200: Vision

Entering the house after our market trip, I was surprised to see Micca was actually home already for the day and looked to be in deep conversation with Milo at the dinner table. I didn’t want to interrupt, so I tried to slip by without disturbing them.

“Trevor, hold up!” Micca called.

Taking a seat at the table with the other two, Micca continued.

“I’m choosing my class. I want your input,” she said.

Raising my hands. I had no idea what would be good for a merchant, and I didn’t want to be responsible for her choosing something bad. I had not even chosen my arcane foraging skill yet.

“I don’t know…” I started to say, but it was waved away.

“It’s fine. It’s only your opinions and not the only deciding factor, and we’ve narrowed it down to Rare Goods Trader and Luxury Merchant. The reason I want your opinion is that my connection with you will ultimately affect how this evolves, and I don’t want to be solely reliant on you and your goods, because what happens if you go to a different continent? Or a dungeon?” Micca explained.

I nodded. That made sense, and from memory when she told us, Rare Goods affected only rare quality or above goods, but she could value items far better, where Luxury Merchant was for anything the system deemed a luxury item, regardless of quality, and could be cakes, teas, even fancy jerky.

“Honestly, I think Luxury would probably be better than Rare, since you’re running a cafe,” I shrugged.

A giant smile came across Micca’s face. “That’s exactly my thought! That settles it, then.”

I didn’t know what to expect, as I had never seen someone go through a class evolution before. So, did they glow? Was it like Crisplet where their whole body changed?

Nothing…

Nothing happened, and I couldn’t help but feel a bit let down by that.

“It’s done!” Micca squealed happily.

Yet selfishly, I was still wondering why something didn’t happen!

“Everything okay?” Micca asked me, clearly concerned about my staring.

“Oh, sorry. I don’t know why I just expected something to happen, a glow or a change, something,” I said, feeling embarrassed. The embarrassment wasn’t helped by Milo, who just laughed.

“It can happen, Trev, but it won’t happen when a merchant is switching to just a different type of merchant,” Milo chuckled.

“I guess that makes sense,” I said. I was still disappointed, and it wasn’t even my class.

“This is as good a time as any to finally choose my arcane foraging advancement, though.”

I explained again all my options to Milo and Micca.

We ruled some out immediately. Forager’s Intuition, mainly because it only told me the direction of the nearest rare item but provided no visuals or exact distance.

Forager’s Senses, creating a temporary map, was nice; however, it didn’t help me visually see anything and couldn’t tell rarity. Bounty Sense likewise had the issue of only seeing clusters of items, so a single rare item would not stand out, and ultimately we felt it wasn’t very useful.

Purity Appraisal, which appeared to be a skill focused mainly for buying from stores, would tell me the rarity and value of an item, as well as traits for buffs, but nothing here could help me search, so this was ruled out as well. I personally didn’t see the value in Abundance Echo. Milo made the argument that knowing where rare items were and would regrow would be helpful, but ultimately it was ruled out due to it slowly fading over months.

“Right, so the last two options. Forager’s Sight is a downgraded version of your current ability, at least at first glance. However, it is passive and will always be active. This could be an example of a small step back to take two giant steps forward on your next evolution,” Milo explained.

“How does it even level up if it’s always active?” I asked.

“Most of the time these skills level up when you actually harvest or collect the ingredients. A lot of miners have ore location abilities, and the experience is earned when they collect the ore,” Milo said.

“And the other one?” I asked.

“Well, that one seems stronger, at least in what you described, except for one small detail that’s in there. It removes visual cues, so you’ll be able to sense ingredients, even have a stronger sense for rare ingredients. However, it will not be visual, so overall I think the straight passive visual switch would be better.”

I nodded. “Well, it’s decided, then.”

Before I had a chance to second-guess myself, and hoping I wouldn’t regret it later by picking an ability that was not as strong as the others, I selected Forager’s Sight.

What happened next was strange. I felt a tingle in the back of my eyes, which rapidly became a burning sensation, causing my eyes to tear up. What really caused me to panic, however, was when everything went dark.

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“I can’t see!” I yelled.

“It’s okay, Trev. This is normal with passive sight skills. Just stay calm and give it a while; there will be some discomfort.” I heard Milo say.

I tried my best to stay calm and felt the warm mana of Crisplet sending reassurance.

Taking deep breaths, slowly the burning subsided, but I was still in darkness.

Minutes passed. The reassurance from Crisplet never ended while Milo was talking me through it. Internally, I was fighting back panic, thinking I had messed up and become blind now. I never even got to complete the rune I had planned!

It was then that a soft blue light returned to my vision. Rather, it was my vision. The darkness was fully taken over by the light.

“Now everything is bright blue,” I commented.

“Perfect. That means your eyes are getting used to it already. Just let yourself adjust naturally,” Milo said.

I wasn’t sure how much time passed as the brightness started to grow more dull, before I could finally make out shapes in my vision, with Crisplet’s fire standing out the most, cutting through the blue with an orange glow. Though it wasn’t all good. My head was aching now, and my eyes felt incredibly strained.

“I can see shapes, but my head’s really starting to hurt,” I commented.