Chapter 6 – Change of plans.

Roland returned to his room, it was still raining outside and the thunderstorm wasn’t letting up. The time spent in the ascension space felt like seconds to the people outside so not much time had passed. Martha had accompanied Roland to his room after the reveal that his elemental affinities were low. She brought over some tea and decided to let the boy cool off for now.

“If you need anything just call me Young Master, The Baron will be returning to the mansion tomorrow…”

Roland just nodded while being quiet, after he heard the door closing behind his maid he flopped on his bed like a dead fish.

‘What is this shit, what am I supposed to do now?’

He hit the bed with his ten-year-old fists while gritting his teeth. After a bout of rage, he jumped right of and ran up to his desk.

‘Where is that book…’

He started flinging the books left and right and managed to find the one that explained the elemental affinities in more detail.

‘0% on all of the affinities…this means…’

He already knew the answer, he had gone through these books multiple times, still, he needed to check one more time. He started reading, his eyes going through the information while his brain digested it with astonishing speed.

“Ugh…”

He threw the book he was reading to the side and sat down at his desk, his head moving backward as he looked at the ceiling.

“To change your class to any of the element mages you need to unlock an elemental affinity skill, you can’t unlock it if your connection to the elements is non-existent…”

If you wanted to progress further in your life as a mage this was a requirement. He could not go any further, getting that skill required his affinity to at least be at 1%. This was a rare case, a one in a million occurrence. People like him were considered inept at becoming a mage and mostly strayed away from that path.

He was a special case though. All of his stats made everyone think that he would be a talented mage. He had learned the mana sense skill at a young age and his intelligence was off the charts. In the book it said that most mages had an intelligence stat at 20 when they started out, he, on the other hand, had more than double of that. There was no reason to believe that he could be anything other than a mage.

“Something is playing a stupid joke on me… I can’t even swap this class till I get to level 25…”

He decided to glance at his status screen, he had even leveled up to the third level of mage due to the buildup of his experience. After the 9th birthday, his father arranged a goblin fight. Just as the first time he would fight a one on one battle each week, earning experience along the way that could be then used when he ascended. The experience buildup wouldn’t work for further classes though, this was a one-time thing before the ascension.

He thought about his status, he wanted to see all the new skills that he had gained as well as their explanations.

He then looked at his stats after he was done with reading those, his MP shot up quite high compared to the rest.

He looked at his stats, people at L1 who specialized in a field mostly had their stats at about 20. For instance, a warrior would mostly have a Strength, Vitality, and Endurance rating close to 20. He was a L 3 Mage and his intelligence was getting close to 50, but all his physical attributes were slightly below a basic l 1 Warrior.

“All my stats scream mage, I even got a trait that gives me more useless mana… Even if I respec later I will be behind everyone. My physical stats are below average when it comes to warriors… my dexterity is high though… should I switch to an archer?”

He started scratching his head and brought out the book that had some class and skill combinations. This was something that a noble title got you, most of the people outside didn’t have the luxury of planing and most of the class combinations were off-limits to the commoners.

He had focused on the mage related classes without much thought about the other ones for one reason or the other. He put all of his eggs in one basket and now they exploded at once. He needed to come out with a new battle plan.

“I must think of something plausible… if I leave it to that daddy of mine, I’ll be working in the army for the rest of my life.”

All of his brothers were on a one-way ticket to the army. His father was quite the militaristic nut and didn’t consider people that didn’t work in that field as much. At least that was how Roland saw it, he couldn’t be sure as the interactions with his ‘father’ were limited. He also tried to avoid him most of the time along with the other brats from his family.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

He was banking on evading the military by becoming a mage. Mages were rarer than the other combat classes and were sought after. He would be able to choose his path if he became one. Apparently, that wouldn’t be an option now, he would have to level up in this class which was a dead end.

“I still have the mage class unlocked… but if I wanted to be a magic swordsman I’d need a tier 2 mage class to unlock this tier 3 class…”

He went through his book once more, most of the better classes that synergized with the mage class required a tier 2 version. You even needed some tier 2 classes to unlock other tiers 2 classes that would let you get a better tier 3 class. The Elementalist class was one of those, that requited all of the element tier 2 mage classes to unlock.

“Damn elemental affinity!”

‘I need this skill to even unlock a general upgrade to the tier 1 class, I would be okay with this shitty tier 2 superior mage class that doesn’t really give many bonuses to anything but it also requires those affinities, they are just lower…’

He wanted to strangle the person that decided that you needed to have one skill to unlock any one of those classes.

‘The possibility of having this was super low… one in a million or less… does it have something to do with me being from another world or something?’

“Wait, do I really need to have a combat class? … Wouldn’t it be better not to risk my life and just make money in peace?”

He rubbed his chin, he had ignored most of the construction classes that were presented there. Mostly due to the only viable one at tier 1 was the blacksmith. He imagined himself stuck in a stuffy room hammering away on some ingots.

“Well… might not be that bad?”

“Is there anything that works well with a tier 1 mage class till tier 3 at least?”

He went through the book, it had some combinations that could work with the blacksmith class.

‘Blacksmith is the first and gives basic bonuses to crafting weapons and armor but nothing special… you can unlock a weaponsmith or an armorer at tier 2. After that, the most common classes are tier 3 Master Smith and Tier 4, Grandmaster Smith.

He started going for the requirements for those classes. The blacksmith class used dexterity as one of its main stats along with strength and endurance. Those two later stats weren’t so high, but he had high dex so this was feasible. Plus he would gain more strength by leveling up his mage class so when he started anew as a blacksmith he shouldn’t have any problems.

‘I need to find something that combines with those first…’