Eritance - Chapter 40

How else could you describe this relic? A relic that boosts your cognitive abilities, ability to grow faster, stronger, and can absorb other relics? The only way to describe a person with this kind of a relic is as a beast.

I was truly fortunate to have stumbled upon it in the forest all that time ago. This relic was changing my life. I have already had so many experiences that I never could have had as just a plain field hand. I grew stronger, I stayed in a fancy room, I became part of the underground resistance, and I would soon get an education on many things.

Little by little I was changing my lot in life and working towards my goals. I was determined to turn my dreams into a reality and this was the stepping stone to it all.

I looked at the list of missions that were currently available to me. Many of them involved hunting monsters, or gathering rare supplies, and even assassination missions. Of course, the assassination missions were to be done in groups, and were determined by very high-level commanders that held public positions. Some of these were to get rid of corrupt officials, or to destroy their power bases.

I didn’t feel comfortable working in a group yet, so I decided that I would do the monster hunting and gathering missions as much as possible. Of course, these missions didn’t give me many points. I wouldn’t be able to take many classes with just these missions alone. I would have to come up with a solution somehow.

For the moment I just decided to focus on learning. My classes began the next day. I vowed that I would apply myself fully towards memorizing the knowledge and skills that were imparted onto me during my time here. I felt very confident in doing so thanks to the enhanced learning and my ability review the classes in my memory, almost as if I were able to take them again.

The first month passed in a blur. I realized how little I knew before. I learned how large the world was in my history class. I learned that there used to be many empires before the emperor united them and formed our country. I learned about his battles, and the wars that raged before him. I learned about the discovery of relics and many of the tribes that formed them, the ogres, the elves, the minotaur, and others that were now extinct.

That wasn’t all I learned about though. I learned about botany and was able to learn about many new plants that could be used for all kinds of purposes. Some could be eaten, others could be used to make drugs, medicines, and even poisons.

My field medicine class was also useful, it didn’t teach me how to cure the sick, but I learned how to patch wounds and keep myself alive should I be injured in the field. There was even a method of helping someone breathe should their breathing stop.

However, the most important thing that I learned was how to read and write. This was the most challenging class for me, but I was able to gain a working knowledge of the alphabet and how to read the most common writings within my course. Thanks to the combined mental abilities of Ross and I, I would no doubt be able to improve rapidly on my own. Things that weren’t in the knowledge inherited from the beast relic would be stored with the other knowledge as well.

My mind was opening up at a rapid pace. In just one month, I had raised my brain from the mud and into the light. I realized how simplistic all my thoughts had been before.

By the time the next month’s classes had come along for me to take, I had only enough points to take three basic courses. I needed a way to get more points, but I didn’t know how. I didn’t have any materials that people wanted to buy, so there was no way to earn points except through my taking on missions.

I would have to keep my eyes open, but for now I signed up for my next three classes. I decided that I would take all of the beginner courses that I could. The intermediate and advanced courses were good, of course, but they were useless to me without the foundation. Besides, by mastering the basics I could understand the beast relic’s inherited knowledge much better and I could easily develop techniques and gain insights at the level of the advanced classes or higher. This was because the knowledge they possessed was incredible.

However, simply having access to it and understanding it were two different things. You could watch an archer strike a target 100 times, but if you don’t understand how to stand, hold the bow, draw the bow, and consider the wind and even the arrow itself, you may never hit it yourself.

Right now, I was a man with a box of treasure, but no key to access it. These courses would help me build the key to open the box and get the treasure.

The next three courses that I chose were on stealth tactics, basic magic theory, and relic control. I thought that these courses would help me out quite a bit in the future. After submitting my selections and taking the points I went out.

I didn’t normally associate with the other students, but I had recently learned that there were many training rooms available to students. I had recently just gotten a firm grounding in basic sword craft and decided that I would go spar with the other sword craft users to see if I could apply some theories that I had developed. After arriving, I saw that nearly twenty other students were practicing there. I chose one that had been in my classes and battled with him. The battle ended after just a few seconds, it seemed that he hadn’t learned very well.

He looked at me with a shocked expression. We had both taken the class, but I had grown so much faster than he did. Some of the other students there wondered if I was an advanced sword user picking on a beginner. This situation gave me a grand idea. What if I could tutor people for points? My learning speed combined with insights from the beast relic allowed me to progress rapidly. I could charge them much less than the course itself would and teach them all the same stuff.

I had heard some of the other students were doing things like this as well. I just never thought I would be able to do it too. A smile slowly spread on my face.