My dreams of sleeping until noon had been ruined by a sudden stirring. Panicked, I opened my eyes, only to see Eleanor looking at me with a sharp expression. "Explain!" she ordered.
I froze. I hadn't expected to be discovered, not after spending the whole night cleaning. Could it be that Maria had revealed something and Eleanor managed to connect the dots.
One good thing about being forcibly woken up by a scary woman with an even scarier aura that felt like a sword, my exhaustion had dispersed quite easily, my mind working overclocking in panic. The first question was what exactly she knew.
I had many secrets. Some mild, like the fact that my Forge skill had a perk it shouldn't have, and some significantly more radical, like my Forge skill, wasn't just Forge anymore. Answering the wrong question would only make the problem more troubling.
I decided to pick the safest option first. "I'm sorry. I have used more bronze ingots than we had agreed upon, but Lady Maria said that —"
"I'm not talking about it," she growled, her aura tightening further. I knew she wasn't talking about it, but the challenge was to know what she was talking about. "Tell me, what are your intentions towards her?"
This time, I didn't need to fake my expression of shock. I truly didn't understand what she was trying to say. "Is this about wasting her time by asking for her help?" I probed, confused.
She said nothing, examining my expression. I had no idea what she was looking for, but she must have found it because her aura receded once more. "Good, you know your place," she said.
"Of course, ma'am," I replied, a hint of military respect feeling appropriate. I didn't know what it was, but nodding in acceptance seemed like a safe bet.
"Good. Now, prepare. You'll be leaving with Maria soon. No funny business. Understand?"
With that, she left as sharply as she came. Her sudden intrusion into my living space was annoying, but the camp was similar to a military operation. And, there was no privacy in the military. Especially when I was the weaker party.
I quickly donned my armor and took my helmet. I touched them, enjoying the wave of new information provided by Mana Repair, allowing me to enjoy the intricacies of the products even more. Multiple enchantments overlapped, creating a confusing overlay, one that I doubted that I could handle even with my current abilities. But, if I could find a workaround —
I stopped that line of thought. As much as the idea of playing around with them was fun, I couldn't afford to do so. Unlike the swords I brought to repair, my new armor and hammer were not disposable assets. Damaging them would attract undue notice.
And, even if I was willing, I didn't have time.
"Ready for another day of adventure," Maria greeted me cheerfully.
"Always," I replied, this time, not even faking my excitement. I was looking forward to clearing the first threshold, curious what I would find. Not to mention, I had many questions that needed to be answered, and Maria was the best candidate. She was strong and came from a strong family, which meant she knew far more secrets than I did. Combined with her careless approach to secrets — at least minor ones that didn't matter to her — she was the best target for probing.
I had thought about asking Eleanor, but her erratic behavior this morning had changed my mind.
For the first part of the flight, we played chess. Maria crushed me even harder than usual, though I was happy. Between moves, I managed to wheedle some stories from her. Mostly stories of previous battles, mostly about how she single-handedly managed to save the day.
She was clearly bragging, but that didn't make her stories untrue. I had seen her destroy thousands of monsters without breaking a sweat. I couldn't even imagine just how impressive she was when she actually faced a threat requiring her to push herself.
" … And then, I created a wall of fire, enveloping the monsters as I hit from the side, saving the elites of the guild from certain destruction," she finished another story.
"Wow, fascinating," I said. "You must have been really proud. I wish that I could fight just as well, saving people rather than … being a worker." That was so far from my true sentiments that it wasn't even funny. While I envied the benefits of the stats granted to others, the last thing I wanted was to spend my days on the battlefield, risking myself every day.
I much preferred staying in my forge and tinker. It was not a replacement for a proper research project, but it was far better than going around fighting like another grunt. The world had enough of them already.
"If only I could change my class," I baited. Faking sorrow wasn't too hard. I just focused on the fact that I was thousands of feet above the ground, and started shaking.
Maria noticed my distress as she shifted in her seat, hugged me, and patted my back. A surprisingly kind move from her, which made me feel guilty about manipulating her. Still, I was already committed.
"Too bad the class promotion is not triggered by external skills. You would have made an excellent warrior with your determination," she said, revealing a piece of information that I had been searching for.
"Yeah, it's a pity that it only works with class skills," I said, acting like it was something I knew all along. "Worse, it's impossible to get skills for Production classes."
"Not impossible, but very difficult," she responded. "There had been one auction for Uncommon skill, though ultimately we weren't able to afford it."
"You couldn't afford it?" I asked, shocked.
She blushed. "Well, only because this operation is … well, complicated. Our budget is limited, so ultimately, we decided an Uncommon Repair skill was not worth paying for."
"May I ask how much it went for?"
"Two hundred platinum coins," she replied, which shocked me. A platinum coin was worth a hundred gold coins, making that skill worth twenty thousand gold. I thought myself rich just because I had fifty gold coins.
The new economy didn't make sense. Though, it was inevitable when money was generated by killing monsters, and used in mysterious shops with even more mysterious goods.
"Are all uncommon skills that expensive?" I asked.
She snorted. "Not even close. My own Rare meditation skill had merely cost four platinum coins. It's just the rarity driving up the price. Some groups are trying to find a way to trigger upgrades for production classes. It's a waste of effort."
"Because a rare skill is a minimum requirement to trigger a class upgrade," she said. "People worked very hard to trigger class upgrades for production classes during the first days of Calamity.
"Before we discovered the System Shops," I completed.
"Exactly. With the shops in place, the production classes are pretty much useless —" she started, only to freeze. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like that!"
"Don't worry about it. I can't blame you for telling the truth," I said, once again looking despondent. But, I was very happy with her unintentional insult. It meant that she would be looking for an opportunity to change the topic. "Too bad we can't upgrade the skills ourselves, right?" I asked.
"Yeah, it would have been nice not to depend on dungeon drops for rare skills, not to mention anything higher," she muttered in frustration. "You can't believe how long I had stayed in a dungeon just to get my epic skill."
"I'm sure there's a good story there," I responded, changing the topic once more. Her words already confirmed to me what I needed to know. I could ask further, but I decided not to appear too curious.
I had already received my most important answer. Rare production skills were either unheard of or their existence was suppressed.
I didn't know which. There was a possibility that I was the only one that achieved it in the whole world. If I said that to someone else, they would certainly feel like it was arrogance. However, I couldn't discount the possibility due to a combination of several unique factors.
First, the fact that I was a genius was an undisputed fact. Otherwise, I couldn't have been one of the leading figures in my field before my peers could even finish their education.
Then, there were the three years I spent constantly working as a Blacksmith, which gave me some unique insights that proved very useful.
In addition, I had been lucky. Extremely so. If Maria hadn't been a fire mage, if I wasn't working in a location without environment mana to interfere, the experiment would have failed.
Yet, the biggest differentiator was a difference in belief. Everyone was dazzled by the benefits of the System, too ready to discard the learnings of the past. Maybe because technology had failed us, they believed science did as well.
A mistake. Technology was just a tool. If it was broken, you could always just develop a new one. Science, on the other hand, was a way to dissect and understand the world. It helped our ancestors to understand the mysteries of thunder and the seas.
I had no reason to believe it couldn't do the same for the System.
But, ironically, my discovery had given me a reason to keep my head down. Science had allowed us to understand the world, but it didn't always end well for the scientist in question. Galileo was almost burned at the stake, and Giordano Bruno was actually burned. Many other scientists had been killed, ostracized, or otherwise ruined for revealing the truth.
Particularly if that truth affected the established economic benefits.
No, as much as I wanted to reveal the truth, I didn't dare to.
"Amazing. Then what," I muttered, not paying attention to Maria's story other than knowing when to nod and encourage — an ability I perfected in endless department meetings — while I charted the next stage of my strategy.
"Then, we gathered together and …" she said, then paused. "Too bad we have to stop. We have reached our destination," she asked.
"Of course," I said, then looked around, and realized it wasn't the same location. "We're not at the same place, right?" I asked.
"No," she replied. "Since you are already at level twenties, I decided that we can handle a more dangerous location."
"Whatever you say. You're the expert," I said. I wasn't entirely happy with it, but trying to argue against it was pointless considering she didn't even ask my opinion in the first place.
I twirled my hammer. It was time to fight.