Blessed Time: A LitRPG Adventure

by Cale Plamann

  He stopped, his hand on the simple wooden door leading to his bedroom. This was the moment of truth. Without a blessing, no one could view their status screen. They would still have stats and attunements; they just couldn’t use them for anything. The question was whether he’d still retained his blessing after traveling back in time. Hesitantly, Micah tried to call up his status.

  Micah Silver

  Age 13 [ERROR] / 18

  Class/Level-XP

  HP 8/8

  Attributes

  Body 4, Agility 3, Mind 9, Spirit 8

  Attunement

  Moon 4, Sun 1, Night 2

  Mana

  Moon 8/8, Sun 2/2, Night 4/4

  Affinities

  Time 10

  Wood 6

  Air 5

  Blessings

  Mythic Blessing of Mursa - Blessed Return, Ageless Folio

  Skills

  Anatomy 6

  Fishing 1

  Herbalism 4

  Librarian 3

  Ritual Magic 2

  Spear 5

  Spellcasting 10

  A wide smile blossomed on Micah’s face. Whatever magic powered his status and blessings clearly didn’t know what to make of his return.

  Despite its confusion, it still worked well enough. His class was gone and his attributes and attunements were trash, but years of training with the Folio had given him the skills of an experienced adventurer, and the Folio itself contained the spells and ritual formulae he’d need to regain his power quickly.

  It wouldn’t be easy to avoid the coming storm, but with those skills and the time to hone them further, this was doable. For the first time in weeks, hope began to bloom in Micah’s chest.

  “Miiiiicaaaaaah!” Esther screamed, slamming open the door and almost running into him. “Momma said to wake you up. Breakfast is ready and she didn’t want you to be late for your apprenticeship with Keeper Ansom again.”

  “Well, I’m certainly up.” Micah chuckled, ruffling her hair as he walked out of his bedroom. A wave of nostalgia washed over him as he smelled the ham sizzling away in the kitchen. Constant fieldwork had kept him from his mother’s cooking for most of the last year in the previous timeline, and only now did he realize how much he’d missed her homemade meals.

  After a brief but hearty breakfast, Micah began the walk to Keeper Ansom’s library. Around him, the comfortable morning sounds of Basil’s Cove tried to lull him into a sense of normalcy.

  The bell from the docks announced to the stevedores that a new ship was pulling into harbor for unloading. A cluster of children ran by shouting the names of the “blessings,” play acted in their games of tag. All of this was complemented by the quiet babble of petty merchants as they sold all manner of knickknacks and food from small stalls lining the city streets.

  It was all so mundane, in sharp relief to the terror and adrenaline of the Durgh invasion. Micah couldn’t help but smile as he quickened his pace, trying to arrive at the library just as it opened.

  He was almost on time, drawing a mirth-filled admonishment from Ansom as he gasped for breath in the darkened building’s vestibule. Silently, he vowed to take up jogging. Even if his younger body lacked the muscle definition and endurance he was used to, a short run shouldn’t leave him winded and heaving. If he really planned to make a difference in five years, that would need to change.

  “Keeper Ansom,” he said between deep breaths, sucking down the morning’s humid air, “I was talking with some of my friends about Blessed and none of us could figure out how they get their classes. James said that they just get them along with their blessings, but that doesn’t sound right to me.”

  “That’s why you’re working for me and James is apprenticing as a butcher,” Ansom replied with a chuckle, buying Micah’s lie. “Classes are bestowed by something called a class crystal. Really, it’s not much more than a chunk of quartz enchanted and imbued with a point of attunement. They aren’t terribly hard to make; it’s just that spending a point of attunement on them is expensive. Most of the adventuring and crafting guilds have a couple on hand that they let their protégés use in exchange for an exclusive contract. It’s the same story with the military and civil government. Heck, I’m a decent enchanter myself. I could probably make one if I wanted to.”

  “How does the crystal select your class, then?” Micah questioned, doing his best to sound like the inquisitive youth he remembered himself to be.

  “They analyze your skills, affinities, and blessings,” Ansom replied, moving over to a pile of books by the side of his desk. “Most people end up with fairly simple classes because it’s hard to amass the necessary abilities to earn an uncommon or rare class before they turn sixteen. Technically, you don’t need to select a class right away, but it’s difficult to earn attunement without one, so most people don’t bother with waiting. Still, some scholars have studied the process.

  “Here.” Ansom passed a musty tome to Micah titled On Classes and their Assignment. “About a century ago, the royal house of Kerrakan commissioned this work. As far as I understand, the purpose of it was to help them design rigorous training regimens to ensure that their children would earn more rarefied classes than those available to you or me. Once you finish your work, you can take it to the reading room.”

  Micah nodded, grabbing the book from Ansom and clasping it to his chest before scampering off to an eventful day of sorting and reshelving books. Every once in a while, the Keeper would need him to engage in the tedious drudgery of copying by hand a damaged passage in an older grimoire, but usually, Ansom gave him only simple organizational and filing work. The end result was Micah having half of almost every day to read through whatever might take his fancy.

  In his previous life, that had included an embarrassing number of books about heroes and knights rescuing fair damsels. Sure, he’d also read some more practical works on spell theory, but there hadn’t been any focus or drive behind his actions. This time, Micah passed by the histories and propaganda entirely. As soon as he finished his work for the day, he began poring over On Classes.

  It was fascinating. No one in the Lancers really talked about the theory behind receiving a class. As far as they were concerned, you just touched a crystal and got your options. There wasn’t even a cursory attempt to understand how and why an individual received the options they did.

  On Classes treated class selection with the same scientific rigor a botanist would plant classification. Known classes were laid out by category, rarity, and benefits provided to the recipient. There was even a table cross-indexing the classes by the skills needed to unlock them.

  Apparently, wizard was an uncommon class because it required multiple affinities as well as a skill. When Micah compared it with the more common elementalist spellcasters, he noticed the difference immediately. Only elementalists specializing in the primal elements, Time and Order/Chaos, earned an attribute per level. Of course, their classes were also considered uncommon due to the rarity. Every other spellcaster specializing in only one element provided much less mana per level and only 1 attribute point every other level.

  Semi-angrily, he paged toward the end of the book, looking for more advanced spellcasting classes. Some were a matter of luck—such as sorcerer, which required affinities in both primal elements—but many were simply more advanced versions of wizard. High wizard required a Spellcasting skill level of 10, doable but well beyond the capabilities of most commoners, especially if they were unprepared. Magi needed two affinities and a Spellcasting skill of 5 along with a skill level in Ritual Casting. Adept also demanded two affinities, a Spellcasting skill of 5, and a skill level in Enchanting.

  Each of those classes granted a point in both Spirit and Mind per level, doubling a wizard’s attribute growth. What truly caught Micah’s eye, however, was the thaumaturge class. Only one royal son had ever managed to earn it, and he’d been quickly killed during a dynastic dispute lest he turn into an unstoppable despot. The details on its acquisit
ion were spotty, but it was rumored to require three or more affinities, and 10 skill levels in Spellcasting, Ritual Casting, and Enchanting.

  Of course, the class was as useful to the recipient as it was difficult to acquire. In addition to increased mana growth, the class gave a point in Spirit, Mind, and an attribute of its user’s choice each level. The book had an afterword, theorizing the existence of even more exalted classes that would put their users on par with the saints themselves, but Micah simply ignored the baseless speculation.

  Micah closed the book, a gleam in his eyes. That was true power. He’d always known that nobles were more powerful than a guild Blessed. The insufferable pricks never shut up about it after all. He’d always just chalked it up to the absurd amount of attunement they inherited, letting excess mana subsume any difference in skill the two might have.

  The book changed things. The nobility were powerful, but their secrets weren’t entirely beyond his grasp. With proper training and preparation, he’d be able to claim a rare class and unlock his potential in a way that would force them to listen.

  The next day, after finishing his normal work, Micah cracked open a book on enchanting. He wouldn’t have the time to become a thaumaturge—after all, it took him almost three constant years of spellcasting to earn his way to 10 ranks in that skill—but with the time he had, it shouldn’t be impossible for him to learn enchanting well enough to make a class crystal.

  Once he selected a class, most likely Magi, he’d be able to use his spells again. Then, it was just a matter of sneaking out at night to practice spells and gain levels. If he became powerful enough, one of the larger guilds would have to take notice of him. That would be his chance to pass on the warnings about the Durgh incursion.

  Mentally setting the Folio to take notes, Micah dove into the book on enchanting. It was like crossing calculus with calligraphy. Each rune etched onto an item created an effect and altered the item on a fundamental level. Every rune needed to be custom-tailored to the object that it was being inscribed on, with slight changes to the composition or even metaphorical significance of the object being enough to cause an enchantment to fizzle. Worse, each subsequent rune required the enchanter to account for the changes made to the magical fabric of the object by previous runes.

  He ended the day with a headache, a skill level in Enchanting, and a point of Moon attunement as a reward for his diligence. For almost a month, he did nothing but study enchanting at the library and follow up on his studies from the notes inscribed in the Folio at home.

  Fairly quickly, he made it to the second skill rank in Enchanting before his growth tapered off, likely due to his reluctance to actually practice the skill. After all, every attempt at enchanting, whether or not it was successful, cost attunement. At least until he turned sixteen, he had almost no way to regain any attunement he spent.

  Finally, a couple days after Trevor’s sixteenth birthday and blessing and just before Micah’s fourteenth birthday, he reached the third level in the skill. Reluctantly, Micah went to the market and acquired a decent-sized chunk of quartz from a curio shop. The milky crystal had some use in enchanting, but it was a common enough mineral that no one second-guessed a boy claiming he wanted it to “make jewelry” for his mother.

  That night, he snuck out into the garden with the necessary reagents to enchant the quartz: a small amount of silver dust, a chisel, a kitchen knife, and a live chicken he’d fed a sleeping draught. Once he was sure the rest of his family was sound asleep from another dose of the sleeping drugs that he’d slipped into their dinner, Micah began the process.

  Sprinkling a pinch of the dust over the quartz, he recited a ritual spell of consecration to prepare it before quickly slitting the chicken’s throat and letting its blood soak the stone. Theoretically, a chicken wasn’t needed, but any ritual or enchantment needed energy. If lifeblood or some other easily accessible source wasn’t provided, it would simply take it from the caster. A simple two-rune enchantment like this wouldn’t kill him. Probably. It certainly would sap his vitality, making him frail and more prone to injury or disease.

  As the blood soaked into the stone, it grew warm in Micah’s hand. Quickly, he began inscribing the runes into the quartz, careful to follow the detailed instructions and mathematical proofs laid out in the Ageless Folio. After what seemed like hours, Micah leaned back breathing heavily, his body drenched in cold sweat. The rune was done. There was only one final step.

  He cut his hand with the knife and let his blood mingle with that of the chicken on the stone. A primal force slithered into his mind and asked him a wordless question. Three clusters of light appeared, one as white as the sun at noon, another a pale gray, and the final one a single point of starlight in a field of darkness. Micah focused his attention on the sun and indicated his acceptance.

  With a crackle of energy and the smell of burning flesh, a tremendous amount of energy transferred from his body into the crystal. His entire body felt weaker, like he’d run for hours without rest or water, and he knew instinctively that he was now one point of Sun attunement poorer.

  The dried blood flaked off the sides of the crystal. Where once the quartz had been a rhombus, now Micah held a perfect sphere, slightly smaller than his tiny fist. Before his eyes, it began to grow with an inner light.

  New life and energy flowed through his body as he was awarded a point of Moon attunement for his achievement. Apparently, Mursa approved of his first forays into enchanting. Micah chuckled and held the sphere up to the starlight. Now he only needed to let the crystal charge for a couple of days, and he’d be ready to resume his work once more.

  16

  Reclassed

  While waiting for the class crystal to charge, Micah spent all of his free time at the library studying ritual magic. Really, the apprenticeship was a lucky break on his part. The library was technically owned by a collection of Basil’s Cove’s richest families. On paper, Keeper Ansom only curated and maintained the books, but the nobles of Basil’s Cove knew better than to remove the old wizard. The library was such a disorganized sprawl that without the Keeper, no one would be able to find any of the tomes they needed.

  The fact of the matter was that no one family could easily afford all of the books in the library, and usually, each noble house only wanted one or two at a time. While a novel or history book might be cheap, possibly even mass-produced by a printer with the appropriate blessings, grimoires containing spells or other valuable knowledge were rare, often by design. It was obvious, really. It wasn’t any harder to print a book containing valuable information on classes, monsters, or spell theory. The rich and powerful just controlled the production of such texts in a mostly successful effort to keep a monopoly over them.

  The more Micah thought about it, the angrier he got at himself for how he’d misused his time in his first iteration. With most of Basil’s Cove’s theoretical knowledge just sitting around him, most of which was restricted to people of his class, instead, he’d read children’s stories. Admittedly, he was a child at the time, but still. It was almost as foolish as his instinctive rejection of his blessing. Mursa gave him the ability to travel to the past for a reason, and he’d be an absolute idiot not to take advantage of that gift.

  As for his studies? Ritual magic had always fascinated Micah. Like enchanting, it didn’t require an affinity, but by the same token, it wasn’t terribly useful in combat. Rituals could be used to see great distances, summon fell creatures, enhance someone’s body, change the weather, or any number of things.

  Theoretically, the only thing that mattered in a ritual casting was the skill level and experience with the specific ritual of the caster. Unlike spells, they didn’t require mana. Casting a ritual was more a matter of scholarship and calculation. Every factor needed to be accounted for, from the phase of the moon to the position of the stars and, more importantly, the processing of the reagents.

  Technically, even a first-level ritual caster could use the most powerful rituals devis
ed. In practice, the complexity of even simpler rituals tended to overwhelm any caster without a double-digit Mind attribute and years of research spent on developing the skill.

  The results of a failed ritual were much more serious than a fizzled spell. With ordinary spellcasting, either the spell worked or it didn’t, but miscast rituals could work in ways unforeseen by their casters. The guidebook warned of teleportation rituals that lodged the user into solid walls, or summoning spells that released eldritch horrors upon the world, as well as more mundane failures that simply stripped the caster of their vital energy and left behind a mummified husk. Micah wasn’t sure if the book was overstating the risks as a warning, but he wasn’t inclined to push his luck.

  Finally, the crystal was charged. Once again, Micah waited for his family to go to sleep before sneaking out to the garden and placing his hands on the sphere. The heat built as the voice entered his mind.

  “Error,” the genderless voice stated without any inflection. “Prospective user is under the age of majority. No class can be assigned at this time.”

  “Override,” another feminine voice, clear and beautiful but speaking from a great distance, interjected. “Designate prospective user as temporal anomaly and reanalyze.”

  That was new. Micah frowned, trying to ignore the way the crystal continued to heat up under his hands. None of the books mentioned anything like this.

  “Prospective user is eighteen solar years,” the original voice responded. “Adjusting internal records and analyzing skills and affinities.

  “Available classes are Magi, Adept, High Wizard, Wizard, Chronomancer, Aeromancer, Healer, Doctor, Herbalist, Surgeon, Librarian, High Spearman, Spearman, Warrior.” The voice recited the list emotionlessly. “Please select an option to gain more information about it.”

  “Magi,” Micah choked out through gritted teeth. The interlude while the voices argued had let the heat in the crystal build to an almost-unbearable level.