Mantle of the Gods

We farmed for six hours.

We had grabbed a few pieces of fruit to eat on the way and continued to our farming spot. That kept us satiated while we worked, but we had to stop for lunch. Once we trekked back to the fruit tree, we cut through the woods back to the river for water.

Aelin was counting the snake crystals while the rest of us took the chance to catch our breath.

“How’re you holding up?” Ether came over and sat down next to me. She wrapped her arms around my left arm and wove her fingers through mine.

“I’ll make it.” I looked up at the sky. "Once Aelin finishes counting, we’re going to have to get back out there.” I looked at the red-eyed woman. "We won’t have enough time to double whatever we’ve gotten so far.”

“It’ll be okay.” Ether’s voice softened. It almost sounded like she was trying to reassure herself more than me.

“I know.” I squeezed her hand. "We’ve got plenty of time to meet the deadline.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.” She said. "There’s so much that can go wrong.” She laid her head on my shoulder. "I’ll be surprised if we get to the boss tomorrow without something else going wrong.”

“Forty-seven!” Aelin declared.

Everyone looked at Ether. Somehow she’d been keeping up with how much experience everyone had. I’d been having to remember how many crystals we’d gotten each day, divide it by the people who were present, then add each day up. Yesterday was when that’d been too many numbers for me to keep up with. Since Ether seemed to have a running tally, I’d given up on trying to remember all the numbers.

“Seventy seven.” She unwove her left hand so she could point at me and Aelin. "Justia and I have eighty.”

“Where does that put us?” Justia got up, prompting all of us to do so as well.

“It’ll be tomorrow morning when we level now.” Ether started walking.

We let her take the lead as we followed after her.

“What do you think will happen when we hit level two?” Aelin looked at me.

I was about to ask her why she thought I’d know, then realized I had the other two women’s attention as well. Given that I’d worked beside Adventurers for the last four years, it kind of made sense that they think I’d know something.

I tried to remember what I’d overheard.

“Since we don’t have crystal bands, the only way for us to know what abilities we get is right when we level.” I thought about the one time I’d seen someone level up. Farmers were always on floors that were on a lower tier than they were, which gave them a heavy experience penalty. Because of that, it took Farmers much much longer to level than the Explorers who were pushing the deepest floors.

“We’ll glow for a second and if we get an ability, then you’ll hear what it is.” I looked at them. "That’s all I know.”

“Seems simple enough.” Ether stopped walking sideways so she could pay better attention to where she was leading us.

“What do you think we’ll get?” Aelin was skipping as we walked.

“There are catalogs with every class that’s been discovered as well as the skills, spells, and abilities each one has learned and the level ranges that those abilities have been acquired.” Justia answered. "Part of the curriculum is supposed to be for each of us to look through the catalog and decide which class we want to aim for and to help us build our stats and abilities to achieve that goal.”

“Do you know what class you’re going to be going for?” The blonde had her full attention on Justia.

“My father is Priest and my mother is a Curate.” She looked at me. "Both went for a pure Healer class. I had planned to do that as well, but…” Her voice trailed off.

“But what?” Aelin was bouncing around us in a half circle.

“But after this exercise, I’m starting to think that I might want to get an offensive subclass.” She turned to the blonde. "Even if I stop pushing to go deeper in the dungeon, I should be able to defend myself.”

“Cool!” She skipped over to Ether. "What about the two of you? Have you thought about what you’re going to do?”

“I’ll have to see what there is.” Ether seemed to be thinking. "I’ve seen the catalog, but that’s something the Mundanes didn’t have easy access to.” She shrugged. "I would have never thought I’d be a Tank, so the little I did think about it, that wasn’t one of the options I considered.”

“What were you going to be?” Aelin grinned

“I thought I’d be either a Caster or a Shooter.” She looked at me when she said Caster. "But neither of those work well with being a Tank, so I’ll have to look at it more once I get a chance." She looked at the joyous woman. "What about you?”

Aelin stopped in her tracks. Her face got somber. "I’d hoped that I’d be a Healer." she looked at Justia. "So I could save people like my mother.” She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them. His smile started to return. "But this works too. As a Buffer, I can help everyone do better.” She looked at me. "What about you, Atlas?”

“I thought I’d be a Hitter.” I shrugged. "With as much work as I did for the Porters, it just made sense to me.” I slashed at some of the underbrush. "I even tried practicing with weapons in the little downtime I had. Sometimes the Adventurers would give me pointers, but that wasn’t the way my stats came out.”

“So Justia is the only one who got the class she wanted.” Aelin laughed. "I guess that shows the Gods know more about us than we do!”

I saw the uneasy look that Justia gave me. I wondered what Aelin was going to think when she learned the truth. I just hoped everything worked out whenever that day arrived.