The Strongest Spellblade

“Urg,” Anerac said with a groan as he sat my table. Everywhere else was full at the moment. The inn was packed.

“Problem?” I asked him. I was getting lessons on dwarven culture and language from a tutor that Healer Melon had arranged since Anerac was too busy now. After winning that race, he had gotten several sponsorships and a new magical carriage with the latest improvements.

“I can’t get a tier 4 skill, no matter how hard I try,” he muttered.

“Ah, that problem,” I replied.

“You know something?” he asked while looking at me with hope.

“Just what my mother told me. It is an issue of imagination. What does a tier 4 driving skill look like to you or feel like? And what is the bare minimum you can do to touch upon that skill,” I replied. Tier 4 skills were the start of unique skills. The problem Anerac was facing was a common one, especially a pioneer of a new skill.

That was why people became Squires or Apprentices in order to have higher tiers laid out for them. I suspected that was what my mother would give me if I placed in the top spot at the College of Advancement. A personal journal detailing her path to a tier 6 skill and other top tier skills.

Such a thing was priceless, since it made advancing in the higher tiers much easier. But even with help people still struggled and even without help, tier 6 was the limit. My mother had confirmed that her tier 6 skill, Dawnbreaker Destruction, was only level 40. That was probably why she had demonstrated at the end of our time together in order to show me the pinnacle of power and I had asked a lot of questions during our time together.

I had been thinking level 80 or 90. But tier 6 skills leveled incredibly slowly, and the bottlenecks were almost impossible to get past. How often would one be able to practice such a skill as well? My mother explained that higher tier skills weren’t always better, they were just more powerful. They also used up a lot of Mana.

Rationing Mana in the dungeon was incredibly important for an adventurer. It was too easy to burn through one’s reserves and then be stuck in a bad position, struggling to survive.

As for higher tier skills, it was about imagination and manipulating Mana enough for the System to recognize the skill. Such skills were given personal names. It was also what made higher tiers more difficult, since skills weren’t as structured and why Runes Mastery and Weapons Mastery were such important skills that my mother wanted me to eventually get.

Getting all the possible foundational skills for each of those skills would be huge. That was also why the College of Advancement was trying to discover more structured skills. Skills that were not created though imagination and Mana Manipulation, but that had a structure to them were viewed in much higher esteem, since they were easier to teach through structured training and learning.

There was a lot of debate on if the skills that currently existed had evolved from personal skills that were shared widely. But the chain of skill names with skills, focus, and then empowered ended in tier 3. Resistance skills went higher, but they were insanely difficult to level once they reached immunity. Only around 1 level a month on average for only Fire Immunity and Poison Immunity skills classes the College of Advancement offered.

I knew my mother wanted me to keep pushing up my resistances. And I could see the benefit. Like having a second set of armor you could depend on in an emergency. Not something to depend on all the time, but important nonetheless to mitigate life threatening risks.

“I can’t think of anything,” Anerac complained and slumped onto the table across from me.

“A tier 4 driving skill? Hmmm. Maybe Carriage Sense would be a good support skill to know how it is doing overall, but that would be tier 2. Maybe some kind of reinforcement around the engine or Mana compressor. To go faster, didn’t you use some higher grade Mana mix?” I asked.

“Yes. And that is genius. Overdrive,” he said and then his eyes went wide. “I got the skill. Tier 4.” There was a sense of awe and wonder in his voice. I forgot that high tier skills were rather rare unless one had a legacy like myself to draw upon. For a dwarf like Anerac, they were priceless. The fact it was a single word as a skill name, showed it had potential as a structured skill, rather than a more personal skill.

Anerac might be an amazing driver, but he was nowhere good enough to handle the Mana Manipulation to forcibly unlock a skill. Overdrive, that did sound like the kind of tier 4 driving skill that he would want.

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“Justin, thank you, thank you,” he said quietly. He wasn’t about to shout out that he just got a tier 4 skill. After tier 3 most people kept their skills secret unless it related directly to their profession.

“It was all your hard work. I just had a bit of an idea, that is all. Sometimes you need an outside perspective. So, what does this mean for you now? I know you already have sponsorships,” I said.

“Win some more races of course and open up a driving school. With a tier 4 skill I qualify as an expert, especially since no other dwarf has a tier 4 driving skill,” he explained. “You should learn from me, be my first customer.”

“Please no. My stomach and head can’t handle it,” Healer Melon said. There was no way he would let me do a driving lesson on my own. I considered the Driving skill. It didn’t seem that useful in my opinion.

“Is it really that useful in the Balde’s Maw?” I asked using the dwarven term for the dungeon.

“Of course. You have just seen the passenger and cargo machines. But I have seen the battle golems and other war machines. Once dwarven technology gets past a certain point, everyone will be begging for a taste,” Anerac said.

He wasn’t the kind of being that had a lot of stats or skills, but he was passionate and very good at what he did. I wasn’t trying to get more skills, but Driving was growing on me. I already had two junk skills, Sweet Tooth and Pulse Strike. One more wouldn’t be the end of the world, even though my mother would sigh and give me a look of disappointment when she heard the skill.

“Alright, sorry Healer Melon,” I said, and he let out a groan.

“My first customer. Don’t worry, I am the best,” Anerac said.

“Let’s plan a week from now. That way I can take a day off from my regular training,” I replied. I also needed a break from the training hall and resistance training. My mother made me feel guilty every time I had some sweets or wanted a spa day, but she hadn’t put a cloud of gloom over driving.

“Perfect. That’s more than enough time for me to make things official and get a temporary instruction license for Driving,” he replied.

“How do people normally learn?” I asked.

“They get a magical carriage and try not to crash in the training area outside the city. But with a tier 4 skill, I can officially teach driving skills.”

“It seems odd they don’t let people teach before that,” I replied.

“It is about not leading dwarves down the wrong path or teaching something that will make it harder to get to a tier 4 skill. It gives credibility. Now if I got a tier 5 skill, then I could take up the title of Driving Master and my life would be complete,” he said with a smile.

The title of Master was often associated with a tier 5 skill. It wasn’t a hard and fast rule, but if you had that title and didn’t have a tier 5 skill, questions would be asked. Maybe if someone was the best in their field for a while, but it was a small field or without that many people with a high tier skill, like Farming.

A lot of people had the Farming skill but getting it above tier 3 was very difficult. While farmers would use the skill quite a bit, it wasn’t a combat or high stress skill like Driving, where a wrong turn meant death. And the people who worked on the skill a lot didn’t have a high level, which meant a lower Vitality. They wouldn’t live as long and have as much time to raise up the skill.

That was why Anerac despite being so young now had a tier 4 skill. It was the pressure placed on him. Especially the life or death pressure. I had no doubt that this pressure was purposefully cultivated by the dwarves so they had the individuals with the best Driving skills.

If there was a war or a conflict, Anerac would be Driving some giant war machine instead of a magical carriage. It was bold move by the dwarves but played to their strengths of finding a group of skills that had use in both combat and in peace. They would be able to transition a lot of dwarves into war machines very quickly without needing to train up new skills.

The dwarves were probably stockpiling Mana cores as much as possible. I had seen the Adventurer’s Guild in the city and a lot of dwarves were going in and out. With the average descent time being anywhere from three months to an entire year, all that activity was a clear sign they were trying to get as many Mana cores as possible.

As for an actual war, that was unlikely to happen. Or at least a protracted one. At most they would attack the neighboring human noble on the border, show off their war machines, and then sell older versions.

Since they had the craftspeople, copying the machines and teaching people the Driving skill would only drag down other nations while putting the dwarves in a position of power. Wealth would flow in their direction.

It wasn’t about learning a new skill for me. It was about doing something different and new. Life wasn’t about just increasing skills, it was about living. My mother forgot that along the way. While she had reached immense heights, it also meant that she lost out on quite a bit. Her mindset was incredibly rigid.

She would think learning the Driving skill a waste of time. I thought it was something fun I could do for a couple of days before enrollment opened for the College of Advancement. One shouldn’t get caught up in such nonsense full time, but if I had to travel on the surface, it would be cool to drive my own magical carriage. And despite the danger it did look exciting to be zipping around tight corners.

In a couple of decades I might be seeing war machines down in the dungeon. Knowing how they worked was important. While I wasn’t a fan of external equipment, similar to my mother, to be a spellblade one needed a blade.

There were a lot of reasons to learn the Driving skill. Ultimately, I did it because I wanted to. The justifications I came up with would only help win an argument if it happened, or at least hold my ground.