Chapter 4 (Patreon)

Hi everyone. I'm finally back in the swing of things, so chapters should come out weekly this month. Sorry for the lack of progress so far, but we should be good to go now. These chapters will be a bit rougher than I usually post because there are details that need to be included, but I'm not sure when they should be added, so there will be larger changes between this version and the final version than is typical for me. Chapter 4

Ranic was more than happy to organise a generalist scholar to teach me general knowledge. However, when I gratefully handed over Salem's curriculum, he laughed. In retrospect, I should have questioned why my familiar was being so helpful. Yes, he'd taught me everything I needed to know to survive, but he rarely parted with more information if he could help it.

The initial stage of Salem's curriculum was a list of 182 novice lore proficiencies. To me, they looked like a list of general knowledge. To Ranic, they were clear instructions to send me back to elementary school.

Scholar Lishia held the door to her classroom open, wearing the same dress she'd worn on our date the night before as I filed into the room with the rest of her six-year-old students. The school the royal scholars were building was still months away from being completed, so she was teaching out of the living room of an unfinished apartment.

She smiled at each of her students as they took a seat on the mat, then smirked at me at the back of the room and walked over to the blackboard. "Good morning, students."

"Good morning, Scholar Lishia," I replied with the rest of the class before returning the smirk.

Lishia was twenty-five, blonde, cute, generously proportioned and the hottest teacher I'd ever had. Since the first morning I walked into her classroom, I'd done everything I could to become the teacher's pet. I would have tried my luck with detention, but they didn't give six-year-olds detention here. They just hit their hands with a cane, so having to stay after class was never an option.

After two weeks of coming here every morning, I no longer felt embarrassed about being in a room filled with six-year-olds. I'd accepted that if I wanted to know what every child in this world knew, I needed to study what they learned.

I could have studied under private tutors, but Blackwood had a limited number of generalist scholars, and Ranic had said that asking one to teach me privately was inconsiderate. They were already overworked.

Lishia pointed to the blackboard where she'd drawn half a dozen animals with coloured chalk. "Today, you'll be learning everything you need to know to gain the novice guardian animal lore proficiency. Does anyone know what a guardian animal is?"

Several little hands shot up excitedly.

Mine wasn't among them.

I had no clue what she was talking about, but that was normal.

Lishia's classes were not like the classes I grew up with. She didn't try to construct her lessons to slowly introduce information, growing her students understanding. Instead, she tried to instil enough knowledge for her students to gain novice lore proficiency as fast as possible.

Gaining the novice rank clarified your understanding of the subject and improved your ability to recall that information. It also drastically increased how quickly you could learn and retain novice-rank details related to that lore. By the end of this class, these six-year-olds would be able to remember at least half of everything they had learned here for the rest of their lives, which was most of the reason why everyone I met seemed to know so much.

None of the proficiencies I'd gained since attending these classes had changed my understanding of the world. However, they did make it significantly easier for me to understand how it operated. It surprised me how much easier it was for me to accept the day-to-day rules of this world once I had the right lore proficiencies. Many of my minor struggles with the weird logic they adhered to were no longer a problem for me.

The little hands continued to wave excitedly until Obie, the brown-haired son of a trap operator and a generalist scholar, shouted, "Mommy says they're animals that can talk!"

Lishia gave Obie a patient smile. "What's the rule for talking in my classroom, Obie?"

Obie sighed. "You have to raise your hand."

"Did you raise your hand?"

"I did."

"What's the other rule?"

"You have to wait for permission."

"Did you wait for permission?"

"I did."

Lishia pressed her lips together, which was the only way she ever showed displeasure to her students.

"Not," he quickly added.

"Remember that for next time. However, you're right. Guardian animals could talk."

I felt my eyebrows raise. These lessons were never difficult, but they were always informative and engaging. I had no idea there were talking animals in this world.

Lisha turned to the rest of the class. "Where did guardian animals come from?"

This time, Obie was the only one to raise his hand, and he waited for permission to speak. "Mommy says they came from the wilds but were sent by the system."

"Do you know why the system sent them, Obie?"

"Mommy says the system sent them to protect us, but that was a long time ago. There haven't been any guardian animals in a very long time."

"That's exactly right, Obie. You earned a gold star."

Lisha went to her desk and opened the drawer, returning with a small wax paper card covered in gold stars. I'd discovered stickers weren't a thing in Radian on my first day of class, so I'd asked my research and development teams to make some for me. The children in this world were just as obsessed with them as they were back home, even though we hadn't yet perfected a version that could be applied to skin or clothing.

They were so obsessed with earning them that they actually learned faster, which increased Lisha's experience. This increase in experience was why she'd agreed to go on a date with me last week instead of waiting until after I left her class, as she'd initially said. She'd spent over an hour grilling me on the education practices I'd grown up with before my banter and good looks had managed to steer her in a more romantic direction.

Lisha went to the poster on the wall with everyone's names and added a gold star to Obie's collection, causing the boy to grin. He had the most by far, but then the boy liked to ask questions, and his mother was a scholar who taught the older students in another class.

Lisha turned back to her students. "Thousands of years ago, before the dwarves and elves existed and the system worked the way it does now, there was no way for the system to communicate with us directly. So, the system would send our people guardian animals. These animals could only say a few sentences and would repeat these sentences over and over again until we listened. Not listening to the guardian animals always led to terrible things happening to our people, so we quickly learned to listen to them and respect their wisdom."

I raise my hand.

Lisha nodded.

"When you say thousands of years ago, do you mean several cataclysms?"

"Yes, they appeared several cataclysms ago, but scholars are not sure when. Our original knowledge about them comes from oral tradition passed down by an older variation of the bard class. There are no written records from that time. The earliest records date from several thousand years after these events. Guardian animals may have appeared before the first cataclysm or after it. However, we do know they did not exist after the third cataclysm. Their existence is mostly myth and legend at this point. However, we're certain that they did exist because there is a branch of system lore for them."

Jiln raised her hand while pulling on her braid. "What's a cataclysm?"

Lisha looked at the class. "Does anyone know what a cataclysm is?"

When no one else raised their hand, I put mine up. It was rare for me to be able to answer anything, and Lisha liked as much back and forth in her classes as possible. It helped her students quickly achieve novice proficiency. "A cataclysm is an event or events that makes the system stop working the way it should, forcing the system to change so that it can keep working."

"Could you simplify that for the class a little more, please?"

I thought about it for a second. "The dwarves used to be humans, but then the giants started to eat them, which caused a local cataclysm."

I watched a room full of little mouths drop open.

Obie recovered first. "How did that cause a cataclysm?"

Lisha facepalmed, knowing I'd just derailed her class…again.

"They ate so many people that the dwarves' ancestors dug deep holes into the ground so they could hide. Because they were stuck underground hiding, they couldn't farm, hunt, collect firewood to cook, or get anything else they needed to survive and level their classes. That meant they couldn't use the system. So, the system changed to help them survive underground, turning them into dwarves."

Lishia spent the next half an hour answering her students' questions about dwarves and giants before steering the conversation back to guardian animals. "Does anyone know why there are not more guardian animals?"

I looked around, as ignorant of the answer as everyone else.

"I'll give you a hint. The answer is sitting in this room."

A flashback of the dwarf chief Durg'un receiving a quest from the system popped into my head. I could see him telling me that a quest from the system was confirmation that you were on the right path. That this knowledge was its own reward. The system was telling him to pursue my knowledge of mechs or suffer the consequences of losing out on an opportunity for his people to grow.

All the children were looking around, but Obie was the first one to point to me.

Lisha nodded. "Nice work, Obie. Landlord Arnold is a champion. Champions receive quests from the system that allow them to protect us from events we cannot see. Because he receives these quests, the system does not need to send us guardian animals to guide and protect us anymore. Does anyone know who else receives quests from the system?"

Every hand shot up.

Lisha pointed at a girl named Krin.

"The king receives quests from the system."

Lisha nodded. "The king and champions are our direct link to the system. They are our guardians against disaster. We are fortunate to have a champion here in Blackwood. Arnold's presence makes this village one of the safest places in the whole kingdom."

I suppressed a groan and tried not to let the children's adoring gazes bother me. My transformation into a champion was a rare example of something I couldn't fix despite it making me miserable. When I caught my reflection in a mirror, I barely recognised myself anymore. I wasn't a hotter version of me. I was someone else. And I didn't like it.

Discovering that I could heal like Wolverine had initially been exciting. I'd had enough close brushes with death that it seemed like a boon, but then I'd noticed how much my perception of danger had changed. How calm I was in life-threatening situations. How different I was from the man I used to be.

And then there was what was happening here.

Champions were the heroes of this world. They were the greatest adventurers. The bravest warriors. They ran into danger, so everyone else was safe. And people kept looking at me like I was going to do that for them.

The children and Lishia were looking at me like I was going to do that.

But I wasn't that person.

I did what I had to do when I had to do it, but I didn't go looking for trouble.

I tried to change the subject. "Are you saying that guardian animals used to fill the role of champions and kings?"

Lishia shook her head. "No. Guardian animals only delivered messages from the system. They didn't fight for us. They didn't directly protect us. They just informed us of the impending disaster. They are also the only known examples of talking animals. Many people consider them to have been directly created by the Sun Serpent and, as such, are considered higher beings."

"What happened when the disaster was diverted?"

"They returned to the wilds."

"So, guardian animals were peaceful animals created by the system or Sun Serpent that pass along a message from the system or Sun Serpent to ward off disaster. They may or may not have been higher beings, and ignoring them would lead to disaster. They no longer exist because champions and kings receive quests from the system, making their creation unnecessary."

A halo of light surrounded me as I finished reciting back everything she'd shared, and a notification appeared.    

Well done, you have successfully comprehended simplified guardian animal lore well enough to parrot it back, earning you your first rank of comprehension in this field. You can now boast that you understand guardian animal lore as well as any Novice.

The knowledge bouncing around in my head came together, giving me a deeper understanding and clarity. With that understanding came a question that hadn't occurred to me only a moment before.

When my bond with Salem had fully formed, he had taken the form of an angel, as it was the closest concept I had to his actual existence. Had the system forced his cat form onto him because a guardian animal was the closest form Maraveer understood to his true form?

I'd need to ask him.

As the light faded, the entire class glared at me sulkingly.

They hated it when I was the first one to gain the lore proficiency.

Without a word, Lishia walked over to the poster and added a gold star next to my name because I was the first one to reach novice rank.

She turned back to the class. "Does anyone else think they're ready to try to gain the novice rank of guardian animal lore?"