might see him at the temple square when he confronted the usurer. The priest offered his support, although he claimed that a priest of knowledge would offer little to the affair. Joe still thanked him for what little he could possibly add and then headed to bed.

Joe went straight to his room to begin recording his skills gained and growth information for his new job while he sent Garnedell to the other room to make sure the two Acokzau siblings were comfortable enough. He was a bit worried that his presence might unsettle the two since they still seemed a bit skittish.

He dutifully wrote down his stat gains and information about the new job before preparing to turn to the job skills page. As he did so, he sighed with some frustration. Seriously, why does it have to be so unhelpful! They couldn’t organize it a bit better? Maybe show the skills in a table cross referencing job and level when the skill is gained? It would be so… easy! Seriously! Having vented, his finger slapped down on the available skills tab before he froze, staring in shock. The entire page had changed. In fact, it had changed to be exactly what he’d wanted with a list of his jobs down the left side and his skills lined off to the right organized in a neat table lined up by… Is it lined up by level? Is it! I think it…

Joe whipped open his notebook looking through the skills section of his notes and quickly compared the skills he knew the level at which he had gained it in comparison to the table. As he went through the list, all the ones he knew were verified, and Joe quickly realized that the chart now kept a record of when the skills were gained. Joe’s smile gained a few notches as he felt a bit of relief about not having to write down so much anymore. Keeping track of the initial stats of the job would still be necessary, but now skill gain level was not needed; it was all in his status page.

He thumped back in his bed with some relief over one less detail to keep track of and looked over some of the skills he’d gained. He’d gained three more skills besides job guidance and he glanced over them. As his eyes flickered over them, he did a double take on the last before smiling hugely. Another boost to learning! Haha! Joe was so thankful just for that he almost didn’t care about the rest. Haha! Got it at twenty five, it looks like. Glad I chanced the legendary sparks! Heh! I wouldn’t have gotten it otherwise. I wonder what’s at thirty? Should I? But Joe calmed himself and realized that while the skills were useful, chancing the attention of nobility seemed like a bad idea. His grin quickly faded, mood souring as he realized that the double learning skill wasn’t a ‘char:’ skill and it would only last as long as he was a theorist. Joe’s joy slipped quickly in angry despair as he tried to figure out what he could do. He could switch out his language skill maybe? But then he would be a bit stuck communicating and if they were in a middle of a desperate fight, he would really need to talk with Joe, and now the siblings!

So, currently, it was useless for him. The system is so… how could anyone know how to grow under such a convoluted system? I really need this skill permanently. But… hmm… I guess the double learning is important. It’ll let me open a lot more jobs and increase my base stats. But I need a ‘char:’ skill. Where… Joe’s thoughts side tracked to looking at his skills and searching for a suitable ‘char:’ skill to use.

Huh… which ‘char:’ skill? Bow is already on for my language… I really don’t want to give it up. But…? His language expertise skill wouldn’t grow unless he had it at level one or he had ‘char:’ applied and the polyglot job equipped. Maybe I could work on swapping out my job in the evening’s when I’m chatting with everyone and the priest! Then my language expertise job might grow! Joe looked at his language expertise and saw that the skill was only at two percent, and that was with the skill working for the whole day. Might be worth it? I’ll get Common as a permanent language in fifty days? But... fifty days lost!

Joe shook away that option. He wasn’t sure how he could ‘super level’ his language expertise skill like he could with his combat skills. It seemed that his bow shot up so fast simply because he was attacking monsters and enemies at significantly higher levels. I really don’t want to take away the +50% to learning. That seems counter intuitive. Should I just take the hit and spend a day or two as a commoner and smacking some double or triple core sparks with a large cudgel? I might get it leveled up in a day? That would probably be worth it? Plus, I need to level up commoner to thirty to open up the combat jobs? Hmm… commoner tomorrow, maybe… Yeah… it’s a good idea. Commoner it is. Two or three days to get a char for my new double learning skill saves a day for each job I level to twenty! Right? Joe took a couple minutes to fumble some numbers in his head and came up with new jobs taking about one and a half days to get to twenty, but only three quarters of a day if he doubled his learning. Easy enough! I would take two days normally, and waste half the second day, but only one day and still have a good quarter of the day to come home, swap to a new job, and prep for the next day, maybe even work on my language skills to get the ‘char:’ skill freed! Alright, commoner tomorrow then!

Joe also took a look at the other two job skills, poking at them and trying to play with them but found it as useless as his odd skill he’d gotten with the educated job. The two skills were convoluted chicken scratch obviously meant to be illegible and impossible to understand or use. What is going on with those things? That’s two more broken skills. Sighing, he moved on to his available jobs as there really was nothing else he could do.

Joe looked at his newly available jobs and found nine new jobs which were all extensions of the theorist: citizen theorist, criminal theorist, party theorist, education theorist, crafter theorist, virtus theorist, magus theorist, combat theorist, and faith theorist. Most of these jobs seemed self-explanatory from just the names. The study of the jobs systems for specific types of jobs. Joe did find that the system itself seemed to acknowledge the need to study the system. Heh… I guess all systems have that kind of self-study… Joe found the criminal theorist job enlightening and wondered how the criminal jobs would work. If I do something wrong, am I automatically given a criminal job? I’m really going to want to get my own ability to change jobs even just so I can swap through my jobs and level my skills up!

Joe looked through the other jobs and was able to easily assign each theorist job to a specific job grouping. Most were easy and Joe had to guess about citizen theorist but felt pretty confident applying it to commoner and all its unlocked jobs. Party was likely related to the party job system that he’d just found out about. He and Garnedell were now in a party. Since there was a theorist, there must be quite an extensive number of jobs related with the party system. Education, crafter, magic, combat, and faith were easy. He made the pretty obvious judgment that he was currently in the education line of jobs. Sadly, he couldn’t figure out the virtus line of jobs nor did he feel like he had any good idea about it since he really didn’t know what the word meant. He could guess, of course, that it was somehow related to virtuous or virtue, but, it gave him little insight.

Joe then went back to consider his next step. Choosing another theorist job, if it also gave twenty learning per level, would get him another forty or so learning and he could get that with a day of work. But if he put his effort into getting his cudgel skill to level one and the char skill released, he could double his current learning; a significantly greater amount than the ten percent he would gain from other jobs. It would likely be worth it even if he took four or five days to get his cudgel to level one. Welp… guess I got my plan. Commoner it is. Hopefully I’ll level up my cudgel relatively quickly. Luckily I’ll be fighting sparks and not slimes! Wooden cudgels for the win!

Joe then spent the time waiting for Garnedell to return from the sibling’s room going through his remaining jobs and using his job guidance skill to try to find any jobs that unlocked a multitude of jobs. He really need quantity more than quality right now. Despite the great gains he was getting from the education line, the educational jobs were really only feeding one important stat at his point: learning. He’d long exceeded his IQ and wisdom needs. His careful questioning led him to know there were quite a few more jobs unlocked with cook, merchant, and groom. However, the crafter line seemed to really be the biggest bang for the buck as job guidance simply sang to him when he asked about that.

He then took the time to try to figure out how to open up the magic and faith jobs. He spent a bit of time to figure it out and was pleasantly surprised when he realized both were opened with the education line. The mage lines seemed to open with mana-ologist and would only need level twenty, although there were still subtle hints of additional complications. The faith line, however, seemed to open with the philosopher job which he had already leveled to twenty without any new jobs showing up. Job guidance let him know that he would need to raise philosopher to thirty but there seemed to be other details after that before he truly unlocked the faith classes. Joe considered creating another couple legendary sparks but felt quite nervous about doing so, deciding to leave it for now. I’ll just keep getting learning from what education jobs I can! Maybe I’ll gain enough learning to make thirty a viable level.

Joe tried to figure out the party job line but couldn’t find anything at all except that it was related to the commoner job and none of the currently opened jobs that he had gotten from commoner were ones that unlocked the party line of jobs. As Joe started looking through other jobs and trying to find the answer, the feeling of getting further and further away started to frustrate Joe and when Garnedell showed up, he gave up his search.

Instead, Joe asked Garnedell to pop up his status and looked over his stats but was surprised to note that Garnedell hadn’t leveled at all, even with the destruction of two legendary monsters. He did gain the title of legendary spark killer and legendary monster killer twice over, but Joe realized that the percentage gain from those ultimately proved so minor that they did little for him besides give him notoriety. Joe congratulated him nonetheless but realized that Garnedell really was stunted because of his poor learning! This system really is … crippled!