Back to the present, and some self-reflection.

“Hey Mog! The next caravan is leaving in half-an-hour. They still got room for a couple more passengers,” Rupert said.

Morgan opened his eyes and cursed under his breath upon realizing that he had carelessly nodded off while resting on the walkway at the side of the street. He looked up to see Rupert, the gruff, tall, strapping, burgandy-haired man in chain armor standing before him.

They were currently in Latice, a town nearby the dungeon which they had found the white cube. The town was rather busy at this time of day. This was due to the fact that the particular dungeon which Morgan and Rupert had just returned from was still fairly new, having only been discovered a handful of months prior. As a consequence, noobs are arriving by trainloads of wagons every day, all seeking to test their luck in the new dungeon, or at the very least, find some.

This initial rush of adventurers was bound to dry up eventually, once all the easy pickings have gone. But Morgan reckoned that point would remain quite far off. The town would foreseeably remain flushed with new visitors for at least another year. After that, the only types who will bother to show up are the much serious minded adventurers who are aiming for the harder depths and sweeter loot of the dungeon.

Rupert was older than Morgan by a bit. He was about 28 years old while Morgan had only just turned 20. Rupert had been part of the Manticore Sting cohort who had been taken in by Edan. He was a good level 16 fighter, but had always been a little lax about leveling. Most people his age would have reached about level 20 and attempted to advance their class.

“We’ll take it,” Morgan said to Rupert, “Did you report Garrett's and Sonya’s fate to the adventuring association?”

Rupert looked crestfallen. “Yeah…” he replied.

“Don’t let it get you down, Rupert. These things happen. It’s all part of the adventuring trade.”

“I know that. But still, Goddess have mercy, I can’t believe they are gone just like that.”

Morgan nodded. “Yeah, I know. We’ll need to break the news to our guild once we return.”

Rupert sighed. “Just leave that to me. I’m the leader of this expedition. This was my responsibility.”

“Sure,” Morgan replied, “But let me give the news to Edan himself, eh?”

“Yeah, sure thing. It’ll be better to hear it from a friend.”

“Yeah. A friend…” Morgan said with a dry, humorless grin, “That’s an interesting notion these days, isn’t it?”

“I-I guess…?” Rupert replied, cocking his head sideways questioningly.

The two adventurers picked up their gear and marched off to the caravan of wagons and carriages which were bound for the city of Harbinger. They paid their fare of one silver talent each and climbed on board one of the horse drawn wagons. Pretty soon, the two men were taken on the road and steadily heading west.

Rupert succumbed to drowsiness not long after, lulled into nodding off in the back of the wobbly, moving wagon. With time on his hands, Morgan brought up his status screen to review his current status.

————————————***——————————————

Player Information

• Name: Morgan Alastor
• Age: 20
• Class: Assassin [Level 16] (Next: 3050/8000)

Potentia Information

• HP: 32/32
• MP: 16/16
• AP: 72/72

Powers Information

• Might: 2
• Dexterity: 4
• Agility: 4
• Endurance: 1
• Vitality: 1
• Magic: 0
• Senses: 4

————————————***——————————————

As he often did, Morgan took the time to admire the wondrous phenomena that is the “Status Screen.”

According to the legends, people in the far ancient past did not have status screens, classes, or levels. The notion seems maddeningly outlandish to Morgan. He couldn’t fathom a world without any of these functions.

As the stories go, three thousand years ago, a great cataclysm nearly destroyed the world of Rol. There was an invasion perpetrated by a terrible race of extra-dimensional demons and the races of Rol were utterly powerless to stop them. Then, in their most dire hour, the three great goddesses appeared. Each goddess bestowed upon the great races of Rol a divine gift that would aid them in their struggle against the demonkind.

The goddess of Grace, Gertava, imparted the gift of “Classes” to the races of Rol. Each class would grant its holder a set of powerful abilities that can be developed and be used to great effect against the demons.

The goddess of Hope, Prudentia, gifted the folk of Rol the capacity to store and manipulate “Potentia,” which greatly increases their survivability and enabled the use of magic by the races of Rol. Potentia is an abstract raw energy that is apparently ubiquitous throughout the universe, and it had been what the demons were using to fuel themselves. Prudentia’s gift grants the people of Rol the ability to make use of potentia in several different forms.

The first form is Excelsior potentia, or ExP. This form of potentia is obtained by slaying the demons, monsters, (or each other). This form of potentia is used to increase the levels of a person’s class in order to improve the upper growth limit of their class abilities. Alternatively, they can also use it to raise the ranks of their abilities.

In addition to that, the goddess’s gift also grants each person the capacity to distill and store health potentia (HP), mana potentia (MP), and action potentia (AP). These specific forms of potentia can be depleted with use, but will restore itself with time and rest. They each have different uses.

Health potentia (HP) heals a person’s wounds. They very quickly and automatically regenerates a person’s body the moment the person suffers an injury or trauma. Naturally, if someone gets overwhelmed by attacks that outpaces the HP’s restoration rate, they might still get killed or disabled. The same goes with critical hits, which is when the damage is so severe that it instantly kills a person before the person’s health potentia can compensate for the damage. If a person runs out of HP, then he stops healing or regenerating and becomes **** to a killing blow.

Mana potentia (MP) is channeled by a person to cast spells or fuel one’s abilities. It’s as simple as that. Every class uses MP to a certain degree for their abilities, but spell-casters rely on it the most.

Action potentia (AP) augments a person’s natural stamina, energy, and focus levels. As long as a person has an AP reserve, it will replenish their stamina and energy, staving off general fatigue, tiredness, and breathlessness. When AP is depleted, it no longer replenishes a person’s stamina, so a person becomes **** to running out of breath or lapse of focus.

Finally, there was the goddess of Virtue, Solisana, who bequeathed upon the Races of Rol the gift of “Powers,” which are blessings that are applied to specific domains of a person’s attributes. The blessings are granted by the goddess in seven areas. These are Might, Dexterity, Agility, Endurance, Vitality, Magic, and Senses. They act as additional buffs to a person’s natural attributes. Thus, a person who relies only on his natural strength would have a ‘Might’ score of 0, and a Might score of 1 would mean that a person’s natural might has been enhanced by a single degree factor by Solisana’s gift.

Solisana also awards a single token of power with each additional level that a person gains in their respective classes. The point can be freely allocated towards any of the seven powers. The allocation is permanent however, so most people try to optimize their powers distribution to complement their class or roles.

The demons were ultimately vanquished in the end by heroes who wielded the goddess’s gifts, but the world’s nature had been permanently altered forever. The goddesses’ gifts remained firmly integrated with the races of Rol. Now every new soul in Rol is born with a class, which in turns allocates a respective set of abilities to the person. A person may still choose to engage in whatever profession or trade which he/she desires, but most people find it most beneficial to play and master the cards that they are dealt. Hence most people tend to assume roles that suits their classes.

Morgan contemplated on his current level. Killing Garett and Sonya had pushed him past level 16. He was now 4 levels away from a class advancement.

It is known that in addition to receiving a class at birth, a person is able to evolve or advance their class when they reach certain milestones in their levels. Alternatively, they would also have the option to obtain an additional new class instead of advancing their current class, effectively becoming a dual-classer. These milestones have been determined to be every 20 levels. It was said that the heroes that vanquished the demons back in the day had managed to hit level 60 and obtain their third class advancement. Since then, there have been only a handful of people in history who have managed to hit the level 60 mark.

Morgan focused his mind and consciously pulled up a second screen, called the “Ability Screen.”

—————————————Ability Screen—————————————

Class: Assassin [Rank 5] (Rank Up Cost: 15,000 ExP)

• Shadow Cloak (F) - Cost: 8 MP
• Acceleration Burst (F) - Cost: 10 MP
• Ambidexterity (D) - Passive
• Executioner’s Instinct (E) - Passive
• Parkour Intuition (D) - Passive
• Rogue’s Gut (F) - Passive

Class: Overmind Protocol

• Read
• Write
• Copy
• Scan
• Dominate
• Nexus

Class: Willforce Protocol

• Vector
• Vortex
• Blast
• Repulse
• Attract
• Factor

—————————————————————————————————

The ability screen confirmed Morgan’s suspicions about the cube. It would seem that with every additional cube that he obtains, a new class would be granted to him. When he activated the black cube, the class, “Overmind protocol” was added to his Ability screen. Now the white cube seemed to have added a “Willforce protocol” class.

These were curiously named classes which Morgan had never heard of before in his life. In addition to that, the abilities that these classes bestowed upon him were rather unique as well. There didn’t seem to be any ranks assigned to the abilities nor are there any indications to rank them up. They were also all active skills but there didn’t seem to be any cost associated with them. It appeared that he could use these “cube” abilities as many times as he liked.

While Morgan had done some preliminary testing with the Overmind abilities, he hadn’t had the chance to determine what the Willforce abilities could accomplish. As a habit, Morgan was a cautious person who didn’t like taking risks or diving into unknown frontiers without preparation or information. He decided he would need to set aside time to properly test out the white cube’s abilities in the near future.

But all that would remain secondary in priority. For now, dealing with Edan comes first.