Jackson replied, “I’m level nineteen, but pretty close to level twenty. If this wasn’t a military event, I likely would have been able to level up just from defeating those ghosts.”

  They all nodded, knowing how military events reduced the amount of XP that could be gained, but then Master Meyer said, “Actually, I don’t recall ever getting a notification that we had entered a military event.”

  That got a round of voices agreeing, and then everyone closed their eyes to look at their notifications, which had been neglected during the fighting and planning.

  Jackson’s face lit up as he realized that, sure enough, they were not in military action but considered to be in a raid against a monster-controlled location. He didn’t know what the distinction was, and as his dad was always saying, it was something to think about another day. He was just thrilled to be getting XP.

  Consolidated XP Notifications:

  Your raid force (87 survivors) has slain:

  47 level 9 pirates = 36 XP

  2 level 17 pirate captains = 5 XP

  1 level 19 frogkin wizard = 3 XP

  Party Only XP (rest of raid was out of range or in active retreat):

  2 level 21 fallen dragonkin ghosts = 110 XP

  Congratulations! You have gained enough XP to reach level 20. You are now Tier 3.

  Stats Points Gained: 9

  Total Stat Points: 9

  Character Points Gained: 6

  Total Character Points: 239

  You have boosts waiting from Watcher’s Ongoing Provision.

  You have gained a new Class Skill: Perpetually Purifying Body

  Perpetually Purifying Body (20): This skill acts as a trait. Through struggle and absorbing an assortment of types of damage, your body has developed built-in resistance. This skill will increase your resistance to all diseases, including magical ones, by 7% per level. This skill will increase your resistance to all poisons/venoms, including magical ones, by 4% per level. This skill will increase your resistance to all debuffs by 2% per level.

  Further, even if you fail to resist any given disease/poison/debuff, the severity of its impact and its duration will be reduced by 1% per level.

  This unique class skill can only be leveled by use. You may not spend free character points into this skill.

  It was all that Jackson could do to resist whooping out in excitement. When he saw Max staring at him, his friend asked, “Get something?”

  Jackson explained, and they all agreed that was an impressive trait. Jackson, of course, left off the part about the Watcher’s Provision. He figured he could talk about that later with Max. For now he knew that some of them, like Master Meyer and Sir Schinhofen, were probably struggling not to be jealous that this mere boy had now reached a level that they would never be able to progress to.

  “Everyone needs to try to get a bit of rest. I will have some guards keep watch, but I think that one of us needs to stay awake too. We can take shifts. Then, come morning, we are going to reclaim Rostock,” the knight said.

  “Don’t worry about scheduling watches for us. I have a class skill that will make it easy enough for me to stay up all night. Just have some guards assigned to cycle through with me, and the rest of you get some sleep,” Max said.

  Half an hour later, Jackson was in his tent. He had expected to be required to share a tent with someone, but then realized that as the son and heir of a noble, he was probably expected to demand more luxuries. So he had a tent of his own and much larger than the small pup tents that the common soldiers got.

  Sleep wasn’t going to come until he had assigned his points. The first part had been easy. He assigned the boosts he got from the Watcher. Running shot up to 100. He was gonna be so fast it was silly. Languages went up to eight. He already could speak common, moon elf, Albian and Miromarian. Now he added Faelorian, minotaur, sun elf, and orc. The last choice was motivated by his interaction with Balayria when he had been in Eris’ Rise.

  The other two skills that were available for him were Engineering, which increased to twenty, and Unarmed Combat, which advanced to forty, half of which was from character points and half from the Watcher. As of yet he still didn’t have to pick any of his base skills to drop and wouldn’t have to unless he made it to the fifth tier, at which point he already knew he would drop languages. The choices would get harder after that, but again that was a problem for another day.

  Now he had to think about how to assign his stat points. He might have wanted to wait, but since they were going into battle tomorrow, he realized it would be silly to delay. It was then that he heard a voice outside his tent. At first he was startled till he realized it was Captain Aremay. There was something about the man that Jackson admired. He was clearly powerful and decisive.

  Equally though, Jackson was put off a bit by how much the man seemed to be watching him. It was almost like he was being evaluated by the man. That was a bit of a scary prospect given that Aremay was the commander of the most prestigious military unit in Miromar.

  “Are you asleep yet, Jackson?”

  Rather than answer, Jackson opened the tent flap and poked his head out.

  “Good, I didn’t want to wake you, but I also thought that you might have a lot going on in your head. You are the youngest I have ever met to reach Tier 3. Typically even nobles don’t reach that level until their twenties, and from what Max says, less than half a year ago you were still level zero.”

  “Yes, it has been a bit of a whirlwind,” Jackson replied.

  Aremay ran his fingers against his chin, stroking his well-trimmed beard, before he said, “If you would prefer to speak with Max, I would understand, but I thought you might be willing to accept sound advice from me.”

  Now Jackson was interested. Normally everyone in Eloria treated leveling and character build as a deeply personal matter, and he had never heard any of them who were willing to offer much in the way of outright advice. He expressed as much to Aremay, who looked confused at first before replying, “Oh, I would never presume to tell you how to assign your character points. Even if you were my son, I would be very hesitant to make suggestions. I agree it is a personal matter. What I wanted to talk to you about is something related but not quite the same thing.”

  “Okay, well, you clearly are powerful, seem to be a good man, and Gianna talks about you like you are her favorite uncle.”

  Aremay smiled then. “Ah, the princess has spoken of me, then?”

  “Yes, nothing but good things.”

  “This makes me happy. I am quite fond of that young lady, even beyond my obligations as an officer of Miromar. You should know that she is well liked in her country. There is great hope for the relationships that she is building with Albia by attending the academy, and the thinking is that she will be very talented as a queen someday. May the True Gods make it many years from now though.”

  Jackson was caught off guard by how he spoke about Gianna. Then it dawned on him that maybe he was betrothed to the princess or something. He was more than twice her age, but Jackson seemed to remember that such things happened in ancient countries back on Earth. That might explain why the man was paying so close attention to Jackson. He didn’t want any other guys to be around his girlfriend or whatever she could be considered.

  “I’m sorry if you are worried about me being friends with Gianna. Are you, like, her betrothed or something? I don’t know exactly how that works.”

  If he thought that the captain had been baffled by his earlier question, the man’s face was an absolute mask of horror now, to the point that his jaw hung open. “By Mishpat, I hope she hasn’t been spreading some rumors like that. I am a non-noble military officer, a glorified servant of the throne. It would be beyond inappropriate for me to be even linked to such a rumor.”

  “Oh, like I said, I don’t really know how it works where you come from. I just thought that might be why you seem to be checking me out. But maybe you are like this with everyone.”

  Now the horror left Aremay’s face, and he laughed. “She did say that you were clueless. No, I don’t ‘check everyone out,’ to use your words. You are an interesting young man with a promising future. But that is all I will say about it now.”

  It was definitely Jackson’s turn to be confused now. He had no idea what they were talking about, so he shifted back to something he did understand. “So you had some advice for me.”

  “Yes, quite right. Back to business. It is often a problem for those who level too quickly that they fail to gain a true understanding of how to use their abilities. Simply having skill points in an area does not inherently give you the expertise to make good use of those abilities or to know when to refrain from using them. This is true of those who gain Tier 3 over a period of a handful of years. It must be even more so for those who gain it over a handful of months.”

  “I guess that makes sense. It’s sorta like the difference between being a great athlete and being a great baseball player.”

  “Has anyone ever told you, young master, that you say many strange things?”

  “My friend Tabor all the time.” Jackson laughed as he replied.

  “Well then, you won’t mind if I don’t understand exactly what you said, but I think I get the gist. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask. More than that though, remember that as powerful as you are now, it takes time to acclimate to that kind of power.”

  Jackson just nodded, and when it was obvious he didn’t have any immediate questions, Aremay walked off, but Jackson couldn’t shake the feeling he was still being watched. Then the voice in his head said, “If it wasn’t so much fun watching you muddle around, I’d explain what this is all about. As it is, these are not the thoughts you should have before battle. The human was correct about one thing. You need to be careful with your rapidly expanding power. Focus on being good at a few things, and don’t spread yourself too thin.”

  It was almost shocking how much the voice spoke. He had never heard it say half as much at one time. Usually it was simple commands or jibes. Now, Jackson sat back down in his tent, waiting for the voice to speak again. When nothing more was forthcoming, he asked, “Do you have any specific advice for how I should assign my stat points?”

  Still no answer. Jackson had found himself becoming more patient though. The training he did at the academy and the way the voice would provide him instruction at times had helped develop that. He didn’t feel the need to rush into everything. So he sat quietly, waiting, hoping for more.

  Finally as a last-ditch effort, he called out inside his head, “Piersung?”

  It almost felt like there was a stirring within him, but no words followed. Jackson gave up on it and figured it was his gloves speaking to him and that he had many years to learn from them. That or he was going crazy. Of course, either way he had to survive the upcoming battle or it wouldn’t matter.

  So he pulled up his stats. If he was to focus on a few things, he added four points to Strength to bring it to thirty. Then he added two into Constitution, which with its 50% bonus came up to forty-six. Finally he added the last three points into Endurance, which had a 30% bonus and came up to thirty-four. With the duplication effect of his new ring, his stamina-regeneration rate was tripled and now up to 10.2/hour. That gave him a good number of options.

  Now he had a bundle of character points, but much as Mira had told him, the difference between Tier 2 and 3 was significant. Now he could raise a skill to forty rather than the prior cap of twenty, so it was very costly to increase skills, yet the impact of each skill would be better.

  Jackson wished he could learn some Tier 3 spells, but there was no access to those, so he opted not to put any more points into any of his schools of magic, at least for now. The first 120 points were pretty obvious. He added twenty points each to Unarmed Combat, Axes, Short Blades, Blunt Weapons, Unarmed Specialization, and Toughness. It was almost staggering how easy it was to drop that many points.

  The notifications about the perks he got for raising the levels on his skills were nice.

  Toughness (40): You have reached Apprentice level in this skill.

  Apprentice Perk: The value of each point of toughness is increased from 0.4 damage resistance/pt to 0.6/pt. Current base damage resistance: 24.

  Axe (40): You have reached Apprentice level in this skill.

  Apprentice Perk: Your cleave chance increases by 0.5%/level.

  Unarmed Combat (60): +300% to attack, +60% to damage, automatic second attack when exclusively using unarmed combat. Feet attack as easily as hands.

  You have reached Journeyman level (Tier 4) in this skill. You now have the trait: Using their strength against them. You can now use martial arts techniques designed to redirect an opponent’s force and potentially send them flying through the air. Throws can deliver up to four times basic unarmed combat damage.

  Blunt and Short blades had similar perks, but Jackson was far more interested in his Axe and his Unarmed Combat. Throws would be cool, and because of his Watcher’s bonus, he was actually Tier 4 in it. In one fell swoop his skill level had gone from thirty to sixty. To say Jackson was excited to try it out would be an understatement. Other skills like Weapon Specialization didn’t add anything extra, just more damage with his unarmed strikes.

  There were so many options, but he decided not to add any of his points into any of the many skills he looked at, with only two exceptions. He had seen Daichi use his Feign Death skill to good effect in the dungeon. Jackson thought it was probably a long shot, but if it could help, he wasn’t gonna pass up the opportunity. Besides, he liked that both of the skills were part of the monk class tree. As far as he knew, that meant that they would not be very common, although he couldn’t say that no other class would gain access to them.

  The only question was how much to put into each of them. A part of him said try out ten points and see how it works, but then he decided if it was worth doing, then it was worth going all in. So he dropped forty points into both of the new skills.

  Feign Death (40): You may attempt to pretend to be dead so that predators or enemies will be convinced to leave you alone. Lose 1% of aggro per level when activating this skill. Base chance of success against monsters is 5% per level—does not work on sapient races. You have gained the Apprentice level and gain both the Initiate and Apprentice perks.

  Initiate Perk: May attempt to use this skill against sapient races. Base chance of success is 1% per level. Other factors may influence the success, such as how closely you are observed.

  Apprentice Perk: Aggro reduction is increased to 2% per level. Base chance against sapient races increases to 2% per level.

  Stunning Blow (40): Costs 1 Stamina. Adds a small chance to stun an opponent with an unarmed attack to the head. Base chance is 0.25%/level. Chance is affected based upon the anatomy of targets. In general, non-humanoid creatures are harder to knock out. Stamina cost only applies if the effect is triggered. You have gained the Apprentice level and gain both the Initiate and the Apprentice perks.

  Initiate Perk: May double base chance with attacks that use an elbow or knee.

  Apprentice Perk: Base chance stacks for each unarmed attack landed on the head in a single tick.

  Jackson saved the last fifty-three character points. He wasn’t sure what else would give him an immediate benefit without making things more complicated for him. Now all he had to do was manage to fall asleep. He lay on the floor of his tent with his bedroll. It left a lot to be desired when compared to the sleeping bag and pillows he’d had back on Earth, but it was what he had.

  In his distraction and insomnia he lay there. This led to him finally noticing that he had one more notification that he hadn’t paid attention to.

  Update to Class Aura Ability

  You have gained the ability to upgrade your auras. A base aura can activate once you reach 25% of max health in damage. If you hold the aura without activating it, it can reach stage 2 at 25% of max health in damage. At 75% the aura can reach stage 3. The process continues and counts damage resisted by Toughness in the total. The level of spell that can be active is tied to the stage of your aura.

  By holding the Minor Protection from Evil aura until you reached stage 3, you gained the ability to activate it as Protection from Evil. This aura creates a field 1 foot from the body rather than 1 inch and increases applicable spell resistance to 100%.

  So, if Jackson was reading that correctly, essentially by not activating the aura as soon as it was available, he had increased his aptitude. This was cool, and he had to wonder what it would be like if he had a healer and could store it up to a higher stage. He now could add an additional aura to his list, but none of them seemed like a good match. He really needed some time to experiment with this. Eventually he was able to fall asleep as he speculated about how this might affect different aura options.

  It felt as though he had barely closed his eyes when he was being shaken awake by Malten. “Father told me to get you awake. Eat a quick breakfast and be ready to head out in thirty minutes.”

  Jackson sleepily nodded in understanding.

  Malten went to leave and then at the last second turned back. “Look, I know I didn’t treat you fairly, and we may never be friends, but I do want to thank you. I’m not sure my father would have made it back to camp if you had not done what you did. So… uh… thanks.”