Chapter 6: CHAPTER 6: Normal
I'm back into my schedule the next day – Wake up and eat at six, pray until Lunch at noon. Study before dinner, and into bed by nine.
-But my schedule is not exactly the same. The first day my chores are doubled, for the day I spent 'sick', but after that, the chore amounts are back to normal. And as the days go on, my 'praying' changes. At first, it's normal. The routine I've held for as long as I can remember. Then, my praying is more like asking questions. What does all of this mean? Why was I awake that night? Why did I see the star? I want to ask the Priestess the hard questions, but she's away on some duty or another. I also want to see her to find out what it really means to be a Cleric.
When I was younger, I thought that it was just something that you did as a member of the church. Now, with the system, I'm sure that it's something that I could learn. And seeing the REWARDS that I got through the system so far, I could only imagine what else it held.
What I held was the Ruby of the War Mage. By the time that a week had passed slowly in town, my prayer time wasn't so much spent in prayer as in thought, and one day as I was holding the Ruby in my hands, concentrating on it, the system chimed in.
*ting!*
I was so startled that I looked around me in the chapel, certain that I'd interrupted the silence of the moment. I was alone in the pew, though, and no one noticed the sound, or even my glances. Of course they didn't! Remembering that I was the only one that could hear or see the system, I brought up the window in front of me.
*ting!* "Item identified."
Ruby of the War Mage
Wondrous item, Common (requires attunement by a spellcaster)
This ruby allows you to use a simple or martial weapon as a spellcasting focus for your spells. For this property to work, you must attach the ruby to the weapon by pressing the ruby against it for at least 10 minutes. Thereafter, the ruby can't be removed unless you detach it as an action or the weapon is destroyed. Not even an anti-magic field causes it to fall off. The ruby does fall off the weapon if your attunement to the ruby ends.
The details are dizzying. A spellcaster? I can't cast a spell. Maybe I can attach the ruby to my axe, though. There's no way I can wander around holding it... I haven't taken it out since I got back to town.
The ruby isn't the only development within the system, however. While reading the system in my quiet time, I've been looking at the Background page, and found more information. Lying in my bed, one night, I'm reading the details of the other backgrounds. The Acolyte background at the top is mine now, and I'm curious about others. The second background can be expanded, and it reads like this;
Charlatan. Earned 1,000 by confidence tricks or with scams.
0/1,000
I'm not surprised that the number is zero, but I'm a little bit surprised to see any number at all. I scroll down the other backgrounds, but it's mostly things in which I have no experience. Things like performing for crowds or time spent in seclusion – or in the wilderness. This one is interesting, because it shows the few hours I spent on the night of the star. These other things, though; spending time on the high seas or in an 'active military unit'. …Maybe they're not for me.
One holds promise. There's no moon out, and it's so dark that I can see nothing but the system. Still, my eyes widen.
Sage. Spent 10,000 hours studying and practicing arcana and history.
9,478/10,000
But how? Servants of the temple don't really have a school to speak of, so I can't think of anything. Sure, I've read over the years, and once in a while I must have picked up something on the way. The matron's occasional lectures… sermons on the history of the church or the local area… maybe a lot more has sunk in then I'd have ever imagined. And I'm so close!
So, I start to study.
The next day, I'm in the library as soon as I wake up. I only have an hour to study before the bell rings to call all to prayer. I groan inwardly, not wanting to leave the books… but maybe I don't have to? No one will miss a few books here or there, I grab a few and I silently tuck them into my inventory. I file into my own pew and take a few furtive glances around before I open the tome. It's a dry treatise, but it doesn't matter. Over the next half-dozen weeks, as spring begins to turn into early summer, any time I can, I'm reading anything that I can. Have you ever heard the history of the nearby village, Tubb's Vineyard? Well, it's NOT interesting. I read every word. Did you know that we even have dry notes on the history of law in water deep? Because I do. I fell asleep reading them nine times. The ones that are hardest to keep straight are tomes of experiment after experiment done by scholarly wizards in pursuit of such overly specific knowledge that it hardly seems possible. But I read them all. I'd keep a few at a time in my inventory and read them whenever I could.
The second strangest thing that happens one day is that I'm reading a long (and I do mean long) description of different "somatic components", and it starts really making sense. I've read it before, and barely understood that it was the way that you wave a wand to make a spell happen. That's true, in a crude sense, but it's so much more! The way that a body moves to coax The Weave - the pattern of energy all around us that makes magic work – is like a dance with the laws of the universe. I'm so lost in my epiphany, that it barely registers in my head when the system rings.
*ting!* "Congratulations on earning a new background!"
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone